On my way to work I pass by a town called Hell, Michigan. This morning it was frosty, frozen and snow-covered.
Now I know why.
Charles Krauthammer points out what so many on both sides of the political divide seem to have missed: the tax cut/unemployment extension deal negotiated by the Obama administration achieves more progressive goals than it does Republican goals.
Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 – and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years – which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I was so reviled that the Democrats banished the word from their lexicon throughout the 2010 campaign. And yet, despite a very weak post-election hand, Obama got the Republicans to offer to increase spending and cut taxes by $990 billion over two years.
Not that this will be noticed by the wishful-thinking ideologues on the left who think he (a) could have gotten an even better deal and/or (b) think a better deal would have passed in the Senate.
I long for the days of reality-based liberal left. I really do…
And I should add that I’m totally freaked out to be agreeing with Charles Krauthammer about anything. Creeps me out and makes me feel kinda slimed.
I’m just sayin’…
