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I'm not sure what George Will was smoking before he made an appearance on ABC's This Week on Sunday morning, but apparently he believes that Democrats agreeing to extend tax cuts for income under $400-450K somehow marks the beginning of the decline of liberalism and now no other taxes can ever be raised. And of course in Will's world, we must go after "entitlements" because the only way to keep them was going to be to raise taxes on the middle class.

Never mind that, as Robert Reich reminded him, we did just raise taxes on the middle class with the expiration of the payroll tax holiday. I'm just wondering how many things Republicans have voted for to which he's asserted that same sense of finality? Or anyone else, for that matter? Will, like other Republicans, seems to have a little bit of trouble with that whole concept of compromising -- which, as much as people may dislike the results, is what used to be considered the normal way politics operated in Washington. Now it's become a series of hostage taking events, with Republicans continually threatening to kill the hostage if they don't get what they want.

I'm pretty sure Will has been predicting liberals' demise for quite some time now, but if his party thinks the way they're operating these days is an acceptable form of governing, and if they continue to push to destroy our social safety nets, the voters will start to wake up to the fact that we've got a problem with one of the political ideologies in this country -- and it's not liberalism.

Liberal groups in this country are the ones pushing back against austerity, against the unfairness of the unequal income distribution, pushing for a tax code that's fairer and pushing to keep our social safety nets in place. Will and his ilk are ready to throw grandma and the poor and the middle class under the bus and back over them a few times.

Transcript below the fold.

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If anyone would like a change of pace from the typical debates we've seen over this "fiscal cliff" deal and who made out and who didn't, the upcoming debacle over raising the debt ceiling and what's really lead to the lack of upward mobility and record income disparity in the United States, I'd highly recommend you set aside some time to watch at least the first few segments from Up With Chris Hayes from this Saturday.

Unlike most of the brain-draining discussions we're treated to on the majority of our corporate media and despite the presence of guest Veronique de Rugy appearing again in less than a month on Hayes' show, I don't think most of our readers here will be disappointed with the discussions that went on.

As Hayes has been talking about for some time now, if you really want to know who our members of Congress represent, forget the rhetoric and look at how they vote and who they protect when we see them finally act and not just what we hear them saying during their posturing on television. As was pointed out during the discussions here, despite the fact that President Obama talked about protecting the middle class in this deal, most Americans are going to see their taxes go up with the expiration of the payroll tax holiday.

As the panel members discussed during the segments, there was bipartisan agreement on that for some good reasons, like not wanting to undermine the integrity of the Social Security trust fund. But as was also noted, that should have been replaced with a renewal of the Making Work Pay tax credit, which you can read more about here: Making Work Pay vs. the payroll tax cut, in two charts.

Sadly, our Congress is still showing themselves to be more worried about their rich campaign donors and this deal to make it through their last round of Shock Doctrine governance was no exception.

You can read more on all of this from Hayes' blog here and more video below the fold: The fiscal cliff deal: A tax hike for the real middle class:

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What's really frightening is that there apparently are people out there who take this guy seriously rather than being viewed as some insane carnival barker who ought to be run out of town on a rail: Fischer: Fiscal Cliff Legislation is 'Demonic':

Bryan Fischer is not at all pleased with the legislation passed last night by the House of Representatives in an effort to avoid the "fiscal cliff, "declaring that it is a violation of the Ten Commandments' prohibition on covetousness, meaning that the Democratic Party is driven by a "Satanic" ideology and the resulting legislation is "demonic."

So much for that talk about it being harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than that camel going through the eye of a needle. Those greedy poor people out there are the evil ones for coveting what that rich man has by wanting him to pay his fair share of taxes.

As Steve Benen noted on this:

There was no word from Fischer as to why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would help craft a "demonic" fiscal agreement -- or for that matter, why 125 congressional Republicans voted for it.

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If anyone is still suffering from the illusion that we get any better programming from public broadcasting than we do from the majority of our corporate media, that is determined to push our politicians into going after our social safety nets, you need look no further than their regular Friday evening series featuring The New York Times' overpaid op-ed columnist and Republican turd polisher David Brooks and their favorite faux liberal, Mark Shields.

This week, Brooks was still carping about how the so-called "fiscal cliff" deal went over and that we didn't get any meaningful deficit reduction from the debacle, or in other words, he's mad that President Obama didn't give away the store and gut our social safety net programs. And for "balance" the viewers got treated to Shields repeating every right-wing trope in the book about how those who would like to see our New Deal programs remain in place are expecting a "free lunch" or being selfish because they don't want to cut Social Security benefits and "don't want to pay" for the benefits they receive from government.

Who needs right-wing Republicans when you've got the likes of Shields out there repeating their talking points for them? And as I've written here along with a ton of others, no mention about what's really needed to solve our deficit problems without balancing budgets on the backs of the poor, working class and elderly. No mention about getting us back to full employment and what policies should be fixed to bring jobs back to the United States that pay a living wage. No mention of the enormous income disparity and concentration of wealth at the top. No mention of the fact that Social Security not adding to our deficit and that there are some fairly simple ways to keep it solvent for decades to come.

Instead it's more talk of who is acting like an "adult" by doing their best to make those gaps between the rich and the poor even worse. What irritates the hell out of me about shows like this is that there are people out there, like my dad, who watch this stuff and think it's unbiased programming because it's PBS.

It's really disheartening to see just how much the Pete Petersons of the world have managed to dominate this conversation, where instead of talking about what is driving up our health care costs, what to do to contain them and whether The Affordable Care Act is going to address those costs once the law is fully implemented, we're seeing discussions on every network from PBS to Fox to you name it in between, pretending as though all of those things exist in a vacuum and the only solutions are for the working class to make some more sacrifices. It's actually beyond disheartening. It's really disgusting and inexcusable.

Transcript via PBS below the fold.

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Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) couldn't help but laugh on Wednesday as he corrected the hosts of Fox & Friends for repeating incorrect Republican talking points about how President Barack Obama handled fiscal cliff negotiations.

In an interview following the passage of the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012,” Smith told the Fox News hosts that he had voted no because the bill made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent and did not address sequestration cuts to the military and other programs.

"It's great that you're worried about spending and taxes but, you know, there are a lot of people who are watching this and they see the president and he really took no leadership when it comes to cutting spending with the budget and with this latest crisis," co-host Steve Doocy asserted. "So, it seems like you're at odds with the president."

"I don't actually agree with that," Smith insisted. "The president put on the table cuts to entitlements. He put on the table the chained CPI issue and a variety of other issues."

"But that was a non-starter for a lot of people in your party," Doocy interrupted, evoking laughter from the Washington Democrat.

"Well, no, here's the thing," Smith explained. "You can say, 'Well, he's not showing leadership.' But now what you're saying is, 'He showed leadership, but nobody else was willing to.' So, it's really hard to blame the president. As long as we're talking about the president, let me also make the point, Speaker [John] Boehner and the Republicans, what have they put on the table in terms of specific spending cuts?"

"Look at the Ryan plan," co-host Brian Kilmeade suggested, pointing to a controversial budget proposal authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

"Well, the Ryan plan was not specific spending cuts," Smith schooled. "A budget is not an appropriations bill, Brian. The budget said, 'Across the board, we will cut 10 percent. We're not going to tell you what, we're not going to tell you where, we're just going to imagine that it's going to happen.' In terms of specific spending cuts, the president has actually put more on the table during this last negotiation than the so-called fiscal conservatives leading the House."

"Really?" Kilmeade replied. "Because I don't know anything that he wanted to cut besides defense."

"I just told you. Entitlements," Smith insisted. "Again, if you want to say he's having trouble getting the country behind a fiscally-responsible approach, that's one thing. If you want to say he hasn't shown leadership, well, that's different. He said, 'Here's some ideas, here's some things I'm willing to do.' And it wasn't just Democrats who were running away from those ideas."

(h/t: Think Progress)

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It seems the House Republicans finally woke to the fact that their demands to amend the bill that just made it through the Senate to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff" were going nowhere: New Year’s on the ‘cliff’ _ House to vote on Senate bill as GOP backs off demands for changes:

Maneuvered into a political corner, House Republicans abandoned demands for changes in emergency legislation to prevent widespread tax increases and painful across-the-board spending cuts and cleared the way for a final, climactic New Year’s night vote.

The decision capped a day of intense political calculations for conservatives who control the House. They had to weigh their desire to cut spending against the fear that the Senate would refuse to consider any changes they made in the “fiscal cliff” bill, sending it into limbo and saddling Republicans with the blame for a whopping middle class tax increase.

Adding to the GOP discomfort, one Senate Democratic leadership aide said Majority Leader Harry Reid would “absolutely not take up the bill” if the House changed it. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a requirement to keep internal deliberations private.

The legislation cleared the Senate hours earlier on a lopsided pre-dawn vote of 89-8. Administration officials met at the White House to monitor its progress.

“I do not support the bill. We are looking, though, for the best path forward,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declared after one meeting of the party’s rank-and-file.

Despite Cantor’s remarks, Speaker John Boehner took no public position on the bill as he sought to negotiate a conclusion to the final crisis of a two-year term full of them. Read on...

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One self-inflicted crisis averted for the time being as we move on to the next one. I can hardly wait: Obama Praises Passage Of House Tax Deal:

Late Tuesday night, President Obama praised the House's passage of the Senate-approved fiscal cliff agreement to prevent a variety of tax hikes on middle class Americans.

The bill now heads to the president's desk. He thanked Vice President Joe Biden and all four congressional leaders for their work.

"Everybody worked very hard on this and I appreciate it," he said.

Obama called for additional deficit reduction in the form of "further reforms to our tax code" and spending cuts. But he reiterated his vow not to play games with the debt limit again.

"I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills for laws they have already racked up," he said.

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Surprise, surprise! It's all sour grapes over at Fox now that it seems Republicans are finally going to allow a clean vote on this so-called “fiscal cliff” bill that had passed the Senate. Leave it to their resident curmudgeon Charles Krauthammer to use the opportunity to paint President Obama as some evil Socialist who just wants to extract money from those hard-working rich people so that the lazy, good-for-nothing moochers out there can have their “entitlements.”

Never mind that he's completely wrong about President Obama being willing to negotiate with Republicans (far too often with the hostage taking we've witnessed), or that Republicans were the ones who originally voted to have these tax cuts expire. And never mind that we've got record income disparity and if we want to pay for a democratic society with a middle class, we should have a progressive tax code where the rich pay their share.

And of course no segment on Fox would be complete without some revisionist history in the form of St. Reagan worship.

BAIER: I mean, if you look at his deficit and debt commission, the Simpson-Bowles commission and the recommendations that came out of there (sorry Bret, but there were no recommendations from that commission, it failed) and what has not been followed through on, now two years ago, it's pretty remarkable.

KRAUTHAMMER: But he's not interested in that. And he's not interested in leading on spending. He's not interested in cutting spending. I think if you look at this in a large view, it's now becoming very clear who he is and what he wants to do. He's now in his second term. He's liberated.

He can be open about what he wants to do. He once said on '08 that Reagan was a historical President in a way that Clinton or Nixon was not. He meant Reagan changed the nature of the country. He got it hooked on low taxes, less government and an increase in inequality, is the way Obama sees it.

He sees his historical role, Obama, is to undo Reaganism and that means, not to cut spending. It means to raise taxes and he let the cat out of the bag on Monday. In that little rally he had, he said to Republicans, you're not getting any spending today and you know that, any spending cuts, but he said that if you think that you can get spending cuts after this in the rest of our negotiations, the answer is no. If you want a cut in spending, you're going to have to increase taxes on the rich.

Remember, he got an increase in revenues now by raising the rates on the rich. Well, now he's going to return, as he said on Monday and get increased revenue from the rich by eliminating deductions, the other way to do it. So he has no interest in anything other than raising the level of taxation, to sort of pre-Reagan levels, so he can support the entitlement state, which is what his presidency is all about. It's a very long view and I think he's attacking it in exactly the right way, if you were of his ideology.

Yeah, that's the ticket. The Kenyan usurper Socialist Communist just wants to beat up on the poor, oppressed rich people and steal all of their money for those lazy, undeserving seniors who would like their Social Security benefits so they don't starve. Krauthammer's still stuck in the '60's if he thinks this sort of talk is going to move most people when you still have so many people hurting from the recession and unemployed. That said, he knows he's speaking to the Fox viewers here, who are probably stuck right there with him.

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I have to give CNN's Ali Velshi kudos here, because he did something we don't see often enough on our corporate media. He fact checked someone right on the air and called them out for not telling the truth during an interview. Then he followed up during the same program so the viewers who watched the interview would see it. I was glad to see that happen during his New Year's Ever interview with Rep. Tim Huelskamp.

He actually went a long way in making up for the terrible interview with Huelskamp's fellow wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn the previous evening, where he allowed her to filibuster him and rattle off way too many of her talking points unchecked. I still don't think it makes up for him having the Wall Street Journal hack Stephen Moore just about every stinking week on his weekend show, Your Money, without some liberal economists for balance.

Velshi laid into Huelskamp for pretending that raising taxes on those making over $250,000 a year is going to harm a large number of the small businesses out there and those so-called "job creators," and gave him some grief for the stats he was quoting as well.

Ali Velshi Tears Into GOP Congressman Over ‘Misleading Statistic’: ‘You’re On CNN Right Now’:

Huelskamp disputed Velshi’s claim and said that he had “seen research” that raising taxes would impact “41% of business income.” Velshi called him out on his language, saying “41% of business income is not 41% of business, that’s a very, very different and somewhat misleading statistic.” Again Velshi asked, “You understand the distinction, right?”

Velshi then proceeded to silence Huelskamp from speaking any further, saying, “Sir, you put out information to our viewers, you’re on CNN right now. I would like the information to be accurate.” Huelskamp fought to answer, and when he was asked by Velshi whether he wanted to stand by his information, he said, “That’s our best guess. We’re still working on that.”

“I think that’s a guess,” Velshi retorted.

According to Huelskamp, part of the difficulty in obtaining accurate information is that the Obama administration won’t tell his team anything. Velshi slammed him for this misstatement, saying, “We actually don’t have any difficulty getting that information, sir. We don’t need it from the administration, that information is public.”

The post at Mediaite did not take note of the fact that he followed up during the same hour and fact checked Huelskamp for the viewers who had just watched the interview. I say good for him for doing this. It's too bad that this is the exception and not the norm on every channel with any politician who comes on the air and lies to the viewers.

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VELSHI: Wolf, I just want to... I've been doing some research as I promised I would do in the conversation that we had with Congressman Tim Huelskamp, quoting what he said was a study by Montana State University. We're working our way through that study, but I'll tell you the facts that we have right now.

If businesses... if everybody who earned more than $250 thousand saw an increase in the top tax rate from 36 percent to 39.6 percent, that would be 3.5 percent of all small businesses. That would be 940,000 businesses. That's I think a number that the Congressman was quoting. So at $450,000, it is nowhere near the number that the Congressman was quoting.

But let's just be generous and say that it was that. Of that number, only a very small proportion are not hedge funds, partnerships, law firms, companies that don't employ a whole lot of other people. So the Congressman's facts are just incorrect on this. There is nowhere near a million businesses that will be affected by this increase of taxing people above $450,000.

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House Republicans are pushing to amend the "fiscal cliff" deal that just passed in the Senate, but as Rep. Barney Frank told TPM, "if House Republicans amend the Senate bill to include spending cuts, they'll effectively kill the deal.":

"If they do, that'll kill the package," he said after a Democratic caucus meeting.

"I would not predict what these people will try to do because they are in thrall to extremists," Frank said. "But if they amend this I don't know how they think they -- an amendment basically says, our ideology is too rigid and we're not really trying to really [reach a deal]."

Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) office said his members have expressed "universal concern" with the agreement's lack of spending cuts. Rumors on Capitol Hill are that the House GOP is considering amending the legislation and sending it back to the Senate.

House Democratic leaders demanded an up-or-down vote on the Senate deal on Tuesday afternoon.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) declined to discuss whether a GOP amendment to include spending cuts would threaten the bill.

"Look, the country deserves an up or down vote on the compromise bipartisan bill that passed the Senate," he told TPM. "What we're calling for is an up or down vote. Let democracy work its will. ... Let's just take this step by step."

Here's more from The Hill: Senate-passed 'fiscal cliff' agreement in trouble in House:

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