The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Keith Olbermann Punk-Smacks Obama in the Best ‘Special Comment’ EVAH!

Posted on | December 8, 2010 | 42 Comments

Talk about your “must-see TV”!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As I remarked last night on Twitter, if Glenn Beck had ever gone after Obama this hard, he would have been denounced for committing a hate-crime. (To be exact, with only 140 characters to work with, what I actually said was, “@KeithOlbermann‘s contempt for President Obama in ‘Special Comment’ would have gotten @GlennBeck on DHS watchlist.”)

Given Olbermann’s contempt for “the insatiable maw of capitalism,” I’m going to engage in an act of social justice by expropriating the entire 2,192-word transcript of his hectoring, self-important, anti-economic rant:

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the tax compromise.

To paraphrase Churchill, again, let me begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing: “that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. We should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of American politics and policy have been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being, been pronounced against this Administration: ‘thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting’.”

In exchange for selling out a principle campaign pledge, and the people to whom and for whom it was made. In exchange for betraying the truth that the idle and corporate rich of this country have gotten unprecedented and wholly indefensible tax cuts for a decade. In exchange for giving the idle and corporate rich of this country two more years in which to accumulate still more, and more vast piles of personal wealth with which they can buy and sell everybody else.

In exchange for extending what he spent the weeks before the mid-terms calling “tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires” to people who have proven, without a scintilla of doubt, without even a fig leaf of phony effort to make it look like they would do otherwise, that they will keep the money for themselves.

In exchange for injecting new vigor into the infantile, moronic, disproved-for-a-decade three-card monte game of an economic theory purveyed by these treacherous and ultimately traitorous Republicans, that tax cuts for the rich will somehow lead to job creation even though if that had ever been true in the slightest the economy would not be where it is today.

In exchange for giving tax cuts for the rich which the nation cannot afford, and extending their vintage through the next election and thus promising at best a reenactment of this whole sorry, amoral, degrading spectacle in the winter of 2012 and at worst a rubber-stamp from a wholly Republican House and Senate and even White House.

In exchange for this searing and transcendent capitulation, the President got just thirteen months of extended benefits for those unemployed less than 100 weeks. And he got nothing absolutely nothing for those unemployed for longer — the 99ers.

This the Administration is celebrating — taking the victims of Republican Economic Policy, taking the living breathing proof that the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich do not create jobs, and putting economic bullseyes on their backs as of next December.

On the one hand— Unaffordable Tax breaks for the beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts, made ever more permanent as they threaten to suck four trillion dollars out of government revenues in the next decade.

On the other hand: An insufficient dead-end unemployment solution for Americans who would actually work for a living, made ever more temporary.

And we are hearing nothing about those 99ers. Even though the numbers of them will balloon from two million to four million or more by next December, even with this deal. Even though just last Thursday, the President’s own Council of Economic Advisers reiterated the reality that the easiest way to create jobs and keep jobs is to make sure that the unemployed continue to have money to spend.

.The unemployed — unlike the rich whom this President has just bowed to are, in fact, the job creators. They do not have investment portfolios to expand. They do not have vast savings into which to stuff the government checks. They have to spend the money. And the Council reported last week that when someone becomes a 99er his or her household loses at least a third of its income.

And where the 99er was the sole breadwinner — four households out of ten — they lose 9/10ths of their income.

The economy is surprisingly simple. If business and the rich won’t spend, and the middle class can’t spend, the only factor left to keep pushing money into the insatiable maw of capitalism is the government.

So, should the government give the money to the rich who keep it, or the not rich, who spend it? Apparently this President does not know the answer to that question. Even though he has his own Council of Economic Advisers.

Mr. President, for these meager crumbs, you have given up costly, insulting, divisive, destructive tax cuts for the rich and you have given in to Republican blackmail which will be followed by more Republican blackmail. Of course, it’s not just tax cuts for the rich that you’ve given up.

There is also your new temporary payroll tax holiday, establishing a precedent that the way money is pumped into Social Security should be negotiated and traded off and making it just that much easier to gut Social Security later.

And, oh by the way, in the middle of a crisis over making temporary Republican tax cuts permanent, you give the Republicans another temporary Republican tax cut that they can come back later to blackmail you into making permanent. Well, Sir, at least that’s the end of it.

Except, of course, for the estate tax, what Republicans so happily call, “the death tax.” Which will be reduced from its 2009 levels.

Huh?

The money given by one dead rich person to some living rich persons, will not be taxed, up to five million dollars. More than five million and it’s 35 percent — which is less than it was under the tax laws of President Bush’s last fiscal year. Sir, you have given undeserved tax breaks —and you have carved them a little more deeply into the stone of law – to rich people, living and dead. And you want me to tell them which Democrat proposed the Estate Tax giveaway?

Blanche Lincoln! Blanche Lincoln, repudiated by nearly half the Arkansans in her own party, and then repudiated by 63 percent of the voters in Arkansas. Mr. President, you’re listening to Blanche Lincoln? What? Were Bob Beckel and Pat Caddell unavailable?

This President negotiates down from a position of strength better than any politician in our recent history. It is too late now to go back and ask why the President, why the wobbly Democratic leadership, whiffed on its chance to force John Boehner to put his money where his mouth was. In September Boehner said if he had no other option, of course he would vote to extend tax breaks only for the middle class.

So the President and the Democrats gave him another option, naturally. But didn’t extending the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy became necessary to get Republican support for extending the jobless benefits? Nonsense.

Five times in the last two years, the Republicans have gone along with extending those jobless benefits, and they’ve done it without being bribed with tax cuts for the rich. Even now Boehner’s September confession, and the GOP’s unwillingness to take the blame for killing off jobless benefits, offered an alternative blueprint for this President:

Let the law expire as scheduled in 24 days. Let all the tax breaks go, and when the Republicans take over the House and try to pass them anew, if they somehow are not stopped in the Senate, veto anything that does not keep tax cuts for the middle class and unemployment benefits as the dog, and perks for the rich as the tail. The GOP is still terrified of being blamed for cutting off the unemployed. You take that fact and you break them with it.

There is only one possible rational explanation for this irrational and childish transaction. There are Republicans and Tea Partiers who are still intent on cutting off their noses to spite their faces — the “Blind Rage Conservatives” for whom any compromise is disaster, just as for this President, apparently no compromise is disaster.

Maybe the reason the Administration’s numbers don’t add up in this deal is that it was too busy instead counting votes and there really are enough on the Far Right to sink it and the President winds up having his cake and eating it too, proposing what he can call a “tax compromise” and then having it derailed publicly and embarrassingly by the Republicans. Maybe the political calculus here exceeds both in priority and quality, the real calculus.

But I deeply doubt it. Yesterday I had an exchange with a very Senior member of this Administration who wanted to sell me on this deal. I pointed out that that was fine, except that — as I phrased it to him — “frankly the base has just vanished.” “Well,” he replied, “then they must not have read the details.” There, in a nutshell, is this Administration. They didn’t make a bad deal — we just don’t understand it.

Just as it was our fault, Mr President, for not understanding your refusal of even the most perfunctory of investigations of rendition or domestic spying or the other crimes of the Bush Administration, or why you have now established for those future Administrations who want to repeat those crimes, that the punishment for them will be nothing.

Just as it was our fault, Mr. President, for not understanding Afghanistan. Just as we didn’t correctly perceive, Sir, the necessity for the continuation of Gitmo. Or how we failed to intuit, President Obama, your preemptive abandonment of Single Payer and the Public Option. Or how we couldn’t have foreseen your foot-dragging on “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Just as we shouldn’t have gotten you angry at your news conference today and made all the moderate Democrats wonder why in the hell you get publicly angry so often at the liberals who campaigned for you and whether you might save just a touch of that sarcasm and that self-martyrdom for the Republicans.

And of course, Mr. President how we totally betrayed your Administration by not concluding our prayers every night by saying “Thank you for preventing another Great Depression, you are entitled to skate along on your own wonderfulness indefinitely and if you get less than you could have on Health Care Reform or taxes, well, that’ll be okay, we’re happy to pay $10,000 for a $300 car because hey, it could’ve been $20,000, right? And because we only expect you to do one thing correctly during a presidency and you had pretty much cleared that obligation when it proved that you were, indeed, not John McCain.”

We are very very sorry. In some sense, the Senior Member’s remark about how we “did not read the details” is not utterly absurd. We have enabled this President, and his compromises-spinning-within-compromises. And now there are, finally, those within his own party who have said “enough.” In the Senate, the Independent, Mr. Sanders has threatened to filibuster this deal. He deserves the support of every American in doing so, as does Mr. Conyers and Mr. McDermott and the others in the house. It is not disloyalty to the Democratic party to tell a Democratic president he is wrong; it is not disloyalty to tell him he is goddamned wrong.

It is not disloyalty for the 99ers and the 99ers-to-be to rally in the streets of Washington. It is not disloyalty to remind the President that he was elected by people to whom he had given a clear outline of what he would do for them, and if he does not steer out of the skid of what he is doing to them, he will not only not be re-elected, he may not even be re-nominated.

It is not disloyalty to remind him that we are not bound to an individual. We are bound to principles. If the individual changes, or fails often and needlessly, then we get a new man. Or woman. None of that is disloyalty. It is self-defense. It is the acknowledgment that, as my hero Thurber wrote, you might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards.

That is what the base is saying to this President, about his Presidency. “Well, then, (we) must not have read the details.” The Churchill quotation — as opposed to the quotation from the very Senior member of your Administration, Mr. President — is from October 5th, 1938.

I don’t want to make any true comparison to the historical event to which it related; the viewer can go ahead and look it up if they wish; I will confess I won’t fight if anybody wants to draw a comparison between what you’ve done with our domestic politics of our day, to what Neville Chamberlain did with the international politics of his.

The rest of what Churchill said, paraphrased — but only slightly paraphrased — bears repeating again. The terrible words have for the time being, been pronounced against this Administration: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.” And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and political vigor, we arise again and take our stand for what is right.

Understand that Keith Olbermann speaks for the vast majority of people who reliably vote Democrat.

They really think this way.

They really think of the rich as “idle” people who contribute nothing useful to the economy. They really think that unemployment payments create economic growth. They really think of economic liberty as a “three-card monte game.” They really think of Republicans as “treacherous and ultimately traitorous.”

Elsewhere, I’ve described this resentful class-warfare mentality — the politics of envy – as “Murthanomics.” It is the exact opposite of sound economics, and is the sentiment that elects to office demagogues.

To watch Olbermann indignantly lecturing the President of the United States in this manner is a delightful smorgasbord of schadenfreude for Republicans watching the Left turn upon its own fallen hero. This is the misery inflicted on Democrats by the Republican mandate of winning 242 House seats in the mid-term elections.

Yet the fact that Olbermann speaks for tens of millions of his fellow Democrats, still trapped within the hate-filled darkness of their economic ignorance, is in fact a tragedy. And we should not gloat.

Oh, what the hell. Who am I kidding? Let’s gloat our asses off!

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Insty also links Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey, who links Rob Port at Say Anything, all of which you should read.

Related: More MSNBC Awesomeness: Obama Gets Pimp-Slapped by Rachel Maddow.


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Category: Barack Obama, MSNBC, Taxes, Video

Comments

  • http://www.uncoverage.net GoldenEagle4444

    And this is just the beginning, Keefums! I can’t wait to hear his diatribe come January!!

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    As LBJ once said… “If I’ve lost Keith Olbermann, I’ve lost… what, nine people?”

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_E55KWMMV2ZSWXNJPXDN2ST4ASY Mr. Joe

    Yes sir, I hate Barack Obama. I hate that half of him which resulted in this terrible deal.

    Yes sir, his white side. Which is coincidently his rich side.

    I also denounce you, myself, and the rest of white America.

    And what, sir, what will you do for the 99ers? Can you answer that RSM? Can you? You will give money to the rich.

    I know what I will do. I will listen to Nena’s masterpiece “99 Luftballons”. And I will contemplate how Mr. Obama negotiates down from a position of strength. And how the Administration tried to sell me on it and how we do not understand it, and how Obama failed to go after Bush for criminal charges.

    I would give some of my millions to these 99ers, but I do not want to get in problem with MSNBC again. So I will keep those millions.

  • Anonymous

    I’m not sure he speaks for a vast majority of Dem voters on stuff like this– a lot of them, yes, and probably most of the committed activists or ideological “base,” esp around college campuses and some minority communities. But there are lots of people who usually vote Dem for lots of reasons other than Bolshevik class warfare; not least, because in their families that’s just how you vote and has been since 1932 or 1936.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    I managed to last until 1:40 and could stand no more. What a complete idiot this man is. It’s amazing that anyone is fooled by slick-sounding stupidity, but it managed to elect this President, so I shouldn’t be so surprised.

  • http://www.coalitionoftheswilling.net Thsister

    Your words are music to my ears after I found one of ,a href=”http://coalitionoftheswilling.net/?p=11334″>Keith’s smug little toadies on CNBC today.

    WHERE do they come from? HOW does earning $250K after working towards that not-so-substantial sum make you a menace to society in America nowadays? HOW did that happen? HOW did we LET that happen?

  • http://www.facebook.com/jeff.weimer Jeff Weimer

    Their tears really are delicious.

    On another note:

    It is not disloyalty for the 99ers and the 99ers-to-be to rally in the streets of Washington.

    Keef says, “Let’s be just like France! Dammit, give us what we demand!”

  • AnonymousDrivel

    Olbermann: “The unemployed — unlike the rich whom this President has just bowed to are, in fact, the job creators. ”

    It was just about here where I thought to myself, “Yeah, it was probably OK to read this for the unintended hilarity of trademark hyperbole, but I cannot punish myself any further with such sustained idiocy.”

    So I guess that’s where we are with Olbermann’s Special Comments: where hyperbole meets idiocy.

    Sorry, guys. I just couldn’t finish the transcript. It may have bruised my brain so I’ll surely consult counsel on how to proceed in collecting on pain and suffering. Do you think Barrett Whatsisface can recommend an attorney?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_4JJCAFBITLNR6DJW5S5HLBFLXM Becky

    The man practically gags every time he has to say “the rich”. Where does all that nastiness come from?

    This idiot may speak for the Moveon.org Democrats, but I can’t believe ordinary rank-and-file Dems believe tax cuts are evil. If they do, this country is in worse trouble than I thought.

  • BJH1970

    OTOH, Keef probably knows something about the idle rich. One presumes this ignorant blowhard is, for reasons that escape human logic, paid more than $250K a year. And you have to admit, he produces nothing of value. He’s just extrapolating his own worthless existence to everyone else in his tax bracket…

  • Paul

    Keith Olbermann makes $4.oMM per year at least. So he is the rich. This type of diatribe makes me think he’s mostly idle as well. At least, his brain is. To the best of my knowledge, he is not sending in more than the required amount for his tax bracket to the IRS. Like many entertainers, he might be incorporated as an LLC which means he pays a lower annual rate. He probably employs an accountant or two to shelter some of his money from Uncle Sam through tax-free investments.

    In other words, he should shut his trap.

  • Anonymous

    This cocksucker is the rich. Fuck him. If he feels so guilty about being so unable to do anything constructive with his money, he can give it to me. I’ll spend it better than he could ever imagine, and help more people than all the Democrats combined.

    That’s not such a high bar, but still.

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  • http://912member.blogspot.com just a conservative girl

    How much money does he make? Isn’t he one of the rich?

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PXDAMZF5LE7YUIWB6FYWET54BM John Smith

    I think the problem is that Olbermann resents the fact that there is a black man living in the White House. What else could account for this kind of venom coming from someone as white as Keith Olbermann?

  • JeffS

    Stacy, you need to pen a gracious thank you note to Obama, thanking him for all this blogfodder from which you can mitigate that holiday blog traffic suckage.

    Say what you will about anything else Obama does (and I know that you will), his petulant behavior is a gold mine for blog traffic.

  • Michael_gettings

    “So, should the government give the money to the rich who keep it, or the not rich, who spend it?”
    I’m a little confused here. Give the money to the rich? I thought they already had it.

  • Pingback: Hey, at least Olbermann’s admitting that England should have fought first, negotiated later, instead of the other way around. « The TrogloPundit

  • Nate Whilk

    I gave up on the video at 1:20: “treacherous and ultimately traitorous Republicans”.

    I gave up on the transcript at ‘There is only one possible rational explanation for this irrational and childish transaction. There are Republicans and Tea Partiers who are still intent on cutting off their noses to spite their faces — the “Blind Rage Conservatives” ‘.

    This guy is a psychopath.

    TOMccain wrote, “And we should not gloat. Oh, what the hell. Who am I kidding? Let’s gloat our asses off!”

    Gloat, hell. It’ll be a few hours until I fight off the nausea Olbermann’s insanity gave me. I can’t imagine how you deal with it.

  • http://twitter.com/jtLOL ‘Jim’ ‘Treacher’

    Works for me. Ahem:

    HA-ha!!!

  • Anonymous

    –“tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires” to people who have proven, without a scintilla of doubt, without even a fig leaf of phony effort to make it look like they would do otherwise, that they will keep the money for themselves.–

    With apologies to Dickens “”Two hundred forty-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine : a noble member of the middle class deserving of a tax cut. Two hundred fifty thousand : an evil millionaire billionaire deserving of scorn and pitchforks.”"

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  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    I guess Democrats and Republicans have 0ne thing in common when it comes to this president. Neither one of us know a good thing when we see it. If you don’t like what this president does, you just don’t understand. It’s a communication problem.

  • Anonymous

    Someone should inform Keith that, before Mr Churchill said such splendid thing in 1938, he went out riding with the 21st Lancers on 02 Sep 1898. An example that Keith has yet to attempt.

    Cheers

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  • higgins1990

    “The economy is surprisingly simple. If business and the rich won’t spend, and the middle class can’t spend, the only factor left to keep pushing money into the insatiable maw of capitalism is the government.”

    Because of the insatiable maw of government, business and the rich won’t spend…it really is that simple. What is surprising is that liberals, especially in California and New York, don’t understand why businesses and “the rich” are fleeing their states.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    Obama’s peeps are right in a way – his problem is messaging. They err in believing he has been ineffective in presenting his policies. On the contrary, he has argued for them often and vigorously.

    His problem is that his message HAS gotten through and once people understand what he wants to do, they are against it.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    Oh, yeah – since I have been remiss in delivering gratuitous abuse lately, may I mock most derisively the idea of a post which requires readers to risk carpal tunnel syndrome to scroll through, only to find a “Read More” link at the bottom.

    Salt in the wounds . . .

  • Dcamp3376

    How can this Keith buffoon call taxes Government “revenue” . Been a while since finance class, but I remember that revenue comes from the sale of goods and services. Hmmm, this guy needs to be removed from the airways. FCC action required, lol.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PZBPCQ2YKRXJSK6C5AUTB4T6FQ Just Some Poor Schmuck

    “Well,” he replied, “then they must not have read the details.” There, in a nutshell, is this Administration. They didn’t make a bad deal — we just don’t understand it.

    ”

    Isn’t that what Olbie has been telling us about Obamacare? That we would all like if if only we knew what was in it?

  • Anonymous

    Wow. I’ve seen psychosis up close and personal in my family, but this takes it to a whole new level. Olberdouche has indeed lost his mind.

    Of course, that didn’t take long since there wasn’t much there to begin with.

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  • http://twitter.com/SooperMexican el SOOPer

    Damn it feels good to be a GOPster…

  • Euripides

    Why don’t you tell us why that is?

  • GM in Ohio

    We had better not gloat. The fact that there are MILLIONS of people in this country that share his warped perspective is probably the greatest threat our country has ever faced. If we cannot find a way to stem the tide of progressive socialist thinking invading this country, our society as we know it will be finished. Ketih had one thing right…..”good luck”.

  • Dodd

    They really think of the rich as “idle” people who contribute nothing useful to the economy.

    It’s difficult to separate one’s own experience of the world from how one thinks about it. So, tell me, can you really blame a rich liberal like Mr. Olbermann for thinking this way?

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