UPDATE II: In a Capitol Hill news conference, Mr. Boehner announced the “deal.” The New York Times reports: Bowing under intense pressure from members of their own party to end the politically damaging impasse over a payroll tax holiday, House Republican leaders agreed Thursday to accept a temporary extension of the tax cut, beating a hasty retreat from a showdown that Republicans increasingly saw as a...

Washington’s new impasse could ironically lead to a gift of sanity as the House Tea Party is finally revealed for the berserk faction it has been all year, holding the nation hostage to a scorched-government ideology. Senate Republicans, after passing a short-term payroll tax extension by 89 to 10, are outdoing the President in denouncing them for “harming the view, if it’s possible anymore, of the American...

Bahrain, the close American ally with one of the worst recent records of violence against pro-democracy protestors, received a formal a warning on Wednesday from the UN Human Rights chief. A team from the High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Bahrain from 13 to 17 December and concluded that the repression was unacceptable. It insisted the government should immediately and unconditionally release protestors...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Lately, I have been watching hours of scratchy black-and-white film about my childhood years, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and seeing through very old eyes a different America, peopled in turmoil by those who don’t resemble their descendants today. Instead of fighting for bargains on Black Friday, they stand patiently in breadlines with gaunt faces and hopeless eyes, waiting for food. Instead of blaming...

Tomorrow reliably-polarizing talk show hosts can be expected to applaud and cheerlead the Republican House for rejecting the bipartisan Senate plan as a great courageous development and brilliant political move, but there are many in the Republican establishment who are wondering how their party can get out of this political mess. Add to that the Wall Street Journal, which says in part: GOP Senate leader Mitch...

The routine is now familiar: Senate Republicans are in rare agreement with their Democratic colleagues and the GOP’s House leadership is poised to do likewise, but then reverses field, prompting the party’s Senate leadership to renege on its commitment. And so in less than 24 hours, House Speaker John Boehner, having said he approved of the short-term, bipartisan Senate measure to extend a payroll...

In recent weeks everyone from bloggers on the net to pundits on the networks have been discussing the issues of partisanship versus unity. Some have argued that it is more important for us to work together and to put partisan topics aside while others argue just as strongly that voters elect people to office to fight for the issues they believe in and thus it is necessary to be partisan. As the title of this...

How Now, Brown Cloud: What Smog Hath Wrought by Michael Winship Have you heard about the great brown cloud? No, it’s not a new nickname for Donald Trump (his cloud is more an intergalactic nimbus of Aqua Velva and Tang), or the ominous menace in a new Stephen King novel. It’s almost as nasty, though . The Atmospheric Brown Cloud, formerly known as the Asian Brown Cloud, is a mass of air pollution...

The deal averting a government shutdown: Who achieved what? A guide HERE.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s national and Iowa polls are sliding but the question is whether he is still high enough up there so that the impact will not be significant: Newt Gingrich’s support in the race for the Republican nomination fallen quickly since national Gallup polls of Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters in early December. And as Republican contenders hit the final...

Paul Zanetti, Australia This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

It sounds like the Democrats are ready to meet the Republicans halfway on extending the payroll tax cut – but the question now is whether the GOP will demand the Dems meet them 100 percent of their way as talk looms of a government shutdown: In what would be a major concession, President Obama and Senate Democrats will drop their insistence that a surtax on millionaires pay for extending the payroll tax...

Newt Gingrich, who is surging in the polls as the Iowa Republican caucuses draw nearer, is proposing a massive tax cut that has gotten much too little attention. That is probably a good thing for the presidential wannabe because it is exactly what most Americans don’t want and Washington can’t afford as it grapples with the aftershocks of the Bush Recession. The tax cuts are aimed at the highest...

And so the game of political brinksmanship continues. The House has passed a version of the payroll tax plan that sticks it to President Barack Obama, thus ensuring the continuation of the seemingly nonstop partisan struggle: Another Washington political showdown took shape Tuesday as the House of Representatives passed a Republican plan that would extend the payroll tax cut and speed the process for government...

Watching the President on 60 Minutes raises wonder at why more Americans aren’t rallying around this highly intelligent, energetic, fair-minded man. The answer may be in the question itself. Contrasting Barack Obama’s demeanor with the rage and unearned self-regard of his would-be successors, Congressional critics and Murdoch media attack dogs—-and his low-key response to that rabid criticism–may...

Are the American-based credit rating agencies in cahootz with the U.S. government? Columnist Anna Szabó of Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet Konyvek sees a war on Europe and specifically Hungary in the latest credit rating downgrades by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, and exorts Europeans to create their own credit rating agency that would be independent of U.S. influence and offer more accurate...

Has the very foundation of modern democracy been superseded without anyone noticing? Columnist Nicolas Demorand of France’s Liberation warns that democratic politicians have a new master – and it isn’t the constitution or the voter. For Liberation, Nicolas Demorand starts out this way: Executive, legislative, judiciary: political philosophy teaches that a democratic state is based on the...

Mitt Romney with Capital founder William W. Bain Jr. in 1990 As economic flapdoodle goes, the notion that trickle down economics creates jobs and otherwise helps the middle class has been so thoroughly debunked that Republicans have rebranded it as “wealth redistribution.” Still, the Republican message is pretty much the same less than a month before the all-important Iowa Republican caucuses and New Hampshire...

Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Merry Christmas: No More Insider Trading on Capitol Hill? by Michael Winship The other day, a couple of kids up in Kingston, NY, called 911 looking for Santa Claus. Law enforcement arrived to tell them that what they had done was naughty, not nice, but in deference to the holiday, no pepper spray was involved. Meanwhile, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a guy dressed up like Frosty the Snowman — that jolly,...

Here is some economic history from Barry Ritholtz: We’ve known for literally thousands of years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this. We’ve known for 1,900 years that that rampant inequality destroys societies. We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse. We’ve known for hundreds of years that the...

Newt is Right by Michael Reagan Tom Brokaw has written a book about the Greatest Generation, a generation that grew up with fathers in the home who saw it as their duty to instill in their sons a work ethic. The Greatest Generation went on to win World War II. Newt Gingrich is right when he warns that the newest generation does not understand or appreciate the value of good, hard work. Tragically, 40 million...

Are the once all-powerful credit-rating agencies, the most important of which are American – becoming irrelevant to the markets and those who invest in them? According to this editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, despite the fact that Standard and Poor’s threatened to downgrade eurozone debt last week, European markets have hardly moved. The editorial board of the Financial...

This is the week Barack Obama declared political war on an obstructionist GOP, invoking Theodore Roosevelt. In Osawatomie, Kansas, the President cited TR who came there in 1910 and “was called a radical…a socialist—-even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women—-insurance...