William Black has written the article The Great Betrayal – and the Cynicism of Calling it a Grand Bargain .

Kuttner wrote to warn that Obama intends to seek a “grand bargain” causing the U.S. to adopt the type of austerity program that threw the Eurozone back into a gratuitous recession.

Worse, Obama intends to begin to unravel the safety net (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) to convince the Republicans to enter into this Faustian bargain.  Just as only a conservative Republican could visit “Red” China, only a Democrat can begin the destruction of the safety net.  The difference, of course, is that normalizing relations with China was a good thing while unraveling the safety net is a terrible thing.

I had been hoping to keep this controversy among Progressives under wraps until after the election, but I can see that it is difficult to keep this hidden.

Electing Mitt Romney is not the solution to preventing the Great Plague (aka Grand Bargain). What is the solution is for the Progressive Community to be able to turn on the proverbial dime after the election. As soon as we know that Obama has been re-elected and that the Democrats are in firm control of Congress, we must start applying immediate pressure to prevent the Great Plague from coming to fruition.

November 7 cannot be the time to take it easy and think our problems have been solved.

Another gem posted on The Real News Network.

It is so sad when the Republicans want to focus on spending cuts now and the Democrats concentrate on spending cuts later, but none of the mainstream politicians are focusing on what to do now.

When are we going to, as a nation, focus on the trillions of dollars of infrastructure work that we know must be done in the next decade? Do we do it now when there are lots of people unemployed, resources going unused, and interest rates at historic lows? Or do we do it later if and when we get full employment, the economy is running at full capacity, the interest rates are high, and any extra government spending will only fuel inflation?

Where is the sanity in refusing to do now what is the most appropriate thing to do now, and formulating a policy where we will do necessary work at exactly the wrong time in the economic cycle?

Many of the posts on this blog are inspired by what I read and and see on The Real News Network.  Because this source is so important, I am posting this explanation of what The Real News Network is, what it can become, and the support that it needs.

“The Promise” represents The Real News Network as we hope it will be when fully funded. What you have been seeing so far on our web site is just a taste of what’s to come.  We need your support to make this vision a reality.

The following video was re-emphasized in today’s email from The Real News Network, but it was originally posted in 2009.