[VIDEO] Olbermann: The four Great Hypocrisies of the debt deal

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Countdown 2.0: The four Great Hypocrisies of the debt deal

Keith Olbermann had a great “Special Commentary” on the hypocrisy of the new debt limit deal.  He opens up by stating that our government has given up the concept of right and wrong.

Gone from this deal are the "Four Freedoms" articulated by FDR; they have been superseded by the “Four Great Hypocrisies.”

The deal calls for over $750 billion in domestic cuts, including Medicare.

The new legislation was due to a politically induced hostage crisis over debt originated by bills run up by the previous president including funneling billions of dollars to the military industrial complex.  

The new legislation was born of an unnecessary debate to raise the debt ceiling in which every modern president has had to do…Reagan raising it EIGHTEEN times!"  Bush II raised it seven.

The debate was an obvious smokescreen to deflect from the issue of jobs -- and the lack of them produced by the Bush Tax Cuts – in hopes of capturing victory in 2012.  

As a matter of fact, the new deal subtracts 1.8 million jobs!  According to John Irons over at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, the agreement not only erodes funding for public investments and safety-net spending, it misses an opportunity to address the job problem we are facing. 

“The spending cuts in 2012 and the failure to continue two key supports to the economy (the payroll tax holiday and emergency unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed) could lead to roughly 1.8 million fewer jobs in 2012, relative to current budget policy,” Irons said.

Think Progress

This debate was fueled by egomaniac ideologues in the Tea Party who care more about getting reelected and gaining more contributions than they do governing.

These are the results of Republican leaders who cry for balanced budgets, and we have called it compromise.

Olbermann points out that those who defend the legislation have called it a credit to a pragmatic president who apparently won political points for standing for nothing and giving away almost nothing for which he stood.

The first of the Great Hypocrisies:  The Super Congress

Republicans can run back to their corporate masters and claim they have won $1.5 trillion in cuts without revenue increases while pawning off the real responsibility on some “super congress.”

“For two-and-a-half brutal years, we have listened to these Tea Party mountebanks screech about The Constitution of the United States as if it were the revealed word of, and not the product of, other, albeit far better, politicians,” Olbermann said.  “They demand the repeal of amendments they don’t like and the strict interpretations of the ones they do and the specific citation of authorization within the constitution for every proposed act or expenditure or legislation except this one.”

Where in the constitution does it say we can create a third congress to sacrifice these politicians so the majority of the incumbents can roll over and pretend they had nothing to do with it saving their jobs?

That’s the problem; politicians are more worried about keeping their jobs than they are governing.

The second of the Great Hypocrisies:  Republicans creating a constitutional super congress and a constitutional amendment to require a mandated balanced budget

Pick a side.  Either ignore the constitution or adhere to it.

Olbermann points out that history again proves not in their favor.  When firms aren’t spending and the consumer isn’t spending, then the GOVERNMENT HAS TO SPEND.

“Our ancestors were the lab rats in the horrible experiments of the Hoover administration that brought on the Great Depression in which the government curled up into a ball while it simultaneously insisted that the economy should heal itself when in times of crisis, then and now, the economy turns out to be comprised entirely of rich people who will sit on their money no matter if the country is starves,” Olbermann said.

So what happens if we go to war again?  What happens if there is another terrorist attack?  Or the next natural disaster...or anything that would require that we spend just one penny more than what we have?

“A constitutional amendment denying us the right to run a deficit is madness, and it will be tested by catastrophe sooner than any of its authors with their underdeveloped imaginations that can count only contributions and votes can contemplate,” Olbermann said.

The third of the Great Hypocrisies:  The super congress is supposed to cut evenly from domestic and defense spending

The problem here is that if the super congress cannot come to an agreement on what needs to be cut, then the cuts will automatically be cut from entitlement programs.  Basically, they are expecting six Democrats and six Republicans to agree on cuts.  If they don’t and they can’t decide on what defense cuts have to made, and they can’t finish any vote that isn’t 6 to 6, the poor will suffer again.

The fourth of the Great Hypocrisies:  The evident agreement to not add any revenues to the process of cutting

“Not only is the impetus to make human budget sacrifices out of the poor and dependent formalized, but the rich and the corporations are thus indemnified again and given more money, not merely to spend on themselves and their own luxuries, but more vitally, they are given more money to spend on buying politicians, buying legislatures, buying courts, buying entire states…all which can be directed like so many weapons in the service of one cause and one cause alone…making by statute and ruling the further protection of the wealthy at the expense of everybody else,” Olbermann said.

Every dollar cut is another dollar the average American, 9 out of 10 Americans, has to spend on education, security, or even life itself.  Where is the shared sacrifice?  These Americans didn’t spend the money that got us here, so why are we only asking them to shoulder the burden?

Olbermann asks where the outrage will come from.

He points out that it won’t come from the corrupted media in which favors access over exposing a corrupted political party or politician.  He points out that it certainly won’t come from politicians who seem to only care about their next contribution and how to get elected again than to actually govern.

The outrage has to come from us.

“First you have to get mad!” explained Olbermann.  “There is a tide pushing back the rights of each of us, and it has been artificially induced by union bashing and the sowing of hatred and fears and now this evermore institutionalized economic battering of the average American.”

Olbermann continued to explain that this will continue to crush us because those who created it are organized, unified, and hell-bent on keeping it this way.  

“We must find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960s and early 1970s,  and we must protest this deal and all the god-damned deals to come in the streets,” Olbermann stated emphatically.  “This deal is more than a tipping point in which the government goes from defending the safety net to gutting it.  This is wrong!  And while our government has now declared that it has given up the concept of right and wrong, you and I have not and will not do so!”