memeorandum: Obama's deficit plan revs up Democrats (Stephanie Condon/CBS News)

5:35 PM ET, September 19, 2011

Top Items:

Alex Seitz-Wald / ThinkProgress:

Multi-Millionaire Rep. Says He Can't Afford A Tax Hike Because He Only Has $400K A Year After Feeding Family — Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on MSNBC with Chris Jansing this morning to attack President Obama's new deficit reduction plan, which includes some tax increases on the wealthy.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Wall Street Journal, The Moderate Voice, Mediaite, Daily Kos, No More Mister Nice Blog, Indecision Forever, Gawker, emptywheel, TPMDC, The New Civil Rights Movement, Reuters, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Juanita Jean's and Balloon Juice

Ezra Klein / Washington Post:

Why the White House changed course — President Obama's deficit-reduction plan (pdf) is most interesting for what's not in it. It does not cut Social Security by “chaining” the program's cost-of-living increases. It does not raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67.

Discussion: Hullabaloo, Firedoglake, US Politics, Booman Tribune, MyDD and Grasping Reality …

Helene Cooper / New York Times:

Obama Deficit Plan Cuts Entitlements and Raises Taxes on Rich — WASHINGTON — President Obama will unveil a deficit-reduction plan on Monday that uses entitlement cuts, tax increases and war savings to reduce government spending by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, administration officials said.

Greg Sargent / Washington Post:

Obama throws ‘class warfare’ charge back in GOP's face — This has to be the clearest sign yet that Obama has taken a very sharp populist turn as he seeks to frame the contrast between the parties heading into 2012. During his remarks this morning, Obama directly responded to Republicans accusing him of …

Discussion: Washington Monthly and The New Republic

Jonathan Bernstein / Washington Post:

Behind Obama's newfound aggressiveness: GOP fear of the ‘trigger’ — It's probably true, as Greg wrote this morning, that Barack Obama's willingness to promote a jobs bill and now a deficit reduction package that are dead on arrival in the House — but will give the White House popular talking points …

Discussion: Salon, Outside the Beltway and The Caucus

Sam Youngman / The Hill:

Obama defends new taxes: 'This is not class warfare, it's math' — President Obama defended his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy Monday and promised to veto any deficit reduction plan from Congress that cuts entitlement programs but doesn't raise taxes on the wealthy.

Discussion: The Politico and The Heritage Foundation

Stephanie Condon / CBS News:
Obama's deficit plan revs up Democrats

Discussion: Balloon Juice and JammieWearingFool

Rose Garden / The White House:
Remarks by the President on Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction

Discussion: Firedoglake, The Hill, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/* and AMERICAN FUTURE

David Dayen / Firedoglake:
Obama Debt Reduction Plan a Sharp Pullback from Grand Bargain Territory

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly, TPMDC and Wall Street Journal

Mike Lillis / The Hill:
Liberals pan benefit cuts in Obama plan

Discussion: CNN

Mark Penn / The Huffington Post:
Strategy Corner: Obama — Don't Bring Back Class Warfare

Discussion: Pajamas Media, Hot Air, TPMDC, Ben Smith's Blog and The Mahablog

Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic:
What Obama Is Proposing for Medicare

Discussion: Washington Monthly and ThinkProgress

Zachary A. Goldfarb / Washington Post:
Obama's debt-reduction plan: $3 trillion in savings, half from new tax revenue

Helene Cooper / New York Times:
Obama Vows Veto if Deficit Plan Has No Tax Increases

Discussion: The Caucus, Outside the Beltway, Washington Post, Hot Air, DISSENTING JUSTICE, Truthdig and The Other McCain

Reed Hastings / The Official Netflix Blog:

An Explanation and Some Reflections — I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation. — It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes.

Mike Isaac / Epicenter:
Meet Qwikster: Netflix Spins Off Discs-By-Mail from Streaming Video

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Outside the Beltway, Mashable, New York Times, GigaOM, skippy the bush kangaroo and Eschaton, more at Techmeme »

Megan McArdle / The Atlantic Online:
The Qwikster and the Dead

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Mother Jones and alicublog

Mj Lee / The Politico:

Greta Van Susteren: Tucker Carlson's a ‘pig’ for Palin story — Fox News host Greta Van Susteren is calling out Daily Caller owner Tucker Carlson as a “pig” and “purveyor of smut” for prominently posting a story with the headline: “Mike Tyson: Sarah Palin met the ‘womb shifter’.”

Discussion: The Crawdad Hole, Conservatives4Palin, All American Blogger, FishbowlDC, Mediaite, Gretawire, The Other McCain, Left Coast Rebel, Riehl World View and Datechguy's Blog

David Edwards / The Raw Story:
Greta Van Susteren calls Tucker Carlson a ‘pig’

Discussion: ThinkProgress and Gretawire

Jeffrey Goldberg / The Atlantic Online:

Susan Rice: Palestinians Are Delaying Creation of Their State — The anti-Israel Barack Obama, who has strengthened America's defense and intelligence ties with Israel (despite secretly hating it, as many Republican will tell you), also appointed the secretly Israel-hating Susan Rice …

Discussion: Ben Smith's Blog, Bloomberg and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

John Heilemann / New York Magazine:
The Tsuris — Barack Obama is the best thing Israel has going for it right now.

Discussion: NY Daily News, Israel Matzav, Pajamas Media, Weasel Zippers, Democracy in America, Mediaite, Weekly Standard, Ben Smith's Blog, JammieWearingFool and New York Times

Tim Mak / The Politico:
Mahmoud Abbas: ‘All hell has broken out’

Discussion: Reuters and Israel Matzav

Ryan J. Reilly / tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com:

DOJ: Rick Perry's Texas Congressional Redistricting Map Violates Voting Rights Act — The Justice Department said Monday that Texas' state House and congressional redistricting plans didn't comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), indicating they thought the maps approved by Gov. Rick Perry …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Roll Call, Mother Jones and Capital Tonight

Aljazeera: Vote suppression in the US revs up

Bill Keller / New York Times:

Fill In the Blanks — Just a few winters ago my wife and I took our daughters to witness the inauguration of a man who had campaigned on hope and embodied possibility. We are pretty immune to political euphoria, but, circulating among the footsore pilgrims, we could imagine our country …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, Balloon Juice, Pajamas Media and LewRockwell.com Blog

Adam Liptak / New York Times:

A Blockbuster Case Yields an Unexpected Result — WASHINGTON — People who hate Citizens United, last year's blockbuster campaign finance decision by the Supreme Court, tend to blame it for allowing secret money from corporations and unions to flood the political landscape.

Associated Press:

Pentagon: Military ready for gay ban repeal Tuesday — WASHINGTON (AP) - The military has begun accepting applications from openly gay recruits but will not act on them until the legal ban on openly gay service is lifted Tuesday, said a Pentagon official. — Pentagon press secretary George Little …

Discussion: ThinkProgress

Leo Shane III / Stars & Stripes:
On eve of DADT repeal, it's business as usual for military

Discussion: Washington Post, The Raw Story, Addicting Info, ThinkProgress and Towleroad News #gay

William A. Jacobson / Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion:

BlueCheddar melts, pulls video confession of “beer pouring” guy (but the internet never forgets) — BlueCheddar is a Wisconsin “progressive” website that posted a video confession by an anti-Republican stalker who poured beer over a Republican legislator. — The stalker has been charged …

Matthew Yglesias / ThinkProgress:

When Ronald Reagan Was President, There Was A Soviet Union And A Cold War — Via Spencer Ackerman, Eli Lake reports on Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) acting like a complete fool who thinks the GOP congressional staffers are tiny children: … There's not much to engage with in this argument except …

Discussion: Attackerman and The Daily Beast

Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket:

Obama's urgent jobs plan: Right now, ‘right now’ means sometime next month maybe — Everybody remembers the urgency of President Obama's attitude toward the awful jobs situation. — Back in early August, Obama said the jobs situation was so urgent that he was going to give another speech about it …

Discussion: Hot Air, Don Surber, Weasel Zippers, Right Wing News and The Hill

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day — “By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over.” — Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), in an interview on MSNBC, on why as a small business owner he can't afford a tax increase.

The Wtmj / Local:

Thompson files fundraising papers for Senate run — MADISON - Former Governor Tommy Thompson has said that his long consideration of a run for U.S. Senate is over, and the process to run for the Senate has begun. — “I've filed my corporation documents today, which allows me now to build my organization …

Discussion: The Raw Story, Don Surber, Washington Post, Ballot Box, Daily Kos and Hotline On Call

Noah / Noahpinion:

Great Stagnation...or Great Relocation? — “I was on top of the Westin Hotel being shown the sights of [Shanghai], and I had a sudden crisis as I looked out at the extraordinary skyscrapers the architecture and the art deco. I thought to myself, well, the mandate of heaven has passed from us and come home.”

Discussion: ThinkProgress and Marginal Revolution

The Daily Beast:

Bill O'Reilly's Civil War — The Fox News host thinks America is in dire straits—and what it needs is a history lesson. In this week's Newsweek, he tells Peter J. Boyer about his new book and why he likes Obama.

Discussion: The Politico and Mediaite