Brett is doing that just fine on his own.

Yeah, Brett and Nitram are the only people on my ignore list.

Yes how dare anyone talk with a person you dont like. That would be against the law or something I guess.

I’m giving Brett a month’s vacation. This crap is depressing enough as it is.

I actually wonder what the Democrats could have done? With the Republicans in control of the House and having the ability to vote down any borrowing increase, and with them also being craven cowards more worried about retaining their seats than about what’s good for the country, just what options are available to Democrats besides Obama taking the nuclear option and invoking the 14th amendment?

It’s a game of chicken except the other side is actually crazy. Good luck playing chicken with crazy people.

Sweet, delicious tears of persecution.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20110731/D9OQR0RG0.html

FWIW

Paul Krugman posted an interesting quote (questioner is Marc Ambinder):

Q Mr. President, thank you. How do these negotiations affect negotiations or talks with Republicans about raising the debt limit? Because it would seem that they have a significant amount of leverage over the White House now, going in. Was there ever any attempt by the White House to include raising the debt limit as a part of this package?
THE PRESIDENT: When you say it would seem they’ll have a significant amount of leverage over the White House, what do you mean?
Q Just in the sense that they’ll say essentially we’re not going to raise the — we’re not going to agree to it unless the White House is able to or willing to agree to significant spending cuts across the board that probably go deeper and further than what you’re willing to do. I mean, what leverage would you have –
THE PRESIDENT: Look, here’s my expectation — and I’ll take John Boehner at his word — that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse, that that would not be a good thing to happen. And so I think that there will be significant discussions about the debt limit vote. That’s something that nobody ever likes to vote on. But once John Boehner is sworn in as Speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.
And so my expectation is, is that we will have tough negotiations around the budget, but that ultimately we can arrive at a position that is keeping the government open, keeping Social Security checks going out, keeping veterans services being provided, but at the same time is prudent when it comes to taxpayer dollars.

Boy he sure looks naive in retrospect, doesn’t he? I could see that kind of attitude before the GOP’s all out war on the PPACA, but in late 2010? Jeez…

Looks like Montesquieu was right all along. It just too a while for it to work itself out:

Yes, isn’t there a study showing that states with non partisan districting have more centrist reps?

You have GOT to be kidding…

Report are that the delay in completing the package tonight is due to Boehner objecting to cuts in defense spending…

CNN just had a real solid story on ‘how we got here’, how the debt increased over the last 25 years. Turns out it was all about spending! I had no idea. Not once did they mention the revenue side, I guess it just manages itself.

I love our media. And this was from ‘impartial’ CNN, I wonder what they say on Fox.

And this is surprising why, exactly? I expected exactly this when the details of the current package were revealed.

Sure, because the Republicans need to position themselves as opposed to cuts in defense spending. They want it all, and want to bear none of any possible backlash.

Of course not. Who owns the media, after all?

Here’s a transcript of Richard Wolff on the topic (taken from Greenwald’s comment section):

"The most amazing thing to me is that we talk about fixing a government budget that’s in trouble, and we don’t talk about the revenue side in a serious way. That is an amazing thing. If you look at what happened to the American budget over the last 20 or 30 years, the culprit is obvious. We have dropped corporate taxes. We have dropped taxes on the rich.

"Let me give you a couple of examples to drive it home. If you go back to the 1940s, here’s what you discover, that the federal government got 50 percent more money year after year from corporations than it did from individuals. For every dollar that individuals paid in income tax, corporations paid $1.50. If you compare that to today, here are the numbers. For every dollar that individuals pay to the federal government, corporations pay 25 cents. That is a dramatic change that has no parallel in the rest of our tax code.

"Another example. In the ’50s and ’60s, the top bracket, the income tax rate that the richest people had to pay, for example the ’50s and ’60s, it was 91 percent. Every dollar over $100,000 that a rich person earned, he or she had to give 91 cents to Washington and kept nine. And the rationale for that was, we had come out of a Great Depression, we had come out of a great war, we had to rebuild our society, we were in a crisis, and the rich had the capacity to pay, and they ought to pay. Republicans voted for that. Democrats voted for that. What do we have today? Ninety-one percent? No. The top rate for rich people today, 35 percent. Again, nobody else in this society—not the middle, not the poor—have had anything like this consequence.

“So, over the last 30, 40 years, a shift from corporate income tax to individual income tax, and among individuals, from the rich to everybody else. To deal with our budget problem without discussing that, putting that front and center, making that part of the story, that’s just a service to the rich and the corporations. There’s no polite way to say otherwise. And there’s something shameful about keeping all of that away and focusing on how we’re going to take out our budget problems by cutting back benefits to old people, to people who have medical needs. There’s something bizarre, and the world sees that, in a society that has done what it has done and now proposes to fix it on the backs of the majority.”

According to all the major news sites, the President & Congressional leaders have come to a deal. Now we get to see a) how shitty it is and b) if the respective Congressional caucuses are actually going to pass it…

Anyone who votes against this on either side needs to lose the election in 2012, tea partiers, dems upset with no tax increases, any of them. Pass this now and fight out who did things the right or wrong way in 2012.

As we all could have expected, complete capitulation:

A first step would include about $1 trillion in spending cuts while raising the debt ceiling about the same amount. The proposal also would set up a special committee of Democratic and Republican legislators from both chambers of Congress to recommend additional deficit reduction steps – including tax reform as well as reforms to popular entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

The committee’s recommendations would be put to a vote by Congress, without any amendments, by the end of the year. If Congress fails to pass the package, a so-called “trigger” mechanism would enact automatic spending cuts. Either way – with the package passed by Congress or the trigger of automatic cuts – a second increase in the debt ceiling would occur, but with an accompanying congressional vote of disapproval.

In addition, the agreement would require both chambers of Congress to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Such an amendment would require two-thirds majorities in both chambers to pass, followed by ratification by 38 states – a process likely to take years.

What part of the Tea Party platform didn’t get included, I ask?

H.

I was talking about this with my father tonight. I am pretty convinced we’re seeing the early stages of the final sclerosis of our Constitutional order. I can’t see the US system making it another 50 years if this keeps up.