Thanks, I can’t let go of the damn hope.

Romney just came out against it. I hope that will help kill it.

One potential insignificant positive of this disaster, Schadenfreude, in listening to Larry O’Donnell admit how stupendously wrong he was about Barry. No, that won’t happen either. Larry will find some way to hedge it.

Why assume that DWS has to go along? Oh yeah, to get along, but maybe in fact she has a mind of her own….Only maybe.

It is very difficult to figure which would be worse for the common man: The Deal or default.

For myself, I hope it fails. The failure options seem much less damaging.

Boxturtle (If it passes, I sure hope the foodbanks are ready)

Objection! Assumes material not in evidence!

Boxturtle (Besides, her campaign contributors want it and the idea that she’d stand up to THEM….)

Well, last night everyone was smiling and handing out cigars and signing autographs, but I’m sitting here thinking “a bit premature, ‘eh?”

How long before Bowles and Simpson get to pop the champagne? About and hour?

Stop the Trojan Horse Debt Deal before it disgorges the Super Congress on top of the Social Security Trust Fund…

If this deal doesn’t look so good, wait for the 2012 budget battles. This situation only gets solved at the ballot box.

The manufactured victory for this manufactured crisis just got cut off at the knees by this morning’s Manufacturing Report. Wall Street had to shove the corks back in because it appears that our manufacturing base is hovering just above zero it terms of positive territory. Get used to the political kabuki being undercut at ever turn by economic reality. What is going to happen subsequently is going to be the rudest civics lessons ever received by the media stupefied American public. Poll this morning shows 70% of the public “believes in the necessity of a balanced budget amendment.” Personally, I prefer my civics lessons in a classroom setting because the real life ones are so
much messier. We are now seeing the “wisdom” of killing off critic thinking and civics in our schools.

The deal is worse for two reasons:

1) US is likely to get their bond rating downgraded anyway, the deal doesn’t save that. The process has been too ugly and the deal too weak to satisfy the ratings agencies (or so the market analysts say).

2) The default can be avoided in one of two ways: invoking the 14th Amendment or with the coin seigniorage.

The corrupt bond agencies shouldn’t be driving US economic policy. And if default is really so terrible, Obama would have to avoid it all costs which means using one of the two extreme solutions. Which aren’t really all that extreme in the face of the insanely nihilistic GOP.

I’ve been caught up in the day-to-day moves in the deficit/debt game but it seems to me, we would be well advised, as Progressives, to be working on our long game. The Right started, after a thumping defeat of Goldwater, to formulate their goals and work on implementing them. No one outside their circle would have given them a snow ball’s chance in their effort, for example, to kill Social Security. But here they are on the verge of victory.

I think it is time for us to start taking long views. (Oh yes. I know we are getting bloodied right now and that assaults on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid can actually kill people. But still.)

I’d like to suggest forming the NOTA party: None of the Above. If we got people onto ballots with that name, I think we’d win in a landslide. People would vote for it just because it was not a D or R. Might even get some of those Mad Hatter tea partiers who are mad at the Republicans. The 2012 elections seem ripe for NOTA.

Many have noted that if this disaster gets passed, it will severely affect those on Medicare by rationing their access to providers. So to ‘alleviate’ that problem, one logical approach is to mandate that all healthcare providers have to accept Medicare patients.

(Those mandate fans really do not seem to worry about where the limits on that sort of thing end, ignoring the proverb about letting the camel stick its nose inside the tent flap.)

I am betting Debbie W Schultz will be out of that job before the campaign heats up. That because I do believe she has a mind of her own. IMO she only took that job because of being snubbed in leadership appointment by Pelosi. Anybody know why?

If it fails to pass, that means the ball is totally in Obama’s court. Perhapss this will finally be his moment to shine and invoke the 14th or mint a few coins. I will not hold my breath on that, however, This guy has proven himself to be a danger to the Democrats and his country, regardless if because he’s hapless or on board with the Oligarch’s agenda. Worse than useless.

Wow, what a POS Huffington Post has become. Apparently the debt deal isn’t as big of a deal as “SEX ED: Saddled With Debt, College Students Selling Themselves To Pay Loans”.

How pathetic.

Yeah, the deal is done…like we all pretty well knew it would be as close to August 2 a practicable for the Congress. Rotating villains on the left, per the usual. Theater.

Oh, how I wish I am wrong.

If it fails to pass, that means the ball is totally in Obama’s court.

Oh great. He’ll go for a 30-day extension in exchange for an increase in the SS retirement age.

If the lamb turns out to be a wolf,
and he leaves a wasteland,
the answer is not to run to the wolves.

It’s to find a lamb.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020959/US-debt-ceiling-crisis-Obama-John-Boehner-deal-avoid-default.html

Who do you have in mind? (I think it’s who–it’s not
actually an indirect object. Did I get that right?)

Hillary Clinton (actually reforming, returning to Yale roots.
Dennis Kucinich?)

Dennis is getting gerrymandering to oblivion
otherwise.

He’s been brave.

Go with Dennis.

Why is McConnell so fucking happy? He must have worked a deal that really screws anyone not good with god filthy rich enough to breath his rarefied air. This is a Cheshire cat huge grin! The signals to me we are going to be sodomized the likes not seen since biblical times. I knew it would be bad, but never dreamed this bad.

Boehner’s right. It lives up to GOP principles.

So does Barack Obama.

Can we officially give him to them, for 2012?

Veneer; damn good post.

’bout nails it.

Hillary Clinton?

The pol: who voted for Bush’s lunatic invasion of Iraq, when 21 Democratic Senators had the intelligence and the decency and the courage to vote against it?

Who, in the Connecticut Democratic Primary, supported Joe Lieberman (who subsequently actively campaigned for John McCain in the election) over a good anti-war candidate like Ned Lamont?

The “savvy” veteran who was too fucking dumb to know that trying to get to the White House by sucking up to the very people who were ruining the country would kill her chance at the nomination?

Who openly speculated about the possiblity of assassination, as a reason for staying in the race?

How does Barack Obama’s sellout AFTER he got to the Oval Office erase Hillary’s corrupt idiocy as she was TRYING to get there?

Does “out of the frying pan, into the fire!” ring a bell?

This is what the Uncle Tom President wanted.

Go ahead sell your soul for chump change, President Chump.

Dayen: the agreement is a done deal, make no mistake. Wall Street plutocrats will lose a lot if there is a default tomorrow. They will not allow either party to create a default for them. There will be a binding deal today, or an “extension”, or what have you, but there will be no default. It is easiest to believe that the Democrats will “compromise” and we will have a right-wing extremist “agreement” on budget-balancing and spending of the worst proportions by tomorrow AM. This is just the lowest-energy path forward that meets the requirements of keeping plutocrats calm about their money and pleased about future spending plans.

Here is what Grover Norquist is saying:

But the power of the agreement is in the precedents it sets.

First, never again will we have to listen to all the smart people in the permanent Washington establishment tell us that any “budget deal” has to have both tax hikes and spending restraint. The ghosts of 1982 and 1990 are finally laid to rest. The 1982 and 1990 tax hike and spending cut deals delivered very real and very permanent tax hikes and no spending reduction. Spending actually increased over the baseline after each “agreement.” Why? Because once the Democrats saw the Republicans were stupid enough to put tax hikes on the table, the spending cuts once on the table began to melt away to nothingness.

Second, there is a new rule in town. The Boehner Rule: Any increase in the debt ceiling will require a reduction in federal spending by the same amount of the debt ceiling increase. This new rule will apply to a President Romney or Perry as well as to President Obama. We now have a new tool to keep spending down. One with teeth.

This deal, whether it passes or fails, should provide yet more talking points for progressives, and even greater incentive to target for defeat:
- John Boehner
- McConnell
- Eric Cantor
- Bachmann

Which other high visibility Republicans should be targeted specifically for defeat?

The goal needs to be to have high visibility Republican defeats tied to their actions just this year, defeats significant enough that progressives can threaten Republicans with defeat in the future with credibility.

Don’t forget to add Obama to that list. He maneuvered to get this “crisis” ginned up so he could go after entitlements.

Don’t forget the ConservaDems.

We need a new party which will represent our interests.

Back at ya’s tanbark. They’ve got to know it’s over at the WH. As Jane has said during this “event,” “We are witnessing the demise of the Democratic Party. No way does the economy pull out of this by 2012. Bye, bye WH. Quest: How bad will it be in Cong. and who w/o scratch (which will be most) is going to give a shit. Welcome to the “Democratic Brand” of identity politics. It’s not your daddy’s Party, just a cheap parody of it’s former self. Hey, what’s in a name? Can’t have everything can you? That’s the trouble with you progressives. You always see the glass as half full when we are giving yours to the bankers? WHO is DEFAULTING who!