Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

I really should read my own blog.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

This chaos was totally avoidable.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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25Comments

  1. 1.

    Napoleon

    Not to nitpick but hearing some of the details on the radio I do not know if this is a 100% fold on their part. In order to get the increase Obama will have to specify an equal amount of cuts. So they are going to put him and the Dems on record with some unpopular cuts.

    Oh, and if there is any truth to this I no longer trust Obama, his stewardship of the economy and what he will do to progressive goals:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/12/mcconnell-debt-ceiling-obama-deficit_n_896649.html

  2. 2.

    Napoleon

    . . . and PS, no need to dance in the endzone yet went it remains to be seen if the Rep actually bring anything to a vote and it actually passes.

  3. 3.

    JPL

    Dana Milbank has a good article on Cantor in the Washington Post…

    He draws out the vowels in a style that is part southern, part smarty-pants. Had young Cantor spoken like this at his prep school in Richmond, the bigger boys may well have wiped that sneer off his face. Yet even then, Cantor was accustomed to having things his way. According to Cantor’s hometown Richmond Times-Dispatch, the quotation he chose to accompany his yearbook photo was “I want what I want when I want it.”………………………………………….
    What Cantor wants now is power — and he is prepared to risk the full faith and credit of the United States to get it.

  4. 4.

    agrippa

    It is called “putting on a show”.
    The GOP leadership knows that the debt ceiling needs to be raised. The GOP leadership also knows that the GOP cares nothing about the deficit. Those two facts form the basis of Obama’s strategy.
    There will will more mones in this game, as the clock is still running.

  5. 5.

    General Stuck

    It looks like Mcconnell is begging asking for three separate debt ceiling raises before the election, to stroke the tea tards with a toothless, lip less, and chin less grin and obligatory reach around. That will be like feeding a hungry tiger a few bacon strips to sate their appetite for destruction. And when Obama makes his suggested spending cuts to offset the raising of the debt limit, poor Mitch had better build a cage around his dumb ass.

    I doubt Obama will accept that. He might go for one, but now has the wingers on the run for the safety of capitulation and whinging poutrage about how they won’t have nice things until Obama is gone. Presumably, for another term, with this show of republican slithering out from under a stupid and dangerous from a crisis they created, then bailed on.

    Either way, it will be a minor miracle for Boehner to scrape together enough GOP votes, along with dem votes in the House to avert disaster of default. Though now, if they don’t vote to raise the limit, Obama will have the cover to do it his self, in whatever context, as a matter of national security, if for no other reason than to protect the country from republican fools with gas cans and matches.

  6. 6.

    kerFuFFler

    I had to turn off C-SPAN this morning; only Republican callers were being invited to call in and the commentary was so monumentally stupid I thought my head might explode. More than one caller thought that Obama was being tyrannical for “threatening” to not pay out SS checks in the event of the debt ceiling not being raised—–like he is proposing it as a sort of retaliation. The President would have no choice in the matter.
    @ Napoleon

    “…if there is any truth to this I no longer trust Obama”

    Some progressives seem as dumb and inflexible as the conservatives. If both sides insist on not budging an inch then no compromise can be reached. Spending cuts may not be permanent. People may clamor for them assuming that there is a lot of waste that can be trimmed with no appreciable reduction in services and programs. Once people get that the programs they like actually cost money to run, they may be more amenable to tax increases to bring programs back.

  7. 7.

    NobodySpecial

    Once people get that the programs they like actually cost money to run, they may be more amenable to tax increases to bring programs back.

    Programs lost, even if people like them, don’t come back. Name a major part of the safety net that was ever cut and came back. One.

  8. 8.

    General Stuck

    Progressives not trusting Obama? that’s a good one, and worth a morning chuckle. Progressives can pound sand with the wingnuts for another 6 years, and comfort one another while Obama eats their lunches, some more.

  9. 9.

    JPL

    General Stuck…but Obama is just like Bush except for the health care act, Lilly Ledbetter act, gay rights, etc,etc,etc.
    The Bush years were disastrous for our country and it will take decades to recover and for some to forget so easily.
    The President is dealing with fools and for Milbank to realize this says a lot, imo.

  10. 10.

    Han's Solo

    I’m just loving this.

    Obama’s critics really should figure out that Obama is smarter than they are, and that their best course of action is to STFU.

  11. 11.

    Napoleon

    Some progressives seem as dumb and inflexible as the conservatives. If both sides insists on not budging an inch then no compromise can be reached.

    Read the story. Obama appears to be all on board with the discredited “confidence fairy”. That is not about “inflexibility” or not “budging”, its about being stupid.

  13. 13.

    JPL

    Napoleon, I stopped reading Huffington when several of their articles were based on the opinions of the pixie dust fairy.

  14. 14.

    Napoleon

    JPL, I don’t go there to read it myself, but Sam S. always seemed to be pretty good, even if others are not.

  15. 15.

    Lawnguylander

    I wonder if the McTurtle deal requires the President to submit actual spending cuts or if it would only require him to submit proposals that reduce the debt. Like, could Obama propose eliminating tax breaks for oil companies to comply with the deal? He’s been depicting them as spending in his remarks on this debt mess for a while now.

  16. 16.

    Bruuuuce

    Haven’t seen a mention of Wisconsin yet, so I’ll just do a little, quiet, Snoopy Happy Dance while I note that all six faux Dems went down by huge margins. Next stop, recalling six anti-citizen state senators, and then, in January, Tyrant Walker.

    Add to that the victory in CA-36 and Ron Paul effectively retiring from politics (he’s not a serious contender in the R primaries), and it was a pretty good day yesterday.

  17. 17.

    General Stuck

    Sam Stein is a wanker, writing for a wanker rag. The only stupid is dumbass progs being clueless about electoral politics and the never ending co dependent purity bullshit.

  18. 18.

    Han's Solo

    @Lawnguylander: Obama could propose anything.

    I was thinking about this, and if this GOP silliness passes I think Obama should propose the following: Not allowing the GOP to repeal the ACA (saves billions), Not allowing the GOP to cut Paris Hilton’s taxes again, Not allowing the GOP to start any more wars, etc.

    He should, in other words, list the many things the GOP wants to do that would make the debt worse. Hell, the Ryan plan added 6 trillion to the debt, didn’t it?

  19. 19.

    Linda Featheringill

    bruuuuuuuuuuuce or whatever :-) # 16

    Good news about the fake Dems in Wisconsin. The Republicans in Wisconsin might be finding out that people aren’t as dumb as they think they are. Or at least, most people learn from their mistakes.

    [and California too.]

  20. 20.

    Han's Solo

    @Bruuuuce: It was the best day since Obama had Osama shot through the eye, after embarrassing the birthers and mocking Trump at the correspondence dinner.

  21. 21.

    kay

    Name a major part of the safety net that was ever cut and came back. One

    SCHIP is a really good (and recent) example of a liberal program that was vastly expanded in the Bush years. The first SCHIP program was the biggest expansion of public health care since the 1960’s, so that was the first giant win.
    Obama signed the vast expansion, because Bush vetoed it twice, but the win really belongs to congressional Democrats. That was a huge loss for conservatives, too. They knew that if single-payer was expanded to the (lower) middle class, people would like it. And they do. They love it. Bush said that, when he vetoed it. He said he wanted to block expansion of public-payer health care to the middle class.
    We should take our wins, instead of insisting they were really losses :)
    Anyway, that’s an example of a gradual winning “template”, if you will.

  22. 22.

    Bruuuuce

    Linda @19: Four “u”s, just like what we call the singer from New Jersey when we see him in concert :-) (If we see him in concert ever again. I think he’ll go back out, but I could easily see him calling it quits, down two members of the E Street Band. Dammit.)

    It helps that it really is my name, too :-)

  23. 23.

    SteveinSC

    Good news about the fake Dems in Wisconsin… I saw the Hahn story on Huffpost, brought to you by the AP and as ususal this republican adjunct news agency did their best to couch Hahn’s win as disappointing to Democrats, because, however much it was majestic fail for repubs to prove they can have an upset victory, Huey was within the previous margin for the former losing republican. A few more successes like that and these assholes will all be out of Congress. AP a bodyguard of lies.

  24. 24.

    Barney

    Question (since it’s an open thread): when did Megan McArdle go from being “the business and economics editor” for The Atlantic (as endlessly laughed at on Balloon Juice) to just being “a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics“. I just noticed that “Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for the website“.

    So does this mean they had to admit McArdle wasn’t cutting it, and demoted her to a writer with an overseer?

  25. 25.

    Rome Again

    This was on the internets last night (shame nobody picked up on it):

    “Durbin added that a plan floated by Sen. Mitch McConnell to give Mr. Obama chief responsibility over increasing the debt limit was discussed. The senior White House official said the White House does not want to adopt the McConnell plan but could eventually consider it as a last-ditch option to avoid default. ” http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-50354​4_162-20078946-503544.html

    Obama is NOT going to accept this deal with three tranches. Obama doesn’t have to. The big dogs in the GOP (the money folks at Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce) will not allow McConnell to get away with this trickery, this is just another game. And, these things take time, don’t expect it to be resolved in the next five minutes.

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