Category Archives: Elections & Politics (U.S.)

The Wall Street Journal, making sense

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Heh: What none of [the Boehner bill’s conservative] critics have is an alternative strategy for achieving anything nearly as fiscally or politically beneficial as Mr. Boehner’s plan. The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against… Read more »

“Did the president just quit?”

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Jon Stewart captures the national mood, taking on both Congress (Monday night) and the President (last night): The Daily Show – Armadebtdon 2011 – Nonfiction Captain AmericaGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook   The Daily Show – Armadebtdon 2011 – Call CongressGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily… Read more »

What about Social Security?

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Some commentators and politicians have been suggesting, based on a variety of rationales, that Social Security payments will definitely, without question, be made on time next month, even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised — and that any suggestions to the contrary by the Obama Administration is a lie. Those folks appear to be incorrect.

A debt ceiling history lesson

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This brief article by James Surowiecki is a must-read. It says just about everything I’ve been trying to say about the debt ceiling situation, but more succinctly and with less rage. It also includes a useful history lesson: The truth is that the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception… Read more »

Debt standoff: Playing with Fiendfyre

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I have one additional thought on the debt ceiling, which I meant to include in my previous post, but which probably deserves its own post, so here goes: I think politicians on both sides of the aisle — and more broadly, partisans on both ends of the ideological spectrum — are vastly underestimating the political downside risk of a failure… Read more »

A debt ceiling update, and a question

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The “debate” between Democrats and the Anti-Arithmetic Right over whether or not the nation should be economically ruined now seemingly boils down to three options: 1) John Boehner’s utterly disastrous plan, which I hereby dub the Omnibus Kick-The-Can-Down-The-Road Act of 2011, to pass a short-term debt ceiling increase, then re-run this entire charade in the middle of an election year,… Read more »

#PANIC

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CNN Breaking News: House Speaker John Boehner has ended debt talks with President Barack Obama, telling fellow Republican House members in a letter that he will “begin conversations with the leaders of the Senate in an effort to find a path forward.” The president said his administration had offered “an extraordinarily fair deal” to cut expenditures and raise revenues, in… Read more »

Debt ceiling a “housekeeping matter”

Mitch Daniels, back when he was George W. Bush’s budget director, on Meet the Press, about the debt limit: We’re going to raise it, as a reasonable government must. This is really housekeeping, Tim. This has nothing to say or do with future spending. This simply reflects decisions made in the past, and it ought to be treated as the… Read more »

Final Shuttle mission launches, briefly distracts from Unemploymageddon

Overcoming concerns about weather — and a last-minute technical hitch that created a dramatic countdown hold at T-minus 31 seconds, with just minutes remaining in the launch window — the Space Shuttle Atlantis rocketed into space a few minutes ago, a picture-perfect final launch for NASA’s 30-year Shuttle program. [UPDATE: Apparently, liftoff occurred with just 58 seconds left in the… Read more »