Just to be clear: the GOP is now trying to decide which leader falls on his sword

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59718.html

The two options going forward are:

1) Boehner bringing forward an essentially bare debt ceiling extension that can pass the Senate
2) McConnell's "punt" plan that lets Obama veto refusals to extend the debt ceiling over the next several months

The first is essentially what Obama asked for to begin with (and has the added deliciousness of making Boehner come crawling to Pelosi -- again -- for votes since his own caucus is out of his control). The second is a little worse for Obama politically but does give him some rhetorical space about Congress abdicating their responsibility. Neither touches entitlements or taxes.

In short, after all this, the question is whether Congress is willing to give up some power in exchange for some political heat against Obama, or not, in return for what was Obama's original position: an extension of the debt ceiling.

Say what you want, I think this turned out pretty well. Yes, Obama was willing to give a lot on entitlements to reach a deal. Yes, I realize that infuriates most of you (I think the decision to cut entitlements was made when the Bush tax cuts passed, we just haven't owned up to that fact yet). But, in the end we're back where we started, with a debt ceiling extension. And a probably mortally-wounded Speaker (if he has to go to Pelosi for votes a second time, there won't be the opportunity for a third, IMO).

Quoting Boehner:



By the time you have to say that, you've lost already...

May as well take the whole miserable bunch while we're at it.

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wants the defult to occur. We don't have the votes in the House to pass the debt ceiling increase.

McCarthy hasn't exactly excelled as a whip, but if he can't find 23 people (he and Boehner being assumed) then I would be surprised.

that future social security recipients will be missing out on.

It sure makes me all fired up to win the future or something.

And should stop freaking out whenever tax increases are mentioned.

Our lower revenue base is going to be a reality for a while: they will probably come up some in the near future, but not to 1990's levels, let alone 1970's, unless the voting patterns in this country drastically change. So we need to be asking what we can do given that reality.

They had it coming, am I right? That's why they're poor!

Just because you're (for example) poor, black and living in Alabama is no excuse.

It's the "Independents" (or probably better, "low-information voters") I'm thinking of.

Look, if you have a way to pass more revenues given the kind of cretins these people vote for, I'm all ears.

How you never see anyone in the upper echelons of the party go on television and tell the true history of how the New Deal gave opportunity and real freedom to pursue their dreams, rather than the false freedom of merely getting by and toiling in the fields and factories of the wealthy. Or how you never see Democrats extolling the virtues of the people who participated in the first great US Civil Rights Movement nor its descendent movements. The few who do are usually small-time outsiders looking to get in or are wild-eyed kooks whose stars burn out within a few months. Maybe if the people in power, people who represent the majority of the members of the most powerful government on the face of the earth, people who supposedly represent our interests, if they actually did so in a more energetic manner that that which is required to warm the overpriced seats under their pampered asses on Capitol Hill, we would see some of those drastically changing voting patterns you called for.

If the poor in this country were mobilized, the Republicans would never have a chance. The sheer weight of numbers make that obvious; there are many times the number of potentially Democratic votes than there are natural Republican votes. In a rational world, fickle, ignorant, puffed-up "independents" wouldn't mean dick. The reason the Republicans can ever have a shot at winning is this: that years of violence, persecution, and disappointment have stifled our poor folks with an unbelievable weight of apathy. Hell, I'm the whitest white boy there is and I've been disenfranchised before, probably because my long hair picked me out as one of those people (what is this, the 1960s?). If I can't have my voice heard, what reason do the truly destitute and powerless in this country have to believe that they can change anything, that that they can or should vote, or that they will be allowed to do so if they should try?

Don't you dare blame the people that this bastardized "compromise" will hurt most. History, and anyone with more than a passing knowledge of history, will not stand by for it. If you really want "CHANGE" then lets actually change the system so that it lives up to it's own overblown sense of fairness.

DO NOT blame the victims.

and his teabagger leaders. McCarthy doesn't need any Democrats to get the vote against raising the debt ceiling. They have enough already with the majority.

Not till I've staked him to a fire ant hill, please. It's such a good thing I'm not God because I'm in a very mean mood about this.

you put forward are those that the Republicans are considering. In fact, it says that the R's back up plan is to be a increase in the debt ceiling matched by an equal ammount of spending cuts. The number that is discussed is 2.4 billion. Here is an excerpt:


"Boehner was expected to insist that the president agree to a package of spending cuts that match the amount needed to raise the debt limit, which would be about $2.4 trillion through the end of next year, Buck said.

“Last night the president said, ‘the only bottom line that I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election,’” Buck wrote. “Now, we do not know what size or shape a final package will take, but it would be terribly unfortunate if the president was willing to veto a debt limit increase simply because the timetable prescribed would not be the ideal one for his re-election campaign.”"




Where are you getting your two points about the way forward?

There's a Japanese proverb that goes "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down." I think that tells us about Republican Party culture. If you have a mob mentality all the time, you can easily get stampeded off a cliff. Sadly, they're gonna take the country's fiscal solvency with them.

Jesus, what a pathetic bunch of followers. They just follow their rhetoric, responsibility be damned.

male long-term plans, set their strategy, and then stalk until the right moment and then...

It is also a part of psychopathic human culture as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MZCHjGkTPg&feature=related

I want to repeat this over again because you cannot understand these people unless you understand political psychology and you cannot understand political psychology unless you understand psychopathic personality.

are only to game their own unworkable plans. In other words, they will continue to make obscuring rants and noises signifying nothing forcing the Dems to act on their own. The money gods could order their stooges otherwise, but that would be to take one of their few political tools and break it over their knee and lose tax breaks, momentum and protection. Too crazy to boss around quietly anyway, so the GOP will basically just game disaster, whatever form Obama wants to give it.

To beat that is to do something Obama has not done or said yet AND raise the debt ceiling on his own(which he sort of brushes off). The drama is surreal when that latter solution is so available and likely a cause for GOP inaction.

Expect more enablement instead of easy crushing of GOP disaster legislation. What it means for Americans is genuinely something to be scared of however it turns out. Such fear, even if the "crisis" seems to subside, will beget eventual vengeful anger. The only ones more than willing to direct that anger are more than intact tools of the GOP lie machine.