If there has been one positive result from the recent knife fight in an alley that has been our debt ceiling debate, it’s come from watching the self-appointed Smartest People In The Room come to the belated realization that they’ve been out-maneuvered by a bunch of hobbits. No, don’t take it from me: listen to them. A representative sample is below. Paul Krugman: “The worst | Read More »
Peter Beinart doesn’t understand why the Tea Party gets to be the populist movement transforming American politics, instead of whatever latest cargo cult on the Left is these days. In the spirit of bipartisanship – with ‘bipartisanship’ being defined as ‘kicking progressives in the teeth for the amusement of the crowd’ – I shall deign to explain things for him, hardline progressives, and everyone else | Read More »
I think that this quote below from a New York Times article on whether the GOP will allow themselves to be stampeded on irresponsibly raising the debt ceiling might just be fairly representative of attitudes among our freshman class. More to the point, I think that the New York Times is coming to the same conclusion: “Re-election is the farthest thing from my mind,” said | Read More »
Ignore the rest of his article on the ongoing debt ceiling controversy – Dionne is the kind of person who is comfortable trying to portray House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as being some kind of Machiavellian mastermind running a shadowy conspiracy to control the Republican party behind the scenes, if you know what I mean* – but as Mickey Kaus notes, Dionne’s got a good | Read More »
It’s hardly a surprise – Pawlenty has been arguing since January that automatically raising the debt ceiling without exhausting other options (read: spending cuts) first is a bad idea – but the video below shows that the former Governor of Minnesota continues to want Republican legislators to not back down on this issue: As GOP 12 noted, this statement by Pawlenty… Now is the time. | Read More »
The always-reliable (mouthpiece for Democrats, that is) Greg Sargent is playing Alinsky-stalking-horse-by-proxy for his party this morning by trying to push out the narrative that President Obama’s abrupt cutting and running from debt ceiling negotiations yesterday night reflects badly on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor , somehow. This is, of course, absurd – aside from everything else, it’s not Cantor’s fault that the President couldn’t | Read More »
I know, I know: that wasn’t the intent. The intent was to flog the concept that a debt ceiling is itself unconstitutional as per the 14th Amendment, thus obviating forever the need for Democratic politicians to stop spending money that we don’t actually have. Here’s the text from the 14th: Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, | Read More »
Personally, I’m not entirely certain why the Obama administration is so adamant about raising taxes on small businesses, but they’ve at least abandoned their previous position where a possible early end to Bush-era tax breaks (now scheduled to expire in 2012) was on the debt ceiling negotiating table. Unfortunately, the White House is still adamantly refusing to accept the pesky objective reality that there are | Read More »
Which is a surprise, given that I didn’t think that there were 318 Republicans in the House… no, wait, there aren’t. 82 Democrats voted against raising the debt limit without accompanying spending cuts; which is highly entertaining, given that 114 House Democrats signed Rep. Peter Welch’s letter requesting… precisely this vote. Do compare the signatories to said letter with the no votes on HR 1954: | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}