Tag: TMC Politics

Jul 28 2011

Damned If We Do, Damned If We Don’t

Apparently the rating agencies don’t like either the Republican or Democratic plans to raise the debt ceiling and address the deficit. Love them or hate them, the rating agencies still have huge power over credit ratings and have warned raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending is not enough:

Market analysts and investors increasingly say yes. The outcome won’t be quite as scary as a default, but financial markets would still take a blow. Mortgage rates could rise. States and cities, already strapped, could find it more difficult to borrow. Stocks could lose their gains for the year.

“At this point, we’re more concerned about the risk of a downgrade than a default,” said Terry Belton, global head of fixed income strategy at JPMorgan Chase. In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Belton said the loss of the country’s AAA rating may rattle markets, but it’s “better than missing an interest payment.”

snip

Standard & Poor’s warned earlier this month that there was a 50-50 chance of a downgrade, if Congress and President Obama failed to find a “credible solution to the rising U.S. government debt burden.” S&P said it may cut the U.S. rating to AA within 90 days. Passing a $4 trillion agreement could prevent a downgrade, S&P said.

The other chief rating agency, Moody’s Investors Service, said the U.S. government would likely keep its top rating if it avoids a default.

CNN’s Erin Burnett also reported from her sources that neither bill may be adequate to keep the US credit rating from being down graded:

“I think it is important to emphasize that most people think both of the plans are really Band-Aids and don’t deal in any significant way with the spending and cost issues in the country,” Burnett said. “The issue was that Speaker Boehner’s plan does not cut enough spending right away. Harry Reid’s plan would cut about $2.7 trillion. Just because it is bigger than Speaker Boehner’s plan is really the reason the Boehner plan may still trigger a downgrade.”

The ratings agencies aren’t alone in their criticism. there is plenty of opposition from both sides in the deficit debacle. Zero Hedge noted:

Paul Craig Roberts – a true conservative, who was a Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan – slams the Republican intransigence on the debt.

The Reid plan came under fire from Anti War for its alleged trillion dollar saving from the draw down of the two wars:

   Senate Democrats have issued a new “savings” plan that would nominally pare the projected deficit by over $1 trillion simply by assuming that the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually go away by virtue of those wars ending.    

   This has spawned a myriad of criticism, including a leaked Goldman Sachs memo warning that the nation faces a credit downgrade if it tries to use this sort of on-paper gimmick instead of actual cuts in spending.    

   And indeed, while politicians may be comfortable with the notion that the wars will end at some point in the next decade, it isn’t clear at all that this will be the case. Officials are already talking up continuing in Afghanistan long beyond 2014, while the war in Iraq seems set to be extended for “years to come.”  

   The memo noted that this war savings was only a problem “without a credible follow-on process,” which is to say an actual effort to end those wars. Given strong Democratic opposition to other efforts to end wars (including the ongoing war in Libya), it seems hard to believe officials are looking at doing anything credible about the seemingly endless conflicts.

The damage may already have been done. A small ratings agency based in China, Dagong Global Credit Rating Co., said it would down grade the US next week even if the debt ceiling is raised before August 2, citing the acrimonious fight has already damaged investor confidence.

It would seem that the Republicans and Democrats have already driven off the cliff and the crash will be as early as next week.

Jul 28 2011

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Robert Sheer: Debt Madness Was Always About Killing Social Security

This phony debt crisis has now passed through the looking glass into the realm where madness reigns. What should have been an uneventful moment in which lawmakers make good on the nation’s contractual obligations has instead been seized upon by Republican hypocrites as a moment to settle ideological scores that have nothing to do with the debt.

Hypocrites, because their radical free market ideology, and the resulting total deregulation of the financial markets, is what caused the debt to spiral out of control this last decade. That and the wars George W. Bush launched but didn’t have the integrity to responsibly finance. The consequence was a banking bubble and crash leading to a 50 percent run-up of the debt that has nothing to do with the “entitlements” that those same Republicans have always wanted to destroy.

New York Times Editorial: America’s Credibility Is at Risk

Until this week, Wall Street has shrugged off each new low in the debt-limit debate, confident – in a whistling-past-the-graveyard kind of way – that Washington would raise the debt limit on time.

Many Republican politicians have insisted that the economy and the country could shrug off a default. Up to Wednesday, the most conservative members of the House seemed to be welcoming a default. They refused to support a plan to raise the limit – and impose overly harsh spending cuts – put forward by Speaker John Boehner.

The cost of this fecklessness should now be clear to everyone. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 200 points on Wednesday and is down 421 points since Friday when Mr. Boehner left President Obama waiting for a phone call that never came about a deal that never closed.

Cliff Schecter: The Republican Party No Longer Has Its Country’s Best Interests at Heart

Once upon a time, in a land that now seems to have been populated by tooth fairies and unicorns, there was a political party that had a set of core beliefs to which they actually adhered.

Among them was that actually balancing the budget, as opposed to just talking about it, was sacrosanct. Slow change, while necessary, had to be balanced against the traditions of the United States, ones that had mostly served us well over two centuries.

Foreign military adventures should be limited to our national security interests. And one of the single most important components of diplomacy was protecting the economic interests not only of an elite few, but of the great many Americans who toiled in our factories and fields.

Robert Reich: The Biggest Driver in the Deficit Battle: Standard & Poor’s

If you think deficit-reduction is being driven by John Boehner or Harry Reid, think again. The biggest driver right now is Standard & Poor’s.  

All of America’s big credit-rating agencies – Moody’s, Fitch, and Standard & Poor’s – have warned they might cut America’s credit rating if a deal isn’t reached soon to raise the debt ceiling. This isn’t surprising. A borrower that won’t pay its bills is bound to face a lower credit rating.

But Standard & Poor’s has gone a step further: It’s warned it might lower the nation’s credit rating even if Democrats and Republicans make a deal to raise the debt ceiling. Standard & Poor’s insists any deal must also contain a credible, bipartisan plan to reduce the nation’s long-term budget deficit by $4 trillion – something neither Harry Reid’s nor John Boehner’s plans do.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Yes to moderation, no to centrism

What the country yearns for is moderation. What we hear about is the political center. But centrism has become the enemy of moderation.

Moderation in politics is about balance. It means believing in a vibrant and innovative private sector and a government substantial enough to do what the private sector doesn’t, and it means enforcing sensible rules for economic competition. It means incentives for success, help for those making their way up, and security for the sick, the aging, the poor, the unlucky. It means balancing our love of individualism and our desire for community. This, in turn, means that reducing the budget deficit can’t rely only on cutting programs. Yes, taxes need to go up.

All the polls I have ever seen peg the vast majority of Americans as moderate by this definition.

Jon Walker: Disaster Legislating; A Dangerous New Process

Some people are worried about the potential Constitutional crisis if President Obama uses the 14th Amendment to declare the debt ceiling voting unconstitutional. The reality though is that we are already in the midst of a full blown Constitutional crisis that is will likely only get worse in the coming years.

Whether or not you think it is a good idea, the Constitution was designed such that any major policy change should take the agreement of the House, the Senate, and the President, unless the President’s veto could be overturned by the House and Senate.

Bill McKibben: Tim DeChristopher Is Going to Jail, Now It’s Our Turn

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.” –Ed Abbey

“The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.” –Terry Tempest Williams

There’s something about the redrock canyons that seems to inspire great writing — I was lucky enough to know Ed Abbey and to count Terry Tempest Williams as a great friend. Both wrote — and both fought. They fulfilled the duty they owed that great landscape. They fought to protect great chunks of land.

And they’re joined by Tim DeChristopher, sentenced today to 24 months in prison for a creative act of resistance straight out of the Monkey Wrench Gang. He didn’t damage anything except the pride of the Bureau of Land Management, when he posed as a bidder and won 14 parcels of land at an oil-and-gas lease auction. They were gorgeous pieces of land that he protected — but far more, he was acting on behalf of every landscape left on the planet.

David Sirota: The Long-Term Legacy of 9/11

Nearly 10 years later, new studies point to lasting effects on the nation’s mental, physical and political health

Like most Americans, I can still remember it as if it were yesterday: The images of the burning building on the screen, the murmurings of bewildered morning TV anchors, the burst of “holy shit!” subject lines in my email box and then, shattering the slow-mo dreamlike quality of it all, the bark of a police officer telling me to get out of the Capitol complex as quickly as possible because a plane-turned-missile was headed our way.

This was my particular 9/11 experience — a Washington of complete chaos where chest-thumping tough-on-terror congresspeople were instantly transformed into cowering child-trampling George Costanzas as they fled for the door. I’m sure everyone fortunate enough to survive that day has their own unique flashback — it was, after all, a generation’s “where were you when” moment a la the JFK assassination. Only now, approaching the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, a trio of new studies show the post-traumatic stress of the attacks resulted in deep cultural shifts that go way beyond mere haunting mental images and bouts of insomnia.

Jul 28 2011

Countdown with Keith Olbermann

If you do not get Current TV you can watch Keith here:

Watch live video from CURRENT TV LIVE Countdown Olbermann on www.justin.tv

Jul 27 2011

The Wealth Gap

The Pew Research Center published its report on the widening wealth gap between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. It’s not a very good picture.

    The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.

    These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.

    The Pew Research analysis finds that, in percentage terms, the bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households.

    The collapse of the housing market and home values were the main cause hitting Hispanics worse that any other demographic for two main reasons, where their money was invested and geographics:

    Nearly two-thirds of Hispanics’ median net worth in 2005 came from home equity, according to the report, and when the housing market collapsed, so did their wealth. Median home equity for Hispanics fell by 51 percent in the period of the survey. The drop was compounded by the fact that Hispanics tended to live in the places that were hit hardest in the recession, like Florida and California, the report said.

    Dr. Thomas Shapiro, the Pokross professor of law and social policy at Brandeis University on The Rachel Maddow Show, discussed with guest host Melissa Harris-Perry the racial legacy of the wealth gap.

    Meteor Blades at Daily Kos pointed this out in his article

    While the recession worsened the wealth gap, the trend has been headed in that direction for a long time. A study conducted in 2007 by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy found that middle-income whites had less wealth than high-income African Americans in 1984, but by 2007 they had accumulated four times as much wealth. Tom Shapiro noted that this period coincided with lower tax rates for more affluent Americans. That has been one of the main contributors to the wealth and income inequality that now plagues the United States in a ratio that is-or should be-more akin to banana republics than mature industrialized nations.

    Currently 1 percent of the population owns 40 percent of the wealth and 25 percent owns 87 percent. During the so-called “recovery” from the recession, which officially ended 25 months ago, 88 percent of the rise in income has been captured by corporate profits, while only 1 percent has gone to wage-and-salary earners. That kind of income disparity adds to the gap in a country where wealth is already distributed more unequally than anywhere else in the developed world.

    Given the attitude toward cutting taxes on “job creators” now prevalent in Washington, there’s every reason to believe this situation will worsen.

    (emphasis mine)

    We are now just waiting for the ground at the bottom of the cliff we have already driven off.

    Jul 27 2011

    Punting the Pundits

    “Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

    Wednesday is Ladies’ day. Scroll down for the Gentlemen.

    Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

    Katrina vanden Heuvel: The GOP’s state-by-state crusade to disenfranchise voters

    With only a week left before the United States of America could default on its debt, it’s easy to look at the federal government and wonder how we ever made it this far. Who would have guessed that a committed gang of extremists could bring down the economy? And yet, that’s where we find ourselves today, cornered by a manufactured crisis and running out of time. As Larry Sabato rightly tweeted over the weekend, “For anybody who teaches the American system and believes in it, this has been an extremely discouraging week.”

    Unfortunately, the assault on our democracy is not confined to Congress or the standoff over the debt ceiling. It is also seeping into the states, where voting rights – the fundamental underpinning of any democracy – are being curbed and crippled.

    In states across the country, Republican legislatures are pushing through laws that make it more difficult for Americans to vote. The most popular include new laws requiring voters to bring official identification to the polls. Estimates suggest that more than 1 in 10 Americans lack an eligible form of ID, and thus would be turned away at their polling location. Most are minorities and young people, the most loyal constituencies of the Democratic Party.

    Amy Goodman: War Is a Racket

    “War is a racket,” wrote retired U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, in 1935. That statement, which is also the title of his short book on war profiteering, rings true today. One courageous civil servant just won a battle to hold war profiteers accountable. Her name is Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse. She blew the whistle when her employer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, gave a no-bid $7 billion contract to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) as the invasion of Iraq was about to commence. She was doing her job, trying to ensure a competitive bidding process would save the U.S. government money. For that, she was forced out of her senior position, demoted and harassed.

    Just this week, after waging a legal battle for more than half a decade, Bunny Greenhouse won. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers settled with Greenhouse for $970,000, representing full restitution for lost wages, compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees.

    Her “offense” was to challenge a no-bid, $7 billion+ contract to KBR. It was weeks before the expected invasion of Iraq, in 2003, and Bush military planners predicted Saddam Hussein would blow up Iraqi oilfields, as happened with the U.S. invasion in 1991. The project, dubbed “Restore Iraqi Oil,” or RIO, was created so that oilfield fires would be extinguished. KBR was owned then by Halliburton, whose CEO until 2000 was none other than then-Vice President Dick Cheney. KBR was the only company invited to bid.

    Maureen Dowd: Not O.K. at the O.K. Corral

    For half a century, our trust in government has been falling off a cliff. Some presidential elections have been more about voting against somebody rather than for somebody. There were upticks in faith when Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton delivered prosperity.

    But now trust levels are drooping even lower. The public has less faith in Congress than Wall Street, and that’s saying something. Most Americans either feel that government is broken or that the fix is in, so that special interests and a handful of people at the top are the only ones benefiting.

    The last century was the American century. But this one will not be, thanks to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who used their boots and spurs to ride roughshod over the globe and American economy. They spent eight years and trillions of dollars either barging into stuff they should have left alone or leaving alone stuff they should have intervened on.

    Annie Lowrey: The Markets Yawn

    Why isn’t Wall Street panicking about the default crisis yet?

    Predicting where the market is heading is a daft exercise. But its nonchalance suggests that investors are no more worried about the possibility of a U.S. default today than they were on Friday. The consensus seems to be that the debt-ceiling crisis is an obnoxious piece of political theater that will end as close to the default deadline as possible, and that it is not an actual financial crisis that needs handling now.

    Indeed, the current “crisis” is a manufactured one. Of course the United States needs to get its fiscal house in order. Of course the debt has ballooned to threatening levels. But the problem remains long-term and mostly about ensuring job growth and bending down the health care cost curve. Still, it is not clear what the scale of the catastrophe could be should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling. Some investment banks speculate that the market reaction might not be as bad as people think, with government going into a very short-lived shutdown, voter anger forcing Congress to get its act together, and the market rolling its eyes even if it dumps some bonds.

    Anne Applebaum: Anders Behring Breivik and the Crisis of Legitimacy

    What the Norwegian murderer and American “birthers” have in common.

    In the past 48 hours, Anders Behring Breivik has been described as a racist, a white supremacist, and an anti-Islamic fanatic. News reports of his arrest are now accompanied by analyses of Europe’s failure to absorb its immigrant population, by commentary on the rise of far-right political parties, by discussions of the threats posed to Muslims living in Europe. Having mistakenly assumed that the story of terror in Oslo belonged to the narrative of the war on terrorism, we are now placing it firmly within the equally familiar narrative of white racism and anti-Islamic fanaticism.

    Aren’t we missing the point once again? Breivik was not, in fact, a killer of immigrants or Muslims. He was a killer of Norwegians. The particular set of obsessions that led him to madness and then to mass murder were not merely racist. They also sprang from an insane conviction that his own government was illegitimate.

    New York Times Editorial: A Denial of Reality

    How can so many Republican lawmakers justify pushing their country toward catastrophic default just to score ideological points? The answer can be found in their statements and writings: They are constructing an alternative reality far different from that of most Americans.

    A large number of Republican lawmakers, for example, simply don’t accept that the United States is going to be in default as of Tuesday. (Wall Street banks say the nation will run out of money within a few days of that date.)

    The Treasury Department, which keeps the government bankbook, set the Aug. 2 deadline, but they say it cannot be trusted because it is an arm of the Obama administration. Representative Joe Walsh, a freshman from Illinois, recorded an instantly notorious video in which he accused President Obama of “lying” about the dangers of default. “There’s plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all of our Social Security obligations,” he said, without saying where all these billions might be hidden.

    Eugene Robinson: Thinking the unthinkable

    Just for a moment, let’s think the unthinkable: What if we get to August 2 and there’s still no deal to raise the debt ceiling? How big a disaster would that be?

    Somewhere between massive and apocalyptic, if an actual default were to ensue. That’s why I’ve never understood, throughout this whole endless tragicomic melodrama, how President Obama could possibly let that happen. It seems to me that definitive action – unilateral, if necessary – to prevent the nation from suffering obvious, imminent, grievous harm is one of the duties any president must perform. Perhaps the most important duty.

    Neither Obama nor anyone else in the White House wants to talk about possible doomsday scenarios, except to warn that Social Security checks might not go out on time. This is understandable. There’s no incentive for Republicans to give an inch – which would anger the Tea Party base – if they believe Obama, in the end, will ensure they never have to face the consequences of their intransigence. In any event, there will probably be some kind of deal. Won’t there?

    E. J. Dionne: Democrats winning on the debt ceiling, losing on jobs

    The Post’s able blogger Greg Sargent has been pushing the idea of a “Beltway Deficit Feedback Loop.” The idea is that the Washington conversation makes everybody in the nation’s capital believe more fiercely by the day that the deficit is the most important problem facing the country, when out in the real world, Americans are worried primarily about jobs and growth.

    There’s a new poll out that lends further support to this view. The latest Pew Research Center poll released on Tuesday – the survey was carried out between July 20 and July 24 – asked respondents which economic issue worried them most. The results: 39 percent said the job situation, 29 percent said the deficit, 15 percent said rising prices and 11 percent said problems in the financial and housing markets. Pew’s report noted that even among Republicans, 34 percent cited jobs while 37 percent cited the deficit.

    Dana Milbank: In debt debate, life imitates sport

    It’s fourth and long in America’s fight to avoid default, but our leaders still can’t agree on the field conditions.

    “The White House moved the goal post,” House Speaker John Boehner protested Friday night.

    “There was no change at the goal post,” White House chief of staff Bill Daley responded, via “Meet the Press” Sunday morning.

    Yet Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, is on record saying the uprights were indeed moved – by the Republicans. “It is like trying to kick a field goal and the goalposts keep moving,” he said earlier in the budget fights.

    It’s time to throw a flag and penalize both sides for unnecessary sportsmanship: specifically, turning the debt-limit impasse into an extended athletics metaphor.

    Jul 27 2011

    Eco-Activist Bidder #70 Gets 2 Years In Jail

    US eco-activist jailed for two years

    Campaigners denounce sentence of ‘hero’ Tim DeChristopher for disrupting oil and gas industry auction as excessive

    Tim DeChristopher was immediately ordered into custody, and fined $10,000. He had been facing a potential sentence of up to 10 years and a $750,000 fine.

    snip

    As Bidder No 70, DeChristopher disrupted what was seen as a last giveaway to the oil and gas industry by the Bush administration by bidding $1.8m (£1.1m) he did not have for the right to drill in remote areas of Utah. He was convicted of defrauding the government last March.

    In a phone conversation with The Guardian, a day ahead of sentencing, he said he was expecting jail time: “I do think I will serve some time in prison. That is what I think will be the next chapter in my life.”

    DeChristopher’s lawyers had argued that his actions in December 2008 were a one-off, and that the judge should show leniency. They argued DeChristopher had not intended to cause harm.

    However, Judge Dee Benson said DeChristopher’s political beliefs did not excuse his actions.

    Is this justice? Chris in Paris at AMERICAblog thinks this sentence raises questions about the fairness of criminal justice system considering the slap on the wrist the Wall St., Haliburton, and the oil and gas industries have received. DeChristopher, in an opinion article at Common Dreams, asks not for mercy but that we stand with him to protect the environment and our right to challenge the government through non-violent protest.

    I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me.  If you side with Mr Huber (the prosecuting US Attorney) and believe that your role is to discourage citizens from holding their government accountable, then you should follow his recommendations and lock me away.  I certainly don’t want that.  I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false.  I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government.  I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience.  If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them.  You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path.  You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing.  You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM.  You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it.  This is not going away.   At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like.  In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like.  With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.  The choice you are making today is what side are you on.

    Jul 27 2011

    Countdown with Keith Olbermann

    If you do not get Current TV you can watch Keith here:

    Watch live video from CURRENT TV LIVE Countdown Olbermann on www.justin.tv

    Jul 26 2011

    Punting the Pundits

    “Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

    Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

    New York Times Editorial: The Republican Wreckage

    House Republicans have lost sight of the country’s welfare. It’s hard to conclude anything else from their latest actions, including the House speaker’s dismissal of President Obama’s plea for compromise Monday night. They have largely succeeded in their campaign to ransom America’s economy for the biggest spending cuts in a generation. They have warped an exercise in paying off current debt into an argument about future spending. Yet, when they win another concession, they walk away.

    This increasingly reckless game has pushed the nation to the brink of ruinous default. The Republicans have dimmed the futures of millions of jobless Americans, whose hopes for work grow more out of reach as government job programs are cut and interest rates begin to rise. They have made the federal government a laughingstock around the globe.

    Ari Melber: In Debt Address, Obama Asks Americans to Raise The Roof

    President Obama did not say anything particularly new in his unprecedented deficit address to the Nation on Monday night.  The most significant moment came not in an original announcement or last-minute proposal, but in the President’s request that Americans actually get up, get involved, and ask Congress to lay off the insanity.

    “I’m asking you all to make your voice heard,” the President said near the end of the address.

    “If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your Member of Congress know,” Obama continued, “If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise — send that message.”

    Even for a politician who ran on his (brief) history as a grassroots organizer, that is unusual. It may really help – there were reports of Congressional websites crashing from traffic spikes on Monday night, according to Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman.

    The potential problem, however, is that while Obama admirably walked through the facts on deficits and default, he did not offer a clear, single, final offer for would-be supporters to rally around.

    Robert Reich: Why Washington is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse

    We now live in parallel universes.

    One universe is the one in which most Americans live. In it, almost 15 million people are unemployed, wages are declining (adjusted for inflation), and home values are still falling. The unsurprising result is consumers aren’t buying – which is causing employers to slow down their hiring and in many cases lay off more of their workers. In this universe, we’re locked in a vicious economic cycle that’s getting worse.

    The other universe is the one in which Washington politicians live. They are now engaged in a bitter partisan battle over how, and by how much, to reduce the federal budget deficit in order to buy enough votes to lift the debt ceiling.

    John Nichols: ‘Right-Wing Nutters’ Threaten Global Economy, as IMF Warns of “Disastrous Consequences”

    Global markets are slumping, and the dollar is rapidly losing ground in international trading (hitting a record low against the Swiss franc Monday) amid fears that the determination of John Boehner, Paul Ryan and their henchmen to hold the US economy hostage for political purposes could create an international crisis.

    Concerns about the Republican refusal to allow the debt ceiling to rise are now being voiced far from Washington. And some of the loudest objections are coming from long-time US allies and governments that led by conservatives.

    Britian’s Secretary of State for Business Vince Cable, an economist who serves as a member of Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government, has been particularly blunt in his criticism of the economic madness that is being imposed on the United States-and now the world-by a band of career politicians whose only knowledge of how finance works comes from collecting campaign-contribution checks.

    Joe Nocera: This Is Considered Punishment?

    Last Wednesday, nearly lost in the furor over Rupert-gate and the debt ceiling crisis, came the surprising news that the Federal Reserve has issued a cease-and-desist order against a Too-Big-to-Fail bank. The bank was Wells Fargo, which was also fined $85 million and ordered to compensate customers it had unfairly – indeed, illegally – taken advantage of during the subprime bubble.

    What made the news surprising, of course, was that the Federal Reserve has rarely, if ever, taken action against a bank for making predatory loans. Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, didn’t believe in regulation and turned a blind eye to subprime abuses. His successor, Ben Bernanke, is not the ideologue that Greenspan is, but, as an institution, the Fed prefers to coddle banks rather than punish them. That the Fed would crack down on Wells Fargo would seem to suggest a long-overdue awakening.

    Eugene Robinson: The Influence Industry of Rage

    The monster who slaughtered at least 76 innocent victims in Norway was animated by the same blend of paranoia, xenophobia and alienation that fuels anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. Yes, it could happen here.

    One could argue that it already did, in Oklahoma City. The difference is that Timothy McVeigh’s apocalyptic anger was diffuse and nonspecific. Anders Behring Breivik-who has acknowledged detonating a powerful fertilizer bomb in central Oslo and then killing scores of teenagers and young adults on a nearby resort island-was focused like a laser beam on what he saw as the “threat” posed by Islam.

    The judge who presided over Breivik’s arraignment Monday said the accused mass murderer “believes that he needed to carry out these acts to save Norway (from) cultural Marxism and Muslim domination.”

    E. J. Dionne: After the Debt Ceiling Fiasco

    Hours before the negotiations on the debt limit between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner collapsed, political reporters received a missive from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign that served as a reminder of how irrelevant this kerfuffle might feel next year.

    The headline read, “Romney for President Launches New Web Video: Obama Isn’t Working: Where are the Jobs?”

    The video spoke to the difficulties that new college graduates are having finding work in a brutal job market. This bit of campaign propaganda went straight at the core of Obama’s political base-young Americans who volunteered for him by the tens of thousands in 2008 and powered him to victory in state after state. If joblessness disillusions enough of them, the president will be in trouble.

    Romney’s exercise was a passing bit of politics unlikely to make many waves in an environment obsessed with debt and fears of default. But it was hugely instructive.

    Jul 26 2011

    Countdown with Keith Olbermann

    If you do not get Current TV you can watch Keith here:

    Watch live video from CURRENT TV LIVE Countdown Olbermann on www.justin.tv

    Jul 25 2011

    Congressional Game of Chicken: Dueling Debt Plans

    As we move closer to the debt ceiling limit and defaulting on the debt, two proposals have been put forward by opposing sides. The Republicans have put a bill together that will come up for a vote on Wednesday that calls for a two-step plan that would allow the debt limit to be raised by $1 trillion and create “a “Super Congress,” composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers.”

    From the Democrats, House Majority Leader Harry Reid has proposed $2.7 trillion in spending cuts and raising the debt ceiling through 2012 with no revenue increases but would not touch any of the big three social safety nets. It does include the proposed “super congress”:

    “made up of 12 members, to present options for future deficit reduction. The committee’s recommendations will be guaranteed an up-or-down Senate vote, without amendments, by the end of 2011.”

    There are a few problems though. The first problem is the neither bill will pass both houses. The other obstacle two-fold. Reid’s bill will need 60 votes for cloture. It is unlikely that Reid can convince four Republicans to vote for it. He may get able to convince Sen, Olympia Snowe (R-VT) and Sen. Collins (R-ME) but he also must get the blue dogs to fall in-line. The only way I can see Reid getting this bill to the floor for a vote is to use the “Cheney nuclear option” and call bull shit on the filibuster. They don’t have the guts for that.

    House Speaker John Boehner has similar problems. He needs 217 votes to pass. With 89 tea party Republicans who signed a letter refusing to raise the debt ceiling no matter what the deal, Boehner would need to convince 63 Democrats. That won’t happen either. Some of the tea party crew may break tier “oath” since they are taking heat from their constituents at home. The House bill stands a better chance of suvival.

    If both bills by some miracle pass, then it goes to reconciliation and both bills have to be voted on again. This isn’t going to happen in less than a week. If only the House bill makes it, the Senate probably reject it. That is the most probable scenario.

    That leaves one option and it falls back to the White House to use the 14th Amendment, Article 4. Obama has already rejected this option but as it gets closer to August 2 and default, given the choice of a constitutional crisis versus a global economic melt down, let hope Obama put his “big boy pants on” and starts acting like a responsible adult who has to make a decision not everyone is going to like.

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