jollyroger's picture

    Prez: Debt bargain in December? Nah, I'm dumb as a fuckin' stump--don't blame me for current (kabuki) coming train wreck...

    As we have so many times before, we find ourselves obliged to believe that Prez simply could not foresee the logical outcome of his actions.

    This time, the drama requires suspension of disbelief that beggars the imagination.

    Only months before having to crawl to the new repugnant majority for borrowing authority to fill a void largely resulting from the predictable outcome of their tax cutting demands, Obama studiously avoided requiring, as a reasonable quid  pro quo, that they raise the debt ceiling a commensurate amount back then.

    He now finds himself boxed in, without even the lame duck majority that obtained in December.

    Can we really believe he failed to see this coming?

    Or, having seen this coming, can we believe that he somehow thought that the struggle over raising his borrowing authority would redound to the benefit of progressive policies in any possible way?

    Obama, clueless putz, or closet repugnant?  They report, you decide...

     

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    Ezra Klein discussed this back in december. The Democrats' thinking back then was not to raise the debt ceiling during the lame duck session so that they would force the GOP to themselves propose radical cuts during their new majority, and then the Dems could ride the outrage all the way to the next election.

    What's important to understand about the debt-ceiling vote -- where Democrats and Republicans will either strike a deal to increase the Treasury's borrowing cap or the country will collapse into default -- is that it's not like Democrats have simply forgotten about it. It's not that they haven't realized that they could tie it to the tax cuts, which Republicans want and which will add $900 billion to the debt. It's that they simply don't want to. “Let the Republicans have some buy-in on the debt. They’re going to have a majority in the House,” said Harry Reid. “I don’t think it should be when we have a heavily Democratic Senate, heavily Democratic House and a Democratic president.”

    The theory goes something like this: Republicans will demand sharp spending cuts in return for lifting the debt ceiling. Let them. "Boehner et al have had the luxury of proposing all sorts of ideas that bear no relation to reality," says Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman. "Next year, they’ll have to lay it all out. No more magic asterisks, no more 'we’ll get back to you.’ "


    It seemed like a bad strategy to me back then and I said so. It was basically a lets-let-the-GOP-destroy-the-country-so-we-can-win-an-election strategy. I.e. the Dems win by abdicating their responsibility to the country and letting the GOP have their way.


    Well, are these folks, these pols really that smart?

    I think they think they are that smart; they think they are great chess players; but I wonder if they really think that far ahead!

    MSM is more worried about what is contained in Weiner's shorts or Palin's cranium than the moves being made on the Congressional chess board!

     


    Dick, my link is from December. They were thinking that far ahead. That link isn't post-hoc interpretation or anything. I'd like to think this is just rank incompetence. But it isn't.

    As for the MSM, it's scary. I switched on CNN after taking a break from the news and even on CNN international it's all about Blitzer freaking out over a picture of some guy's junk. I didn't know what was going on, but it's like reality is a bad parody of an SNL sketch. Good God...


    The problem with the program as stated by Obey is that it requires someone (eg Obama) to be out there talkin' shit.

    Anybody talkin' shit?  Cause I don't hear them.


    Well, boy, howdy, that sure is working out well for them.

     

    Not to mention us...



    I guess we would have to believe that Obama really, really wants to win.  (not 2012, but "the future")

    Me, I don't feel it.


    You don't????  WTF????  Cool


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