There's just no way Prez can win for losing.

He abases himself beyond all measure before the austerity gods, he does his "family around the kitchen table" schtick, he promises to shove it directly up the ass of the poor and retired, and what does he get?

All they say is "sorry, buddy, no dime for you..."

I notice with some interest that S&P had the decency to wait till the market closed before launching their ratings bomb...query: who was on the short side thursday and friday, and what did they know about the coming downgrade?

This, by the way, is appropriate payback for letting the agencies run wild with SEC approval. The best part of the joke is how the  Repugnant budget proposes to slash SEC funding, just to make sure that the cop policing the market is forced to panhandle for donut money. After all, there's no problem with our markets when half the trades represent stocks being held for 10 seconds or less...talk about capital formation!

They also had a bouquet for the Pugs, albeit many paragraphs down in the release:

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, 

As he contemplates his new place in history as the first President to preside over a downgraded debt rating, perhaps Prez will lament his failure to step up to the plate with a coin seignorage solution, which would have taken the debt issue per se off the table.