Looks like John Boehner has been paying visits to Wall Street bankers lately, trying to figure out how close the Congress can bring the government to hitting the debt ceiling before they all freak out and sell America to China.  Or, more likely, freak out and stop donating money to Republican candidates for national office.

The deficit was caused by the financial crisis and the resulting recession, which will cost the U.S. $500 billion a year in tax revenues going forward.  Absent the recession, the "trillion dollar deficits" we're worried about now would be half trillion dollar deficits and we'd be talking about how to grow our way out of them.

Absent the recession and absent two wars (one justified but mismanaged so as to still be ongoing even though it should have been a short military operation, one that didn't have to happen at all) those half trillion dollar deficits would be even smaller.

Barack Obama's re-election bid has launched and I guess that means the silly season is upon us.  We all have to band together to beat Michele Bachmann or some such nonsense.  So how are you all feeling about this, Daggers?  Too soon?  I know it's too soon for me.

Juan Cole's strongly worded "Open Letter To The Left" about Libya seemed designed to take down a very dangerous bit of information that's come out recently but hasn't gotten nearly enough attention in my opinion -- the Libyan rebels we're defending have real and substantial ties to Al-Qaeda.