Mirror Image by cosygreeneyes

I watched both speeches last night on the debt ceiling. I have to say that this whole thing makes me crazed. It is a dumb time to talk about pulling trillions out of the economy, especially when we are talking about a policy that is supposed to be a decade long. All I see from the debt reduction right now is a slow growth of jobs because we never addressed the underlying problem of demand.

Be that as it may, there was plenty to be unhappy about from both the President and Speaker Boehner. President Obama is pitching us on the idea that cutting spending, and cutting it on social safety net programs is somehow going to bring the confidence and jobs fairies out of their coma and everything will be Moring in America again (I am not keen in any fashion on how much this President, this Democratic President grooves on Ronald Regan).

I understand that he is standing on the bridge of the Titanic and watching the Republicans push and iceberg into the path of the national and planetary economy. At this point I am not at all sure that there is much different he could have done, but that does not let him off the hook for granting the legitimacy of the deficit reduction by hostage taking (call it Disaster Legislating) in the first place.

He had the bully pulpit and could have been hammering it for months if he chose to do so. It is entirely possible that things would have been different, but it is water under the bridge now.

Last nights speech was kind of a primer for those (unlike you and me) who have not been paying attention and don’t have a the history of debt ceiling fights on the tip of our tongues. Still he was far too easy on the Republicans in terms of who is at fault for our massive debt. Five trillion (that is 5 million, million for those how don’t do big numbers well) was added to our debt in the 8 years of the Bush administration. That is more than 1/3 of the total.
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John McCain - Caricature by DonkeyHotey

Since it was a holiday weekend, you might have missed the Senior (so very, very senior) Senator from Arizona on CNN. Leaving aside the reason that this failed presidential candidate gets a billion appearances on Sunday news shows, he said some things that deserve a little attention.

On the debt ceiling negotiations he said that Americans don’t want compromise. I get this feeling that John McCain does not really know a lot of Americans, because poll after poll shows that more than half of us want a balance approach combining cuts and tax increases for the solution to this BS crisis that the Republicans have manufactured and the Democrats have bought into. If we must have a solution to the non-short term problem of the deficit and debt, then this is the one they want, by overwhelming numbers.

That is bad enough, but he also said something worse:

To McCain, the danger from continuing to let the federal deficit expand without taking substantive cost-cutting steps is much greater than the threat from failing to increase the federal debt ceiling by August 2.

“I think that this catastrophe or short-term meltdown that we’re facing isn’t nearly as bad as the meltdown that we’re facing unless we get our deficit under control,” McCain said.

This is insane. I mean really bat-shit, howl at the moon, rub your own crap in your hair nuts. Sen. McCain is suggesting that if we default, for the first time in the history of our nation, and against the 14th Amendments requirement that the debt of the United States not be questioned, it won’t be that bad.

I don’t expect every Senator to know about every set of policies, it is really too much for any individual to be an expert in everything it takes to run the nation, but if you are a dumbass about economics you should, shut your gob.

As if that is not bad enough, he is actually saying that it would be worse for the nation if we continue to spend as we have than a world wide economic meltdown and increased borrowing costs for the US for decades to come. Like his assertion that Americans don’t want compromise this just shows how completely out of touch Sen. McCain is (maybe the clouds are provoking him…).
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