If Mitt Romney was Santa Claus, "he'd fire the reindeer, and outsource the elves." (VIDEO)

When Mitt Romney came to town (Bealsville, OH) he cost everyone a day's pay.

Welcome to Mitt Romney's America:

When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.

The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.

A group of employees who feared they'd be fired if they didn't attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.

Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend." He said the company did not penalize no-shows.

What the hell is Mandatory...but no one was forced to attend mean exactly??

"Succeed" Obama for America Ad (VIDEO)

The President's somewhat confrontational speech in Cleveland, OH (and we LIKE the confrontation!) (VIDEO)

Oh, and while I remember, there's this, too:

It isn’t just Richard Cordray. Obama is also set to use recess appointments to install his picks to the National Labor Relations Board, according to White House officials and others familiar with ongoing discussions.

The move, which is arguably as important as the Cordray appointment, will ratchet up opposition from Republicans and make this an even bigger fight, since they have been attacking the NLRB regularly for its moves to streamline union elections and inform workers of their rights.

Obama is set to appoint Sharon Block, Terence Flynn, and Richard Griffin to the board — something unions have made a big priority for them in the new year. Senate Republicans have opposed the recess appointments to the NLRB on constitutional grounds, but unions charge that Republicans are only interested in rendering the agency inoperative.

Obama’s move, which will help energize unions in advance of the 2012 election, is yet another sign that he is determined to circumvent GOP opposition and make government functional again by any means necessary. It’s another sign that the White House and Dems have abandoned the illusion that anything can be done to secure bipartisan compromise with Republicans on the major items on Obama’s agenda.

And why is this important Talking Point Memo's Brian Beutler??

Republicans were threatening to block Obama’s NLRB nominees in a bid to extinguish the board’s power. So just as with Obama’s decision to recess appoint Richard Cordray to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, this move does more than fill vacancies. It actually restores the power the agency was given under the law — power Republicans were hoping to strip without passing new legislation.

Who's going around the Constitution again.

Randi Rhodes' Interview with John Nichols of the Nation Magazine on Tuesday's elections (AUDIO)

President Obama's speech at the Brent Spence Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio (VIDEO)

Wow, they booed the Bears. Really, Cincinnati? Really?

And yes, that was a decidedly mixed response for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

What a shock. Republicans are set to break their word on the Budget Control Act.

Did I call it...or did I call it?

I said in an earlier post, this:

For John Boehner, nothing is worth doing, unless you can screw the Democrats at the same time. My bet is he tries to go the Teabagger route, because he wants to do whatever it takes to kick a Conservative bill into the Senate, and have the Democrats there "take the blame" for shooting it down.

And now, we have confirmation from Talking Points Memo:

Looks like House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will try to close GOP ranks around existing legislation to fund the government rather than scrap a controversial requirement that disaster relief funds be offset with an unrelated budget cut. And that means they'll be moving ahead without Democratic support -- a risky gamble that could lead to a government shutdown if it fails.

"The Speaker's seeking more Republican votes," Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who led a House conservative rebellion on Wednesday, told reporters after an impromptu Thursday GOP meeting.

According to other Republicans, Boehner will swap out the existing disaster relief offset -- a hybrid vehicle manufacturing incentive -- with new cuts.

Remember there are consequences to this strategy, from Stan Collander:

[By moving to the right] to pick up tea party votes by (1) proposing bigger spending reductions for fiscal 2012 than were included in the bill that was defeated yesterday and (2) continuing to refuse to allow the Hurricane Irene-related disaster assistance to be provided unless others spending is cut to pay for it. The tea partiers want fiscal 2012 discretionary spending to be set at the level included in the House-passed budget resolution — AKA, the Ryan plan — rather than the higher level included in the debt ceiling increase/deficit reduction plan (the Budget Control Act) enacted on August 2.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that it will likely lose other votes from Republicans in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey — the states that were hardest hit by Irene. Note that three of these four — all but North Carolina — have Republican governors who have said that they want/need/must have the federal assistance. And House Democrats are very unlikely to go along.

Lemme repeat something. There was a deal between the White House and Congress as to how much spending would be cut made back in August. I'm sure you remember.

Now, in order to secure more Republican votes (some of which he may lose, but I bet they can twist enough arms), they are going back on their word.

Boehner is probably going to get this out of the House, and make it the Senate's problem...but hopefully the Senate will turn around and throw it back in the House's face, meaning Conference Committee here we come!

In the meantime, the Senate will be screaming over how the House went back on their word.

Oh, and by the way, they need to do all this by the end of the month.


Sooner or later, that 9% approval rating is going to look sky high.

So what's more important to Boehner, his ties to the Tea Party or the Country?

We're about to find out...even though, if we're honest, we already know the answer.

From Stan Collender:

The big question now is the one we’ve been wondering about for some time in analogous budget situations: Where do Boehner and Cantor go from here?

On the one hand, they can move to the right to pick up tea party votes by (1) proposing bigger spending reductions for fiscal 2012 than were included in the bill that was defeated yesterday and (2) continuing to refuse to allow the Hurricane Irene-related disaster assistance to be provided unless others spending is cut to pay for it. The tea partiers want fiscal 2012 discretionary spending to be set at the level included in the House-passed budget resolution — AKA, the Ryan plan — rather than the higher level included in the debt ceiling increase/deficit reduction plan (the Budget Control Act) enacted on August 2.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that it will likely lose other votes from Republicans in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey — the states that were hardest hit by Irene. Note that three of these four — all but North Carolina — have Republican governors who have said that they want/need/must have the federal assistance. And House Democrats are very unlikely to go along.

In other words, moving toward the tea party may not guarantee that the bill passes.

On the other hand, moving in the other direction on this one bill very likely will cause the tea party to split permanently with the two House leaders. The tea partiers have been leery of both Boehner and Cantor since the start of the year. In fact, a tea party supporter is running against Boehner in the GOP primary and the Virginia tea party has been threatening to challenge Cantor since before the 2010 election. Working with House Democrats at this point might get the bill passed but might also make it all but impossible for the GOP leadership to lead in 2012, that is, in the months heading into an election where anger about Congress is already at an all-time high.

For John Boehner, nothing is worth doing, unless you can screw the Democrats at the same time. My bet is he tries to go the Teabagger route, because he wants to do whatever it takes to kick a Conservative bill into the Senate, and have the Democrats there "take the blame" for shooting it down.

The President's American Jobs Act Tour comes to Columbus, OH (VIDEO)

Oh, so NOW Kasich wants to negotiate... (VIDEO)

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From Steve Benen:

Kasich said the offer to revisit the law he recently signed has nothing to do with “a fear we are going to lose.”

The laughter was audible throughout Ohio. I mean, really. Why else would the governor suddenly discover a willingness to change a law he championed?

It’s almost amusing — Kasich wants to negotiate with state employees after gutting their collective bargaining rights, because he knows his constituents are likely to side with workers over him.

A progressive coalition, We Are Ohio, dismissed talk of a deal, but said Republicans can avoid the November referendum by repealing the anti-worker measure.

Boehner didn't have the votes...so Nancy Pelosi stepped up and saved his @#$#....

From David Corn:

When the voting began on the controversial—and ugly [1]—debt ceiling bill in the House of Representatives on Monday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the Democratic leader, did not know how many votes House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had for the measure that had been crafted by President Barack Obama and the Republicans. Boehner had not reached out to her to make certain that the crucial legislation designed to prevent a potentially disastrous US default would be approved. When Boehner "went to the table"—brought the bill to a vote—he "had no idea" how many votes he had, Pelosi says.

The speaker, as it turned out, did not have enough Republican votes to pass the bill—only 174—and he had made no arrangement to guarantee its success. When there were minutes left for the vote, and it became apparent that Boehner would fall far short of the 216 votes necessary for passage, Pelosi's Democrats began voting in favor of the measure. "We were not going to let it go down," she told a small group of journalists on Wednesday morning.

In past years, a House speaker and the leader of the opposition would probably confer before such a crucial vote and figure out how to move the legislation through the chamber. (Boehner and Pelosi both were supporting this bill, albeit Pelosi quite reluctantly.) And many outside observers assumed that Boehner and Pelosi had indeed convened prior to this vote, that a conversation such as this had occurred: Nancy, I can get up to 170 or so votes, but not all those tea party guys. John, I can tell you that at least 50 Democrats are going to hold their noses and vote for this stinker. Yet when the final dramatic vote arrived, Pelosi was surprised that Boehner was so short of the magic 216. "When they didn't come to us for votes," Pelosi recalls, "we thought they had the votes on their own."

But Boehner didn't. So the Democrats, having waited to see how many Republicans would back the measure, started filling in the gap. Pelosi didn't have to send any signal. Her Democrats, she says, are a "sophisticated" group, and they could see that without Democratic support the bill would fail.

In a routine situation, if the House speaker were to bring a bill to the floor and only obtain 174 votes of his or her own party, he or she would pull the legislation and then talk to the other side, which would expect concessions or sweeteners in return for the votes necessary to assemble a majority. In this case, Pelosi maintains, there was no time for further bargaining. The measure had to be approved and kicked over to the Senate, for the possibility of default loomed. "I don't know nobody [in the Democratic caucus] who wanted to vote for it," Pelosi notes. But Democrats were committed to forestalling default. In the end, half of her caucus supported the measure, far more than necessary to put it over the top.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was one Democrat who voted against the measure, which mandates deep cuts in discretionary spending and sets up a commission to propose further cuts (and possibly revenue hikes). He argued that the legislation was a lousy deal and could lead to significant cuts in programs crucial to low- and middle-income Americans, without imposing any burdens on the well-to-do. If the Democrats were to balk and vote against it, he contended at the time, Congress would be forced to pass quickly a measure that would raise the debt ceiling (and prevent default) for at least a short period of time. Why didn't Pelosi, who hardly fancied this debt measure, adopt such a course? Frank, she says, was "probably conveying" his own sense of decency upon others—meaning he was granting GOPers the benefit of the doubt, and Pelosi didn't trust the Republicans to forestall default by agreeing to a temporary measure. Default, she notes, "would have been terrible," and blame for it would have landed at the doorsteps of Obama and the Republicans.

So to prevent default, Pelosi held her nose and halfheartedly encouraged fellow Democrats to vote for legislation that she insists will "deter economic growth [5]." This fight, she adds, was not propelled by Republican concern for deficit reduction; it was "about destroying the public space"—that is, the tea party's desire to weaken government. And this battle, she concedes, has reinforced the Republicans' economic message: "Debt is everything." It has demonstrated that the tea party has succeeded, as she puts it, in changing the "arena."

"The stupidest Deficit Reduction Package in history"... (VIDEO)

Like I said, Lawrence lays out the details, and doesn't seem happy about them. But since I put him up when he was praising the President, I'd best put him up when he's ripping him.

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A message to the Firedoglakes, Greenwalds, Schultzes and Greens of the world...

From Ezra:

When Nancy Pelosi served as speaker of the House, her job was conditioning her members for disappointment. It was Pelosi who had to bring them around to a Senate-designed health-care law that lacked a public option, a cap-and-trade bill that gave away most of its permits, a stimulus that did too little, a bank bailout that endangered their careers. Pelosi had to do that because, well, that’s what the speaker of the House has to do. To govern is to compromise. And when you’re in charge, you have to govern.

Lately, Boehner has not been governing. What should have happened Friday is obvious: Having failed to pass a conservative resolution to the debt crisis without Democratic votes, he should have begun cutting the deals and making the concessions necessary to gain Democratic votes. That, after all, is what he will ultimately have to do anyway, as whatever he passes will also require the approval of the Senate and the president.

But Boehner went in the opposite direction. He made his bill less conservative. He indulged his members in the fantasy that they wouldn’t have to make compromises. It’s as if Pelosi, facing criticism for dropping the public option, had tried to shore up her support by bringing a single-payer health-care bill to the floor. Even if that would have pleased her left wing, what good would it have done her? Her job was to prepare her members to take a vote that could lead to a successful outcome. Pretending that that outcome could be far further to the left than it actually could be would ultimately make her job harder.

Did you catch that?

I seem to remember the Whiny Left crowd chanting for exactly that when the Public Option fight was going on...kill the bill and start again with Single Payer.

What we're seeing now in the Debt Ceiling fight is the exact same hole you wanted to dig us in during Health Care Reform.  So, thanks for nothing.

I'm sure ramming through Single Payer would have made the aforementioned people feel sooooo much better, and accomplished exactly nothing as the whole of Health Care Reform would've gone down in flames.

The very thing so many Lefties are excoriating the Republicans for today, is the very same behavior they are still mad at the President for yesterday.

The purpose of the Speaker, of the Senate Majority Leader, of the President, in a strange way are all exactly the same, even if those three will occasionally come to blows.  It is to prepare the caucus for what the deal will look like (yes, disappointment, but with realism), but at the same time do so in preparation for a successful outcome.

The problem I have with the Bill Killers from HCR, with the Ed Schultzes, the Jane Hamshers, the Adam Greens, the Arianna Huffingtons, the Keith Olbermanns (there, I said it), Bill Mahers and the Glenn Greewalds of the world, is that they are very good at sketching out what is their preferred outcome is, while conveniently neglecting to give us any realistic indication of how to get there.  Sure they give us 100% Grade-A bullshit like "he should have lead more", or "he's not using the bully pulpit", or "he's really a Republican".

(And for the record, Robert Reich has been through these fights and should know better.  I guess he enjoys getting his ass kissed too much by the Huffington crowd.)

I went through the Bush Years with a belief that the Left, the people of my ideological stripe, were at least the one's mired in reality.  But the last two years have shown, that that's nonsense.  The Left is terrible at Politics.  There's a reason they lose as many campaigns as they do.  They're lazy and arrogant (lazy because they feel they should just present their ideas and have everyone bow in acquiescence).  The problem is the Left hasn't heard that lesson...and multiple defeats at the polls have not taught them otherwise.

My marker is down, and remains down.  The only way this President does not win re-election, honestly, is if douchebags, like the ones I've mentioned above don't show up.  I am a Liberal, and I will always remain a Liberal in my beliefs, thoughts and actions...

...but I can't stand Liberals.  And if they don't show up to support the President in 2012, I will make it my mission to end organizations like MoveOn, like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Like Chris Mattews said yesterday, "I will not forget those who did this..."

But I'm talking about you Professional Left.

I have discovered your mirror opposite, and for some reason...they've been allowed to sit in the House of Representatives.



P.S. Oh, and Conservatives...if that's how I feel about Liberals, imagine how I feel about you?

The Zombie Speakership...(VIDEO)

At least there was a hint of self-sacrifice in this clip. That tells me John Boenher lacks the brain power of Homer Simpson...and that's saying something.



I said it before, I'll say it again.  The sooner John Boehner realizes his Speakership is over, the sooner we'll get a deal on the Debt Ceiling.

The problem I have is that what Boehner did yesterday and what he is doing today is compounding a waste of time, with another waste of time. The Boehner plan was dead on arrival. The Speaker knows that. It was never going to pass the Senate, and that was the point. But last night it became clear it wasn't even going to pass the House, and instead of accelerating things toward a deal, the Speaker did what was previously unthinkable, he moved his plan even further to the right, by re-adding the Tea Party's demand for a Balanced Budget Amendment.

Boehner's plan probably had a puncher's chance of at least getting a party-line vote in the Senate, but add this on, and even that prospect is dead.

So what are we all doing here?

We're basically going through the motions, completely wasting time because the Teabaggers won't compromise, and Boehner is more worried about being Speaker than governing the Country.

Ezra puts it another way:

John Boehner has a problem. He likes being Speaker of the House of Representatives. He would like to continue to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. But being Speaker of the House of Representatives means both leading the House Republicans and compromising to get things done. And in this Republican Party, at this moment, if you want to lead the House Republicans, you can’t compromise to get things done.

We’ve now seen the same farce play out four times. Republican leaders get close to a deal and then, just before they can close it, their members revolt and they have to pull back. The first time was when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of the Biden talks rather than discuss revenue. The second and third time when when Boehner walked out on the various iterations of the $4 trillion deal he had been cutting with Obama. And the fourth time is playing out right now. Boehner is rewriting his bill so that it links any increase in the debt ceiling to the passage of a balanced budget amendment.

Is that acceptable to the Senate? Of course not. “We simply do not have the votes in this body to enact such a measure,” said Sen. John McCain on Thursday. But that’s sort of the point. If Boehner is to have any chance of passing his bill through the House, he needs to make it completely unacceptable to the president and the Senate.

If that doesn’t make any sense to you — and it shouldn’t — then perhaps it would help if I rephrased: In order to have any chance of surviving as Speaker of the House, Boehner needs to produce legislation that is completely unacceptable to the White House and the Senate. Their opposition is a feature, not a bug. Consider how he sold his plan to Laura Ingraham: “President Obama hates it. Harry Reid hates it. Nancy Pelosi hates it. Why would Republicans want to be on the side of President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi [is] beyond me.”

Why anyone would think that a plan loathed by the Majority Leader of the Senate and the President of the United States would be signed into law is beyond me. And since then, Boehner has moved the plan considerably to the right. But that’s because he’s not legislating. He’s just trying to survive.

It’s not just that Boehner’s party doesn’t like any of the viable compromises on the table. It’s that they don’t like compromise, full stop. YouGov polled this question and found the two parties to be almost mirror images of each other: Two-thirds of Democrats preferred a member of Congress who “compromises to get things done.” Two-thirds of Republicans preferred a member of Congress who “sticks to his principles, no matter what.”

The problem for Boehner is that the country needs a Speaker of the House of Representatives who compromises to get things done. Even if what’s being compromised is his career.

There's a certain element in this country that is intellectually lazy. It is not exclusively an element of the right, because Lord knows I've seen it on the left, too. There's a certain element among the citizenry who just want problems to go away, and will always take the path of least resistance to get there.

My concern has always been that should we go through an apocalyptic 2011, with battle after battle after battle (because don't forget, the Fiscal Year ends in September, and we're going finish up the Debt Ceiling fight and start this nonsense all over again), and the American People will tire of it all. Instead of blaming those actually responsible, they will decide that its just easier to get rid of the President, and that way all the fights will go away.

I hope that doesn't happen, and I'm decently sure that it won't. But I am afraid that a lot of my fellow citizens are stupid enough to think that way.

And if that's the case, we will bring about yet another crisis enitirely of our own making, because the rest of the world is ahead of us. They're looking at the current batch of Republicans, and have decided they're batshit insane.

Lawrence O'Donnell: Rejecting proposals serving a larger strategic purpose (VIDEO)

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You do remember how the President mentioned that compromise has become a dirty word, right? (VIDEO)

Well, you should.  He mentioned "compromise" a bunch of times in last night's speech:

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Actually, Chris (and mind you, Randi Rhodes totally caught this earlier today), this goes back to the beginning of the year:



Was it just me, or did you hear Leslie Stahl audibly gasp when he said that?

Greg Sargent: "If the Boehner plan goes down...that would represent a serious blow to Boehner’s leadership"

Greg Sargent's a little better at this analysis stuff, so I'm sure he won't mind that I'm putting up quite a bit of his article: Dems plot the endgame in debt limit fight here for you to read.

Here’s the game plan, as seen by Senate Dem aides: The next move is to sit tight and wait for the House to vote on Boehner's proposal. The idea is that with mounting conservative opposition, it could very well be defeated. If the Boehner plan goes down in the House, that would represent a serious blow to Boehner’s leadership, weakening his hand in negotiations.

“The Senate will wait to act until we see if Speaker Boehner is able to pass a bill in the House,” a senior Senate Democratic aide says. “At the moment that’s an open question.”

It’s unclear as of yet where most Tea Partyers will come down on the Boehner proposal, but House conservatives are privately expressing serious reservation about the plan, arguing that it doesn’t cut spending enough, and the Republican Study Committee is dismissing Boehner’s plan as not “a real solution.” Dems hope that if conservatives do sink Boehner’s plan, it will reveal clearly that Boehner does need Democratic votes to get anything passed.

At that point, the Senate would then pass Harry Reid’s proposal, and then kick it over to the House, which would increase pressure on Boehner to try to get it passed, since he was unable to pass his own plan.

The second alternative possibility being gamed out by Senate Dems would take place if the Boehner plan does manage to sneak through the House. Aides say Dems would then vote it down in the Senate. And here’s where it gets even more interesting.

Senate Dem aides say they would then use Boehner’s bill — which passed the House but died in the Senate — to expedidate their own proposal. Here’s how. They would use the “shell” of the Boehner bill as a vehicle to pass Harry Reid’s proposal, because for various procedural reasons House messages get expedited consideration. Senate Dems would vote to “amend” Boehner’s bill by replacing it completely with Reid’s proposal — which the Senate could then pass more quickly than they otherwise could.

After that, Reid’s proposal — having passed the Senate — would then get kicked back to the House. Having proved that Boehner’s plan can’t pass the Senate, Democrats would in effect be giving House Republicans a choice: Either pass the Reid proposal, or take the blame for default and the economic calamity that ensues.

I think we're headed toward option 1, because it looks like Boehner's plan is already tanking with some House GOP members.  Dear old Dad, who I talked to this morning, thinks they really haven't started Whipping votes yet, and that's true, but remembering Joe Walsh's letter, I think Boehner starts out the day with 90 votes down, and thus we're headed for Reidsville.

Also, here's Jim Jordan (R-OH) saying something just a wee bit interesting:

A leading House conservative said Tuesday that enough Republicans oppose the debt-ceiling plan drafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to make Democratic support crucial to passing it.

“I am confident as of this morning that there were not 218 Republicans in support of this plan,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. The group comprises more than 170 House conservatives.

The comments from Jordan, who announced Monday that he would not support Boehner’s plan, come as several Republican members have expressed skepticism about or declined to weigh in on whether they might support a two-step increase in the country’s debt ceiling in exchange for $3 trillion in deficit savings.

Jordan said that members “appreciate the speaker’s hard work” but that the proposal would not do enough to get the country’s fiscal house in order.

Translation. Boehner...needs...Democrats.

President Obama's speech on the Debt Ceiling for July 25, 2011 (VIDEO)

On the Debt Ceiling itself:

Now, what makes today’s stalemate so dangerous is that it has been tied to something known as the debt ceiling -– a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.

Understand –- raising the debt ceiling does not allow Congress to spend more money. It simply gives our country the ability to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up. In the past, raising the debt ceiling was routine. Since the 1950s, Congress has always passed it, and every President has signed it. President Reagan did it 18 times. George W. Bush did it seven times. And we have to do it by next Tuesday, August 2nd, or else we won’t be able to pay all of our bills.

Unfortunately, for the past several weeks, Republican House members have essentially said that the only way they’ll vote to prevent America’s first-ever default is if the rest of us agree to their deep, spending cuts-only approach.

If that happens, and we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills -– bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.

For the first time in history, our country’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded, leaving investors around the world to wonder whether the United States is still a good bet. Interest rates would skyrocket on credit cards, on mortgages and on car loans, which amounts to a huge tax hike on the American people. We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis -– this one caused almost entirely by Washington.

So defaulting on our obligations is a reckless and irresponsible outcome to this debate. And Republican leaders say that they agree we must avoid default. But the new approach that Speaker Boehner unveiled today, which would temporarily extend the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts, would force us to once again face the threat of default just six months from now. In other words, it doesn’t solve the problem.

First of all, a six-month extension of the debt ceiling might not be enough to avoid a credit downgrade and the higher interest rates that all Americans would have to pay as a result. We know what we have to do to reduce our deficits; there’s no point in putting the economy at risk by kicking the can further down the road.

But there’s an even greater danger to this approach. Based on what we’ve seen these past few weeks, we know what to expect six months from now. The House of Representatives will once again refuse to prevent default unless the rest of us accept their cuts-only approach. Again, they will refuse to ask the wealthiest Americans to give up their tax cuts or deductions. Again, they will demand harsh cuts to programs like Medicare. And once again, the economy will be held captive unless they get their way.

This is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. It’s a dangerous game that we’ve never played before, and we can’t afford to play it now. Not when the jobs and livelihoods of so many families are at stake. We can’t allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare.

On the Teabaggers:

Now, I realize that a lot of the new members of Congress and I don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. But we were each elected by some of the same Americans for some of the same reasons. Yes, many want government to start living within its means. And many are fed up with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle-class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few. But do you know what people are fed up with most of all?

They’re fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word. They work all day long, many of them scraping by, just to put food on the table. And when these Americans come home at night, bone-tired, and turn on the news, all they see is the same partisan three-ring circus here in Washington. They see leaders who can’t seem to come together and do what it takes to make life just a little bit better for ordinary Americans. They’re offended by that. And they should be.

The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government. So I’m asking you all to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know. If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message.

Apparently, they did.

Chris Matthews lights 'em up (VIDEO)

...and by "them", I mean the Republicans.

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Pay attention to about ten minutes in, where Howard Fineman talks about the Teabagger's slow motion secession from the country. There's a lot to it. He wouldn't put a racial tone to it, but...frankly I might.

Jonathan Chait: What's John Boehner Up To?

Jonathan Chait had a good explanation Sunday Night:

Here's my guess. [Boehner's] got a faction that opposes raises the debt ceiling on principle unless and until President Obama has agreed to implement the entire Republican fiscal agenda. He's got another faction that's willing to cut raise the debt ceiling, but fiercely opposes any tax hike. They're willing to raise the debt ceiling without any deal -- that is, they support a version of the Mitch McConnell plan -- and they also oppose a deficit agreement that would allow President Obama to move to the center on fiscal policy. But you have a larger group that regards the McConnell plan as a sell-out.

Basically, Boehner doesn't really have the votes for anything. He doesn't even have the votes for Cut, Cap and Balance, because that requires a supermajority in each house to pass a Constitutional amendment.

So he's reduced to the lowest common denominator. That's a plan that only temporarily lifts the debt ceiling, pleasing the faction that opposes lifting the ceiling, avoids any tax increases, pleasing the anti-tax absolutists, and provokes a confrontation with Obama, pleasing the political hardball faction. It also positions the party as having voted to lift the debt ceiling past August 2nd, thus providing the party with an argument for laying the blame on Obama if and when dire consequences occur.

How should Obama respond to this apparent move? He needs to veto it, for two reasons. First, as he's said, extending debt ceiling chaos into the election year will only worsen the crisis. And second, abandoning his one true demand would prove that he's willing to capitulate on anything at all. This would set up a second debt ceiling showdown in which Republicans would be emboldened to make even more maximalist demands.