Some people have a woefully misguided view of what the Debt Ceiling means

and you see it all over the comments on news/discussion sites everywhere and helped along by the trolls on social media sites. Some people literally believe that raising the debt ceiling means that it's giving the President and/or Congress the means to spend more money. Others have adopted the new talking points that say that budget negotiations are inextricably entwined with raising the debt ceiling. Others perpetually bring up President Obama voting against raising the debt ceiling back in 2006 even though he wasn't holding it hostage and his symbolic vote didn't prevent the debt ceiling from being raised. On and on. We have at least one sitting US Senator (Rand Paul) who believes that not raising the debt would not be a huge deal- against the weight of all of the economic experts whom say otherwise. What happened back in 2011 was bad but ultimately it got resolved even if the means used to do so weren't good but now that the Republican Tea Party has made good on its threat to shut down the government and is openly talking about defaulting, I'm starting to get worried that they might actually refuse to lift the debt ceiling and we're going to see what a default situation actually looks like. The worst part of it will be that it's not like this is unavoidable but will happen because of the Republican Tea Party and their extremism.

The worst part about all of this

is that while some countries (i.e. Greece) are having severe economic problems like this, they're not experiencing them because they had one political party literally and purposely push them into it. The most disturbing aspect of all of these shutdowns and fights over the debt ceiling and the consequences thereof is that it's totally self-inflicted by one faction of one of the major political parties in our country and is in no way unavoidable- as has been the case in other countries. Stupid, stupid

Some may scoff at the "11-Demensional Chess"

but I think that there is some truth to it

Politico rivals Yahoo for being a cesspool of wingnuts

I know that this might fall into the "duh" category but it's hard to believe that Politico isn't run by Fox News and/or RNC. The bias against President Obama and Democrats in general is so obvious and overwhelming that it may as well be though they try to make themselves to be a credible news organization. Just have to rant for a second.

Republicans are all about "Job Deletion"

Through their obsession with the almighty *deficit* Republicans have been busier cutting jobs (i.e. public jobs) than they have been doing anything to create them. They're not even doing anything to help re-train workers for other jobs. Between the sequester and their shutdown, they are putting even more people out of a job and pay.

Democrats are apparently NOT allowed to be "Partisan"

whereas Republicans can be as partisan as they like. WTF is up with the media and this insane double standard, particularly when it comes to President Obama? President Obama ran on a message of national unity, true enough, and for the most part, he has bent over backwards, forwards, and sideways, to try to work with Republicans- to the point where he is seen by some as trying to work more with Republicans than his fellow Democrats- but the Republicans have been nothing but, in short, nasty towards him and have worked to obstruct him and the Democrats in Congress at every turn. Yet whenever President Obama has stood his ground, called out the Republicans for the obstructionist jerks that many of them are, suddenly the Republicans get the vapors and take to the airwaves bemoaning his "divisiveness" and "partisanship" and the corporate media gives them a platform to spew even more nastiness and lies!

Hope he doesn't hurt any Republican fee-fees

or "divide" the country or, heaven forbid, say anything "partisan"!


NPR was playing clips yesterday of some Republican operative complaining about Obama being devisive and partisan! What the hell are Republicans doing then????

So........what now?

Republicans failed to stop ACA dead in its tracks during the past 3 years- in Congress, at SCOTUS, or the WH- and not even a government shutdown that they engineered in the House was successful in stopping the Oct. 1 rollout of the ACA Exchanges. So, now what? Based on some comments made by House members, it's not clear that they even have a Plan D, E, F, etc. and seem to just be operating on inertia at this point. There does not seem to me to be any way- absent a huge public backlash against ACA- that they can even halfway reasonably continue to demand that we pull the plug on the Exchanges now and acquiesce to a repeal, defund, or delay of ACA. Certainly not when millions of people are evidently interested in the Exchanges and looking at their options, especially not without a suitable replacement plan waiting in the wings, which we all know the Republicans are neither ready nor willing to offer in any way, shape or form. They have placed themselves in a box from which neither they (nor we) can easily escape from.

Republicans are trying to make Ted Cruz the "fall guy" for their shutdown

But don't buy it. Republicans, particularly in the House, have been more than willing to go along with his delusional jihad against ACA. This shutdown is on any Republican whom failed to vote for a clean CR before the government had to shut down.

So, things are going to be a little difficult for awhile, so let's just do nothing, right