Quote of the Day

"While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks... My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

-- Warren Buffett in a New York Times op-ed called "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich"

This is absolutely required reading -- and it should be circulated far and wide. The question is, at what point will the sociopathically obstinate Republicans listen? At last week's Fox News-hosted Clown Car Debate, every single GOP presidential candidate taking part raised his or her hand when asked the following question: "Say you had a deal, a real spending cuts deal, 10-to-1... spending cuts to tax increases... Who on this stage would walk away from that deal? Can you raise your hand if you feel so strongly about not raising taxes, you’d walk away on the 10-to-1 deal?" Once again, all eight candidates raised their hands.

I said it last week but it bears repeating over and over again: These people don't work for you. They're not the least bit interested in representing you. If you're not wealthy, or a major corporation, they couldn't give a crap about you.

And don't even get me started on the audacity of another squinty-eyed, hyper-Christian, pretend cowboy from Texas taking a run at the White House three years after the last one left -- and left the country in financial ruin.

Will and Disgrace

These days, particularly with the political divide in Washington as substantial and insurmountable as it is, there's very little that's more offensive than a politician arrogantly invoking the supposed will of "the American people." Think about how often you've heard that phrase in just the past few weeks, from dozens of different leaders from both sides of the aisle. It's generally the worst kind of cliché: a pompous politician claiming to speak for the entire republic and to be doing its collective bidding. But recently it's become flat-out insulting, given that it's impossible for any representative from either party to bridge the gap between the highly polarized political extremes and only the most lunatic among the electorate actually want to see government gridlocked to the point of threatening the world.

Still, if you needed confirmation of that which you very likely already knew, a new poll proves unequivocally that when guys like John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint claim that their intransigence is nothing more than a case of succumbing to the will of the people, they're basically full of shit. The Tea Party and the ever-widening extremist wing of the Republican party may be loud, but they're not very big. According to a CNN/Opinion Research survey, just 33% of the American public currently hold a favorable view of the Republican party, compared to 59% who have an unfavorable view. If you're looking for context, yes, those numbers are as dismal as they sound. The Democrats, meanwhile, are holding relatively steady -- and even -- at 47% favorable and 47% unfavorable.

Both sides have played a role in creating a profound nationwide distrust of and distaste for our current government, but make no mistake -- the Republicans are rightfully getting most of the blame. What's most noteworthy about this, though, is that as of this morning the usual suspects within the GOP are continuing to tout their absurd stance on slashing entitlement and social programs while waiting in line to slavishly get on their knees and blow Grover Norquist as a simple case of doing the people's work. And you can be damn sure this will continue unabated.

The people have spoken loud and clear, saying that they overwhelmingly want to see corporate tax breaks ended, loopholes closed, and the wealthy forced to pay their fair share -- but if you think for a moment that something like verifiable reality will stand in the way of the Republicans' agenda and a lot of propagandistic nonsense about how it's all being done under the direction of the masses, you're crazier than one of those old people sitting in a lawn chair cheering the U.S. credit downgrade.

That's because they don't work for the average American. They don't work for you, and they never have -- not lately anyway.

Salon: Could the Tea Party Actually Be Obama's Salvation in 2012?/8.11.11

Quote of the Day

"What makes America look unreliable isn’t budget math, it’s politics. And please, let’s not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided -- specifically, they’re caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands."

-- Paul Krugman in yesterday's Times

Fight or Flight

So often these days I feel like all I'm doing is adding to the noise.

The worse things get, the more angry I get -- or as anyone who listened to this week's podcast knows, the more overwhelmingly depressed -- and the more I either want to lash out in every direction or just shut down completely. I figure everybody's got an opinion and more often than not everybody's willing to share it with you whether you want to hear it or not, so I'm not sure I provide a specific service that you can't get anywhere else.

Take for example the Standard and Poor's downgrade of the United States' credit rating from AAA to a mere AA+ -- the first time that's happened in our history. Not only is this development disheartening at face value, the enormity of what it will likely mean for each and every one of us and for the country as a whole simply can't be overstated. While there are plenty of reasons to contest S&P's decision -- from the fact that its calculations may have been off by $2 trillion, to S&P's role in approving the toxic crap that got us into this economic mess in the first place, to the question of whether a for-profit company should have a say in a sovereign nation's internal affairs at all -- it's impossible to deny what it means for our standing around the world. What's also impossible to deny, if you believe the people at S&P, is who is to blame for the downgrade.

"The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy... Our lowering of the rating was prompted by our view on the rising public debt burden and our perception of greater policymaking uncertainty, consistent with our criteria... The (debt ceiling deal) contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues, though the committee could recommend them... 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, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act."

Translation: Yes, the U.S. is carrying a lot of debt, but we weren't downgraded because of that; we were downgraded because the Republicans in Congress turned what should have been a simple procedure with a long history of precedent into a political dogfight, one in which they, quite simply, threatened the world with the possibility that the U.S. wouldn't pay its bills. And what's more, they've already made it abundantly clear that they intend to pull the same kind of crap again and again, especially since they now know that it works. Whether intentionally or not, the Republicans and their bizarre subservience to the Tea Party minority got the hostage that they took shot in the chest -- and don't think for a second that it will cause them to rethink this brand of political terrorism in the future.

It practically goes without saying that Republican leaders are now giddily lining up to blame President Obama for this latest global embarrassment; it goes without saying because that was the intention all along -- to burn the economy to the ground, sabotage it from the inside, and hang it all around the neck of the man they hate more than they love America and its people. The marrow-deep audacity required to do something like this is nothing short of mind-boggling. You've probably heard this analogy a lot lately, but it's fitting: It's the child who murders his parents then pleads for leniency from the court because he's an orphan. I keep wondering how much will be too much; at what point, if there even is one, the current crop of Republicans will stop and realize that they're literally destroying our country; when they'll finally wake up from their wet dream of unchecked power and feel something approaching shame.

I imagine that it will never happen. They've proven over and over again that there's no depth they won't sink to, no maneuver that crosses the line, no lie too offensive, no hypocrisy that's unthinkable. So it rests with us to heap the shame on them they seem to fundamentally lack. Maybe it's because I tend to view things through this prism, but I can't help but blame the political media for so much of what's been allowed to happen here -- and it's time they honored their responsibility to the truth, as opposed to contriving some comforting form of fake objectivity, and did so with a firm understanding of what's at stake. The debt ceiling fight, the credit downgrade, the implementation of hostage politics, all of it stemmed not as a result of a "broken government" in which both sides share equal blame; these things were the direct result of one party, the one that tallied up an unprecedented debt then manufactured a phony crisis over that debt which has already cost us our credit rating and could very well lead to a partial collapse of our fragile economy. What they've done will hurt people. It will destroy lives. And the entire reason for it is simply that the GOP wants control of the White House again. After utterly ruining us, the Republicans are seeking to assume complete dominance of our national and global policy again. This is reality. This is what's happening. And while the press should be equally adversarial when it comes to its coverage of our leaders, it should not ignore the truth or pretend that there are two sides it. The truth is the truth. Period.

It should be presented that way.

Where we go from here, whether we rise again to a place of preeminence within the world or take another step toward becoming a banana republic -- that's anyone's guess at this moment. But each and every one of us now knows what needs to be done. Whether you're the President of the United States, a journalist, a student who could soon inherit a funhouse mirror image of the America you were raised to sanctify, or just an average citizen -- it's time to take a stand.

I want so badly to concern myself with how much noise I'm making, or maybe just go back to sleep right now -- but I know that I can't.

Quote of the Day

"This whole episode has underscored an idea that's central to the GOP's governing philosophy -- government just doesn't work. It takes triggers, and committees and hostage taking to get anything done. Had deficit reduction come about in a reasonable manner, the GOP would have been a big loser. They exist to prove that government is inherently dysfunctional."

-- The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins in a piece called "What Does the Debt Ceiling Deal Mean for Ordinary Americans?"

This is a damn terrific point, and one that needed to be made. By engaging in the kind of antics they did, the GOP basically proved their point that government is a mess. It's near perfect, circular meta-reasoning. It's also complete horseshit. It's like a boyfriend or girlfriend picking a fight with you or otherwise doing something awful, then when you take the bait or react angrily saying, "See, this is why I can't be with you."

It also highlights the central paradox of the current crop of Republicans and why their motives and actions should be constantly eyed with suspicion: They claim to believe that the very entity they work for is hardly necessary; the more they're able to sabotage it from the inside the more they have to gain with their constituency. Put it another way: If you were a business-owner or manager, would you hire someone who made no effort to hide the fact that he thought your business -- and entire industry, for that matter -- sucked? That if he had his way there'd barely even be a need for you to hire him in the first place?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the overarching GOP ethos, circa 2011.

Give Us What We Want and Everyone Gets Hurt

One of my favorite things about the Republican leaders in Congress these days is that most of them are basically like Colonel Nathan Jessup. They don't even try to hide the fact that they're ordering the Code Red on the entire country because they firmly believe it's the right thing to do and they can't wait to tell you about all about it.

A couple of months back, Mitch McConnell flat-out admitted that the only reason the GOP raised a public stink over the attack on Libya was that the president who ordered it wasn't a Republican.

Now, he's got some illuminating words for those who dare to call Congresional Republicans "terrorists" in the wake of the debt ceiling fight.

They're not terrorists. They're more like, you know, kidnappers.

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting... Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.”

See? They had what they firmly believed were necessary political reasons for taking a hostage and trying to force the government to bend to their will.

Oh, wait, that actually is the definition of a terrorist.

(via Cesca)

Quote of the Day

"I'm so disgusted. I mean, no, I don't know what you do in the face of that kind of intransigence. So, my heart does go out to the President. He is dealing with a lot... The wealthy are paying less than they paid at ay time else, certainly in my lifetime, and probably in the last century. I don't know what we were paying in the roaring 20's; it's criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I don't mind paying more. I really don't mind paying more taxes. I'd rather pay for taxes than cut 'Reading is Fundamental' or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids. This is the greatest country in the world; is it really that much worse if you pay 6% more in taxes? Give me a break. Look at what you get for it: you get to be American."

-- Matt Damon

If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at Damon's populist tear during an appearance at a Save Our Schools rally over the weekend. Not only did he give voice to the frustration a lot of Americans are feeling in the wake of the shameful debt ceiling fight and equally shameful deal, but he verbally smacked down a reporter and photographer from Reason TV. The two took the typical neo-libertarian asshole position that only the traditional free-market drivers -- like the fear of being out of work -- would lead someone to want to excel at his or her job, whether that job is as an actor or a teacher. That letting the free-market Sword of Damocles be a constant threat over your head makes you try harder and that that's what matters most. Damon wasn't having any of it, and let them know in no uncertain terms.



Do not fuck with Jason Bourne.

My favorite thing about that exchange: I promise you, you have no idea how much the guy with the camera hated being called a "cameraman." In the world of broadcast journalism, it's like calling a flight attendant a stewardess. That's why whenever you hear a photographer referenced on a news show it's as a "photojournalist" or some other impressive-sounding, politically correct title aimed at keeping him or her from pitching a hissy.

By the way, while we're on the subject, if there's one thing I'm absolutely through abiding in this country it's these idiots who embrace Ron Paul as some sort of messianic figure come to save our great nation from itself. The draconian brand of libertarianism that Paul and his monkey son espouse is intrinsically anti-American because it reduces the notion of a "United States of America" -- particularly as a world leader -- to an afterthought, one that can and should be sacrificed in the name of each person doing whatever the hell he or she feels like with no sense of a collective responsibility to each other or the country as a whole. If Paul's vision for America had been in place since our nation's inception, America never could have accomplished the myriad astonishing things that made us a superpower.

The free market is not America. It couldn't fucking care less about America; it exists simply in the service of itself. It has no loyalty to anything but its own perpetuation and notions like patriotism don't even enter into the picture. Say what you will, but a government of duly-elected officials is the only system beholden to no one but the people. In theory, anyway. While I'm not sure our current model is working -- precisely because so many of our leaders are on the take in one way or another -- I hold tightly to the belief that the citizenry can actually change that situation for the better. We have the power, but only if we act in concert as Americans -- not strictly as individuals who don't give a crap about the other people who make this country great.

Ron Paul and his neo-libertarian acolytes want an America with no sense of cohesion; one that's at the mercy of a system of government that's no real government; one that doesn't care much what happens to you because it's either none of its business or it simply isn't cost-effective to give a damn; one that in many ways resembles a Third-World country.

Fuck that.

"First, You've Got To Get Mad"

This is the best thing this Olbermann has ever done. It's damn-near perfect.

Circulate it far and wide.

Picture of the Day

In case you needed something to confirm what you very likely already knew.

The article this graph is from, in today's Salon, I think tries a little too hard to cement the connection between the Tea Party and the traditionally obstructionist, anti-federalist conservatives in the oh-so-white South -- and by that I simply mean that the author doesn't really need to elaborate on iron-clad facts by engaging in semi-tenuous conjecture. Those iron-clad facts speak for themselves.

Regardless, whenever some tea bagging idiot shrieks about how he or she "wants our country back," don't bother trying to fool yourself into thinking you don't know who they're afraid is taking it away from them.

Disgust Among Yourselves

A few of the better comments about the dismal debt deal from the past 24 hours:

"Today, the markets are breathing a sigh of relief because Washington managed to agree before it sparked an unnecessary financial crisis. But we could be celebrating an agreement that actually did what was necessary to speed the recovery now and reduce the deficits that matter. Congress may be patting itself on the back because it didn't needlessly wreck the global financial system, but that's not evidence of success. It's evidence of how terribly they have failed us. And the fact that so many are celebrating this deal only goes to show how used to their failures we have become."

-- Ezra Klein in the Washington Post

"In the long run... Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy?"

-- Paul Krugman in the New York Times

"The right wing should ditch the tricorn hats and replace them with mirrored sunglasses. They truly are Banana Republicans."

-- Paul Begala in the Daily Beast

"The Democrats, despite sitting in the White House, the most awesome repository of political power on the planet, didn't fight at all. They made a show of a tussle for a good long time -- as fixed fights go, you don't see many that last into the 11th and 12th rounds, like this one did -- but at the final hour, they let out a whimper and took a dive. We probably need to start wondering why this keeps happening."

-- Matt Taibbi on his Rolling Stone blog

"In the August recess, the heat legislators encounter back home won’t come from the weather alone. The Tea Party captured the populist anger in 2010, representing a small fraction of the population. In 2012, legislators in both parties may just encounter a populist uprising that represents an American majority."

-- Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post



"What the fuck?!"

-- Jon Stewart

Quote of the Month

"They have acted like terrorists."

-- Vice President Joe Biden on the Tea Party Republicans in Congress

It's All Downhill from Here

Salon's Andrew Leonard sums up the only exculpatory spin that can be put on the shit sandwich America is very likely about to be forced to swallow whole:

"If one wished to give the president the benefit of the doubt, one could argue that maybe there was nothing he could have done to get a better deal. House Republicans were willing to push the nation into default -- and that's a scenario no sane leader could responsibly endorse. Obama couldn't credibly threaten a veto of any legislation that would reach his desk because Obama ultimately would not and could not voluntarily choose to default on the nation's obligations. Obama had to choose between an awful deal or an outright catastrophe. There's no way to come out of that jam smelling of roses.

But he didn't need to try to sell this resolution as some sort of 'compromise.' The president said it was not "the deal I would have preferred." He should have been stronger. He should have said it's a bad deal that does not address the pressing needs of the nation, and sets in stone cuts in entitlements that will savage an aging population faced by spiraling health care costs. And then he should have acknowledged that he still had to sign it, because the alternative would have ensured a nearly immediate slide into recession and the strong possibility of a global financial shock."

That's about all there is to it. I realize that both sides of the political aisle aren't at all happy with this deal and maybe it could be argued that that's one of the best things you can say about it. Unfortunately, if nobody's happy then that generally means it's a crappy deal, and while I know there are those on the opposite side of the fence who claim differently, they're full of it: the Republicans got almost everything they wanted. The Tea Party put a gun to the head of the entire country and turned what should have been a simple political procedure into an effort to bury us all under a big, heaping pile of its ass-backward dogma -- and that it did. What was one of the most embarrassing episodes for this country in its short but celebrated history has just morphed into an almost unimaginably devastating sucker punch to the American psyche. Thanks to a misguided embrace of austerity in the middle of an economic crisis, we'll no longer enjoy the inviolable powerhouse status we've had as a nation for decades into centuries. We're now no better than the European countries our twisted and treacherous Republican leaders so casually condescend to as part of the prerogative supposedly granted to us by "American exceptionalism."

The world is laughing at us right now -- and maybe it should be.

And we just learned an important lesson that we've, ironically, never really been able to admit to ourselves: terrorism is nearly impossible to defeat because it works. Welcome to the new era of Hostage Politics in this country.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"Quick, to the batshitmobile!"

-- Jon Stewart, reacting to Rep. Allen West's quick and assured response that he was "ready to drive the car" after watching a clip from The Town aimed at pumping up House Republicans during the debt debate

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"I have no doubt that we will not lose the full faith and credit of the United States... That's why I refuse to be a party to deceiving the American people yet again. I won't do it. I will vote against any proposal that includes tax increases or raises the debt ceiling."

-- Michele Bachmann, speaking today

Michele Bachmann believes that homosexuals aren't born that way and can be reprogrammed to be straight people. She believes that The Lion King was gay propaganda. She believes that abolishing the minimum wage will create jobs. She believes that Terri Schiavo was never actually in an irreparable vegetative state. She believes that climate change is a hoax and that carbon dioxide is "harmless." She believes that evolution isn't real, that "intelligent design" is, and that most scientists agree on both counts.

And she believes that the debt ceiling doesn't matter, that a potential default isn't imminent and that the whole thing is a scam made up by the Democrats.

Yup. Michelle Bachmann is somebody you really want to be listening to right about now.

Fault Lines

The Nation's Ari Melber spells out simply and concretely what the debt ceiling fight is about (and here's a hint: both sides aren't equally to blame for it):

"This fight started with a partisan threat to sabotoge the economy in order to extract policy concessions, but then, when Democrats offered most of the concessions, it ricocheted and morphed into something else: a high-stakes lightning round of intramural GOP posturing. Right now, we are living through a Republican primary for economic policy. The results may hurt the nation -- an externality that Republicans have widely acknowledged, lending bite to their bark -- and no one seems to know what you do with an army that wants to keep fighting after there’s no land left to conquer."

Melber goes on to pick apart the "balance bias" America's journalists regularly engage in and how, especially when it comes to the debt ceiling story, its inherent dishonesty screws us all.

Fail-Safe

You had to know that something like this was coming.

The Huffington Post: House Democratic Leaders To Obama: Invoke the 14th Amendment/7.27.11

The reaction by the right to that kind of move would be seething, homicidal rage directed toward the White House and the Democrats. I don't even need to elaborate on that.

Of course there's an argument to be made that, really, not a thing would change.

This is what it's coming to. Unbelievable.

Debt or Alive

Playing the role of the harbinger of doom today will be Oliver Willis -- and I find it hard to disagree with him or anyone else who feels this way anymore.

"We face gigantic problems in the country and in the world. But our political machinery is simply incapable of even acknowledging the problems, much less fixing them. An economy paralyzed by job loss is being discussed as a debt problem, for Christ’s sake... We are doomed."

How bad is it right now? How shameful and embarrassing? Our government is seriously putting us in danger of defaulting, which will not only create economic chaos for us -- potentially thwarting any hope of a recovery and in fact very likely plunging us into an all-out depression -- but the shockwaves for the global economy could be calamitous. What's more, it's doing it over an entirely made-up crisis, mostly because the GOP and the Tea Party, I truly believe, would be willing to burn the whole country to the ground as long as it meant that Obama would be forced out of the White House.

Worrying about an eventual problem like the federal deficit instead of dealing with the immediate and grievous problem of nationwide unemployment is an almost incomprehensible lapse in logic. The Republicans are constantly lecturing about how Washington supposedly needs to conduct itself the way businesses and average American families do -- well, how many businesses and families do you know that put aside dealing with a crisis happening today in favor of one that will happen years from now? Even worse, who would be flat-out stupid and stubborn enough to do it knowing full-well that taking care of today's problem would actually help solve tomorrow's? If the economy begins running at full-capacity again, the deficit could be hacked down piece by piece. We've done it before -- as recently as the 1990s.

I swear, there are moments right now when I think we deserve to be invaded and have our government taken away from us for the greater good of everyone. We're now a threat to the entire world -- and isn't that the reason we always give for why a sovereign nation needs to be overthrown? Of course I don't really want that, but at what point will all of this finally stop?

Quote of the Day

"I’m ready to drive the car."

-- GOP Rep. Allen West of Florida

West reportedly stood up and said this after watching a clip of -- prepare to make the disconsolately confused Daffy Duck face -- Ben Affleck's The Town, which House Republicans have apparently watched as a kind of motivational tool during the current debt ceiling debate. The scene in question features Affleck's character approaching Jeremy Renner's character and saying, "I need your help. I can't tell you what it is; you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people," to which Renner responds, "Whose car are we gonna take?"

Get it? Allen West says he'll drive.

So the Republicans are watching a movie about bank robbers to get themselves pumped for battle. And this was leaked presumably to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, so that everyone could know just what kind of testosterone-filled bad-asses the GOP is made of. And Allen West is, of course, assuming the role of the murderously crazy guy in the movie, the one who goes down in a hail of police gunfire. I swear, if this weren't so catastrophically sad it would be hilarious. You just can't make this kind of adolescent crap up anymore.

Still, there's never been a better metaphor than whack-job Allen West being handed the keys to a car -- which he'll then drive right over a cliff, with all of us in it.

"We're gonna hurt some people."

Indeed.

Update: Affleck is now responding to the fact that the House Republicans appear to be his new biggest fans by saying, "I don't know if this is a compliment or the ultimate repudiation." He then goes on to suggest the GOP watch another film he starred in, one he feels is more appropriate for them: The Company Men. I've actually got an even better suggestion, the most obvious one of all.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"The greatest concern to the Cut, Cap and Balance Coalition is the integrity of the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge that was signed by 39 House Members and 12 Senators, and whether voting for the proposed deal constitutes a Pledge violation... We hold that is does violate the pledge, on several grounds."

-- From a declaration issued today by a coalition of more than a hundred Tea Party groups which warns that any vote for John Boehner's debt ceiling proposal constitutes a violation of a pledge signed by dozens of Republican lawmakers

This is what it's come to. The Republican party is completely beholden to these people and terrified of the threats made by them. And these people are blithering idiots who honestly don't think that a U.S. default would be a big deal -- that it's some kind of hoax like climate change, evolution or the death of Elvis.

They'll willfully cause this country to be plunged into economic catastrophe if the GOP doesn't immediately disavow their insanity. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Quote of the Day

"What was the point of giving a prime-time address to the nation, without an Obama plan?"

-- Former CNN correspondent Ed Henry's very first question in the White House press room as a newly minted Fox News correspondent

I see the obligatory reeducation camp regimen, as usual, worked splendidly.

Actually, Henry was always a bit of a weasely little hack, so this isn't that far a jump for him.

Incidentally, I love people who continue to make the diversionary argument that it's somehow the responsibility of the President of the United States to come up with a plan to solve the debt ceiling fight. The last time I checked, the executive branch didn't create legislation; the president is not a lawmaker. Obama submits proposals for the budget and makes it clear what he will and won't approve on this current fight -- and he has, more than once -- but ultimately it's Congress's responsibility to put together a sensible plan. And as for the howling about how Obama spends too much, as the House Republicans are so fond of saying, Congress controls the purse strings -- hence why the GOP pulled them wide open during the Bush years without even a peep of complaint. Regardless, Obama has made his position clear from the start and has in fact moved to the right since then, at his own peril. The House Republicans, meanwhile, refuse to compromise on the most important issues standing in the way of meaningful progress here and are the ones who have brought the country to the edge of catastrophe in the name of shameful dick-swinging.