Coalition of the Swilling has the whiny Jay Carney calling "Republican talking points" on the idea the President should have a plan.

It's pretty interesting-- the press room jeers in protest when Carney suggests they skipped out of town early on Friday, when he claims the President clearly outlined his "principles."

His "principles." Still not his "plan."

As the CBO said, "We can't score speeches."

Really worth viewing. It's interesting that media is finally starting to chafe under Obama's arrogant reign. Really, really worth watching. The press (particularly Todd and Jake Tapper) will not ease up on Carney over the administration's utter failure to produce a plan.

Hmmm... Obama insists that the debt deal must carry him to January 2013, and here Carney repeats that the President also insists that no tax hikes will go into effect before January 2013.

Is there some economic importance of this January 2013 date?

Seems pretty political, doesn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (210)
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She thinks both sides have all but given up on a compromise and are now just positioning themselves for the post-default theater of blame.

I have been thinking about something Dick Morris said. He thinks the White House, the Senate, the media vanguard of the Ever-Growing Liberal Welfare State has misread the situation here.

It's always a mistake to not understand your opponent, and to not differentiate between when he is bluffing, and when he means what he says. Saddam Hussein made that error in 1990, for example. There are plenty of other examples, such as Chamberlain's failure to understand that when Hitler said he'd take over all of Europe, he meant it.

Dick Morris thinks the Liberal Establishment doesn't understand that the House Republicans feel they have a mandate from the people (as, in fact, they do). And that they are only talking among themselves, only chatting each other up about in which way they will win, and in what manner the House Republicans will back down, as they always have before.

They're not considering themselves the need for genuine compromise on the rapid expansion of government. An expansion that was uncompromised, for those keeping track, through the first two years of Barack Hussein Obama's mismanagement.

So they're continuing to assume they're going to win. Why not? All their liberal pundit friends say so, and they've always won every single time before.

They are making the error of not listening to the words their opponents say, and not understanding their opponents are serious.

I think there's a good chance that even if the Republicans began to compromise, Obama would just change his demands yet again and push for further concessions. I think they are trapped in groupthink and happy-ending dreams and don't understand that their opponents here do actually expect them to roll back some of the increases in spending they've pushed (with no compromise) for two years.

So I am beginning to fear there actually may be no deal, and, while maybe no default, a scrambling to pay bills and a possible downgrade of our credit rating, because the liberals just do not understand that sometimes they don't get to win.

The Apocalypse Is Postponed? After threatening default for a month, Obama is now reassuring consumers and banks that there will be no default.

While officials from the Obama Administration raised their rhetoric over the weekend about the possibility of a debt default if the debt ceiling isn't raised, they privately have been telling top executives at major U.S. banks that such an event wonÂ’t happen, FOX Business has learned.

In a series of phone calls, administration officials have told bankers that the administration will not allow a default to happen even if the debt cap isn't raised by the August 2 date Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says the government will run out of money to pay all its bills, including obligations to bond holders. Geithner made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows saying a default is imminent if the debt ceiling isn't raised, and President Obama issued a similar warning during a Friday press conference after budget negotiations with House Republicans broke down.

Is this blinking? Obama can't continue making the claim that August 2nd is the default trigger date if he's on record reassuring banks that won't happen.

I'd like to see the media follow this up, after Obama's claimed for a month that August 2 was the absolute default drop-dead date, but they won't.

They can't admit the president they all voted for lies to the country on a routine basis.

Meanwhile, Boehner's plan is unlikely to pass the House (not enough cuts) and Obama -- the Great Compromiser, remember -- says he'd veto it anyway, as it does not suitably boost his chances for reelection.

While waiting for Congress to make its next move, the Obama administration today threatened to veto the two-step debt reduction plan put up by House Speaker John Boehner -- though they're pretty sure it won't come to that.

"The speaker's proposal cannot pass the Senate, will not pass the Senate, will not reach the president's desk," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Remember, Obama really just wants his $2.5 trillion to not have the topic of spending come up on the national radar before election day.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (195)
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He strains to find a deeper meaning in the demonic attack and I don't think he's successful.

I'm not sure you can find a deeper meaning. There have always been vicious murderers, since the dawn of time. 10,000 years ago, before there was a name for them, there were undoubtedly serial killers. And throughout most of history -- until the most modern period -- warfare against armed men was just the prelude to the fruits of victory, rape and slaughter of the unarmed and underage.

From reading the serial stupidities of Tom Friedman (a confirmed member of the "Puritans without God" religion Mead mentions below) I've gotten pretty skeptical of these "link things to technological progress" think-pieces.

But this passage rang true.

The dominant tone among American intellectuals – Puritans without God by and large – is as deterministically Calvinist as any New England divine would have wished. The New England Calvinists believed that everything that happened had been planned and predestined by God from eternity. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century American progressive intellectuals threw God under the bus, but kept the machine. The universe is a closed system, every effect is related logically and inevitably to a cause, and with a sufficient amount of knowledge and enough computing power, the future of anything can be predicted. To this they grafted American optimism: the belief based on our national historical experience that things get better over time.
They called the results “social science.”

The left strains to find a parallel in this to Islamist massacres. They'd like to do so, as it's always been a wonderful two-fer for them: Such a parallel permits them to ignore the fact that Islamism really is different, and continue parroting their multi-culti bromides; and, even more importantly, it gins up the necessary hate against their political rivals on the (non-murderous, non-crazed) right.

But Brevik's manifesto was the document of one man, not millions; no government (which is ultimately the expression of the people's mores and beliefs) enabled him and set him out to butcher innocents; no well-connected spy agency, acting at the behest of public officials, armed and trained him and gave him maps and uniforms.

In Pakistan, the Taliban are slaughtering Pakistani police and this is considered not a crime but a political struggle between the Islamists and the less-crazed moderates. Cops are murdered with the blessing of a substantial fraction of the population -- one third, perhaps, maybe one half.

This could not go on in any society in which an overwhelming majority rejected murder as an instrument of political expression. Such outrages can only happen when the "issue" of Is murder wrong? remains an open and hotly-debated point.

Brevik will get the maximum sentence in Norway (a pitifully short time, I've read, but that's what Norway has chosen). There will be the occasional lunatics that make a folk hero out of him, as confirmed leftist novelist Gore Vidal made of Timothy McVeigh, but 99.99% of Norway will wish him to hell, and not proclaim him a prophet of heaven.

But even so the right will be charged with a crime committed by a sociopath.

Posted by: Ace at 10:31 AM | Comments (190)
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Because they don't have one.

Chuck Todd: "Release your plan" Jay Carney: "We've shown a lot of leg" Todd: "Why not just release it?" Carney: "You need it written down?"

Yes, yes we do. It's an old old old negotiating trick to force the other side to make their starting offer first. The one who speaks first defines the outer parameters, the best case scenario, of what they seek. The deal will get no better for them from there.

But Obama has gotten the Republicans to speak first, and second, and third, and fourth. He continues offering no solutions himself, no proposals, because politically he doesn't want to take ownership of anything that happens; he wants to claim that he merely presided over a negotiation between Senate Democrats and House Republicans.

But that's a lie, of course. Reid and Boehner were actually making progress on a plan until Obama blew it up, by speaking up for the leftwing Congressional caucus and making fresh demands.

While what is described as financial apocalypse by Obama himself looms on the horizon of next week, he continues to sit back and invite everyone else to court him, doing nothing at all but receiving others' entreaties.

This is psychologically where he lives. His whole life has been nothing but other people coming to him to kiss his ass, while he does nothing but provide "hope;" why would his presidency be any different?

He's not a leader. He's a cheerleader smiling for votes for Prom Queen.

Meanwhile, though, there is chatter from Republicans that they should compromise towards Obama's position, whatever the hell that is.

Fred Thompson:

"Is this the best deal we could have obtained?” you might ask. I suggest that you don’t run the risk of finding out.

Yes, itÂ’s true that the White House is using overwrought and misleading implications, and weÂ’re still a long way from default. But do you really want to spend the next several months going on record as to which discretionary-spending programs (including the military) the administration should cut as much as 20, 30, or 40 percent? This is not the way to downsize. The political process wonÂ’t tolerate it, in part because this approach would require you to ask the American people to put aside their proclivity for divided government and trust Republicans to govern for the next couple of decades, which is what it will take to get us out of this mess. Taking huge, unnecessary risks like this is not consistent with long-term political success.

Yes, perhaps S&P and MoodyÂ’s are being manipulated and apparently have newly found religion regarding our long-term fiscal prospects. But by their own criteria, they should already have downgraded the United States, because until now, we have not shown the political will to address entitlements. No one knows what a downgrade will cause. The behavior of bond and stock markets is based in large part upon perception. Historically, even relatively small financial events have had unforeseen consequences. So have large ones. Conservatives, especially, should be mindful of unintended consequences."

Thompson makes the point that real change can only happen with a united, not divided, government, and we put that good possibility at risk if we start to see turmoil in the markets (or default, of course, should it come to that).

Cantor tells the troops to stand down:

“The debt limit vote sucks,” he said, according to an attendee of the closed meeting. But Republicans have three options, Cantor said: risk default, pass Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plan — which he thinks gives President Barack Obama a blank check — or “call the president’s bluff” by passing the Boehner plan, which not only cuts deeply into domestic spending but calls for a bipartisan commission to find more savings.

Cantor also announced that the House will hold a vote on a balanced budget amendment Thursday, a nod to vocal conservatives in the conference.

House Republican leaders will spend Tuesday and Wednesday cobbling together votes to pass BoehnerÂ’s plan to hike the debt ceiling by $1 trillion and cut federal spending by a greater amount. Treasury says that the nation will run out of the ability to borrow money on Aug. 2.

I'm not completely opposed to this plan, because there's a limit to what can realistically be done when you hold just one house of Congress, but the plan is only good for six months, and Obama swore he'd veto it.

If Obama passes it, then we can revisit these issues next Thanksgiving, and drive for more cuts; but... won't Obama just veto it? I suppose it's worth seeing if he will, but if he does veto it, is this all just posturing? Do we then just pass Reid's unacceptable phantom-cuts-blank-check proposal?

I don't know.

NRO writer Yuval Levin calls the Boehner deal, should it pass, a "stunning victory."

As the details of the Boehner bill become clearer, it’s increasingly apparent that the bill is just what the moment calls for: significant cuts achieved through statutory sequestration caps, no tax increase, no backsliding on entitlement reform or implicit acceptance of Obamacare, a path to another process that could lead to more cuts without tax increases, and the setting of a precedent that from now on increases in the debt ceiling must be accompanied by proportional spending cuts. It’s far from perfect, of course—meaningful entitlement reform is the only way to really address the debt problem, and even short of that some more significant discretionary cuts would be good—but Republicans don’t control Washington, and given their limited formal power, an end to this process that looks something like this bill would be pretty remarkable.



Even the Reid bill, though its cuts are less real, would be a better conclusion than has seemed plausible throughout much of this process, and there is nothing particularly important about a “short-term” rather than a “long-term” increase, provided a long-term one maintains the one-for-one ratio of spending cuts to debt-ceiling increase. Something between the two bills, which is now perhaps the most that Democrats can hope for, would be an extraordinary win for Republicans.



But frankly, itÂ’s not clear Reid can even get his bill through the Senate. If Boehner can get his through the House, the Senate would have to take up that bill (perhaps with modest amendments) and Republicans would set themselves up for a pretty stunning victory.

I think people are likely to say this sounds an awful lot like the Establishment selling the base on a stalemate, and I think they're probably right.

But... I just don't know if too much more than a stalemate is possible with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House.

Update: Jay Carney has more for you.

Carney called Chuck Todd's (!) request to see Obama's specific plan "a Republican talking point."

Apocalypse Is Rising, and this guy won't put thoughts to paper?

Thanks to Slu for those Twitter tips.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (294)
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After the debt vote though. Because his moral leadership is so necessary or something.

Embattled U.S. Rep. David Wu will resign from the House of Representatives after being accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward a fund-raiser's daughter, he announced Tuesday.

In a statement issued by his office, the seven-term Oregon Democrat said he would step down once the current standoff between Congress and the White House over raising the U.S. debt ceiling is resolved.

"I cannot care for my family the way I wish while serving in Congress and fighting these very serious allegations," Wu said. "The well-being of my children must come before anything else."

Apparently his kids welfare comes after hitting up on a woman but tomato/tomahto.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:02 AM | Comments (122)
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Waking up in an Cleveland back-alley lovingly clutching a Ken doll while wearing nothing but one flip-flop (though not on either foot) and a Marco Rubio campaign pin stuck through his left nipple.

An Ewok never felt so ALIVE, and thanks the stars once again that on Endor, a weekend lasts no less than 4 days.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:30 AM | Comments (195)
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Rather than reveal details of just how his hedge fund manages to make money for himself and his few select clients, George Soros has decided to lose the extra profits he makes off of his clients.

He is instead turning the business into a family-only fund, requiring far less transparency to regulators called for commercial hedge-funds under the new Frank-Dodd Act.

His fund has been primarily a family-only fund for some time now, which gives rise to the suspicion that his motivation may be to keep potentially shady business practices from the law & the general public.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:57 AM | Comments (195)
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His Majesty once again deigns to leave the Golden Throne and speak directly to His subjects. His heart-rending pleas for shared sacrifice rang somewhat hollow, given King Obama's wardrobe (bejeweled crown, golden scepter, ermine cloak, diamond stickpin, cloth-of-gold pantaloons) and entourage (a troupe of court eunuchs fanning him with fresh hundies straight from the Treasury vault). William Kristol at least was not terribly impressed:

These “people outside of Washington” are not little children being lectured on an obscure subject by a worldly adult. These people outside Washington are ... citizens. Judging by the polls, most of us have opinions about whether, and under what conditions, the debt ceiling should be raised. We don’t seem to be as ignorant as Obama thinks we are of the term or concept of a debt ceiling. But the president assumes we’ve never bothered our pretty little heads about such a thing.

Currency traders sure didn't think much of Obama's speech. (Boehner's either, for that matter.)

Of course Jimmy Carter is smiling. He's no longer the worst President of the post-WWII age.

Republicans, who have brought either four or five different budget plans to the table since April and have had them all shot down by a recalcitrant Senate or an imperious President, are still somehow to blame for the budget impasse according to the wise heads at the New York Times. Pretty soon they'll just start writing random mash-notes and love poetry to Obama and posting those in lieu of op-eds. ("Dear Obama, you are just the ginchiest!!!! Huggz and big wet smooches from your darlings at the New York Times! Luv4Eva!!!!")

Britian is learning the same sad lesson that the cousins in America are struggling with right now: shrinking the government is a lot harder than growing it. The piece is by Theodore Dalrymple (the nom de plume of Anthony Daniels, a former prison-doctor in the UK), and like all his other stuff, is a must-read.

As soon as the crisis is over, though this may not be for some time, the politicians are likely again to offer the public security and excitement, wealth and leisure, education and distraction, capital accumulation without the need to save, health and safety, happiness and antidepressants, and all the other desiderata of human existence. The public will believe the politicians because—to adapt slightly the great dictum of Louis Pasteur—impossible political promises are believed only by the prepared mind. And our minds have been prepared for a long time, since the time of the Fabians at least.

Another thing Britain has in common with the colonies? Their AAA bond-rating is in danger as well. I can't think of any sovereign debt I'd rate at AAA right now (except maybe Switzerland).

That August 2 "deadline" really isn't a deadline. It's a manufactured crisis meant to cause alarm in both the population and the markets. (Don't get me wrong: the markets are right to be alarmed -- but the alarm should stem from the degradation in our finances that has been decades in the making, not from some stupid manufactured political "deadline".)

But so far, oddly enough, nothing has happened. Despite warnings that a deal would need to be brokered by Sunday night before the Asian markets opened, stocks merely stumbled on Monday — the type of weakness usually associated with soft corporate earnings instead of an economic apocalypse.

Wall Street’s blasé response presents a serious challenge for the administration. The government has been ringing the alarm bells of an impending catastrophe to add urgency to its efforts to get Republicans to hash out a compromise.

The next Federal agency to need a bailout is...the FHA! Come on down!

This FT writer places blame on Germany and Greece equally for Greece's current distress -- well, no. "Blame" is the wrong word. "Responsibility" is a better one. Still, I'm pretty sure that much of the onus lies on the Greeks for lying and cheating and weaseling their way into the Euro and then going on an epic spending binge; the Germans merely allowed them to do it. There are no innocents in this crime, but Greece brought much of its pain on itself.

Poor, doomed, boned California. As public money runs out, you'd think that the cities in Callie would concentrate their resources on things like infrastructure and public safety, right? You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. Left unchecked, public-employee pensions and healthcare costs are going to bankrupt hundreds of cities, but in many cases state and federal law prevent cities from taking remediative action. It'll all end up in the already-overburdened court system, and any solution will probably happen too late to do anyone any good.

UPDATE 1: England's GDP growth was a measly 0.2% from the April to June time-period. This is well short of the (not exactly dazzling) growth of 1.2% that analysts expected. And before we gloat, we might want to consider how badly we missed our own GDP targets.

UPDATE 2: If I had the money (and enough tolerance for risk), I'd have been running the hell out of that CHFUSD trade. CHF is the Swiss Franc, USD is the US DOllar. As you can see, the CHF is kicking the USD's ass right now. The Dollar isn't looking all that sweet these days. Investors are looking for alternatives.

UPDATE 3: From kratos in the comments comes "Winds of Change". A sobering bit:

Yet, more trouble is coming along. A recent report from Bloomberg reports that ever larger numbers of citizens are racking up debt to just keep food on the table and provisions on the shelf. The bottom line is that citizens are turning to their last source of revenue- debt- in order to drive and feed their families. Debt to fund a boat is an act of stupidity. Debt to feed your family is an act of desperation.

UPDATE 4: Via HotAir -- a debt-downgrade may come as early as Friday. I'll go on record here: I don't think it will happen. The footprint of US debt in the world is huge, and I don't think even the newly-vigorous debt-rating agencies are quite ready to release the hounds. I think we're just seeing yet more politically-motivated "pressure" to drive the two sides to a compromise.

UPDATE 5: "We need tectonic changes." But remember this about tectonic changes -- a lot of stuff gets destroyed to make way for new things. It's necessary -- in fact it is inevitable -- but it's very painful and sometimes deadly.

UPDATE 6: Sauron has fallen! (via rdbrewer)

UPDATE 7: Contra my belief that default is not imminent, someone has just gone short on Uncle Sam in a mighty big way. If money talks and bullshit walks, this guy is talking with his outdoor voice.

UPDATE 8: More on that whole "liquidity" vs "solvency" thing. Washington is pretending that we have a liquidity problem, when in fact what we have is a solvency problem. (In other words, the problem is not cashflow; the problem is excessive debt brought on by excessive spending.)
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:32 AM | Comments (161)
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Last night the President gave a deeply disingenuous speech, filed with his tired analogies, overused strawmen, and violent rhetoric (GOP is "taking captives," "collateral damage" in GOP's "political warfare"). And it's not like we could expect anything else out of him. What surprised me, though, is just how out of touch he was.

In his speech, the President repeated his demand that a tax hike be part of the debt ceiling deal. New taxes are not a feature of any of the current proposals, not even the Democrats'. Republicans have completely won that point. The last plan to include new taxes was the Gang of Six proposal (thanks Dr. Coburn!) and that plan didn't even pass the laugh test. Reid's newest plan completely abandoned the idea of a tax hike and that's understandable, I'd say, since the President has now indelibly linked tax hikes to the Democrats.

Looking past the President's sliming of Republicans, he drew some fairly stark lines last night. Democrats are in favor of tax hikes; Republicans want to cut spending. Honestly, I think the President just did us a favor.

Now, Obama's not the only politician being disingenuous on the debt ceiling deal. He must know that his tax hike proposal isn't even on the table anymore, but he keeps blathering about it anyway. So he's just hanging out on Reid's left flank hoping to leverage his public support in exchange for a deal that takes the debt ceiling past election season.

The Republicans also have their disingenuous politicians on the right flank. Yesterday, Reps. Chaffetz and Jordan played another sad game of "I'm purer than you" when Boehner was looking for support for his plan. Chaffetz humorously claimed that he was "as no as no can be" to the Boehner plan and then sheepishly admitted that he hadn't actually seen the numbers. Jordon stomped his feet and demanded another vote on Cut, Cap, and Balance. Like the president's tax hike proposal, CCB is off the table, having already been voted on and voted down in the Senate.

So maybe Chaffetz and Jordan are just hoping to tug the final deal further to the right, even though their actual demands don't have any chance. That's fine, but the actual result is that without solid Republican support, Boehner is going to have to get more Democrats on board, which means more compromises. Whereas Obama can be expected to sign any deal that makes it through Congress, Chaffetz and Jordan cannot be relied on to vote on half a loaf.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:27 AM | Comments (201)
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Why is there a 'd' when it's a "fridge" but not when it's a "refrigerator"?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:00 AM | Comments (60)
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