Gaming Out the Debt Limit Negotiations

(Because Estabon Ferlingetti VI demanded it)

For a lot of different reasons, it is obviously insane that the House GOP has resorted to extortion by threatening to block an increase in the nation’s debt limit unless its demands for spending cuts are met.  Every person who actually understands the situation agrees that the economic consequences would be disastrous should America end up defaulting on its public debts.  Toby Ziegler explains:

This is why even John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have acknowledged that the nation’s debt limit must be raised before the August 2^nd drop-dead date.  “Must” – not “should.” Toby Ziegler's assessment of what will occur should the United States default of its debt obligations may have been dramatic, but it wasn't far off the mark. <:p>

Refusing (Barely) the Red Pill

Well . . . that was interesting.

I waited up until a little past 11:00 last night, to find out what was going to happen with the budget and whether we’d have a government shutdown.  I had geared up for a shutdown, although I recognized that the odds were at least even that nothing of the sort would ever occur.

But, in a weird way, I have to confess to a bit of a letdown that it didn’t happen.  Not because I wanted to see the government shut down – God forbid.  But because it makes understanding where we are now, politically, as a nation, just a little bit more difficult.

By the time the last few hours, yesterday, were ticking down, the only real dispute was about federal funding of women’s reproductive health services.  And, no, that is not a euphemism.  And let me repeat that – the federal government was in the process of being shut down, because of a dispute about the funding of women’s health services.

Let’s back up.