Debt Ceiling Talks

Saturday Reads Around The Internets - Credit Ratings, Crazies and Crisis

Submitted by on

shocknews
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop. This week the fur is flying over the never ending economic absurdity spewing from our government representatives.

 

Did the GOP Play Math Hooky?

Scarecrow calls it on how the press doesn't even challenge outrageous economic fiction being spewed by politicians in did the GOP miss third grade math?

Compared to laying siege to government, hurting millions, and putting the economy at risk, it’s only a minor irritant, I suppose, one of the dozens of little misrepresentations that we are so used to hearing from the right wing that we just shrug our shoulders and wait for something new. But the fact the media almost never pushes back suggests that letting it slide is a mistake. And it’s just fractions!

Remember third grade math? Sure you do. It’s when you probably first learned fractions. Numerators! Denominators? Percentages! Pies! Well, it seems many right wingers skipped that year, because they can’t recall that a fraction has both a numerator and a denominator, so the size of the fraction depends on both.

So night after night, apparent third grade dropouts tell news anchors and talk show hosts, none of whom even sighs (sigh), that government spending has exploded under Socialist Obama. Before Obama, it was about 19 percent of GDP or 1/5th. But now its almost 1/4th, or 24 percent of GDP.

Tom Coburn said that on my public tv. Boehner and McConnell and Kyl say that. Every Tea-GOP and rightwinger has it tatooed on their foreheads, and Sarah Palin has is written on her palm. From 19 to 24 percent! Yikes!

Budget Blasts Bad Request

Submitted by on

It seems President Obama knows how to crash a party as well as a server. The House of Representatives website is crashed after Obama went on prime time television asking Americans to contact their representatives. In visiting John Boehner's website 15 minutes ago this error message was displayed.

Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)

About sums up the insane budget crisis doesn't it?

When Obama told Americans to contact their representatives to show support for his debt-ceiling plan, the response was so strong it overwhelmed some House telephone lines and websites.

On Tuesday morning, House officials said calls to telephone circuits there are hitting near capacity, with many callers getting busy signals. An alert advised members' offices to provide important contacts with alternative numbers, adding that outbound calls are unaffected.

In addition, Monday night and Tuesday morning checks of the websites of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., showed a "Server is too busy" response on an otherwise blank screen, as did the House Ways and Means Committee website on Tuesday morning.

This author is more horrified at our government in general and believes every representative should be required to pass an economics class before being sworn into office. Kind of like requiring bad driving school for repeat traffic offenders. With that, what are others saying?

The below video interviews Yves Smith pointing to the entire debt ceiling crisis being manufactured.

Why Some People Are Just Fine With the Collapse of the Debt Ceiling Negotiations

Submitted by on

Originally published on The Agonist

If political functionality were a means test for a country’s credit-worthiness, the US would have lost its AAA rating a long time ago. The country which prides itself as the “World’s Greatest Democracy” has puts its dysfunctional political system on display for months now, in a struggle to get the debt ceiling increased. The resulting spectacle has nauseated even the ever-complacent American public: both Democrats and Republicans are now given losing grades by the voters for their performance in this farce. If the country had a legitimate third party to vote for, the Democrats and Republicans would be in serious trouble. Of course, the political system is geared to prevent third parties from emerging, so the country flounders about, looking for leadership from pusillanimous Democrats or ideological Republicans who consider raising taxes a mortal sin. The voters are probably a few steps away from concluding what is meant to be hidden but by now should be obvious: American democracy doesn’t exist, and the political system in Washington is beyond repair. What is worse: there are people and organizations who like things just the way they are and will fight any attempts at reform.

How to Cripple a Government

Let us look at a sad laundry list of governance failures that have built up over time and which now have paralyzed Washington’s political process.

• The average Congressman spends only about half their time in governance – meaning reading and introducing legislation, attending debates, working on committees, and voting. The rest of the time is spent raising money and campaigning for reelection.