That's Mister DOOM To You, Punk!

Even Chris Muir (of Day By Day fame) isn't impressed with Mitch McConnell's "fallback plan" for the debt-ceiling vote. Jim DeMint, a Tea Party favorite, won't support it either. I have to wonder if McConnell ran this plan by anyone else in his caucus, or if he just threw it out there to see who'd bite. I might be willing to consider it a bit of Machiavellian manipulation, but...well, I don't think the GOP is really that bright.

The WSJ's editorial page is in favor of the plan, however. This is as good a statement in favor of McConnell's idea that I've read so far:

The reality is that Mr. Obama is trying to present Republicans with a Hobson's choice: Either repudiate their campaign pledge by raising taxes, or take the blame for any economic turmoil and government shutdown as the U.S. nears a debt default. In the former case Mr. Obama takes the tax issue off the table and demoralizes the tea party for 2012, and in the latter he makes Republicans share the blame for 9.2% unemployment.

ADDENDUM: A bit of editorializing here -- to me, McConnell's plan stinks of ass-covering rather than problem-solving. I am a foolish idealist, I know, but in my mind we send our representatives to Washington to do the people's business, not to craft strategies to avoid taking responsibility for things. If you can't do the hard thing, take your worthless ass home.

Speaking of the Tea Party's influence on the debt-ceiling negotiations: the problem is that those Tea Partiers are just a bunch of Jesusland morons who don't understand the intricacies of the national debt.

What happens if the debt-ceiling deal isn't reached? No one seems to know for sure. I don't think the consequences are as dire as many are predicting -- the market may indeed take a failure to raise the debt-limit as a good sign; a sign that the United States is finally getting serious about paying down its debt. But the Democrats, as usual, will scream that the GOP is trying to starve old folks to death or something. As James Taranto puts it: Raise Taxes or Granny Gets It!

Hey, who's up for QE3? I hear this one is in 3-D! (I should note that though I sometimes agree with Brad DeLong, this is not one of those times.)

Ireland's debt gets cut to junk status by Moody's. Don't let the debt-ceiling soap opera distract you from the action going on over in Europe right now -- the sovereign debt crisis over there is accelerating.

Why Obama's war on small businesses is killing the job market. (You want to jump-start the jobs-market, Bammer? Abolish the minimum wage. Unemployment would drop by two full points by the end of the year.)

Obamageddon coming to a city near you? This is what you get when you let ideology trump basic principles of economics and municipal government.

And as for the CA-36 special election: California is boned. Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

UPDATE 1: The issue isn’t default but government shutdown. We will only default if we choose to; we have plenty of money to service our debts even without a debt-ceiling hike.

UPDATE 2: As reported in the sidebar yesterday, Cisco is looking to axe about 10,000 jobs, many of them as soon as August. That'll be enough to put a hurt on US employment numbers generally.

UPDATE 3: "The U.S. has an unemployment problem. It has an education problem. It has a regulation problem. And they are fundamentally interrelated."

UPDATE 4: Signs of the times - Scrap metal thieves make off with vineyard's irrigation system. I'm hoping VDH will read this story and comment on it. (California is so boned.)

Everything on earth is basically just a cat-bed with alternate uses.

posted by Monty at 08:56 AM

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