Quickies: the completely manufactured debt ceiling deadline panic edition

A round-up of what some people have been saying about the debt ceiling deal.




First, B-Daddy of The Liberator Today encourages us to take the long war view of this:

It's warm at my house, (I was going to say hot, but we live in San Diego, CA not San Diego, TX). My son's room seemed especially warm, so I turned on his overhead fan. A while later, I went back in his room and it was still uncomfortable. The fan was spinning fast, but in the wrong direction, sucking air up from the floor and blowing it towards the ceiling. This fan has a remote control, with way to many buttons; but I managed to hit the button to reverse the flow. (I know I am probably not supposed to do that, but quit interrupting.) As soon as I hit the button, nothing seemed to happen, the fan was still sucking air from the floor. But after a while, I noticed that it had started to slow. Sure enough, it continued to slow and slow, eventually coming to a complete stop and reversing direction.

So here is the deal with this execrable debt ceiling deal; we've got a fan spinning at high speed in the wrong direction and threatening to fly apart. But the only reasonable thing to do is apply a countervailing torque that will eventually reverse the flow. Sticking a pitchfork between the blades to get it stop instantly isn't going to be good for the fan or the pitchfork. But that means that we have to keep the torque constantly applied, because this fan has a lot of mass and momentum built up over decades.

A lot of tea partyers are incensed by this deal. That may not be such a horrible thing. Let's harness that anger toward taking back the Senate and the Oval Office in 2012 where we might possibly be able to do something about the real budget busters: entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid which is not getting nearly the attention it should considering the horrible fiscal condition of many of our states).





Over at our blog buddy, Harrison's place, we made the following comment on his take on Biden's tea party = terrorist outburst and the liberal-Left echo chamber:

So, when the liberal-Left finally gets around to “pedophile” will that be the end of the line or do we just start the whole “racist-extremist-terrorist-pedophile” cycle all over again?

Oh-no. Looks like we're in a bit of an echo chamber of our own as Jim Treacher turns the tables in his tweet:

So we're terrorists for "holding the country hostage"? Okay, then: For what you're doing to future generations, you are pedophiles. Own it.

Then again, maybe pedophile just doesn't make the cut in the liberal-Left pejorative handboook.





Crime, smog, traffic and graffiti and all they have to show for it is their crappy newspaper.

Yep. Leave it to the L.A. Times to politicize Gabby Giffords' return to the floor of the House a couple of days ago to cast her debt-ceiling vote.

Steve McCann at The American Thinker is shoveling dirt:

The Obama Presidency is over. He has abdicated all responsibility to the Congress, in particular the House of Representatives, which has little choice but to assume a role they are not structured to do: lead the country as best they can until November 2012. The American people, suffering under the burden of high joblessness, eroding housing values, inflation and dramatically declining economic growth with no prospect of any immediate relief, are increasingly resigned to the fact that they must focus on surviving as best they can until the election.

To paraphrase a famous quote: rumors of the President's demise are greatly exaggerated.

McCann, however, is correct in his assertion that in kicking the can down the road with respect to dealing with the debt ceiling issue, the Democrats and the President were spoiling for a fight with the Republicans, to the exclusion of all else that is ailing this country right now. They gambled on this and they got worked. And for all that, the President came out looking ineffectual and incompetent. Hope he likes apples.




Stephen Green at Pajamas Media may not believe Obama's Presidency is over but the gravy train has definitely been derailed.

President Obama has had a good two-plus years, handing out deficit-busting goodies to all the favorite Democrat constituencies. The EPA has become the monster it always threatened to be, the unions are stuffed full of automakers and have the mighty Boeing trembling at their power. The insurance companies are wards of the state, the medical profession has been saddled and broken. The symbiosis of Washington and Wall Street is complete, each too big to fail and utterly, sickeningly and dangerously co-dependent.

But yesterday’s debt deal showed that Obama’s goodie bag is empty. There’s nothing more to hand out. Santa Claus has left the building, and the Grinch has taken his place.

“Honestly,” the Democrats must be wondering, “what good is he to us now?”

(italics, ours)

That would be the Keynesian gimmickry goodie bag, Mr. Green.

Porkulus fail. Cash for Clunkers fail. Cash for Caulkers fail. HAMP fail.

All these wonderful and well-meaining programs that were designed to lift us out of the recession and propel us into economic prosperity only served to forestall a real recovery and now it looks as though the stall has been overcome by gravity and we are once again heading back into recessionary territory.


And, of course, Charles Krauthammer chimes in on... patent reform?:

More bridges

And speaking of Keynesian gimmickry and "dead"... Rich Lowry shovels some of his own dirt.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the liberal lion from Illinois, pronounces the debt deal “the final interment of John Maynard Keynes.”

The burial ceremony should be a nice, simple one after the violence done to the aged economist by the failure of the broad Obama stimulus program. The administration’s serial overpromising in his name did more to discredit Keynes than a century’s worth of broadsides by his intellectual enemies.

Nearly three years into the Obama administration, the unemployment rate is more than 9 percent, a grassroots movement devoted to cutting government has the upper hand in the House of Representatives, and the debt of the United States could well be downgraded by Standard and Poor’s. If Durbin thought that in these circumstances Keynes was heading anywhere other than a pine box, he hasn’t been paying attention.

It must be an alliterative thing because we never hear or read the term "conservative lion". But considering that Durbin ascended to that title after Teddy Kennedy's passing, maybe what qualifies one for "liberal lion" status is trashing our troops over in Iraq.


OK, gang, that's it. Hope you enjoyed this special mid-week edition of Quickies.