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LFG!!!! … hopefully the US defaults this time… 

Biden people throwing down:

WHITE HOUSE SAYS CONGRESS WILL HAVE TO RAISE U.S. DEBT LIMIT, WITHOUT CONDITIONS

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) January 8, 2023

Trump saying to use the ceiling to exact concessions from Democrats:

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 8, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

 

Strategic Political Economy

Why Petulant Oligarchs Rule Our World

Paul Krugman [New York Times, via The Big Picture 1-3-2023]

…the lesson I took from my moment of pettiness was that privilege corrupts, that it very easily breeds a sense of entitlement. And surely, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous privilege corrupts enormously, in part because the very privileged are normally surrounded by people who would never dare tell them that they’re behaving badly.

“This would be unprecedented. This is not a “government shutdown” over budgetary disagreements. This is an intentional meltdown of the global financial system” If you are unfamiliar with Republican GOP debt ceiling hostage taking, take a few minutes to watch this video with Norm Ornstein on the subject. AEI Election Watch from Dave Troy on Vimeo. I don’t think we need to wonder whether or not if they will do it. Yes, the Democrats would all vote to raise the debt ceiling and would only need to pick off 5 Republicans to make it happen. However, these new rules changes mean the crazies are in charge of what comes to the floor. It’s going to be a nightmare.

Another Message Board Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’ve moved my irregular email news from Mailchimp to Substack. You can read it here. You can also follow me on Mastodon here I’m also trying out Substack as a blogging […]

The rise of the far right has unfolded in plain sight. But many people didn’t want to see it. During the Obama years I took a lot of grief for writing about Newt Gingrich and his leadership in the radicalization of the Republican Party. The criticism came from progressives. They thought I was focusing too much on the GOP when I should have been criticizing the Democrats. (I did criticize the Democrats plenty BTW.) But it greatly irritated quite a few people that I followed the developments on the right so closely because they just didn’t take it that seriously. That I kept going back to Newt was considered to be some kind of dodge. If you go back and read this blog over the past 20 years you will see that I got a whole lot of things wrong. Tons. But I was right about this. Here’s Robert Draper on Newt and the GOP NutHouse: Newt Gingrich was disdainful. After watching days of House Republicans failing to elect a speaker, Mr. Gingrich, the most famous of all recent G.O.P. House speakers, vented about the hard-right holdouts, among them Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. “There’s no deal you can make with Gaetz,” Mr.

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