wednesday

out-smarted

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gosh, why isn’t fox reporting this stuff!?

call up

See here

Thanks Suzanne and Symmetry

embrace

President Barack Obama hugs Bertha Petry, the grandmother of Sergeant First Class Leroy Arthur Petry, U.S. Army, in the Blue Room of the White House, July 12, 2011. The President later awarded SFC Petry, left, the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions during combat operations against an armed enemy in Paktya, Afghanistan, in May 2008. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

cowardice

Steve Benen: ….. As best as I can tell, McConnell’s proposed scenario, which would avoid default, is an elaborate scheme to pass the buck.

President Obama could raise the debt ceiling, effectively on his own, with McConnell setting up a series of votes going into the 2012 election intended to put Democratic lawmakers on the spot. (McConnell’s top goal, other than defeating the president, is becoming Majority Leader in the next Congress. If he can make vulnerable Dems cast awkward votes, McConnell will do this as often as humanly possible.)

Brian Beutler unwraps the proposed solution.

The plan would require Congress to pass a bill allowing Obama to raise the debt limit on his own contingent on him taking a series of steps: Obama would have to notify Congress of his intent to raise the debt limit — a high-sign to Congress that would be subject to an official censure known as a “resolution of disapproval,” and which Obama could veto. If he vetoed the resolution, and if Congress sustained the veto, then Obama would also have to outline a series of hypothetical spending cuts he’d make, equal to the amount of new debt authority he gives himself.

McConnell proposes extending this process in three tranches, to force Obama to request more borrowing authority, and to force debt limit votes in Congress, repeatedly through election season. […]

The legislation would not give Obama unilateral authority to cut spending or reduce deficits. And as such, it represents a big policy cave by Republicans, who’ve long insisted that they will not raise the debt limit without enacting entitlement cuts, long-sought by the conservative movement, on a bipartisan basis. But, if Dems buy into this option, it will keep the potent debt issue alive, and central to politics, for much of this election season.

Garance Franke-Ruta (the politics editor of The Atlantic) described this as “one of the clearest statements of legislative cowardice I’ve ever seen.”

The right, meanwhile, doesn’t seem fond of the idea – Erick Erickson (at Red State) is equating McConnell with “Pontius Pilate” and said it’s time to “burn” the Senate Minority Leader “in effigy.”

Full post here

Jay Carney’s statement:

“Senator McConnell’s proposal today reaffirmed what leaders of both parties have stated clearly, that defaulting on America’s past due bills is not an option. The President continues to believe that our focus must remain on seizing this unique opportunity to come to agreement on significant, balanced deficit reduction. As the President has said, ‘If not now, when?’ It is time for our leaders to find common ground and reduce our deficit in a way that will strengthen our economy.”

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Kevin Drum (Mother Jones): ….When I read about Mitch McConnell’s debt ceiling proposal, my jaw dropped. The cynicism of the thing was enough to leave my tongue hanging out of my mouth the entire time I was writing the post below….

….McConnell wouldn’t have proposed giving Obama his debt ceiling increase with only political strings attached unless he was convinced that Republicans were losing the PR battle for a more comprehensive deal…

….Obama has been positioning himself all along as the reasonable, centrist guy, willing to agree to trillions in spending cuts as long as Republicans are willing to close a few modest tax loopholes. Last week Republicans derided Obama’s repeated focus on tax breaks for corporate jets as class warfare etc., but you know what? It must have been working. Somewhere down in the bowels of the GOP’s polling operation, they must have discovered that the public was buying Obama’s pitch that “the wealthy need to pitch in too.”

…apparently McConnell had started to realize that shutting down the government over tax breaks for hedge fund billionaires and shorter depreciation schedules for corporate jet owners was really, really, not going to go down well, even among Republicans. So he pushed the eject button and tried to bail out.

It probably won’t work, though. The political cynicism of his proposal is almost certainly too much for some Democrats, and giving up on spending cuts will be too much for most Republicans. Still, it provides a hint about who has the upper hand in the debt ceiling negotiations right now. And it ain’t McConnell.

Full post here

CBS: The Senate’s top Republican said Tuesday that he did not see a way for Republicans and Democrats to come to agreement on meaningful deficit reduction as long as President Obama remains in office.

“After years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is probably unattainable,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor. More here

last respects

From top left, former first lady Nancy Reagan (partially obscured), former President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, first lady Michelle Obama and former first lady Rosalynn Carter watch as members of the armed forces carry the coffin bearing the body of former first lady Betty Ford into St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church Tuesday, July 12, 2011, in Palm Desert, Calif. At lower left is former first lady of California, Maria Schriver.

medal of honor

President Barack Obama awards US Army Sgt. First Class Leroy Arthur Petry, from Santa Fe, N.M., the Medal of Honor during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

ABC: At a White House ceremony today, Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry, an Army Ranger, will become only the second living recipient of the Medal of Honor for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Petry lost his right hand while throwing a live grenade away from his fellow soldiers.

… on May 26, 2008, Petry and his fellow Rangers were conducting a rare daylight raid on a Taliban compound in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktia Province … after securing a building in the compound, Petry and Pfc. Lucas Robinson entered a courtyard to take on three enemy fighters readying to fire on soldiers at the other end of the courtyard.

They immediately came under fire and Petry was shot by a round that went through both of his legs. Although wounded, Petry led Robinson to take cover behind a chicken coop … but a short time later another grenade landed in their midst … It was at that moment that Petry, already wounded in the legs, lunged for the live grenade to throw it away from his fellow Rangers.

…. But just as he did so, the grenade exploded in his right hand… Remarkably, Petry placed a tourniquet on his right arm then reported by radio that he and the other two Rangers had been wounded and were still under enemy fire.

… Petry now wears a high-tech robotic artificial hand … He continues to serve on active duty as a liaison officer with wounded warriors and plans to remain a soldier. The married father of four recently re-enlisted for another eight years of Army service.

More here

july 16, day of action

More here

Thanks nintendowii10 😉

…..and the gop carry on playing with people’s lives

More at CBS

Steve Benen: The correlation is probably not a coincidence: the more House Speaker John Boehner loses control of his caucus, the more he loses his cool”

Burned by the fact that their prescription for reducing the deficit and increasing the national borrowing limit either can’t pass in Congress or doesn’t cut spending enough to warrant, in their minds, a significant debt ceiling hike, House Republicans returned to the Capitol Tuesday to ratchet up their demands, and shirk responsibility for avoiding default.

“Where’s the President’s plan?” asked House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) at a press stakeout after a GOP caucus meeting. “When’s he going to lay his cards on the table? This debt limit increase is his problem.”

Just so we’re clear, in three weeks, the United States will exhaust its ability to pay its bills. The economy will deteriorate and millions of Americans will suffer. John Boehner knows all of this – he’s never even tried to deny the severity of the consequences – and has the ability to prevent it. Indeed, by most measures, he has a legal obligation to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.

But as of today, with the crisis quickly approaching, the Speaker of the House, one of the most powerful officeholders in our system of government, has decided this isn’t his “problem.”

More here