People are saying they shoulda got this, and they shoulda asked for that…. blah, blah, blah… Do you want to know my opinion ?

Imagine if they had simply said:  “we’ll raise the debt ceiling on the same date we see the president’s budget” !  [constitutionally the POTUS budget proposal is supposed to be delivered to congress on Feb 1st of each year – yeah, as in 11 days ago] Think about it.

(Reuters) – Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday caved in to demands by President Barack Obama and agreed to advance legislation raising Washington’s borrowing authority without conditions.

House Speaker John Boehner, announcing to reporters the plan to advance a “clean” debt limit bill to the House floor on Wednesday, said: “We’ll let the Democrats put the votes up. We’ll (Republicans) put a minimum number of votes up to get it passed.”  (link)

UPDATE:  (NBC News) – The House has passed a “clean” extension of the debt limit.   Twenty-eight Republicans joined all but two Democrats to approve the extension of the debt limit until March 2015 — without any additional legislative wish list items attached.

The vote was 221-201.  The Senate is expected to take up the debt limit extension before the end of the week.  (link)

…”I’ve got something way, way, better than scotch and cigarettes buddy;  wait right here little buddy and I’ll be right back, ok”…

David Simon, a former police beat reporter in Baltimore, MD and creator of the popular television series, “The Wire” implies that Libertarians in America are “greedy” and decries Libertarianism as a “juvenile” idea that he “just can’t get past….”  

Clearly upset that Fabian ideology is not taking root in the 20-somethings community, while the Libertarian movement is growing as an identified political affiliation in the cohort,  he gave a speech in Australia in November, 2013 at the “Dangerous Ideas” conference declaring “Libertarianism in my country is now being taken seriously as an intelligent mode of political thought… it’s astonishing to me… ” (around the 8:00 – 10:00 mark) and then goes on a screed to deliberately disparage and attempt to dismiss the Libertarian school of thought – including the assertion that Libertarians are “anti-government” (as Moyers chuckles along in agreement…)  Fraidy cat!

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Behind the scenes, groundwork has been laid for a federal government confiscation of your tax-deferred retirement accounts such as IRAs.  They’ve been quietly working it through backroom committees since 2007.  You see, Uncle Sam has a spending habit….and he’s got it bad.   Now, he sees Americans with $19.4 trillion in retirement savings, and he’s generously offering to help them manage it.  What could possibly go wrong?

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Venezuela, in a squeeze for hard currency, devalued its currency for foreigners another 44%, following an initial devaluation of 32% by Chavez in February.  The move is seen as a necessity to keep Venezuela from defaulting on sovereign debt when reliance on excessively high levels of public spending has been the tool of Chavez and his successor, Maduro, to maintain their grip on power.  It is the 6th such major devaluation in a decade.
The move is essentially a bookkeeping sleight-of-hand – it allows the Venezuelan central bank to balance its books by “earning” more Bolivars for its oil export sales, at a time when overall sales volume has decreased dramatically.

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The chatter amongst the Inside-the-Beltway C&CCS* set is the recent flare up in the barely simmering ideological flame war between the Establishment “Main Street Republican” Decepticons and grassroots Tea Party activists leading into the 2014 election cycle for the very soul and future direction of “Conservatism” in America.
In addition to not-so-subtle chats with martial industry lobbyists, at a fundraiser held in early November McConnell personally demanded Defense contractors pony up to stop the Tea Party assault or face a defense contract spending drought in the next Congress.

Sources close to the discussions state McConnell is looking for deep pockets to fund his “one issue” campaign to “teach” those who seek to primary “approved” Establishment Republicans a “lesson” as some type of ill conceived anodynic salve that will simultaneously heal the internecine rupture and rally the troops while affirmatively castigating the wayward “wild eyed” Tea Party patriots and extinguishing any lingering questions about his impoverished ability to lead fence sitting middle America into rallying behind a resurgent majority Republican Congress. Overall support from the defense industries has tapered significantly since the 2008 cycle, and McConnell is demanding they open the spigot – wide.

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DETROIT — The city of Detroit officially became the largest municipality in U.S. history Tuesday to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy after a judge declared it met the specific legal criteria required to receive protection from its creditors.

The landmark ruling ends more than four months of uncertainty over the fate of the case and sets the stage for a fierce clash over how to slash an estimated $18 billion in debt and long-term liabilities that have hampered Detroit from attacking pervasive blight and violent crime. (more…)

Effective one second past midnight this morning anything that happens will be because the U.S. Federal Government shut down.

If you don’t believe me, just watch television.   It will be live 24/7….
A wounded water buffalo was spotted trying to give birth on the dangerous Serengeti Plain, CNN International will soon report the cause is the shutdown of the U.S. federal government.   A man in Wisconsin missed his bus because the battery in his alarm clock ran out; Damn that John Boehner. A drawbridge near Baton Rouge Louisiana got stuck this morning – MSNBC confirms the GOP caused that.
In New York, a once joyful fifth grade teacher’s chalk broke in half right when she was about to use it on the blackboard; Peter King erupts in fury – ABC has live coverage.    If the stock market climbs, or falls, it’ll be all Ted Cruz’s fault – And NBC will be there live to walk you through it.   When the planes arrive/depart typically late, now CBS will report it’s because of Paul Ryan’s entrenched ideology – last week notsomuch. (more…)

Correct answer to such a request = um, NO !

If you want to insure the immediate DEATH of a Constitutional Republic take taxpayer money from fiscally prudent places and spend it to bail out the insufferably incompetent.  Such a proposition should  -if actually applied- LEAD TO CIVIL WAR.

(Via MSNBC)  American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) President Lee Saunders:

We’ve got to deal with this, Chris. I believe not only as it affects Detroit but the national government. This administration has a responsibility to deal with the problems and impact on urban centers across this country. The engines — the engines of states who are experiencing financial difficulty. I’m not saying we’ve got to bail everything out, but if we can rescue cities and countries in Europe, if we can bail out Wall Street — which we did — if we can rescue the auto industry, which was the right thing to do, then i think we’ve got to think about creative measures in which we can help urban centers across the country experiencing financial difficulty.  (link)

We call it “his money” because in the world of all things progressive they view wealth, or income, as belonging to the State.   Progressives in a larger sense view wealth as a static amount of available resource, a single pie to be divided – the Scarcity mentality.

Therefore all production value, the income earnings of your labor, actually belongs to the State, and they alone will determine how much of their money you are allowed to receive.  It is, in its most direct sense, the essential tenet of fabial-socialism;  Which is, as you know, the essential ideology of modern progressives (Democrats or Liberals defined).

WASHINGTON – President Obama’s 2014 budget calls for a trillion dollars in new taxes, almost twice as much as previously thought, The Washington Examiner has learned.

“Of the more than $1 trillion in new taxes, about $800 billion is raised through the individual income tax system, about $125 billion comes from new excise taxes — including new taxes on tobacco and financial companies,” a source familiar with the president’s budget explained. “The remainder comes from reverting back to the 2009 estate tax parameters and other miscellaneous tax increases.” […]   (link)

WASHINGTON DC – Tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters are scheduled to rally outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon as lawmakers inside prepare to unveil the biggest immigration bill in a generation.

The demonstration, dubbed the Rally for Citizenship, will feature speeches from immigration rights advocates, labor leaders, faith organizations and members of Congress working on immigration legislation. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous will deliver the keynote address.

The rally will coincide with marches, campaign-style door-knocking events and candlelight vigils in cities from Los Angeles to Orlando to Portland, Maine. (more…)