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This afternoon, I came in from walking the dog, and put the finishing touches on a special edition of the Gateway dedicated to the latest debt ceiling news, only to find a deal had been done—though I am still not confident that right Republicans and left Democrats won’t stop it from actually passing.
Meanwhile, a column accumulated from a couple of days of Facebook posts, turned into crap.
I'm glad there’s a deal, just like I’m always glad to come out of the Holland Tunnel, even though it means I’m now in Jersey.
It’s still better than spending one more minute in that Tunnel.
I’m glad, even though the details taste like poison, because I was getting pretty tired of saying the same stuff over and over again (and I thank Jim Fallows for putting it all into one place).
Also nice was this piece from Time, which contain this lovely money quote;
"If the debt-limit debate had anything to do with reality, every story about it would include a few basic facts. Starting with: President Obama inherited a $1.2 trillion budget deficit. And: Republican leaders supported the tax cuts and wars that (along with the recession, another pre-Obama phenomenon) created that deficit. Also: Republicans engineered this crisis by attaching unprecedented ideological demands to a routine measure allowing the U.S. to pay its bills. Finally, Obama and the Democrats keep meeting those demands—for spending cuts, then for more spending cuts, and even for nothing but spending cuts—but Republicans keep holding out for more."
But as glad as I am that it seems to be over, it it still sucks that a line this good has already bitten the dust for its usefulness:
“Teapartiers may have a point; screw the 14th, if I were the President I'd be sorely tempted to use my Second Amendment options”
A couple of other observations are also worth saving.
Boehner seems to have spend his boyhood wanting to grow up to become Bob Dole, but his efforts at imitation recall Rich Little channeling Jack Benny.
Poor Boehner is a Babbitt who went to sleep one night and woke up to find out his Rotary Club had morphed into a Klavern. Strangely, he’s fighting to hang on anyway.
And yet, I sort of hope he does, since the alternative will only be something worse.
In the event of a far right revolt, which may yet come, my compromise would be to pledge the Democratic Conference to supporting Boehner serving out his turn as Speaker. Surely, Boehner’s still capable of delivering himself at least two dozen Republicans to ceil this deal.
