The ink isn't yet dry (or even written) on the 11th hour debt deal, but the media are already doing their usual body count of the victors and vanquished. In the Washington Post, conventional wisdom regurgitation machine Chris Cillizza produced the predictable winners and losers list. While the Wall Street Journal and right-wing columnists proclaim […]

"In Washington more spending and more debt is business as usual," House Speaker John Boehner declared on Monday before warning, "I've got news for Washington - those days are over." The days, Boehner should have explained, before Barack Obama took the oath of office. As Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) rightly pointed on the Senate floor last […]

"The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists.," former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neilldeclared in April, adding, "They're really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our […]

On Thursday, House Republicans will vote on John Boehner's debt plan. But whether they follow his order to "get your ass in line" or not (and 23 have already gone on record saying they won't), Republican hostage takers on Capitol Hill will continue to threaten the United States with default - and economic catastrophe - […]

The cult members have gathered. They've drunk the Kool-Aid. The poison already flowing through their veins, they are hallucinating and lashing out against the unbelievers. But this time, the death spasms aren't their own, but their nation's. Unless they get what want, Congressional Republicans will block an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling and take […]

Appearing on Face the Nation Sunday, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin warned House Speaker John Boehner about his paternity for the economic catastrophe resulting from a Republican failure to increase the U.S. debt ceiling. "If you break it," Durbin told Boehner, "you own it." But as the New York Times was just the latest to […]

It's tough to be taken seriously as a presidential contender when you call yourself "T-Paw" and repeatedly trumpet your "smoking hot wife" as a qualification for the White House. But just two days after having to deny he was preparing to pull the plug on his flat-lining campaign, Tim Pawlenty made his growing credibility problems […]

"If we get to the point where you've damaged the full faith and credit of the United States," Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee exclaimed in January, "that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity." But if that economic catastrophe comes to pass, its cause will not have been dementia, but disinformation. […]

Well before the current debt ceiling crisis, Americans learned from the elephant's mouth that virtually every GOP talking point is "not intended to be a factual statement." In their perpetual crusade to gut the federal government, Republicans have now distilled their debt duplicity and fear-mongering into a single word: Greece. Earlier this year, Senate Minority […]

If nothing else, you have to hand it to Congressional Republicans for sheer "choot-spa" when it comes to the national debt. Not content to destroy the U.S. economy rather than raise a dime of revenue from the wealthiest Americans, Republicans will vote Tuesday for the "Cut, Cap and Balance Act" making draconian spending reductions inevitable […]