Mitch McConnell, worst negotiator ever!

As I've noted many times in recent weeks, the debt ceiling is a chimera.  Actually, it's not just a chimera, it's a chimera that was created by the US and that legislators are using to scare the public.  POTUS and Tim Geithner have now inserted the debt ceiling into the fiscal cliff talks.  The response of Greta Van Susteren and Sarah Palin was to compare such an eventuality as giving debt ceiling responsibility to POTUS to giving him a limitless credit card.  This was an incredibly uninformed response, but neither here nor there since neither of these women is a policy maker or legislator.  However, this week Mitch McConnell chimed in with the same (false) analogy:

The analogy is, of course, demonstrably false, and we should assume that McConnell knows it's false.  So why would he make such a claim?  It's part of the pissing contest over the fiscal cliff.  It simply looks bad to give your opponent anything, no matter how insignificant.  This is a terrible tactic for negotiating.  If you have something entirely meaningless (both to yourself and in itself) that someone else wants, and for which someone else will give you something in exchange, you take that deal--that is a successful negotiation.  What McConnell is doing is more akin to throwing a tantrum.

Debt ceiling, again.

I've posted recently about the debt ceiling--this week Greta Van Susteren interviewed Sarah Palin regarding the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling.  Both reacted to Timothy Geithner's request that the task of reviewing and raising the debt ceiling be given to the president.  Palin and Van Susteren agreed that that would be tantamount to giving president Obama a credit card with no limit.  Now Boehner and Fox News are showing their indignation over Giethner's suggestion.  "Congress is never going to give up this power," the House Speaker told Fox News Sunday.  Boehner doesn't understand the debt ceiling any more than Van Susteren or Palin.  First, it is not a power, it's a responsibility--the US gains nothing by raising the debt ceiling (except that we guard our credit rating); we do not get more money out of the situation.  Second, congress already shirked this responsibility (which resulted in a downgrade of the credit rating of the US).  

Debt ceiling-what it's not.

It's not a credit card with no limit, as Greta Van Susteren and Sarah Palin suggest toward the end of this video.  Van Susteren's outrage (shared by Palin) over the idea that POTUS might take over the responsibility of raising the debt ceiling (subject to approval by congress) is incredibly mis-informed.  Raising the debt ceiling is largely a matter of optics--congress regularly reviews (and raises) the ceiling simply to remind themselves of how much they owe (of our money) before they think of borrowing more.  Whether or not the US can borrow more money has absolutely nothing to do with the debt ceiling--though if the international community of lenders sees that we are so irresponsible as to not review and raise our debt ceiling, they may be disinclined to lend to us.  In addition, the idea of taking the debt ceiling review out of the hands of congress was suggested my Mitch McConnell in 2011.

As far as the first half of the video, Leno is being held up as the only example of a journalist over at CBS with enough balls to call for answers regarding who changed the talking points on Benghazi before Ambassador Rice went on air.  Unfortunately, Leno's balls are not as impressive as his tardiness--the intelligence community has already indicated that they were responsible.  Maybe Leno missed the same meeting McCain missed.

Spy vs. Spy

The analysis continues as to why Romney (and the Republicans in general) lost.  And the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf has weighed in with an article entitled: How Conservative Media Lost to the MSM and Failed the Rank and File.  The article itself is quite interesting, analyzing acutely the problems at certain conservative outlets.  However, although he identifies many errors committed by conservative media, he does not identify the reason for those errors, and thus misses an opportunity to make the larger, more important point.  

Indeed, listening to the predictions of Noonan or Morris or Scarborough over those of Nate Silver was idiotic.  You shouldn't start making bets when you don't know the rules of the game.  Silver is a gambler, and a highly successful one, not a journalist.  The first three are pundits, commentators and politicos.  They should not be playing the numbers game in any case.  Nevertheless, the Atlantic article misses two important points.  First, the Republicans lost because they fronted some of the worst candidates they could possibly find (and that is saying quite a lot after having allowed Palin on their ticket in '08--she was a strong woman who fought for what she believed; unfortunately she believed Africa was a country).  Second, there is no such thing as conservative media (nor liberal media), if by media you mean an organization responsible for broadcasting the news.  If you intend the fifth estate, a biased news outfit is not a news outfit at all.  Rather it is fictional programming with an agenda.  The only bias of a true newsman is bias towards the truth.