Ian Welsh — Why The Republicans Shut The Government Down and Threaten the Debt Ceiling

Parsing the kabuki. All toward selling a Grand Bargain to both parties?

Ian Welsh

Why The Republicans Shut The Government Down and Threaten the Debt Ceiling

Gaius Publius — Like Nixon to China, it takes a Democrat to put the first knife into Social Security

Why are both parties so hell-bent on eliminating or cutting Social Security benefits? Is there really that much at stake — for them? I’m going to slow-walk the answer in this post, and follow up later with numbers (this is turning into a research project on the numbers side). Let’s start with this …

America Blog
Like Nixon to China, it takes a Democrat to put the first knife into Social Security
Gaius Publius

How the establishments of both parties unite to dupe the rubes, the GOP with a narrative for their base and the Democratic Party with another narrative for their base, but both with the purpose of fleecing "the little people" who don't know any better and can be rolled over and over again.

Others Recognizing that the Debt-Ceiling Crisis is Phony

commentary by Roger Erickson:

The Grand Bargain: What It Is and Where It Comes From

"On August 2, 2011, wielding the pretext of a phony debt-ceiling crisis, the U.S. Congress approved legislation aimed at ... $900 billion in cuts to ... Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid ..."

Ok, these particular "others" may be union, liberal and socialist S.O.B.s ... but they're OUR union, liberal and socialist S.O.B.s! [With apologies to FDR.]