Debt ceiling? What debt ceiling?

The following is from Stop the Charade: The Federal Budget Is Its Own ‘Debt-Ceiling’ in a recent Forbes. I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know how well the reasoning would hold up in court, especially today’s courts. On the other  hand, there’s the planning dictum that “More of the same never solved a problem." Read the whole thing by following the preceding link.

If President Biden, like Presidents Clinton and Obama before him, wishes to give would-be financial hostage-takers in Congress more rope to hang themselves with, he can of course play up the present pseudo-conflict, say that he ‘will not negotiate with terrorists’ or ‘cut Social Security or national defense,’ thank them for the de facto line item veto they’ve unconstitutionally conferred on him in the form of Secretary Yellen’s ‘extraordinary measures,’ and enjoy yet another public backlash against Republican House clown-shows.

If, on the other hand, the President decides that it is long since time to pull the plug on this farce so the nation can address real problems, he should simply inform Congressional Republicans that there is no debt ceiling apart from the budget that they themselves have enacted, then watch them either drop their latest hijack attempt or sue him and be told the same thing by the courts. 

In case you haven’t noticed (how could you miss), we’re all living in interesting times and have about 90 seconds to fix them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were wise enough to elect political leaders who actuallly focus on the existential issues we’re facing?

That’s (almost) all for today.

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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