Our household has a two word rallying cry. The first word is DEFAULT, DEFAULT, DEFAULT!!!!! Since we have had very dry weather, the second word is RAIN, RAIN, RAIN!!!!! A default won’t affect me because once the Reichstag takes over the WH and the Senate on January 20, 2013, I will have no Medicare and social security. An eight thousand dollar voucher won’t cover any procedures and I will be unable to pay for my medications. GOD IS NOT CALLING MY NUMBER FOR DEATH; IT IS THE REICHSTAG THAT IS CALLING THE SHOTS FOR MY DEMISE!!!!! Currently, I am a dead man walking who is preparing for death. And, we call our country a Christian country. Every time I hear that the Anti-Christ is a Christian country, I have a torrential upchuck.

I am a Christian but more specifically I am a Catholic. My frame of reference is Christian. Let me leave you this Beatitude! “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” The United States in Mortal Sin is addicted to wars. Persons who seek justice and peace will be vilified in our Anti-Christ nation where the triad of evil reigns – money (greed), nuclear weapons, and false prophets.

Shock Doctrine techniques in international financial markets.

IT'S NOT A DEBT CEILING

It's a financial free fall, engineered to be captured at the bottom of the US Dollar cycle by the SPECIAL DRAWING RIGHT (SDR) of theInternational Monetary Fund:

Why Supplanting the Dollar Would Be Good For America World Bank Makes Case for New Reserve Currency

"The Special Drawing Right (SDR), is the currency not of some foreign rival but of the Washington-based and traditionally U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF). It isn't even really its own currency, since it derives its value from a basket" that contains dollars, euros, yen and pounds."

The SDR is poised at the tipping point of the "debt ceiling crisis" to serve as an instrument of Econogenics, capturing the lead position among financial elites of the global economy as the currency without a constituency, a credit system controlled from behind the shadows of the board rooms of the global banksters, with the agency of the International Monetary Fund serving as the SS enforcer of the global regime of meta-national corporate fascism.

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Econogenics:

The philosophy and practice of global economic elites to perpetuate the domination of geo-political regimes of expropriation and exploitation of the natural resources and labor of the earth and humanity for the benefit of the few, at the expense of an unsustainable ecological relationship among human societies and with the natural world.

Terracide:

Wow! I'm new to this site, Thom, and I'm surprised at how many of the comments have nothing to do with the post they follow. I assume they're pursuing a back-and-forth initiated by an earlier post.

Anyhow, in response to the question you asked in this post, I don't have a clue as to whether Limbaugh and Norquist will be happy next week. However, I'm pretty sure that I and other progressives will be anything but happy. None of the players – including the President – seems interested in actually restoring the American economy. The struggle seems focused exclusively on how much or how little further damage to inflict.

Strange to see how eager how many Americans are to release the robber barons from regulation and civic responsibility; to invite them once again to grind the poor, the working class, and the middle class (as much of it as still exists) beneath their expensively shod heels.

I'm reminded of the line from The American President: "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight." Seems as if too few of us want it badly enough. Too few of us are willing to fight for democracy. Too many of us are eager to shed the weight of responsibility and welcome back the oligarchy.

GOP mantra (Rush and Grover): "The ONLY thing wrong with America is that our richest poeple just don't have enough money."

"The New Homeless."

Here's a USA Today video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obho7uBg3-A&feature=youtu.be and an article from The New Junkie Post addresing these http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/07/03/the-debt-ceiling-political-theater-and-the-fire-sale-of-america/

IMO poverty is a subject you don't speak nearly enough about Thom.

The middle class had better stand up and recognize those who are already IN poverty because their joining them en masse.

McVeigh was raised Catholic. Being raised in a religion has a lasting effect.

The only thing that will make the tea party and republicans happy is if they destroy America, but I'm afraid that will not turn out to be enough; they will then be ordered by God to destroy the rest of the world, and then they will be happy. But wait- even if they destroy this entire planet, that would still leave the moon and the other planets, and all of the rest of God's creation to be destroyed before they can be truly happy. But then we get down to the real brass tacks, because what the republican leadership really wants is to destroy God. Then they will be happy. Really, truly, and completely happy.

In other words, there is absolutely no point in trying to give the republicans enough concessions to "make them happy," because there nothing they could be given that would cause them to say, "That's enough for me, I'm happy." Not going to happen. So we should just kick their asses in the elections and when they do manage to get elected we need to kick them out of office, and every time they try to do anything, they should see us standing in their way, because the fact that a republican wants to do a thing, is proof positive that that thing would harm us. And oddly enough, it's also proof that that thing would harm the republicans, but they're too dense to see that blatantly obvious fact.

I have an idea: we progressives need to take a page out of the tea party playbook and become more like them. Then they will be better able to understand our position. For instance, how about, until the tea party agrees not to destroy America, their members are not allowed to eat food, drink water, or go to the bathroom. And when they complain about how unfair that is, we can just say, "Hey, this entire thing is your fault and your fault alone. If you want to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom, all you have to do is be reasonable and agree to every single one of our demands without exception, and those demands include you taking training in what it means to be human."

The success or failure of the Obama presidency? Thom, come on, most of the folks who listen to you, and most progressives, and a significant percentage of folks who campaigned, fund raised, caucused and voted for him are very clear his presidency is already a failure - since he is a total turncoat. The NY Times says he has to move to the center! only if he moves to the left can he move to the center. Good grief. Or bad grief. For better or worse, the days of the ascendancy of the US (and hopefully global capitalism and corporatism) are numbered. I just hope they don't take too much more toll on the environment and wildlife, and innocent folks while they are sinking the ship.

Thoms said it

Reflection of the week: ““We share our grave concern and dismay that the ongoing conversations and negotiations regarding our nation’s budget may yield an outcome that places individuals and families struggling with poverty at risk of even further hardship while shielding the wealthiest in our nation from any additional sacrifice.”-- Religious leaders letter to President Obama

You asked what we should do? We should ask why the Fed was able to give away and loan and trade away a jaw dropping $16 TRILLION between 2007 and 2010, as discovered by the GAO, without telling Congress or anyone else....and during that time present a hold up note for $700 BILLION while doing it, and why if the Fed had that much money why do we have a deficit or debt AT ALL???

Go here for the story as written by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=ca3bd5d9-0ebe-4ee4-a005-9e59f9bc73d2

A few days ago, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office completed the first independent investigation into the emergency actions taken by the Federal Reserve. As a result of this investigation, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided a jaw-dropping $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the world

There is a link at the bottom where, if you click will download a 266 pdf of the GAO report complete with charts and their findings. Our bail out of our banks was NOT $350 Billion. It was more than a Trillion per bank. And they are still losing money because they are not loaning it out.

With this...the GOP has NO RIGHT in creation to ask questions about any spending, nor any right to cut anything. That money could have been spent on recovery in our own country, here, where we the tax payers paid that money. This is absolutely beyond evil!