Hello? We're fricken broke

McConnell gets McCalled out

Not thrilled with Mitch McConnell's plan to punt on the debt ceiling? Neither are TheDC's Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, who write: "The debt limit plan designed by Senator Mitch McConnell is political engineering of the highest order: Take a thorny issue with lots of angles, distill it to its political essence and come up with a way to minimize your pain and maximize your benefit. No, the plan doesn't reduce the size of the federal debt by one dollar. It doesn't limit government or expand freedom, nor does it punish President Obama for failing to do the same. It may, however, give Republican officeholders an issue to run on in the next election cycle. For that reason, many in the Republican leadership consider it brilliant... Meanwhile, the laws of arithmetic remain unchanged. Last week, Standard and Poor's announced that unless Congress reduces the federal debt by $4 trillion, the ratings agency will be forced to downgrade America's bond rating. That would amount to disaster. Many of the countries and institutions that buy American debt could no longer do so if our bonds didn't meet their portfolios' AAA ratings requirement. The result:  the cost of federal borrowing would rise by trillions over time, adding to the debt spiral. A downgrade would also mean that rates on all sorts of non-government loans would rise as well, adding to the individual debt of all Americans and American businesses. How does the McConnell plan respond to this imminent and dire threat? It doesn't. Sen. McConnell and his growing band of Republican allies have apparently concluded that a debt downgrade is an acceptable cost of doing politics. It's not. It's horrifying."  [Daily Trawler] In the meanwhile Border's Book Stores can't make expenses.  So they're closing all their stores. It's what happens in the real world, Mitch. Start closing agencies.