Elizabeth Drew’s piece in the New York Review of Books is making the rounds, and this passage jumped out at me.

As I said at the time Obama’s veto threat of a short term debt increase has a serious credibility problem. Obama can’t legitimately take both the position that failing to raise the debt ceiling would be a devastating catastrophe, and also that he would let this disaster befall America simply because the Republican offer didn’t help him enough politically for his 2012 campaign.

Just a gentle reminder that the President doesn’t actually have to wait around for the political mess on Capitol Hill to sort itself out before he ensures an increase in the debt limit. The first thing he could do is demand a clean bill. The politics of the debt limit are such at this point that asking for a clean bill isn’t as fanciful as it was before.

Elizabeth Drew who says that Obama is “a weak negotiator—a ‘pushover.’” But it’s not the whole story. I wrote about his negotiating style and the impact it could have on the looming debt ceiling fight in December of last year, shortly after the extension of the Bush tax cuts. And I figure if TBogg can rerun the lawnmower post….

These so-called deficit hawks just couldn’t imagine an agreement without their wise counsel, so they bigfooted into the debate. In the process, they blew up the only two solutions on the table at the time, and added this alternative that produced a panoply of opinions about how to move forward. It gave everyone something to hide behind, so they could say “I support a deficit plan, but they won’t bring the one I like up for a vote.” It’s the first rule of negotiation: you don’t throw in a whole new plan at the end of the process.

Harry Reid is working on a debt limit proposal that would satisfy two key Republican demands. It would sustain the dollar-for-dollar relationship between spending cuts and an increase in the debt limit, and it would not include any revenue increases.

For the past months, I have hosted a show called “This Week in WikiLeaks,” where I bring a guest on to talk about a WikiLeaks-related story or to talk about the latest news and updates on WikiLeaks, an organization that provides a lens for understanding so much about how the press, policy and politics, the national security state, etc. Sometimes, I don’t have guests on that are part of the WikiLeaks story. Sometimes they simply provide greater context for understanding the US government reaction and the players, who are a part of this story.

Joshua E.S. Phillips, a writer, journalist and author of None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture, is this week’s guest. The conversation was recorded after Phillips’ story in The Nation, “Inside the Detainee Abuse Task Force,” was published. We discuss this task force that was created after the Abu Ghraib scandal to, as he writes, investigate “abuse cases that occurred in and around Victory Base Complex—a huge area of responsibility that included the heaviest concentration of detainees.” In his story, he highlights a retired officer, who claims it was a “whitewash.”

• The debt ceiling drama continues.
• Only makes sense if they want to burn down the US economy.
• K-Thug, on messing with Medicare.
• Here comes the Secessionist.
• See #2.

As long as the patient winds up pretty much mortally wounded we’ll have our compromise.

Van Morrison – And It Stoned Me