If you falsely believe the top goals of Congressional Republicans are to reduce the deficit or cut government spending then resolving this debt ceiling stand off by adopting McConnell’s fall back would represent of real missed opportunity and defeat for Republicans. On the other hand if you take the Republicans at their word this isn’t a terrible outcome for them.
Republicans got Obama to go on record supporting these very unpopular cut without the GOP also needing to agree to them. I imagine the Republicans are already working Obama support for cutting Social Security into some really good 30 second campaign ads.

The progressive blogosphere has been all over the story that Marcus Bachmann runs a “clinic” that “cures” teh ghey, but unfortunately for Michele, the legacy media has started looking into the scandal.

In response to President Obama’s warning that Social Security recipients may not receive their monthly checks on August 2, FDL is asking people across the country to visit the local offices of their Senators and Representatives on Tuesday July 19, to express their opposition to the radical and unjust proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits currently being contemplated by leaders of both parties.

Last week FDL members put forward the suggestion that we organize office visits, because members of Congress and their staffers need to hear in person just how strongly the American public is opposed to cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits in the way that President Obama has proposed.

Corporate America and the GOP have been playing a very dangerous game, throwing enormous amounts of money behind PR campaigns demagoguing the very deficit that their radical manipulation of the political system created in the first place. They thought they could hide their true intentions under the cloak of fiscal responsibility and good governance. The fact that the very tool they virtually invented to captivate the democratic process finally turned around and bit them in the ass is almost Shakespearean in its irony.

From President Barack Obama’s inauguration to now, he has treated the issue of torture and the legalization of this supreme violation of human rights as an inconvenience. Obama has kept the possibility of holding former Bush Administration officials accountable for torture shrouded in remarks that contain platitudes on nobody being above the rule of law, yet, in those same remarks, he has shifted the responsibility to people like Attorney General Eric J. Holder to prosecute Bush officials, effectively freeing him of any obligation or liability that might stem from having to launch an investigation.

After trying to pull a fast one on their Mortgage Backed Securities, Bank of American and Bank of New York Mellon are having the breaks slammed on their $0.05 on the dollar settlement. There is some reason to hope this will actually expose more of the tangled web of deceit that these banks have tried to hide.

Some new developments in the Manadel al-Jamad and Binyam Mohamed torture investigations.

All the fake Democrats went down in flames in Wisconsin. And the real Democrat cruised to a easy victory in the CA-36th.

The ACLU was in court today to defend a US citizen, who was illegally detained and mistreated by US officials in Kenya and Ethiopia. The citizen, Amir Meshal, a man from New Jersey, was in Mogadishu, Somalia, studying Islam in December 2006 when violence erupted. He fled to Kenya in a boat, spent three weeks in a forest looking for shelter and assistance and was arrested by the joint US-Kenyan-Ethiopian task force.

• Republicans blink.
• Game over: the WSJ backs McConnell.
• Another historic and brave GOP effort fails.
• You daily dose of Bachmannia.
• Nice.