As I noted the other day, Maxine Waters (D-CA) didn’t care for the President’s strange tirade at the Congressional Black Caucus’ award dinner — and as it turns out, neither did James Clyburn.

James Clyburn (D-SC), a member of the Catfood Commission II, rejected increasing the Social Security retirement age yesterday, calling it an idea devised by “people who work in air conditioned offices” and unnecessarily punitive to laborers.

This is a reversal for Clyburn.

If this is the best they’ve got, this childish “If you like high taxes rates so much, why don’t you marry them?” argument, they don’t have much at all. Hilariously, some flak at Heritage tries the idea that Buffett “downplays the role taxation plays in investment decisions.” Because what would Warren Buffett know about investment decisions?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made her selections for the Super Congress with the choices of Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, and Nancy Pelosi.

“My appointees: @Clyburn @RepBecerra @ChrisVanHollen They’ll focus on economic growth & job creation–which reduces deficit/”

There is now a deal, and Speaker Boehner needs Democratic votes to pass it because of his unruly and recalcitrant TeaParty membership, members of the Progressive Caucus must stop the deal. By stopping the deal at the last minute, the House Progressive Caucus forces President Obama to use his constitutional authority to ignore an illegal law that questions America’s public debt: the debt ceiling.

Kill the deal. Fourteen-four or Bust!

With only four days left until the August 2nd deadline and no deal in hand, more and more of the top Congressional Democrats have been coming out in support of the President using the 14th Amendment to ignore the debt ceiling. Yesterday the House’s second ranking Democrat Steny Hoyer (D-MD) came out strongly in favor of this tactic.

For weeks the White House has downplayed this as an option, but it is hard to believe Rep. Clyburn would make a public statement like this without the tacit approval of President Obama.

Now that Mitch McConnell has thrown down the gauntlet and demanded a cut to Medicare as a condition for an increase in the debt limit, Democrats have the choice of negotiating with hostage-takers, or holding firm and allowing the pressure to build on their opponents. All of the leading contributors to the GOP don’t want a debt default. They can and will do the work – indeed already have been doing it – of forcing the Republicans to act. It hasn’t yet worked, but the pressure hasn’t yet risen.

By inventing a new post of “assistant leader” for James Clyburn of South Carolina, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has headed off a leadership fight that threatened the unity of her caucus just as it became drastically smaller.

The common approach is to look to House “leaders” as how they will play broadly in the country, whether they have the ability to excite the mass middle of the public. Yet we know that the identity of the number 2 Democrat in the leadership will have no bearing whatsoever on the fate of the House in 2012 and beyond. The leadership position is a legislative one, particularly the position of the Minority Whip, whose job mainly entails keeping the caucus unified on important votes.