… because John Boehner appears to be failing to come up with anything that will “steady” them, and they’re going to begin opening in an hour or two as I keyboard this.

The stock market may be a bit bumpy tomorrow, although maybe if we send the Asian Markets a pretty card, they will feel better. Sorry we’re such losers, Asian Markets! Have a nice day!

Update:

This is soothing — watch this and pretend the toy mouse is Eric Cantor.

“I’m starting to think that the Left might actually be right.” At the Telegraph, Charles Moore has an epiphany:

It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.

All together now: Duh.

Moore is still clueless about some things:

Last week, I happened to be in America, mainly in the company of intelligent conservatives. Their critique of President Obama’s astonishing spending and record-breaking deficits seemed right.

Only to a bleeping idiot.

But I was struck by how the optimistic message of the Reagan era has now become a shrill one. On Fox News (another Murdoch property, and one which, while I was there, did not breathe a word of his difficulties), Republicans lined up for hours to threaten to wreck the President’s attempt to raise the debt ceiling. They seemed to take for granted the underlying robustness of their country’s economic and political arrangements. This is a mistake. The greatest capitalist country in history is now dependent on other people’s capital to survive. In such circumstances, Western democracy starts to feel like a threatened luxury. We can wave banners about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, but they tend to say, in smaller print, “Made in China”.

One more time, from Thom Hartmann:

After just the first decade of Reaganomics, we went from being the world’s largest exporter of manufactured goods to being the world’s largest importer; we went from being the world’s largest creditor to being the world’s largest debtor.

The guy ends the column by gurgling about “the Left’s blind faith in the state,” meaning he’s still getting all of his information about what “the Left” thinks from right-wing propaganda. But he got a glimmer. Maybe he thinks the moguls will save him from the moguls.

Nicholas Kristof makes the point that if outside influences were doing to our nation what Republicans are doing to our nation, we’d be calling it terrorism and be enraged by it. Or, put another way — who needs al Qaeda when we’ve got the GOP?

Update: One more — Didja ever notice righties screaming their heads off that Social Security is at risk and will bankrupt itself and the country by sometime next week if it isn’t privatized at once? I seem to remember that. Anyway, now that there is some question Social Security can continue to make payments if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, suddenly Social Security is as solid and safe as your Grandma’s lap. Maybe solider.

Update: Michelle Malkin still refuses to acknowledge that she and Rubin and other knee-jerkers were fanning the flames of mob hysteria by jumping to the conclusion that the Norway violence was the fault of Islamic terrorism. And somehow, if something is wrong, it’s liberals’ fault. A triple putz-lutz, indeed!