I’m watching. Please comment if you feel moved to do so.

Update: The tone of this really is similar to one of FDR’s fireside chats. He is being clear and reasonable. Adult.

Update: He’s not going to accept a compromise that doesn’t provide for paying the nation’s bills until after the 2012 election. Otherwise, we’re just going to be playing the same game over and over until after the election.

Orange Julius up next.

OJ: Blah blah blah. Lies and misdirection. Whats on another channel?

Oooo, Criminal Minds re-run. It’s the one about the vampire rock star who is suspected of serial homicide, but the real perp turns out to be his publicist and a schizophrenic fan. Classic.

Update: Orange Julius is gone. It’s safe go back to the commentary on the speech if you want to.

Update: Oh, bleep, MSNBC is going to have some teabagger on. I’m outta here.

It appears many bluffs are being called today. Matt Yglesias writes,

Something you often see in negotiations is a mismatch between one side’s stated sticking points and its real sticking points. In the debate over the debt ceiling, for example, Republicans have sought to portray themselves as having two bottom lines. One is that any increase in the debt ceiling must be met dollar-for-dollar with spending cuts. The other is that no revenue increases can be part of the deal. What Harry Reid did yesterday was essentially call the GOP’s bluff by outlining a plan that raises the debt ceiling by $2.7 trillion and includes $2.7 trillion in spending cuts, a healthy share of which comes from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And, of course …

Republicans are rejecting this even though it nominally meets their demands. Why? Because it doesn’t achieve either of their two real objectives. In particular, the plan doesn’t cut Medicare, which means that Democratic party candidates for office in November 2012 and 2014 can accurately remind voters of the content of the Republican budget plan. …

,,, Second, while Reid’s plan doesn’t raise taxes, it also doesn’t take tax increases off the table.

Elsewhere, Steve Benen reviews all the offers made to and rejected by Republicans in the past several months.

The Wise, Serious People who think that a deal can be struck before the weekend are the same ones who refuse to see that the Republican Party has become a moving lunatic asylum.

The stock market is down, but not in a rout. Why is Wall Street so calm? Andrew Leonard writes that the Street has reached a weird equilibrium — everyone thinks that a stock market rout will panic Washington into making a deal. But because investors think an eventual rout will cause a deal to be made, there is no rout.

The New York Stock Exchange is about to open, and it occurs to me that a nice, dramatic dip might be just the thing to wake some people up.

The Hill reports that the Senate Tea Party Caucus and some House GOP freshmen have produced a bill called the Full Faith and Credit Act and want John Boehner to bring it to the floor of the House for a vote. The bill would direct the White House to prioritize federal payments to the nation’s creditors, Social Security recipients and soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

They seem to think that warnings about seniors and soldiers not getting their checks are just scare stories, and they are worried the scare stories will turn voters against the GOP.

This reminds me of one of Bill Clinton’s less than stellar moments, while he was still governor of Arkansas. While campaigning for president, Gov. Clinton did not stop the execution of a brain damaged man named Rickey Ray Rector. Rector was so out of it that he saved a slice of pecan pie from his last meal so he could eat it after they brought him back from the death chamber.

Think of the “Full Faith and Credit” Act as that slice of pecan pie. If the congressional teabaggers think the American people won’t notice the consequences of default as long as the old folks and soldiers get their checks, they have no idea what’s about to happen.

News stories this morning suggest that most of the movers and shakers of finance still believe default is unlikely, mostly because it is unthinkable. But unless something big and dramatic happens this week to spook the baggers, I don’t know what’s going to stop it.