The President will give a news conference later this morning, although I’ll be surprised if he has any big announcements about the resolution of the debt ceiling impasse. I understand he’s pretty much punted the ball back to Congress and told them they’ve got hours to make a deal.

Steve Benen and Paul Krugman both note that Republicans are rejecting offers that the White House took out of the GOP playbook. Benen wrote,

Obama was willing to trade needless tax subsidies, some of which even Republicans don’t like, for a separate tax cut that benefits private employers. This is, as of last week, exactly the kind of deal GOP leaders said they were inclined to support.

But when the president put it on the table, and set up the deal exactly as Republicans want it, they still said no. And remember, a payroll tax cut is the GOP’s preferred approach to job creation.

Krugman writes,

… the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama took office.

So I have no idea how this impasse will, or can, be broken. Do read Andrew Leonard’s primer for teabaggers on what will happen if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

Rupert Murdoch’s British press empire is in meltdown. British politicians are dissociating themselves from Murdoch as fast as they can.

However, I am skeptical the same would ever happen in America, even if a recently launched FBI investigation finds that Murdoch’s minions hacked 9/11 families. I’m betting that even now loyalists are putting together reasons why such hacking was justified. And I can already see Little Lulu leading the charge to smear and demonize anyone who was hacked.

So I think this British writer is wrong — if the FBI finds that the phones of 9/11 families were hacked, Fox News will not be finished. Too many politicians and bureaucrats owe their careers to Murdoch. They may be able to bring him down in Britain, but IMO he’s untouchable here.

John Boehner complained yesterday that dealing with the White House is like dealing with Jell-O. This reminded me of the late Dainin Katagiri Roshi, a Japanese Zen master who brought Soto Zen to Minnesota. He used to tell his students, “fighting with me is like fighting with tofu.” The Roshi appeared to offer no resistance, yet didn’t change shape. It’s like kung fu. The Roshi usually got his way.

So where are we this morning on the debt ceiling?

Old CW: The President is a spineless appeaser.
New CW: The President is Jascha Heifetz, Republicans are the violin.

This is the opinion of Lawrence O’Donnell, from last night’s The Last Word.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Transcript:

The normally disciplined congressional Republicans are now in an all-out panic in the most difficult negotiation they have faced to date with President Barack Obama. As the President holds to his bluff that he wants a big deal, a $4 trillion deficit reduction package, the Republican leadership has gone from retreat, from $4 trillion to $2 trillion, then to yesterday’s surrender position outlined by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell to today’s total outright confusion about what to do, or think, next. They should, by now, have realized that they were tricked by the President into weeks of discussion of trillions in possible spending cuts.

Eric Cantor and John Boehner, the lead Republican negotiators, went into those discussions with the Vice President and the President with no real experience in negotiating anything this big, anything half as big as this with an opposition party. They forgot the maxim often repeated by participants to the press, nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to, and with some of the Democrats at the table doing the smart thing, continuing to smile and nod as the Republicans targeted spending cuts they would like, the rookie Republican negotiators made the mistake of thinking they had reached areas of agreement with the Democrats when, in fact, absolutely nothing had been agreed to, not one dollar, not one spending cut had been agreed to because everything was never agreed to.

Naively thinking they were making progress in those negotiations with the White House, which, it turns out, really were only discussions, not negotiations, the rookie Republican negotiators were lulled into allowing the clock to run down on the time left before the Treasury risks default and hits the debt ceiling on August 2nd. The President timed his changing of the subject to taxation perfectly. Once the republicans realized the president was truly insistent, not bluffing in any way about the need to include additional tax revenue in any sized deficit reduction package, they abandoned the negotiations. They gave up on $4 trillion, then they gave up on $2 trillion, because any package they negotiated, the President was insisting, must have tax revenue in it, any package of any size, so the Republicans had nowhere to go, there was no size package they could negotiate.

The naive Eric Cantor proudly and very loudly refused to attend any more meetings as soon as the President became insistent on taxation. That, of course, gave the President exactly what he needed at that time — the image of the reasonable man trying to do the responsible thing but unable to secure the cooperation of some irresponsible juveniles who would sooner run away than fulfill their oath of office and bear the responsibilities of leadership.

America’s moneyed interests, who spend millions trying to keep Republicans in charge of the tax code so that they will save billions in taxation in their corporations and their personal fortunes, looked on with increasing alarm. Now those moneyed interests are desperately trying to teach economically illiterate Republicans in Congress that there are worse things that can happen to their wealth than taxation. The Huffington Post reports today the Citigroup report issued this week says, “asking what the U.S. economy might look like after a possible U.S. Treasury default is akin to asking what you will do after you commit suicide.”

Having taken the debt ceiling hostage for the last six months, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who have finally made it clear the debt ceiling must be raised, are trying and failing to figure out how to release their hostage without suffering a unanimous press judgment that they were beaten badly in this hostage taking, humiliated really, by President Obama, the same president whose reaction to hostage taking by Somali pirates was to shoot them in the head.

The President’s calm — no, not his calm, his deadly coldness — face-to-face with these inexperienced, incompetent political hostage takers has thrown them and their usually bombastic cheerleaders cowering in fear. Consider the lead editorial today in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, normally a champion of the most ludicrous republican policies and strategies, encouraging, which is to say ordering, a full surrender on the part of Republicans on the debt ceiling, saying of Mitch McConnell’s strategic surrender yesterday, “Who can blame them?”

They have finally caught on to what they say today has been, quote, “The President’s strategy all along, take the debt limit talks behind closed doors, make major spending cuts seem possible in the early days, but then hammer Republicans publicly as the deadline nears for refusing to raise taxes on business and the rich.”

Murdoch’s editorial writers who normally find themselves in fundamental agreement with the right-wing blogosphere are now trying to put down any possible mutiny against the McConnell surrender. Quote, “The hotter precincts of the blogosphere were calling this a sellout yesterday, though they might want to think before they shout. The debt ceiling is going to be increased one way or another, and the only question has been what if anything Republicans could get in return. If Mr. Obama insists on a tax increase, and Republicans won’t vote for one, then what’s the alternative to Mr. McConnell’s maneuver?”

The president’s statements about what may or may not happen to Social Security checks in the event of a debt ceiling crisis has inspired the Murdoch editorial writers to advise freshman tea party Republicans to not trust the polls they are looking at today. Quote, “The polls that now find that voters oppose a debt limit increase will turn on a dime when Americans start learning that they won’t get Social Security checks.”

If the Republicans had a plan that they thought would work when they took the debt ceiling hostage, it could only have been the misguided expectation that when the moment came for the presidential decision in these discussions, Barack Obama would simply cave to the hostage takers’ demands. Ironically, others who shared that view as the possible outcome, here on the left side of our politics, have positions in the blogosphere and megaphones in which they have relentlessly trumpeted their distrust of Barack Obama’s strength of character and his command of presidential power.

As of tonight, the one person who we know is not panicking about what to do next is Barack Obama. Eric Cantor, however, has just described the meeting tonight at the white house this way to reporters. He, the president, got very agitated, said that he had sat there long enough, that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t sit here like this, and that he’s reached the point that something’s got to give. A democratic aide tells NBC, Cantor’s account of tonight’s meeting is completely overblown.

I’m going out on a limb and predict that McConnell’s surrender will have to be substantially modified before President Obama will accept it. The debt ceiling will be raised once, enough to cover expenses until 2013. Some spending cuts may be agreed to, but there will be no agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

Other Stuff to Read:

John Nichols, “ALEC Exposed.”
Steve Benen, “When There’s No Method to the Madness.”
Nate Silver, “GOP’s No-Tax Stance Is Outside Political Mainstream.”

Updated — More Other Stuff to Read:

Ezra Klein, “Why Obama Walked Out.”
The Booman, “Real Professional Kabuki Theater.”
Glenn Kessler, “Paul Ryan’s Misleading Historical Analogy.”
Dana Milbank, “Michele Bachmann’s Defaulty Logic.”

Yesterday the Republican politician connected to possibly the most racist campaign ad of all time, Craig Huey, was defeated by Democrat Janice Hanh in a special election for the U.S. House from California’s 36th Congressional District. I understand this is in the vicinity of Los Angeles.

Ever classy, the National Republican Congressional Committee sent out this press release after the race was called:

Washington — National Republican Congressional Committee Communications Director Paul Lindsay today made the following statement in response to the special election results in California’s 36th Congressional District:

“Janice Hahn is now Nancy Pelosi’s problem. Between her pattern of unethical behavior and close ties to LA’s most dangerous gang members, Hahn is adding to the pollution in the swamp of Washington corruption built by Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats.”

Sorta makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, huh?

Unofficial returns show Hahn won 54.6% to 45.4%. Considering there are 18 percent more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district, this actually was a better-than-expected result for Craig Huey. Some rightie bloggers are spinning the result into a symbolic win for Republicans and a harbinger of a turn to the Right next year. However, turnout was low — 23 percent — which means polling results are not necessarily a representative sampling of the district.

Now, on to a serious issue — Minnesota is running out of beer. This is an unintended consequence of the ongoing government shutdown in the lutefisk state. Cigarette shortages are anticipated.

I don’t believe there are any new developments in the debt ceiling standoff. Steve Benen writes that Wall Street and Main Street business leaders, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are virtually screaming at the Republicans to quit screwing around and raise the ceiling already. I guess we’re about to find out if the Republican Party feels it owes greater loyalty to business or to teabaggers.

Elsewhere — a series of explosions have killed 13 people in Mumbai, India; and Murcoch gives up on BSkyB.

In her official campaign biography (and also on Wikipedia), Michele Backmann claims to have an LL.M. degree in tax law from William and Mary. But eagle17765 points out at Daily Kos points out that William and Mary doesn’t have an LL.M. program in tax law. I looked at the William and Mary Law School website, and by golly, there is no LL.M. in tax law offered there. The only LL.M. is designated for foreign students, in fact.

However, maybe they used to offer an LL.M. in tax law, back in 1988 when Bachman says she got hers. So don’t get too excited yet [update -- one of the other Kossacks says this is the case, so never mind]. She got her J.D. from the school now known as Regent University, which became famous for supplying corrupt and incompetent Christian lawyers to the Bush Administration.

The Murdoch media scandal continues to unfold in Britain. It appears that Murdoch’s attempt to co-opt British new media as much as he has co-opted U.S. media is crumbling. Yes, he owns the Sun, the Times, and the Sunday Times. But he’s going to have a hard time expanding.

Murdoch had been expected to take over British Sky Broadcasting, or BSkyB, a satellite television company that broadcasts in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. The Brits would have had their own Faux News! But Parliament is telling him to drop it. Editorialists are saying that Muroch’s media ambitions are detrimental to Great Britain’s national interests.

George Monbiot writes,

Is Murdoch now finished in the UK? As the pursuit of Gordon Brown by the Sunday Times and the Sun blows the hacking scandal into new corners of the old man’s empire, this story begins to feel like the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. The naked attempt to destroy Brown by any means, including hacking the medical files of his sick baby son, means that there is no obvious limit to the story’s ramifications. …

… The cracks are appearing in the most unexpected places. Look at the remarkable admission by the rightwing columnist Janet Daley in this week’s Sunday Telegraph. “British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong,” she wrote. “It is this familiarity, this intimacy, this set of shared assumptions … which is the real corruptor of political life. The self-limiting spectrum of what can and cannot be said … the self-reinforcing cowardice which takes for granted that certain vested interests are too powerful to be worth confronting. All of these things are constant dangers in the political life of any democracy.”

Indeed, this very confluence of power and assumptions is one of the primary reasons the United States has become dysfunctional. Apparently, the British are taking this seriously. I hope so.

Yes, there is an agreement, although not one that raises the debt ceiling. Left and Right are united in opposition to the McConnell Contingency Plan!

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the Mitch McConnell proposal, and am pleased to see Steve Benen struggled with it also. However, Brian Beutler figured it out –

The plan is designed to give President Obama the power to raise the debt limit on his own through the end of his first term, but to force Democrats to take a series of votes on the debt limit in the months leading up to the election. This would stave off the threat of defaulting on national obligations, but keep the charged issues of debt and spending at the center of political debate for months.

Here’s the juicy part –

The plan would require Congress to pass a bill allowing Obama to raise the debt limit on his own, contingent on a series of steps: Obama would have to notify Congress of his intent tor raise the debt limit — a high-sign to Congress that would be subject to an official censure known as a “resolution of disapproval,” and which Obama could veto. If he vetoed the resolution, and if Congress sustained the veto, then Obama would also have to outline a series of hypothetical spending cuts he’d make, equal to the amount of new debt authority he’d give himself. Only then would the Treasury be allowed to issue new debt.

McConnell proposes rolling out this process in three tranches, to force Obama to request more borrowing authority, and to force debt limit votes in Congress, repeatedly through election season.

However, the Right rose up and shouted its opposition as soon as word of this got out. John Boehner approves, however.

A lot of details of this scheme remain fuzzy. Needless to say, Democrats would be insane to agree to this.

Update: Rachel Maddow is calling this a surrender on the part of the GOP.

Lawrence O’Donnell thinks that President Obama has been masterfully playing Republicans in the debt ceiling talks (h/t c u n d gulag):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Joan Walsh considers this:

Is President Obama proving his political genius by floating a plan for a $4 trillion deficit cut deal to lift the debt ceiling, offering entitlement cuts that will enrage parts of his base knowing he’ll never face their wrath, because far-right Republicans will never take the deal? It could be. House Speaker John Boehner rejected Obama’s “grand bargain” Sunday and Monday, because his members won’t consider anything to raise revenue, not even closing loopholes for corporate private jets or a tax giveaway for hedge fund managers. Insiders say this lets Obama look like “the only grownup,” the man who was willing to snub key parts of his base for the greater good of the country, while Republicans bowed to their Tea Party and corporate masters. Everyone knows Republicans don’t care about the deficit. They’ve already voted for the budget-busting Ryan plan, whose tax cuts increase the deficit.. This is all about greed masquerading as supply side economics that have been discredited by the experiments of the last 30 years.

Walsh is wrong that “everyone knows” Republicans don’t care about the deficit, because rank-and-file teabaggers are way too stupid and/or brainwashed to understand what’s going on here, and plenty of independents still aren’t paying close enough attention. But “everyone” who is a player in this little drama knows it, I suspect.

I hope Obama’s positioning himself as ready for big compromise, secure Republicans will never agree to a deal that raises revenue. But there’s no proof either way. The president’s willingness to throw Social Security and Medicare into the mix has always worried me, even if it’s just political theatre. Every time this president accepts the way Republicans frame fiscal and economic issues, he moves the debate in this country farther to the right.

I’ve been wondering myself is some of the President’s positions have been more about political theater than actual offers. If it is political theater, it’s a big gamble. If the Republicans actually took him up on the deal, it’s possible Dems would vote against it and keep it from passing in the Senate.

But Eric Cantor is saying that merely voting to increase the debt ceiling is a concession in itself, and the only concession Republicans are willing to make. The game of chicken continues.

Yesterday it appeared that John Boehner and congressional Democrats were close to a deal on the debt ceiling. But Boehner caved under pressure from his Right.

House Speaker John A. Boehner abandoned efforts Saturday night to cut a far-reaching debt-reduction deal, telling President Obama that a more modest package offers the only politically realistic path to avoiding a default on the mounting national debt.

The negotiators were close to an agreement on a deal that would have included significant cuts to sending plus substantial tax increases. But the ultra-Right among the congressional GOP let Boehner know they would not support tax cuts increases.

The sweeping deal Obama and Boehner had been discussing would have required both parties to take a bold leap into the political abyss. Democrats were demanding more than $800 billion in new tax revenue, causing heartburn among the hard-line fiscal conservatives who dominate the House Republican caucus. Republicans, meanwhile, were demanding sharp cuts to Medicare and Social Security, popular safety net programs that congressional Democrats have vowed to protect.

Obama, at least, was willing to make that leap and had put significant reductions to entitlement programs on the table. But on Saturday, Boehner blinked: Republican aides said he could not, in the end, reach agreement with the White House on a strategy to permit the Bush-era tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest households to expire next year, as lawmakers undertook a thorough rewrite of the tax code.

Steve Benen explains what happened in a little more detail, adding,

As a substantive matter, the anti-tax extremism that dominates Republican politics is well past the point of being farcical. Given a chance to cut the debt by $4 trillion, GOP leaders who claim to be frantic about a non-existent debt crisis have been exposed as frauds

Do read “Playing Chicken With History” by Paul Glastris. Glastris is making a point I know I’ve tried to make in the past, which is that the extremely wealthy who game the system in their own favor are ultimately just hurting themselves by cutting the legs out from under the economy.

Conservatives say, incessantly, that “a rising tide raises all boats.” By this they seem to mean that if the wealthy get wealthier it benefits everybody. History is full of examples that say otherwise, however, as Glastris says. To stick to the boats and tides analogy, boats that are not properly maintained will fall apart and sink.

What the righties need to understand that while a rising tide might not raise all boars, but an ebbing tide will sure as bleep lower all boats.

See also Susan Mettler, “$20,000 Leagues Under the State.” It’s a stupid title but a good article.

Rep. Paul Ryan was spotted at a swanky Washington bistro sipping $350-a-bottle wine with lobbyists. In fact, the table enjoyed two bottles of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru, an eyewitness said, listed on the menu at $350 each, although it’s much less expensive if you can buy it by the crate from a wholesaler. Just sayin’.

Congress critters are not supposed to accept gifts of more than $100 a year from anybody, and the two bottles exceeded that even at wholesale prices. However, Ryan retorts that he decided to pay for one of the bottles himself, and he produced the credit card receipt to prove it — he blew $472 on dinner, $392 for his meal and the bottle of wine plus $80 tip. That’s more than someone working full time at minimum wage makes in a week.

The eyewitness said all three men were “droning on loudly during the evening that liberals think that if you’re a millionaire, you have done something wrong.” Heh.

Update: Righties have fallen back on their standard fallback position — character assassination — to defend Ryan. Classy.

See also Joshua Green.

Update, unrelated: What John Cole says. This sorta kinda goes with the “Let’s Not Make a Deal” post.

Off topic for this site, but you gotta see this — British actor Matthew Lewis played Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films, and in the first film he looked like this –

– and he grew up to look like this.

Well, if I were about 40 years younger …