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.

… 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!

The newest word is that John Boehner told congressional Republicans that there must be some kind of positive signal on a debt ceiling deal before the Asian markets open Monday morning, which is Sunday evening North American time. Steve Clemons writes,

“Instead of August 2nd being the debt default deadline, Boehner’s tactics and now his statement to his own troops have created market expectations that will either be met — or be disappointed, possibly creating a real sell-off in American treasuries.”

This may be just politics theater designed to keep Republican talking points in the news, or not. But the next few hours could be interesting.

Boehner is saying he’s going to push for a short-term deal, even though the President has said he won’t sign off on a short-term deal. Is Boehner making an offer he knows the President will refuse?

Not entirely related, but interesting — “Why Conservatives Abandoned Monetarism.”

I haven’t said anything about the bombing and shootings in Norway because I was waiting for more information. Turns out others should have taken the same precaution.

CNN reports that the primary suspect is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist Norwegian whackjob named Anders Behring Breivik, who looks like someone you’d expect to find wearing a knit cap and reindeer sweater and teaching Nordic outdoor sports to tourists at some expensive Scandinavian resort. The alleged perp appears to have been striking a blow against Marxism and multiculturalism.

Now, it goes without saying that as soon as news of the tragedy was on the Web, the knee-jerk reaction from the Right was to pin the blame on radical jihadists and the liberals who allegedly love them. The Washington Post‘s ongoing embarrassment Jennifer Rubin issued a broadside against jihadists and everyone in Washington who has ever supported cuts in the Defense budget. As of this writing Rubin has not re-visted the issue. No corrections, no updates, no apologies.

But you’ve got to read Little Lulu’s post, which declares that the jihadists responsible for the bombings were protesting the deportation of an Islamic cleric named Mullah Krekar. Even after the identity of the suspect was made public, Malkin does her best to insinuate that he was pro-Islamist, when in fact Breivik is an outspoken anti-Islamist associated with anti-immigration factions in Norway.

Like Rubin, Malkin has dropped the Norwegian atrocity as an item of interest and gone on to blog about how President Obama is responsible for the failure to reach an agreement over the debt crisis.

At this point, it’s clear that congressional Republicans are not going to vote to raise the debt ceiling unless the Democrats sign off on one of their lunatic schemes to kick the rest of the props out from under the economy in exchange for keeping one prop intact.

Will Democrats, at long last, cave to Republican blackmail to avoid default? I can’t predict what they will do, but if I were a Democrat in Congress I’d say no. Because, first, the policies Republicans want as payment for their vote would be about as damaging to the country as default. And second, it would be political suicide. (Note that even if Dems choose to offer something based on Nancy Pelosi’s plan, I doubt the whackjobs will take it.)

A couple of law professors argue in the New York Times that the President should use the constitutional option — not necessarily based on the 14th Amendment — and raise the ceiling himself. I understand the President has expressed great reluctance to do this, although he hasn’t ruled it out. There doesn’t appear to be a clear consensus among constitutional scholars that he has the authority to do that.

And if he does do it, frankly, I think he’d take a huge political hit for it. I can think of about 97 different ways the Right could demagogue such a unilateral presidential action to death. And they’d get away with it because Americans would have been spared the effects of default.

The real disease that has infected the nation is not runaway debt but right-wing extremism. The debt itself is just a symptom of that. I recently came across a 2009 essay by Thom Hartmann that does a nice job explaining how Reaganomics paved the way for the the economic calamities of our time. Most of you already know all this, of course. But I think this sums it up:

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.

And U.S. economic policy ever after has been more or less run according to Reaganomic rules, not Keynesian rules. The exceptions were some of Bill Clinton’s policies that sweetened the economy for a time. But for the most part the “solutions” Washington comes up with to respond to any economic problem is to double down on the policies that caused the problem.

And with the current crop of looney-tune right-wing extremists standing in for Republicans in Congress, think quadruple-down. It’s like they’re trying to prevent forest fires by filling forests with dry twigs and lit cigarettes.

Let’s face it: Until most of the extremists are run out of government, we’re just going to be bouncing from one unprecedented economic crisis to another, and every “solution” will make the United States poorer and more dysfunctional than it was before.

We’ve already gone too far down that road to have any hope of restoring the U.S. as the dominant economic powerhouse it was in most of the 20th century. We’ll be doing well to remain an average first-world industrialized nation, economically speaking.

Americans on the whole are not learning any lessons. The Pew Forum came out with a survey saying that the GOP is making gains among poor whites and young whites, two groups who should be fleeing Republicans like bats out of hell if they had any idea what is really going on. I agree that Dems haven’t done enough to earn their loyalty, but for the young and poor of any color to give their support to the Republican Party really is the sheep giving support to the wolves.

So I say let the damn shoe drop. Let all the consequences be felt. And if Americans remain stupid enough to return the whackjobs to Congress next year, never mind turn the White House over to them, then I’ll say the fight is over. America is done. But if there is any chance the bitter medicine could flush the nutzoids out and send them back under their rocks for a couple of decades, I say let’s take it.

The White House kept saying there was no deal, and now John Boehner is saying there is no deal. All that self-righteous liberal hyperventilation has gone for naught. It could have been hooked up to a power generator and run some air conditioners, at least.

Boehner is kicking the can to the Senate, telling them it’s their turn to make a deal. And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor challenged Democrats to produce their own plan. I say the Dems should write a one-sentence declaration about raising the debt ceiling on a napkin, no strings attached, and submit it for a vote this afternoon. Call it “The Democratic Plan to Avert a Damnfool Calamity.”

If the New York Times article that touched off al the hyperventilation is correct, the President was at least holding out for a deal that would increase revenue in the future, with a “trigger” to go into effect if the deal were not met. Obama wanted the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire. Boehner wanted the Affordable Care Act to be repealed.

In other words, it wasn’t gonna happen, anyway.

In other news — the Florida legislature has rejected more than $50 million in federal grant money for a child-abuse prevention program.

The money, offered through the federal Affordable Health Care Act passed last year, would have paid, among other things, for a visiting nurse program run by Healthy Families Florida, one of the most successful child-abuse prevention efforts in the nation. Healthy Families’ budget was cut in last year’s spending plan by close to $10 million.

And because the federal Race to the Top educational-reform effort is tied to the child-abuse prevention program that Healthy Families administers, the state may also lose a four-year block grant worth an additional $100 million in federal dollars, records show.

The Florida legislature would rather sell their children to pedophiles than touch one dime of Affordable Care Act money, apparently. This is what passes for “principle” in some quarters.

Also, the Right is fighting a recommendation that insurance carriers be required to cover all FDA-approved methods of contraception.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/21/2323996/florida-rejects-child-abuse-prevention.html#ixzz1Sr4CIioz

First off, here is the promised Barney Frank rant (Barney comes in at about the 10:30 mark, although the part before that is interesting, too):

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

As was true yesterday, there are stories that President Obama and Speaker Boehner are close to a deal, and there are all kinds of rumors about what’s in the deal, and lots of people are already mad about it and condemning the deal, which as far as I can tell is only a rumor because the White House is still denying there is a deal. And I’m not going to spend the day chasing down every rumor and ranting about how President Obama is selling us out again. You can go to Firedoglake for that.

Here is some other stuff to read —

Nate Silver writes that Republican governors have moved to the Right of their constituents even in right-wing states. “It suggests that the party has become uninterested in appealing to swing voters — and that the voters are starting to notice.”

“Credit Agencies Warn GOP of ‘Death Spiral.” Not that they’ll listen.

“It’s Hotter Than It Used to Be.” Seriously. Here in Mahaville it’s supposed to top 100 degrees F. today, which is unusual for New York.

Krugman’s column. Despair.