Parker, Florida Today This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

The debt ceiling limit crisis has revealed one fact: the current political class of leaders who are largely from the Baby Boomer and post-Baby Boomer generations could never be confused with “The Greatest Generation.” The Most Partisan Generations? Perhaps. Based on what is leading up to that fateful day of Aug. 2, our political class — weighted down by Baby Boomers’ hubris of Vietnam-era divisions and...

As the President and the Speaker gave competing pitches on prime time, they were aiming at different audiences. Barack Obama was urging millions of indifferent Americans to pressure Congress against taking the economy over a cliff, while John Boehner was trying to keep a handful of his Tea Party mavericks in line for the same purpose. The chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee had already announced...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Was this tragedy waiting to happen? Are Anders Behring Breivik’s murders another brutal manifestation of the hysteria that started building up post 9/11? George W. Bush and his team in the White House began an era of hatred and revenge, and have added enough fuel to create confusion and fire to last a few decades. We can still see widespread smoke, if not flames, in the West and elsewhere. Was the fire...

In a rebuttal to the President tonight the Speaker of the House, John Boehner at one point said a “serious bipartisan committee of Congress would begin the hard work necessary of dealing with the tough challenges our country faces.” He went on to say “The individuals doing this work will not be outsiders, but elected representatives of the people.” Boehner also continued to tell us he spoke for the...

David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Here’s a complete video of President Barack Obama’s televised comments tonight on the debit ceiling limit crisis. Rather than tell you what we thought it meant, watch it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. And feel free to leave them in comments: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Here’s the text of the speech as prepared for delivery. And here’s...

The Air Force Times is reporting today on a sweeping proposal by the Defense Business Board—“the wellspring for many cost-saving initiatives adopted by the Defense Department in recent years”—that would drastically overhaul the military retirement system and could affect today’s troops. The new plan “would give some benefits to all troops and phase out the 20-year cliff vesting system that...

The Tea Party says thumbs down…so consider it dead. This is the way laws are made in the United Tea Party States of America these days.

From Talking Points Memo: But there remains a general sense — one the markets seem to share — that Washington really can’t be so dumb as to let default actually happen. File that in your “Oh Yeah?” file.

Our political Quote of the Day is actually several Quotes of the Day that underscore a growing consensus that the Republicans are poised for victory on the Debt Ceiling Limit by getting far more than the Democrats sought to give – but risk political disaster by not accepting their victory and pushing the United States either over the brink to default or negatively impacting the economy by dragging it out. First,...

As signs continue that the debt ceiling crisis is now going to negatively impact the United States and world economy — even if there is some eleventh hour solution — here’s a must-read: an open letter to House Speaker John Boehner. The author: Michael Stafford, a 2003 graduate of Duke University School of Law and a former Republican Party office who works as an attorney in Wilmington, Delaware...

WASHINGTON — Hours before the negotiations on the debt limit between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner collapsed, political reporters received a missive from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign that served as a reminder of how irrelevant this kerfuffle might feel next year. The headline read, “Romney for President Launches New Web Video: Obama Isn’t Working: Where...

As the Asian stock market is about to open and our elected Feds on all sides have not come to final terms about an USA budget plan/deficit reduction/credit extension, et al, that is either stepped or aboslute, it may be that damage comes to other nations, not only our own. The deadline-darers seem to have set aside that there is far more at stake than they themselves and their parties. We all are at stake. And,...

As America’s partisanship-obsessed political class — Republicans and Democrats — provide full, unquestionable evidence of why they can never be called “The Greatest Generation II,” the clock is now ticking for the United States (and some say the global economy) on two fronts. The Christian Science Monitor reports: The political turmoil over raising the nation’s debt ceiling now...

Tomorrow’s headline, as written by the Tea Party, would be, “Congress Saves Economy; President Signs On.” As their bunch crowds the White House out of the driver’s seat on debt-ceiling negotiations, the Sunday talk shows are dominated by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Chief of Staff William Daley insisting that Barack Obama is still in the game, not only standing by to veto any loony compromise...

Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

As the right jams its utopian economic theory down America’s throat, polls indicate many Americans have begun to question the historical economic basis for the right-wing’s claims. As politicians from both sides of the political spectrum seem to be drinking Eric Cantor’s Kool-Aid, out here in Middle America, our natural sensibility toward the middle of political thought is finally being offended. The right...

The Tea Party won’t take yes for an answer. Even as the President caves in to their debt-ceiling demands, the Speaker of the House comes out like a ventriloquist’s dummy and demolishes the deal they were making. “I have decided,” John Boehner harrumphs, “to end discussions with the White House and begin conversations with the leaders of the Senate in an effort to find a path forward… “The president...

As the United States now is poised on the brink of what experts and non-talk-show-political-culture analysts (including establishment Republicans) say is a financial catastrophe, when House Majority Leader John Boehner walked away from negotiations over the debt ceiling limit with President Barack Obama, according to The Politico he gave House Republicans what they wanted. It’s yet another indication...

What would default look like? It would be scary — and many Americans would feel its impact in terrible ways. But some really don’t seem to care since they are blinded by other considerations and influences.

Should China’s people feel pride that the state of California contracted over two dozen giant steel modules for the San Francisco Bay Bridge out to a firm in Shanghai rather than building them in America? In this article from the state-run Beijing Youth Daily, the author, Wang Chuantao, mixes in equal measure national pride over the progress this represents for the “Made in China” label,...

House Speaker John Boehner has walked away from negotiations with President Obama over a deal to raise the debt limit. “In the end, we couldn’t connect. Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country,” Boehner said in a letter to colleagues. He said Mr. Obama ” is emphatic that taxes have to be raised” and “adamant that we cannot make...

First Rep. Eric Cantor walked out of talks with Vice President Joe Biden on raising the debt ceiling limit — and now Majority Leader John Boehner has walked out on talks with President Barack Obama. Consider this crisis now extra grave — although there have been predictions it would reach this stage and eventually be settled in the Senate. And it’s likely some of the crisis status could...