Dueling Quotes

Or, how I know it’s Monday.

I routinely get inspirational quotes in my email. Today I got these two:

“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”
Katherine Mansfield
1888-1923, Author

And…

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Herman Melville, Author of Moby Dick
1819-1891

They make my brain hurt.

For today, I think I’ll stick with Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day…



It’s a Deal…we think…

Are the American people about to be zonked?

What they’re saying tonight about the alledged deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. There still has to be a vote.

Jack Tapper of ABC News gives a look at what is in the framework of what is called the Budget Control Act of 2011.
Read more.

Associated Press: Boehner: Budget pact lives up to GOP principles
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner says the pact he’s reached with President Barack Obama and other leaders of Congress on lifting the debt limit and taming the budget “isn’t the greatest deal” but lives up to the GOP’s principles on taxes and spending.
Read more.

Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post: The debt ceiling fight is over. The White House and congressional leaders have settled on a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, enact immediate spending cuts and, our favorite part, create a super-commission designed to trim the federal budget further by the end of the year.
Read more.

Ken Falkenstein, Bearing Drift: This is a major victory for conservatives and a major defeat for leftist Democrats, and we need to recognize it as such and trumpet it confidently as such to the world. Obama and the Democrats began this debate by insisting on a “clean” increase in the debt ceiling – a blank check to continue to spend with no restraint whatsoever. This was a non-starter. Their fallback position was that any cuts associated with increasing the debt ceiling must be accompanied by tax increases. The Republicans stood firm, and the Democrats lost on this count as well.
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Eric Odom: It’s 8:48 PM Eastern time and President Obama just held a press conference announcing a “deal” on the debt limit has been reached in the Senate. Details of the deal are still not entirely clear, but from what we do know the “compromise” represents both a win and a loss for America. The win part is marginal and mainly political. The loss part is downright horrendous.
Read more.