Joe Klein: “If [Obama] had cited the 14th Amendment and simply ordered Treasury to pay the bills, he would have been impeached by the radical Republicans. This would have guaranteed that the next 16 months would have been overwhelmed by an even worse version of the silliness visited upon our nation by the poisonous Limbaugh-Tea Party nihilists.” [Time, via Political Wire]

While you’re hearing today about the “$3 trillion deficit-reduction plan”, here’s the NYT chart from a week ago showing the (largely unpaid) costs of Bush and Obama policies. Just by coincidence, the wars and Bush tax cuts top $3.2 trillion.

Boehner: ‘Beyond My Control’ How Ratings Agencies Treat My Debt Limit Plan [TPM]

The Preznit of These United States will be speaking to Our Exceptional Indebted Nation at 9 p.m. ET, in order to explain the necessary Austerity Measures that will only affect the Already Austere. If you’d like to see how millionaires speak to peasants, tune in.

It’s like watching a baby seal being clubbed …

[ Flash video not available. ]

Rick Santorum insists that he had “nothing to do” with his 2012 Presidential campaign slogan being plagiarized from a poem written by a pro-union gay black man (Langston Hughes) that said “Let America be America again.”

[ThinkProgress]

“REVEALED — THE LEFT’S ECONOMIC TERRORISM PLAYBOOK: THE CHASE CAMPAIGN BY A COALITION OF UNIONS, COMMUNITY GROUPS, LAWMAKERS AND STUDENTS TO TAKE DOWN US CAPITALISM AND REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH & POWER” [The Blaze]