Not sure how this works when it’s technically the beginning of the work week, but I work as the need hits me and don’t always pay attention to weekends.  Anyway:  Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove, The Daley Gator, The Other McCain, Flappr and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!

Now then:  There is a “debt limit deal,” and it’s…  awful.  PJMedia’s Matt Margolis reports:

The deal, which was finalized Saturday night, would raise the debt limit through the end of 2024 in exchange for a cap on annual discretionary spending for two years and raising it by 1% in 2025. A series of cuts demanded by Republicans were also part of the deal. The White House had long opposed including spending cuts as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, describing such cuts as “devastating.”

“We still have a lot of work to do,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said. “But I believe this is an agreement in principle that’s worthy of the American people. It has historic reductions in spending, consequential reforms that will lift people out of poverty into the workforce, and reins in government overreach. There are no new taxes, no new government programs.”

Sorry, Mr. Speaker, but you just can’t polish that turd enough to make us think it’s ice cream.  Here are some things we don’t see in this “deal”:

• Actual spending cuts, as opposed to reductions in the rate of increase.
• Holding anyone accountable for this mess before the next election.
• Eliminating the 87,000 new IRS agents.

And much more.  It’s a fucking joke.  The debt limit has long since been meaningless, as it just keeps getting raised and raised.  We’re still mortgaging our grandchildren’s future.  $31 trillion in debt will probably surpass $35 trillion by the next election.

These people are utterly out of control.   Sadly, the founders of the Republic put in place a system intended for educated, thoughtful, well-informed people, and too many Americans today are none of those things.

And those people vote.

Granted this is just another boulder in the fiscal avalanche that is going to hit us, sooner or later.  What can’t continue won’t continue, and this situation can’t continue.  And the longer we wait to finally fix it – by which I mean, swing a big, broad axe at the Imperial government – the worse the crash will be.

I wish I could be more optimistic.  I’m normally a pretty optimistic guy.  But this crap, with Speaker McCarthy going on about how he pwned the libs when he basically just gave away the farm, is just too much.