We Only Ignore Laws That Seek To Prevent Us From Bombing Brown People

I think it's very telling of our national priorities that the White House went out of its way to concoct the most laughably stupid rationale for as to why bombing Libya did not constitute a war, yet we continue to allow ourselves to be beholden to some nebulous limit placed upon the full faith and credit of the United States. Also note how we're perfectly fine with torture, ordering the assassinations of American citizens, and indefinite detention without ever charging those individuals with a crime. You'll note that the difference between these two standards is that ignoring one set of laws allows us to attack Muslims with impunity and the other allows us to fuck over average American citizens through unnecessary economic hardship and manufactured debt crises, the common denominator being that both of these things are wildly popular in Washington. 

And reading this just about made me want to explode:

When you strip away all the noise, and the posturing from both Democrats and Republicans, sources on both sides, including in the White House, acknowledge that there’s really only one way out of the impasse.
Both sides have to agree on a way of separating the debt ceiling hike, or hikes, from the process by which spending gets cut — in essence putting an end to a situation in which the debt ceiling is being used as a Sword of Damocles hanging over the spending process. Accomplishing this overall policy goal in a way that can pass both Houses of Congress is the only real way out of the trap right now. The cuts have to be deep enough to pass the House, but the proposal to hike the debt ceiling has to simultaneously satisfy the White House and Democrats.
According to a source close to the talks, Vice President Joe Biden has been in discussions with multiple officials on the Hill from both parties, about ways of realizing this aim.
One idea being floated in multiple private discussions would in effect be a fusion of the Boehner plan and the original McConnell plan to transer control of the debt ceiling to the President.
The idea would be to preserve the joint commission that Boehner’s plan sets up, and also preserve the spending cut targets in Boehner’s plan. But rather than have those tied to two debt ceiling hikes, the President would have the power to hike the debt ceiling unilaterally in keeping with McConnell’s plan, unless a two-thirds veto-proof Congressional supermajority disapproved of it (which wouldn’t happen). The spending cuts in Boehner’s plan would instead be enforced by some kind of trigger — if the committee didn’t reach the goals, automatic cuts of some kind would be triggered automatically.

And then when Capricorn wanes in Venus' shadow and the magical unicorn centaur people of Zargon V sing their haiku of adulation to the heffalump goddesses, Congress will come together and stop holding the global economy hostage. 

Just pass a fucking clean debt ceiling bill already and be done with it. If congressional Democrats and the administration wanted one, they would have fought for it all along. Instead we are stuck with this economically counterproductive, wholly conservative plan because of some mindless political calculation by the White House that they need to cater more to the delicate fee-fees of independents rather than actually do something about the economy.

And speaking of Libya, whatever happened to that delightful little war?