Uncertainty

I'm disgusted by this whole debt ceiling debacle, but it's good to remember our President is a winning poker player. Think Obama just threw down his ace in the hole:

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News. [...]

Mr. Obama told Pelley "this is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are veterans checks, these are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out."

Looks like he's convinced the investor class that he's not going to blink this time. Some 470 top business leaders issued a sternly worded open letter basically telling the Village Idiots to quit dicking around and raise the damn thing.

“Now is the time for our political leaders to put aside partisan differences and act in the nation’s best interests,” the letter said. “We believe that our nation’s economic future is reliant upon their actions and urge them to reach an agreement. It is time to pull together rather than pull apart.”

Of course, they don't mention and neither will the media point out, they could just raise the debt ceiling in a clean, one sentence bill in less than hour. As they have routinely, some 74 times before since the Kennedy administration. Then they could still fight out the rest of the issues without risking the entire world economy.

Only the DFH's care to mention that, but nobody listens to them.

[This may be a first. Thanks to Yahoo News for linking in, even if they only refer to me as some liberal.]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]