PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

DEMS COMPROMISE THEIR WAY OUT OF OFFICE?

This whole \"crisis\" looks like a set up deal by the Republicans, using the extreme demands of the tea potters as their leverage points. We get three to four weeks of \"no deal\", \"no deal\", then, after the House takes its symbolic vote on the Boehner plan and then, again symbolically but even more so, votes down the Reid plan that hadn't even been sent over to them yet (perhaps they'd like to turn down some bills pending in 2014?). THEN, after all the posturing, screeching, demanding and ploying, McConnell and Boehner announced on Saturday that \"we are  close to a deal\". Doesn't make sense. Plain sense, complicated sense or twisted sense, it doesn't make sense that you go through all of this crapdoodle and then announce, boom, you are close to a deal. To top it  off, Obama appears to have been somehow informed of the deal, because he went ahead and made his plans to go to Chicago on Tuesday, the supposed D day of budget crisis. Something is rotten hereabouts (forget  Denmark).

At this moment, and I am praying for additional  information that will prove me wrong, it looks like Obama and the Dems have been thoroughly bamboozled. They made the mistake of negotiating  with the radicals in the House. They made the mistake of having the  president personally involved in the negotiations. They made the mistake of showing weakness by agreeing to what the Republicans wanted  (repeatedly rejected). They made the mistake of never setting a firm deadline, EXCEPT the deadline by which they could lose. And they messed around so long that they couldn't even bring up their own bill in the  Senate. Weakness, thy name is Democrat.

If the cuts are delayed  past the 2012 elections, we might yet come out of the recession enough for Obama to be re-elected. If the cuts include really significant pain  for Republicans in areas like farm subsidies, there might be some fairness in this deal. Otherwise, it stinks from start to finish, top to bottom.

There is so much bad potential in all of this I can hardly put it all together. One, it encourages the Republicans to try to play this game again and again, as long as they have the majority in one house of Congress. Second, this is no reasonable way to work out cuts in Federal spending, under the threat of some sort of disaster unless you make hard cuts fast enough. Third, the Republicans will be crowing from coast to coast about the victory they achieved by threatening to severely damage the American economy and our standing around the world.

Doug Terry

7:32 PM , 7.31.11

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