re: #3 Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut

Then why do you phrase it as Obama and the House playing chicken? Obama isn’t playing at anything. The House GOP are playing chicken with a brick wall.

Francis ignores (or is ignorant of) the fact that while it’s the President’s responsibility to submit a budget, Congress controls the purse strings and is wholly responsible for negotiating & passing said budget.

He also ignores (or is ignorant of) the fact that while both the House & Senate passed budgets (in March & April of this year, respectively), House Republicans have blocked no less than 18 separate attempts by the Senate Democrats to go to a budget conference with them. It was only during the past week—after the GOP caused the government to be shut down and America to be essentially taken hostage—that House Republicans suddenly decided it was time to sit down and negotiate, which Senate Democrats rightly refused.

Francis claims that the NY Times is one of his sources for information, yet once again he conveniently ignores (or is ignorant of) an article they published just yesterday about how this budget crisis was months in the planning by Republicans and their activists.

Regardless of whether francis is deliberately intellectually dishonest (and therefore lacking in personal integrity), or simply gullible due to ignorance, he seems oblivious as to how clownish many of his assertions sound to anyone who keeps up with current events using sources outside the wingnut bubble.