The Downgrade Whirlwind

Wow, looks like NOBODY is happy in the wake of Standard & Poor's decision to finally lay the smack down on Red Barry's profligate ass.

House Speaker John Boehner:

This decision by S&P is the latest consequence of the out-of-control spending that has taken place in Washington for decades. The spending binge has resulted in job-destroying economic uncertainty and now threatens to send destructive ripple effects across our credit markets.

Republicans have listened to the voices of the American people and worked to bring the spending binge to a halt. We are no longer debating how much to spend, but rather how much to cut. Unfortunately, decades of reckless spending cannot be reversed immediately, especially when the Democrats who run Washington remain unwilling to make the tough choices required to put America on solid ground....

The administration and Democrats in Congress had sought an increase in the debt limit without any spending cuts or reforms. Republicans made clear the American people would not tolerate that and fought for the largest spending cuts possible. With the Budget Control Act, we made a positive first step toward reducing the debt, but much more must be done.

In May, I warned, ‘if we don't act boldly now, the markets will act for us very soon.’ It is my hope this wake-up call will convince Washington Democrats that they can no longer afford to tinker around the edges of our long-term debt problem. As S&P noted, reforming and preserving our entitlement programs is the ‘key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

Fat chance, Mr. Speaker.  At best, Dems are blind guides, hopelessly welded to their rancid, discredited, destructive, quasi-religion, unable to abandon it and unwilling to even consider trying.  To do so for them would be to commit ideological suicide, and that they will not do.  At worst, everything, to quote Emperor Palpatine, is unfolding according to plan.

Which makes the ChiComms' reaction most....intriguing:

China said Washington only had itself to blame and called for a new stable global reserve currency.

"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," China's official Xinhua news agency said in a harshly worded commentary....

China roundly condemned the United States for its "debt addiction" and "short sighted" political wrangling and said the world needed a new stable global reserve currency.

"China, the largest creditor of the world's sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets," the Xinhua commentary said.

It urged the United States to cut military and social welfare expenditure. It also said further credit downgrades would very likely undermine the world economic recovery and trigger new rounds of financial turmoil.

"International supervision over the issue of U.S. dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert a catastrophe caused by any single country," Xinhua said.

So now we're being lectured about fiscal responsibility by the world's largest remaining communist power, as well as a regime that is inflating its own funny-money currency like the Hindenburg in order to cover up its own collapsing economy.  Obamunist dreams really do come true.

Kind of reminds me of this glimpse of the future:

Gotta give Beijing credit; they figured out decades ago what the Soviets never did: the way to get leverage over a capitalist enemy isn't by trying to out-arm (and therefore out-spend) them, but by becoming their bankers.  And their kung fu is strong, indeed.  Not that The One needed any encouragement to shutter the Pentagon.

If there's any silver lining in this debacle, it's that this might mean his early exit to the ol' driving range:

The downgrade of the U.S.’s AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor’s darkens President Barack Obama’s re-election chances...

S&P’s move deals a blow to Obama’s political standing by giving Republican presidential candidates the chance to attack him for being the first U.S. president to preside over a downgrade, said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey....

Republican presidential candidates who were quick to jump on Obama following the downgrade included former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in most polls, and U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who voted against the deficit-reduction deal enacted this week that prompted the S&P downgrade.

“America’s creditworthiness just became the latest casualty” in Obama’s “failed record of leadership on the economy,” Romney said in a statement. The downgrade is “a deeply troubling indicator of our country’s decline under” the president, he said.

Bachmann said S&P’s action “is a historically significant and serious event for the United States.” Obama “has destroyed the credit rating of the United States through his failed economic policies and his inability to control government spending by raising the debt ceiling,” she said in a statement.

And the punchline?:

Obama, who left for the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland hours before the downgrade was made public, didn’t immediately issue a response.

Well, you know the old saying: He who cuts and runs away lives to demagogue another day.

Or perhaps this is his version of a victory lap.  After all, this is the crisis he's been waiting for.  Even if he can't escape the fallout, he can take solace in having accomplished his "transformative" mission.

Makes you wonder if he and Scherherazade and the girls found a "Mission Accomplished" banner waiting for them when they arrived.