'Get your ass in line': Boehner scolds Republicans for not being Democrats

"Get your ass in line," said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) to a caucus of Republican legislators. The speaker has become increasingly frustrated in recent days as the fabled debt ceiling looms ever closer and many Republicans in Congress refuse to support the bills that he and President Obama have hammered out in their private talks. It's no wonder he's mad -- Boehner is clearly dealing with personal insecurities over the size of his spending cuts. Just this past Tuesday he came under fire for trying to sell the Republicans a bill that would have cut a whopping one billion dollars from the roughly four trillion-dollar 2012 proposed budget. Yes, that's around 0.025%.

But while Congressional Republicans laugh at Boehner's tiny package of cuts, one has to wonder if even they understand the full gravity of the situation. As yet another nonsense proposal heads for a vote, rhetoric abounds regarding a 'default' if the debt ceiling is not raised. This default, of course, is every bit as mythological as the deep cuts Democrats imagine Boehner has proposed. In reality, federal revenues vastly exceed the cost of servicing the outstanding debt. A failure to raise the debt ceiling will not produce a default on the existing debt; it will only mean the government cannot go even deeper into debt.

Faux economists and sensationalist journalists imagine that failure to raise the debt ceiling would lower the government's credit rating. Nothing could be further from the truth. As long as creditors know the government is going deeper and deeper into debt every day, they are sure to be skeptical of its faith and credit. If instead the government stops going deeper into debt, confidence that the existing debt will be paid off would go up, not down!

House Republicans should remember that they were elected to fix the country's fiscal situation, not sell out to the President and the left-wing Democrats who added five trillion to the national debt since Obama took office. Do not put a higher burden on future generations; do not raise the debt ceiling.

Free Speech Takes Another Shot...Maybe

Rumors are flying all over the Internet that the FCC may regulate Internet lines days before Christmas!

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a Christmas gift in store for the phone and cable industry: it may move ahead on its controversial net-neutrality regulations three days before Christmas.

An FCC source confirmed on Friday that the commission plans to push its December meeting back by a week, meaning it will fall on the 22nd of the month. That's the same meeting in which analysts say the agency may move forward on its controversial net-neutrality proposal.

Though the FCC has not confirmed that it will vote on net neutrality this year, rumors are swirling that it will. 

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[Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.)] said "it appears that Chairman [Julius] Genachowski is trying to slip it under the radar and hope no one notices."

In case you're rusty on the idea of Net Neutrality, here's Steven Kinsella from the Mises Institute with "A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality".

I leave you with a quote from Cass Sunstein, admin of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs:

The word 'voluntary' is a little complicated. And sometimes people don't do what's best for our society.

Yes, Cass. People don't always do what's best for our society, do they?