Jitters Over Debt Default May Have Provoked China’s Desperate Plan B

BEIJING, China. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- As any landlord showing signs of frustration with deadbeat tenants, the People’s Bank of China in Beijing placed a series of “US For Rent” ads across international Craigslist sites. The listings first came to U.S. attention when 2012 White House hopeful Rick Santorum stumbled upon them. Santorum, who regularly spends hours a day policing Internet sites around the world for smut, said, “It’s all part of my anti-pornography work, hunting down and reporting deviant sex sites on the Web. Craigslist is usually a bonanza.”

It was during one of these late night missions on Thursday that Santorum came across an ad from Beijing, posted by the People’s Bank of China which was attempting to let a “Roomy Historic Fixer-Upper in FANTASTIC Neighborhood!”

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Three of the most influential Congressional Republicans were detained by Capitol Police Thursday after leaving the Yetenbi Ethiopian Restaurant on 9th Street without tendering a tip or even paying the tab. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- all pivotal figures in the contested budget debate -- allegedly “ordered enough food to sustain an Ethiopian family for two years” before getting into an argument with the eatery’s management about the amount of the check. After, the trio casually strolled away with the unpaid bill in their hands. Boehner, according to witnesses, picked something out of his teeth, wrapped the soiled toothpick in the bill and then tossed it at the door of the restaurant, leaving behind a curried fart that elicited schoolyard giggles from McConnell and Cantor. Police were summoned immediately.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Washington to be born? It’s not the Antichrist that haunted the nightmares of Yeats, it’s the August 2 debt default deadline. And with the whole of Congress at an impasse, not to mention conflicting budget proposals in stalemate, House Democratic leaders emerged from a Caucus on Wednesday to urge President Obama to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” Essentially, Democrats are arguing that since the “public debt” can’t be questioned, then the debt ceiling itself becomes unconstitutional. Former President Bill Clinton said he would have invoked that option “without hesitation” and left it “to the courts to figure it out.” Clinton previously utilized a similar legal maneuver when he made the courts redefine the mechanics of human sexual congress and the nature of the verb “is.”

NEW YORK, N.Y. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said the ECB would not be able to accept Greek bonds as collateral if Greece has its debt rated as default. Trichet added that “the governments would have to take care the Eurosystem is presented with collateral that it could accept.” However, after discovering that the latest bail out plan announced last week would require private sector debt holders to accept losses, Moody’s again downgraded the financially embattled country’s credit rating to one notch above default. Previously, Moody’s had ranked Greece as Caa1, which falls well within the category of junk bonds.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Senate Democrats on Monday presented a $2.7 trillion deficit reduction plan, crafted by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), which includes deep spending cuts, no tax increases and a host of savings that Republican leaders have already endorsed. The plan immediately raises the debt ceiling to authorize the Treasury to pay the United States’ obligations through the end of 2012. It also establishes a bipartisan committee to direct future deficit reductions -- admittedly a threat to entitlement programs -- and guarantees a Congressional vote on its recommendations. To further sweeten the pot, in a brazen gambit tentatively endorsed by the White House, Reid’s draft also proposed “the removal of child labor protections, legal recognition of English as the national language, the repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment, the shuttering of all Planned Parenthood clinics, mandatory gun ownership for every American household, the teaching of Intelligent Design, no government health care regulation, exclusive and perpetual copyrights on the King James Bible, relocation of the nation’s Capitol to Texas and the privatization of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“I dare Republicans to reject this,” Reid added. They did.