I'm not any happier about this whole debt ceiling kabuki theater as anyone else is here, as our politicians are still willing to come on the air and pretend that a lot of them are crazy enough to actually risk the United States defaulting on our debt obligations. I'm also not happy that President Obama allowed doing something about the budget and trying to get some "grand bargain" out of Republicans ended up being tied to this debt ceiling debate.

I would have preferred he was going on the air day after day demanding a clean vote on raising it and explaining how dangerous defaulting on our debt is and that it's not for future obligations, but current ones that have to be paid for. I'm also not happy with him for throwing Social Security into this mix when it's not adding a penny to our debt if it was going to mean them possibly raising the age on it in the future rather than just raising the cap on that regressive tax.

That said, I was glad to see someone finally brow beat Grover Norquist for his ridiculous "starve the beast" tax pledge and the demands he's made for ages on anyone who has signed it and for his attacks on anyone that refuses to.

Matthews went after Norquist for accusing President Obama of "having a hissy fit" and chastised him for using that sort of inflammatory rhetoric and for being more concerned about Republicans sticking to their rigid ideology on tax increases than for allowing the economic consequences that would follow if they were reckless enough to allow a default. He also slammed Norquist for not even being able to meet the terms of his own balanced budget amendment with his demands.

Matthews also hit him for his views not necessarily reflecting the views of "theamericanpeople" which Republicans apparently think is a new noun that has to be injected into every other sentence ad nauseum while they pretend that polls out there saying that the majority of voters don't agree with how they're behaving or with their policies either don't exist are aren't true.

I've watched Norquist be allowed a lot of air time lately with few challenges to his talking points and at least Matthews called him out for what his priorities are. Norquist for his part seemed fairly amused by all of this. If he really thinks it would be better for us to default than to raise the debt limit with some tax increases, it makes me wonder if he's shorting the bond market like his buddy Eric Cantor.