While keeping up with all the theatrics of Democratic fear-mongering, all the displays of media race-baiting, and the garish sight of witnessing the Republican Party commit suicide in super-slow motion via self-flagellation with a leftist lead pipe, a revealing, oxymoronic quote by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), slipped through the cracks, swallowed unquestioningly by the leftist media and unnoticed by the conservative media.

Apparently, in attempting to put the onus on the Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) decided on Thursday, Dec. 6, to call a vote on the president's debt ceiling proposal -- the proposal being that the president be able to more easily raise the debt ceiling.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at first objected, and then, a few hours later, the Democrats remembered that they were Democrats and decided to go for the power-grab.  McConnell sanely objected, thus saving the day he risked.  In response to the debt ceiling debate and without a trace of irony or sarcasm to be sure, Dick Durbin said the following (emphasis added):

Our downgrade of America's credit rating was not based on the state of our economy but the debt-ceiling debate," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois to reporters after the affair. "We are paying dearly for that already.  So the Republicans are creating a situation which makes reducing the debt and deficit extremely difficult by creating this uncertainty about the debt ceiling.

It's understandable how Durbin said this with a straight face -- he's had a lot of practice and is paid well to say such ridiculous things.  What's not as understandable is how any thinking American can accept this with a straight face.

Knowing that his media brethren are for all intents and purposes his teammates, posing as referees who won't throw a flag, blink an eye, or ask a follow-up, what Durbin felt safe implying to the American people is this: solving "uncertainty about the debt ceiling" would mean giving Obama the blank check he demands, which will keep America's credit from being downgraded, which will make debt- and deficit-reduction easier.  Durbin wants to link debt ceiling uncertainty to downgraded credit to debt reduction difficulty, but he expects us not to link an unlimited debt ceiling to a profligate president to debt-reduction impossibility.  Durbin wants you to forget that raising the debt ceiling necessarily allows deadbeat Obama to increase, not reduce, debt.

Giving Barack Obama, whose friendliest detractors put him somewhere on the scale between wastrel Keynesian and spendthrift Marxist, an unlimited credit card would be the economic death knell of America.  To paraphrase Durbin, this would be creating a situation which makes reducing the debt and deficit not only extremely difficult, but prima facie laughable and downright intelligence-insulting.  Obama's goal is to explode the debt and turn Uncle Sam into a pauper -- that's why he wants this power.  Dick Durbin's goal is to convince the rest of us that this isn't so.  Durbin is trying to convince whoever is listening that you can have your cake and eat it, too, so why not let Obama eat the cake?  Think of the money saved -- Obama can eat your and your neighbors' cake, and the Fed can just turn on the oven and bake two more cakes with only half the ingredients.

Once Obama gains his magic borrowing wand, the only thing we could be certain of in regards to the "debt ceiling" is that our debt would no longer have a ceiling for the next four years at least.  What Republicans in the House should be doing is passing a bill calling for a "debt floor" the federal government cannot breach -- a cap on spending set at 90% of revenue, for instance.  Of course, this would require a Republican Party led by conservatives instead of craven, unprincipled, anti-intellectual politicians.

Obama will borrow inflated money from the Fed to pay for the interest on borrowed Chinese dollars he is spending on hope-powered windmills and the retirement accounts of union bosses -- and the debt will increase, and the interest on the debt will increase, and inflation will rise, and jobs will be lost, and credit will be further downgraded.  The dishonorable senior senator from Obama's home state has to know that raising the debt ceiling does not lower debts, and he is deliberately obfuscating the issue with talk of credit downgrades and Republican obstructionism.

Or he is exceptionally stupid.  Can Durbin really believe that an increase is a cut -- that ignorance is strength, that A does not equal A?  And if he doesn't believe this, how little does he think of the American people that he expects us to fall for it?

As Jim Yardley put it in 2011, Dick Durbin must be stupid, ignorant, or just lying to his constituents.  I respect Senator Durbin's intelligence too much, however, to believe that he's being anything more than dishonest and deceptive.

Boyd Richard Boyd blogs as the Cold Hearted Patriot at www.catwyp.com and is the author of America Vs. Anti-America.  E-mail:coldheartedpatriot@yahoo.com.  Twitter: @ColdHartPatriot.