If the Republicans block a timely increase of the U.S. debt ceiling . . .

they will deliver a broken, impoverished and discredited USA into the hands of the Democrats for the next 50 years, and destroy economies the world over in a global Depression that will make the 1930s seem like a day at the beach.

Furthermore, if Barack Obama caves in to their demands to destroy Medicare and Social Security in exchange for a vote to raise the debt limit without corresponding increases in revenue, the Depression is only going to happen later rather than immediately. One of the country's creditors is its own Social Security fund; another is Medicare. Even if these programs are gutted or destroyed, someone still has to take care of the people they covered, and it won't be the wealthy.

You can't spend what you don't collect. Cutting spending without raising revenue will not lower the existing debt; we need to raise taxes. We need to get rid of the entitlements of the wealthy and the corporations and force them to shoulder their fair share of the burden that they helped to create by refusing to pony up.

The rich are not entitled to a free ride. They made their goddamned money off the backs of the middle class they are hell-bent on destroying. If they succeed in forcing the US into default, everybody, including corporate "persons," is going down.