This article on the politics of the debt crisis in Politico tells you everything that is wrong, everything that is blind, everything that is STUPID about conventional Beltway reporting. Glenn Thrush is no dummy and there is some authentically good reporting here. And at least one of the premises of the piece should be admired: the attempt to separate fact from fiction in the "debate" no taking place over U.S. debt default.

Problem is, that dang "View From Nowhere," as Jay Rosen puts it, pollutes the whole damn thing.

I readily concede Thrush's rather obvious point i.e. that both Democrats and Republicans are trying to spin this event to their respective benefit. There MIGHT even be a symmetry to who is spinning more (though I seriously doubt it).  So to read Thrush's piece you are being asked to conclude that this is basically some sort of partisan, political fight for electoral advantage and that because both sides are more or less or equally dishonest there is NO moral dimension to the fight.

To assert otherwise, in the asinine logic of assumed impartiality and the hypocritical ethic of "neutrality," might mean that Rush would actually tell you what is really happening and who is and who is not morally culpable.

Legislation often has a moral or –  more often– an immoral foundational basis. Every great legislative battle is infused with justice or injustice. Take two extremes as examples. The Civil Rights Act and the vote to authorize war in Iraq.  In both cases, as true in the fight  over default, both parties took advantage of these measures in whichever ways that could for partisan ends.  That did not mean that passage of the Civil Rights Act was a great moment of justice and, likewise, the authorization for war in Iraq was a great moment of national hubris and shame.

The default issue has a sharp moral dimension — one completely missing from Thrush's sum-up of myths versus realities. He simply ignores the greatest reality of them all.

The entire nation is being held hostage by a group of Tea Party-driven know-nothings who seem more than willing to walk us all off the cliff. Period.

That reality trumps all the other he said/she saids that pepper the Politico piece.

Raising the debt ceiling has never been the matter of any debate and has been an automatic necessity that has been quietly carried out scores of times in recent history.  The Republican Right, this time around, has seized on the issue, strapping dynamite onto their chests, and threatening to push the button if benefits to to the poor are not cut and handouts to the wealthiest are somehow curtailed. Sorry, but this a textbook example of gross immorality.

This is not to give Obama and the Democrats a blank check to play politics. But, I think we sort of expect that from both sides at every possible moment.

We need to be focused on the underlying issue. And that issue is that if the Republicans don't act with some modicum of decency and common sense by sometime Sunday afternoon, we will see the Asian markets open with a very loud boom.