Obama's Presser

++President Obama es mas macho que John Boehner. The President has megatons more patience than I ever would as he spent over an hour explaining the importance of default and addressing Republicans who believe it isn't a big deal. And if it isn't a big deal than why do Republicans believe they can extract massive concessions from the Democrats.

++The problem with President Obama is he is too rational. He walked through the history of the budget battle, including John Boehner's dare the Senate pass a budget--which it did. Then, according to the President, the House refused 19 times to appoint members to meet with the Senate in conference. President Obama was even tougher than before about not negotiating. He called again for Boehner to just bring the bill to the floor and let every member get their vote recorded individually. He again called for a clean debt ceiling vote and talked about the history of those votes dating back to Reagan's day. 

++He explained why he might be tempted by the individual bills passed by the House and explained that these were only the result of the media showing a problem, which then embarrassed Republicans. And he said it wasn't a way to run a railroad.

++He disappointed me by explaining why he was not going to invoke the 14th Amendment despite its possible legality because it would essentially mean that the United States had defaulted because the litigation would take years and cast doubt on the Treasuries. He also dismissed the trillion dollar coin idea. He answered one question from a British reporter about paying bond-holders first by saying that Jack Lew would be giving a presentation to the Senate on Thursday addressing the details of different options Treasury has.  He also said that Democrats should not expect any further tricks in the Treasury bag because Jack Lew will have exhausted them by the date of the debt ceiling.

++As sort of a concession, he said the GOP can attached what subjects they want the President to address in budget negotiations if they did not believe him. But he was not going to make unilateral concessions just to have a CR. This sort of suggested a form Boehner might try.

++The President took more questions than I have seen him do so in previous press conferences. He ignored Jon Karl, who at the end stood shouting "Whether the President took any responsibility for the shutdown?" This was dutifully recorded by ABC but the President had already left the room and probably didn't hear him. 

++Overall, I thought the President did a great job and didn't cave. Earlier that morning he called John Boehner and told him basically the same thing. John Boehner told his Caucus that the Democrats were trying to destroy the Republicans and that they should hold tight. A few of those who said they favored a clean CR have backed down.

++In a new poll,72% of Americans believe that the shutdown is hurting the country and 50% believe it is "severely hurting the country". Only 12% believe it isn't.

++Weirdly, the Catholic Bishops Conference chose today to come out and ask the House not to end the shutdown until contraceptive coverage is banned under Obamacare. Shutdown the government and default on the debt because people use contraceptives.

++Meanwhile church groups, including Catholics,had 40 different rallies around the country demanding Congress pass an Immigration Law that had a path to citizenship.

++The Supreme Court looks like it will eliminate limits on individual campaign contributions. President Obama criticized this at his press conference,alerting the press that the reason we haven't had a budget agreement is that billionaires and millionaires have funded various special interest groups who threaten members or bankrolled their campaigns. 

++At this hour, things don't look good for a resolution on either a CR or a Debt Ceiling.