The debt-ceiling palaver currently occupying Washington is certainly important, but in my New York Post column today I try to step back a bit and take a longer, even dimmer view of the fiasco:

Confused by the manic, frantic activity going on inside the Beltway as the days dwindle down to Aug. 2 — the supposed drop-dead date for an increase in America’s $14.3 trillion national-debt limit? Don’t be. Last-minute, hair-on-fire, blame-game politics is what this is really all about.
President Obama’s cavalier spending has included the failed $800 billion stimulus program and the looming fiscal catastrophe of ObamaCare. His laughable February budget would have added more deficit spending, and he has yet to put a debt-reduction plan on the table. Instead, he’s issued a series of contradictory ultimatums about what sort of debt-limit bill he’d accept — all the while savaging the Republicans with appeals to envy and resentment.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are careening around the halls of Congress like circus clowns in bumper cars, tossing plan after plan against the Capitol walls and hoping something will stick.

What a sad, demoralizing spectacle in the last days of the Republic. But not to worry! Some folks are surviving just fine:

On Aug. 3, the day after America supposedly goes broke, the president flies to Chicago for a couple of 50th-birthday fund-raisers — at up to $38,500 a pop.
Then it’s off to Martha’s Vineyard, where the first family will spend a week or so on yet another vacation, at the 28-acre Blue Heron Farm, which comes complete with its own basketball court, pool and boathouse.
For at least one American family, times have never been so good. Too bad the rest of us can’t say the same.

It’s great to be Caesar.