TR had the Square Deal.  FDR had the New Deal.  Harry S has the Fair Deal. Barack Obama will have the Raw Deal.

So a debt-ceiling “deal” has been reached.  Going in to this, the President was willing to compromise but had a few lines in the sand:

1. Some deficit reduction would have to come from new revenues.
2. There would be an extension through the 2012 elections.
3. The big social safety net programs would be protected.

What did he get?  None of these.  None of them.  What he got was a temporary extension of the debt ceiling, but he must take ownership of it now and again in six months.  He got a “super congress” stacked against him with triggers that hurt only one side.  He got an agreement that the hostage-taker would not shoot the hostage at this time, though he let the hostage-taker keep the gun and even gave him more bullets.

He got rolled.  That’s what he got.

I am not a Tea Party default denialist.  I fully understand that the scope of a default would be unprecedented and uncharted and very likely catastrophic.  I just don’t see how surrendering the principle of democratic government is better.  The Republicans know that their policies would be unpopular — fatally so, in fact.  So they don’t try to enact them.  Instead they manipulate the far-too-easily-manipulated Democrats into making the hard choices, doing the hard things, and then getting savaged by an electorate that doesn’t understand what’s going on and can’t be bothered to learn.

There are many who say the President should have stared down the Republicans and bluffed harder about using the so-called constitutional option, invoking the 14th Amendment.  I’m not one of those; I don’t believe in bluffing.  He should have stared down the Republicans fully intending to invoke the 14th Amendment if need be,  He should have said, This far and no further.  He would have looked decisive because he would have been decisive.  He would have the public on his side.  More importantly, he would have been right.  And given the certainty of disaster implicit in the rise of the Crazy Caucus to power, a roll of the dice would have been preferable.

I’ve already called my congressman to find out where he’ll vote.  (It’s Yes for surrender.)  And I’ve implored him (or rather his intern) to reconsider.  The best option for the country right now is that this abomination goes down to defeat in the House.  (It seems assured passage in the Senate.)  Then, with the clock ticking, the President can demand a clean bill to save the nation’s credit rating, with these tough choices made not under pressure from a hostage-taker.  Sadly, on this, apparently the Democrats have found their message unity that they so often lack.

The best hope for the nation, then, is that the Crazy Caucus, having been handed literally everything it wanted, will find itself still congenitally unable to take “Yes” for an answer — that the Tea Party’s visceral hatred for that upstart in the White House will compel them to vote against a bill their own leadership has negotiated and is whipping hard.

Yes, our only hope lies in the rabid right.  May Heaven help us all.икониПравославни икониикони на светци

And if so, what cn be done about it?

A study referenced in Discover has the provocative conclusion that seeing a small American flag while completing a political questionnaire can induce the respondents into being more Republican, even up to 8 months later. Is our society doomed by our optic nerves to surrender to the rabid right?

First off, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If the description given is accurate, this study doesn’t meet the bar. The sample size is smallish (worse for the followup) and the controls seem ill-defined. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course. There is also a danger in defining some policies as solely Republican, or pretending that the conservative position is monolithic. Serious replication efforts are called for.

But for the moment assume the causitive effect is real. Why would seeing a flag make one more identify more with Republican views? I would argue it’s because, since the 1960s, the Republicans have highjacked the symbols and language of patriotism. They have been aided in this by the tacit complicity of the media (which like simplistic us-v-them soundbites), the Democratic Party (which has been timid in defense of its country and of itself), and the American people (who have lazily accepted the sports-team approach to politics pioneered by Fox News and embraced by the rabid right).

What path of action is there for progressives and liberals, who perhaps might be driven to despair over the apparent psychobiological advantage this gives the Republicans? The same one as always: Fight back by reclaiming those symbols. The advantage comes from two crossed circuits in people’s brains: “flags = patriotism = good” and “flags = Republican”. This leads them to erroneously conclude “Republican = good”. Progressives must break the chain at the second link. If we concede owenership of the trappings of patriotism to the rabid right, we _will_ lose the public.

Granted, this will be a challenge. Firstly, a lot of time has been wasted and a lot of ground lost. People would have to unlearn their unexamined habits of thought, and no one welcomes that. More importantly, patriotism is more complex for progressives. The message of the rabid right is starkly simplistic: My country, wrong or right. America – love it or leave it. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. The progressive position is more abstract, more nuanced: I love my country, but I don’t always love what it does. I recognize its greatness but I also recognize the uncomfortable ugly truths that are part of its history. America is not the pinnacle of history; it is a path to a better tomorrow. That’s harder to sell. It’s harder to enforce message discipline. It’s harder to tweet.

But it is no less a stirring vision of America. Indeed, I believe it is more so. I think that the American people are sleeping, and in their slumber, the rabid right have been whispering illusions of a center-right nation. But at root, despite it all, the American people are a smart and a good people who will not dream forever. They believe not in an America that never was but in an America that should be. That is a message that finds far more resonance in the progressive ethos.

Do people associate the flag with Republicanism? Has the rabid right seized the symbols of patriotism? Maybe. But that’s not reason to surrender them. It’s a call to take them back.

The 14th Amendment is more-or-less the Swiss Army amendment of the US Constitution.  It defines citizenship, extends constitutional protections to state constitutions, and so on.  Lately, it’s become popular to posit that it also holds the key to avoiding a default of US credit.  Specifically, Section 4 reads

4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

That last bit is not particularly relevant right now.  But the first part (in bold) — it is said — could be.  President Obama could cite that portion of the 14th Amendment and direct the agencies of the United States Government to issue debt pursuant to the existing budget, regardless of whether that debt exceeds the amount authorized under the debt ceiling.  Voila! Crisis averted!  (See, for example, this piece by Jonathan Zasloff in the Washington Monthly.)

This 14th Amendment option is decisive, elegant — and completely irrelevant.

As appealing as it is to dream that the President can resolve this issue with a stroke of the pen, it’s a fantasy or, better, a delusion.  The Constitutional argument may seem reasonable but it’s certainly no slam dunk: reasonable legal minds can differ on its validity.  Whether or not it ever gets litigated before the Supreme Court, it would be argued in the public square forever.  And that’s the clincher: The fact that it would be hotly contested — and not just by reflexive anti-Obamites — renders it pointless.

Why?  Because debate over the debt limit is a crisis for one reason only: It’s pointing up the increasing dysfunction of the American political process.  A default by any debtor is bad for creditors and, eventually, for the debtor as well, as he/she will have to pay a higher interest rate to compensate investors for their lack of confidence in his/her ability to repay.  But a default by the US is infinitely worse.  No one is seriously worried that the US can’t repay its debt.  The market is worried that the US won’t repay it — that our political process has become so broken that we would rather endure a deadlock that cripples our economy than compromise on any principle.  We face not economic bankruptcy but political bankruptcy — a sense that our historic form of government is unequal to the problems we face.

With that in mind, it clearly doesn’t matter if the President waves a magic wand, or a magic signing pen, and declares the debt ceiling obviated.  The mere fact that he would need to do so would indicate that the political process has collapsed — that partisan rancor and madness have overtaken deliberative government.  The market would be further dismayed by the all-too-certain immediate explosion of anger and acrimony — the calls for impeachment, the impassioned bewailing on FOX News, etc.  Many investors might well refuse to lend, not knowing the ultimate legal status of debt incurred under this executive action.

A failure to raise the debt ceiling — no matter how artfully the President and the Treasury dance around it — confirms our transformation into a banana republic.  The market will not look kindly on that.  History, I suspect, will be even harsher.

Well, by extension.  They’ve invited John Yoo to participate in a forum on “A Conversation on Civility and Democracy in America” — apparently without a blink of irony, too.  Yoo, you might recall, is the author of the infamous Torture Memos, that said the United Stated could and would abandon its obligations under the Geneva Conventions because, well, President Bush wanted to.  He also said that the President could order warrantless surveillance on, well, anybody, ’cause you know, the terror and all.

I knew that UC Berkeley had somehow decided to allow this lowlife to sit on its faculty, but somehow, the fact that the National Constitution Center is loaning him its gravitas really struck home for me.  And while I have no connection, even remote, to Berkeley, I do have one small lever with the NCC: I am a member.  Now, I have to decide if I’ll continue to be one.

My note of outrage to the NCC is posted below the fold.

I have been a proud member of the National Constitution Center for many years now.  Although I don’t often get down to Philadelphia to take in the Center’s exhibits, I feel the Center has a vital mission to educate the population and build its appreciation and respect for the US Constitution, one of the primary documents of human history and a cornerstone in humanity’s groping towards dignity and freedom.

You can imagine my surprise and dismay, then, to read that the Center will sully its good name and besmirch its grounds by inviting John Yoo to speak on “civility” in political discourse.  Although I have a high tolerance for political opinions of all stripes, I find myself disgusted that the Center would elevate the man responsible for the infamous “Torture Memos” and lend to him the gravitas of the Center’s work.  John Yoo, perhaps more than anyone else in the past decade, has undermined both the spirit and the letter of US law, has trampled upon the goodwill and good name of the United States, and done what he could to usher us toward a state of totalitarian oppression entirely at odds with the driving impulses of the US Constitution.  For anyone else, it would be the high mark of infamy to be author of memos advocating that the President willfully commit a felony (spying on Americans without warrants).  For John Yoo, this shredding of the 4th and 14th amendments is a mere footnote.

Inviting him to participate and then treating him as a respectable academic demonstrates wildly inept judgment on the part of the event’s organizers and of the Center itself.  I am forced to wonder if I can continue to support an institution that has decided to support John Yoo.  I hope the Center will reconsider and rescind its invitation, and stand with decent people everywhere in denouncing John Yoo, his dangerous theories of the “unitary executive”, and his embrace of torture under the aegis of legalized fictions.

Disappointed and disgusted,

-=-Bernard HP Gilroy

• American Scripture by Pauline Maier
• Consider Phlebas by Ian Banks
• Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowel

So, last Saturday (Sep 11), a paper in Maine ran a story about the local celebrations at the end of Ramadan the day before.  It was a pretty innocuous piece, a typical fluff article about local culture.

Then the Internet happened.

The paper got deluged with calls and comments and Facebook screeds and angry words.  Some people, it seems, were offended that the paper would devote front-page real estate to a Muslim celebration on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  Blindsided and, one imagines, just a bit scared, the paper issued a remarkably abject — one might even say servile — apology.

I find the whole affair disheartening.  And even though I neither subscribe to the Press-Herald nor, indeed, had ever heard of it, I wrote to the Publisher to express my own reaction.  Here it is:

Dear Mr. Conor–
I have read with interest your story on the ending of Ramadan and your subsequent apology (http://www.pressherald.com/note-of-apology.html).  I will admit to finding out about the incident only through Internet reporting and I can’t lay any particular claim on your attention or respect.  But the apology was disheartening.  Your paper’s response to frankly overheated criticism helps support a very mistaken view that 9/11 was about Islam versus the West.  Only one group benefits from that view, which is al Qaeda.  On 2001 September 11, the US was not attacked by Islam.  We were attacked by a band of street thugs, of small men with small minds who exploited a weakness in our vigilance.  It was not an epic clash of civilizations; it was a drive-by shooting.  We should not dignify those thugs by allowing them to shock and certainly we should not buy into their ridiculous claims.  Islam did not triumph over the West on 9/11.  Rather, 19 unworthy men got unbelievably lucky.

I am sure others have pointed out that many Americans who are Muslims died in those attacks, and others as first responders trying to save lives in the aftermath.  I am sure that others have pointed out that papers routinely runs stories on Christmas pageants and Easter parades without “balancing” them with stories about forced conversions and pogroms.  As a nation, I would like to believe, we are wise enough to distinguish between a faith and the twisted shadow of a faith misappropriated by evil men.

Your first article did a service by reminding your readers that Islam is practiced — peacefully! — in the United States just as Christianity and Judaism and all faiths are.  Your abject apology undermined that and gave comfort only to the foes of the US.  No matter how much a bunch of yahoos hiding in caves want it to be different, there need be no clash of civilizations, and we don’t need to abandon our time-honored jurisprudence, our noble tolerance, or our basic civility.

We are smarter than that.  We are stronger than that.  We are better than that.

And I just wish your paper had been, too.

Disappointed,
-=-Bernard HP Gilroy

Neil Irwin explains the current dilemma faced by the Fed by extending a metaphor promoted by guest host Christopher Hayes on Monday’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show: The Fed is in charge of watering the fields but has exhausted its usual reservoir system.  Anything new will be risky and the Fed leaders tend to be conservative about risk.

At this point, the economy is so anemic we should probably be considering nuclear-fueled desalinization plants (whatever their fiscal equivalent would be)…

Regarding the fact that Fox News will now have a front-row seat at the White House briefing room:

Fox News is a propaganda outlet, a detail everyone seems to know, but which is apparently impolite to say out loud. The network’s proponents will likely argue a front-row seat is warranted because Fox News has a lot of viewers. Perhaps. But Milli Vanilli sold a lot of records, and success didn’t make them legitimate recording artists.

The quote comes from Steven Benen at Political Animal; the emphasis is mine.

I stole the tagline from a commenter at Political Animal and the picture from a public domain image at Flickr, and put it together using the motivational poster generator at Big Huge Labs.

Why did the stimulus go wrong?

In the end, we took a soapbox racer to a go-kart track and then realized we were competing against actual cars.

Great analogy — and better analysis — by Ezra Klein.