Modeling Journey

It might be the only way you can keep your own job come November.

Paul Krugman

A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong.

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

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The postponement was announced just minutes before the planned 6 p.m. vote. The House instead moved to consider a far less controversial measure -- to rename a post office in Peoria, Ill.

Republicans had been working throughout the day Thursday to lock down support for their plan to raise the nation's debt ceiling, even as Senate Democrats vowed to swiftly kill it if passed.

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Eric Schneiderman

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Is President Obama doing anything to help those struggling to modernize the ossified political systems in the Middle East to actually implement realistic, significant and long-lasting change?

The new stage brings new, more complicated challenges.

The Armed Forces Supreme Council, the body of top generals that now rules the country after Mubarak's ouster last Friday, has laid out a transition that emphasizes speed, not the sweeping democratic change the protesters want. The military has left the remains of Mubarak's ruling party to dominate the caretaker government and the levers of power, including the powerful police forces.

The organizers fear that unless the ruling party is broken and major change guaranteed, Egypt can fall back into an authoritarian rule, a Mubarak regime without Mubarak...

Also, the protest coalition is trying to fend off fragmentation that has plagued past reform movements, which tended to coalesce behind a single figure in a personality cult and then fall apart over personal disputes.

The new ruling generals urged the protesters to form their own political party. But the coalition refuses, saying a party now would bring out the divisions among them and break their bond of common demands.

The coalition tried to bring in Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who worked on a Facebook page that rallied hundreds of thousands of Egyptians behind the protests. But he has decided to work independently. He has set up a webpage to gather suggestions of what Egyptians think should be done now — so far collecting at least 37,000 entries.

The military has also only suspended the constitution, not dissolved it. It appointed a panel of legal experts that has 10 days to draw up just enough changes to the constitution to allow a multiparty election.

Egypt rises

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Stung by comments that the Gulf oil spill amounts to Obama's Katrina, the president's men (and women) have sprung into action on two fronts in an attempt to get control of the framing of the issue, and to avoid this comparison with the Junior Bush's mishandling of New Orleans taking root.

But in doing so the Obama Administration runs the risk that it will deliver less than is required to solve a problem fingered and blasted by the administration (just as its response to the financial meltdown and the problem of banks being allowed to run risks that should not be run, through use of derivatives and trading activities, is far less than the scope of the meltdown problem really requires).
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When running against the hapless Senator John McCain, Obama pooh poohed McCain's policy of giving homeowners who were underwater some relief reducing their amount they owed on their mortgages, in recognition of the drop in home prices after the financial meltdown of 2008.

Now it seems that the same problem is even bigger, and the president is faced with doing exactly what McCain proposed, because Obama's first stab at the problem has been unsuccessful.


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A little spat has broken out between Natanyahu of Israel and President Obama. The VP visited Israel and the Israeli government and it seems Biden took offence because the Israeli government announced further building in Jerusalem when he was there. Hillary Clinton climbed into the foray, castigating the Israeli government before she softened her stance.

And then Bibi visited Washington, and Obama decided to teach the leader of this little country a lesson, by not dining with him.
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With a vote apparently scheduled for this Sunday, the vote counters are out in full force, trying to figure out if American Congressmen and –women and Senators will finally drag the US by the scruff of its sorry neck into the advanced land of universal health care, something that the rest of the industrialized West has had for a long long time.

And one of the most interesting analyses of who is going to vote for Obama's limping, muddled-middle-of-the-road health care hill is that of the Washington Post, which has a table showing politicians' votes last time, plus the percentage of voters in each constituency who do not have health care.

And plus the amount of contributions made to each one by the health industry.

Very interesting table, especially if you have your head stuck in the sand and still believe the American political system has not been privatized, and throw open to the highest bidders.

Having decided not to run again, Senator Dodd seems to have also left his courage at the door of the Senate committee he heads, and decided to table a watered down, relatively toothless bill to cure the root causes of the financial meltdown the American financial system faced a short while back:

"Americans are frustrated and angry, as we all know," Dodd, D-Conn., said. "They've lost faith in our markets, and they wonder if anyone is looking out for them."

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Does that startle you? It should.

Does that perturb you? It should.

And at the same time, many are still engaged in 'bubble borrowing':
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President Obama held a press conference one day after the Republicans whipped the Democratic candidate for the senate seat of Massachusetts, sending that candidate (and the Democractic Party) into a tizzy.

That tizzy was shared by Obama, who somewhat belatedly threw his weight behind the Democratic candidate last week, but could not prevent the historic upset.
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The MYM movement is gathering more support in the USA, with the latest salvo coming from Maher:

"That's right, I'm talking to all of you that keep doing your banking at the giant, too big to fail, Wall Street banks that brought our economy to the brink of disaster, were rescued by trillions of dollars of our taxpayer money, then paid us back by using that money to hire lobbyists to convince our lawmakers in Washington to kill financial reform.

They took our money... but cut back on lending.
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Because of three letters: MYM.

That stands for Move Your Money.

And that stands for a citizens' protest movement in the USA that is snowballing, and gathering supporters who feel that the powers that be have failed ordinary Americans by not handling the banking crisis correctly, allowing the fat cats to start paying monstrous bonuses again, and simply disregarding common sense and ordinary virtues, such as punish the guilty, not the innocent (taxpayers).
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Yesterday was a bad day for the president and a worse day for American democracy.

Commenting on a case before an American court, Obama said:

"“I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” the U.S. President said Wednesday before leaving China."
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With Republican senators dogmatically opposed to a public health care system similar to the very efficient and morally justifiable Canadian and certain EU systems, and with conservative Democratic senators siding with the right wingers, the prospect of the US having a public health care system option as part of the legislation now before the Senate and the House was dim indeed.

But now there is life in the public option again, because some senators have found a new way to skin the cat and allow them to vote for a public option without losing votes in their states.
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The outleak is bleak, right now, says Zogby:

"President Barack Obama's job approval rating has sunk to a record low of just 45%, the latest Zogby Interactive poll shows. Fifty-one percent of likely voters now say they disapprove of the President's job performance."

But Obama still scores well with Democrats, although he is losing the independent vote:

"While this latest poll shows Democrats continue to overwhelmingly approve of Obama's job performance (84%), just 6% of Republicans say the same. Most independents (59%) now disapprove of the job the President is doing."

None of this is surprising, given the major changes which this president is trying to make in a very short space of time.

And none of these results should cause Democrats undue concern. After all, what Obama is seeking to do is change the very contours of American politics, by tackling tasks of a scale which only three other presidents have dared to deal with (Lincoln, fighting to keep the Union alive; Roosevelt, pushing through the New Deal despite strenuous and misguided opposition; and LBJ, putting into law civil rights bills which even Jack Kennedy would not have been able to enact).

Revolutionary presidents like these four men will be opposed, and the size of the changes they force upon their societies will cause concern.

But when the dust settles, in a year or so, watch his ratings rise again, just in time for his bid for re-election.