Current affairs

The House Republicans appear to be poised to pass a bill that would forbid increases in the federal debt limit beyond six months from now unless Congress sends out to the states for ratification a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This will never happen. There aren't enough votes in the Senate, and maybe even the House (two-thirds), to approve the amendment. And I predict that if the federal debt limit isn't raised by August 2, as appears increasingly likely, American voters will be horrified by the prospect of a balanced budget amendment -- dooming this foolish proposal forever. Why?…

I'm hoping that soon we'll have another constitutional slogan that will become as well known as "pleading the Fifth" -- take the Fourteenth. The Fifth Amendment provides a right against self-incrimination. To many, including me, the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes the president of the United States to do what is necessary to protect the validity of our nation's public debt. A month ago I was arguing for this, inspired by a fictional -- but today, all too believable -- speech that Garrett Ebbs wanted Obama to give if debt limit negotiation talks broke down. It ended with: I regret that the…

This progressive says, "Thank you, House Republican leader John Boehner. You just served up a juicy political victory to President Obama by throwing a hissy fit and walking away from the debt limit negotiations yesterday." If Boehner had accepted Obama's deal, which was tilted toward Republican positions, lots of Democrats (including me) would have freaked out. As Jonathan Cohn's cogent analysis in The New Republic points out, Obama was poised to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in ways that would have hurt seniors and poor people. This also would have taken away a powerful argument that Dems are eager…

Great analysis by Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight. He supports what I've been saying: Republican "fundamentalism" about refusing to consider any additional federal revenues for any reason is way beyond how the majority of Americans feel. The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix. ...But the House Republicans are very unlikely to capitulate on their no-tax pledge. And Democrats have little reason to capitulate either: they are on the…

The more it looks like the United States is heading for a political and financial train wreck over raising the federal debt limit, which has to be done pronto to avoid a massive panic in the stock and bond markets, not to mention drastically increasing the government's future borrowing costs, the more I put the blame for this fiasco on religion. Why? Because Congressional Republicans who are "negotiating" with President Obama and Democratic leaders are acting like thou shalt not raise taxes is a divine decree rather than a ridiculous pledge cleverly engineered and promoted by Grover Norquist, a decidedly…

The Republican stance on negotiating an increase to the federal debt limit is illogical and ridiculous in so many ways, it's difficult for me to know where to focus my outrage.  First, it's deeply irritating to have the national interest held hostage by a quasi-religious "Thou Shalt Never Raise Taxes." And just as absurd, "Thou Shalt Always Have a Balanced Federal Budget." The first commandment is Grover Norquist pontificating, who knows zilch about economic reality. Conservative (but not a crazy one) David Brooks gets it exactly right in his The Mother of No-Brainers column. Over the past few years, it…

Wild and crazy can be fun. But not in politics, not now, because there's too much extreme'ish freaking out going on in both Congress and state legislatures. So thank you, 2011 Oregon legislature, for showing that Republicans and Democrats can still work together productively to serve the public. The Oregon Legislature wrapped up business Thursday, putting final touches on a no-frills budget and heaping praise on each other for what they called the most congenial, businesslike session in many years. ..."We have been blessedly boring all session," summed up Rep. Vicki Berger, R-Salem. Yes, there were some partisan spats, especially…

All the hue and cry over whether, or how, the federal debt ceiling should be raised again seems increasingly ridiculous to me. After all, Congress and the President already have agreed to every dollar of spending that requires this new borrowing. So the debt ceiling must be raised for both legal and moral reasons. It'd be reprehensible for politicians to disown the legislative decisions that Republicans and Democrats alike have made, saying "Yeah, we voted for more spending, but now we refuse to supply the money to pay for it." Thus I really like the idea that's starting to be…

Anyone who values honesty, forthrightness, and straight talk should look at how Michelle Bachmann responded to some questions from Bob Schieffer about her horrible PolitiFact accuracy record. Then, vow never to vote for her. This is why many politicians are so distrusted. They even lie about their lying, being able to face the truth about their not facing the truth.

Many people consider that liberals tend to be warm-and-fuzzy emotional types, while conservatives are just-the-facts thinkers. Well, a scientific study found the reverse to be true. The amygdala, which processes fear, was bigger in conservatives, while liberals have a bigger cortex, which processes complexity. Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study…

Ah, I needed this: a sign that the United States is on a positive track. Last night my wife and I went to a Salem Social Dance Club event. Periodically I'd check my iPhone to see if the New York legislature had passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage. When we were about to leave the dance, I checked one last time. Learning that New York had become the sixth state to make same-sex marriage legal lifted my spirits almost as much as the dancing had. I felt that a milestone had been reached, that our country had finally turned the…

Recently Jon Stewart sort of apologized on his The Daily Show for saying that watchers of Fox News are the most consistently misinformed media viewers. Well, he shouldn't have. Stewart was right, and the usually accurate PolitiFact was wrong in this case. PolitiFact came in for a lot of justified criticism when it ruled that Jon Stewart's June 19 statement, ""Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll," was false. For one thing, PolitiFact often gives a lot of leeway to politicians and public figures who make similarly bold statements. Meaning, Politifact's rulings can…

So here we are in the middle of 2011, with an economy that isn't great. But it's still a heck of a lot better than it was in late 2008 and early 2009, when Obama took over the presidency. Remember how horrible it was to watch your retirement or investment portfolio drop 30, 40, 50 percent? Maybe even more, if you were into really risky stuff. I didn't enjoy those days. When the stock market went back over 12,000, I began to relax some, feeling that the biggest economic shocks were behind us and the United States was on a…

Back in 2008 I blogged about how Sarah Palin is hot! (and wrong). Today I was pleased to see that another guy has analyzed Palin's and Michele Bachmann's popularity from an attractiveness angle. Marty Kaplan asks a good question, if Bachmann and Palin weren't pretty. I wonder how much airtime Michele Bachmann would get if she didn't look the way she does. I wonder how much of Sarah Palin's political appeal arises from her physical appeal.I have a feeling that wondering this will get me in hot water, but what the hell.