Year: 2013

The Sabotage Is Already Happening, Ctd

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If the GOP’s plan is to continue to maximize economic pain under Obama, it’s working as it did in 2011. This graph is from Gallup. Expectations for future growth are also collapsing, with unknown but presumably dire effects on investment and employment:

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This time, unlike 2011, it’s much clearer which party is inflicting the loss of jobs, confidence and growth on the American and global economy. And this time, the Republican partisans don’t even have the cynical motivation to make Obama a “one-term president.” This time, it’s a toxic brew of spite and ideology – at the expense of countless Americans without jobs, without healthcare security and with waning hope of a stronger recovery. I cannot remember a time when a political party deliberately sabotaged the very basis of a country’s economy, deliberately prompted a recessionary surge in debt because they want to reduce the debt, and deliberately ensured that countless jobs would be destroyed, because they allegedly want to create jobs.

Politicians are dangerous enough when they’re trying just to govern. But when they make an effort to destroy the global economy, the damage they can do is incalculable.

The Speaker’s Choice Narrows

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Yesterday, Beutler predicted that Republican dead-enders in the House would oppose the Senate deal. They did. This morning, NRO’s Robert Costa predicted that “because the way the House GOP is running now, and given the internal politics, even THIS bill will have its challenges, let alone a Sen deal.” And he was right.

This morning, the GOP leadership could not get enough support from their own caucus for the alternative, tougher “compromise” they wanted. So we’re back to the Senate bill, which the House may have to reject and throw us into economic chaos or accept and step back from the brink. Beutler explains how the bill can still pass the House:

[A]s weak as his control of the House is, Boehner’s still officially the speaker — and as long as he’s officially the speaker, he controls the floor. The logical leap (really, the assumption) everyone’s making is that Boehner will put the Senate plan on the floor before midnight, rather than kowtow to the dead-enders to preserve his speakership. There are almost certainly 217-plus votes in the House for any deal that comes out of the Senate, which means we’ll only crash through the debt limit deadline if Boehner chooses to let the country default the same way he chose to shut down the government.

Ezra sees the logic of the Senate deal:

The timing of all this is designed to create a fight about sequestration.

The Jan. 15 deadline means funding for the federal government runs out at the exact moment sequestration’s deeper cuts kick in. The Dec. 13 deadline means that the full House and Senate would have time to consider any package of recommendations the bicameral committee comes up with, if the committee actually manages to come up with anything.

The deal isn’t official yet. It hasn’t passed the Senate yet. And it certainly hasn’t passed the House yet. But if it does clear those hurdles — and, again, that’s a big if — it’ll mean Republicans and Democrats have agreed to take what began as a fight over the Affordable Care Act and make it into a fight over sequestration.

If the Senate bill passes, Drum wonders whether we will get a “rerun of the whole mess next year”:

The evidence this time around has been pretty resounding that the public isn’t on the GOP’s side in this fight, and that might convince lot of Republican fence-sitters to nip things in the bud if the tea partiers try to start another hopeless war in February. Right now, public irritation with the budget fight probably hasn’t had any real effect on next year’s midterm elections, but if Republicans do it again and again, it might.

Which depends on the fallout within the GOP. Can they begin to rein in their nutters? Or are they all too afraid of them?

(Photo: Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks after a House Republican meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, October 15, 2013. By Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.)

Today In Beard History

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A reader writes:

Greetings from the Land of Lincoln. Thought you might like to know that today is the anniversary of young Grace Bedell writing a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln and suggesting he grow a beard because “you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.”

Happy beardday, Mr President!

A One-Man Default

Tomasky warns that Ted Cruz could cause one:

Screen Shot 2013-10-15 at 12.00.10 PM[W]ill Ted Cruz and/or Mike Lee let the deal move through the Senate quickly enough to avert default? The Senate will have to expedite its usual clock to do that, and that requires … dum da-dum … unanimous consent. Cruz was asked about yesterday and said, “We need to see what the details are.” Great. There’s our Senate. One man can totter the world economy.

Josh Green calculated that, even if a bill had been introduced last night, Cruz could delay it until Friday, a day after we hit the debt ceiling. One wonders what kind of demented ego lies behind this reckless, phony demagogue.

(Image from Twitter user darthredpandacare)

The Sabotage Is Already Happening

Felix Salmon provides a reality check:

The global faith in US institutions has already been undermined. The mechanism by which catastrophe would arise has already been set into motion. And as a result, economic growth in both the US and the rest of the world will be lower than it should be. Unemployment will be higher. Social unrest will be more destructive. These things aren’t as bad now as they would be if we actually got to a point of payment default. …

While debt default is undoubtedly the worst of all possible worlds, then, the bonkers level of Washington dysfunction on display right now is nearly as bad. Every day that goes past is a day where trust and faith in the US government is evaporating — and once it has evaporated, it will never return. The Republicans in the House have already managed to inflict significant, lasting damage to the US and the global economy — even if they were to pass a completely clean bill tomorrow morning, which they won’t. The default has already started, and is already causing real harm. The only question is how much worse it’s going to get.

What is being undermined is America’s central place in the global economy. To dislodge the US from that because the GOP lost the last election is so out of proportion with any conceivable gains even hostage-takers and blackmailers could get it is almost the definition of insanity. I once wrote an essay on the degeneracy of American conservatism – about 15 years ago! – which I called “Going Down Screaming.” But what this rogue faction of fanatics is doing is bringing us all down screaming. They are not negotiating. They are sabotaging their own country.

Except, it’s clear to me at least that this is not how they see it.

They are sabotaging what they regard as someone else’s country – the country that voted for Obama twice, that gave the popular vote majority in the House to Democrats, that gave the Senate to the Democrats, that has a majority for marriage equality, that desperately needs immigration reform, and that, in any long-term fiscal Grand Bargain, must have more revenues for any deal to work.

That’s why I come back to the analogy of a cold civil war. The reluctance of the South to pay the debts of the nation which led to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the national debt. It seems to me that if the House GOP really does intend to destroy the American and global economy, to throw millions out of work, to make our debt problem far worse in a new depression … just to make a point about Obamacare, then at some point, Obama, like Lincoln, must preserve the republic.

But no president should ever want to take that position – because it represents the collapse of the American polity. But we are in collapse. If the House pushes the country into default this week, there is no workable American polity left. The most basic forms of collective responsibility will have been forsaken for almost pathological ideological purism and cultural revolt.

The House Goes Rogue

Earlier this morning, Ezra wondered whether the House would accept the Senate’s bill:

The question now is whether the House can pass the Senate’s deal — and, if they can’t, how quickly the resulting game of legislative ping-pong can be played. It may not seem possible for Republicans to push their disapproval higher than 74 percent. But if House Republicans cause an 800 point drop in the stock market by rejecting a deal Senate Republicans have signed off on and breaching the debt ceiling they may come to look back on 74 percent fondly.

Robert Costa’s reporting doesn’t inspire confidence in the House GOP:

House conservatives are bashing [the Senate deal] behind the scenes, and they’re pushing leadership to reject the compromise. A flurry of phone calls and meetings last night and early this morning led to that consensus among the approximately 50 Republicans who form the House GOP’s right flank. They’re furious with Senate Republicans for working with Democrats to craft what one leading tea-party congressman calls a “mushy piece of s**t.” Another House conservative warns, “If Boehner backs this, as is, he’s in trouble.”

But that’s unlikely to happen. As of 8:30 a.m., House conservatives believe the leadership is well aware of their unhappiness, and they expect Boehner to talk up the House’s next move: another volley to the Senate, which would extend the debt ceiling, reopen the government, and set up a budget conference, plus request conservative demands that go beyond the Senate’s outline.

This brinksmanship with millions of jobs and lives at stake the world over is staggering. The narcissism is staggering. The sheer, rank irresponsibility is staggering. This is not conservatism by any meaning of the word. It is nihilist vandalism.

The Rape Double-Standard, Ctd

A reader writes:

Your efforts to explore this topic are part of what makes your blog so special.  I mean, really, is there anything you won’t discuss?

I really must agree that there is a double standard with male rape.  By all accounts, I have been a male victim of heterosexual rape within the context of a relationship. Many years ago, I was living with a woman who had a pretty strong sexual appetite, at least in terms of frequency. She wanted sex generally at least twice a day, and for at least one or two hours. And as a young twenty-something, I was happy to accommodate her most of the time (wasn’t it glorious to be 20!). But every now and then I would have to beg off – either I was busy, studying, or just worn out sexually.

One night after a few days of avoiding sex, she woke me up in the middle of the night by stroking me.

Then she held me down with all her strength and basically forced me to have sex with her.  I was really tired and really not wanting sex with her because of some tension in the relationship, so I wrestled against her.  Now, she was almost my size and actually pretty strong and very insistent, so it quickly became apparent that I would either have to seriously kick her ass, or just go along with it. I undoubtedly could have beaten her off, but I gave in and just went along with it as the course of least resistance.  I asked myself, was not having sex worth beating the crap out of my girlfriend?

So she satisfied herself and got off. It occurred to me that I had been raped. I don’t really know what else to call it.  I didn’t want to have sex. She forced me to. Isn’t that rape?

I guess I was technically raped, but I was not particularly traumatized by it. I was annoyed. I don’t equate that experience with anyone else’s in any other context.  I completely get why “real” rape must traumatize the hell out of people.  But we also must understand the incredibly complex panorama of human sexual experience and why I just put quotation marks around the word “real.”  If our genders were reversed, she could have gone to jail for years for what she did. But that wouldn’t have been right.  Whether we want to admit it or not as a society, there are shades of fucking grey all over this topic.

Update from a reader who, if nothing else, illustrates the mainstream attitude toward the subject:

I’m sorry.  If you’re a grown man and can be “forced” to have sex against your will by an unarmed woman, then you are simply an unbelievable pussy.  And, no, you do not “have to seriously kick her ass.” Frankly, I doubt that the candy-ass whose baloney you posted could have done that in any case.

Besides, how could he have penetrated her without an erection? This tale is bullshit in every level.

From Mohandas To Mahatma

Patrick French reviews a new biography, Gandhi Before India, a portrait of the leader as a young man:

[Author Ramachandra Guha] invests much energy in trying to show that Gandhi never dish_gandhi had sex with anyone other than Mrs Gandhi. He certainly had weird, manipulative flirtations with young unmarried women – characterised here as “paternal” – and was the father from hell, refusing to let his sons be educated and forcing them to take vows of celibacy that they inevitably failed to keep. Gandhi’s belief was that everyone who followed him should give up meat, alcohol, smoking and sex, and take up fasting. Guha claims that concerns over his fixation on celibacy and refusal to consult his wife Kasturba about it are a western obsession, but this neglects the doubts many Indian colleagues such as Nehru had.

Zareer Masani observes that Guha “neither censors nor censures the budding Mahatma’s frequent megalomania and his increasingly autocratic and even brutal treatment of his own wife and children”:

He castigated his conventional Gujarati wife, Kasturba, for her caste prejudices and almost threw her out of the house for refusing to empty the chamber-pot of his low-caste Tamil clerk. She was not consulted when he added sexual abstinence — Brahmacharya — to his growing list of household rules and tried unsuccessfully to impose it on his sons as well. When Kasturba fell critically ill, Gandhi wrote explaining that he could not give up the political struggle to be with her, but cheerfully urged her not to feel guilty about pre-deceasing him if death should take her.  Released from prison, he was outraged to find the poor woman, now severely anaemic, being dosed with beef extract by her sensible Parsee doctor. Though warned that she might not survive the journey, he insisted on moving her in torrential rain back to his own Phoenix Colony, where he subjected her to a naturopathic regime of cold baths and a fruit diet. Miraculously, she survived and later earned his respect by courting imprisonment herself.

Meanwhile, The Economist praises the book’s investigation of Gandhi’s early influences in South Africa:

First, an assortment of progressive outsiders influenced Gandhi’s ideas and methods. He drew much from the feminists and activist vegetarians he met in Britain; in Johannesburg he learned from Hermann Kallenbach, a German Jew, and Leung Quinn, a Chinese activist; and he exchanged letters with Leo Tolstoy. All encouraged Gandhi’s unusual broad-mindedness, his belief in peaceful, incremental change and his readiness for self-sacrifice. That seems paradoxical. South Africa for most people was a place of deep inequality. Gandhi’s encounters with black Africans, the majority in South Africa, may have been minimal, but still he found strength in their struggle against white power. He enjoyed “a crucible of human togetherness” among many who were opposed to discrimination. And he shared homes, prison cells and long walks with like-minded, though mostly foreign, friends. That would have been impossible had he remained in India.

Second, and just as important, it was in South Africa that Gandhi developed his methods of peaceful agitation. He liked to use the word “Satyagraha”, loosely translated as “insistence on truth”, to mean civil disobedience. His South African campaigns led thousands of people to court harsh prison sentences, which surprised the authorities, who had dismissed Indian migrants as timid.

(Image of Gandhi in South Africa in 1909 via Wikimedia Commons)

The Abatement Of Cruelty, Ctd

A reader writes:

I thought I might chime in on the thread with a suggestion from Australia: eat kangaroo meat. Kangaroos increased in numbers after European settlement due to land-clearing and are so common (estimated 50 million, versus 22 million people) that in many areas they are periodically culled to reduce numbers, because they exert pressure on the local environment, are a hazard on the roads, and compete with livestock for food.

All kangaroo meat sold comes from animals who lived freely in the wild and were killed with a rifle shot to the head by licensed shooters operating under a strict code of practice. In addition to the ethical benefits, there are numerous environmental advantages.

Kangaroos have soft paws that do not damage plants and cause soil erosion, unlike the hooves of cattle and sheep. They do not require provision of additional food and water. And they are not methane producers, so they are better from a climate change point of view. Kangaroo meat is also very healthy – it is extremely lean, and what fat it does contain has high levels of CLAs, a type of fat thought to be beneficial. The meat is gamier than beef, but not unpleasantly so, and is very tender if cooked well. In certain dishes – for instance as mince in a bolognaise – I doubt most people would realise it was not beef if they were not told.

There are some people in Australia who for ethical and environmental reasons will eat only kangaroo meat and are otherwise vegetarian. My sister’s partner is one of these. There are enough of them that the ugly neologism “kangatarian” was coined to describe the diet.

I’m not sure about price and availability of kangaroo meat in the US, and it’s not a large-scale solution to the problem – we have a lot of roos, but not enough to feed the world! – but it’s an option for readers trying to avoid factory-farmed meat. Since all kangaroo meat comes from animals who lived in the wild and were killed ethically, it removes the necessity of having to track down where your meat was sourced from.

Recent Dish on kangaroos here.