“President Obama waived a ban on arming terrorists in order to allow weapons to go to the Syrian opposition. Your listeners, US taxpayers, are now paying to give arms to terrorists including Al Qaeda. … This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists, now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s end times history. … Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand,” – Michele Bachmann, a sitting member of Congress.
Author: Andrew Sullivan
The Debt Ceiling Denialists
Bouie watches their ranks grow:
No one knows exactly what would happen if the United States breached its debt ceiling—an artificial limit on what the Treasury can borrow to pay its bills—but almost everyone agrees it would be disaster. I say “almost” because a growing chorus of Republicans insist the opposite, that hitting the debt limit wouldn’t cause a default, and even if it did, it’s no big deal for the nation or the world.
Some of the current GOP delusions: the deficit is rising (it isn’t); the debt is currently unsustainable (it isn’t); the public wants Obamacare ended (it’s split on even delaying it); climate change has nothing to do with human-produced carbon emissions (it is, according to almost every single reputable scientist examining the issue). Why are we surprised that the people who predicted a Romney landslide a day before he was trounced might actually be prone to believing in things that simply are not true by any empirical, objective standard? That’s the true danger here. Their epistemic closure is now not just threatening them, but all of us.
Bruce Bartlett has a must-read on the whole topic here. It’s exhaustive and careful and irrefutable. The GOP is currently threatening not just the core stability of the American economy but of the entire global economy. And the ultimate sign of their craziness is that they deny that – against universal agreement among economists for whom the word “catastrophe” keeps popping up – there is any threat at all. A reality check from Bruce:
Wells Fargo Bank economist Scott Anderson has said of a default, “It would be an earth-shattering event. It’s taken as given that U.S. Treasuries are a safe asset. Once you question that assumption, it shakes the foundations of global finance and the way it’s been established over the last 50 years.”
University of California, Berkeley, economist Barry Eichengreen, a world-renowned expert on the international monetary system, warned that a debt default could lead to a run on the dollar if foreigners come to feel that the U.S. is being run by irresponsible leaders. As he put it:
“If there is a threat to the dollar, it stems not from monetary policy, but from the fiscal side. What is most likely to precipitate a dollar crash is evidence that U.S. budgets are not being made by responsible adults. A U.S. Congress engaged in political grandstanding might fail to raise the debt ceiling, triggering a technical default. Evidence that the inmates were running the asylum would almost certainly precipitate the wholesale liquidation of U.S. Treasury bonds by foreign investors.”
A “wholesale liquidation of US Treasury bonds by foreign investors.” This is becoming a national emergency of economically existential proportions. Weigel identifies a source of this delusion:
[Republicans] were told for years that a shutdown would be a disaster for the economy and their party. They were told the same thing about sequestration. Neither crisis has really lived up to the end-of-times hype, especially not in their districts. … Republicans have a new, cold confidence that the president, and the press, are lying to them about the downsides of these crises.
As an example, here’s Hannity downplaying the danger of hitting the debt ceiling:
It sounds a little bit like sequestration. Predictions of doom and gloom, and none of it ever happened. The world isn’t collapsing … I’m really not that afraid of it.
And here is a list of other debt-ceiling denialists. Krugman frets:
Given all the forms of debt denial, I really wonder about the confidence many people still have that there will be an 11th-hour resolution.
I don’t believe there will be. American pseudo-conservatism is about to achieve its paramount goal: the wholesale destruction of the American government and economy. It is, indeed, the only way to return to the nineteenth century. And that, after all, is what they want.
How Bad Was Kathleen Sebelius Last Night?
It is hard to find the words to describe it. On The Daily Show, talking to a critical demographic with respect to Obamacare, the HHS secretary was so incoherent, so incapable of even basic reasoning, so tied to exhausted talking points, so unable to concede, let alone explain, error, that she would be fired if she were a spokesperson for a minor member of Congress. And yet she is allegedly in charge of the most important domestic policy initiative of this administration and has presided over a rolling disaster in terms of its critical first week.
Dish readers have done a better job at explaining the huge snafus on the various Obamacare websites. (And The Daily Show – see above – might want to get in a defensive crouch on malfunctioning websites since its own clip of Sebelius is currently as unavailable as Obamacare’s). Today we got a better explanation:
The technical problems that have hampered enrollment in the online health insurance exchanges resulted from the failure of a major software component, designed by private contractors, that crashed under the weight of millions of users last week, federal officials said Monday.
Why was she incapable of saying that?
Why was she incapable of explaining the huge crush of demand or the fact that 32 states refused to cooperate, making the feds’ task that much more difficult? Why could she offer no plausible reason for why corporations with over 50 employees got an extra year to comply, while individuals don’t? This was a very friendly media environment, and she was given acres of time to give even a small explanation. And she was worse than useless.
Part of an official’s job is to be able to be accountable to the public for failures, to help explain them, to give an idea of how they are going to be addressed. She failed. Another part of an official’s job is to make sure that critical programs under her jurisdiction run smoothly – especially when they are as critical as Obamacare. She has failed at that as well. Why is the president content with that kind of grotesque incompetence and lack of accountability? And when will she be fired?
Detonating An Economic Nuclear Bomb
Daniel Gross warns that the impact of a default would be massive:
A U.S. debt default, or the whiff of one, would be a much more significant financial event [than the Lehman disaster]. As Yalman Onaran of Bloomberg noted, “The $12 trillion of outstanding government debt is 23 times the $517 billion Lehman owed when it filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008.” True. But the increase in damage wouldn’t be arithmetic, it would be exponential—Lehman to the 10th power rather than Lehman times ten.
A debt default, even if momentary and partial, wouldn’t be like blowing up a much bigger stick of dynamite. As Warren Buffett suggests, it would be like detonating a nuclear bomb.
Why would a default be so much worse than Lehman Brothers? It has largely to do with who owns U.S. government debt and how much debt those companies and institutions have. Lehman caused a company to fall, a sector to fall, and stocks to fall a bunch. A U.S. government default—or again, even the whiff of one—would cause all that to happen, plus it would bring down a bunch of governments and possibly ignite a revolution and a couple of wars.
One Month, Many Causes
In honor of @EsteeLauder‘s @BCAcampaign, our tower is glowing pink tonight. #BCAstrength #BreastCancerAwareness pic.twitter.com/XQYoogba3H
— Empire State Bldg (@EmpireStateBldg) October 1, 2013
What happens when at least 11 advocacy and awareness campaigns fall on the same month? Competition:
Rita Smith was watching football in 2009 when she noticed – as if it were possible not to – that the players were newly outfitted in pink socks and gloves. Her heart sank. “I was pretty sure we were toast,” she says. “There was no way we were ever gonna match them.” Smith is executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which also claims October as its awareness-raising month.
Why it’s hard to compete with cancer:
Breast cancer is, as many critics have pointed out, the perfect issue for corporate-funded cause marketing. It’s got an unambiguous villain (CANCER) and a natural constituency (women). Saving boobies is a friendly cause that everyone – even frat boys and NFL players – can get behind. A straightforward health issue. By comparison, domestic violence is downright controversial. It touches on complicated issues like power, rape culture, victim-blaming, and gender roles, and stirs up uncomfortable emotions. …
One in eight women will suffer from breast cancer in her lifetime. One in four will experience domestic violence. Good luck finding that statistic on a yogurt lid this month.
Update from a reader:
Cancer can’t even compete with cancer! Breast cancer does not kill as many women in the US (41,000) as lung cancer (70,000), but you never hear about this from the pink ribbon brigade
Blinded By The Fight
Ilya Solmin, who just came out with Democracy and Political Ignorance, notes that “high-information” voters aren’t necessarily well-informed:
Just as there are sports fans who love to follow their favorite teams even though they can’t influence the outcomes of games, there are also “political fans” who enjoy following political issues, and cheering for their favorite candidates, parties, or ideologies. I am a political fan myself, as are many of the people who read blogs like Balkinization or the Volokh Conspiracy. So too are most of the people with an unusually high level of knowledge of politics, in the general population. The single most powerful predictor of political knowledge – more important even than education – is interest in politics.
There is nothing wrong with being a political fan. But if you are seeking out political information for the purpose of enhancing your fan experience, that objective is often inimical to the goal of seeking out the truth. Much like sports fans, political fans tend to evaluate new information in a highly biased way. They overvalue anything that supports their preexisting views, and undervalue or ignore new data that cuts against them, even to the extent of misinterpreting simple data that they could easily interpret correctly in other contexts.
The Manliest Compromise
Can the mustache come back? I’ve always had a thing for the seventies’ porn stache myself but it doesn’t quite seem to work these days, despite John Hodgman’s fearless pioneering. In an excerpt from Paddle Your Own Canoe, Nick Offerman extols its moderate virtues:
The straight dope is: If we’re TRUE to our natures, then we grow a robust beard. That is what was intended by the ORDER OF THINGS. Society has put a spin on us, making a “clean-shaven” countenance the social “norm,” which, from Ma Nature’s point of view, is bullshit. But then, so are air-conditioning and Saran wrap and Cap’n Crunch and a bunch of other cool shit that allows us to “rise above” nature at times. A moustache is a socialized way to say, “Okay, look, I’ll let you see most of my face, since that’s what we’re all doing right now, but if you would kindly direct your gaze to this thornbush above my mouth, you will be reminded that I am a fucking animal, and I’m ready to reproduce, or rip your throat out if called upon, because I come from nature.” In this way the moustache can be considered a relief valve of sorts, for the buildup of animal preening that most people completely repress. That’s what makes a man with a good stache so cool, calm, and collected.
The key thing is not to buzz it. You have to let it grow so that the hairs that start just beneath your nose go all the way down to the upper lip in a waterfall cascade. That means only trimming the bottom border with scissors to enable eating and drinking without a straw. I favor a slight downturn at the crease of the mouth – but that’s obviously a matter of taste.
A Midlife Crisis At Any Age
Psychologist Oliver Robinson runs through them:
In your 20s, crises tend to be about whether you are making the correct decisions for the rest of your life, namely in your job and relationship. In your 30s, work-related issues and break-ups feature prominently. In your 40s, for women bereavement is often an issue, most likely for a parent. For men, it is still to do with their job but it has moved to “Holy crap, I’ve got a lot to do.” In your 50s, you get features of both early and later life crises—bereavement and ill health. This may be why late midlife is so potent. And that continues in your 60s, with retirement-related issues and heightened awareness of mortality.
Contemplating Cool
The genesis of the classic American term:
Cool has come a long way, literally. In a 1973 essay called “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” art historian Robert Farris Thompson traced the concept to the West African Yoruba idea of itutu—a quality of character denoting composure in the face of danger, as well as playfulness, humor, generosity, and conciliation. It was carried to America with slavery and became a code through which to conceal rage and cope with brutality with dignity; it went on to inform the emotional textures of blues, jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, and more, then percolated into the mainstream. [Scholar Peter] Stearns argues that cool’s imperatives of flexibility and fluidity helped Americans escape rigid Victorian morality into modernity and developed along with mass production and mass media as a new individualist ethos.
Carl Wilson continues with a meditation on its meaning:
To be cool is to have cultural and social capital, and most urgently it is to be not uncool—a hang-up most of us pick up in adolescence that’s damnably hard to shake even if it mellows with age. Cool is an attitude that allows detached assessment, but one that prizes an air of knowingness over specific knowledge. I think that’s why it doesn’t become dated, unlike hotter-running expressions of enthusiasm like groovy or rad. As Stearns says, cool is “an emotional mantle, sheltering the whole personality from embarrassing excess. … Using the word is part of the process of conveying the right impression.”
Slate continues its month-long series on the meaning of cool with Mike Vuolo delving deeper into the etymology and Mark Joseph Stern focusing on the coolness of Cary Grant.
Who’s Responsible For Bad Code?
Jane Chong takes a look at efforts to make software developers liable:
[S]oftware insecurity can be likened to a public health crisis. The fact that a single vulnerability can give rise to untold numbers of compromised computers and harms that are difficult to cabin makes dumping costs entirely on end users unreasonable as a policy matter. To borrow the words of law professors Michael Rustad and Thomas Koenig, the current paradigm is one in which “[t]he software industry tends to blame cybercrime, computer intrusions, and viruses on the expertise and sophistication of third party criminals and on careless users who fail to implement adequate security, rather than acknowledging the obvious risks created by their own lack of adequate testing and flawed software design.” A more reasonable and balanced system should be possible.
On the other hand, any attempt to systematically hold vendors accountable for vulnerabilities must build in realistic constraints, or risk exposing the industry to crushing liability.
