Several news stories broke last night suggesting that President Obama wants to broaden the debt ceiling deal with Congress, reducing deficits by $4 trillion over a decade, rather than the $2 trillion previously believed. Here's Politico, here's the New York Times, and here's the Washington Post. The reports all suggest Obama will agree to cut Social Security and Medicare in return for higher revenue.
Obama blundered by not getting a debt ceiling deal last December and now he's trying to get out of a jam by conjuring up a bigger concession (in scope and particulars). But the amazing thing is for him to do the Republicans' dirty work of cutting Social Security and Medicare while leaving Bush tax cuts and the wars firmly in place.
It's a disgrace.
The situation is still fluid, but it appears that all Obama would get are minor tax changes (aka "closing loopholes") in exchange for substantial cuts in entitlements. And there is even talk that he'll do a deal on the Bush tax cuts which would remove any leverage the president might have had in late 2012 on that issue.
In a column at CNN, he write that Obama has done a poor job of handling the debt ceiling issue. He reviews the history and the potential events going forward. It's quite dispiriting. Excerpt:
Some may say: What could a president do faced with such implacable opponents? But the opponents didn't start implacable. Back in January, Speaker John Boehner said the possibility of a government default was "not even on the table."
The president's weakness, however, empowered the most radical Republicans. Would one more hard push extract one more big concession? The answer was always, "yes." So the radicals pushed -- and pushed again -- and incidentally pushed would-be dealmakers to the side.
Through it all, Obama has played nice, again and again entreating his Republican opponents to emulate his example and play nice too. It's not what Lyndon Johnson would have done. It's not what Franklin Roosevelt would have done. I doubt it's what Hillary Clinton would have done.
Which brings me back to my starting question: Why don't the Democrats rebel? Presumably, they elected Obama to stand up for their shared principles. But he's not standing up. He's rolling over. Or being rolled.
Frum has written similar pieces at his website, FrumForum, and they aren't much different in outlook - at least from a tactical analysis standpoint - from what you'd read on liberal blogs.
Sometime earlier, Frum stated his approval of stimulus spending, bank rescues, and a decent social safety net, which is anathema for Republicans these days. Maybe Frum is still influenced by his Canadian roots, where political extremism is less pronounced.
In any event, it's odd to find cautionary warnings about American politics from this guy.
It's just the latest in a long series of such moves at the state level. Arizona and Tennessee, to mention a couple, have similar laws.
What's it all about?
It's not about guns. It's an expression of a libertarian, government-despising mindset. It's a mindset that animates the Tea Party crowd. It's a lashing out at a government that hasn't delivered the economic goods to most citizens (both parties are guilty of this, but the Republicans more so). With no credible leadership to assuage fears, a lurch towards "freedom" is viewed as some sort of escape. It isn't, though, but it takes a long time to restore the social fabric and confidence in the democratic process.
Facebook flattens our social relationships into one undifferentiated blob. It's almost impossible to organize friends into discrete groups like "family" and "work" and "school friends" and so forth. ...
In truth, Facebook started out with an oversimplified conception of social life, modeled on the artificial hothouse community of a college campus, and it has never succeeded in providing a usable or convenient method for dividing or organizing your life into its different contexts. This is a massive, ongoing failure. And it is precisely where Facebook's competitors at Google have built the strength of their new service for networking and sharing, Google+. ...
By far the most interesting and valuable feature of Google+ is the idea of "circles" that it's built upon. You choose friends and organize them into different "circles," or groups, based on any criteria you like -- the obvious ones being "family," "friends," "work" and so on.
The most important thing to know is that you use these circles to decide who you'll share what with. So, if you don't want your friends to be bugged by some tidbit from your workplace, you just share with your workplace circle. Google has conceived and executed this feature beautifully; it takes little time to be up and running.
The other key choice is that you see the composition of your circles but your friends don't: It's as if you're organizing them on your desktop. Your contacts never see how you're labeling them, but your labeling choices govern what they see of what you share.
I'm sure problems will surface with this model but so far it seems sound and useful, and it's a cinch to get started with it. Of course, if you're already living inside Facebook, Google has a tough sell to make. You've invested in one network, you're connected there; why should you bother? But if, like me, you resisted Facebook, Google+ offers a useful alternative that's worth exploring.
We'll see how Google handles privacy settings, but it's almost a sure bet it won't be the Gordian knot that Facebook presents.
