Find Me A Rug That Misattributed Walter Sobchak And I’ll Be Upset

Jamie Stiehm at WaPo:

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

President Obama’s new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it’s not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you’re fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.

A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian’s lofty prophecy during marches and speeches. Often he’d ask in a refrain, “How long? Not long.” He would finish in a flourish: “Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Tim Daniel at The Dally Caller:

A seemingly trivial error, or rug-gaffe, you could say, says a lot about our touted-genius president. Educated foolishness? The Manchurian Candidate? It’s another piece in the Obama puzzle that doesn’t fit.
This time last year I blogged about the “Nine Simple Truths,” a list of prescriptions that is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Recall, the “Lincoln” axiom goes like this:

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves

Back then I did a little research (when you could say that I was quite a bit less savvy, and perhaps even less “smart”) and found out that the above “Lincoln” adage is actually from William J.H. Boetcker.

Funny, isn’t it, that a blogger with some research/net skills can track down the actual source of a dictum or, in this case, a sort of urban-Americana poem credited to Honest Abe?

Obama’s rug burn moment isn’t a trillion-dollar deficit issue, but it is telling, nonetheless.

Warner Todd Huston at Gateway Pundit:

Parker was a staunch anti-slavery man who died just on the eve of the American civil war, a man involved in every reform effort of his day, quite a radical for his time. He even supported domestic terrorist John Brown and supplied money for guns to be used in the “Bloody Kansas” fights over slavery.

King admired this white man who fought to end slavery and used his phrase many times — with full attribution, of course.

Sadly, Obama and his rug makers did not do their due diligence and research these quotes properly because they’ve attributed Parker’s inspiring words to King.

This is just one more incident that lends credence to the feeling that Barack Obama has no real feel for America, no connection to her history, and no grasp of what it is to be American.

Like his mis-attributed quote, Barack Obama is only an inch deep American. Sure he and his slipshod researchers knew that there was some famous quote or another, but they just weren’t informed enough about America to get the source of that quote right.

Worse, it is a misappropriation of words connected to Martin Luther King, Jr., the one historical figure that this president aboce all should have taken care to get right.

Is this misquote the end of the world? No, of course not. But it is just another small piece of evidence that points to the fact that this president is essentially disconnected from the country he is supposed to be leading. Barack Obama really isn’t much of an American.

Thomas Lifson:

The error perfectly encapsulates the shallowness of Barack Obama’s intellect, and his lack of rigor. Obama is a man who accumulated academic credentials while giving no evidence whatsoever of achieving any depth. He was the only president of the Harvard Law Review to graduate without penning a signed article in that esteemed journal. His academic transcripts remain under lock and key, as do his academic papers.

For the sort of people like David Brooks of the New York Times, who are impressed by fancy degrees and a sharp crease in the trousers, Obama may appear to be the smartest ever occupant of the Oval Office. But, as the old joke goes, deep down, he is shallow. Underfoot, literally, there is woven into his background a prominent vein of phoniness.

For some reason or other, Obama has been able to skate through academia and politics without ever being seriously challenged to prove his depth. A simple veneer of glibness has been enough to win the accolades of the liberal intelligentsia. But now that he has actual responsibilities — including relatively trivial ones like custodianship of the inner sanctum of the presidency — his lack of substance keeps showing up in visible, embarrassing and troubling ways.

Ed Morrissey:

For the record, King never claimed the phrase as his own.  He quoted Parker, one of his inspirations, in using this phrase, a point never noticed by Barack Obama during his campaign.  He repeated the phrase often enough that it caught the attention of Reverend Matt Tittle, who attempted to inform the campaign in April 2008 that Obama was misattributing the quote.  The campaign never replied to Tittle, but for a while Obama dropped the reference, and Tittle thought the message had been received.

When did this come out?  Well, Tittle blogged about it in December 2008 at the Houston Chronicle.  In July 2009, I wrote about it as an Obamateurism of the Day — and that was more than a year before the White House decided to commit their poor research into the press release for the Oval Office rug.  When that happened, it became one of this week’s OOTDs, and will be one of the selections in tomorrow’s OOTW poll.

It’s nice of the Post to notice this, even if it ran on a Saturday, but perhaps they might credit Tittle, who first reported it.

Tom Maguire:

Well, as Bob Hope said, “It’s not what we know, but what we know that ain’t so that gets us into trouble.”  Or was that Will Rogers?

FWIW:  Based on this picture of the carpet itself, none of the quotations are attributed, so the carpet won’t be sent back to rewrite.

And Dodd, with a nod to our video

What Was Said At A Ramadan Celebration

James Hohmann, Maggie Haberman and Mike Allen in Politico:

The White House on Saturday struggled to tamp down the controversy over President Barack Obama’s statements about a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Obama wasn’t backing off remarks Friday night where he offered support for a project that has infuriated some families whose loved ones died in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Obama’s comments placed him in the middle of the controversy over a Muslim group’s plans for a mosque near the site of the 2001 attack — and in turn, transformed an emotion-laden local dispute in New York into a nationwide debate overnight.

Republicans pounced, amid early signs that the issue would seep into some state and congressional contests. “It is divisive and disrespectful to build a mosque next to the site where 3,000 innocent people were murdered at the hands of Islamic extremism,” said Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio. His opponent, Charlie Crist, a Republican turned independent, came out in support of Obama’s comments.

And Democrats — at least some who were willing to comment — could barely contain their frustration over Obama’s remarks, saying he had potentially placed every one of their candidates into the middle of the debate by giving GOP candidates a chance to ask them point-blank: Do you agree with Obama on the mosque, or not?

That could be particularly damaging to moderate Democrats in conservative-leaning districts, already 2010’s most vulnerable contenders.

“I would prefer the president be a little more of a politician and a little less of a college professor,” former Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), who once ran the House Democratic campaign arm, wrote in POLITICO’s Arena. “While a defensible position, it will not play well in the parts of the country where Democrats need the most help.”

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

We now have official Washington’s response and take on the President’s speech last night stating that Muslim-Americans have every right to build an Islamic center on private property near Ground Zero. It comes in the form of Politico’s ubiquitous and closely followed “Playbook” email. As the author puts it, the statement poses a basic choice: is it “Obama delivering on his status as a breakthrough figure on American history”, by which we mean a feel-good affirmative action president with a foreign-sounding name or “elitist arrogance.”

It continues with various responses — mainly from chortling but unnamed Republican operatives marveling at the president’s being out of touch or courting a backlash from regular Americans but also one from Michael Bloomberg and a circumspect response from a White House aide.

The stand out for me was the response from what the author labels a “middle American” …

“This is too much. It’s not insensitivity that’s leading these guys to build this mosque. It’s a monument to their conquer of the site — just like the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem or the conversion of the Hagia Sophia (former primary church of the Byzantine empire in Istanbul) into a mosque”

There’s also what’s titled a “flashback” to what is apparently the most apt comparison, President Bush’s impromptu speech at Ground Zero two days after the attack: “”I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

It’s a quite a moment. We’re still hung up on the Turks turning the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque in 1453? Soon after 9/11 we marveled at how the bin Ladenites could still be so aggrieved over the abolition of the Caliphate in 1923 and the loss of Muslim Spain in 1492. But I guess times change.

John Hinderaker at Powerline

Frank Gaffney at Big Peace:

At a White House celebration of Ramadan tonight in the company of representatives of several of the Nation’s most prominent Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, President Obama announced his strong support for one of their most immediate objectives: the construction of a mega-mosque and “cultural center” at Ground Zero.  In so doing, he publicly embraced the greatest tar-baby of his presidency.

In the process, Mr. Obama also inadvertently served up what he likes to call a “teachable moment” concerning the nature of the enemy we are confronting, and the extent to which it is succeeding in the Brotherhood’s stated mission: “…Eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

As the AP reported, “President Barack Obama on Friday forcefully endorsed building a mosque near Ground Zero saying the country’s founding principles demanded no less. ‘As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,’ Obama said, weighing in for the first time on a controversy that has riven New York and the nation. ‘That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.’

“Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect to those who are different from us—a way of life that stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”

So much for the pretense that, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had previously declared, the President would not get involved because the Ground Zero mosque (GZM) controversy was “a local matter.” (As opposed, say, to the arrest of a Harvard professor on disorderly conduct charges.)

Gone too is the option of continuing to conceal an extraordinary fact: the Obama administration is endorsing not only this “local matter,” but explicitly endorsing the agenda of the imam behind it – Feisal Abdul Rauf.  Rauf is the Muslim Brother, who together with his wife Daisy Khan (a.k.a. Daisy Kahn for tax purposes, at least) runs the tellingly named “Cordoba Initiative.”   He is believed to be on a taxpayer-underwritten junket and/or fund-raising tour of the Middle East, courtesy of the State Department, which insists that he is a “moderate” in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, the President’s rhetoric – like that of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other apologists for and boosters of the GZM – tracks perfectly with the Muslim Brotherhood line about why we need to allow what Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin has correctly described as an “Islamist victory arch”  close by some of America’s most hallowed ground.  It is, we are told, all about “religious freedom” and “tolerance.”

Glenn Greenwald:

What makes this particularly commendable is there is virtually no political gain to be had from doing it, and substantial political risk. Polls shows overwhelming opposition to the mosque nationwide (close to 70% opposed), and that’s true even in New York, where an extraordinary “50% of Democrats, 74% of Republicans, and 52% of ‘non-enrolled’ voters, don’t want to see the mosque built.”  The White House originally indicated it would refrain from involving itself in the dispute, and there was little pressure or controversy over that decision.  There was little anger over the President’s silence even among liberal critics.  And given the standard attacks directed at Obama — everything from being “soft on Terror” to being a hidden Muslim — choosing this issue on which to take a very politically unpopular and controversial stand is commendable in the extreme.

The campaign against this mosque is one of the ugliest and most odious controversies in some time.  It’s based purely on appeals to base fear and bigotry.  There are no reasonable arguments against it, and the precedent that would be set if its construction were prevented — equating Islam with Terrorism, implying 9/11 guilt for Muslims generally, imposing serious restrictions on core religious liberty — are quite serious.  It was Michael Bloomberg who first stood up and eloquently condemned this anti-mosque campaign for what it is, but Obama’s choice to lend his voice to a vital and noble cause is a rare demonstration of principled, politically risky leadership.  It’s not merely a symbolic gesture, but also an important substantive stand against something quite ugly and wrong.  This is an act that deserves pure praise.

UPDATE: To anyone wanting to quibble with what was done here — the timing, the wording, etc. — I’ll just pose this question:  when is the last time a President voluntarily entered an inflammatory public controversy by taking a position opposed by 70% of the public?

Tom Maguire:

I have an idea our President will love – maybe we can open an Islamic Waffle House in a building damaged in the 9/11 attacks.  Obama can be the first customer.

On Friday night President Obama explained tolerance and the Constitution to We The Rubes, drawing this headline from the Times:

Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site

With uncanny prescience AllahPundt explained that the media was reporting on their fantasies, and that Obama was actually splitting the difference:

So what’s a poll-readin’ president to do? On the one hand, he’s at a Ramadan dinner and doesn’t want to alienate either the audience or his base. On the other hand, he’s staring at supermajority opposition to the mosque. Hey, I know: How about a statement that mostly dodges the question of whether it should be built in favor of the easier question of whether the owners have the right to build it? Not a Bloombergian lecture, in other words (unlike Bloomberg, Obama’s not a lame duck and thus can’t afford to wag his finger like The Enlightened so enjoy doing), but rather a pat on the back for free exercise and a pat on the back for the mosque’s opponents by acknowledging their “emotions.” He’s basically voting present. But since the media is pro-mosque too and eager to leverage authority on behalf of its position, this’ll be spun tomorrow as some sort of stirring statement in defense of the right to … alienate everyone around you, I guess, in the ostensible interests of “dialogue.”

And on cue, here is President Obama on Saturday, backpedaling from the media so quickly he might be the answer to the Jets Darrelle Revis problem:

Obama Says Mosque Upholds Principle of Equal Treatment

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERGPANAMA CITY, Fla. — President Obama said on Saturday that in defending the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near Ground Zero he “was not commenting” on “the wisdom” of that particular project, but rather trying to uphold the broader principle that government should treat “everyone equal, regardless” of religion.

…White House officials said earlier in the day that Mr. Obama was not trying to promote the project, but rather sought more broadly to make a statement about freedom of religion and American values. “In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion,” Mr. Obama said at the Coast Guard station. “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.

“And I think it’s very important as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about.”

That was quick.  Gutless, but quick.

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs:

So, of course, now right wing bloggers are crowing that Obama is “walking back” his earlier statement; but I don’t see that at all. Obama is emphasizing that his remarks were meant to support the Constitution — which should be enough for anyone. The idea that it’s somehow “unwise” to build this project is a concept promoted by opponents, and it’s irrelevant to the Constitutional issue; it would have been neither appropriate nor productive for Obama to wade into that poisoned debate.

Andy McCarthy at The Corner:

Already getting trounced in the polls, Democrats are reeling over the President’s decision to side with the Muslim Brotherhood over the American people by endorsing the Ground Zero mosque. So he’s trying to close Pandora’s Box.

Politico reports [and thanks to John Hinderaker at Powerline for pointing this out] that Obama is now seeking “to defuse the controversy” by explaining that he was merely talking about the mosque proponents’ legal right to build at the World Trade Center site. “I was not commenting and I will not comment,” he said, “on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there” (emphasis added).

Good luck with that one. Compounding insult with cynicism and cowardice is probably not a winning strategy.

Doug Mataconis

UPDATE: Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard

Andy McCarthy at NRO

David Dayen at Firedoglake

Tbogg on Kristol

UPDATE #2: Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus at Bloggingheads

The Two Propositions Of The Day: Proposition 8

Andrew Sullivan with the ruling

Marc Ambinder:

Here’s what you need to know about Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision invalidating California’s Proposition 8, a referendum, passed by voters, that banned same-sex marriage. The decision itself will be appealed, and Walker’s reasoning could serve as the basis for argument at the appellate level — or, the appeals court could decide to argue the case a completely different way.

What matters are the facts that Walker finds. Why? As Chris Geidner notes, “[the] judge or jury who makes the findings of fact, however, is given deference because factual determinations are aided by the direct benefit of the judge or jury at trial. On appeal, Judge Walker’s findings of fact will only be disturbed if the appellate court finds any to be clearly erroneous.”

Walker, in his decision, writes that “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gays and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.”  He evaluates as credible witnesses the panel of experts who testified against Proposition 8, and finds fault with the credentials of several witnesses who testified against same-sex marriage, including David Blankenhorn, President of the Institute for American Values.

“Blankenhorn’s testimony constitutes inadmissible opinion testimony that should be given essentially no weight,” Walker writes. “Blankenhorn gave absolutely no explanation why
manifestations of the deinstitutionalization of marriage would be exacerbated (and not, for example, ameliorated) by the presence of marriage for same-sex couples. His opinion lacks reliability, as there is simply too great an analytical gap between the data and the opinion Blankenhorn proffered.”

Jacob Sullum at Reason:

The arguments for banning gay marriage are so weak, Walker said, that they fail even the highly deferential “rational basis” test, which applies in equal protection cases that do not involve a “suspect classification” such as race. “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians,” he wrote. “The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite sex couples.”

The decision is bound to be appealed and may ultimately reach the Supreme Court. The text of Walker’s opinion is available here. The Los Angeles Times has excerpts here. I discussed the equal protection argument for federal recognition of state-approved gay marriages here and here. More to come.

Rachel Slajda at Talking Points Memo:

In his findings of fact, Walker pointed out that California “has never required that individuals entering a marriage be willing or able to procreate.”

He also notes that slaves were unable to marry.

“The states have always required the parties to give their free consent to a marriage. Because slaves were considered property of others at the time, they lacked the legal capacity to consent and were thus unable to marry. After emancipation, former slaves viewed their ability to marry as one of the most important new rights they had gained,” he wrote.

Walker also noted that past marriage inequalities have included the prohibition of interracial marriage and coverture, in which a woman’s identity is subsumed by her husband’s.

Chris Rovzar at New York Magazine

The Brad Blog:

Great news for real conservatives who believe in the U.S. Constitution and its guarantee of equal protection under the law! A U.S. District Court Judge, first nominated by Ronald Reagan and then appointed under George H.W. Bush, has struck down CA’s Prop 8 which added an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage equality. The state’s majority Republican-appointed Supreme Court had previously found no basis for banning same-sex marriage in the CA constitution. That finding was, in effect, overturned at the ballot box in November 2008 by Prop 8 which ended same-sex marriage in the state and left thousands of marriages in limbo until today’s finding.

Jim Newell at Gawker:

CNN is going to gay bars in San Francisco on TV right now, for reactions. (Update: No one was in the gay bars so they stopped. Lame empty gay bars!)

You can read the full decision here. The judge found it unconstitutional under both the due process and equal protection clauses. The ruling is expected to be appealed and could end up at the Supreme Court.

Steve Benen:

The full ruling from Judge Walker, an appointee of President H.W. Bush, is online here.

Note, the case will now go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which tends to be pretty progressive. Many legal experts I’ve spoken to expect the Supreme Court to eventually hear the case.

In the meantime, the decision is heartening. The arc of history is long, but it continues to bend towards justice.

Jesse Zwick at The Washington Independent:

Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see what kind of role the issue of same-sex marriage, so incendiary in California in 2008, will play in the midterm elections in the state this November. The Courage Campaign, a progressive online organizing network based in California and formed partly in response to the passage of Prop 8, has been busy pointing out the role of the National Organization of Marriage (NOM), the main nonprofit behind the passage of Prop 8, in backing California candidates like GOP senate hopeful Carly Fiorina.

“In NOM, Carly Fiorina has aligned herself with a fringe group that relies on lies and fear to advocate discrimination and second-class citizenship for millions of loving American families,” Courage Campaign Chairman and Founder Rick Jacobs said in a press release. “Bigotry is not a family value and it has no place in the United States Senate.”

The National Organization of Marriage, already under fire for failing to disclose its donors to state election officials in Iowa and Maine, has now joined up with the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, an initiative of American Principles in Action, and the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life women’s network, to back Fiorina through the “Tus Valories” (Your Values) Campaign, an independent expenditure on the part of American Principles in Action.

bmaz at Firedoglake:

The common wisdom is that the prospects for upholding Judge Walker’s decision in the 9th Circuit are good. I agree. However, the common fear is that the ever more conservative and dogmatic Roberts Court will reverse and ingrain the discrimination, inequality and hatred of Proposition 8 and its supporters deep into American law and lore. I am much more optimistic this is not the case.

As the inestimable Linda Greenhouse noted recently, although the Roberts Court is increasingly dogmatically conservative, and Kagan will move it further in that direction, the overarching influence of Justice Anthony Kennedy is changing and, in some ways, declining. However, there is one irreducible characteristic of Justice Kennedy that still seems to hold true; she wrote of Kennedy:

…he embraces whichever side he is on with full rhetorical force. Much more than Justice O’Connor, whose position at the center of the court fell to him when she left, Justice Kennedy tends to think in broad categories. It has always seemed to me that he divides the world, at least the world of government action — which is what situates a case in a constitutional framework — between the fair and the not-fair.

The money quotes of the future consideration of the certain appeal and certiorari to come on Judge Walker’s decision today in Perry v. Schwarzenegger are:

Laws designed to bar gay men and lesbians from achieving their goals through the political process are not fair (he wrote the majority opinion striking down such a measure in a 1996 case, Romer v. Evans) because “central both to the idea of the rule of law and to our own Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection is the principle that government and each of its parts remain open on impartial terms to all who seek its assistance.”
……
In a book titled “Justice Kennedy’s Jurisprudence,” a political scientist, Frank J. Colucci, wrote last year that Justice Kennedy is animated by an “ideal of liberty“ that “independently considers whether government actions have the effect of preventing an individual from developing his or her distinctive personality or acting according to conscience, demean a person’s standing in the community, or violate essential elements of human dignity.” That is, I think, a more academically elegant way of saying fair versus not-fair.

So the challenge for anyone arguing to Justice Kennedy in the courtroom, or with him as a colleague in the conference room, would seem to be to persuade him to see your case on the fair (or not-fair, depending) side of the line.

I believe that Linda is spot on the money with her analysis of what drives Anthony Kennedy in his jurisprudence. And this is exactly what his longtime friend, and Supreme Court advocate extraordinaire, Ted Olson will play on and argue when the day arrives. It is exactly what Vaughn Walker has ingrained in to and framed his extraordinary decision today on.

Today is one of those rare seminal days where something important and something good has occurred. Fantastic. The beauty and joy of equality, due process and equal protection under the Constitution of the United States of America.

UPDATE: Dahlia Lithwick at Slate

Orin Kerr

Ilya Shapiro at Cato

Tom Maguire

William Duncan at NRO

Eugene Volokh

UPDATE #2: James Taranto at WSJ

Scott Lemieux

Dan McLaughlin at Redstate

Jim Antle in The American Spectator

UPDATE #3: David Frum at CNN

Steve Chapman at Reason

UPDATE #4: Legal Insurrection

Allah Pundit

Wait, This Article Didn’t Appear In Slate?

Michael Grunwald at Time:

President Obama has called the BP oil spill “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced,” and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the “catastrophe along the Gulf Coast,” while CBS, Fox and MSNBC are all slapping “Disaster in the Gulf” chyrons on their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted that the spill was an “environmental catastrophe.” The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it “the leak” — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.

Well, Limbaugh has a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it’s no leak; it’s the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It’s also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it’s important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. “The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared,” says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana. (See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the number killed by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska 21 years ago. Yes, we’ve heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but so far, wildlife-response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region’s fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana’s disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but so far, assessment teams have found only about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year. (Comment on this story.)

The disappearance of more than 2,000 sq. mi. of coastal Louisiana over the past century has been a true national tragedy, ravaging a unique wilderness, threatening the bayou way of life and leaving communities like New Orleans extremely vulnerable to hurricanes from the Gulf. And while much of the erosion has been caused by the re-engineering of the Mississippi River — which no longer deposits much sediment at the bottom of its Delta — quite a bit has been caused by the oil and gas industry, which gouged 8,000 miles of canals and pipelines through coastal wetlands. But the spill isn’t making that problem much worse. Coastal scientist Paul Kemp, a former Louisiana State University professor who is now a National Audubon Society vice president, compares the impact of the spill on the vanishing marshes to “a sunburn on a cancer patient.” (See TIME’s interactive graphic “100 Days of the BP Spill.”)

Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, another former LSU prof, who’s working for a spill-response contractor, says, “There’s just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we’re not seeing catastrophic impacts.” Van Heerden, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid from BP’s spill-response funds. “There’s a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it.”

The scientists I spoke with cite four basic reasons the initial eco-fears seem overblown. First, the Deepwater oil, unlike the black glop from the Valdez, is unusually light and degradable, which is why the slick in the Gulf is dissolving surprisingly rapidly now that the gusher has been capped. Second, the Gulf of Mexico, unlike Alaska’s Prince William Sound, is very warm, which has helped bacteria break down the oil. Third, heavy flows of Mississippi River water have helped keep the oil away from the coast, where it can do much more damage. And finally, Mother Nature can be incredibly resilient. Van Heerden’s assessment team showed me around Casse-tete Island in Timbalier Bay, where new shoots of Spartina grasses were sprouting in oiled marshes and new leaves were growing on the first black mangroves I’ve ever seen that were actually black. “It comes back fast, doesn’t it?” van Heerden said.

Rich Lowry at The Corner:

I said last week that I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a major story in the mainstream press in the months ahead saying that the spill isn’t going to be as much of a disaster as advertised. And here come those stories, much sooner than I expected. First, we had the New York Times saying that the spill, at least on the surface, has gone missing. And, now, we have Time magazine reporting the environmental damage has probably been exaggerated (h/t Mike Allen’s Playbook)

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones:

In short, the story is classic man-bites-dog, knee-jerk counterintuitivism. In reality, we have no idea yet how bad the damage in the Gulf is. The federal government is still only in the early stages of a natural resources damage assessment, a process to determine the full extent of the destruction. The government hasn’t even come up with an estime of how much oil leaked into the Gulf. And BP hasn’t yet finished the relief wells, meaning the disaster isn’t over yet. Meanwhile, the environmental impacts of the natural gas that has also been seeping into the Gulf remain unclear. And the article gives scant attention to the nearly 2 million gallons of dispersant applied by BP to break up the spill, which the country’s top environmental official has acknowledged is a science experiment of monumental proportions.

“The amount of oil and toxic dispersant pumped into the Gulf is unprecedented, and we know the marine impacts will be massive, we simply don’t know how long it will take for the ecosystem to rebound, and how significant the decrease in productivity will be until it recovers,” says Aaron Viles, campaign director at the Gulf Restoration Network.

Referring to the Time article’s author, Michael Grunwald, National Resources Defense Council lawyer David Pettit says, “I’m not sure what boats he’s been out on. When I went out from Plaquemines Parish two weeks ago, there were oiled marshes as far as the eye could see, plus all the islands we saw were oiled. I would agree that it’s too early to say what the long-term effect of that oiling will be, but by the same token I don’t think anyone can credibly say that there will be little or no effect.”

The article mentions the 488 dead sea turtles found in the Gulf, but says “only 17 were visibly oiled.” What it doesn’t mention, however, is that nearly 80 percent of those dead turtles are Kemp’s Ridley turtles, the most endangered species of sea turtle in the world. “When you get to that level of peril, every individual makes a difference,” says Doug Inkley, a wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Federation who was in the Gulf last week. Nor does a turtle need to be visibly oiled to die because of it; ingesting the oil, and the oil-dispersant mix, can also be deadly. And then there are the turtles that may have been burned alive.

I have quite a bit of respect for Grunwald, whose work on the Army Corps of Engineers and Hurricane Katrina was spectacular. But if he’s going to criticize folks for making premature doomsday predictions, then he, too, shouldn’t engage in making preemptive declarations that the problem is exaggerated, either. Doing so not only lets BP off the hook, but also contributes to the already waning interest in the disaster among the American public—nothing to see here, folks, back to your regularly scheduled environmental apathy.

Tom Maguire:

The oil was light, the water warm, and the bacteria feasted.  I recall a lot of talk that comparisons to the Valdez made no sense because Prince William Sound is so much colder, but still.

Here is a Rush flashback:

“The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there,” Limbaugh said. “It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.”

Well, doing nothing made no political sense, and I assume all the skimming and booms accomplished something.  That said, the after-action reports will be compiled by the same people that insisted Something Be Done, so the results may not be entirely unbiased.

Digby:

Rush Limbaugh has been saying the oil spill is nothing more than a little leak that has caused almost no damage. Time Magazine is backing him up saying since the news that the slick “disappearing” evidence points to the fact that the whole thing was over-hyped for ratings and fundraising by environmental groups. (Seriously.)

But perhaps “disappearing” the wrong word. The right word is “dispersing.” And there are just a few niggling issues to discuss about that

[…]

BP seems to have ably headed off the worst of the PR disaster by keeping the worst of the oil more or less off the shoreline. The actual disaster may have been made worse by the use of toxic chemicals. So it’s all good.

James Joyner:

It’s a fascinating contra-conventional wisdom story, although the bottom line seems to be not so much that the disaster was hyped but that we just don’t have the ability to forecast the effects of these incidents with great confidence.   And that nature seems to have enormously strong coping mechanisms.

Let’s hope this is right.

Settle In Kids, We’re In For Another Sherrod-y Week

Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator:

It isn’t true.Shirley Sherrod’s story in her now famous speech about the lynching of a relative is not true. The veracity and credibility of the onetime Agriculture Department bureaucrat at the center of the explosive controversy between the NAACP and conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart is now directly under challenge. By nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court. All of them dead.

[…]

Plain as day, Ms. Sherrod says that Bobby Hall, a Sherrod relative, was lynched. As she puts it, describing the actions of the 1940s-era Sheriff Claude Screws: “Claude Screws lynched a black man.”

This is not true. It did not happen. How do we know this?

The case, Screws vs. the U.S. Government, as she accurately says in the next two paragraphs, made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Which, with the agreement of all nine Justices of the day — which is to say May 7, 1945 — stated the facts of the killing of Bobby Hall this way:

The arrest was made late at night at Hall’s home on a warrant charging Hall with theft of a tire. Hall, a young negro about thirty years of age, was handcuffed and taken by car to the courthouse. As Hall alighted from the car at the courthouse square, the three petitioners began beating him with their fists and with a solid-bar blackjack about eight inches long and weighing two pounds. They claimed Hall had reached for a gun and had used insulting language as he alighted from the car. But after Hall, still handcuffed, had been knocked to the ground, they continued to beat him from fifteen to thirty minutes until he was unconscious. Hall was then dragged feet first through the courthouse yard into the jail and thrown upon the floor, dying. An ambulance was called, and Hall was removed to a hospital, where he died within the hour and without regaining consciousness. There was evidence that Screws held a grudge against Hall, and had threatened to “get” him.

The very first paragraph of the Supreme Court decision states:

1. Upon review of a judgment affirming the conviction, for violation of § 20 of the Criminal Code and conspiracy thereunto, of local law enforcement officers who arrested a negro citizen for a state offense and wrongfully beat him to death, the judgment is reversed with directions for a new trial.

In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States, with the basic facts of the case agreed to by all nine Justices in Screws vs. the U.S. Government, says not one word about Bobby Hall being lynched. Why? Because it never happened.

So why in the world would Ms. Sherrod say something like this?

Philip Klein at The American Spectator:

A regular part of writing for a political magazine or website is that you sometimes disagree with what is written, or even with decisions to publish certain articles. Such is my sentiment today with Jeff Lord’s piece on Shirley Sherrod. I am rendered speechless by a 4,000-word article that is based around the suggestion that somebody is a liar for saying that a black man was lynched, when he was merely beaten to death by a white sheriff who evidence suggests had previously threatened to “get him.”

John Tabin at The American Spectator:

What on Earth is Jeffrey Lord talking about on the mainpage? He says that the sentence “Claude Screws lynched a black man” is untrue. Lynching is defined as an extrajudicial killing by a mob (which can be as few as two people). The fatal beating of Bobby Hall most certainly qualifies.

Radley Balko at Reason:

The term lynching refers to a mob execution unsanctioned by law. It’s often associated with hanging, but there are dozens of documented, racially-motivated lynchings in American history that had nothing to do with hanging. (The murder of Emmit Till is probably the most famous example.) Lord is also flat wrong about federal anti-lynching legislation. These bills sought to punish local governments for sanctioning or refusing to prevent all forms of lynching, not just hanging. Here’s the text of the Dwyer bill, the first piece of federal anti-lynching legislation, introduced in 1918:

…the phrase “mob or riotous assemblage,” when used in this act, shall mean an assemblage composed of three or more persons acting in concert for the purpose of depriving any person of his life without authority of law as a punishment for or to prevent the commission of some actual or supposed public offense.

The bill never uses any form of the word hang. The more famous Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill also made no distinction about a lynch mob’s chosen method of execution. Had either bill passed, they would have held local law enforcement responsible for failing to prevent extrajudicial mob murders of any kind, including murder by black jacks and fisticuffs.

But Lord isn’t finished. Sherrod mentions in her speech that Hall’s murder made it to the Supreme Court, which overturned the civil rights conviction of Sheriff Claude Screws by a 5-4 vote. Lord next criticizes Sherrod for not telling her audience that one of the justices who overturned the conviction (Hugo Black) was not only a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but also an FDR appointee, New Deal supporter, and a “committed liberal activist,” just like Sherrod. How conniving of her!

It gets even better. Lord also helpfully informs us that….

Hugo Black was, of course, a lawyer. His law partner? That would be a man named Crampton Harris. Mr. Harris was the Klan “Cyclops” of the Birmingham Klavern. Does this weird term ring a recent bell? It should. “Exalted Cyclops” was the Klan post held in a later time in West Virginia — by another prominent future Democratic Senator named Robert Byrd.

It goes on like that. There’s no question that there’s a long, ugly history of racism in the progressive movement, and that today’s left glosses over that history. But it’s more than a little absurd to suggest Sherrod was being dishonest for not drawing all sorts of connections between progressives and racism simply because a New Dealer sat on the Supreme Court that denied her relative justice.

But that is Jeffrey Lord’s charge. So black people, take note. If you’re ever giving a speech in which you recount a racially-motivated injustice, be sure you’re thoroughly familiar with and relay to your audience not only any subsequent legal action related to the case, but also the political affiliations of any and all judges who presided over those legal proceedings, both at trial and on appeal, and whether or not they or any of their business partners (and presumably family members, friends, or golfing buddies) were racist. Also, and most importantly, never, ever, ever talk about any historical racial injustice without also mentioning that the late Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat (be sure to mention this part, it’s important!), was once an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan.

Anything less would be dishonest.

Tom Maguire:

Taking a a more pedestrian approach, I simply Googled the word “lynching“.  These are all on the first page; Wikipedia is number one:

Lynching – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lynching is extrajudicial punishment carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake and shooting, in order to punish an alleged …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching

Lynching

Lynching is the illegal execution of an accused person by a mob. The term lynching probably derived from the name Charles Lynch (1736-96), a justice of the …
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm

New Georgia Encyclopedia: Lynching

Of Georgia’s victims of lynch mob “justice,” the overwhelming majority (95 percent) were black, and they were murdered primarily, although not exclusively, …
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org › History and Archaeology

79.02.04: The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the …

Most of the lynchings were by hanging or shooting, or both. However, many were of a more hideous nature—burning at the stake, maiming, dismemberment, …
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/…/79.02.04.x.html

Even a casual clue-seeker might have guessed that there were problems with equating “lynching” and “hanging”.

Sweet Jiminy – Jeffrey Lord is embarrassing himself and annoying the rest of us, even at the American Spectator.

Adam Serwer at The American Prospect:

Now does three guys beating someone to death sound like an extrajudicial mob killing to you? Well Lord thinks it’s merely “brutal fisticuffs” because under the definition of lynching he just made up, you need a rope to make it official — I mean they didn’t even set the guy on fire for crying out loud! It’s almost as if instead of being a Southerner tortured by the knowledge of past racial injustice, he’s someone who didn’t know very much about lynching or segregation before he decided to call Shirley Sherrod a liar without bothering to use Google first. What’s sad is that when the generation that actually remembers what living under segregation was like is gone, this kind of historical revisionism is just going to get 10 times worse.

Finally, how many times are conservatives going to try to smear this woman before some sense of shame or decency kicks in?

Paul Campos:

It’s hard to understand how this kind of thing gets published in a world that includes editors, higher cognitive function, and/or common decency.

My favorite bit from the comments, defending the author’s use of a definition of lynching that limits it to hangings:

“Regardless of the dictionary’s definition, English is considered the most nuanced of languages because each word has a specific, unique meaning giving context and emotion to any written or spoken idea or statement. I don’t need a dictionary to instruct me on the accepted meaning of the word ‘lynching.’”

UPDATE: More Lord

Steve Benen

Charles Johnson at LGF

Two Ranches Near Laredo, Texas

Kimberly Dvorak at The Examiner:

In what could be deemed an act of war against the sovereign borders of the United States, Mexican drug cartels have seized control of at least two American ranches inside the U.S. territory near Laredo, Texas.

Two sources inside the Laredo Police Department confirmed the incident is unfolding and they would continue to coordinate with U.S. Border Patrol today. “We consider this an act of war,” said one police officer on the ground near the scene. There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Word broke late last night that Laredo police have requested help from the federal government regarding the incursion by the Los Zetas. It appears that the ranch owners have escaped without incident but their ranches remain in the hands of the blood thirsty cartels.

The Cypress Times:

Anonymous sources in law enforcement in the Laredo area tonight have passed on word that US law enforcement agencies are in the area and are weighing their options regarding the ranches. The media has been silent on this incident and some law enforcement in the area says that they are furious that the media is not reporting the whole story of the continued violence along the border. Their frustrations are understandable because keeping the truth suppressed continues to hamper law enforcement from receiving the true support they need along the border.

The ranch assaults come on the heels of attacks in Nuevo Laredo that shut the city down as a gun-battle raged in the streets. Los Zetas blocked off intersections with vehicles and used fragmentation grenades to attack Mexican law enforcement. In the end 12 were killed and 21 injured in the assaults. Citizens in the area were told to stay in their homes and bullets whizzed all around.

Michelle Malkin:

There’s a new outbreak of disorder at the southern border this weekend.

The AP reports on gun battles plaguing the region across from Laredo, Texas:

Late-night gunbattles with gangs who forced citizens from their cars and used the vehicles to block streets paralyzed a border city, sound of gunfire alarmed Texans on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande.

The Nuevo Laredo city government posted messages on Facebook warning citizens to stay indoors as the battles erupted at several intersections in the city across from Laredo, Texas.

Frightened people on the U.S. side of the border called emergency dispatchers after hearing the gunfire, Laredo police spokesman Joe Baeza said Thursday. But he said there was no spillover violence.

“We were getting reports from people who live on the river’s edge that they could hear gunfire and explosions from the Mexico side,” Baeza said.

“We didn’t have any incidents on the American side. It’s hard for people to understand who don’t live here,” he added. “They’re not Vikings, they’re not going to invade us, it doesn’t work that way.”

Nuevo Laredo city officials said they could not immediately confirm witness reports that several gunmen were killed.

Despite those denials, rumors are swirling of a Zetas-led invasion into Texas ranches. Digger’s Realm, a veteran immigration blogger, has the story:

The bloodbath continues along our southern border and now word is coming in that Los Zetas, the highly trained killers formerly with the Gulf Cartel, have crossed into the United States and taken over at least two ranches in the Laredo, Texas area. I am receiving word that the owners of the ranches have evacuated without being harmed. The source is law enforcement in the area.

(Update 2 story is now 100% confirmed by second source within the Laredo Police Department)

Founder of the San Diego Minutemen Jeff Schwilk tipped me off to this story and passes along the following information on the location. The ranches are said to be “near Mines Rd. and Minerales Annex Rd about 10 miles NW of I-35″.

Update 1 (Statement from Mr. Schwilk)

I can personally vouch that this info came in late last night from a reliable police source inside the Laredo PD. There is currently a standoff between the unknown size Zeta forces and U.S. Border Patrol and local law enforcement on two ranches on our side of the Rio Grande. The source tells us he considers this an “act of war” and that the military is needed on the border now!

Dan Riehl:

This can’t actually be happening, can it? What, do they figure the numb-nuts in the WH is so weak they can get away with a move like this? Okay, on second thought, maybe they have a point. But still. Hell, the right configuration of Texans could end this nonsense. Retired special forces, anyone?

Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee:

Twitter exploded a while ago about this story, which claims that heavily-armed Los Zetas gunmen of the Gulf Cartel have taken over ranches on the U.S. side of the border.

My curiosity got the better of me, and so I called the Laredo Police Department, and had a delightful chat with the acting watch commander, Sgt. Perez.

Sgt. Perez informed me that I was her seventh caller about this claim since she came on duty this afternoon. She stipulated two things that blows holes in the invasion claim.

1. The location of the alleged invasion is outside of their city-limits jurisdiction, so they would not be involved, and;
2. while they would not be involved in any law enforcement response outside of their jurisdiction, they work closely with the county sheriff’s office and would know if such an event is occurring.

She also provided me the number of the Webb County Sheriff’s Department. The deputy that answered the phone there was less amused, having also dealt with this rumor multiple times in a short amount of time. She also told me that there was no invasion and no law enforcement siege, and that deputies were continuing normal operations.

Don’t believe the hype.

Tom Maguire:

However, if I were to believe the hype, this sort of story would be the reason – just a couple of days ago Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican side of the border, was out of control:

Several intersections in the City of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico were shut down as gun battles erupted between the Mexican military and heavily armed “hit men” from a Mexican drug cartel. The gunfire could be heard across the U.S. border in Laredo, Texas leading citizens there to call 911.

The Latin American Herald Tribune reports, ““Nine criminals, two civilians and a soldier were killed in the three clashes between elements of the National Defense Secretariat and members of organized crime, and 21 people were wounded.” That information is attributed to the Government Secretariat from Mexico.

The U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo had posted warnings on its website hours before the gunfire was reported by Texas citizens, “We have received credible reports of widespread violence occurring now between narcotics-trafficking organizations and the Mexican army in Nuevo Laredo.”

Here is a US travel advisory from July 16 warning visitors to Mexico that, however bad the situation was, it’s gotten worse.

So – is it possible that a group of outnumbered and outgunned cartel members crossed the border figuring it would be better to be captured by the American government than shot by the Mexican federales?  That strikes me as not-impossible.

The story saying that the cartels are coming adds this detail:

There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A news blackout makes sense while the diplomats sort this out (and certainly Team Obama wouldn’t want this publicized while they are suing Arizona) but then again, any conspiracy theorist would know to include that.

I would say, stay tuned and stay skeptical.

James Joyner:

Reports from The Examiner and The Cypress Times that thugs from the Los Zetas drug cartel have seized two Laredo, Texas ranches are spreading through the blogosphere.  Is this the first wave of the Reconquista?

Well, Confederate Yankee’s Bob Owens called the Laredo Police Department and the Webb County Sheriff’s Department and told that no such thing was happening.

The Laredo Times could also find no information to support the claim. There’s are registration-only stories on the front page with headlines “Stores close due to cartels” and “Cartel loses chopper,” so they do seem to be reporting aggressively on the cartels.

Pat Dollard:

Kimberly is adamantly standing by her story, and gave me the name of one of her three sources inside both the Laredo Police and Webb County Sheriff’s Departments. She says two of those sources not only confirmed the story of the ranches being seized, but elaborated in great detail on what was happening. She also has other sources on the ground, non-law enforcement. She is mid-stream in developing and further reporting the whole story, and has reason reason to believe that law enforcement is in mid-operation on the ranches, and do not want that operation interrupted with publicity before they are finished.

Given the shootout that occurred on the 22nd, it would also make some sense that the ranches were simply occupied as safe havens by retreating Zeta gunman.

Kimberly has a record as a credible journalist, with established sources inside the Mexican cartels themselves.

I have no idea what quite is or isn’t going on here, but I say let’s give ol’ Kim the hours ahead to track all of this, and flesh it out, one way or the other. She’s asked for the rope, and I’m giving it to her.

As someone else likes to say:

Developing…

Where Is Radar O’Reilly When You Need Him?

Calculated Risk:

Usually the Fed minutes are pretty boring, but the minutes for the two day meeting held on June 22nd and 23rd, to be released on Wednesday, might be a little more interesting.

This release will include a revised forecast. Look for the Fed to revise down estimates for GDP and for inflation. And revise up estimates for unemployment.

The Fed April forecast for 2010 (most recent) was:

Change in real GDP: 3.2% to 3.7% (probably under 3.0% in first half, and GDP growth will probably slow in the 2nd half)

Unemployment rate: 9.1% to 9.5% (Unemployment averaged 9.7% in the first half, and will probably remain elevated)

PCE inflation: 1.2% to 1.5% (PCE inflation increased at a 0.7% annualized rate over the first 5 months – and appears to be dropping).Also the Fed might have discussed possible additional easing measures at the June meeting, and if so, it will be interesting to see the options discussed.

Jon Hilsenrath at WSJ:

Fed officials still expect the U.S. economy to keep growing. But an updated forecast to be released Wednesday afternoon with the minutes of the Fed’s late-June policy meeting is likely to show that officials have trimmed their second-half forecasts—as have many private forecasters.

One topic under debate is the possibility that today’s already-low inflation may turn into a debilitating bout of deflation, a broad drop in prices across the economy.

Fed officials disagree on the risk of deflation. A few see it as a threat; others call it very unlikely, Fed officials said in recent interviews.

For now, the Fed—and particularly its most-powerful member, Chairman Ben Bernanke, who has ultimate say—appears to be very much in wait-and-see mode. But differences among his colleagues are growing more evident. One problem: Having already cut interest rates to near zero, most of the Fed’s options for spurring growth aren’t very appealing.

[…]

In public comments, Mr. Bernanke has played down the risk of a double-dip recession. But he has been keeping his options open.

The Fed is better equipped to solve some economic problems than others. As Mr. Bernanke noted in a now-famous 2002 speech, the Fed has the power to fight deflation—or falling wages and prices—by printing money.

But the bank’s tools aren’t perfectly suited to reducing unemployment, which is influenced by a range of factors including fiscal policy, regulation and global demand.

Paul Krugman on Hilsenrath:

Sorry, but that’s totally wrong. The question is whether, at the zero bound, the Fed has the ability to increase aggregate demand — full stop. If it can increase aggregate demand, it can fight both deflation and unemployment; if not, not.

In a way, the problem with Bernanke’s speech was that he made increasing demand and fighting deflation sound too easy. The Fed can print money, if you increase the supply of something its price will fall, end of story.

But as I tried to point out a long time ago, this simple story breaks down when short-term interest rates are near zero.

Here’s one way to think about it: when the Fed conducts an open-market operation, buying short-term debt with newly printed money, this normally affects the short rate because bonds and money are imperfect substitutes: money yields less, but has the advantage of being something you can use directly to make payments, that is, it’s more liquid.

But when you have bought so much debt and created so much money that rates are near zero, the public is saturated with liquidity; from that point on, they’re holding money simply as a store of value, which makes it no different from bonds — and hence a perfect substitute for bonds. And at that point further open-market operations do nothing — they just swap one zero-interest asset for another, with no effect on anything.

So why not forget about open-market operations, and just drop the stuff from helicopters? Well, remember that at this point cash and short-term bonds are equivalent. So a helicopter drop is just like a temporary lump-sum tax cut. And we would expect people to save much or most of such a tax cut — all of it, if you believe in full Ricardian equivalence.

Brad DeLong:

But we don’t believe in full Ricardian equivalence. Maybe we would if this year’s helicopter drop was to be followed by next year’s great helicopter vacuuming, but it isn’t. So printing money now–and promising never to buy it back–is a way of having some impact on future inflation, and thus of getting some traction. Moreover, “much or most” is not all.

The “much or most” is, I think, reason to go for money-financed government spending as a preferable policy to a helicopter drop–which is a money-financed tax cut. And it is reason to go for an explicit raising of the Federal Reserve’s long-term inflation rate target from 2% to 3%.

But if we are not going to do either of those things–and it looks like we are not–it’s time to rev up the helicopters…

Tyler Cowen:

First, cash and short-term bonds may be near-substitutes but they are not literally, strictly equivalent.  The nominal rate on T-bills is not exactly zero and furthermore you can’t use a T-bill for every retail purchase.  The demand curve for real cash need slope down only slightly for a quantity theory result to hold.  After everyone spends the new cash balances, and prices rise, people end up with the quantity of real balances which they initially desired.  These equilibria have “knife-edge” properties, where “identical to T-Bills” and “nearly identical to T-Bills” do not bring the same results.  Tsiang showed this in a very good JMCB article on Friedman’s optimum quantity of money, in the early 1970s and you might regard it as implicit in Bewley’s Econometrica article on Friedman.

Second, after a helicopter drop no one need expect future taxes to be raised to retire the money (although maybe a sufficiently credible government could create such an expectation).  So there is no Ricardian motive to save the new cash, as Brad DeLong points out.  Indeed, if you think there is some chance that others will spend the money, raising the price level, you will want to spend your new cash soon, so as to preserve its value against forthcoming price inflation.  The resulting game-theoretic equilibrium, applying dominant strategies, again leads to higher prices, higher aggregate demand, and the desired quantity of real cash balances held.

Those are not the only possible cases (see the work of Fischer Black) but I take them to be the most sensible default cases.  Both indicate that a helicopter drop of cash will work fine in boosting aggregate demand.

The most likely scenario for no positive AD effect is simply that the helicopter drop is so small that no one expects a price level rise and thus no one expects an inflationary tax on the new cash, people (for bounded rationality reasons) treat the new cash as a transfer purely to themselves, the precautionary motive for saving is strong, and so the new money is simply held.  A larger helicopter drop should overcome that inertia, if need be.

Maybe these arguments are incorrect but they date from a consensus established in the mid- to late 1960s and early 1970s, much of it springing from Patinkin’s book on money and the subsequent discussions thereof.  Krugman suggests this perspective is wrong, but he hasn’t yet given me — or others — a reason to budge from it.

Tom Maguire:

Well, suppose our helicopter flies very carefully and only hovers over the homes of the unemployed; further, suppose the pilot also announces “this is unemployment insurance” before pushing the money out the door.

Now, at least as I understand current Dem talking points, this is no longer a useless tax cut but a vital stimulus program.  But I am not sure when the substantive change occurred.  As the money fell through the air, maybe?

Well.  The unemployed may calculate that aggregate taxes are likely to rise in the future, but they may also guess that those taxes will rise for Someone Else (it’s the American Way!).  In which case, they will feel free to spend all of their helicopter windfall.  Of course, The Current Rich may increase their own saving in anticipation of these future taxes, but what about the Future Rich?  Are law school students going to forego pizza in anticipation of higher taxes on their partnership income in fifteen years?  Maybe not.  (As a related puzzle, why is it that temporary tax cuts don’t spur permanent changes in hiring and investment but temporary spending increases do?  File that under Unsolved Mysteries.)

Could similar logic apply to a lower-income payroll tax cut today made up by (likely) taxes on “the rich” later, resulting in transfers as stimulative as unemployment benefit extensions?  I am not smart enough to be a Dem strategist or psychologist. I just know tax cuts are something they can’t say yes to.

Matthew Yglesias:

Meanwhile, I think Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong (and again), and Tyler Cowen are really all saying the same thing about the prospects for re-inflating the economy by printing money and dropping it from helicopters.

To make monetary stimulus work, you need to raise inflation expectations. But to achieve this, you need token of your inflationeering. If you drop the money and say “don’t worry about inflation, I have an exit strategy” that won’t work. If you just drop the money and don’t say anything, it might or might not work depending on some hard to assess factors. But if you drop the money and say “I’m dropping this money because I want prices to go up faster in order to catch up to the long-run trend” that should work.

Noah Millman at The American Scene:

I have a question for people who know more economics than I do.

Right now, if I understand the state of debate about the Fed, there are two camps.

One camp holds that the Fed can do a variety of things – such as purchasing debt of somewhat longer maturity than T-bills – that are metaphorized as “dropping money from helicopters” in order to reduce the value of money, which should stimulate demand, and help pull us out from what might otherwise be a double-dip recession.

The other camp holds that the Fed really shouldn’t do these sorts of things at all except in a Titanic-scale emergency because of the risk to the ultimate credibility of the currency – that you’ll overshoot the desired outcome of “inflation expectations go up” and go directly to “the Fed’s gone mad – let’s put all our money in gold (or Euros, or whatever looks like a better store of value than dollars that are being dropped from helicopters).”

(Interestingly, Paul Krugman, in his 1998 article on Japan argues that it is only the expectation of precisely this kind of irresponsibility that could possibly make unconventional monetary policy work:

If this stylized analysis bears any resemblance to the real problem facing Japan, the policy implications are radical. Structural reforms that raise the long-run growth rate (or relax non-price credit constraints) might alleviate the problem; so might deficit-financed government spending. But the simplest way out of the slump is to give the economy the inflationary expectations it needs. This means that the central bank must make a credible commitment to engage in what would in other contexts be regarded as irresponsible monetary policy – that is, convince the private sector that it will not reverse its current monetary expansion when prices begin to rise!

Put that in your rotor and smoke it, helicopter Ben.)

In any event, the alternative to action by the Fed is action by the Treasury – increase borrowing and put the money into the economy via either government spending or tax cuts. We all know the political constraints on this kind of action, and I rather think it’s subject to the same kind of criticism – if the Treasury issues a whole bunch of 10-year debt, that should push up the yield on government bonds, which should stimulate more private savings to take advantage of the yields, and that rise in private savings should offset the stimulative effect of the tax cuts, so there isn’t any point. Japan’s public debt has grown positively brobdignagian since the early 1990s, but it’s all financed by domestic savings and has therefore traded off with dwindling private sector demand; hence it’s done precious little to stimulate growth. Again, the only way to make this work is to reduce confidence that the government will pay back the bonds in good coin – in other words, to behave truly irresponsibly.

So now we come to my question.

Our goal is to increase the output of the economy, either increasing aggregate demand for goods and services relative to demand for money (the demand side approach), or encouraging the deployment of “dead” money in productive investment (the supply side approach).

Wouldn’t a meaningful wealth tax do both?

A tax on wealth (financial assets and real property) is functionally equivalent to a rise in inflation (that’s why inflation is also described as a tax on savings). Money currently earning a nominal zero percent per year in a savings account would now earn negative two percent per year because of the tax. Spending on assets that naturally depreciate (cars, toasters, trips to Florida) would look more attractive than watching one’s money evaporate through taxes. So would taking risk on a productive investment that might yield a big return but might go bust – just as when inflation expectations rise people shift out of safe short-term bonds and into riskier assets, to “stay ahead of inflation.”

More Krugman:

Does the Fed have the right to do a helicopter drop, i.e., just hand out cash? My guess is not: it’s empowered to buy assets, which is what it does in an open-market operation, but not just to give stuff away.

So to do the equivalent of a helicopter drop, the Fed would have to work with the Treasury: it would have to buy government debt, and the Treasury would then hand out the money.

But the Treasury can’t do this without enabling legislation.

And enabling legislation can’t pass without Ben Nelson.

I think we have a problem here. There’s a hole in the bucket.

However, the Fed can change its inflation target any time it likes.

Yglesias:

I think that with a modicum of creative thinking the Fed could get around that. True, the only thing the Fed can do is buy assets. But who’s to say what constitutes an asset? They could start up a Sock-Backed Lending Facility (SBLF) that offers “loans” of up to $1,000 per person in exchange for a pair of socks as collateral. Citizens who fail to repay the loan default ownership of their pair of socks to the Fed but don’t otherwise face any consequences. That’s not the same as literally dropping money from helicopters, but it’s about the same.

The important thing, as Krugman was saying earlier, isn’t so much what exactly you do but how you frame it in terms of expectations. You don’t want people to think of this as an early government tax refund that’s going to have to be repaid soon enough. People need to see that you’ve got a wacky bunch of characters running the central bank who are determined to keep printing up cash and trading it for socks until the economy re-inflates back to the trend level. The idea isn’t just that you want people to spend the $1,000 (or go buy new socks), it’s that you want to purge the economy of the excessive demand for money and get people thinking they’d like to trade their money for something else—consumer goods, fixed investment, blah blah.

Now it seems the Fed isn’t inclined to do this, but it can be encouraged to change its mind. The problem is that you can’t have the President of the United States running around talking about belt-tightening. The country isn’t stricken by a crop plague that’s inducing a famine. We’re not at 9 percent unemployment because we’ve become a society with less skills or capital goods than we had ten years ago. If there’s less stuff to go around, then everyone has to tighten their belts. But our shortage is a shortage of money and demand and the government doesn’t fix that by tightening belts, it fixes it by creating more money and more demand.

UPDATE: More Krugman

Bruce Bartlett

More Yglesias

The Rich Are Deadbeats, Just Like Us!

David Streitfeld in NYT:

No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.

The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

“The rich are different: they are more ruthless,” said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist.

Calculated Risk:

Were these borrowers really “rich”? Or did they just buy more home than they could really afford?

The “movin’ on up” theme for distressed properties is something we’ve been discussing for some time. We’re all subprime now!

Obviously more distressed sales will put downward pressure on prices in these areas.

Atrios:

It’s a bit hard to comprehend that this housing/foreclosure crisis stuff has been going on for…fucking years already. As is so often the case, the maintstream media got it completely wrong initially, painting it as a “subprime” crisis due to bad behavior by unworthy brown people.

Naked Capitalism:

One has to be cautious in invoking cultural stereotypes. However, when the subject of defaults or mortgage mods comes up here and in other forums, almost inevitably some readers will start off on a bit of a rant: “I pay my mortgage/rent, why should these people get a break?” And these discussions often take a personal tone, as in they resent neighbors getting a break, or they claim to know someone who went hog wild spending on their home ATM and have now had their comeuppance (having never met anyone like that, I cannot verify if this pattern is anywhere near as prevalent as it is alleged to be). The problem is that their willingness to see their neighbors suffer, when it really is their neighbors, is cutting off their nose to spite their face, since foreclosures, particularly when homes sit vacant, drag all property values nearby down.

The perverse part is a New York Times article today indicates that the affluent are far less burdened by consideration of morality in their financial decisions, including their mortgages: “’The rich are different: they are more ruthless,’ said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist.”

Default rates are highest among plus million dollar properties. The problem with the NYT account is that it discussion of defaults at the high end mixes apples and oranges. Defaults on second homes are mingled with defaults on primary residences. Second homes are the first to go when financial stresses become acute. And because a lot of borrowers claimed that vacation digs were primary residences to borrow on better terms, there isn’t an easy and obvious way to construct clean data sets (as in defaults on primary residences by income level or home price v. those on second homes).

Tom Maguire:

First, are we talking about “the rich”, or just people who live in areas with expensive real estate?  For anyone not from this continent (perhaps including the Times reporter), similar homes vary widely in price across the nation, as this CNN survey reminds us:

This [2009 Coldwell Banker Home Price Comparison] index, released Wednesday, is an “apples-to-apples” comparison of similar homes in so-called “move-up buyer” neighborhoods. It compares the prices charged for 2,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-and-one-half bath, single-family homes in more than 300 markets around the nation.

The overall U.S. average for such a house is $363,401, but in Grayling [MI], it sells for just $112,675, the most affordable market in the nation.

La Jolla [CA], on the other hand, is the most expensive; a comparable house there goes for a cool $2.125 million. That more than $2 million disparity is up from 2004, when the spread between the most expensive and most affordable towns was $1.5 million.

So – is this CoreLogic study making any adjustments for owner income and average local prices?  Can we safely conclude that “rich” Californians in million dollar homes are defaulting more frequently than admirable proles in their modest $100,000 homes in the heartland?

Or (dare we ask) is it possible that the biggest mortgages are more likely to be found in the areas that saw the biggest bubble in real estate prices and have subsequently seen the greatest declines?  If Core Logic is not controlling for regional variations in price than we aren’t really looking at “rich” versus “the rest of us”; we are looking at an inconclusive mix of rich v. poor and bubble areas v. rationally non-exuberant areas.  Per this Housing Tracker data, a million dollar home in San Jose is at the 75th percentile of listed homes; in Cleveland, the 75th percentile value is $229,000 and a million dollar home (let alone mortgage) is off the charts.

And how old are these defaulting mortgages?  Imagine Sally buys a modest California home for $800,000 in 2004.  Harry, with a similar income to Sally, buys an identical house next door a few years later for $1.2 million, with a $1 million mortgage.  A few years later, both houses are worth $750,000.

Harry defaults, making him rich and a ruthless scoundrel; Sally continues to make her payments, making her a stalwart and a princess of virtue (whose mortgage is also above water.)

Has Core Logic adjusted for any of the likely timing effects of the bubble?  Only the Times reporter knows for sure.

Finally, dare we ask for a baseline?  The Times presents charts stretching all the way back to 2005, from which we learn that defaults were few when prices were rising.  Thanks for sharing.  How did larger mortgages look versus smaller mortgages back in the real estate swoon of the early 90’s, hmm?

The Times could make a start by putting the study online.

LEST I FORGET:  There may also be an institutional quirk to consider.  Anecdotally, I know a chap with a balloon mortgage coming due soon enough that the market will never recover in time.  He can keep current on the payments, but will never be able to refinance at current prices, and doesn’t have the cash to bring his equity up to the new lending standard.  He would like to negotiate an extension with the bank to defer the day of reckoning, but they won’t even talk to him until he is in default.  So, any day now he is going to start missing payments just to get their attention.  It all sounds dumb, but that may well be going on elsewhere.

Felix Salmon:

Streitfeld’s piece is bylined Los Altos, California, a town where the median home is $1.5 million. In such towns, you don’t need to be a millionaire to find yourself in a multi-million-dollar home. Let’s say you’re a tech geek who found yourself with $200,000 for a downpayment on a house over the course of the dot-com bubble. So you buy a million-dollar home, and then start up a series of companies. You need to live, of course, and you can’t afford to pay yourself a salary, so you do two or three cash-out refinancings on a home which by 2007 was worth $2.5 million. Before you know it, you’ve got a $2 million mortgage, no way of paying it, and a home which is worth significantly less than the mortgage. Realistically, you have no choice but to default.

Even after accounting for your initial $200,000 downpayment and a series of mortgage-interest payments along the way, you still took out of the house much more money than you put in: the cost of living there over the past 10 years has probably been negative to the tune of well over half a million dollars. Essentially, the house has paid you $50,000 a year — money which is easy to spend, and is now long gone.

In any event, these were jumbo mortgages when they were taken out, and they’re jumbo mortgages now — none of this has anything to do with Fannie or Freddie, except insofar as the homeowning majority of the population might yet wake up and, emulating the rich, default on their underwater homes. And so the GSEs are desperately, and unconvincingly, trying to persuade them not to do so:

Knowing the costs and factoring in the time horizon, some borrowers have made the calculation that it is better to purposely default on the mortgage. While I understand how that might well be a good decision for certain borrowers, that doesn’t make it good social policy. That’s because strategic defaults affect many other families and communities. And these costs – or as they are known in economic jargon, externalities – are not factored into the individual borrower’s calculations.

Well, sure, it’s not good social policy to strategically default. Fine. That doesn’t stop the rich, and it shouldn’t stop the rest of us either. I think it’s pretty clear which direction we’re headed in, and moralistic exhortations aren’t going to turn the tide.

Megan McArdle:

“CoreLogic data suggest that the rich do not seem to have concerns about the civic good uppermost in their mind, especially when it comes to investment and second homes. Nor do they appear to be particularly worried about being sued by their lender or frozen out of future loans by Fannie Mae, possible consequences of default.”

This is just nonsense.  The CoreLogic data tell you how many people are in default.  They do not tell you how concerned those people are about the civic good, nor what may or may not be worrying them in those 3 am moments when they contemplate the wreckage of their housing dreams.

We don’t even know that these people have more resources to draw upon, as Mr Khater implies.  All the data I’ve seen show that millionaires–aka “high net worth individuals” are not particularly likely to live in million dollar homes.  Who are?  People who live in areas with expensive real estate.  And where is the expensive real estate?  Why, often in the areas that experienced the biggest inflation during the housing bubble.

Those are places where homeowners are much more likely than the national average to owe more than the house is worth.  And being underwater on your mortgage is very highly correlated with default–much more tightly correlated than the local unemployment rate.

This has often been advanced as evidence that strategic default is popular, but I’ve seen no compelling data backing up this conclusion.  There are other reasons that being underwater makes you more likely to default.  For one thing, it makes it quite likely that you took out a loan in the bubbliest years, when bankers were allowing eagerly encouraging people to take on too much debt relative to their income.  For another, it means that if you need to relocate, get divorced, or have some sort of an income shock, you can’t take the otherwise obvious step of selling the house.  From what I’m hearing, most banks won’t even consider a short sale until you’ve already missed some payments.

Shouldn’t people with million dollar homes have more resources to fall back on?  Absolutely.  The best you can say about people in that situation is that they were probably living beyond their means well before things got to this point.  But the bubbly areas–especially California–were characterized by a grim competition in which the houses in the good school districts went to the people who were most willing to overstretch themselves.  Those people didn’t build up a big reserve of savings that might allow them to meet the mortgage payments while they find a new job, because they were pouring everthing into securing the best possible education for their children.

And in some ways, people with those jumbo mortgages are less able to adjust in crisis.  If your mortgage payment is $1000 a month, shaving $200 off a $700 monthly grocery bill and quitting smoking probably gets you close to halfway towards keeping the mortgage current.  If your mortgage is $10,000 a month, and one spouse loses their job, no manipulation of other basic expenses will help much.

I’m still more sympathetic to anyone with a $1,000 mortgage who loses the house, of course.  And I still think it’s more likely than not that the wealthy are leading whatever trend their may be in strategic defaults.  But that’s just a hunch, because, like the New York Times, I don’t have any data to back up that belief.

Ross Douthat in NYT:

The rich are different from you and me. They know how to game the system.

That’s one interpretation, at least, of last week’s news that Americans with million-dollar mortgages are defaulting at almost twice the rate of the typical homeowner. It suggests an infuriating scenario in which the average American slaves away to keep Wells Fargo or Bank of America off his back, while fat cats and high fliers cut their losses and sail off to the next investment opportunity.

That isn’t exactly what’s happening, most likely. Just because you have a million-dollar mortgage doesn’t make you a millionaire, and a lot of the fat-cat defaulters probably aren’t that fat anymore. Chances are they’re more like Teresa and Joe Giudice from “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” tacky reality-TV climbers who recently filed for bankruptcy after their decadent lifestyle turned out to be a debt-enabled fantasy.

Still, watching the Giudices sashay through their onyx-encrusted mansion, and knowing that thousands of similarly profligate homeowners are simply walking away from their debts, it’s easy to succumb to a little class-warrior fantasizing. (Pitchforks, tar, feathers … that sort of thing.)

The trick is to channel those impulses in a constructive direction. The left-wing instinct, when faced with high-rolling irresponsibility, is usually to call for tax increases on the rich. But the problem, here and elsewhere, isn’t exactly that we tax high rollers’ incomes too lightly. It’s that we subsidize their irresponsibility too heavily — underwriting their bad bets and bailing out their follies. The class warfare we need is a conservative class warfare, which would force the million-dollar defaulters to pay their own way from here on out.

Consider the spread that the Giudices currently occupy (pending potential foreclosure proceedings, of course). The first million of its reported $1.7 million price tag is presumably covered by the federal mortgage-interest tax deduction. Intended to boost middle-class homebuyers, this deduction has gradually turned into a huge tax break for the affluent, with most of the benefits flowing to homeowners with cash income over $100,000. In much of the country, it’s a McMansion subsidy, whose costs to the federal Treasury are covered by the tax dollars of Americans who either rent or own more modest homes.

This policy is typical of the way the federal government does business. In case after case, Washington’s web of subsidies and tax breaks effectively takes money from the middle class and hands it out to speculators and have-mores. We subsidize drug companies, oil companies, agribusinesses disguised as “family farms” and “clean energy” firms that aren’t energy-efficient at all. We give tax breaks to immensely profitable corporations that don’t need the money and boondoggles that wouldn’t exist without government favoritism.

James Joyner on Douthat:

He’s right, of course.  None of these policies make sense when looked at in terms of societal cost-benefit analysis.

Of course, that’s not how these things get into the tax code.  They’re either sops to lobbyists who simply care more about the issue than those who pay for the subsidies or, in many cases, an unintended consequence of buying the votes of the middle class with tax dollars only to see the benefits going to those who don’t need them.

How Low Will He Go? How Low Will He Go?

Dan Balz and Jon Cohen at WaPo:

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

Regard for Obama is still higher than it is for members of Congress, but the gap has narrowed. About seven in 10 registered voters say they lack confidence in Democratic lawmakers and a similar proportion say so of Republican lawmakers.

Overall, more than a third of voters polled — 36 percent — say they have no confidence or only some confidence in the president, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans. Among independents, this disillusionment is higher still. About two-thirds of all voters say they are dissatisfied with or angry about the way the federal government is working.

CBS News:

Economists have declared the economic recession over largely over, but most Americans don’t share their optimism, and they are increasingly blaming President Obama for their money woes.

Mr. Obama’s approval rating on the economy has tumbled five percentage points from last month, according to a new CBS News poll, with just 40 percent of those polled expressing full confidence in his actions.

More than half of those questioned (54 percent) said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy. Last month, 45 percent approved. The drop in approval has been seen mostly among independents, just 35 percent of whom now say they approve.

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary:

In short, Obama has lost the confidence of the voters on the issues that matter most. (”Just 43 percent of all Americans now say they approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove.”) They will take it out on those with a “D” next to their names in November.

DiA at The Economist:

Things look bad for the Democrats, but I’m not sure I agree with Jennifer Rubin’s oversimplified assessment that the poll “has nothing but bad, very bad, news for Obama.” Buried deep in the Post‘s report is the surprising news that Mr Obama’s overall job-approval rating stands at 50%. Granted, “those who strongly disapprove now significantly outnumber those who strongly approve”, according to the paper. But with the unemployment rate at 9.5%, I’d expect much worse. Mr Obama’s rating puts him in a similar position to Bill Clinton in 1994, and ahead of where Ronald Reagan was in 1982, when he too struggled with a severe recession. Mr Clinton’s Democrats lost both the House and the Senate, and Mr Reagan’s Republicans lost a bunch of seats in the House, but both went on to easily win re-election two years later. So, bad news for the president’s party, but not all bad for the president himself. The worse news for Mr Obama is that voters seem to be prioritising deficit reduction over further stimulus spending, which will make it hard for the president to do anything about that sticky unemployment rate.

John McCormack at The Weekly Standard:

One bright spot for President Obama in an otherwise dreary Washington Post/ABC News poll:

On the issues tested in the poll, Obama’s worst ratings come on his handling of the federal budget deficit, where 56 percent disapprove and 40 percent approve. He scores somewhat better on health-care reform (45 percent approve) and regulation of the financial industry (44 percent). His best marks come on his duties as commander in chief, with 55 percent approving.

Voters also disapproved of Obama’s job performance on the one other issue tested by the Post: 54 percent disapprove and 43 percent approve of how he’s handling the economy.

So Obama’s head was above water on just one of the five issues tested by the Post: his performance as commander in chief. Yet his overall approval rating is at 50 percent, which suggests that perhaps the president’s determination to prosecute the war in Afghanistan is propping up his overall job performance rating.

Jonathan Chait at TNR:

At the same time, the poll also shows that the public clearly favors the Democrats over the Republicans. The Post story about the poll leads with the fact that only 43% of the public has confidence in President Obama to make the right decisions for the country’s future. That’s low. But only 26% have confidence in Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions, which is far lower than Obama, and even lower than Congressional Democrats, in whom 32% have confidence. That’s not an anomaly. Asked which party will do a better job of handling the economy, 42% say the Democrats and 34% say the GOP.

So, in sum, there’s a crucial swing vote bloc that prefers the policies of the Democrats over the Republicans but plans to vote for the Republicans anyway.

Why would anybody do that? Delving into the psychology of voters is tricky. But clearly, it vindicates the sense that voters hold the governing party responsible for the state of the country, which mainly means the state of the economy. Voters in the middle are not going to compare the policies of the two parties. They’re just going to vote yay or nay on how things appear to be going. That makes more sense when you consider things from the perspective of voters who don’t follow politics very closely.

Tom Maguire:

A new WaPo/ABC News poll shows Obama is still taking on water as he continues his Titantic fail.  Two bright spots for Dems – although Dems are moving down, Republicans are not really moving up.  And the poll didn’t ask about immigration, thereby sparing Obama more mortification:

Confidence in Obama reaches new low, Washington Post-ABC News poll finds

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 13, 2010; A01

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

As a aside, I am sort of missing the fawning coverage of Obama’s oh-so-sweet date night in Manhattan with Michelle.  I wonder if we will be seeing any more date nights like that before the election

Derek Thompson at The Atlantic:

Finally, this analysis requires a big asterisk. Democrats are almost certainly doomed to fall by the dozens in the House this November. It’s not the candidates, it’s the conditions: plus-nine percent unemployment; slow business investment; continuing weakness in the housing sector. (As the graphs below demonstrate, income growth is a particularly accurate indicator of losses.)

History will debate and determine whether the Obama/Bernanke regime wisely handled the recession. In the nearer term, the voters will make that judgment themselves, and there isn’t much evidence from July 2010 to suggest that the recovery, or the Democrats’ fortunes, are ready to pick up any time soon.

On A Magic Carpet Ride

Byron York at The Washington Examiner:

In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.”  Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is “perhaps foremost,” because it will help Islamic nations “feel good” about their scientific accomplishments.

In the same interview, Bolden also said the United States, which first sent men to the moon in 1969, is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

The Jawa Report:

.A couple goals missing from Obama’s new International Social Justice Department (formerly NASA) is anything to do with the atmosphere, space, or aeronautics. This makes sense, especially when considering job creation efforts don’t create jobs and economic stimulus comes closer to invigorating the rear sphincter valve than the economy.

Ed Morrissey:

Hey, maybe that’s why Obama hasn’t taken the Iranian effort to build a nuclear bomb all that seriously until now.  He just wanted Iran to make the Muslim world feel good about their achievements in science!  And it’s hard to do to that unless you talk a lot about outstretched open hands — and ignore a freedom movement that wants to depose the brutal tyrants who are trying to give the Muslim world a new “historic contribution.”

Actually, Muslim nations should be insulted by the idea that the US pays NASA to provide them with paternalistic and patronizing validation and self-esteem boosts. And they probably will be.

The problem Byron uncovers goes farther than just the Muslim outreach, though.  NASA has always inspired children and even bolstered international relations, but not because that was its mission.  It did those things by pursuing solid goals of exploration of space, which is why Congress funds the agency.  Those esteem-boosters came as a secondary result of actual achievement, not as an end in itself.  The Obama administration wants to turn this over onto its head by making NASA a bureaucracy dedicated to self-esteem which might at some point have a goal that has to do with exploration of space.

This is a recipe for failure on an expensive scale.  Congress needs to either get the White House to redefine its mission for NASA or cut off its funds until the self-esteem party is canceled.

John Derbyshire at The Corner:

That’s why we have a government space program! For the kiddies! (Which means, when uttered by a Democratic politician, for the teachers’ unions and ed-biz lobbies.) For our international relationships! (Heaven forbid we should keep to ourselves, for our own nation’s benefit, the technological wonders we develop. We must share them with the whole world!) To help Muslim nations feel good about themselves! (The Muslim world’s self-esteem is in tatters. It’s up to us to repair it! All those centuries of stagnation are probably our fault anyway.)

I had supposed that there were two different approaches to government-funded space exploration.

● There was the Gene Kranz view, as stated above. In this view, it is legitimate to use government money, even in large quantities, to enhance national prestige and pride.

● And then there was the Derb view, expressed to considerable reader outrage on this site here and here. My opinion is that beyond a few legitimate military and meteorological applications, government-funded space exploration is pointless extravagance and folly (even when “a glorious, soul-stirring folly”). Leave it to private enterprise.

Now I see that there is a third view.

● Our government-funded space exploration, as embodied in NASA, can serve the great Obamanian cause of infantilizing and feminizing us. Government funds are wisely and properly used in turning us into obedient elementary-school tots being lectured at by our wise, benevolent moral superiors on the wonders of “diversity,” sensitizing us to the feelings of different-looking peoples in far-away places, softening and erasing our gross brutish impulses to inquire, discover, explore, achieve, master (!), conquer, and win.

American history was, for a couple of centuries there, a contest between the frontiersmen and the schoolmarms. Well, that’s all over. The schoolmarms have won.

Flopping Aces:

What, pray tell, has space technology advancements got to do with Muslim and Islam in general, I ask myself. Why should our federally funded agency specifically reach out to Muslims for our space endeavors? And why should that magically improve relations? Are we assuming that they have a leg up on this technology, strictly because of their religious choice? Well.. yeah… that is if you’re interested in advancing ways to exploring to ways to pray in zero gravity, or eating space meals under Islamic rules, that is.

But then, in a more honest vein, we have the more stellar example of Ahmad Mahmoud, the son of immigrant Eqyptian parents who attended public schools in New Jersey, went on to major in Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers University. Mahmoud was awarded first place for his design project, Multi-surface Adaptable Touch Sensor, from Rutgers. He went on to a NASA internship, and then offered a full time position with the Cryogenics department.

Because he’s Muslim? No… because he’s exceptional in his field.

Scientists of all faiths and nationalities bond together, across the span of political BS, because they share common goals. And, in fact, Islam Online has their own webpage devoted to Muslims and space. There has been no barrier to their contributions in the industry, and indeed their presence in space itself, since man’s first foray’s into space. The first Muslim to crew the Discovery was in 1985 – Prince Sultan bin Salman AbdulAziz Al-Saud from Saudi Arabia, who acted as payload specialist to deliver the ARABSAT 1-B communication satellite into orbit. He was not only the first Muslim in space, but was the first who was royalty.

Why? Because he’s Muslim? Again, no. Because he’s exceptional in his field.

Gee… now how did that happen without this POTUS, exercising squatting rights in the people’s House? sigh… But still, this POTUS persists in playing the class warfare/”social justice” card, as if this is a pressing problem in our world’s aeronautical society. Yet how has this pathetic ploy of bowing, scraping and proffered olive twigs played in the Muslim world? Not much better than it has with our allies, whom this POTUS is busy alienating at every turn.

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit:

Charles Krauthammer on Obama’s new NASA strategy:

“This is a new of fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep us there. This idea of ‘feel good about your past’ scientific achievements is the worst kind of group therapy, psycho-babble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy. If I didn’t know that Obama had told him this, I’d demand the firing of Charles Bolden.”

Don’t hold back, Charles.

Rory Cooper at Heritage Foundation:

Of course, the Democrat Party establishment, via their Media Matters outlet, were quick to point out that this hullabaloo is merely right-wing noise about the word “Muslim” which of course misses the point entirely, and merely tries to drown criticism of Obama with the age-old liberal mantra that everyone who doesn’t share their worldview is a racist. Substitute the word ‘Muslim’ for any other group, ethnicity or religion, and President Obama is still failing to comprehend that this is not what most Americans view as an appropriate role for NASA.

Congress should demand that President Obama and Administrator Bolden directly address questions on the future of NASA and his vision. President George W. Bush’s clearly laid out Vision for Space Exploration is obviously not a part of it. Under President Bush, NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale was charged with ensuring Bush’s vision would achieve his goal of transcending presidents and politics. She failed. Politics has never been more evident at NASA. We’re left with an agency in chaos and a president whose vision of America’s greatness lies in our humility, rather than our shining example.

NASA deserves better. America deserves better. All of mankind, who NASA has inspired for fifty years, deserve better.

Tom Maguire:

In other news, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Popular Science, explained that chief among her priorities was helping Barack achieve his vision of putting a man on Mars.  Assuming, of course, that Dick Cheney is willing to go.