It's been a couple of days since the embarrassing fiasco that the US government called the debt ceiling negotiations mercifully came to a close. In the time since I've been racking my brain and combing through reaction from officials, the punditry and journalists in order to cobble together some sort of rational response to the negotiations themselves, the deal that was reached and the long-term implications of said deal. I must admit it has been tough for me personally to find some perspective. After all, I worked for this President's 2008 election campaign from the very beginning. I was there for the Iowa caucus nobody thought we had a shot in. I witnessed the euphoria of the general election victory on 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell where university students, Harlem residents and police officers literally danced and sang together in the streets. I was bursting with pride (and fighting off frostbite) on the National Mall when Barack Hussein Obama swore the oath of office and became President of the United States. I have a clear bias in favor of the President. 

So know that when I say this debt ceiling deal was an enormous failure, I am not taking part in gleeful partisan hyperbole. Also, when I say failure, I'm not speaking of a political failure on the part of the White House & Congressional Democrats - though that is clearly the case as well - but of a broader failure that involves not giving the American people (and the people of the world, whose economies and livelihoods are tied up in America's economic success) what they deserve. 

So what happened? What exactly went wrong? What went right? What happens now? Well…

1) A deal was reached. No default. The AAA credit rating is staying put for the time being. [http://bit.ly/nzWbOM] The global economy wasn't sucked into disaster by a singularity of American BS.This is obviously good news. 

2) The Chinese have pledged to diversify their foreign exchange investment as a hedge to US instability, but aren't jumping ship on the US dollar entirely [http://bit.ly/oCu9QW]. This likely means more investment in 2 important global currencies - the Japanese yen & the Euro - which have taken a helluva beating this year. So the US has inadvertently forced China into helping to prop up a reeling global economy. Good news. Especially seeing as how Europe is going from bad to worse and will need all the help it can get [http://on.ft.com/nRGQ0b].

3) The debt limit was increased by enough to last through the 2012 elections. This is certainly good news for the President who doesn't want this hanging over his head during campaign time. I would say this is also generally good news in the sense that it spares the American people another utterly demoralizing and embarrassing showdown right when they're supposed to be participating in the democratic process. This is going to be an important election and the last thing we need is lousy voter turnout because everyone thinks they've got to make a choice between different varieties of 'spoiled children' [http://bit.ly/nx6FQt].

3) Now we have to hear about who the 'winners' and 'losers' were from all the talking heads [http://bit.ly/q7iXyj] [http://bit.ly/mWgNDI]. Besides the fact that this is incredibly irritating and completely misses the point, it also leads to stuff like this [http://bit.ly/rk2Enh] where the White House feels the need to blame President Bush for the whole situation, which is - merits or weaknesses of the argument aside - not helpful in the least. I rarely agree with Megan McArdle, but an accounting of where we are spending our money & national priorities is much more important than figuring out how much of the blame we can allot to previous administrations. Leave that to the history books.

4) At best, the deal won't make much of a sizable dent in the national debt, which the CBO projected earlier this year would reach approximately 100% of GDP in 2020 [http://bit.ly/n40Abj]. In addition, because of reasonable concerns about the present precarious economic situation most of the cuts won't happen until the latter part of the 10 years [http://1.usa.gov/pFygM2]. So it is entirely possible that the very modest dent in the annual deficit/ national debt won't be made at all. 

5) There is now a precedent for debt limit increases to be tied to deficit reduction. So unless the Supreme Court decides to make something of it, Section 4 of the 14th Amendment is turfed for all practical purposes [http://bit.ly/b8ItFt] because "the validity of the public debt of the United States" apparently shall be questioned after all. Which means we're going to have to go through this gut-wrenching hostage crisis song and dance every few years until kingdom come.

6) Then there's the actual substance of the thing, which is anathema to practically everyone. 

A) From the Left: Instead of making the classic sensible Keynesian economic case that everyone learns in Econ 101 - cutting payroll taxes, increasing investment in infrastructure and social programs in the short term while the economy is weak and pledging future fiscal austerity when the economy bounces back - we've got mild austerity measures, no new stimulus money and no revenue increases. For goodness sakes, even Boehner included 15% tax hikes in his version of the deal! Oh and by the way, we may be headed into a double-dip recession [http://nyti.ms/oxlEJ2]. So Krugman is pissed [http://nyti.ms/qnpAOK], Ezra Klein is pissed [http://wapo.st/pv3BD1] and I've got an '08 campaign colleague of mine telling me they think Obama 'emasculated the office of the Presidency' and that they'd vote for Huntsman in a 2012 general. 

B) From the right: Defense hawks are understandably worried about the  built-in trigger which would require $600 billion + in defense cuts should the new 'super-committee' fail to come up with $1.5 trillion in cuts. And it is not unlikely that the Dems might prefer the trigger to a deal. Tea-Partiers and their ilk are pissed because expensive entitlements like Social Security & Medicaid are exempt from cuts. GOPers are also annoyed because this gives the White House even more leverage come 2012 on sunsetting the Bush Tax Cuts entirely. My more Conservative friends - Victor I'm looking at you - can surely help to fill in this portion of the list. 

C) From the young, and damned near everyone else: As I noted before, by not making a serious attempt to deal with cutting spending in the future - potentially shaving around $2 trillion off of what may be a $22 trillion debt in 2020 isn't serious - the President and the Congress once again kick the can down the road, leaving future generations (read: people my age) to deal with a crippling mess that is only getting worse. Also, if I read that CBO memo correctly - and I did - a lot of those 'savings' are coming from throwing young people who are trying to get a higher education under the bus by slashing Pell Grants and student loans funding. Thanks a lot old people. This includes you too now Mr. President. Happy 50th. 

D) From non-Americans: This deal - specifically the lack of economic stimulus provided therein - means the Fed is likely to consider another round of Quantitative Easing [http://bit.ly/qinde4] in order to try and prop up the flagging economy. Other countries, especially those whom we often rightfully chide about manipulating their currency (read: China), probably won't take too kindly to our continued purchasing of financial assets with money we created ex nihilo.

Of course, I have failed to mention a number of things that suck about this deal (like the likelihood of federal employees getting screwed at some point during the setting of caps on agency spending, or the fact that this deal and the spending cuts therein will likely pass on a lot of debt to local/state govs who are also reeling, or the fact that there is a possibility that this deal might lead to the US Congress passing a balanced-budget amendment to the Constiution which is absolutely freaking looney toons), but I'm all ranted out. The point is that this is a lousy deal, the GOP got away with holding the whole global economy hostage and the President folded like a paper fan. 

2012 is looming, and the President had better bounce back and show us he's still got something left in the tank. Lord knows we need it.

I've got nothing useful to add to that statement, except watch/read the transcript of her interview with CNN and then read this article, which references some incredible, unnerving and necessary research that is being done on rape in war zones.

Some pertinent quotes follow:

When Eman el-Obeidy materialized in the breakfast room of the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, Libya, the story she told shocked the world. The 29-year-old woman, a law graduate, claimed to have been held and raped by 15 members of leader Muammar Qaddafi's forces after being stopped at a checkpoint. The bruises on her face, the blood on her thighs, and the wails issuing from her throat made it clear that something bad had happened. Any doubt that remained was dispelled by the swift, vicious reaction of the security forces in the hotel (including many who had been posing as hotel waitstaff -- no, they were not just innocently pouring coffee and busing tables for the press corps each morning), who dragged her out of the reach of the stunned journalists and shoved her in a waiting car.

In April, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice told a private gathering of diplomats that the U.S. believed Qaddafi's military was handing out Viagra pills to troops "so they go out and rape," as Rice reportedly put it. 

Her interpretation tracks with statements from captured pro-Qaddafi Libyan soldiers, who have claimed they were forced to rape by their commanding officers. "We felt scared, but when we refused to rape, they started to beat us," one 17-year-old soldier told the BBC. It was his first sexual encounter, he said. A Libyan soldier who was captured in Zintan as part of a group of loyalist fighters, which included men from Chad and Sudan, told Al Jazeera English that army troops "Were given orders no human being can accept. We were told that any house we entered was ours, any vehicle we wanted was ours, any girl we found, we could rape. Everything was for us." He also mentioned Viagra.

Canada, under the dubious leadership of newly-minted majority PM Harper, is now more hawkishly 'pro-Israel' on the Israeli-Palestinian issue than the United States of America. 

To quote today's Globe & Mail on this:

"Alone among G8 leaders, the Canadian Prime Minister refuses to embrace the U.S. President’s plan to begin peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis on the basis of a return to Israel’s de facto borders as they existed before its 1967 war with neighbouring Arab countries – a precondition, accepted by Arabs and by many previous Israeli leaders and Canadian governments, that would be necessary to get Palestinians back to the table."

So if I may put this in perspective, allow me to compile a list of world leaders/heads of state in the last quarter-century with a comparable Israel stance to the one Harper has taken:

...

Binyamin Netanyahu, current PM of Israel.

Even notorious hawks like former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and former US President George W. Bush (not to mention Netanyahu 6 months ago) accepted the validity of the 1967 borders along with land swaps as the basis of peace negotiations. This is to say nothing of the fact that this is clearly a huge departure from a long history of measured, even-handed, internationally respected Israel policy (anybody remember Lester B. Pearson?).

If nothing else, the PM is certainly a trailblazer.

Because I need to write to get out my thoughts, and character limits on posts- I'm looking at you Facebook & Twitter! - aren't helpful.