Friday Obama Caption Contest and Kitsch Cover

Original caption: "Barack Obama talks with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on the patio outside the Oval Office, May 1, 2013."

Today's Kitsch Cover is Bon Iver covering Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me"

Will Janet Yellen Save Obama's Legacy?

Like many people, I'm dissatisfied with the Fed's weak statements of support for economic recovery. I hope this is just a temporary phenomenon, though, as Ben Bernanke's term ends in February 2014.

The front-runner to replace him seems to be Janet Yellen, the current Vice Chair at the Fed, who's widely rumored to be supportive of expansionary monetary policy. While it's possible that Republicans could block her like they've kept blocking Peter Diamond and lots of other appointments, they don't stand in the way of Fed Chair sized appointments. Moving a #2 Fed person to the #1 spot makes it extra hard to get in the way, too, as there's some sense in which nobody is more formally qualified. So it's just up to who Obama wants to nominate, and Dylan's 33% is a fairly cautious estimate of the probabilities.

This may end up being the final legacy-defining decision of the Obama Admininstration, depending on how things go with Supreme Court vacancies and unexpected domestic and foreign crises. The next Fed Chair will serve for nearly the final 3 years of Obama's term, and will have the opportunity to lift the economy to a full recovery. It's very possible that Obama will leave office under continued high unemployment if we have only timid support from the Fed. But if Obama's second term ends with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finished, and the economy good again, he'll have fixed the greatest disasters of the Bush Administration -- perhaps too slowly, but successfully. 

Dictator Street Journal

People reading this blog know better than to trust the Wall Street Journal editorial page about anything, but my goodness:

Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy. If General Sisi merely tries to restore the old Mubarak order, he will eventually suffer Mr. Morsi's fate.

Wikipedia: "Following Allende's deposement, army General Augusto Pinochet declined to return authority to the civilian government; and Chile became ruled by a military junta that was in power from 1973 to 1990, ending almost 48 years of Chilean democratic rule." And again: "Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn."

If you want the body count, "According to a government commission report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, Pinochet's government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000." Hundreds of thousands of people went into exile to escape the horrors, and hundreds of thousands more left in the 1980s due to economic failures.

"Midwifed a transition to democracy"? The midwife's job isn't to eat the baby. 

America!

America!

On this day, enjoy some long exposure photographs of awesome fireworks.

The Public Doesn't Care How Gay Marriage Is Legalized

Naturally, after the Supreme Court's momentous rulings on DOMA and Prop 8, USA Today sponsored a poll gauging the country's opinion on the subject. The results show that public support for gay marriage post-Windsor is almost exactly where it was before the Supreme Court ruled parts of DOMA unconstitutional. The fact that nine unelected old people dressed in robes made this decision made no discernible difference. Heck, given that the Presidency has been polarized for decades and Congress is slightly more popular than an intrusion of cockroaches, having a fairly popular institution arrive at the "final" outcome is probably a plus, not a minus.

Readers of Lawyers, Guns, and Money will not be surprised at this outcome. Conservatives have tried to make hay out of judicial lawlessness, but most people don't think of court decisions as any more or less legitimate than Congressional votes or ballot referenda. The public is largely outcome-oriented, not process-oriented.