Concert Season Review 2011 Edition Part 2

Earlier this weekend, I did part 1 of my concert season reviews. Today, I’m going to do part 2 and get myself all the way caught up.

The fourth concert I went to this year was A Perfect Circle. I’d describe myself as a casual fan of APC, as they have some songs I like, but nothing that really made me want to rush out and buy all their albums. Being a casual fan was probably not good enough to really enjoy their show. In fact, I didn’t enjoy myself all that much. They played showtunes from Broadway musicals in the interludes before the opener, which aren’t really my thing and were a prelude to irritations to come.

The opener was Red Bacteria Vacuum, an all-female, Japanese death metal trio that I’d never heard or heard of. They get points for uniqueness, I can’t deny that. I never expected to see such a band. They also get points for some good death metal fundamentals, such as a solid death metal growl and the fact that, if you don’t know the words beforehand, you probably could not only fail to understand the words, but in this case, it was hard to even tell what language they were using at times. Their English wasn’t the greatest, which hurt their ability to interact with the audience, but that’ll come with time and they did a pretty good job of getting the crowd going for APC, though I wasn’t swayed enough to go out to buy their album.

After more showtunes, APC came on. I didn’t enjoy their performance at all. Sure, APC has some pretty good songs that I like, but they’re not that good live. I was put off by the fact that they didn’t even acknowledge the fans until they’d played about five or six songs. I also don’t remember once hearing a simple, “Thank you to the fans for coming out tonight and making it possible for us do what we love,” or anything like that, which I found somewhat arrogant. I can’t recall ever seeing a show without that, even in the local music scenes. It’s just good manners to do so. They didn’t really give off any energy to captivate you during the show, either. Additionally, they were drinking heavily on stage. I found this insulting. I’m far from uptight in this sense and I can recognize how some fans may appreciate this, but not me to this degree. A couple drinks, maybe a smoke on stage is fine by me and can definitely add to the performers’ aura, but if I’m going to pay to see you perform, at least have the decency to not be totally drunk on stage. Maybe they need the alcohol to unlock their best performance, I don’t know. Yes, it was their last performance on the tour, so they wanted to cut loose, but you have to take care of business first. I get that they were trying to ‘set a mood’, but it just didn’t work for me.

The music was solid, but the stage presence and ambiance were beyond awful. By the end of the night, I was in a fairly sour mood. I found the show, on the whole, insulting and it was possibly the single worst concert I’ve ever been to. If my girlfriend didn’t enjoy herself so much, I would’ve found the night to be a complete waste of money. Either way, I’ll never buy another APC album and I’ll never go see them live ever again. Overall, the best parts of that night for me were dinner beforehand, my girlfriend enjoying herself, and the great escape we made after the concert (getting stuck in a lot of traffic would not have helped my view of the night).

My next concert will be the Rockstar Uproar Tour, but that’s not for another few weeks.

Concert Season Review 2011 Edition Part 1

I do album and book reviews sometimes, so I might as well do concert reviews while I’m at it. Also, I’m a bit burnt out on writing/pondering global and domestic economic/financial matters, so this presents a nice diversion. I went to four concerts so far this year and I have one coming up in September (Rockstar’s Uproar Tour). In the future, I’ll try to review them more in depth and be more current with them. This post covers the first three concerts. My next post will cover the fourth, and then I’ll do one for the fifth soon after.

The first was Aaron Lewis performing acoustic. I talked briefly about this during my review of his album, but this was a fun performance. Being acoustic, it was pretty much just him sitting on stage playing, sort of like just tooling around on the porch and was a fairly intimate show in that sense. He did several Staind classics, a couple songs off of his acoustic album, and some covers over about a two-hour span. We’ve known since the early days that Lewis has very strong acoustic talent, and this show didn’t disappoint in the slightest.

Second was Credence Clearwater Revival back in June. This was a Father’s Day gift to both my dad and my girlfriend’s dad since the dads are rabid fans. If I recall correctly, only two members of the original band were there and I think they said the band’s been together for over 40 years (which blows my mind considering I’m not even 30). CCR put on a great show and rock pretty hard for a band of their age. Just a good, old-fashioned, no frills and flash rock session. They played for around two hours. If I described Lewis’ performance as playing around on the porch, this had the feel of a garage rock session since it wasn’t unplugged. They did well at making a mid-sized venue feel both big and small in good ways at the same time.

The Rockstar Mayhem Tour was third. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the entire day, so I didn’t get there until the main stage opened up with Trivium. I’d never heard of them coming in, but they put on a good performance. They weren’t anything blockbuster for me and provided a good start for the main stage. After Trivium came metal legend Megadeth. They’re not my favorite old school metal band and I’ve never seen them live before, but I was very impressed. Megadeth took the momentum from Trivium and ran with it, firing the crowd up even more. They showed why they’re rightly considered one of the pioneer bands in metal. Megadeth played several of their classics, including “Symphony of Destruction.” The price of admission was well worth Megadeth alone. The stage was pretty spartan for both of these acts, creating that no-flash rock vibe.

Next was Godsmack. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a very long time and they were very high on my list of bands to see live. Godsmack absolutely tore the house down. From start to finish, Godsmack rocked and rocked hard as they worked the crowd into a total frenzy. It was unbelievable. One thing I was particularly impressed with was Sully’s versatility as a musician. The man was singing and playing the guitar simultaneously, but he also rocked out on the drums for a while. And it’s not like he was doing easy stuff on the drums, either. He did quite the drum performance. Godsmack did pretty much all of their big hits past and present. I will try to see them again, no question. They totally stole the show and were truly one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.

Disturbed was the main event. As I hinted above, I thought Godsmack would’ve been the better pick for the main event. I’m a bigger fan of Godsmack than Disturbed. Disturbed’s music tends to blur together and is generally not as rich and diverse in sound as Godsmack’s, and as such, Disturbed was a bit of a letdown for me, but still solid. They were flashier than the rest of the bands, which makes sense, and they made effective use of the flash. The monitors and the lights were well-done. Disturbed just doesn’t really have the stage presence to captivate the crowd.

I have a whole separate post on its way for the fourth concert, which was A Perfect Circle. I’ll put that up later this weekend.

Legal Same-Sex Marriage in New York State

Right before I left for vacation, New York state legalized same-sex marriage after a fairly dramatic series of events (by state law standards, anyway). The law went into effect on July 24, 2011. I’ve been remiss getting this post up because of the debt ceiling and downgrade wrangling, but now I’m getting this one up because I need a quick break from those things. New York is a particularly big deal for several reasons.

First, and most importantly, I think the events in New York are enormously instructive for both advocates and opponents of gay marriage. The big hang-up in New York was exactly what I’ve previously described, namely the different connotations of the word ‘marriage’. Remember, I’ve long contended that supporters are discussing marriage in strictly a legal sense while opponents are thinking mainly in a religious one. This miscommunication came into play in New York because the major legislative sticking point was ensuring sufficient legal protections from discrimination lawsuits for religious organizations that do not wish to marry gay people. Once the supporters were able to assure the religious organizations that their rights were in no way under attack and ensure the necessary legal protections were in place, the bill was able to pass.

Memo to gay marriage supporters: make sure you’re very clear that you’re only talking about the marriage in a legal sense and make your case based on the legal differences between marriages versus civil unions, domestic partnerships, or whatever else your state has.

Memo to gay marriage opponents: this isn’t about forcing a religious organization against its will to marry gay people. It’s about ensuring access to legal rights for gay couples.

Second, New York state, specifically Greenwich Village, was the location of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Without going into too much detail here, the Stonewall Riots were a major event in the galvanization of the modern gay rights movement. Some view this event as the birth of the movement while some cite other events. I’m not going into that debate here. All I’m going to say is the legalization of gay marriage in the state where such a crucial event occurred is a tremendous victory for the movement.

Third, New York is by far the most populous state to finally legalize gay marriage. New York joins Washington DC (not technically a state, I know), Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Vermont as places in the US that allow same-sex marriage, with Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Massachusetts each lacking laws that explicitly ban same-sex marriage.

As far as I know, every other state has a law and/or constitutional amendment of its own and/or the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) banning same-sex marriage, with Alabama being of particular note because, unlike every other state, it refuses to ever recognize a same-sex marriage even when it was legally done in another state (I think Alabama is acting illegally in doing so).

21 of these states have DOMA alone on the matter. If DOMA disappears, these states will become battlegrounds, as they’ll join the three states mentioned above as lacking explicit bans on same-sex marriage. As I posted previously, the Obama administration is no longer defending the pertinent section of DOMA in court after it was ruled unconstitutional by a Federal district court. With this, DOMA is unofficially sidelined. Until DOMA is either repealed by Congress (and signed by the president) or declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, DOMA is still an issue. Why? Some future president may come in and disagree with Obama’s view of DOMA and resume defending it. Outside of the DOMA situation, California is currently the biggest and probably most interesting battleground, with the current questions of legality regarding their Proposition 8.

This is a major victory for the gay rights movement, but there’s still a lot of work to be done and it needs to be pushed quickly while there’s a somewhat amicable government in Washington DC for the gay rights movement. For all of the shameful faults and epic failures, Barack Obama and the 2008-2010 Congress did more for the gay rights movement than any government I can think of (the 2010-2012 Congress will likely not be so accommodating due to the GOP control of the House of Representatives). The courts have also been consistently ruling in favor of the gay rights movement on several issues.

It’s possible the GOP will maintain its majority in the House of Representatives and it may even pick up a majority in the Senate in the 2012 election. This would make it very difficult to get a repeal of DOMA through Congress. More importantly, if the GOP manages to take the White House in 2012, it’s possible the new president will not only veto a hypothetical repeal of DOMA, but actually resume defending the law in court. Of course, this depends on who the GOP puts up as their ticket. Several candidates in the field, such as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, are very conservative on social issues, whereas others, like Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney, are more moderate on social issues. Furthermore, a GOP president may be more likely to appoint judges that are less friendly to the gay rights movement. Lastly, if the state and national governments goes far enough to the right, the movement to add a marriage amendment to the Constitution may gain traction, but I don’t view this as likely because it would take a drastic shift to the right.

Follow the GOP primaries very closely because they will be key to the future of the gay rights movement. The victory in New York may be short-lived if the sands shift in the coming elections.

More on the Downgrade Part 2

In Part 1, I looked at how the $2T ‘error’ in S&P’s downgrade of the US government was little more than a difference in opinion about the underlying assumptions of the forecast. In Part 2, we’re now going to look at how the myth reached critical mass.

In this case, what more or less happened is the Treasury said S&P had a $2T ‘error’ in their forecast and the media ran with it, no questions asked, which is par for the course. The media is afraid to a certain degree to question the government because the media often fears losing its ‘access’ to government officials on and off the record. The Treasury hasn’t really provided actual evidence that S&P made a mistake beyond the Treasury saying so through statements to the press (both ‘official’ releases and ‘unofficial’ leaks). That’s little more than heresay if you really think about it, and there’s a reason heresay isn’t admissible in court.

The reality is the government deliberately injected the word ‘error’ into the discussion via the press to help frame the discussion in more favorable terms for the government’s position. Let’s use this Wall Street Journal blog post as an example, found here. The WSJ is a Rupert Murdoch company and is generally known for a conservative, pro-finance bias, so it’s not as though we’re looking at a source that really likes Barack Obama.

“August 5, 2011, 7:41 PM ET
U.S. Debt Rating in Limbo as Treasury Finds Math Mistake by S&P in Downgrade Warning
By Damian Paletta

A mathematical error discovered late Friday by Treasury Department officials has thrown into limbo — at least temporarily — plans by ratings firm Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the top-notch AAA credit rating the U.S. has held for 70 years, people familiar with the matter said.

The wild back and forth between the Treasury Department and S&P Friday afternoon illustrated the dramatic stakes at play as the rating firm moved to downgrade U.S. debt for the first time in 70 years.

As of early Friday evening, S&P officials still had not decided how to proceed and could move forward with a downgrade despite the issues raised by the White House, people familiar with the matter said.

S&P officials notified the Treasury Department early Friday afternoon it was planning to downgrade the U.S. government’s debt from the AAA rating it has held for decades, a government official said, and it presented its report to the White House. S&P has previously warned such a downgrade might come if Washington didn’t move to comprehensively tackle its long-term fiscal woes.

After two hours of analysis, Treasury officials discovered that S&P officials had miscalculated future deficit projections by close to $2 trillion. It immediately notified the company of the mistakes.

S&P officials later called administration officials to say they agreed with the administration’s critique, though they did not say whether it would affect their rating. White House officials remained waiting Friday evening to see what the company would do.

An S&P spokesman didn’t return repeated calls for comment.“

We see several typical government tactics at work here. First, note the quoting of people familiar with the matter. These people are often described as not being authorized to speak publicly. That’s usually technically true because organizations often have a very small number of people who are actually formally approved to speak officially in public via press conferences. But, we have to be mindful of a key point. Sometimes, the people who are speaking ‘unofficially’ to the press are actually speaking ‘officially’ in that their superiors have told them to leak this or that to the press. In other words, some leaks are deliberate. The government will often do this using a trial balloon, which is when they leak an idea to the press to gauge the public reaction. If they like the reaction, they’ll maybe run with the idea, and if they don’t like the reaction, they can maybe not run with the idea and just later say, “It was merely an idea we were toying with.”

In this case, the government used the strategic leak not to gauge public opinion, but to do another tactic, which is to frame the discussion into more favorable terms for themselves. By calling it an ‘error’ instead of a ‘difference in opinion in underlying assumptions’, the government creates a more favorable connotation for itself because using the word ‘error’ makes S&P sound incompetent. They’ve done it in the past (‘torture’ versus ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’), they’re doing it today (‘increase revenues’ versus ‘raise taxes’ or the ‘rich’ versus ‘job creators’), and they’ll keep doing it.

Third, note that the article says that S&P called the administration and agreed with their critique. This does not necessarily mean S&P agreed that they made an ‘error’, but it strongly suggests as such. It’s the implication, the seed that it plants in the mind of the reader, which we must notice here. The overwhelming majority of readers probably won’t ask the questions, and that’s what the government’s counting on.

Last, note that because S&P supposedly made an ‘error’, the government and its cronies moved quickly to bash S&P for not seeing the mortgage-backed security bubble forming, basically questioning S&P’s integrity and competence. They’re even saying S&P should stick to economics instead of wading into politics, but the reality is those two are very much intertwined here. S&P truly did screw up during the MBS debacle and they had major ethical issues (S&P basically was paid by the people who were selling the securities for the ratings versus being paid by the investors buying the securities, thereby aligning S&P’s interests with the seller of the security and screwing the buyers) so it’s entirely reasonable to be skeptical of them on those grounds alone. It’s also reasonable to question why S&P hasn’t (yet) downgraded any other nations if the USA gets downgraded, so that goes to questioning their competence. These are all legitimate points, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture here.

The government is trying to distract the masses by attacking the messenger’s credibility instead of the message itself. Also, the government wants to distract us from the fact that they had their opportunity to reform the ratings agencies back in 2008 and they failed to do so. It’s a lame attempt to distract us from the underlying problem and from our own government’s collective incompetence and fiscal mismanagement. Don’t fall for it. This is a great example of the intellectual perils of taking at face value the statements of a big organization like the government or a corporation (with or without the mainstream media). It’s also a great example of many of the tricks said large organization will use to obscure the truth.

Links:

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/08/05/u-s-debt-rating-in-limbo-as-treasury-finds-math-mistake-by-sp-in-downgrade-warning/?KEYWORDS=sp+error

More on the Downgrade Part 1

I just can’t get away from this stuff, can I? I had a very lively conversation this week regarding the S&P downgrade of the USA, specifically the $2T ‘error’ in S&P’s math and questions of S&P’s credibility. As a fellow professional prognosticator, albeit in engineering versus finance, I have a unique perspective on these matters that I’ll outline below.

There are two questions I want to address here. First, did S&P really make a $2T ‘error’ in their forecast? I contend that no, they did not make an ‘error’ and merely have a difference of opinion with the government. Second, since I believe it wasn’t an ‘error’, how did the myth that the difference in question was actually an ‘error’ gain such critical mass? I’m going to put this up as a two-parter.

What happened is that S&P and the government have disagreements in the underlying assumptions S&P used in their model with regards to how quickly government spending will rise over the coming years. S&P did not believe the ‘official’ numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and made some tweaks. S&P also assumed the Bush tax rates would remain in place. A quick and easy-to-read explanation can be found here. I find this explanation far more convincing and credible than anything the Treasury has said.

On a side note, this also provides an explanation for why my debt/GDP levels are different than S&P’s, namely because I use Total Federal Debt now around $14.5T and S&P uses Federal Debt Held by the Public now around $10T, with the difference being my bigger number counts intra-government or inter-agency and S&P’s smaller number doesn’t. I still maintain my number is the correct one to use.

Forecasting is very difficult to do well for even fairly simple things. The complexity ramps up exponentially as we go out further in time and as we explore bigger, more complicated systems. Also, we have to account for unknowns. Donald Rumsfeld is widely, and erroneously, ridiculed for his famous ‘known unknowns’ quote shown here. It’s actually a very intelligent thought, and mocking Rumsfeld for the quote is beyond absurd.

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.”

Prognosticators cope with the complexities and unknowns by making assumptions. We document and justify those assumptions. Unsurprisingly, people disagree with those assumptions quite often. Disagreement in opinion regarding underlying assumptions doesn’t necessarily mean ‘error’. In this case, increasing the rate of government spending by a couple percent per year is reasonable, but assuming the US will grow GDP at 10% per year for the next decade is unreasonable. Of course, we also have to make room for so-called black swan events, which are low-probability and high-impact events that were generally not on people’s minds. 9/11 comes to mind as a pertinent example here. These events generally don’t find their way into credible forecasts, yet they can alter the end result of how accurate the forecast is.

These differences in underlying assumptions are how two proven forecasters can arrive at two different conclusions given the same set of data. It’s how two different weatherpeople can have two different views of tomorrow’s temperatures and weather conditions. It’s how two investors can look at the same stock, with one coming to the conclusion that the stock is deeply undervalued and buying it while the other thinks it’s way overvalued and shorts it. One could be right, both could be right, or neither could be right. Opinions make a market.

The bottom line is it’s not as black and white as saying a forecast is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. There’s a lot of grey area to consider. In Part 2, I’ll look at how the error myth reached critical mass.

Links:
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/treasury-contests-sps-downgrade-because-of-error-even-with-error-u-s-had-to-be-downgraded/

The Debt Ceiling Deal and the Downgrade that Followed Part 2

Yesterday, I talked briefly about the debt ceiling deal. Today, let’s talk about the downgrade that followed shortly thereafter.

S&P downgraded the US Friday night. It’s troubling that this downgrade came only a few days after the deal was approved. Personally, I was expecting that, if a downgrade was coming, it wouldn’t come until several months from now and in the event the supercongress failed.

I read the full report. It is located here. It’s a very quick read at only eight pages and it’s pretty easy to follow, so I highly recommend you have a look. One point I found particularly interesting is that S&P revised their baseline assumption regarding the Bush tax rates. They now assume the rates will NOT expire at the end of 2012 as scheduled. S&P also has upside and downside scenarios in addition to the baseline scenario. They’ve also accounted for the significant negative revisions to GDP in all scenarios in their conclusion that the recently passed deal will be inadequate.

To be honest, I think S&P made the right call downgrading the US. When they put us on negative watch, they laid out exactly what they wanted to see to prevent a downgrade and our government failed to deliver. S&P had no choice but to follow through on its word, lest they lose their credibility (a statement that I make only half-heartedly because S&P lost much of their credibility during the mortgage-backed securities calamity a couple years back).

I’ve laid out the consequences of a downgrade previously, and we’ll know soon enough whether I was correct to be concerned or whether I was being a worrywart. The global stock markets have fallen pretty much in a straight line for the past few weeks due to the debt ceiling wrangling, with a particularly nasty day Thursday. I expect we’ll see some market carnage on Monday, but the weekend may buffer it a little bit. I put a small amount of cash to work in my 401k on Friday because a lot of bargains have emerged, but I have a lot of cash on the sidelines (and maybe I should resurrect my stock blog).

This is a first for the US. Dagong downgraded us, as well, but they’re Chinese and they don’t hold the same clout that S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch hold (not that those three are entirely reputable because, after all, they completely missed the mortgage-backed security debacle and our more recent sovereign debt disasters in Europe). Whether he likes it or not, Barack Obama will go down in history as the man in charge when the US got its first downgrade. Obama will surely try to blame it on every president before him, especially George W. Bush. The Democrats and the liberal media will certainly try to pin it on the GOP, particularly the Tea Party. On the flip side, the GOP and conservative media will put it on Obama and the Democrats.

I think it’s very fair to blame Obama first and foremost for the downgrade, to be honest. It’d be different if he was only a year or so into his presidency, but he’s over halfway through his first term. He can only blame the previous administration for so long before it turns into Obama making excuses and complaining. I see this downgrade is a damning indictment on Obama’s leadership and should be added to the list of things that make voters ask themselves whether they truly believe Obama should be leading the USA. That said, there aren’t many worse birthday presents a president can get than the first credit downgrade in the nation’s history. I wonder if that was intentional on S&P’s part.

The rest of the Democrats also deserve a lot of blame for this downgrade because they’re the ones who continue to stick their heads in the sand regarding entitlement reform. They foolishly refuse to acknowledge that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are unsustainable in their current forms and have America set on a path to insolvency. They don’t even think there’s a problem, and any effort to pull in these programs even slightly is met with extreme resistance (look back a few years ago when Bush Jr. tried to reform Social Security to see what I mean). The Democrats have collectively refused this reality and inserted their own. It’s a travesty.

Don’t worry – the GOP doesn’t get off scot-free, either. Their refusal to even entertain the notion of tax increases is specifically mentioned in S&P’s downgrade. However, I will say that they could be worse in that they could be advocating for not just avoiding tax increases, but actual tax cuts. Also, I did not approve of how they tried to downplay the risks of default and/or downgrade because they’re simply wrong about that, as I’ve outlined previously.

As I said with the debt ceiling deal itself, everybody’s a loser (especially the American people) and there are no winners. The downgrade is the same way. I’m just hoping this is finally the wake-up call we need to get our fiscal house in order.

Links:
http://www.standardandpoors.com/servlet/BlobServer?blobheadername3=MDT-Type&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3DUS_Downgraded_AA%2B.pdf&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobheadername1=content-type&blobwhere=1243942957443&blobheadervalue3=UTF-8

The Debt Ceiling Deal and the Downgrade that Followed Part 1

I didn’t get a chance this week to write about the final debt ceiling deal we got, figuring I’d be able to do it this weekend since I didn’t expect we would get downgraded so quickly. I thought maybe we’d get downgraded eventually if the supercongress or whatever you want to call it failed to do its job in a few months, but I was clearly mistaken. So, let’s take these two topics one at a time, the deal and the downgrade.

My initial view of the deal was that there was no clear winner whatsoever and everybody was a loser. I think it’s a fool’s errand to try to pick winners and losers from here, and it’s much easier, and frankly more accurate, in my view, to say everybody lost. Some lost more, sure, but nobody really won. The downgrade only strengthens my opinion.

The deal hurt the American people first and foremost because, in typical Washington DC fashion, our leadership failed to do anything but put off to another day the effort to solve the problems they’ve created by forming yet another committee. However, this time, they at least did give the committee some teeth in that any measure that comes out of the committee that goes before the rest of Congress is immune from filibuster and amendment and the automatic spending cuts that ensue if they fail to pass a deal (don’t get me started on the fact that much of the automatic cuts come out of the defense budget because, though I could rant about that for a long while, all I’ll say is this is one of the worst ideas to ever get through Washington DC and our elected officials should hang their heads in shame for allowing it).

I understand why they structured it that way, to allow the members to make the ‘hard decisions’ with less fear of political reprisal and to hold a gun to their heads to do a deal. That’s what Washington will tell you, but the real reason is to give the rest of Congress and the White House a certain degree of plausible deniability by being able to say, “I didn’t like [insert aspect here] of the plan, but I couldn’t stop it since I couldn’t filibuster or amend the plan.”

We also lost what little civility we had in political discourse in a bitterly divisive debate, as well. The Democrats called the Tea Party terrorists, among other things. One Republican called Obama a tar baby.

The lack of entitlement reform in the deal hurts the most. Entitlements, particularly Medicare, are the real problem because they are completely unsustainable in their present structure. It’s not like this is a newly discovered problem. Most of us have known for years, if not decades, that this is an existential issues that endangers the survival of our nation. Maybe that’ll come out of the supercongress, but for now, I’m not betting on it.

Politically, both parties did win a little bit. Obama got the largest debt ceiling increase in history and should not have to take this up again before the 2012 election. The Democrats also kept entitlement reform out of this deal. For reasons beyond my comprehension, they continue to put their heads in the sand about this problem and refuse to even acknowledge its existence, much less attempt to address it. The GOP prevented tax increases and exacted a decent amount of spending cuts, though not enough to satisfy S&P. They also got the idea of the balanced budget amendment back in the public eye (again).

Both parties lost more than they gained, however. If Obama had some negotiation savvy, he would’ve tried to fight this debt ceiling battle during the end of 2010, when the GOP was fighting for the extension of the Bush tax rates. He could have leveraged that in exchange for a debt ceiling increase, but he didn’t. Obama also insisted early on that tax increases were needed, but he caved there, too. In a nutshell, Obama looked weak in these negotiations.

On the flip side, the GOP was branded as extremists who would burn the house down to save it. Whether you view that as a good thing or a bad thing, that’s how they looked in these negotiations. The GOP caved on defense spending, which is deplorable as I mentioned before (I know I said I wouldn’t say any more on it, but I’m not sure who is worse here between the Democrats for putting the idea out there or the GOP for agreeing to it).

Tune in tomorrow for part 2, when I discuss the downgrade in greater detail.