Am I disappointed...

...by the debt ceiling deal? Absolutely. In fact, for the first time ever, President Obama is on my S**t List. (It's a long list.)

I was really hoping (but not expecting) the president would invoke the 14th Amendment, unilaterally raise the debt ceiling and dare the courts to push the country into another Great Depression. A precedent would then be set, and the U. S. would never have to worry about such silliness again. But that's not what happened.

Paul Krugman summed it up well in his column today (my emphasis):

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

But what really has my blood boiling this morning is this quote from a piece by Elizabeth Drew in the New York Review of Books (again, my emphasis):

According to a report in The Hill newspaper in late June, the tough-minded, experienced, and blunt Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California told Obama in a White House meeting that he’d asked several Republicans about their meeting with him the day before, and, “To a person, they said the President’s going to cave.” Then the congressman said to the President of the United States, “And if you’re going to cave, tell us right now.” The President was reported to have been displeased, and responded, “I’m the President of the United States; my words carry weight.”