NDN Blog

Both Paul Krugman and the NYTimes editorial page put a 2nd stimulus back on the table. 

Edward Schumacker-Matos takes a deeper look at what is happening in Honduras. 

Huffington Post features the much-discussed Matt Taibbi piece on Goldman Sachs. 

Leon Wieseltier takes a hard look at Obama, the realist.

From a communications standpoint I think the President is going to have to return to a much more elemental discussion of his strategy to create long term growth and broad-based prosperity, explaining how the stimulus, the auto bailout, his financial regulatory plan, health care reform, energy and climate legislation, the foreclosure initiative, new credit card regulations, immigration reform, the G20 process, a completed DOHA round all add up to a comprehensive approach to tackling the most important set of problems facing the nation - our weakened economy, our struggling people, an ailing and worsening global economic outlook. 

There should be no doubt now that ushering in a new era of domestic and global prosperity should be the primary organizing principle of the Obama Presidency.   While he and his team may have avoided a global collapse earlier this year, the global financial system is still very weak, and as Rob Shapiro often says, still very vulnerable to additional shocks.   As we saw in the 1930s a sustained global downturn can lead to nasty geopolitical problems.  And it is hard to imagine the President maintaining broad support for his agenda at home if the domestic economy continues to get much worse. 

As I wrote the other night one thing that I think is essential in this next stage of our conversation about future prosperity is a new rhetorical frame for what we are trying to do.  The President has used two incomptable phrases to describe his strategy - "recovery," and "new foundation."  This tension has to be reconciled, and as I have suggested, the concept of "recovery" should be abandoned for a new vocabulary that adequately describes and attacks an economy that has been underperforming for average Americans for far too long.  The "new foundation" language is closer to what is required but still not there yet.  

In poll after poll the American people see the economy as the overwhelming priority for those in power.  And they are right of course.  The President needs to take a step back, and re-engage dramatically here and abroad on a new economic crusade, or face the prospect of getting little credit for all his hard work to make historic reforms in our health care, climate and energy policies this year.

Oh, and by the way, buried deep in your paper this morning is this exciting little nugget - at some point in the next few weeks we wiil have had twice as many banks fail and be seized by the FDIC this year than we saw in the last two years combined.

On my way back to DC after three days in New York (including some time at this year's excellent Personal Democracy Forum which NDN helped sponsor) and I can't stop thinking about the conversations about the American economy I had while there.   David Leonhardt has a piece in today's Times which captured a lot of the sentiment I heard.  It begins:

In the weeks just before President Obama took office, his economic advisers made a mistake. They got a little carried away with hope.

To make the case for a big stimulus package, they released their economic forecast for the next few years. Without the stimulus, they saw the unemployment rate — then 7.2 percent — rising above 8 percent in 2009 and peaking at 9 percent next year. With the stimulus, the advisers said, unemployment would probably peak at 8 percent late this year.

We now know that this forecast was terribly optimistic. The jobless rate has already reached 9.4 percent. On Thursday, the Labor Department will announce the latest number, for June, and forecasters are expecting it to rise further. In concrete terms, the difference between the situation that the Obama advisers predicted and the one that has come to pass is about 2.5 million jobs. It’s as if every worker in the city of Los Angeles received an unexpected layoff notice.

There are two possible explanations that the administration was so wrong. And sorting through them matters a great deal, because they point in opposite policy directions.

The first explanation is that the economy has deteriorated because the stimulus package failed. Some critics say that stimulus just doesn’t work, while others argue that this particular package was too small or too badly constructed to make a difference.

The second answer is that the economy has deteriorated in spite of the stimulus. In other words, the patient is not as sick as he would have been without the medicine he received. But he is a lot sicker than doctors realized when they prescribed it.

To me, the evidence is fairly compelling that the second answer is the right one. The stimulus package does seem to have helped. But its impact has been minor — so far — compared with the harshness of the Great Recession.

Unfortunately, the administration’s rose-colored forecast has muddied this picture. So if at some point this year or next the White House decides that the economy needs more stimulus, skeptics will surely brandish that old forecast.

Worst of all, the economy really may need more help.

Three quick thoughts:

1) It is time for the Obama Administration to abandon the "recovery" rhetorical frame.  Going back to the economy under Bush is neither possible given what has happened in recent months, nor is it desirable - that economy produced growth but declining incomes for a typical family.  The more recent formulation of "new foundation" is clearly a better frame.   What America needs is a more modern and better economy - the very opposite of recovering what we had.

2) It is remarkable how suprised mainstream economists - including the Obama team - have been by the virulence of the Great Recession.  We will be debating this point for years but certainly one major factor is that the American middle class was already in a terribly weakened state prior to the financial crisis.  Incomes had been declining, and wages flat for most of the current decade, long before the Recession began.  So when it kicked in, and a weakened middle class then lost wealth, jobs, homes, income while retaining high levels of debt, things have gotten much much worse with the end hard to see today. 

My own view is that we really don't understand how robust growth is going to happen again in the Untied States, and certainly we don't know how we can get incomes up again given that they fell during the last period of sustained growth.  What are we doing differently now that will ensure that we don't "recover" the Bush economy - one that saw growth and income decline?

Given the state of the American consumer it is easy to see how over the next 3-5-7 years the savings rate stays very high as people replenish their lost savings and pay down high-interest debt.  This leaves little left over for consumption.  If the American people spend the next half a decade getting their own personal balance sheets in order, and buying very little to do so, we could see very slow growth here and aboard, and may be headed, incredibly, to an entire decade or more of no income growth for the typical American family. 

3) In meeting after meeting I heard that the coming commercial real estate crisis could dwarf the home mortgage crisis.  Are we really ready for this? Do our policy makers understand what is coming here? Will another round of defaults then once again cause bank failures and usher in a new round of financial crisis?  Predictions are we will begin to feell the effects of this impending new crisis this fall, while the nation may also start having to manage the prospect of several states, including California, going bankrupt or shutting down this summer.

As recent polls have shown the American people believe there is one dominant issue in American politics today - the economy.  While I am proud of the President for bravely taking on health care and climate change this summer, he also cannot lose sight of our weakened economy, weakened financial sector and weakened middle class, and to be very very sure he is keeping his eye on this very important ball.  It seems like the nation is ready for, and requires, a big conversation about our economic future, and how this new economy of the 21st century will be very different from the one just past.  I am not convinced we are adequately preparing our people for what is to come, and certainly the nostalgia tied into the concept of "recovery" is not helping us let go of an old economic and financial paradigm, and forthrightly begin the process of welcoming in the next.

From the NYTimes:

TEHRAN — Despite new criticism from President Obama, the Iranian authorities showed no sign Friday of bending to domestic or foreign pressure, saying that the disputed presidential vote on June 12 was the “healthiest” in three decades.

The uncompromising words emerged as the Group of Eight countries, including the United States, fired a fresh broadside Friday, saying they “deplored” the post-election violence and demanding that the “the will of the Iranian people is reflected in the electoral process.”

In Washington, President Obama accused Tehran of violating “universal norms, international norms,” and saying that the bravery of the Iranian people is “a testament to their enduring pursuit of justice.”

“The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous,” the president said, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by his side. “And despite the government’s efforts to keep the world from bearing witness to that violence, we see it, and we condemn it.”

The president also conceded that the crackdown would complicate his plans to have a dialogue with Tehran, saying: “There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks.”

Chancellor Merkel, too, was harshly critical of the Iranian leadership, declaring in German that Iranians should be able to demonstrate peacefully and to have their votes count. “The rights of human beings, of individuals, of citizens are indivisible the world over and also apply, therefore, to the Iranian people,” she said.

But there seemed little likelihood that the Iranian authorities would be swayed by the harsh words, as a senior cleric called for demonstrators to be punished “ruthlessly and savagely.”

At Friday prayers at Tehran University, a senior cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, referred to the demonstrators as rioters and declared, “I want the judiciary to punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson.”

Reuters quoted him as saying that demonstrators should be tried for waging war against God. The punishment for such offenses under Islamic law is death, Reuters said.

The cleric’s remarks represented a significant hardening of official rhetoric as the authorities confronted the biggest political challenge since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Yet. because Ayatollah Khatami is not regarded as a high-profile figure, it was not clear how much weight his words carried.

Yesterday, the President held what was by all accounts a very good first meeting on immigration reform.  As Andres and I wrote earlier this week we remain optimistic that a bill can make it through Congress by the end of the year, or early next.   It won't be easy, but nothing of significance is in Washington.  And of course the votes "aren't there yet," but at this point neither are they for health care reform, cap and trade or financial regulatory reform.   So with this event the hard work begins, and we are at NDN are prepared to work along side many groups across a broad political spectrum to make progress on this issue in the months ahead. 

At the end of the meeting the President made remarks which are worth repeating here, as in a very Obama fashion he makes it clear that he is ready to go and already moving ahead: 

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  We have just finished what I consider to be a very productive meeting on one of the most critical issues that I think this nation faces, and that is an immigration system that is broken and needs fixing.

We have members of Congress from both chambers, from parties, who have participated in the meeting and shared a range of ideas.  I think the consensus is that despite our inability to get this passed over the last several years, the American people still want to see a solution in which we are tightening up our borders, or cracking down on employers who are using illegal workers in order to drive down wages -- and oftentimes mistreat those workers.  And we need a effective way to recognize and legalize the status of undocumented workers who are here.

Now, this is -- there is not by any means consensus across the table.  As you can see, we've got a pretty diverse spectrum of folks here.  But what I'm encouraged by is that after all the overheated rhetoric and the occasional demagoguery on all sides around this issue, we've got a responsible set of leaders sitting around the table who want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now, but to start working on this thing right now.

My administration is fully behind an effort to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.  I have asked my Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Janet Napolitano, to lead up a group that is going to be working with a leadership group from both the House and the Senate to start systematically working through these issues from the congressional leaders and those with the relevant jurisdiction.  What we've heard is through a process of regular order, they would like to work through these issues both in the House and in the Senate.

In the meantime, administratively there are a couple of things that our administration has already begun to do.  The FBI has cleared much of the backlog of immigration background checks that was really holding up the legal immigration process.  DHS is already in the process of cracking down on unscrupulous employers, and, in collaboration with the Department of Labor, working to protect those workers from exploitation.

The Department of Homeland Security has also been making good progress in speeding up the processing of citizenship petitions, which has been far too slow for far too long -- and that, by the way, is an area of great consensus, cuts across Democratic and Republican parties, the notion that we've got to make our legal system of immigration much more efficient and effective and customer-friendly than it currently is.

Today I'm pleased to announce a new collaboration between my Chief Information Officer, my Chief Performance Officer, my Chief Technologies Officer and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Office to make the agency much more efficient, much more transparent, much more user-friendly than it has been in the past.

In the next 90 days, USCIS will launch a vastly improved Web site that will, for the first time ever, allow applicants to get updates on their status of their applications via e-mail and text message and online.  And anybody who's dealt with families who are trying to deal with -- navigate the immigration system, this is going to save them huge amounts of time standing in line, waiting around, making phone calls, being put on hold.  It's an example of some things that we can do administratively even as we're working through difficult issues surrounding comprehensive immigration.

And the idea is very simple here:  We're going to leverage cutting-edge technology to reduce the unnecessary paperwork, backlogs, and the lack of transparency that's caused so many people so much heartache.

Now, we all know that comprehensive immigration reform is difficult.  We know it's a sensitive and politically volatile issue.  One of the things that was said around the table is the American people still don't have enough confidence that Congress and any administration is going to get serious about border security, and so they're concerned that any immigration reform simply will be a short-term legalization of undocumented workers with no long-term solution with respect to future flows of illegal immigration.

What's also been acknowledged is that the 12 million or so undocumented workers are here -- who are not paying taxes in the ways that we'd like them to be paying taxes, who are living in the shadows, that that is a group that we have to deal with in a practical, common-sense way.  And I think the American people are ready for us to do so.  But it's going to require some heavy lifting, it's going to require a victory of practicality and common sense and good policymaking over short-term politics.  That's what I'm committed to doing as President.

I want to especially commend John McCain, who's with me today, because along with folks like Lindsey Graham, he has already paid a significant political cost for doing the right thing.  I stand with him, I stand with Nydia Velázquez and others who have taken leadership on this issue.  I am confident that if we enter into this with the notion that this is a nation of laws that have to be observed and this is a nation of immigrants, then we're going to create a stronger nation for our children and our grandchildren.

So thank you all for participating.  I'm looking forward to us getting busy and getting to work.  All right?  Thank you.

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking about all the young web-savvy future political leaders in less than free countries around the world.   I think about them as they read Nico Pitney, watch the youtube videos, see this incredible uprising unfold on line and on their televisions, and wonder how the inspiration of seeing the Iranian people rise up against a repressive regime will inspire their own future political development.  What is happening Iran has become a powerful teachable moment for emerging and future leaders throughout the world, one that I truly believe will give pro-democracy forces strength and inspiration in their own battles to forge better, more open societies.  After the terribly disapointing age of Bush the issue of political freedom has been thrust back, inconveniently for some, inspritationally for others, on to the global stage in a way that will be hard to for the nations of the world to shake off in the years ahead.

The Times has an interesting story about the impact of the uprising in the Middle East.  I excerpt a passage:

The Iranian standoff may also serve as a cautionary tale for Arab leaders who have watched as modern technology, like the Internet, social networking sites and cellphones, has yet again undermined the ability of authoritarian states to control access to and distribution of information.

But the cultural and social differences between Iran and Arab states are so great, there was no sense that leaders feared their citizens would be inspired to rise up. Iran is an important and influential nation in the Middle East, but it is also distant from the Sunni Arab street as a majority Persian country with a majority Shiite population.

“A lot of young people in the Arab world would love to see something like that, but the kind of civil society they have makes it much more natural for this to happen in Iran than in a place like Egypt or Saudi Arabia,” said Ahmed al-Omran, a college student in Saudi Arabia and author of the popular blog saudijeans.org.

Moreover, the dramatic video of Iranians being beaten or shot by Basijis has done incalculable damage to Iran’s image as the region’s most religiously pure and populist state. Iran’s allies in the region, including Syria, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Hamas movement in the Palestinian territories, also seem likely to suffer a blow to their credibility, and perhaps to their financing, if the election crisis is resolved with heavy suppression or an extended standoff with the opposition, analysts said.

One gauge of how Arab leaders are reacting to the Iran crisis is their silence. Officials seem eager to avoid even the appearance that they are trying to influence the outcome, political analysts said. The state-controlled media outlets around the region have also been relatively low key in their coverage.

“When you are waiting so much for something that makes you happy, you hold your breath, you make less noise in order not to affect the outcome,” said Randa Habib, a political analyst and columnist in Amman, Jordan.

Iran’s allies, on the other hand, are restive. Emad Gad, an Egyptian expert in international affairs, said that he saw evidence of Iran’s allies, especially in Syria, trying to hedge their bet on Tehran. He said that Syria had in recent days been more willing to help Egypt press for reconciliation between Palestinian factions.

“I think Ahmadinejad will concentrate in the economic field to improve living conditions for his population after this crisis,” Mr. Gad said. “That means less giving money, less meddling, less penetration in the Arab world, less involvement.”

I offered my first extended take on all this last Tuesday in the Huffington Post.

This morning, Andres and I released the statement below on tomorrow's meeting at the White House with President Obama and key Members of Congress on immigration reform.

NDN applauds President Obama and the White House for bringing together congressional leaders tomorrow to discuss how to best fix our nation's broken immigration system. Given all that is in front of the White House this summer, the meeting is an encouraging sign that the President and his team are starting a process which we hope will end in passage of Comprehensive Immigration Reform by Congress later this year.

There can be no doubt that conditions for significant movement on immigration reform this year have become more favorable. Senator Reid has made it clear he will introduce a bill this fall, and believes he has the votes for passage. Speaker Pelosi and House Majority Leader Hoyer now both identify immigration reform as one of their highest legislative priorities. An overwhelming majority of Americans want action taken to fix the broken immigration system now and support the Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislative approach. Some polls even show support for reform for increasing this year. There is a broad and deep bipartisan coalition ready to work on a common-sense bill, and a pro-reform President is riding high in the polls, with sufficient standing to sheperd an immigration bill through Congress.

As favorable as the conditions are today, they are likely to improve this fall. The right time for the President and Congress to move on immigration reform will be in the days and weeks following Sonia Sotomayor taking her seat on the Supreme Court, when the pride many will feel about the appointment of the first Latina will still be fresh in the public's mind, reminding all of the extraordinary and growing accomplishments of America's largest, and fastest-growing, minority.

While the road to passing Comprehensive Immigration Reform will not be an easy one, with strong leadership, progress this year is within Washington's grasp. Tomorrow's White House meeting is an important step of the many needed steps required for passage this year.

We also offer the following commentary, analysis and video, including video of Andres and I at a June 16 event on immigration reform. 

NDN Forum Immigration Reform: Politics, Public Opinion and Legislative Prospects,  Simon Rosenberg and Andres Ramirez, 6/16/09. Please click here for video of Simon Rosenberg's presentation; please click here for video of Andres Ramirez' presentation.

Making the Case for Passing Comprehensive Immigration Reform This Year (PDF), Simon Rosenberg, 6/16/09 - Rosenberg lays out the basic foundation for why Congress must pass comprehensive immigration reform. This summary is a good introduction for those wanting to learn the fundamentals of this issue.

Recent Polling on Immigration Reform, Benenson Strategy Group, 6/2/09 - Since a previous America's Voice poll in November, Pete Brodnitz of the Benenson Stratagey Group finds that support for comprehensive reform has been stable (and high), but increasing numbers of voters see the economic benefit of passing comprehensive immigration reform. The poll is consistent with NDN polling by Bendixen & Associates in its affirmation of overwhelming public support for immigration reform.

Making the Case: 7 Reasons Why Congress Should Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform this Year, Huffington Post, Simon Rosenberg, 4/30/09 - Rosenberg argues that the answer to whether Congress can pass reform this year is "yes."

The GOP's Impossible Dream: Republicans Can't Win Without Latino Support in Millennial Era, Mike Hais, 6/10/09 - NDN Fellow Hais writes that on his fivethirtyeight.com Web site, Nate Silver recently raised the possibility that the Republican Party could more effectively compete in the 2012 and 2016 elections by turning its back on Hispanics and attempting to maximize the support of white voters in enough 2008 Midwestern and Southern blue states to flip them red. The Republican Party rode similar exclusionary strategies to dominance of U.S. politics during most of the past four decades. But America has entered a new era.

Latinos Vote in 2008: Analysis of U.S. Presidential Exit Polls (PDF), Andres Ramirez, 1/18/09 - Ramirez provides an overview of the Hispanic electorate in key states from the 2008 presidential election. The analysis concludes that Hispanics participated in record numbers in this election cycle, increasing their turnout from the 2004 election;  Hispanics significantly shifted towards the Democratic nominee in 2008, reversing trends from the 2000 and 2004 presidential election cycles; Hispanics played a key role in Obama’s victory in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico; Hispanics are poised to make other states competitive in future elections; and if these trends continue, the national map will continue to get harder for Republicans.

National Survey of Hispanic Voters on Immigration Policy, Bendixen & Associates, 5/18/09 - Bendixen & Associates conducted a poll for America's Voice that comprehensively documents Hispanic voters' view on immigration policy. 

NDN Backgrounder on Judge Sotomayor and Our Changing Demography, Melissa Merz, 5/26/09 - In response to President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court, Merz compiles key NDN commentary and analysis on the great demographic changes taking place in America today.

From a freshly posted story on the NYTimes website:

TEHRAN — Locked in a continuing bitter contest Monday with Iranians who say the presidential elections were rigged, the authorities here acknowledged that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, state television reported following assertions by the country’s supreme leader that the ballot was fair.

But the authorities insisted that discrepancies, which could affect three million votes, did not violate Iranian law and the country’s influential Guardian Council said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the election result.

At a news conference Monday, Hassan Qashqavi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called the turnout — officially put at 85 percent, or 40 million voters — a “brilliant gem which is shining on the peak of dignity of the Iranian nation.”

He accused unidentified western powers and news organizations, which are operating under extremely tight official restrictions, of spreading unacceptable “anarchy and vandalism.” But, he said, the outcome of the vote would not be changed. “We will not allow western media to turn this gem into a worthless stone,” he said.

Mr. Qashqavi drew comparisons with American election results.

“No one encouraged the American people to stage a riot” because they disagreed with the re-election of George W. Bush, he said. Quoted by Press TV, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the authoritative Guardian Council — a 12-member panel of clerics charged with certifying the vote — denied claims by another losing candidate, Mohsen Rezai, that irregularities had occurred in up to 170 voting districts.

“Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100 percent of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80 to 170 cities are not accurate — the incident has happened in only 50 cities,” Mr. Kadkhodaei said.

Nico has more at Huffington Post.  From the Times' Lede blog over the weekend:

Update | 10:35 a.m. A Lede reader points out an interesting analysis of Iran’s election results that was published by London-based Chatham House. The analysis, based on the province-by-province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, challenges some of the assertions about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection made by Iranian officials.

The authors cite these highlights of their analysis:

1) At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased turnout, and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion that his victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.

2) In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, and all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.

3) In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.

We are clearly entering a new phase in these rapidly unfolding events.

Update: And just found this on Nico's page from early this am:

4:43 AM ET -- Report: 40 senior clerics want election results annulled. The intense infighting among Iran's clerical establishment appeared to play out in new dramatic fashion on Monday. Via reader Art, the news site Peiknet reported that Ayatollah Rafsanjani has a letter signed by 40 members of the powerful 86-member Assembly of Experts calling for the annulment of the recent presidential election results.

Nico's latest liveblogging has mounting evidence that the vote was rigged. 

All of this presents an interesting challenge for how other nations will now interact with the current government.   As Roger Cohen wrote in the NY Times this morning, the current regime's legitimacy is more than in question now.

What a sea change for Iran, and for the region.  Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, and now Iran all having meaningful elections.  Afghanistan has just begun its new round of elections.  Even Palestine's recent election was consequential.  While too much can be read it into it, nonethless, this simple idea - that the people must have their say - is making a powerful apperance now in the Middle East where political freedom has been a rare thing indeed.

I have to say that I have been incredibly inspired by the courage of the people of Iran over the past week, and have been deeply moved by their valiant efforts to bring their story to the people of the world.   These images and stories are being seen by all of us throughout the world, but perhaps no more so than its youth, who are the majority of the people of the world today.  Fully 53% of the world's population is under thirty today, and this uprising is becoming an important milestone in the political education of those will come to power in the years ahead.

As I wrote the other day one of the most consequential stories of the early 21st century will be the struggle of the rising nations of the world with modernity and all that it entails - free markets, the global information revolution and of course the other part of what of what the West has been exporting - political freedom, rule of law and democracy. 

As the "world watches" what is happening in Iran, I've been wondering how these extraordinary images are going over in Caracas, Riyadh, Beijing, Moscow and the corridors of power of other less than democratic governments.   The events of the past week have raised the issues of political freedom and liberty in ways that are not always easy for the West to do.   My sense is that whatever the outcome in Iran - and we have to hope for the best each day - these events, coupled with the rise of Barack Obama in the US, are putting some issues on the global table that may be uncomfortable indeed for many important nations in the world today. 

Much has been written about the how events unfolding in Iran are crossing some kind of internal Iranian Rubicon.  Fareed Zakaria has a new essay to this effect.  But there is a strong argument to be made that the world is crossing that Rubicon right along with the Iranians, and that we wiill all be in a new place together after these extraordinary set of events.   I won't argue that we will begin to see street demonstrations in other parts of the world now, but there can be no doubt that the inconvenient and of course critically important issue of political freedom has been introduced into the great global conversation in a way it has not been for a long, long time.  And where that takes us is still to early to tell, but we do know that this new place almost has to be better than where we've been.

From the House Resolution:

“The House of Representatives expresses its support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law; condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cell phones; and affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections.”

Like the addition of Internet and cell phone access as part of what we would like to see in Iran, and elsewhere. 

Berman's statement:

“This resolution is not about American interests,” Mr. Berman said. “It’s about American values, which I believe are universal values: the values of the rule of law; of participatory democracy; about individual liberty and about justice. And it is on behalf of those universal values not American interests that I urge this body to support this resolution.”