NYT: World Sees America's Aura Diminishing & A President's Authority Under Challenge

In World’s Eyes, Much Damage Is Already Done

Even before negotiations went down to the wire on Sunday night, the bitterness, division and dysfunction that resounded around the world in recent weeks as the United States veered toward default did more than just fuel a perception that Washington is approaching Japan-like levels of political gridlock. Among foreign leaders and in global markets, the political histrionics have eroded America’s already diminishing aura as the world’s economic haven and the sole country with the power to lead the rest of the world out of financial crisis and recession.

It has chipped away at the global authority of President Obama, who was celebrated abroad when he came to office as a man who would end an era of American unilateralism. Now the topic of discussion in other capitals is whether the Age of Obama is giving way to an Age of Austerity, one that will inevitably reduce America’s influence internationally.

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But the brush with default has added a new dimension.

It has left America’s creditors and allies alike wondering what had changed in American politics that a significant part of the country’s political elite was suddenly willing to risk the nation’s reputation as the safest place for the rest of the world to invest.

It raised questions about whether the United States now faces brinkmanship over a variety of issues between an emboldened conservative movement and a president whose authority is under challenge. And for all the talk on the right about “American exceptionalism,” especially among members of the Tea Party, it put doubts in the minds of many about whether America’s military and economic dominance is something the country is still willing to pay for — and will always survive.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/us/politics/01capital.html?pagewanted=all&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

We won't have the money to repair the climate change damages. Texas will become a dustbowl, New Orleans a swamp, and the great United States of America will be the country that was.

But the banks will get their money.

are a small fraction of little pissy-pants assholes that thought the way to control their message was by destroying the country from the inside out. The majority of political heads didn't want this. The Teabagger assholes, as small as they are, wanted this.