Never negotiate with 'terrorists'

Joe Biden is wrong. Tea Partiers are not economic terrorists. They just play them convincingly on TV. With that in mind, there's a reason that you never, ever negotiate with folks wearing suicide vests. "It only encourages them," goes the old saw. Which brings us to Joe Nocera's history lesson of the day: "What is astonishing is that both the president and House speaker are claiming that the [debt ceiling] deal will help the economy. Do they really expect us to buy that? We’ve all heard what happened in 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt, believing the Depression was over, tried to rein in federal spending. Cutting spending spiraled the country right back into the Great Depression, where it stayed until the arrival of the stimulus package known as World War II." Kinda scary, huh? The good news is this isn't 1937. The bad news is this isn't 1945 (which brought VE Day).