Proud Americans, and Other Demographics Liberals Don't Understand

So much ridicule, so little time. Today might be a two-fer on postings, both because I’ve got a lot of time on my hands over the next four days and because I’ve still got Krugman’s article from yesterday backlogged. Collins is an easier target though; she doesn’t even strive for thematic fluidity or logical consistency anymore. Someday I’ll get tired of shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. Not today.

Sacred Cows, Angry Birds

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: February 18, 2011

The House of Representatives has been cutting like crazy!

Sweet! There’s a pun in here somewhere about Democrats in Madison “cutting class,” but I can’t get a handle on it. Oh well. Win some, lose some.

Down with Planned Parenthood

Would Democrats have ever funded the organization if it didn’t offer abortions? Trick question! Of course. Democrats will fund anything.

 and PBS!

Also known as “that channel that’s taking up valuable space between Fox and the History Channel.”

We can’t afford to worry about mercury contamination!

Actually, that’s more of an acknowledgement that the EPA is chock full of self-righteous lunatics. I just can’t imagine that I have anything in common with those assholes—except the self-righteousness.

Safety nets are too expensive!

The deficit is approaching 10% of GDP both because of Obama’s misguided stimuli and ballooning entitlements. I would say that yes, they are most certainly too expensive.

But keep your hands off the Defense Department’s budget to sponsor Nascar

It’s NASCAR. Thanks.

racers.

It seems like the military should have the money to recruit for the armed forces. The determination of where to spend that money should be theirs. As long as you throw in a few auditors to make sure there’s no abuse or waste, I’m good with them spending that money on whatever they believe is acceptable.

“It’s a great public/private partnership,” said Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican.

I believe that’s another way of saying “it works” but spruced up in the ludicrous vernacular of the leftist wing-nut to make it digestible to rhetorical wunderkinds like Collins. (See, it’s funny both because she’s and idiot and because she’s old.)

The Defense Department claims racecar sponsorships are an important recruiting tool for the Army. The House agreed — although this might be news to the Navy and Marines, which decided a while back that a Nascar

NASCAR!

 presence wasn’t worth the money.

This isn’t complicated. There is only one pool of potential military recruits that watch NASCAR. By crowding the market with three service branches, each has opened itself to the likelihood of diminished returns. The fact that the marketplace can only support one service branch to be cost-effective doesn’t diminish the cost-effectiveness of the advertising medium. What’s more, the Navy and Marines willingness to break from an unfruitful partnership implies a strong tendency for fiscal discipline within the military’s recruitment vehicle. This concept eludes the whizzes at Planned Parenthood and PBS.

“What makes U.S. Army’s motorsports initiatives successful?” Ryan Newman, driver of No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet asked his Facebook readers as he urged a show of support for the program. “In a 2009 study among fans nationwide, 37% feel more positive about the Army due to its involvement in motorsports.”

NASCAR races average some 3 million viewers for important races. That’s 1,110,000 viewers per race that are reminded that there exists another door for their lives or their childrens’ lives. Army commercials in the past few years have been geared more towards parents than children, which suggests that recruitment has been strongly impaired by family reticence towards the dangers inherent to military service. Unlike recruitment centers, which offer effective one-on-one interactions between military recruiters and potential recruits, sponsorships give the military the opportunity to tailor a message to the people that have the ear of potential recruits on a daily basis.

Let’s stop right here and think about this posting. Is it likely that racing fans would think less of the Army for sponsoring racecars?

No. But it’s a virtual certainty that they would think about it less. What’s more, it’s entirely possible to support the military wholeheartedly and still feel that it’s not the best opportunity for yourself or your child. That’s why the reminders from the Army are essential:  That it molds strong young men and women, That it pays for college, That it gives the opportunity for kids to develop life-long career skills. Basically, there are elements of the Army that are just like college, without the inane ramblings of a English 101 class.

Actually, wouldn’t you expect the percentage to be higher?

All advertisements are hit-or-miss.

Also, how many of you believe Ryan Newman actually wrote those sentences.

I do, but that’s because I don’t think all NASCAR drivers are illiterate hicks.

Can I see a show of hands?

Don’t be jealous that he’s got a stronger grasp on sentence composition than you. It’s not like you pretend to be a professional writer anymore.

Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota, who sponsored an amendment eliminating the military’s Nascar

NASCAR. You don’t write Mlb or Nfl.

connection, said it could save taxpayers “tens of millions of dollars.”

You would think she’d be able to be a little more precise. There is a finite cost to the sponsorship. In fact, it’s pre-determined in a contract. $7mm per year.

She got a flood of angry letters and one death threat.

It takes some chutzpah to bitch about death threats with what’s going on in Madison.

Also, her amendment was rejected, 148 to 281.

Meh. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have been upset at all if the Army had been forced to pull its NASCAR sponsorship. We need cuts.

The opponents didn’t bother with much debate.

It wasn’t worth much debate. It’s a tiny amount of money in the federal budget and it wasn’t a serious proposal—much like the proposal to cut off funding to Obama’s teleprompter. That one was at least funny though.

“This amendment is about politics in certain districts for certain groups of people,” said Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a tad obliquely.

So pick a better quote.

McHenry was probably

No. Pick a better quote instead of embarrassing yourself by trying to interpret this one.

referring to the Democrats, who’ve often been branded by the Republicans as tennis-watching snobs.

Actually, she did a pretty good job. Democrats don’t “get” real sports.

The Obamaites actually spend vast amounts of time and money trying to woo “Nascar dads,”

First, that term hasn’t been used since 2004, which means it was John Kerry doing the dude-wooing (and really, is anyone surprised?) Second, in a column about fiscal discipline regarding NASCAR money, you’d think Democrats would be demanding a higher return for their efforts. The “NASCAR dad” demographic would still spurn Democrats if Republicans campaigned exclusively on outlawing Slim Jims and Keystone Light. Third, maybe the party would get some more traction in the demographic if it understood that it’s NASCAR, an abbreviation, as opposed to Nascar!

 although given car racing’s sinking popularity, it might make more sense to target some other fan base.

Good luck with baseball fans. We still remember that Obama throws like a girl and can’t name a single player from his “favorite team.”

What about all the people who play games on their cellphones and iPads?

Social-network gamers don’t count as a “fan base.” They barely count as people. I guess it’s good that 90% of them don’t get to vote.

Make 2012 the Year of the Angry Birds Dad or the Brickbreaker Aunt.

Are you trying to get me to punch a political strategist in the gut?

But I digress.

Yes. You do. Very often. It’s not charming or interesting. It’s just sloppy writing.

On Friday, the House was working its way through 129 amendments to its continuing budget resolution. There would have been 130, but Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas retracted his proposal to cut off financing for President Obama’s teleprompter.

That one still makes me chuckle. Props, Arkansas.

The majority did vote, however, to eliminate money for a park in Nancy Pelosi’s district. The former House speaker has been demonized to the point that it’s safe to do anything to her short of kidnapping the family dog.

Nah, I’d be cool with that. That dog has probably seen some terrible, terrible things. He deserves better, America.

Let’s give Speaker John Boehner credit for keeping his promise to give members more chance to debate and offer amendments. Really, if things get any more open, the members will start throwing themselves off the balcony.

So openness and transparency is only sort of a good thing sometimes?

But not such high marks on consistency.

Please show your work.

The newly ascendant Republicans have been howling that the deficit is so big, so threatening, that no target for cutting is sacred. “Everything is on the table. We’re broke,” said Boehner.

I’m digging me some Boehner these days. I immediately regret how dirty that sounded.

But the table is mainly crowded with stuff the Republicans didn’t like to begin with.

Is this supposed to be inconsistent?

Family-planning money and environmental protection,

This is what’s known as “low-hanging fruit.”

but not oil tax breaks

As soon as we quit subsidizing wind farms and ethanol (which, has been inflating food prices, in case you hadn’t heard) I’m so far down with eliminating tax breaks for oil companies it’s not even funny.

or Nascar

NASCAR.

sponsorships. “Sesame Street” is fair game,

Sesame Street is popular. I have no doubt that the program would get picked up by Nick Jr. or any one of 227 other channels designed for incontinent viewers.

 but the Daytona 500 is untouchable.

Untouchable, no. Our elected officials simply believe that it is an acceptable use of military recruitment funds.

“Spending is out of control,” cried Jim Jordan, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, who argued for additional cuts in all nonsecurity discretionary spending — except aid to Israel.

They’re our staunch allies and they have been under siege for 60 years as the only stable democracy in a region dominated by fanatical neo-Neanderthals. For that alone they deserve consideration for their yeoman’s work to further our interests in the region.

In Wisconsin, the new Republican governor, Scott Walker, wants to strip state employees of their collective-bargaining rights

Now you’re confusing state debts with federal debts. See, I know this because you’re talking about a governor, who has absolutely no say in federal affairs (unless you’re talking about states ratifying amendments to the federal Constitution, which you clearly aren’t).

because: “We’re broke. We’ve been broke in this state for years.”

The difference is that Walker can’t print money to cover the government’s debts.

Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators went into hiding to deprive the Republican majority of the quorum they need to pass Walker’s agenda.

In other words, they whined like little girls, spat on the people of Wisconsin, and actively attempted to undermine the impact of last year’s elections and the democratic process in general. Who was it that said “elections have consequences?” Oh right. The guy who throws like a girl in the White House. Wait, that’s not specific enough…

The Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald — who happens to be the brother of the Assembly speaker, Jeff Fitzgerald —

CONSPIRACY!!!

believes the governor is absolutely right about the need for draconian measures to cut spending in this crisis. So he’s been sending state troopers out to look for the missing Democrats.

The troopers aren’t out there because they want the proposed law. They’re out there because they value the rule of law and the legislative process. Democrats in Wisconsin have shown themselves to be irresponsible brats.

The troopers are under the direction of the new chief of the state patrol, Stephen Fitzgerald. He is the 68-year-old father of Jeff and Scott and was appointed to the $105,678 post this month by Governor Walker.

For the chief of the state patrol? That’s very reasonable. Chicago beat cops make $64,374 plus a few add-ons for various responsibilities.

Perhaps the speaker’s/majority leader’s father was a super choice,

I have no idea, and neither do you.

and the fact that he was suddenly at liberty after having recently lost an election for county sheriff was simply a coincidence that allowed the governor to recruit the best possible person for the job. You’d still think that if things are so dire in Wisconsin, the Fitzgerald clan would want to set a better austerity example.

The man runs the state troopers. $105,678 is not unreasonable in the slightest.

And if Big Bird goes, we can spare the U.S. Army Chevrolet, too.

No. You  don’t get to do that. You have strayed so far off-topic that you don’t get to come back around and make a cute little one-off about NASCAR. The Wisconsin issues has virtually NOTHING to do with the federal deficit talks, at least until Boehner and McConnell decide that they have the juice to take on the federal public unions. (I’m crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath.)

What’s more, there is no link between Big Bird and the Army. One is federally funded because…well no one knows why a show that’s perfectly viable on the open market is federally funded. The other is funded by the military with full knowledge of the other options and a full set of market constraints. What’s more, my guess is that if you cut $7mm from the Army’s annual recruitment budget that they would still keep the NASCAR sponsorship. That is how you know that one is about politics and the other is about cutting fat.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 19, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition.

Colman McCarthy: Taliban Admirer and Generally Shitty Human Being

I was never an ardent supporter of “Don’t ask don’t tell.” Of course, it’s difficult to support a half-measure. I am generally receptive to both arguments for whether or not gays should be permitted to serve in the military, but tend to come down on the side that our civilian leadership should pursue policies that unburden soldiers of the complexities that come with sexuality as much as possible. Of course, DADT (I hate that acronym; it feels like what I would call my father if he happened to be Mr. T.) was used as a smokescreen for years by private universities to bar ROTC programs from campus. If there’s a silver lining on the tiny puff of a dark cloud that was the DADT repeal, it is that this canard is delegitimized and private universities must confront their own silly, anti-American biases.

'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on campus.

By Colman McCarthy

Before we move on, check out this guy’s Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colman_McCarthy) Pacifist? Anarchist? Classic.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Now that asking and telling has ceased to be problematic in military circles, ROTC has resurfaced as a national issue:

This is still very much a niche issue. DADT was a niche issue. No one outside the gay community thought it was a priority.

Will universities such as Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools be opened to Reserve Officers' Training Corps since colleges can no longer can argue that the military is biased against gays and therefore not welcome?

Don’t underestimate the counterintuitive chicanery of the learned and bespectacled. Your colleagues in academia regularly argue such this blather. I can hear it now: “the United States military has a long record of [blah blah blah] and the wounds from the dark days of “don’t ask don’t tell” are still raw…[story courageous gay Marine facing persecution]…this university is a sacrosanct institution of higher learning devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Now let’s all go get some grant money to give crystal meth to giraffes or break ground on the new “Neville Chamberlain Peace Studies and Nonviolent Conflict Resolution Center” building.

The debate reminds me of an interview I conducted over parents' weekend at the University of Notre Dame in 1989.

How timely. After you’re done, I have a totally awesome story about how I learned how to use Lego®s. (What do you want? I was 3.)

I sat down with Theodore Hesburgh, the priest who had retired two years earlier after serving 35 years as the university's president. Graciously, he invited me to lunch at the campus inn.

::waits patiently for relevant information::

During our discussion, he took modest pride at having raised more than a billion dollars for Notre Dame, and expressed similar feelings about the university's ROTC program. More than 700 student-cadets were in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

Roughly 6% of the student body.

Few universities, public or private, had a larger percentage of students in uniform then. The school could have been renamed Fort Hesburgh.

Was that a joke? Really, I can’t tell.

When I suggested that Notre Dame's hosting of ROTC was a large negative among the school's many positives,

Subtle.

Hesburgh disagreed.

As do all of us who aren’t bathing in the self-righteousness that comes from a complete detachment from reality.

Notre Dame was a model of patriotism, he said, by training future officers who were churchgoers, who had taken courses in ethics, and who loved God and country. Notre Dame's ROTC program was a way to "Christianize the military," he stated firmly.

I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat,

Combat is not slaughter. Men slaughter pigs and cows and chickens. It is intentionally arbitrary. The word exists for killing in a manner where fighting would be ridiculous. The similarity, of course, is that both combat and slaughter, differing in both purpose and execution, are both necessary.

or a Christian way of firebombing cities,

(Full disclosure: I’m an avowed atheist) That is pretty much the entire purpose of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not to get too deep into theological issues that interest me very little, the distinction between that story and combat is that the Biblical story invokes God’s judgment as a justification for the destruction. This is where I, as an atheist, get to say that man’s judgment is just as valid. Boiling Christianity down to sound bites like the golden rule might be okay for Sunday School, but I’d expect a professional who lectures on religion to acknowledge that the subject has a little more depth.

or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus.

Civilian casualties are a part of war. They have been a part of all wars. When committed by the United States military, they are accidental and/or those responsible are tried. The existence of error does not invalidate the purpose behind the action.

That said, the United States military doesn’t do anything in the name of Jesus.

Did he think that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military would eventually embrace Christ's teaching of loving one's enemies?

There is a difference between loving your enemy and subjugating yourself to him.

The interview quickly slid downhill.

Because you mocked the man’s religion and labeled his students war criminals and bible-thumping crusaders. You’re lucky you got out of there without a black eye, even if you were talking to a priest.

These days, the academic senates of the Ivies and other schools are no doubt pondering the return of military recruiters to their campuses. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, which oversees ROTC programs on more than 300 campuses, has to be asking if it wants to expand to the elite campuses, where old antipathies are remembered on both sides.

Damn hippies.

It should not be forgotten that schools have legitimate and moral reasons for keeping the military at bay, regardless of the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell."

If shrieking “killers!” in the face of ideological opponents is the hallmark of legitimate and moral reasoning, well, the left has a lot of re-thinking to do on the abortion issue.

They can stand with those who for reasons of conscience reject military solutions to conflicts.

Actually, “those who, for reasons of conscience reject military solutions to conflicts,” by definition, can’t stand for anything, lest they risk militarizing their opponents.

They can stand with Martin Luther King Jr.

Requisite hero-worship and invocation of personal morality beyond reproach.

and his view of America's penchant for war-making: "This madness must cease," he said from a pulpit in April 1967.

That is, if you ascribe to the notion that war is, in abstract, madness. Certainly on the ground, war can feel chaotic, but we elect sober, responsible leaders so that the high-level trajectory of our military incursions is not random, incoherent, or mad.

Even well short of the pacifist positions, they can argue the impracticality of maintaining a military that has helped drive this country into record depths of debt.

Oh please open this can of worms. The moral justification for a private university barring ROTC programs is about the public debt? Does that finally mean that debt is a moral issue?

The defense budget has more than doubled since 2000, to over $700 billion.

A ten year doubling period means an approximate growth rate of 7.2%. Considering that we’ve been drawn into two wars since 2000, a growth rate a full percentage point lower than the S&P 500 geometric mean returns seems pretty reasonable. I’d like to ask, what’s the rate of growth for school budgets? Tuition costs?

They can align themselves with colleges such as Hobart, Earlham, Goshen, Guilford, Hampshire, George Fox and a long list of others that teach alternatives to violence.

Nihilism 101, Dependency and Self-immolation 221, Embracing Stockholm Syndrome 302, and a graduate thesis on The Sublime Freedom of Subjugation.

Serve your country after college, these schools say, but consider the Peace Corps as well as the Marine Corps.

The Peace Corps isn’t about service. It’s about delaying your life to embrace a self-serving quest for purpose and meaning. If that’s your thing, stop planting soy beans in Ethiopia and start praying. You don’t have to travel the world and worry about being killed or raped by Congolese rebels. Everything the Peace Corps does, the free market could do better. The only difference is that the Peace Corps hoodwinks kids into doing it for free with the absurd promise of enlightenment, purpose, or moral superiority. There is no valid way to describe the Peace Corps—or organizations like City Year and Teach for America—other than exploitive.

Will the Ivies have the courage for such stands? I'm doubtful. Only one of the eight Ivy League schools - Cornell - offers a degree in peace studies.

That’s not why Cornell is a laughingstock, but it doesn’t help. Also, I’m not sure how offering a worthless piece of paper translates into heightened morality.

Their pride in running programs in women's studies, black studies, and gay and lesbian studies is well-founded,

Not to get sidetracked, but those programs are laughable. They’re petty, biased, and infamous for harboring extreme left-wing ideologues that use their position to indoctrinate students.

but schools have small claims to greatness so long as the study of peace is not equal to the other departments when it comes to size and funding.

Please reread this sentence and come back once your ire’s good and healthy.

Now what the fuck is this? Greatness is defined by “peace studies?” It’s a made-up field. Peace, in and of itself, is also not a laudable goal. Anyone can forge peace if they surrender enough. This guy is lobbying for an Ivy League job in a national newspaper? Who the hell are the editors here?

At Notre Dame, on that 1989 visit and several following, I learned that the ROTC academics were laughably weak. They were softie courses.

Coming from a professor of Peace Studies? Those bullshit curriculums define the “softie course.” Why? Two reasons: 1) the professors are dickless, and 2) the professors know that their funding is contingent on the size of the department, and even college kids are, by and large, smart enough to know that “Peace Studies” is a degree that will get you laughed out of job interviews that actually pay. Also, all the ROTC guys I knew were engineers. I know it’s not Walden, but electrical resistance is pretty important too. Also, have I mentioned my disdain for Henry David Thoreau?

The many students I interviewed were candid about their reasons for signing up: free tuition and monthly stipends, plus the guarantee of a job in the military after college.

All reasonable positions, but somehow I don’t trust his ability to filter their sentiments into two sentences.

With some exceptions, they were mainly from families that couldn't afford ever-rising college tabs.

Who can afford $45k+ per year? Especially when most top tier schools give preferential treatment in the guise of affirmative action to lower income applicants? Everyone else either gets scholarships or student loans. No one actually buys the argument that college is inaccessible for low-income kids without ROTC assistance. That said, it helps.

To oppose ROTC, as I have

Once again, a tastefully subtle homage to his own impeccable morality.

since my college days in the 1960s,

Fertile grounds for this blossoming smugness. Let me make this clear: you, Mr. McCarthy, are a member of the worst generation to ever live in this country. Your youthful rebellions were petty, self-centered, and ill-conceived. The entire hippie movement was based on lies and chemical ingestion. Your draft-dodging antics were nothing short of despicable. Your political choices—Republicans included until 1980—were terrible. Jim Morrison was a douche and Acid Rock/hippie culture did more to ruin the Beatles than Yoko Ono. You continue to milk Social Security and pension benefits as though you’ve earned them. You raised your children into a world in which everything from dodgeballs to nuclear apocalypse was to be feared, monitored, and ultimately regulated. And it is only by the grace of the military, which you abhor, that America never turned into East Germany.

when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier.

You just accused them of killing civilians and slaughtering enemies. You can’t abstract that upon the military and absolve those committing the crimes. Yes, Mr. McCarthy, you are anti-soldier.

I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's:

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!

for their discipline,

You can find that in a football team.

for their loyalty to their buddies

You can find that in a gang.

and to their principles,

You can find that in a church.

for their sacrifices to be away from home.

You can find that at a summer camp. None of these attributes are what make soldiers great.

In recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.

The peace movement attracts spineless weenies and neck-bearded idealists (Two Thoreau references in one post? Yeah I just did that.) who are prone to excessive whining and blocking out the realities of their existence. Those are not valued attributes in the military, but the peace movement certainly coddles them

ROTC and its warrior ethic

Which you just praised two sentences ago, I’ll remind you.

taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace.

No one means that when they say “intellectual purity.” That drivel isn’t a definition for intellectual purity at all. In fact, it’s neither intellectual nor pure. It’s a mission statement for a drum circle based in a misunderstanding of geopolitics and human nature more often found in bedtime stories.

If a school such as Harvard does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.

Non-sequitur. Corporations regularly shape curriculums in business schools because it better prepares students for the professional environment. Scholarships are often given to students with restrictions on fields of study. Neither of these stipulations implies any ownership over the university or its day-to-day functionality.

Colman McCarthy, a former Post columnist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington and teaches courses on nonviolence at four area universities and two high schools.

The Fightin' Dems: "Before going into battle, one must always first prepare a well manicured white flag"

Obama's dangerous debt compromises

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

As I was passing through security at Boston's Logan International Airport

A hellhole, truly. Why is it that Boston is such a terrible place? Right; one-party Democrat rule in both the city and the state.

on Tuesday night, a TSA worker discovered a penny in one of the bins that had just been screened.

He picked up the coin, turned to a colleague and said with a grim smile: "This is your Obama bonus."

First it was the traveler’s Obama stimulus. That’s trickle-down sarcasm, right there.

Which made me wonder: Is President Obama's strategy of offering preemptive concessions destined to make enemies of his potential friends in the electorate without winning over any of his adversaries?

Why should he treat the Republicans any differently than he treats Iran or North Korea?

The idea of freezing the pay of federal workers could be a sensible part of a larger, long-term deal

Which is to say, Obama needs to keep the most obvious deficit-reducing ideas in his back-pocket to push through the crazy ideologically-driven ones. I get the logic of that argument, but to—in the same breath—accuse Republicans of being mindlessly partisan (wait for it) reeks of hypocrisy.

that would combine spending reductions with tax increases.

Great, so we agree. Republicans want spending reductions. Democrats want tax increases in a recession.

It's an obvious element in any negotiation. But Obama simply threw in the federal workers in exchange for - well, as best I can tell, nothing.

Here’s what he got in exchange [speculation]: Republicans agreed not to demand a 10% reduction in federal workers compensation like they should.

And in the short term, shouldn't jobs and rising incomes be a higher priority than austerity?

Jesus, this isn’t even economics, it’s basic arithmetic. By freezing federal workers pay, budgetary constraints no longer demand lay-offs (or, alternately, allow for increased hiring). The problem that Dionne is, in his wonderous stupidity, skating around is that wage reductions (or, in some cases a decrease in the rate of growth of wages) tends to negatively impact morale, which is why the labor supply tends to be price inelastic. Yes, I do feel bad enough for Dionne to make his own argument for him.

Worse, every signal out of the White House is that it is prepared to cave to Republican demands for a temporary extension of all the Bush tax cuts,

Can I take a few moments to praise the faux-Republicans going along with this laudable measure? Thank you, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski. You’ve given me a reason to believe that you’re not completely hopeless.

including those for millionaires who are in rather less need of additional income than security workers at Logan or nurses at government hospitals.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, eh Karl Marx?

The dance toward a capitulation

Also called “The Macarena.”

on the tax cuts was perfectly timed for the release of the fiscal plan put forward by the chairs of the deficit commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Bowles and Simpson are having trouble winning broad commission support for their plan. And in truth, how can anyone take a deficit-reduction proposal seriously when the main order of business in Congress is to make sure we widen the deficit by keeping all of the Bush tax cuts?

People who understand that

1)    Regardless of the highest marginal income tax rate, federal tax revenues have been remarkably consistent at approximately 18.5% of GDP and

2)    Lower taxes markedly reduce the capital financing hurdles to new businesses and business expansions that drive growth and

3)    Economic growth is essential for getting out of this debt.

What we are witnessing here is the political power that comes from the Republican Party's single-minded focus on high-end tax cuts

Well, that and winning massive electoral gains less than a month ago. What was that old Obama mantra? Oh yes. “Elections have consequences.”

and the strategic incoherence of a Democratic Party that is confused and divided - and not getting much help from its president.

Most people are a little dazed just after

Obama seems to have decided that showing how conciliatory he can be is more important than making clear where he stands.

To be fair, this is par for the course for the President. He has made a very successful career out of obfuscating his positions on seemingly simple items. This is largely because whenever he does take a principled stand—Cambridge police, Shirley Sherrod—he ends up with egg on his face. This is largely because his instincts on just about everything are dead wrong.

The administration's strategy is rooted in a fear of what Republicans are willing to do, which only strengthens the GOP's bargaining position.

Is Dionne advocating brinksmanship for the Democrats here, because that’s what it sounds like.

The president figures that congressional Republicans would be quite happy to let taxes on the middle class rise on Jan. 1 if that's the price of continuing to fight for the tax cuts for the rich.

Where is that “rich” line again?

In a game of chicken, Republicans are willing to gamble - even if the economy would take a hit.

So you acknowledge that increased taxes lead to economic stagnation—an surprising revelation from a man advocating increased taxes.

Lacking confidence that Senate Democrats would hold together and force the Republicans to vote to kill the middle-class tax cuts,

Which they wouldn’t, both because they’re too shell-shocked from last month and because they’ve lost the messaging to the Republicans. The American people rightly perceive this skirmish as between those who want to maintain the tax cuts (Republicans) and those who want to increase taxes (Democrats).

Obama is trying to get what he can in exchange for the extension.

He's right to fight for a restoration of unemployment compensation for about 2 million Americans whose benefits have expired,

Malarkey! (Jesus, I’m old.) The reason that we’re hopelessly indebted is because the federal government decided that it was their right and duty—surely as the founders intended—to subsidize moral hazard regardless of the cost. We simply can not continue to pay people to contribute nothing to the economy.

and for other stimulative measures.

Which have proven conclusively to be anything but stimulative.

And, yes, the Senate should ratify the New START treaty with Russia before the end of the year –

Why? Putin can wait for the people who were actually elected to take up this issue.

though what does it say about us as a country when the president has to offer a tax-cut payoff to get a key foreign policy initiative through?

Well, it says to me that E.J. Dionne doesn’t really understand what qualifies as a “key foreign policy initiative.” Is anyone really worried about Russia having a very lot of nuclear weapons versus a lot of nuclear weapons? Plus, Obama has framed this as part of a goal for a nuclear free world, which is just asinine.

As for Bowles and Simpson, they put some good ideas on the table (taxing capital gains at the same rate as other income,

I agree.

for example, and taking a run at cutting military expenditures)

I agree again, but it is telling that the first two things a liberal could come up with that are good ideas to cut the deficit are raising taxes and cutting the military.

and some not-so-good ones (raising the Social Security retirement age,

Sacred Cow #1

capping government expenditures at 21 percent of GDP

Yes, cutting or capping spending by government would be an absolutely batty way to reduce the government’s problem with overspending.

at a time when the population is aging and government will inevitably have to pick up more of our health-care costs).

…To each according to their need.

But the commission now seems a sideshow in a Washington circus where Republicans set the agenda in the main ring.

This is generally to be expected after MASSIVE ELECTORAL LANDSLIDES.

Obama's party is in this end-of-session fix because neither he nor congressional Democrats could agree on what to do about the Bush tax cuts when they held the initiative - and now Democrats have no idea where Obama will go next.

Agreed. The Democrats feared that voting to raise taxes in a massive recession would send voters to the Republican Party in flocks. So they conspired to come up with other ways to send voters to the Republican Party in flocks.

The best gloss on all this is that the president is engaged in a holding action aimed at getting out of this lame-duck period with something to show for his efforts

A “Runner-Up” ribbon?

and a chance to regroup. But he will soon have to decide whether he wants to be a negotiator or a leader.

As though the two are mutually exclusive.

You have to hope

I must do no such thing!

at least that he doesn't want to spend the rest of his term issuing apologies to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.

As a staunch supporter of drastically limited executive rights, I steadfastly disagree. Anything that diminishes the power of the presidency is okay with me, even if that means bowing to Republican leaders like he does to Saudi Kings or Japanese emperors.