Meet the Press

Today's lineup should have produced an interesting discussion about what's going on with the debt, with a lineup of Dick Durbin and Jim DeMint.  Instead I found it extremely disappointing that David Gregory appeared to go out of his way to equalize the nonsensical talking points being made by Jim DeMint.  Durbin's a pretty savvy press guy, he was running circles around DeMint.  Note to press -- if a guy isn't making any sense, go ahead & let him sound like he's nuts.  Don't save him & attack on his behalf.

Don't underestimate Michelle Bachmann

Slick looking ad, well produced -- saying she won't vote to increase the debt ceiling.  Makes me think Mitt, who condemned the "Family Leader"pledge that Bachmann signed, ain't all that horrific.

Laides and Gentleman, Your 2012 GOP LINEUP!!!!!

After Trump dropping out, who's officially in so far -- Newt, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney.... am I missing anyone?

WWRD (What Would Reagan Do)

From the article, referring to what Reagan said about the debt limit:

Reagan wrote: “The full consequences of a default – or even the serious prospect of default – by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar.”

Via Washington Monthly.

Just what I was thinking

Joe Klein crystallized exactly what I was thinking.

I salute you, Mr. President

Today's thought

I miss Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House.

This photo is priceless.  Via TPM headlining a story about how the budget bill needed 40 Democratic votes to pass.

Summary of Budget Cuts

Politico has a summary of the recent budget cuts.  It's pretty brutal.  If you want to have an unfiltered opinion on what the cuts do, look at John Cole's analysis (via Steve Benen).

Budget Cuts - in Chart Form

Ezra Klein lays out the recently agreed to budget cuts in a helpful chart.

What the 2012 election is about

Very funny.

I thought the GOP didn't like welfare

I was just wondering - if Paul Ryan's plan is to have Medicare give people money to buy private insurance, is that corporate welfare?

The Cost of War to the U.S.

This can be broken all the way down to the congressional district level; it also includes an informative calculation of various trade offs (admittedly from a lefty POV, but you get the point).

Hope for our troops to come home

When people are being killed in Afghanistan because some nutjob in Florida burned a copy of the Koran, I think that no amount of military presence can "fix" the situation in Afghanistan and that it's now time for our troops to leave, or at least we need to consider a major change in how we address the region.  I have supported the war in Afghanistan from the time it began - not necessarily its prosecution - but its mission to find and destroy Al Qaeda, OBL, and the Taliban that harbored terrorist elements.  I don't support the war anymore, at least not in its current form. 

What's still troubling, however, is that the WSJ reports that AQ is making a comeback in Afghanistan, although General Petraeus says this is not the case.  I of course have no literal idea of what's happening other than what we see in the press.  If in fact Al Qaeda is setting up training camps, then we have a serious problem, and our leaving might even create worse conditions for training that exist.   That argues for a continued, if not increased presence in the country.  The problem is that Afghanistan appears to be ungovernable - it is not a nation state in the way we think about it.  While I'm no expert on national security, there just has to be another way of addressing the security risks that AQ and the Taliban pose without such a heavy, sustained military footprint on the ground.

Budget Deal

There's been a lot written about the budget deal that the President & Congress reached last night.  I'm not really sure I can add much else, except to point to Robert Reich's commentary on how the Democrats managed to actually move backwards from the GOP's initial offer of $32 billion in cuts to wind up at over $38 billion in cuts.  Who was the lead negotiator for the Dems again....?

The next fight is over the national debt limit.  Pay attention, folks - it's going to happen again, and the stakes are even higher.

Just stinks.

Divided Government

One thing I like about divided government is that it sure has a way of focusing people on what the government is doing....

More info on the handoff to NATO

Ok - so it does look like the U.S. is transferring some responsibility to the NATO coalition.  This has more details than I've seen to-date about what's been going on in terms of who is doing what. 

Ok, now I'm officially pissed

I'm looking at the White House website to get its take on the Libya situation, and what's next.  Well, under the "issues" section, not only is Libya nowhere to be found, but to my surprise, neither is Iraq and Afghanistan.  If you click through the foreign policy link, all there is is a 2009 speech on AfPak, along with a contemporaneous white paper, and a non-working link for Iraq.  Let me know if I'm missing something.

Libya is nowhere on the front page.  It does show up as the third picture in the top slideshow, which links to the President's speech.

I have absolutely no idea whether the "handoff" to NATO has actually occurred, which was delayed after Obama's speech, or how many Western" warplanes are actually U.S. planes.  Oh wait - we're still doing it until at least tomorrow.

This is particularly frustrating as generally, the humanitarian and national security goals of the Libya action can be morally justified, and I think some type of action is generally the right thing to do.  But going to war means keeping the American people, and Congress, apprised of the situation, daily if need be - and NOT pretending we aren't at war.  Again.

Fareed Zakaria's commentary on the Koran Burning & reaction

As usual, Zakaria's comments are well worth watching.  This whole thing is depressing.