Atrios is right: the idea that someone can be “serious” about the deficit while wanting to extend historically low tax rates is ridiculous. But that’s only true if you think yesterday’s Bowles-Simpson recommendations for deficit reduction had anything to do with deficit reduction. Clearly they don’t.

The UK Guardian yesterday released a videotape of a 2007 interrogation of a suspected Iraqi insurgent, one of 1,253 tapes made by interrogators at a secret British military center near Basra, run by the Joint Forces Interrogation Team (JFIT). The release came only days before the U.S. Justice Department investigation into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of the torture of three high-value detainees at secret black site prisons was closed, with no charges brought.

President Obama was supposed to waltz into Seoul ready to mark an agreement with South Korea on a trade pact, with enough changes to win over key constituencies. But while this was widely expected, it didn’t happen, with the South Koreans balking at some of the proposed changes. If you look at where the Democrats lost big last week – the Rust Belt – it would be political suicide to pass the type of agreement that the core constituencies in that region detest. And it would only harm, not help, the agenda of creating more exports and more American jobs.

We already have one party that puts the interests of the rich and powerful above the people. We don’t need another.

The proposed Korean “free trade” agreement would be a truly horrific blow to whatever is left of American manufacturing at a time when unemployment is rampant. But from a political standpoint, fighting for another so-called “free trade” agreement right now has got to represent some kind of death wish for the Democratic party. I don’t have any other way to explain it.

On this day as we pause to remember our soldiers, airmen, midshipmen and Marines, remember that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson want those men and women to get paid less, spend more for their health care and have their houses and workspaces left to rot.

If David Axelrod’s the “political genius” guiding the Democrats these days, they should consider themselves lucky they didn’t lose 100 seats.

Everyone must now debate the measures recommended by the inept chairs of the Deficit Reduction (aka “Catfood”) Commission to reduce the federal deficit. The fact this topic is the focus of attention is itself a national tragedy and a sign of the political elite’s unwillingness to heed the public’s concerns and their desire that government focus on the nation’s real priorities.

There’s a lot to despise about David Axelrod’s announcement of Obama’s capitulation to the oligarchs on tax cuts, not least that he made this announcement on the same day Obama’s Catfood Commission Chairs started the process of stealing from seniors to “fix” our deficit.

Florida’s now even more screwed.