The problem is that leaders of both parties have both pledged an unshakable commitment to, in the near future, make our deficit projections dramatically worse by extending all or most of the Bush tax cuts.

On Twitter last night, Crowley renewed his campaign against the Pentagon’s torture of Manning. In two tweets, Crowley contrasted the State Department’s push for human rights for an American held by North Korea with the Pentagon’s decision to “play by its own rules” in denying the UN Special Rappoteur on Torture an official visit with Bradley Manning.

Obama will present four buckets: keeping domestic spending low, cutting defense, “reforming” Medicare and Medicaid, and reforming the tax code. And this will all build off of Bowles-Simpson, which shared much of these ideas. The details are important, but they won’t really be discussed today. An administration official said that “The president will make clear that while we all share the goal of reducing our deficit and putting our nation back on a fiscally responsible path, his vision is one where we can live within our means without putting burdens on the middle class and seniors or impeding our ability to invest in our future.” The watchword is “balance.” As in, there’s a good way to cut the safety net and a bad way, and we have to put in place the good way.

As we prepare for today’s speech from Barack Obama on his response to the draconian cuts to social services proposed by Paul Ryan in his deficit reduction plan, it is very informative to watch Jon Stewart’s perfect dismantling of that plan from last night’s Daily Show. Stewart is right to poke fun at the “creepy music” to which Ryan presents his plan that the Washington villagers laud as so bold and decisive, but the real value of Stewart’s piece comes in his demonstration that the exact same amount of deficit reduction can be achieved by ending the Bush tax cuts. There were hints yesterday that Obama might actually suggest ending at least some tax cuts, but it remains to be seen just what kinds of revenue improvements Obama will suggest and, more importantly, how hard Obama will fight for them when it comes time to put his plan through Congress.

The smoke and mirrors discussion is a lot of smoke and mirrors. While it’s true that a lot of the cuts reflect accounting changes and one-time reductions from increases meant to only last a year, and in general terms the budget could use a spring cleaning every now and again, the truth is that this mainly speaks to the hazards of putting together continuing resolutions year over year, which inevitably lead to these problems. There’s a huge opportunity cost in scoring these as cuts. Money reduced from an already completed Census can be put to use elsewhere; money from unspent transportation earmarks can be excised and shifted into program budgets. This would be a matter of routine in any normal budget year. Turning them into cuts is not “smoke and mirrors”; it’s real-dollar losses that will magnify over time as these numbers become the new baseline.

Are there any popular newly-elected Republican governors anywhere?

Time to channel a little perceived Calvin Coolidge in budget negotiations and do nothing.

Pink — Raise Your Glass.

Let’s face it, things are weird. I am avoiding using any Dickensian references because I think they could be only half right and not the happy half, but there is a small of amount of hope: Fukishima may not be exactly as bad Chernobyl; Bradley Manning’s treatment got called on the State Dept carpet by AP reporters; the discovery of a 300-million-year-old shark jawbone found 700 feet below ground in a Kentucky coal mine may disrupt ebiblefellowship.com’s End Times calendar stating May 21 as the Rapture/Judgment Day and October 21 as the End of the World, which seems designed to one-up the Mayan 2012 countdown.*

I’m not sure exactly how long they’ve been aware of it, but I think at this point it’s very clear that most Americans realize that both major political parties are worthless at best, and insane at worst.