If the health care law really is a starter home, then what President Obama has been doing is effectively letting the Republicans rip out the house’s copper plumbing to be sold as scrap for pennies on the dollar.

Ladies and Gentleman, Alan “310 Million Tits” Simpson, whose plan to gut our country’s safety net is being embraced by President Obama, thinks the AARP is a “cruel organization” full of “marketers,” not “patriots.” That said, Simpson, aged 79, really likes the AARP’s magazine, especially “their article on sex over 80. Hell, I thought that was amazing.”

Food safety is cut 1% below the previous year’s level. The Labor Department program for green jobs has been cut. The Justice Department’s asset forfeiture fund, which helps fund its criminal investigations, got a $500 million hit. The Special Supplemental Feeding Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) has been cut $500 million from 2010 levels. The total reduction in the Financial Services area, barely a year out from passing Dodd-Frank, approaches 10%. There’s a $942 million cut to the Community Development Fund program, which is nearly 1/4 of the total. And two programs in the health care law, Kent Conrad’s co-ops and Ron Wyden’s Free Choice voucher, have been eliminated.

This article provides some numbers. It explains that 335 Special Forces, contractors, and CIA officers are now being sent home. Of that, 40 to 80 are members of the Special Forces who exceeded the quota of 120 Special Forces Pakistan allowed us. The remaining 255-315 must be a combination of contractors and CIA officers whose purpose the US has not shared with the Pakistanis. That’s in addition to whatever contractors we withdrew after Davis was captured.

• As bad as Chernobyl?
• No deal.
• As always, capitulation with a whimper.
• Heckuva job, Florida.
• This is excellent news for Republicans.

Three anniversaries and sadly several imminent funerals.

Bruce Springsteen – How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live

Illustrating something about the Wisconsin debate I find endlessly interesting: Just how not ready for prime time any of these people are. First Walker gets punked by some dude pretending to be a Koch-hole, then they run the assembly debates like they’re first-timers at student council, then they all say some stuff during the Supreme Court election that makes you wonder if student council couldn’t teach them a thing or two.

Apparently, our “national interest” in the credibility of the UN extends only so far as it allows us to bomb other countries, but not so far as it might expose our own treatment of detainees to independent evaluation.

Washington DC Mayor Gray and several other DC City Council members have been arrested protesting in the streets over the shabby treatment of the District and its women in the “budget compromise” passed last Friday night. If only other leaders in Washington DC had the guts to stand up for their citizens.