For reasons known only to its publishers, the New York Times has chosen to assign reporters and editors to the budget/deficit negotiations who seem oblivious that the politicians they routinely quote are speaking gibberish, without any effort by the Times to explain it’s gibberish.

This collective madness in Washington right now is our politicians own creation.

Larry Summers now tells us we need another $200 billion in extended payroll tax cuts. He explains that this is the nature of recessions connected with financial collapse, that this inherently crushes demand and it takes a lot of money — from borrowing and spending — and a long time to build demand back up to the level at which economic growth is self sustaining. Well, no kidding, Larry. Except you pretended for two and half years that wasn’t true and the rest of us were stupid.

I keep getting requests for donation from the DCCC and Obama’s campaign, at the same time I read stories of his economic team making arguments you’d expect to hear from President Romney. I’d rather cut out pictures of rotten tomatoes.

How often do you have to be wrong until you are fired by the Obama Administration? For Treasury Secretary Geithner the answer seems to be a non-zero number approaching infinity.

Honest economists and sentient observers looking at the most recent and increasingly dismal economic and jobs numbers have their hair on fire over the failure of Washington D.C. to do anything about it. But neither Congress nor the Administration can get their heads out of the deficit sand to see the devastation.

That’s not the title of his John Harwood’s NYT column today, but it might have well have been. It’s a typical example of sloppy, one-sided Beltway thinking.

I’m beginning to suspect the Republican’s decision to hold the debt ceiling hostage to demand only big cuts in spending and President Obama’s almost enthusiastic desire to play along was a way to deal with the problem of the nonexistent bond vigilantes by actively creating some.

Congratulations, America, your federal budget process is now as efficient as New York State’s!

It is not surprising that, after months of near-endless deficit hysteria and politicians insisting we need to cut basic services meant to help Americans, the voters have concluded we don’t have a few hundred million to waste on more military adventurism.