You might have missed the segment in last night’s GOP debate where CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked carefully prepared questions about what America’s industrial policy ought to be. That’s because he didn’t — not that I’m criticizing Wolf, who did much better than the pathetic Brian Williams and hapless John King — but the candidates nevertheless indirectly gave us their own ugly visions.

First Democrat running the Pentagon in 15 years, folks.

A couple days ago, Dick Durbin was confronted by constituents in Illinois and forced to take a position assuring protection of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Two days later, he offered to put “entitlements” on the table in exchange for phony GOP tax proposals that benefit the rich.

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson can’t find the actual data on what’s driving the deficits and how to address them, so he concocts a “centrist” position that, surprise, calls for cuts to “entitlements” and programs that matter to the folks hit hardest by the recession.

Recent stories note that Democratic members of the Super Committee have offered to reduce Social Security, Medicare and other benefits as part of a larger debt reduction plan. This is not surprising, since the Super Committee was created under procedural rules purposely designed to allow such benefit cuts.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested that with the draw down of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US can now deploy more military resources to confront the Chinese military buildup. Because we really need another land war in Asia.

Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal report that President Obama’s proposal for deficit reduction, due out Monday, will not include any changes to Social Security. The reports are less certain about increasing the Medicare eligibility age, giving a definite “maybe” about that measure.

I’ve been trying to remind people throughout the run-up to the Obama jobs proposal that it would also presage a deficit proposal, to “pay for” whatever spending is in the jobs proposal. We now have a topline number for the jobs plan: $300 billion, half from tax cuts and 2/3 from the extension of current law (Maybe this is why nobody thinks it will work). So will there be $300 billion in cuts in some fashion to “pay for” the spending over time? No, it’ll be much higher than that.

There were no real surprises among the choices made by John Boehner and Mitch McConnell for the Catfood Commission II. It’s perhaps interesting to note that Paul Ryan didn’t make the cut, but I guess Boehner figured that he’s toxic and therefore not a good face to put on the committee. Instead, Boehner picked two heads of other committees with jurisdiction over health programs and taxes, and made the chair a member of the original Catfood Commission as well as the House Leadership.

If you think that the committee is designed to fail, these are good members to that end. If you think that the entire exercise is a ploy to cut entitlements and lessen small-d democratic accountability, you can see that at work here as well. In that sense, ultimately the specific members of the committee don’t really matter.