So we have a choice. Either let the military spending cuts go through or allow Obama to raise taxes. So what do we do? I’m for giving them the tax hikes, then we’re positioned good when the economy goes down the drain. It won’t be our fault, because we’ve given people plenty of warning as to what the consequences would be. And we should keep warning them, even after we allow the tax hikes, pointing out that this is the only way we can prevent another credit downgrade, but that this is most definitely a Democratic agenda.

Yeah, it would be a dick move, but so would allowing the military cuts to go through without any idea in the world how they are going to be applied.

Either way, the economy is going to stay in the shitter. But if we refuse to give Obama the “revenue enhancement” he wants, he can point at us and say its our fault. If we go along with him, we can point to him and say, “this is your doing asshole.”

We should call our Senators and Congressmen and tell them and explain it to them in just this way. Of course some of them are so dumb they might be liable to repeat the reasoning in public, so I don’t know what to do. I don’t think it would be possible to find as many ignorant people in one place as you will find in the halls of Congress. The only thing that keeps that place halfway functional are the crooked bureaucrats that have kept the place going for decades, if mainly for their own benefit. And one of my Senators is Rand Paul, who is as big a libertarian ideologue as his father Ron, though he hides it a little better, but he would be unlikely to play along with this, on the grounds it wouldn’t be “right”.

It is a bluff.  The cuts are many months away and Obamna knows it.  This is a political performance of the Nutcracker, where we have to convey to the audience that Obama and his pals are the rats destroying Jobs, Christmas, and the American Economy. 

As long as Congress was free to just rack up debt, it was easy to give both sides whatever they wanted and just put it on the ol’ tab.

Now that the debt is an issue that can’t be avoided, the constituencies are going to fight it out on the ground to keep their pieces of the pie.

And, from a congresscritter’s perspective, there’s just no way around this:

The grandmas who will send your ass right back to practicing divorce law in Dubuque if you even think about messing with their Social Security checks or raising their Medicare premiums, and those grandmas’ loving (but not loving enough to take care of their oldsters in retirement themselves) families, are a more powerful constituency than the K Street lobbyist for Lockheed Martin who leaves a check under the tree each campaign Christmas.

In order to balance the budget, the cuts have to come from entitlements as well as from “defense.” But as long as there’s any rope left for Congress to hang itself with, it will continue to run that rope out, and that means that “defense” will take the first hits, because even though that’s politically hard, it’s politically easier than the alternatives.

If Obama plays his cards right — and he has so far — that goes a long way toward sewing up the election for him next year.