I could not agree with you more. I hate to let the cat out of the bag too much, because part of Obama's three dimensional political chess is to make it seem as if the GOP has won and he has lost (seriously, the Teabaggers would never have voted for anything they didn't think was rubbing his nose in crap). He's more than happy to seem like the moderate centrist who has pissed off all his liberal base, because they'll grudgingly vote for him anyway.

So shhhhh.... don't look at the actual bill if you want to remain mad. There are only $400 billion dollars in cuts - NONE - of which target programs to help the poor, or Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid. There is $350 billion dollars in additional BASE cuts to the military, which has never been done in my lifetime, and the rest is savings in interest on the debt.

Now in addition to this, there is supposed to be 1.5 Trillion dollars in cuts decided upon by a super-committee, and if this committee can't decide, then more automatic cuts kick in. Except what will be automatically cut? Defense spending and Homeland security take half. The other half will be domestic spending that EXCLUDES Social Security, Medicaid, low-income assistance programs and Medicare benefits (Medicare providers may have their reimbursements altered, but Congress changes that constantly anyway).

In short, this bill saves money by slashing welfare. Specifically, corporate welfare. (My God, how will the multinationals ever survive?) It will put a serious crimp in the budgets of major defense contractors. Banks will get less in interest. And big pharma might have to sell pills for a lot less as well.

So man the barricades! This is an outrage! B.P. and General Electric need that sweet government cash. And Obama is a traitor for not giving it to them!

Mitchell, I disagree with this in various ways, all connected to the continuing focus on deficit reduction as the central goal of policy, but it's a great comment that's well worth thinking about, & I hope it gets raised up to the front level as a "notable comment."

The GOP came out of this looking unreasonable, but that's exactly how they looked going into it. And its important to note that of all the interest groups participating here, it was only the Tea Party that got what it wanted. In the end it doesn't matter how silly they looked because they won a huge victory and nothing succeeds like success. The lesson learned here today is that the winning strategy is to stand firm to your principles, no matter how ridiculous or maladaptive, and the Democrats will always come to your side in the end.

Authentic constructive compromise is no more likely later than it is today and so the next "round" in this spiralling farce will inevitably end up in the lap of the other dismal work product from this catastrophe, our spanking new Polit Buro (aka "Super Congress") who will, I predict, proceed with no debate to break everything else that wasn't broken today when they finally get their paws on the budget. Why? Because that's what they want to do and, as was shown unambiguously today, nobody will stand in their way when they do it.

The fact of the matter is that if Congress was serious about lowering the debt all they needed to do was refrain from allocating expenditures above revenue. They have that power. They had that opportunity. That was their moral obligation.

But they're too craven for that simple, responsible and direct solution, or anything else that requires courage or principles. Instead they engineer a fake crises to whip everyone into a hebephrenic panic where the weak ones sign away their power and our sovereignty for a pocket full of magic beans.

That's what has me riled. It isn't about "purity," its about looking down the road, past these present frolics and capers and into the future, and seeing clearly where this penny wise and pound foolish capitulationism is ultimately leading us.