Author: Andrew Sullivan

"What could be better than giving every human being on the planet the capacity to subvert all established authorities and institutions, private or public, tyrannical or meritocratic? What would be better, I submit, is lucid self-awareness about how much our liberty depends on the existence of stable, functioning institutions to protect it against those who long to extinguish it in the name of sundry anti-liberal theological and ideological projects," – DiA.

"So what does the Corner-reading crowd think of Twitter? Do you follow? Do you think it's an advance or decline? Sometimes I wonder as I'm flirting with being a twit," – Kathryn Jean Lopez.

The commission won't get the necessary 14 votes. Ezra Klein remains upbeat:

It's hard to be confident about the prospects of a difficult package designed to address a long-term problem when you watch the difficulty Congress is having addressing the urgent expiration of a popular raft of tax cuts, but this will at least give the fiscal commission an argument to push forward: A 10-person majority that includes both Durbin and Coburn is sufficient for the package's supporters to credibly argue the commission's report deserves consideration by Congress and may indeed be the starting point for a compromise.

I wish I could be as optimistic. I'm as impressed by Coburn's fiscal consistency as I am dismayed by Paul Ryan's extremism and recklessness:

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin reiterated his opposition in a meeting with reporters on Thursday. Mr. Ryan, who will become the House Budget Committee chairman in January now that Republicans have won a majority of House seats in the midterm elections, objected that the plan would not repeal the new health care law nor replace Medicare with a voucher system for future beneficiaries.

So is this a fiscal emergency or isn't it? And here you have a real distinction between a functioning conservatism and the obstructionist utopianism of the current GOP.

The debt is obviously the most pressing issue at hand; this commission represents the best hope in a long time to tackle it. But it must, according to Ryan, be held hostage in order to repeal a health insurance reform that cuts the deficit, according to the CBO, and that was a signature campaign promise by a president elected in a landslide. The only way realistically to cut the debt now, as Bowles-Simpson recognizes, is to work from the status quo – remember when conservatism meant that, when it gave some weight to what was already established? – not to demand tearing it all up and starting over, let alone also demanding a utopian scheme for Medicare vouchers that has no chance of getting through at any point in the near future.

So let's point out the obvious: Paul Ryan is another fiscal fraud. He has much less interest in practically reducing the debt than posturing as a born-again supply-sider and base-pleaser for the Limbaugh right. He is a veneer of fake earnestness over a vandalistic opposition determined to win back power rather than address the country's urgent fiscal crisis.

A reader writes:

I will be amazed if there isn't 100% agreement that Cher deserves the award for the monumental absurdity of "Song for the Lonely". It was released in 2002, and although it doesn't directly reference 9/11 in its lyrics, it's obviously about that tragedy. Bathed in angelic light, Cher actually rebuilds the city of New York through the power of her music. Its skyscrapers are reborn to the great fanfare of working-class cops and firefighters who worship her at the end. No, this isn't hyperbole – they friggin' worship her!

This isn't a contest anymore; it's a coronation.

Matt Yglesias is handing them out:

One structural problem in the world is that they don’t hand out medals for the wars you don’t fight, and the terrible potential consequences of roads you don’t travel down don’t wind up making the headlines. Consequently, policymakers who manage to face-down tricky situations without getting huge numbers of people killed end up overrated.

So I’d like to say that best on what I’ve read in recent news coverage and also what I’ve seen in the WikiLeaks cables, the governments of South Korea and the United States of America seem to have been doing a bang-up job for the past several years of managing a difficult situation.

It’s not as emotionally satisfying as being John McCain and randomly musing about “regime change” and it’s not going to “solve” the problem, but it’s protecting the relevant interests at a reasonable cost. And that, at the end of the day, is the job policymakers are supposed to do. It would be nice if the North Koreans weren’t so bizarre and it would be nice if the PRC were more cooperative and it would be nice if the Bush administration hadn’t blundered so badly in its first four years in office. But you have to work in the real people, and people dealt a bunch of bad options seem to me to be making the best of it.

George Weigel explains why Pope Benedict's remarks on condoms as a least-worst evil in some circumstances is not really a major doctrinal or pastoral shift on the question. I don't think he's wrong technically, and he's right about how some of the press have a hard time distinguishing between comments in an interview and an authoritative teaching from the Magisterium. Nonetheless, what I saw in Benedict's comments was a pastoral judgment on a specific case, where condom use could be a sign of a turn toward responsibility and greater respect for another human being.

This pastoral exception to dogmatic rules is, in fact, what the Catholic church often makes, on the ground, between priest and parishioner, aid worker and patient, parent and child. I wish in many ways that the actual, pragmatic humane work the church does could shine through past the more closed-minded diktats of the Vatican. But that too is as much the press's fault as the church's. When was the last time you read a story of a Catholic priest or religious nursing someone with AIDS or HIV?

Despite the dismal jobs report, Ryan Avent is hopeful:

November numbers may be an aberration. September's job losses were revised down to 24,000 in this report, while October's job gains were revised upward, from 151,000 to 172,000. Through November, weekly data on initial jobless claims showed significant improvement. And of course, many other indicators have been flashing positive signs in recent weeks.

It's likely, then, that the November figures will be revised up in future months to show a better performance more in keeping with broader trends. And it's important to remember that monthly data are noisy. America's labour markets have yet to generate job growth sufficient to bring down the unemployment rate. But the pace of recovery has been improving. There is good reason to suspect that when all is said and done this report will appear as a blip marring a strengthening upward employment trend. All the same, policymakers in Washington weighing whether to extend unemployment benefits and tax cuts should heed the obvious weakness in labour markets. They can and should make sure that November's number remains an anomaly.

 

The House Democrats voted yesterday to extend the "middle class" Bush tax cuts. The Senate Democrats appear likely to do the same, although they risk being filibustered by Republicans, who want an extension of all tax cuts for all income levels. Economist Mom puts the debate in context:

What a juxtaposition to have President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission release its final report while the Administration “negotiates” with Congress on whether all of the Bush tax cuts, or just most of them, should be permanently extended (and deficit financed).  The media has been reporting that whether the bulk of the Bush tax cuts will be extended or not is not the issue–it is whether the upper-bracket ones benefitting only the rich will be included as well, and what constitutes “rich.”  (That floor may be moving up all the way to $1 million.)

Let’s remember that the permanent extension of “just” the “middle-class” Bush tax cuts, as President Obama has proposed, would add about $2.2 trillion to the debt over the next ten years–without interest costs and without the associated extension of Alternative Minimum Tax relief.  Such extension would preserve the full value of Bush tax cuts for 97-98 percent of households while continuing to give the largest dollar value of tax cuts to those above the $250,000 threshold.  (That’s because those in the upper tax brackets have income that passes entirely through the lower brackets.)  Extending the upper bracket cuts along with the rest would raise the ten-year cost to close to $3 trillion (again, without interest).  So the Administration and Congress are debating over whether we should commit to over $2 trillion, versus closer to $3 trillion, in deficit-financed Bush tax cuts.

I have rarely been more depressed by the political leadership in this country. At a time when everyone knows we need to be dealing with the debt, we are adding massively to it, because the Democrats and the president seem incapable of making the case for anything, and because the GOP is as ideological as it is politically autistic.

That's what Matthew Continetti wants government to do:

I think we need to distinguish between a government that finances long-term investment and a government that finances present consumption. Hamilton, the Whigs, Lincoln, and TR sought to improve American infrastructure and level the playing field so that young men of talent could overturn entrenched market incumbents. Growth was the result. Yet the American welfare state, as presently composed, is devoted almost entirely to present consumption in the form of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt. The money spent on education, R&D, and infrastructure is a pittance by comparison. The one place where we actually do massively invest in (global) public goods is defense. But of course that's where everyone wants to cut.

We need to deemphasize consumption and focus on investment. I think that Obama, in his heart, would like to do just that—as David Brooks pointed out, Obama's "New Foundation" speech, while disturbing in its rhetoric of a fundamental break from past decades of American history, was about an economy of investors rather than consumers.

But the president is also trapped, as he and his party seek to protect, and in some cases expand, the welfare state as it exists today.