I Would Like to Believe Pejman Yousefzadeh...

...that inflation isn't really a problem. I really really would. But when the article he links in support of this thesis offers the following bizzaritude, I can't:

The recent pace [of inflation] can't be sustained, but food and energy will continue to rise.

The hell? In what universe is a consistent rise in food and energy prices NOT inflation? Why on earth would anyone suppose that a rise in the thing that humans and their machines need daily will not drive up prices in other sectors?

It's a plumb good thang I kin dine on
squirrel pies and old shoes.

Budget Popcorn: Butter or No Butter?

If the GOP was going to follow-up the Budget deal with some real cuts, they'd get right to it, wouldn't they?

Behold:

“This is about making the right decisions now,” Cantor said. He touted Rep. Paul Ryan’s, R-Wis., budget proposal — a plan released last week that contains about $6 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years — and suggested Republicans would fight for at least a chunk of that plan as a condition of their support on the debt limit vote.

Cantor said a portion, and I think a portion is all he and Boehner expect to get. Which is what any sane person would expect when the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. Shutting down Pelosi (notice how absent she's been from these debates?), and hemming in Obama and Reid are about what Boehner can do. And I can tell that it's working, because:

“It’s totally unbalanced,” Van Hollen said. “He ends the Medicare guarantee for seniors. … They’ll have to eat all of the rising costs of health care, while they provide big tax breaks for millionaires and the corporate special interest."

This is what those triumphant donkeys of 2007-2010 are reduced to; muling and fussing about grampa's pills. Their backs are up against the wall, and they've got nothing to do but point to a weak-tea, half-assed version of the Ryan plan that the White House is going to offer.

So don't fret, wingnuts. Boehner and company are fighting the good fight.


UPDATE: The WSJ chimes in:

[T]he Obama-Pelosi Leviathan wasn't built in a day, and it won't be cut down to size in one budget. Especially not in a fiscal year that only has six months left and with Democrats running the Senate and White House. Friday's deal cuts more spending in any single year than we can remember, $78 billion more than President Obama first proposed. Domestic discretionary spending grew by 6% in 2008, 11% in 2009 and 14% in 2010, but this year will fall by 4%. That's no small reversal.

The budget does this while holding the line against defense cuts that Democrats wanted and restoring the school voucher program for Washington, D.C. for thousands of poor children. Tom DeLay—the talk radio hero when he ran the House—never passed a budget close to this good.

Indeed.

Relax: the Budget Battle is Just Beginning.

I'm not going to comment on the "Shutdown"-avoiding budget deal that Boehner and Reid cobbled together on Friday night. If you consider $38.5 billion in budget cuts too little, you're right. If you think Boehner showed spunk in dealing with the Senate and White House, you may be right. If you think the GOP has sold us all down the river for not getting $eleventy-trillion, you might need to take a breath:

The accomplishment set the stage for even tougher confrontations. Republicans intend to pass a 2012 budget through the House next week that calls for sweeping changes in Medicare and Medicaid and would cut domestic programs deeply in an attempt to gain control over soaring deficits.
And the Treasury has told Congress it must vote to raise the debt limit by summer — a request that Republicans hope to use to force Obama to accept long-term deficit-reduction measures.

Now we have a complete year's worth of budget to make the kind of gigantoid cuts that the Tea Party wants to see. And yeah, a good bit of that won't make it through the Senate, and it's anyone's guess as to whether Obama will sign it if it does. But Boehner has demonstrated that he can get Reid to cut more than he wants to, and that Obama will be largely irrelevant to the procedure.

So keep the popcorn warm and the powder dry. The real show is about to begin.

The Ryan Plan Sucks. We Still Need To Do It.

Nothing a politician does, however intelligent or well-meaning, will be without unpleasant or unintended consequences. This is so true as to be axiomatic. Thus, whatever benefits we will get from the Ryan Plan, people will be unhappy with it. People will have problems in their lives as a result of it. It doesn't go far enough for the libertarians, and it will cause the Left to howl like it's face is being ripped off with a sandpaper-bedecked spoon.

Whatever. This is the last chance our government will have to put its fiscal house in order. After this, we face 1 of 2 options:

1. Euro-style stagnation, complete with monstrously high taxes, permanent double-digit unemployment, and gradually collapsing demographics.
2. Civil War II: Bloodshed Bugaloo.

We don't want either, and I suspect the first will lead to the second rather quickly.