People are wondering about the Fiscal Cliff deal. If Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid can’t agree on anything, Reid will propose a “little budget deal.” This will consist of only tax cuts for incomes under $250,000 and an extension of unemployment benefits. If this happens, the proposal would probably win majorities in both houses of Congress. The problem is that they probably won’t get to vote. There are two questions: will McConnell filibuster in the Senate? Will Boehner allow a vote in the House?

I think the answer to the second question is easy. Boehner will not allow any vote until he is re-elected Speaker of the House. Even after that, I’m not sure. But I suspect there will be so much pressure from the one true Republican consistency (the super rich), that eventually he will cave.

The first question is more interesting. Given that Boehner is not going to allow a vote tomorrow, why should McConnell care if he allows a vote in the Senate? This is a real test to see just how revolutionary the Republicans have become. The strategy is very clear here. The Republicans lose nothing by allowing a vote. But they lose something very big if they don’t allow a vote.

By filibustering now, they will drive home to any wavering Democrats that the Republican Party cannot be counted on to allow the government to run. That vote is just a couple of days away. That also means that if there is no filibuster, wavering Democrats will possibly think that that Republicans aren’t that bad after all. See: they allowed a vote on the Fiscal Cliff deal!

Now, let’s be clear: the Democrats should not fall for this move. Allowing a vote on this deal will not mean that Republicans will be reasonable from here on. There is no question: they will not be reasonable. But if McConnell is not willing to gain a huge advantage without any cost, then it means that the Republican Party is even more committed to its revolutionary agenda than I had feared.

This is a defining moment.

I remember reading an introduction to a Calvin and Hobbes collection. It was by Charles Schulz, and he was arguing that what really mattered in a comic was that it was funny to look at. At that time, I disagreed. Actually, I didn’t really even understand. But since then, I have definitely learned. The primary reason I like Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County is because of how they look.

As a result, I’ve never been that fond of Dilbert, even though it is very well written. In fact, it is only because it is so well written that it transcends the artwork. Scott Adams is a very funny and insightful guy. And he was in fine form today.

Dogbert is a great character. He is your typical Bugs Bunny archetype. Things always work out well for him. He flies by the seat of his pants and that works. But in the process, he highlights of the absurdity of the world with his anarchism:

It is perhaps a little late to be discussing the “I did build that!” crowd, but they are still around. I do disagree with one part of this: he didn’t work nearly as hard as his gardener. Whenever I hear business owners talk about how hard they work, it reminds me of professional musicians complaining about all their hard work. I’m not saying that their work isn’t hard. But there is a big difference between doing work you hate for little money and doing work you love for lots of money. So I wish these people would just shut up.

I might note that I work very hard at my writing. I sit in front of a computer screen about 12 hours per day. I’ve started to gain weight because of my lack of exercise. Boo fucking hoo!

But I did write this.

Wonk Blog presented their second annual Wonky Awards on Friday. I like the idea of it. I appreciate policy wonks a great deal. And I heartily agree with many of the awards. But others? In particular, the top two awards are ridiculous.

First let’s look at some of the well picked awards. They named The Tax Policy Center “Think Tank of the Year.” The TPC does a lot of good work, but they were particularly important this year because they showed that Romney’s tax plan was bunk. There were just not enough loopholes in the tax code to pay for his $5 trillion tax cut and extra $2 trillion military spending.

Wonk Blog also named It’s Even Worse Than It Looks as “Book of the Year.” This is welcome because—What a surprise!—the book has received very little attention because it doesn’t pretend that the problems in Washington are equally the fault of the Democrats and Republicans. Wonk Blog also gives some much needed attention to software patents, even though the entire intellectual property system is broken.

Perhaps the best award was, “Graph of the Year.” For this, they presented the inflation-adjusted interest rate on long-term US treasury bonds. They could have used this last year, but it is particularly interesting this year. For the second half of 2012, investors have been paying the federal government to hold on to their money. Yet all we hear about is how debt is killing us. Amazing.

Many of the awards are just silly. What, for example, is “Rising Star Central Banker of the Year”? Or: “Most Confusing Policy Metaphor of the Year”? And perhaps worst of all: “Most Unfortunate YouTube Video Including a Figure From the Policy World”? I seriously doubt that we will see these next year. We certainly didn’t see them last year. Of course, there are at least two awards that were repeated that were similarly silly, at least regarding their winners this year. The first was “Most Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,” which is inexplicably not an initiative but a man. Second was “Least Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,” which was the NHL lockout. But at least the gang at Wonk Blog is trying.

And now we get to the major awards. The second worst award this year was “Policymaker of the Year.” This was awarded to ECB head Mario Draghi. I will admit that Draghi has done a much better job than Jean-Claude Trichet. But policymaker of the year? I don’t think so. The ECB is still doing the bare minimum required. The main difference now is that even more needs to be done. And I fully expect that in the next year there will be another crisis that will require yet another patch.

But by far the worst award this year wasn’t even on offer last year: “Wonk of the Year.” And the award goes to—Wait for it!—Grover Norquist. I think the folks at Wonk Blog know they are on thin ice here, because they start the discussion of this award by defining “wonk”:

But this is not what Norquist does. He may be preoccupied with taxes, but not the details. A wonk doesn’t decide that all taxes are bad. That is the decision of an ideologue. And that makes Norquist the opposite of a wonk: he isn’t interested in the data or the facts; he just wants to cut taxes because he wants to destroy the government, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Apart of this, I would think that Norquist would have been tossed out of contention for “Wonk of the Year” due to his very public repudiation of his absolutist tax pledge. Especially after it turned out that some members of the House were even more serious about it than he is. But instead, Wonk Blog just glosses over this epic failure by claiming, “Republicans are beginning to defect from Norquist’s pledge, but by setting the terms of the debate around such an extreme anti-tax position, Norquist is winning even as he’s losing.”

Look: I understand how this stuff works. Most of the Wonky awards were already set before Norquist recanted and came to be seen as the paper tiger he always was. But Wonk Blog could have thrown the whole category out—as I said, it didn’t exist last year. Or they could have given it to any number of real wonks. I suspect they kept it in just to get some attention. After all, “Wonk of the Year” is the first thing in the article. Also: I wouldn’t have written about this if Norquist hadn’t been in the list. Still, it looks like they failed; mostly, no one seems to really care about this bit of traffic trolling. If people are bothered by any award, it seems to be Mario Draghi winning “Policymaker of the Year.”

If Wonk Blog wants to make these awards a real thing, they need to be smarter about it. They ought to pick 5-7 standard awards and give them out each year. And they need to be serious about it and not give out awards to people like Norquist and the NHL. The only real use of such awards is to get really wonky. And they certainly didn’t succeed at that this year.

Robert Reich seems have come over to my way of thinking. As I wrote back in November, bipartisanship can bite me! The point I was making was that this idea that congressional Republicans should go along with Obama just because he won a national election is madness. They should do what is right for their constituencies.

Reich writes:

I couldn’t have put it any more perfectly than that.

Of course, the devil is in the details. One thing that is not good for any congressional district is a recession brought on by ignoring the Fiscal Cliff or allowing the federal government to default over the debt ceiling. This is totally different from a disagreement over welfare funding. I don’t agree with this idea, but I can see that a conservative might truly believe that depriving the poor of welfare could be good for them. But doing major damage to the whole United States economy is a a different matter altogether. Anyone who allows that is not looking out for their constituency.

This takes us back to what I wrote about earlier today: revolutionary Republicans. We will see if these people are willing to destroy our economy. I don’t expect a politician to be moved by anyone else’s constituency but their own. But to do what is wrong for your own constituency just to harm others’ is totally unacceptable. Sadly, I’m not sure that many Republicans won’t do just that.

I just watched Honeymoon in Vegas for the first time since it was released in 1992. I am a big fan of writer-director Andrew Bergman, who wrote one of my very favorite films, The In-Laws. He has also written other films that I’m not as fond of, but which have very funny scripts: Soapdish, Fletch, and Blazing Saddles. As a director, he has been less successful. Still, he has had some notable successes. In particular, there is The Freshman and the wrongly maligned Striptease.

My biggest complaint with narrative comedy is that the comedy tends to die in the third act. This is as true of novels (e.g. Something Happened) as it is of movies (e.g. Silver Streak). It is not an easy problem to deal with. The writer needs to tie up all of the plot and it is hard to continue to be funny. Bergman does not have this problem. His scripts keep pushing the comedy throughout.

And that is as true of Honeymoon in Vegas as it is any of his others. The third act is by far the funniest part of the film. Unfortunately, there is relatively little comedy in those first two acts. And most of that involves Nicolas Cage’s over-to-top performance. But that would all be fine; I’m okay waiting for a story to set up all its pins to watch them be knocked over at the end. The problem with this film is the narrative itself.

The basic story is that a gangster falls in love with the bride of a couple about to be married in Vegas. The gangster gets the groom involved in a crooked card game and uses the groom’s losses to try to steal the bride for himself. The plot depends far too much on the bride and groom being very easily deceived. But the main thing is that it is hard for the viewer to like the couple very much. There is a critical scene about halfway through the film where the gangster tells the bride that the amount the groom owed was not $65,000 (the truth) but rather only $3000. On the one hand, it is hard to have too much sympathy for the groom who was both greedy and stupid. But the fact that the bride accepted this lie so easily is also annoying.

In the end, we are left with a film about three people who we really don’t care about. And it all seems that this contrived and annoying story has been put together for the sake of what is, admittedly, a great third act. But I know what Bergman is capable of. I feel that if he had written this screenplay at the start of his career, he would have worked on it more—A lot more!—before he showed it to anyone.

I’ve been wondering about the 2011 budget deal: why didn’t the Republicans take it? I’ve argued in the past that they were gambling on an Obama loss. In fact, all the evidence points to a Republican Party that was convinced that Obama would be defeated. It is all part of the echo chamber effect, where they really thought that the American people hated the president, rather than it just being the subset who listen to right wing radio. Regardless, the Republicans thought that it was better to pass on a bill that gave them 98% of what they wanted and instead go with a new Republican president who would give them 100% of what the wanted. Or at least that’s what I’d thought before.

Now I have a new idea. Boehner could have taken the very good deal he was offered in 2011. Then, if Romney had won the election, all the tax increases (really just limits to deductions) would easily have been repealed. Boehner would have had 100% of what he wanted. Or, if Obama had won, he would still have pocketed the 98%. Why didn’t he take this deal? It can’t be that he didn’t think of it. Even if you believe that Republican politicians are idiots, they have smart young aides; this would have been pointed out.

I think there are a few things going on here, but there is one that dominates. A large part of the Republican Party has become a revolutionary group. As a result, they are not at all interested in governing. This in itself is a very dangerous thing. But what is most important is that they do not think that the Democratic Party has legitimacy. Thus, they won’t make any deals. We saw this the week before last when the House Republicans would not vote even to allow incomes over a million dollars to be taxed at a higher rate. They were, however willing to vote to restore all lost military funding, because they are committed to the military, like most revolutionaries in their position.

Boehner isn’t part of this revolutionary group. But he is an enabler. He cares more about maintaining his power than governing as he would normally want to. But he’s made a very bad deal in the long-term. By pandering to this group, he makes the Republican prospects going forward all the worse. But even if the revolutionaries managed to continue to gain power, they would eventually replace Boehner because he is not one of them.

The only question now is whether Boehner, after securing another two years as Speaker of the House, will start acting like a regular politician or continue to side with the revolutionaries. If he sides with the revolutionaries, we may well get no fiscal cliff deal. And when the debt ceiling comes up, the United States government would almost certainly default. And this all really comes down to Boehner. He is in a typical position: he has power, but only so long as he doesn’t use it as he wants. As soon as he does what he wants, he loses his power. So what’s it going to be, Mr. Speaker?

Look. I’ve heard that John Boehner is a chain-smoking drunk. And that’s why I want to have drinks with him. Other than his politics, he sounds like my kind of guy. That’s why we should spend an evening drinking together. Don’t misunderstand. I don’t think I’m going to change his mind about anything. Frankly, I don’t think he has much in his mind to change. Whenever I hear him railing against the president, when I hear is this: “Let’s get out of here and go have a good glass of pinot.”

In this way, we are of like minds; we are copacetic. I want to discuss all the girls he loved before. I want to know if he has any tattoos. And I want to probe him about whether it wasn’t a major mistake to major in Business Administration. If he hadn’t done that, he might be a Democrat now.

Most of all, I want to see what is going on in the inside of this man. Because I don’t think he gives a damn about the politics that he is in the center of.

At least, that’s what I want to believe. Because if he really does care about what he’s doing in Washington? Then he’s a total dick.

Afterword

I also want to explain to him how his last name is pronounced.

I have long had major problems with Chris Matthews of MSNBC. Listening to him now, he really comes off like a real liberal. But I remember back when MSNBC was conservative and Matthews was right there with it. In addition, he seems to have been the major push behind MSNBC firing Phil Donahue in 2003.

There’s no doubt that Matthews is a hypocrite. Digby has written before about Matthews’ changing position on Bush. In 2003, he was very impressed with President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photo opportunity. He said, “This week the president landed the best photo op in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I’ve got to say.” (Fareed Zakaria was similarly impressed.)

But in 2010, Matthews was all turned around. He said, “The incompetence became downright staggering when the Commander In Chief pranced onto an aircraft carrier with a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner flying overhead. The bozos couldn’t even get the PR right.”

We are perhaps best off assuming that people on the television are just actors. They just play a part. Put Rachel Maddow on Fox News, and she’ll mold herself into the part. I’m not saying here that Maddow or even Matthews aren’t liberal. But like anyone, they can highlight some views and suppress others. And for a million bucks (or more) per year, they can highlight anything you want.

This year, Chris Matthews is being paid to highlight this:

Krugman posted an article that I quite agree with, A Double Shot of Misunderstanding. Basically, he says that there are two kinds of deficit scolds: stupid and evil. He doesn’t put it that way, of course; he writes for the New York Times, after all. But I feel sure that late at night he turns to Robin and says, “Those deficit scolds are a bunch of fucktards!”

The evil group (the FUCKtards) are people like Pete Peterson. They are people who claim to care about the debt, but who really only use the debt to accomplish other goals. As Matt Yglesias pointed out, Quakers running around screaming that we had to fix the debt by cutting military spending would not really be interested in the deficit. Similarly, Fix the Debt (one of Peterson’s many front groups) claims to care about the debt and yet it calls for cutting income tax rates.

Let me be clear: I understand that someone genuinely interested in the deficit might say we shouldn’t raise rates because it would hurt the economy. But to call for lowering them? That’s madness. What’s more, raising taxes on the rich will not harm the economy nearly as much as cutting spending on the poor. It is clear that the primary goal of Fix the Debt and the many other groups just like it is to cut spending on the poor. They do this because they simply don’t like these programs, not because there is anything about these programs that is destroying our budget. The following graph from Kent Conrad (who is in the stupid category discussed below) presents the following graph that ought to put our budget picture in focus:

Republicans are fond of saying, “Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.” I’ve heard John Boehner say this many times. (Note: in the video he presents extremely misleading data that depends almost entirely on the increased cost of healthcare; he is an evil man.) But the graph shows that Washington does indeed have a revenue problem. Yet the Very Serious People don’t want to deal with this. They want to “lower rates and broaden the base.” This is code for lowering rates and cutting deductions. It is a simple matter to cut taxes later. It is trivial to bring back deductions. The Very Serious People are not serious about the deficit; they are serious about inflicting pain on the poor.

The stupid group (the fuckTARDS) are composed of people like Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. As I reported yesterday, he seems to think that the Fiscal Cliff is some kind of debt explosion, when it is exactly the opposite. As Krugman says, people like Schultz are still very dangerous because they are part of Fix the Debt and allied groups. In his letter to employees, Schultz provided a link to the Fix the Debt website. (The website is a mess of platitudes; it is very hard to get to what policies they actually recommend; this is because they aren’t policies most people would agree with.)

The stupid group provides a patina of reasonableness to the whole endeavor. Sadly, this group is overflowing with Democrats. They are useful fools in what is inevitably a bait and switch. As long as one doesn’t look too closely at the evil deficit scolds’ ideas, one can assume they are good intentioned. But once it comes down to a deal, it will turn out that it is very conservative.

This is what happened with welfare “reform.” By accepting the framing that welfare somehow caused poverty, the liberals ended up destroying the program. The truth is that there is no debt problem in the United States. There is a healthcare problem: we pay twice what we should for our healthcare. But this isn’t even in the discussion of the budget. And so what the deficit discussion is really all about is cutting liberal programs that conservatives hate.

Don’t be stupid or evil.

It is always a problem when I watch Ezra Klein host The Rachel Maddow Show. This is because I read Wonk Blog every day—just look at the list on the right. But every once in a while, he will put together some really great television that goes beyond what he’s already written online. He did that last night when he discussed the Starbucks call to “move together” that I discussed in a different context yesterday. This is a really great segment:

A lot of people have died during the last week who I would like to write about. There was Jack Klugman, of course. People remember him most from The Odd Couple. As I recall, he replaced Walter Matthau in the Broadway play after just one performance. (Don’t quote me on that, but I think so.) But when I think of Klugman, I think of him playing Juror #5 in 12 Angry Men. It is a very delicate performance and it has really stayed with me over the years.

The same day, Charles Durning died. I was never that big a fan of his, probably because of the kinds of characters that he played. I certainly thought he was good, just not someone I would actively seek out. But then he played two roles that made me love him—both in Coen Brothers films. The first was Waring Hudsucker in The Hudsucker Proxy. And the second was Pappy O’Daniel in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Both those roles take something special to perform without making a total fool of yourself.

Two days later, Gerry Anderson died. You’ve probably never heard of him. I know him because he created a number of great children’s shows that used marionettes. But in later years he was quite involved in computer animation. He was also the creator of a show my friend Will used to really like, Space: 1999. Here is the opening of his show Thunderbirds. I suspect that it will look very familiar to you:

All three men added a great deal of joy to my life as well as those of countless others. I can’t think of a better way to spend a life. Thanks guys.