Logical, We Are Not

I actually am tired of criticizing Obama, but he just keeps stepping in dog poop, raising his foot and announcing that it smells like apple pie.

After cutting taxes so many times that I have lost count, he is demanding that Congress extend his latest tax cut, at the same time announcing that he will veto any bill that attempts to circumvent a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction “trigger” that consists entirely of spending cuts. This after a full year of insisting that deficit reduction must be balanced between spending cuts and increases in revenue, otherwise known as tax increases, and rejecting “deals” which did not include sufficient revenue increases.

He is simultaneously saying that his number one priority is to restore the economy, notwithstanding that the $600 billion reduction in military will reduce the size of the military, and that all of those service members who will be downsized will no longer be “military personnel” but will then be “unemployed persons.” In addition, of course, all of the people servicing the former military personnel will also be “unemployed persons,” as will all of the people making the supplies used by the downsized military.

Yes, I do think we need to cut defense spending, and by a good bit more than $60 billion per year, but in doing so we need to consider how to deal with the unemployment that it will cause. Obama is not discussing that.

Nor is he discussing how he is going to reduce the military and at the same time engage in a “buildup of forces” in both the Middle East and the Pacific. He leaves unexplained, as well, why such any such buildup is beneficial, and Michael Brenner suggests that it is not.

Language is the first victim of muddled thinking. So it is with the Obama administration’s groping for shibboleths to lend gravitas to its floundering foreign policy. First there was “leading from behind;’ then fight, talk, build in Afghanistan. Now Hillary Clinton is ‘pivoting’ toward China and the Pacific.

Probably "denying them space in which to plan their attacks."

Nor does he explain why he is saying he will veto any bill which does not cut defense by $600 billion while his Secretary of Defense is saying that if we cut defense spending we will leave ourselves so drastically weakened that we will encourage our enemies to attack us. Panetta, notably, does not name the enemies which he claims will be so emboldened by the gutting of our military that will result from a, roughly, 10% reduction in spending.

And everyone is bleating about how illogical the Republicans are.