I hate to carry this exchange any further - because it isn't an exchange. Facts are facts. Social Security and medicare do not draw on tax revenues - simple. When we use the Trust funds' moneys for other purposes, the Treasury places notes (IOUs) in the fund. One assumes that the Treasury will honor them; therefore, it ios the same as borrowing from China.

Those who do not accept this are saying that they do not expect or want the United States government to honor them. That, in everyday language, that's what we call theft

It is very sad that supposedly informed public debate in this country has sunk so low. I pledge that this is the last word that I'll contribute on this matter now or in later discussion

While I much appreciate the professor's interest in my post, I think he misunderstands the nature of what I was saying. I argue that the long term budget issues for the United States have national strategic implications. We cannot pursue our national interests however defined if we are broke. The two main drivers of US debt in the out years are spending on healthcare and social security. To get our budget under control we must get spending in these areas under control. From that perspective, it's important, yes, to take a hard look at the defense budget and pare where appropriate and necessary. But doing so without a broader effort to promote budget discipline will be short-sighted at best.

We have an interesting set of choices in this year's elections. For these choices I would recommend an excursion through Barabara Tuchman's "The Proud Tower." This book describes the world as it was from 1900 to 1912. The period we are now in seems similar to that one in some ways and not in others.

The Democrats today are a Center-Left party in love with social welfare, the social safety net and filled with resentment for the moneyed class (unless they belong to it). They are internationalists who are averse to military action except in the clearest circumstance. i.e., kill bin Laden, suppress African revolutionaries of the more egregious varieties, rescue hostages in Somalia, etc. Their leader claims to be like the Democrats but seems to be more like a liberal Republican of the dimly remembered Eisenhower/Rockefeller variety.

The Republicans of today's mainstream long ago hunted down and largely exterminated Republicans of that type, and have harried scattered surviving centrist Republicans through the Shire while denouncing them as RINOs. Today's mainstream Republican Party is characterised by profound jingoism and an imperialism thinly veiled behind claims of a "civilizing mission,) and the "existential threat" of various species of "mad mullahs," "yellow perils," and "uppity" Europeans. The suggestion that none of these "perils" is truly "existential" sends the Yahoos into paroxysms of nationalist anger.

On the domestic front, the Republican mainstream proudly declares its intention to modify the present social safety net to such an extent that it really will not exist. They seem to worship the concept of "social Darwinism," and to seek a society in which only the fit and brave will live as other than proles. What of; Social Securty, Medicare, Medicaid (the welfare state)? Theirargiument is that these programs should become insurance that may or may not provide equivalent social insurance to what exists now and which almost certainly will not be affordable by the poor (or semi-poor). In the world of business, the Republicans seek a removal of just about all regulation from the activities of commerce. Unions are regarded as nuisances and undesirable restrictions on labor/ownership conflicts. Capital gains taxes are thought of as "class warfare." Inheritance taxes are called "death taxes," and the EPA is just a damned nest of marxists. One could go on listing the "inprovements" in law and tax codes that the Republicans of today would like.

This is a recipe for a return to the Gilded Age, the age of Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller, the time of violent labor action, the growth of real socialist sentiment. Thiose who embrace this ideolgy must adore the massive accumulations of wealth that made possible the "Summer Cottages" at Newport, Rhode Island and many other places.

I guess in the end the question is "Whose country is this?"

The gush of support for the Farnsworth plan is instructive. It reflects a powerful current in America today that is eager to sacrifice our most vulnerable in the name of patriotic duty married to a retrograde social doctrine. They are America’s old – America’s sick – America’s poor. They are implicitly labeled ‘losers’ who now are called upon to give their last measure of dignity for the cause. In the mind of Mr. Gingrich and his ilk, they should welcome the chance to redeem themselves in serving their country by placing the needs of the United States above their own.

What are the vital and urgent purposes that they thereby are to serve in helping spare the military=industrial-intelligence establishment from the budgetary pruning fork? To go to war against the diabolical Iranians? To gird our loins for the apocalyptic sea-air battle with the Chinese? To chase the ghosts of terrorism past into the remotest corners of the globe?

If one were to seek a formula to drive a stake through what remains of America’s standing and prestige in the world, this is it. Then, indeed, we would have nothing to fall back upon for advancing our purposes other than raw military might

I always find it somewhat bemusing when people compare one leader’s time to another based on what the security situation might be at a given time.The world has changed, but have we changed in our methods of trying to manage or solve issues -- or are we locked in our own combat with the intellectual ghosts of the Cold War and before.

President Obama arrived at The White House to face the following: the inheritance of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the continuing threats from Al Qaeda, threats from the drugs and thugs sides of things (which are connected to terrorism in many ways), a sharply declining world and national economy with all of the security issues attached to that, and many other national security threats both large and small.

Given all of the things that have happened since he took office it is hard to say whether the US is safer and more secure than before he took office. What metric do we use? How do we measure safety and security of a country? It is all very subjective and quite complex and fluid. However, one could remark on a few things.

We have extracted our troops from Iraq. Some claim that the war is over. For many Iraqis it is not over. Some claim that Iraq is now a democratic and stable state. I disagree. It is neither democratic not stable. It had elections, but it is led by an increasingly autocratic and brutish regime under Mr. Malaki. Mr. Malaki’s behavior of late has been far from democratic from the way I look at it. It is also becoming more and more to look like a police state. There was a major set of bombings just today. Many bombings have occurred in the last few weeks. It is more peaceful if one looks at the declining death rates from bombings, but Iraq is also a ticking ethnic and sectarian time bomb. It is a matter of time only before it gets much worse. The root causes of its instability are not being dealt with.

Afghanistan is hardly a land of peace, stability and democracy with its regular Taliban murders and attacks and its incredibly corrupt leadership.

The President got a bad set of cards with Iraq and Afghanistan and I wonder if anyone else could have done any better given the environment in those two countries and the environment in Washington and elsewhere.

Problems like Iraq and Afghanistan are “wicked” problems with very complex and manifold reverberations in the countries and beyond. The issues are also quite recursive in nature. One set of issues cannot be looked at separately because so many of them feed into each other in sometimes unpredictable ways.

Mexico is in a far worse situation now than we he got in office, but can we blame a US President for Mexico heading into an increasingly vicious drug gang war. I do not think so even if some people would like to for their own reasons.

Tensions with Iran are much worse than they were when he got in. If anything his backing down to the new neocons, who are some of the old neocons in new Brooks Brothers suits, has aggravated this issue. He has been listening to the armchair strategists; it seems, more than to the real experts on Iran. As with Iraq, it is amazing how many Iran experts popped out of academia and the advocacy tanks as this issue got higher profiles. The Iranians have clearly been part of the problem of ratcheting up tensions. Nobody but someone from one of their advocacy tanks, or their regime, could deny that one with a straight face. Iran is a far bigger problem now than when he took office. There are many reasons behind this that involved lost opportunities between the two countries, but there have been some real botch-ups along the way. The most important being because power has listened not to truth, but to self-interested groups with many agendas.

Our relations with the Russian and the Chinese seem more tense now than before, but it that the result of the actions of one man? Our relations with Canada are more difficult than before and that may have a lot to do with the decision on the XL pipeline. You see, things are not so simple and clear as many would like.

The world economy is still a mess, especially the EU in income-weighted terms. Africa is still mostly a desperate place of people just getting by. There are still many civil and other conflicts in Africa and in many other parts of the rest of the world.

Then there is the Arab Spring. This was new during his presidency. It has been a challenge to deal with this situation. It seems that whatever he does somebody calls him on it. I wish those persons who are questioning what to do would come up to the plate and take their own swing at the issues. The situations in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and more remain uncertain. It is hard to judge how all of this will play out in the next few years. Even in little Tunisia there is some growing instability, albeit less than in other places. The Arab Spring could spread further. It could move into other parts of the world, such as Central Asia and even into Latin America. Who is to tell? There are many unhappy and hopeless people in the world who may just one day stand up and say, as the Egyptians did, “Enough!”

There seems to be this odd assumption in many parts of the world, and especially in Washington, that the US can solve many of the problems in the world. That is a false assumption for many reasons. One is the very complex and really quite gigantic nature of the problems that could easily dwarf the efforts of one country. Think about the possible collapse of the EuroZone as probably the simplest example of this. Then there are those very annoying and dangerous problems of asymmetry in warfare and in economics that can often not be completely dealt with by one country.

We also have an increasing problem of our debt and our inability to deal with that debt. There will be cutbacks and they could be severe. We are likely heading into an era of strategic contraction. In addition, that may not be an all-bad thing. Maybe we as a country and the man at the top, the President, will realize that trying to solve all of these problems is a drain on us and sometimes, maybe more often than not, we cannot solve or even manage these problems alone.

It is near impossible to go through all of the security problems the country faces and then tack on a grade to one person, group or other on how well they did handling them. I will leave this to those that think such exercises have usefulness to them. I do not think they do, mostly because the people who do these sorts of things are always carrying grudges and have agendas so I do not take them seriously. The only times I have seen such things done correctly and objectively have been in after action reviews in certain groups. I was involved with one of these regarding a rather big issue in the Middle East. It was done well. It was hard-nosed and to the point. It was so upsetting how this situation was so messed up that even a usually sound sleeper like me had trouble getting to sleep for three days afterwards.

It is time we as a country had a national discussion in the form of an after action review on the issues we face. This is not to set blame, but to take some time and effort to see how we are doing. Blaming the fellow in the White House, whoever he is,Republican, Democrat, or whatever, is not the way to move forward. There are many others involved. The blame game takes up too much time and effort.

Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read “The buck stops here”. In some ways that is the case given that the President is Commander in Chief and in charge of the Executive Branch that is involved with diplomacy, homeland security, and so many other aspects of national security. However, there are many others involved both inside and outside the country. Success or failure in any efforts to help ensure national security and prosperity involve many. These efforts can also be OBE (overcome by events) that are not within the control of the President or anyone else.

I will leave you with an example of this. Recently a leader in this country said that the President’s economic policies have made the economy worse, not better. The economy is better than it was during the worst parts of the recession and many of the President’s and the Federal Reserve Bank’s policies helped mitigate some of the worst parts of the economy. A do-nothing Congress hamstrung the President. The Federal Reserve Bank was limited in what it could do because interest rates were already close to zero. Then there were the many hits to our economy and stock markets coming out of the problems in the EU and elsewhere. Then there were the oil price shocks from the Arab Spring and other issues. There are many uncontrollable and exogenous shocks that any leadership has to deal with. Leadership also has to deal with those it needs to work with to pass bills, increase ceilings, fight wars, set up new protective efforts, engage in diplomacy and so much more.

If we were all to be thoroughly honest about where the buck stops, we would see that it stops at all of our homes, offices, bases, and more. We are all responsible, especially those with the influence, power, intellectual skills, negotiation skills and more to do something. We are also all responsible to make sure that argument does not devolve into hypocrisy. On that score, this country has been on a road to increasing failure.

Being the President may be the toughest job in the world. I would say the same things that I am writing in this small piece if the President were a Republican or whatever. I am of neither party.

This country should not be about parties of this or that.

It should be about waking up to the fact that the world has changed and is changing fast and it we don’t change the way we are doing things then we will be in much greater troubles and less secure in the future. To wake up in that way requires us to get beyond politics and score settling. It requires us to act as a team in the government, in the country and even well beyond.

The future will bring us very big challenges. If we cannot handle the challenges of today properly what might that say about how we will handle the future?

A virtue of this blog is that it encourages candid exchanges. In this spirit, i offer these comments on Eric farnsworth contribution to this week's discussion. Two points.

First,he asserts that "the defense budget is the one area that is a constant target of budget cutters during difficult economic times." This is factually untrue and has been untrue since 1950. The only dip, in the immediate wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, was short-lived and the gravy train already was on the tracks when 9/11 hit. We now spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. More recently, the austerity craze in Washington already has gutted domestic programs across the board. Social Security and medicare are now targeted for similar cuts even though they don't draw on tax revenues. The envisaged cuts in defense over the next decade are minor by comparison.

Two, Mr. Farnsworth asserts that " cuts will of necessity be more draconian than they otherwise might have been, impacting core national interests, unless entitlement reform becomes a reality.." What he is sayingis that Trust Fund monies which are accumulated from what by law are our payments into a separate fund whose only dedicated outlays are stipulated for specific purposes only should be raided to pay for military expenditures. This is illegal, unjustified and unfair since contributions to those Trust Funds represent a regressive 'tax' insofar they are capped by income. It is not surprising that he should make this elementary error since this untruth has been relentlessly propagated by those doctrinally opposed to both landmark programs or find it politically expedient to do so like mr. Obama.

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts.

It's the revenge of Jim Carville. Unless and until we get our long term budget crisis under control, our defense capabilities and therefore our national security interests will be at risk. No, maybe not in the immediate term, but over time, the defense budget is the one area that is a constant target of budget cutters during difficult economic times. That pressure will intensify dramatically unless the anticipated explosion in entitlement spending is curtailed. That is not to say that the defense budget cannot be cut appropriately, prioritized more effectively, or brought more in line with anticipated US defense needs. The Secretary of Defense has made this point publicly. Rather, cuts will of necessity be more draconian than they otherwise might have been, impacting core national interests, unless entitlement reform becomes a reality. Thus the question: the so-called Greatest Generation saved our country; what will their children, the baby boomers, choose to do?

The president can claim he has made the world safer for America…but that requires writing the script himself and leaving out the messy bits.

In a debate President Obama will have a much harder time making the case that all his foreign policy “wins” have actually advanced US core interests.

The only real accomplishment in the Russian reset has been to elevate Russia’s standing as a nuclear power through the New Start treaty. That is not up for rhetorical debate. Its is just counting. We cut delivery systems and warheads. They don’t.

As for the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House will get lots of pushback arguing that is being done in a manner that leaves US interests secure.

We are up to at least 45 thwarted terrorist acts aimed at the US since 9/11. The pace of attempts has increased in the last four years. Al Qaeda remains active. GITMO is open. The Long War may be over, but the drone strikes continue. The White House will argue the threat is now “manageable. If so, it is manageable because of all we have done post-9/11, not just because what has happened the last three years….and the perception is it will remain “manageable” until the next successful terrorist attack.

Iran and North Korea are as dangerous as ever.

It is hard to see where the strategic competition with China has lessened.

The threat of the transnational cartels in Mexico remains significant.

The White House is gutting the both conventional and nuclear forces.

We are headed for a second Arab Spring with an increasing likelihood that the governments that come to power in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere will adopt policies that limit political, economic, and religious freedom and oppose most US policies in the region.

What the president will point to as progress, treaty signing, talks, negotiations, withdrawals, is mostly process…and only to a progressive is process progress.

If this is the national security platform he plans to run, he might think of switching and focusing on his “accomplishments” for getting the economy back on track…or maybe not that either.

Sorry, Mr. President, it’s not at all hard to argue that your rosy assessment is conjured out of thin air. What is hard to do is discerning the state of mind and psyche that leads an American president to portray the downward spiral in the United States' position in the world in other than dark colors. Spinning, of course, is the name of the game ever since electoral politics has become the White House's 24/7/preoccupation. That is nothing new. More troubling is the justified suspicion that Obama cannot distinguish between reality and some conveniently confected version of it. We are beyond lying; rather we are in the domain of narcissistic psychology where the ability to differentiate has gradually evaporated. He is cool and detached even when uttering the most egregious whoppers. This holds for domestic matters as well as foreign policy issues. Think of the comparison with Richard Nixon who was so aware of his lies that he telegraphed them with every open pore and nervous twitch. Today, Mr. Obama and other leading figures among our political class could, I believe, be hooked up to a polygraph machine when saying things like "the Taliban has never been our enemy in Afghanistan" and the needle wouldn't budge.

What concrete evidence in support of this absurd proposition can sympathizers with the President and /or his policies come up with. Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? The farcical "war on terror" now targeted on Saharan bandits and technically challenged Somali salafists who emerged full grown from the brow of our Saudi allies? Courting war with Iran with no plan B in mind? Our financial dependency relationship with China – which also is squeezing us out of the competition for scarce natural resources on very continent? Our bottoming out in public opinion polls around the world - other than India and a few of our European dependencies who would rather go over the cliff with us than accept the responsibility of making their own judgments about matters of international order?

The challenge ahead for the United States is pretty obvious: how to adjust our aims and our methods to a world we no longer reign supreme. To devise and implement an intricate, sustained diplomacy that takes into account the self defined interest of other parties while seeking to foster a set of arrangements and understandings suited to a world of dispersed power. America's peculiar self -image as the Lord's earthly agent whose benign and enlightened influence will eventually be recognized around the world is the primary obstacle to making that adjustment. Mr. Obama's propagation of delusions ensures that we will not succeed at this delicate task which as of now we don't even acknowledge.

Many observers, and surely the President, think that in the short to mid-term, the State of the Union is improving. The economy is picking up, unemployment seems to be getting better, the market is up, the Iraq war is over, Afghanistan is talking peace, and Iran is feeling the heat. The tea party is fading and the "occupy" movement has descended into unwashed irrelevance. Even Chrysler set sales records. Adding to the President's handsome smile, the Republicans are playing out the Romney Dog and the Gingrich cat. At the same time, Obama breaks fundraising records and, in Chicago, the campaign version of Delta Force is getting ready to cross the line of departure, armed with rocks already thrown by its opponents.

This may all be enough to reelect our often ineffective chief executive, but our country is in deep structural doodoo. Our economy has produced a set of long-term unemployed, and far too many of them are young veterans. Income inequality, propelled by the vagaries of the knowledge economy and the greed of the upper classes, is shrinking the middle class and snuffing out the American dream for many of our citizens. We are in the unenviable position of having to cut spending and stimulate the economy, again. Compounding all of this, we no longer have an effective government, able to solve the big ticket problems. Today, our gridlocked government can't even follow the sane recommendation of the super commissions that it charters. Throughout it all, our oddly remote President and his Republican rivals will focus on winning an election that many of us are convinced will only produce SOS DD: same old stuff, different day. We are in for a deluge of Reagan happy face versus class warfare, with each side subtley playing its very own race card. The State of the Union appears to be getting better, but it is not. We are beset by structural problems that a sluggish economy and an ineffective political system cannot solve. If help is coming, it is not likely to be in this election cycle. God bless the United States of America ... we desperately need it.