MONEY FOR NOTHING. The big tax-cut giveaway Obama just announced -- assuming that it accurately portrays the deal with the GOP -- demonstrates one unremarked fact: Republicans don't give a shit about the deficit. No sane person thinks we can even begin to scale that back just with cuts. Yet they just agreed to abandon the easiest route to new revenue, plus Democratic "concessions" that close others.

I wonder who else has noticed.

UPDATE. Brilliant comments here, especially as regards the general U.S. strategy the deal suggests -- as Tiny Tyrant puts it, "a mad scramble for the loot before the whole thing implodes! From that point there will be suffering by all, just a little less for those with the loot."