Not a nation of deadbeats -- yet

President Obama gave a presser today on gun control. But the twitter told me the White House media insiders found it much too boring so the questions were about the dreaded deficit that so consumes what Charlie perfectly named the courtier press.

President actually did well on defining the players and the stakes in the GOP's reckless gamble with their ante of the full faith and credit of the United States. Sadly, he failed on the defining the solution. This compelled Charlie Pierce to evoke his First Law Of Economics:

Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.

The general public seems to think that The Economy is defined by how many people are working and how many people are not. The political elite, including the president, and the courtier press that services that elite, all seem to define the economy through the deficit. The cognitive dissonance in Washington is about how best to deal with an economy defined by the deficit. The cognitive dissonance in the country is about how best to deal with an economy that is being defined at the highest levels of the government in a way that the rest of the country finds odd and inadequate.

And as Atrios adds:

The additional maddening thing is that if you fix the jobs problem you largely fix the deficit problem. The reverse is not true. If you "fix" the deficit you kill the jobs.

Obvious and uncomplicated. Hard to believe that all these Very Serious People don't know this to be a verifiable fact. Which leads to disturbing conclusions about the implicit sociopathic intentions of our ruling class. Not reassuring.