So, now continues the summer of our discontent...

In Eugene Robinson's Sunday column, he calls the focus on debt reduction "a laudable goal... being pursued in the wrong way at the wrong moment."

I have to disagree. It is exactly the right time to focus on debt reduction- real debt reduction and not the tired, play money, ten years down the road hot mess of numbers we keep getting fed. What is at the wrong time is the "summer break" of our do-nothing Congress just embarked on, leaving the FAA and tens of thousands of workers to twist in the wind in yet another embarrassing example of government-as-usual.

I'm all for allowing our legislators to go spend some time in their home districts, but what is the six week hiatus going to accomplish? A whole mess of fundraisers, photo ops, carefully orchestrated town halls, and setting rosters for fantasy football season? Yep, exactly. Not one single useful damn thing.

I mean, there is the Ames straw poll in Iowa coming up on August 13. It'll be fun, sort of, to watch the one hundred twenty-seven Republican candidates and the mainstream media cackle and debate over what the numbers mean, what their significance is, even though we are talking the political version of preseason football.

And you know the subject when everyone manages to make their way back to Washington- the super committee, as underwhelming a use of the word super if ever I saw. We'll no doubt be treated to a few days of what passes for high drama until both sides announce their lineups, and then the real bitch begins, all the way to a dramatic, last-second deal to keep the automatic cuts from going against party line grains. You know, what they will call the right way to approach an issue at the right time.

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