Debt reduction seems to have taken center stage in Washington. President Obama is talking about discretionary spending freezes. The talk shows are speculating about how close we are to the point where foreigners stop buying our debt, and Republicans are blaming the entire national debt on Obama’s first year in office.

“Deficits don’t matter” was the statement former Vice President Dick Cheney made to a doubting Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil when, in the middle of Bush’s first term , the game plan became another round of tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens in the country, or as then President Bush put it “the haves and the have mores”, (Secretary O’Neil was canned shortly thereafter).

In Baltimore last week, where Obama paid a visit to the party of ‘no’, it became apparent that Republicans, after gorging themselves on Bush policies for 8 long years, have all but forgotten how we came to be in the predicament we find ourselves in today. Despite riding the Bush bandwagon to the largest and fastest national debt expansion in the history of the planet, Republicans are now blaming Obama’s ‘jobs’ bill for  all the red ink.

It’s one thing to use talking points like ‘communist’ and ‘socialist’ to demonize your opponent and garner support from the ignorant  tea-party masses, but Republicans seem to have fallen for their own propaganda. Do they now believe that ‘deficits do matter’?

If so, perhaps they should begin a dialog about military spending.

From my vantage point way to the left of every decision Washington makes, where the consensus is that we have a one-party system, with Republicans and Democrats being two separate wings of the War party, I find it curious that our fawning corporate media (FCM) has yet to ask any lawmaker on either side of the aisle if it isn’t, perhaps, time to examine the cost of empire.

As an example, recently President Obama signed legislation that, for another 4 billion tax dollars, prolongs the ‘war on drugs’ in Central America. The US and Columbian militaries will be partnering, at bases in that country, built by US taxpayers, to continue a drug war that has garnered ZERO returns over the past two decades. But then, partnering with Columbian  para-militaries isn’t really about fighting a war on drugs, it’s about securing joint US/Columbian oil interests.

Shouldn’t oil companies at least pay for this protection, or should we continue to give them tax breaks?

What it comes down to, sadly, is a new President crunching numbers on the cruelest and most wasteful domestic program, the health insurance monopoly, while ignoring the guerrilla in the room, US empire. And all the while Republicans howl about socialism.

If this isn’t tiring I don’t know what is.