Michael Munger nails the key issues in both campaign and recovery

From the Mungowitz's own Kids Prefer Cheese:

Look, folks, until someone makes some effort to (a) reduce military spending, (b) solve the growth of entitlement spending, and (c) turn off the spigot flooding businesses with new and unpredictable regulatory burdens, there will be no increase in jobs created. We are doing the deficit-spend thing about as much as is possible, and the Fed keeps firing its own bullet, right into the ocean. Ploop! Nada. 

If this helps Romney, it's not because he has any kind of plan, or deserves to be helped. Romney has given no specifics of what he would do, or even how he thinks of what he might do. 

Romney is running like an incumbent, in fact. Even though he has no indication of being able to address the three problems above. And the reason is, just like David Leonhardt said in May, that bad job growth numbers mean Obama loses. Not that Romney "wins," but that Obama loses. 

I never thought Obama and co. would be this inept and pigheaded, but they are. They absolutely refuse to move from their position that the solution to the economic malaise is to pay more money to government employees and to fund their pensions.

"The private sector is doing fine," indeed. That was NOT a gaffe. It was a statement of core beliefs. Some people have said that Obama does not trust markets.  That's actually not true.  He has too MUCH faith in markets.  He thinks he can tax, regulate, and abuse people, and they will still doggedly go to work and try to make that cheddar.  That's not actually working out very well for him.

Or for us.

I get it that my liberal friends will not agree with (b) and (c) above, and we can have legitimate discussions about individual policies and their effects.  But . . .

. . . not until they come to grips with (A).  Mr. Obama's supporters have to explain and defend, in no uncertain terms, why they are willing to continue to support a bloated defense establishment and an interventionist military policy around the entire planet.  There is neither a case to be made that significant cuts in the defense budget will either make us less safe or disrupt the economy.  In fact, there is significant evidence that cutting Defense would produce MORE jobs, dollar for dollar, than all this weapons spending is producing now. 

So here's my new premise:  when those of you who support Mr. Obama's hundreds of billions of dollars (over a trillion per year with current wars worked in) can either defend it or recant it, we'll talk about entitlements, but not before that.