Are you a "half full" or "half empty" sort of person?

Ross Douthat:  The fundamental problem with Obama's war on the rich...

Is a Democratic Party that shies away from raising taxes on the $250,000-a-year earner (or the $399,999-a-year earner, for that matter) in 2013 — when those increases are happeningly automatically! — really going to find it easier to raise taxes on families making $110,000 in 2017 or 2021? Color me skeptical: The lesson of these negotiations seems to be that Democrats are still skittish about anything that ever-so-remotely resembles a middle class tax increase, let alone the much larger tax increases (which would eventually have to hit people making well below $100,000 as well) that their philosophy of government ultimately demands. 

Agreeing that the New Year’s bargain bodes ill for the liberal vision of government doesn’t require believing that Paul Ryan’s vision of government is poised to triumph instead. Here I agree with Scheiber: Because Social Security and Medicare are so popular, the right-wing path to fiscal sustainability does sometimes have an air of fantasy about it. It’s just that on the evidence of what the Obama White House and Senate Democrats have been willing to concede this week, the left-wing path to solvency looks pretty implausible right now as well.

Can you choose both?   Here is Instapundit's proposal:

That’s the problem with that whole war on the rich. Obama’s enemies are the small-business Kulaks, who vote Republican, but he can’t go after them without hurting the nobles who support Democrats financially.
I’d push 5% per year cuts in federal spending across the board — no “flexible freeze” BS — and do it each year until the deficit was under control. I think this would sell fairly well politically, too. Nobody believes that any federal department couldn’t cut costs 5% without impacting performance.

Then again Legal Insurrection is definitely leaning half empty...  I liked the comment that Hookers put up more resistance than the GOP did.   Well of course, hookers demand payment first.

Update:
John Boehner is annoying and needs to go.