Budget Deals and Hostage Taking

I'm sure you've all been waiting for my thoughts on the deal to avoid a government shutdown made last Friday.  Here they are:

• Talking about who "won" isn't really very interesting to me.  It can be spun lots of ways.  But I sure don't feel great about it- feels viscerally like the Republicans won.
• Obama gave away the store at the very start of the negotiations, accepting the Republican narrative of a government that needs to "tighten its belt" and essentially agreeing to Boehner's original offer of a $30 billion spending cut.  Of course that just led to the Republicans moving the goalposts further back.  It would be nice to see a tough negotiating position taken by the administration for once.  Which leads me to....
• It's clear at this point that Obama just isn't that liberal.  We can only conclude that the reason he doesn't start negotiating from a liberal position is because he's not inclined toward liberal policies.  At least that's what I hope is the case, because if he really is a closet liberal, then he's an idiot.
• The Next Big Thing is going to be the Debt Ceiling vote.  Now at this point a majority of congress will have voted for the 2011 budget, which has a deficit and will therefore by definition lead to the need to raise the Debt Ceiling.  Republicans have indicated that they want more spending concessions in order to vote to increase it.  Democrats just have to stand firm on this one.  Boehner has already gone on record saying that the Debt Ceiling has to be raised because the government has to pay its bills.  If the GOP threatens to refuse, the Democrats need to call the bluff and dare them to do it.  There's simply no reason to get anything in return for doing the obvious responsible thing.  The Tea Party types can vote no as a protest vote (as many liberals, including Obama, did during the Bush administration), but the Republican leadership has to be forced to do it for nothing.  If the Democrats can't pull this off, they'll have risen to a new level of spinelessness- it will be sickening.  I wish I were confident this will turn out right.
• Then we get to the Ryan budget plan, which has been annihilated by messrs Krugman, Yglesias, Klein, and many others.  I recommend scrolling through any of these bloggers' writings for last week, after which it's tough to take the plan seriously.  But one thing that drives many of us on the Left crazy is the Common Wisdom of the pundit class (Krugman calls them the "Very Serious People") that the budget plan is somehow "courageous".  It takes courage to buck the orthodoxy of the party you're in.  Ryan's courage consists of destroying Medicare and Medicaid in order to fund more tax cuts for the rich.  Now it would be courageous if a conservative Republican pointed out that the budget can not really be balanced without a repeal of the Bush tax cuts.  It would be courageous if a liberal Democrat proposed cuts in social programs on which his constituents relied.  It would be courageous for a legislator from Iowa or Nebraska to speak out against farm subsidies that benefit his state but which are a waste of money.  None of that's too likely I guess, but that's courage.