American Exceptionalism: Building New Shit To Replace The Old Shit We Couldn't Afford The Maintenance On Because We Were Busy Building New Shit

Alec MacGillis, "Angry liberals seek silver lining in debt-limit deal". August 1

FIRST thing we do is add "vertebrate" to the requirements of office:

“It’s a surrender to Republican extortion,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who voted against the deal. “It’s one thing to say we want this, we don’t want that as part of negotiations. It’s another to say we will destroy the country and the economy if you don’t do what we want.”

"Now, honey, you know you can't chop your sister up into little pieces and run her through the garbage disposal. Mommy and Daddy will buy you a cat instead."

So why in hell did your party "do what they wanted" anyway? You don't believe in negotiating with terrorists, just in giving in to their every demand so they'll go away?

Because it sure seems to me that Democratic concerns focused almost exclusively on the potential damage to markets. Which, agreed, was considerable. But we've suffered thirty-five years of real damage thanks to Republican shenanigans, though the markets have weathered that a helluva lot better than the average Americans who used to be the Dems bread-and-butter. Saying "they were holding us hostage" is pure melodrama. If Default was too serious to contemplate as a means of demonstrating to America just what loons the Republicans really are, then you should have solved the problem earlier. You could have caved in last March, or last December, just as easily. Now we're all going to share in a decade-long disaster, probably much, much worse, and none of us has any say in the matter any more. Except to vote you all out, and replace you with assholes of the same or even larger diameter.

Your Next President If It Isn't Michele Mitt Romney said yesterday that he wouldn't have stood for even a whisper of potential revenue increases on some future world, or any talk of reducing the Defense budget. And he's the sane and sensible one in the race, by Republican standards. So it ain't like you've even stopped the hemorrhaging. In a lot of ways, bleeding to death over a decade is worse than doing so in five minutes.

Yet again the default Democrat in me wants to ask how we got here in the first place, and that little voice answers back, "Because the Dems couldn't do a goddam thing with unprecedented majorities two elections running. Because, despite a hostage crisis, a center-right President wouldn't show half the audacity of his miserable predecessor and become a functioning emperor." It's always too late to go back.

I'm sorry, but I just don't fucking get it. Why does Barack Obama want to be President? For the perks? He acts for all the world like what I've long suspected him to be: a guy who thought he was running for Vice-President, who suddenly found himself unexpectedly in the driver's seat, with too much money at stake to back down. Barack Obama is like the goddam Hollywood vanity project a hundred yes men said yes to back when he was hot.

And why do the rest of these fucks want to be Democrats? Because they're more comfortable worshipping Ronald Reagan from afar? For chrissakes, if there's a real Democrat in this country who hasn't expected Republicans to act precisely this way for the last twenty-five years it's because he's not that old. But somehow Congressional Democrats just don't seem to see it. Somehow. The only things accomplished by Democratic presidents over the past twenty years were 1) not being convicted by the Senate; and 2) staring down the Republicans over a government shutdown. Maybe the circumstances are slightly different today, but a stare is still a stare. At the very least maybe you guys coulda been prepared to face the eventuality.