Olio: The Circus Has Left Town. On The Other Hand, There's Still Good Seats Available Edition

• Yes, the Man Is a Horndog. But in Fairness, the Hooker Did Come On To Him: both my Poor Wife and I noted that Channel 13 Political Correspondent Kevin Rader took pains to mention ("in fairness") that his exclusive interview with the Governor came at his Channel's request, even though Mitch "Smaller and Smaller" Daniels is beginning to try making news (with Chuck Todd, on MSNBC, on education, for all the Just Fuck Me Right Here in the Stall of subjects Mitch Daniels is a national expert on), in order to peddle the upcoming Book that someone bankrolled back when it might look like Mitch might possibly test the waters for maybe President.

Which, y'know Kevin, it wouldn't have been necessary to note if you'd asked him a real question or two.

Also, y'know, this would qualify as "fairness" if you announced every time you run somebody's talking points for them at their beck-and-call that that's what you were doing.

We'll get to what Daniels actually got away with momentarily. But let us state that while you have probably been the best local political reporter during the Daniels administration--don't get a swelled head, it ain't much of a class--opening a piece on Daniels--as you did in print and John Stehr evidently read off the teleprompter--with "Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels considered running for president to help deal with the financial crisis" is the sort of sweet talk I can't categorize without having to apologize to my Poor Wife later. And probably print a retraction about her not wearing panties anyway.

Shit, too late. What I meant to replace it was "kid who was ridiculed for his KISS action figure collection getting to interview Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley thirty years later." Both you and the Governor got the job. How much better can ya eat?"

• As for Daniels (Good News, still alive; Bad News, still has power of speech) there's the book-rollout version of his successful I've Not Decided This Is Other People Talking Campaign, 2012, in which, apparently, he tries to emphasize--by manufacturing--his distinction from the House Teabagging and Severe Economic Fuck-Up now that the general public has noticed something of its accomplishment. And more about them after this.

"We need growth. We need more revenue. Let's all agree with that," he said.

To do that, Daniels says we need to get regulators off the backs of business and banks.

"Let's try for the next several years - everything should take second place to trying to help the private economy grow. That is where you will get the tax payments that will provide for the things we need to do," he said.

"Let Us Come Together in the great spirit of rational compromise, and do it My Way, provided I can keep a fantasy version of plausible deniability for yet another financial disaster with my intellectual fingerprints all over it."

What Daniels means by "increased revenue" isn't "increased revenue". It's "promised increased revenue", the exact same Randian plerophory we've heard--and, to a far too great extent, reacted to--is the same Reagan Trickle Down routine which, combined with Incontinent Tax Cutting at the Top put us in this Micturation Soup in the first place. But wait, it gets pissier.

The governor says moderating defense spending and limiting foreign aid won't even begin to address the debt problem.

"What we can't afford is all in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The tragedy is we can protect everybody who is in there today if we would just set up a system where the young people of today have something waiting for them ten to fifteen years out. That is what the world is watching for us to do," he said.

I'm thinking once they get that Constitutional Originalist/Texturalist thing on some moderately-solid philosophical footing--as in "frozen shit"--(in fairness, they've only had forty years to work on it) they should turn to this "the Constitution permits, and prudence demands Defense Spending ("which we can't avoid", much as we'd like to, and still hold out hope for a Cabinet job with Michele Bachmann"), but these social programs are mere legislative creations. Gotta go, sorry, we're broke. True, they have been trying to whim these programs out of existence for forty years (and Mitch has been a Republican insider for at least three-quarters of that), but that just adds to the evidence that Mitch Daniels is lying through his teeth.

Oh wait, my bad. I'm sure there's a rock-solid argument for this arrangement in Daniels' book, available next month at your local time zone's bookseller, if any, and he just can't reveal it ahead of time, like he couldn't reveal any by thinking up an answer back when he wasn't running for not President, and when people were sorta starting to say out loud that his international credibility stood at Sarah Palin minus the ability to see the Soviet Union from her house.

Look, motherfuckers: I'm used to the crackpot shit, believe me, including the anti-fluoridation economics. Carry on. But here's a thing about "finding the middle ground All Americans can agree is the starting place for completing the decoupling of the economic system from the rights and basic interests of 85% of Americans": the opposite viewpoint is not "Gee I wish there were some middle ground, or, barring that, somebody with some really strong opinions and a temporal political advantage". No. The opposite view of your opinion is You're A Lying Sack.

There's your twin poles of American opinion, Mr. Governor. Navigate us between them.

Y'know, meanwhile, as a young man I paid for WWII, and Social Security and medical care for the elderly, which has contributed to my parent's, and my Poor Wife's poor parents, and any number of extended family matriarchs and the drunken rapscallions they inevitably married, I think the word is living. That's not the whim of some legislature. That's a cultural value. If we really can't afford caring for the elderly, the disabled, the infirm, or if we can't afford to do so without the nagging suspicion that some Colored Woman out there is fornicatin' with the proceeds, sweaty, thighs like maple-cured hams, African rhythms pulsing, pulsing, which I suspicion is closer to the truth (if not for you personally, Governor, nor you lovely wife, I'm sure, but we might start by suspecting those people in your party you Disagree With, the ones who kept you out of the Presidential race because they're the majority voice), then we're better off cutting all the needy cold turkey, then say so, and defend the idea that we still need to outspend the rest of the world combined on military power. Because military power. And wouldn't this be a really good time for our military to just Go Gault on the rest of the planet, so there, defend your own parasitical selves?

• And if for some reason you read the article, or watch that attached video, dear God, I hope you don't suffer nightmares from his back-to-back softball "Aren't there some in your party who say…" allowing Daniels to thwack! disagree with unnamed extremist Republicans on closing tax loopholes!, a statement which looks like English but has about as much real world effect as the water in the Scotch at the free bar, and Rader's fucking Winston Fucking Churchill quote.

"Wasn't it Winston Churchill who said after Americans try everything else they eventually get it right?" Eyewitness News asked.

Yeah, "Eyewitness News" asked. I bet the sound man shouted it out.

Fer chrissakes. First, Winston Churchill is quite possibly the last man in all of English-speaking history who should be lecturing anyone on crapping everything up with big ideas, and getting things right by default. Second, what does the thought have even remotely to do with our present economic situation? We've really only tried one solution ever since Reagan. And it's the wrong one. It was a radical reinvention of "American" "society", and it failed, economically. It has enriched the already enriched, but it didn't provide one fucking job, really, that the economy didn't allow for, not in Macro view. I mean, if you crafted wooden sailboats for the Wealthy Adrift over the past four decades Reaganism probably looks like Nirvana to you, but it sure didn't do anything for anyone who wasn't in a position, or of a gambling enough nature, to go into business for himself and hope not to join the vast majority in Bankruptcy. Working people have suffered big time since Reagan. Hey, Gov, maybe there's something we could all admit. Y'know, just as a warm-up pitch, before we get to the important stuff.

I would point out here that among the things we haven't tried, absent a few numerically-insignificant historical oddities, is Socialism. So maybe we can meet halfway and your party can shut th' fuck up about it for a fortnight. On the other hand, Hoping for a Solution Based On Our Magical Belief In Our Own Infallibility has really already been checked off four times, including the first Bush administration, whose program seemed to be based on the idea that the Rapture had to be gettin' close anyway. Else the economy wouldn't be so bad.

• Speaking of Mitch, the guy he named to head the Indiana Utility Regulatiory, or "Regulatory", Commission to replace the other guy he named who'd been part of a scheme which placed his high-ranking lieutenants in cushy jobs with a company they regulated, or "regulated", has been caught talking about placing his high-ranking lieutenants in cushy jobs with a company he regulates. Chairman James Atterholt says he was really just bein' friendly, an' all, like he is with everybody he deals with. So, apparently, the remarkable congruence of his act with the one that got his predecessor shitcanned for making Mitch look bad before the I'm Not Sure I'm Running Campaign roll-out is just accidental. Or not, now that Cheri refused to run.

• 14% of Americans Approve of Congress. Big fucking deal. Tell me when 86% have figured out what to do about it, besides look for some spiffy new packaging--Same Great Taste!-- on old Turd Bar stocks.