For My Next Trick I Will Attempt To Break Out Of Handcuffs I Made Myself Before My Lovely Assistant Can Escape From A Water Tank While Upside Down

Jesus, is this a primary election or a reality show?

-Callyson, "Jonathan Alter launches Chris Christie Presidential bid" at Wonkette
MY Poor Wife reports, ten days into the new school year, that she is now spending more time filling out paperwork, both palpable and electron-based, than actually working with students, a situation which obtains even though, as she has for the past several years, she acquiesces to teaching one more class per day than she is contractually required to.

But contracts don't seem to mean much nowadays, as anything and everything which can be ignored is (this is not particularly new to Indianapolis Public Schools in general, nor to the reign of Dr. Eugene White in particular).

"The 'core subjects' teachers have it a lot worse," she said. "They're sending reports in triplicate which have to be entered into three different web pages. Everyone's lost a prep period to attend mandatory meetings. All this stuff is going into a file somewhere that no one will ever open."

If you got here late, realizing that his time was short to actually profit on awarding private contracts to operate public schools, Mitch Daniels and educational henchman Dr. Tony Bennett rushed into the nuclear option this year, without being able (surprise!) to actually elucidate actual standards and actual responses when those actual standards weren't met. They're poised to take over Indianapolis Failing Public Schools, auction them off to some room deodorizer manufacturer, and declare the problem solved. But they couldn't get ready by the actual start of the actual school year so, like that Iraq War: The Sequel that Mitch financed for us, they went in with the troops they had. Hearings, and more hearings, and the fate of the schools left hanging (for one thing, in order to get the power to do this shit they had to write the law so that the results were entirely arbitrary, lest poor scores at some exoburban system trying to educate large number of farm children with thresher injuries trigger a takeover that white people wouldn't like).

So while we wait for them to sell everything to Edison, or maybe that consortium that runs the Toll Road, the administrative weight of the Indianapolis Public School system has been thrown behind some sort of headless chicken dance designed to ward off death by axing. Not of the teachers, staff, or schools. Of the administrators.

Who fucking works for two weeks in this country and doesn't understand how things work? Who really imagines that handing over employment regulations to local administrators so they can act like the franchisee of some fast-food bunker is going to improve education? Or, for fuck's sake, manage to do anything in any way shape or form except make things worse?

Two more things: these same educational "reformers" made sure to lower the standards for incoming teachers, in the name of Improvement. "Oh, this way the retired industry chemist or idealistic math whiz can give teaching a shot, and we automatically get better teachers, because Business." And in return they get four classes in a row, out of six total, to a roomful (and more) of surly teenagers, with the five minute's passing time between classes to prepare for the next lesson and attend to life's fecal necessities. Welcome, Idealists!

The second is that my Poor Wife, known to some people who read this blog just to get a feel for the sort of thing she goes through, is not the source of these complaints. I am. She--a Teacher, in every good sense of that word--still goes beyond what she's asked for, legal or no. I try not to think about how I wound up with a good woman with a moral code, since when I do I usually go straight to the "how many reincarnations as a pilonidal cyst am I gonna get for this deal?" But for cryin' out loud. All the working conditions shit in the labor contract are the product of long years of everyone involved working together for the common good, not labor union banditry; would you rather have a teacher or a politician hold your wallet while you disappeared for ten minutes? We know it is no good to chain people to class after class, deprive them of prep time, or bury them in the after-action report detritus of the bureaucratic mind. But we're doing it. We're requiring even more work out of the people who do the actual work in the first place, because that way the people who are really responsible look like they're the ones doing something.

In four years time--after IPS has been auctioned off--you're going to hear 1) "Test scores are almost as good as they were before, a remarkable achievement when we had to come in and start from scratch." 2) 'There hasn't been enough time to really evaluate the new system. Please come back after you've forgotten all about it." or 3) "We are beginning to look at whether high-stakes testing is really in the best interest of students. Perhaps we need a wider-based approach to acquiring the necessary skills to compete at some level in the modern, global economy."

You talk about stealing from future generations….

Well, That Didn't Take Long

• But every mention of the word "retarded" is a personal insult to Sarah Palin. Unless you're a right-wing radio blowhard. Weigel:

Rest easy: Rick Perry probably isn't going to execute Ben Bernanke.

And David Weigel probably doesn't really mean "probably".

When he told a crowd of Iowa Republicans Monday that "we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas" if the chairman of the Federal Reserve "print[ed] more money between now and the election," it wasn't exactly a Kinsley gaffe, defined as when a politician tells the truth. Instead, call it a "Perry gaffe": when a politician doesn't mean what he says, but means to say it.

Otherwise known as "hyperbole", an invention of the Ancient Greeks, not some Jebus-mazed huckster from Texas who'd probably not be lynched for showin' off any fancy larnin' like that if anyone got wind of it. We do know that if it was an intentionally-employed figure of speech he didn't get it from his state's textbooks.

Sure, it's the United States of America. Then again, I don't think it woke up this AM wondering whether to read Slate's political columns or check out the morning line-up on E!. Perry was "using" hyperbole. His readers do not need David Weigel to explain this. (David Weigel knows this, else David Weigel would not have stated in as a leg-pull. But he still stated it.)

Furthermore, saying someone was using hyperbole isn't an excuse, except maybe in cases where the hyperbole was widely or strikingly missed. I dunno about you, but I saw headlines saying "Perry Bashes Fed" or "Perry Attacks Bernanke"; I didn't even see a blog post suggesting he'd actually threatened the man with bodily harm. But thanks for clearing it up anyway, Dave. (Especially in a way that suggests, again, that no Republican ever means what he says, unless he gets away with it. We know that, too.)

Now, were I an "objective" 'conservative'-"libertarian-" "leaning" "journalist", my reaction might have been, "Dear God, does every one of these bozos have to dive for the bottom of the Crazy Barrel right at the gun? And isn't there something seriously wrong with a party where that's true?" But that's because I don't have the instincts of the careerist, who knows enough to simply wait until everything's gone to shit again, and then point out all the instances where he was somewhat equivocal tried to warn us.

The other thing is this: Treason. Treason is not hyperbole; "Treason" is something the Right's been spitting out ever since Bob Welch heard about fluoridation. The Right's been accusing somebody of Treason at least forty times a day since, except when there's a Republican President in charge of however many military actions we have going at any particular time, in which case it's forty times a minute. That, of itself, takes it out of the realm of Hyperbole, and into the realm of Phrase Repeated Over and Over Until It Becomes Meaningless, Except It Was Misused From the Start.

We've noted this a few hundred times by now, but there were barely any treason convictions attached to WWII, and that was the last time anyone could commit treason, since it was the last time we had a declared enemy to aid and comfort. It would be nice if we could see a little simple recognition of that once in a while. Not to mention that it goes a long way towards improving the quality of your hyperbolic utterances when you know what you're talking about.

Instead, of course, it's a direct line from "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy's list of 597 364 215 121 84 32 some "traitors" in the State Department, to Hanoi Jane Fonda, to the Chairman of the Fed being a traitor because he carries out his legal duties. Everything the Right doesn't like--even for the sake of temporal political gain--is fucking unAmerican. Is it too much to ask that some columnist playing objective observer from miles behind the lines notice this? Yeah, I'm glad Perry "probably" won't execute Bernanke. Har har har. The fact that everyone in his party talks like Yosemite Sam, though, is another matter.

So, it took Perry about twelve hours to say something so stupid it made headlines, and it took Weigel probably about twelve minutes to decide to apologize for it. How long did it take Kathleen Parker to get to the heart of the matter?

• I smell another Pulitzer. One brief daydream?

There’s something slightly lazy in the mouth, half a smile, a knowing look. Both share a devil-may-care, towel-snapping streak — an attitude that either connects them to their quarry or sends their prey howling into the outer darkness. The same things that drove liberals mad about George W. will repeat themselves with Perry.

It’s that certitude mixed with bravado. It is also, dare I say, their certain brand of manliness. Weathered, creased and comfortable in jeans, they convey a regular guyness that everyday Americans relate to. Take it or leave it, it happens to be true.

Y'know, I'm a life-long admirer of Borges and Milton, and of The Real Helen Keller's courage and socialist humanitarianism; I love Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. Yet somehow it never occurred to me to string two paragraphs together in hopes that thousands of Americans would poke their own eyes out lest they ever encounter anything like it again.

• Finally, we're getting the Republican presidential race back to where it belongs. 2009.

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan is strongly considering a run for president. Ryan, who has been quietly meeting with political strategists to discuss a bid over the past three months, is on vacation in Colorado discussing a prospective run with his family. Ryan’s concerns about the effects of a presidential campaign – and perhaps a presidency – on his family have been his primary focus as he thinks through his political future.

Sure, sure: if you're a Hoosier, like I know I am, the first thing that strikes you is what sort of dedicated family men all these Establishment Republicans are, and how desperate. It's beginning to look like the last great hope for these guys was Bobby Jindal's State of the Union reply.

Could we just say it, please? This--and apologists like Weigel--are what's really wrong with the Republican party. They don't like Romney, who couldn't be more Pro-Bidness if he shit tax exemptions, because he gives off the odor of a man who might try to do something Big while in office to get himself a statue. And they don't like Palin and the Palinettes, because they know these people are fucking loons. That is, they know that a strict application of so-called Republican principles would sink everyone who couldn't move offshore. But, of course, in order to keep going since Reagan they've had to insist that every colossal failure has come about because their principles weren't applied strictly enough. They're stuck in mid-extreme, and nobody wants to yell "Fire!" Or "Shit!", which would be closer to the truth. They can't decide if it's better to lose now, or later.

Listen, it's not like I didn't tell ya that the whole Daniels for President thing was a desperate cry for help. Now they've decided they just need a slightly more magnetic Tim Pawlenty (who, it should be noted, was merely keeping his own bag o'guano insanity under control so he could run as a more competent Michele Bachmann). For the fucking life of me: the Plutocrat party cannot win on its own, and it cannot govern or remain popular when it manages to sneak in. Not to mention that reading Ayn Rand is now the mark of its intellectuals. Why are you not making common cause with the moderate 'conservative' in the White House? The goddam Democratic party is yours for the taking, and there's little risk Barack Obama is going to do anything in the next five years. The Other Party refused to stomp a mudhole in your snake handlers' cult. Suck it up and do it yourselves.

Well, You've Got Plenty Of Dissonance, So I Think The Problem's In Your Cognition

SO a day after the memorial service for those killed and injured in the State Fair stage collapse, a little over twenty-four hours following Governor Mitch "The Only Thing That Could Improve Ayn Rand Is A Little Christianity" Daniels' announcement that the whole thing was the weather's fault, and nobody can prepare for weather; that is, roughly, about the time anyone who's ever paid any attention whatever to such things would have predicted the original story would begin leaking seriously [structure wasn't subject to city inspections, since it's on state property; it's the responsibility of Homeland Security, now, which doesn't consider "scaffolding" to be a "structure" (and hence, required to survive 90 mph winds, or a third-again beyond what the Governor says no one could ever anticipate); it would've been inspected--and would have had to meet our standards for permanent structures--if it was in tax-burdened Illinois; the outdoor venue for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, scheduled to perform fifteen miles north, sent everyone home un-overtured but safe; this is the fourth such rigging collapse this summer, though no one could have anticipated more than three, I suppose; several independent experts have suggested that something was seriously substandard with the set-up, many mentioning a lack of crossbeams and guying; we're really just warming up] the Indianapolis City/County council breaks a land speed record for "shoveling shit at the NFL's behest".

See, Indianapolis has no ticket scalping ordinance. Make that "had". The NFL finds this as unseemly as gambling, but a lot more amenable to public weight-tossing, so it insisted on one as a condition of granting the make-up Super Bowl to the city it promised one to in exchange for using a billion and counting in tax dollars to build a new football barn which seats exactly the same number of people as the old one, but at higher prices. Indianapolis should have gotten the last Super Bowl, but the Cowboys spent even more. God's in His heaven.

And, yes, it is interesting how the whole thing was already in the works with a new city ordinance promised, as though voting didn't mean anything or somethin'. And the city's hosted the NCAA finals at least once a decade over the past thirty years or so, and just shooing scalpers away from the venue (on no authority beyond the NCAAs and the people who stand to make a buck) has been sufficient. But not for the NFL. So, as promised….

Now, look, I do follow politics, in my sleepy fashion, so it's not the toadying, the whiff of corruption, or the willingness to permit high-speed gang anal, sans foreplay, provided there's a nickel involved and one of the guys is on th' teevee that surprises me. Wholly expected. Never even an issue. This city elected a proto-Teabagger mayor in 2007, and you oughta see the public works "improvements" festival going on in preparation for a three-day fucking football game. We already passed--and have steadfastly refused to enforce, so far--an anti-panhandling ordinance of "questionable" legality which will suddenly be remembered about two weeks before the Big Event, and just as quickly forgotten (it happens to place an undue stress on entrepreneurial buyers of gold and operators of franchise fast food abominations who would go out of business if they couldn't dress a minimum-wage employee like a clown and send him out into traffic. Trust me, our scrupulousness has nothing to do with concerns over the Constitutional rights of the unsightly). If the goddam NFL demanded our wimmen the only question would be where we're supposed to meet the bus.

No, it was the local news coverage, which consisted of the sloppiest blowjob possible so soon after a tragedy, coupled with photos of the Large Scary Negro men who scalp tickets. The new law will "protect the consumer" they said. Because ticket resellers--unlike concert-venue managers--will be licensed. It won't affect all the ticket brokers in town, the ones who employ large numbers of Large Scary Negro men to buy up blocks of tickets restricted to "public" sale in order to skirt anti-scalping measures. No. Thank goodness. Because they're entrepreneurs. And because the nice local newshairdos thoughtfully gave them microphones so they could tell us so.

Not a mention of the rest of it, though: not about the NFL pushing the city around, not the sudden loss of your right to go to the venue the day of and sell a ticket you don't need, none of it. In a state whose economic "miracle"--being better than Michigan--has been credited to Mitch Daniels' Economic Freedom agenda, there's not a peep while the game is rigged in plain sight, the little guy takes it in the shorts, and the big operations get their competition swept up alongside the homeless. Because the NFL said so. Because a Super Bowl is so fucking important you can hand over your sovereignty, spend whatever it takes, and take away a right your citizens have had since the invention of the ducat. And it's all Good. Or so the teleprompter says.

Okay, so I expected all that, too.

The World's Longest Praeteritio

YOU might've heard we had a disaster at the Indiana State Fair this weekend. Or maybe you're just close enough to receive our broadcast transmissions, in which case you know we had a tragedy. * People have died, and dozens more had their lives altered in an instant, and we do not mean to detract from the very real hurt that a relative few people suffered, while some lie in intensive care and others wait to be buried, just so we can talk about how the rest of us feel about it.

At some point, I suspect that a lot of the survivors are going to recognize that "showing respect" at this moment was perhaps no more important than calling Premature Bullshit on Mitch Daniels when he gets up the next morning to announce the whole thing was just some freaky freak of Nature, no one could seen it comin', awfully sorry for your loss. Settle early.

I'm not even gonna start, except to say it was particularly telegenic coming in the early light of the first daylight investigators had had since the fevered minutes after the stage roof collapsed. In other words, Daniels didn't know that for a fact, let alone the at-best-a-disputable-conclusion he tried to fob off as fact. Ain't science wonderful?

And just because I'm thinking of it, I think it's fine if local anchorpersons would like to add their own opinions about the nature of the Deity and his amenability to prayer to stories of someone else's pain. And I'm sure that all those "God blesses" and "We're praying for youses" were heartfelt. My question, though, is what would be the reaction if you signed off a telephone interview with the victim of the disaster, or his immediately family, with a cheery "Well, it's all in the stars now" or "Hum. Guess that's Fate" ? "Better luck next kalpa."

Personally, I think if there was a God She'd'a made sure Mitch Daniels was a candidate for the Republican nod, just to enjoy him figuring out what to do about Perry just like a sane person. I really, really, wish we could all see Daniels under pressure to some Bible salesman with good hair and a vegetable-crisper IQ. I'd love to see him have to make something of it, for once, that a good chunk of his Randian Dream Party are Jesus-mazed snake handlers with a magic view of the economy. And everything else.

It's Down to Romney! Bachmann!! and Perry!! say Dan Baltz and Philip Rucker, which I guess is as good a reason to believe it as any. [exclamation points mine]

Bachmann? How does Bachmann stay in the race if Perry's a factor? Her only hope--if she actually does want a nomination--is to start having hookers rappel into his elevator after it's stopped between floors. Does anyone--even a Beltway pundit--actually believe that Perry and Bachmann are going to slug it out for the same delegates while Romney races off? Well, I guess you might as well ask if anyone imagines that stupid-ass Ames poll has any meaning whatsoever.

You've just got to love, or puke at the mention of, how Rick Perry became the Instantly Credible Candidate when "credible" is code for--no, hell, it's not even code, it's synonymous with--"rich donor list". I mean, there's nothing else aside from this constant artificial excitement over what bright, shiny, and fur-wrapped object has grabbed the Religious Teabagger focus du jour. The Texas Miracle--interesting, by the way; a year ago, when the now in decline Establishment Republicans for Mitch--and Mitch himself, I think it goes without saying--touted Indiana as having the best employment record in the Abysmal Obama Economy. Daniels got away with it. Perry won't.

And don't get me wrong: Rick Perry is religious scam artist, a public liar, and a neo-confederate fuck melon. And he could be Your Next President. None of those things is mutually exclusive of the other. Hell, in the last three decades they're positively correlated. Rick Perry sounds like he stands for something. It may not matter anymore just What that happens to be. Democrats quit doing that full-time in 1981, after spending the previous decade apologizing for George McGovern and ridiculing Jimmy Carter. Sorry, but the possibility of President Rick Perry exists today only because Democrats wouldn't stand up for themselves after losing to Richard Fucking Milhous Nixon.

I hate to keep bringing it up, but that's that. Democrats decided in 1972 that Liberalism had run its course; in 1974 Democratic Senators decided it was too costly to get the money out of politics. 2006 was just a re-capitulation; Democrats placed in a two-house majority because of an extremely unpopular war couldn't find the wherewithal to defund it, let alone bring anyone home or hold the Worst President in History accountable. Democrats are not going to take their rightful place as the majority party in the US until they chop the Republicans off at the knees. That's a requirement. Now, of course, the GOP has gone so far Right it's in danger of falling into a Horowitz Singularity and emerging as weirdly religious Trotskyites, and the Dems will figure once again that sooner or later they'll return to power on the backs of what morons their opponents are. Meanwhile, Rick Perry sounds like he believes in something. Barack Obama sounds like he believes in giving speeches.

______________

* Why is it that the very people who keep you informed of Our Failing Schools seem obligated to remind the viewer, or reader, that the information comes from someone who quit paying attention in junior high school? Except to social events, student government, and fashion tips, I mean.

Who?

JON, Jon Jon: whatever's wrong about that Newsweek Bachmann cover--and, somehow, no one to my knowledge has mentioned "being the sort of country where a religiously mazed Bible saleswoman rates any sort of national news coverage"--it's not an example of Librul Media bias which makes FOX look good. Liberal Media? It's fucking Tina Brown. It's marketing. It's the reduction of everything to celebrity gossip as perpetrated by the Roone Arledge of Literacy. And the goddam thing about that is, "There's no such thing as bad publicity" is as old as the Ten Commandments. We all know better. Bachmann willingly poses for pictures like this

and I don't hear anyone complaining about the outrage to Christianity that is the public display of piety for private gain.

And that goes for Terry O'Neill, too, who said:

"Gloria Steinem has a very simple test: If this were done to a man or would it ever be done to a man - has it ever been done to a man? Surely this has never been done to a man," O'Neill said. "What they are saying of a woman who is a serious contender for president of the United States of America...They are basically casting her as a nut job."

First, the Steinem Test belongs with the Above the Ears, Above the Collar test for boy's hairdos of my high school days. Second, it more closely resembles the MMPI than a real test, since a close examination of any results tell you at least as much about the test operator as anything else. The fact that someone is required, by commercial considerations alone, to proclaim Michele Bachmann "a serious contender for president" tells you all you need to know. And more.

This is pretty straightforward, isn't it? The reason there's a Michele Bachmann Crazy meme out there is that she's a fucking loon; as Stewart said, Newsweek could have made that point using her words (by why should they blaze a trail?). The reason there's a Michele Bachmann Crazy Eyes meme is her off-kilter affect--that's not even a matter of interpretation, just one of cultural norms--which dovetails nicely with Meme #1. Tough fucking shit. The reason Tina Brown decided to take advantage of that, assuming she did, was the eternal quest for a buck. Take it up with the people who think that's a sacred oath excusing all sorts of tasteless, amoral behavior. Not with the few Liberals still working in journalism.

Tough fucking shit. We heard this crap about Sarah Palin. We heard it about George W. Bush, more to the point, and look where that got us. Nobody said it was unethical to make fun of John Kerry, or Al Gore, or Mike Dukakis. It's just well past time for forty-something male commenters to acknowledge that this is no one-sided game, that this sort of thing is the Right's great stock in trade--the bumper-sticker witticism, the Messiah caricature--and demanding unilateral disarmament from the Left, let alone from "The Left", is ridiculous.

This is what was said about George Fucking Bush, and that oughta end it right there. You can't make fun of him, you're showing an elitist distain for Christianity, an Easterner's bigotry against (imaginary) Texans, a literate snob's condescension for Yale graduates who can't speak English. Especially not if you're Newsweek, or Time, or NBC, or anything else covered by the right-wing rubric Librul Media, because you're not allowed to call bullshit on that, either, apparently. Just on John Kerry windsurfing. Or Dennis Kucinich, on general principles.

Demands for faux-civility are no different than the argument for faux-balance. It's false, it's contrived, and it plays into the hands of the worst sort of lowest-common-denominator abuse of the system. Bachmann isn't exactly suffering personally from a refusal to caricature her opponents. She hasn't been forced to withdraw from the race for being too honest, and too fair, and too civil. There was no shortage of professional audience applause when she managed to string two certifiable English sentences together in the last debate. Fer chrissakes, I'd like to think the Crazy Meme would stand on the evidence alone, too, but take a look around: Honesty's dead, and Truth's on suicide watch.

Listen, Jon Stewart could've filled an entire half-hour riffing on that cover if he wanted to, but linking it to "proving the Right's case about the Unfair Librul Media" is just flummery. The pool water is fetid, drain the pool; don't complain about how unfair it is when someone who's swimming there voluntarily gets dunked by some commercial rapscallion.

And while we're at it, maybe we could fumigate a political system which allows a hole in the atmosphere like Bachmann to become "a serious national candidate" by dint of nothing more substantive than that Newsweek cover is.

Meanwhile, you'll forgive me if last night's GOP debate didn't cause me to learn where FOX is located on my teevee. It's really enough, for me, to watch the phony buildup to a phony "debate", and wait for the inevitable recap based on the buildup. Oh, it's gonna be Pawlenty vs. Bachmann! They're gonna take the gloves off. They'll violate the 11th Commandment!

Nobody asks why anyone should care what Pawlenty was saying just before he hit that brick wall, or why Bachmann should be replying to him at all, the same way no one asks why this collection of stale iced sugar cookies deserves any coverage at all, let alone any that might contribute to one of 'em becoming President. I don't know why NOW isn't jumping T-Paw for daring to suggest that Bachmann isn't a serious contender for President; Bachmann's response, which appears to involve having her staff find ways of calling him a godless Socialist which can be used on a Republican, is pretty much the nominal operating program. Has anyone said anything of substance yet in these things? Would anyone notice if they did? Hey, isn't that Rick Perry?

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.

Ain't Gonna Play Sun City

Indianapolis Star photo/ Matt Kryger

DAVID Hyde Pierce joins Carmel Center for the Performing Arts Artistic Director Michael Feinstein, above, in opening The Tarkington, the intimate 500 seater which takes its place in a princely Public/ "Private" diadem with the Carmel Palladium at its center. Feinstein is pulling down a reported half-mil a year to lure other big names to the place, so that first-night royalty, your Real Estate Barons, your Furniture Kings, can tell friends and family they seen that guy from teevee.

And, okay, people in Carmel don't talk like that. Carmel's the other side of the Marion/Hamilton county line from Indianapolis, and owes its twenty-year metamorphosis from sleepy farming/antiques whistle stop to Richest City in Indiana to the completion of the interstate highways, specifically the Federally-funded I-465 ring it borders, and well ahead of schedule in the 60s, thank you, combined with the subsequent influx of money and white people escaping public schools the government put Negroes in, and a rock-solid one-party system.

Carmel became an extension of Indianapolis' "cultured" side of town, the North, in the late 70s to the 80s, a time when people with money stopped respecting wit and started respecting real estate holdings. And so it came to pass the City of Nouveaux and Racists decided to build itself a big culture center, and start drawing off the sort of midsteam-to-slightly-inside popular music/ dance troop/ Broadway road show performer who had only five or six alternative showcases available in Indianapolis. And it gave half a mil (reported) to Michael Feinstein, who, and this is not exactly my forte, not that anything really is, does not appear to me to be someone who'd have been filling 500 seaters in Central Indiana on a regular basis without this relationship. I don't recall anyone ever telling me they were headed out to the big Feinstein show at Clowes, or the Circle, or the IRT, or the State Fair. Hey, can-can a son gout, whatever. I don't particularly have any use for Feinstein's crooning, or drenching myself of an evening in a double-dark chocolate truffle of The Great American Song Book. I'm glad someone works to preserve the greatness of Gershwin, Porter, Arlen, Kern, and Carmichael (that's two Hoosiers, in case you lost count); I'd just rather hear them sung by Fred Astaire. Or Lotte Lenya. Let alone someone who could sing.

Of course one thing that will bother me forever is the whole "Let's pretend those dreadful 50s and 60s did not exist, unless it's time for some campy good fun" ambience; so maybe Feinstein blasts Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, and Lowell George when he's home, but there's just no way he could sell it to the swells. But they, on the other hand, are just appropriating the wit of Ira Gershwin and Dorothy Fields, and Betty Comden, and maybe a little Fats Waller some night if they're feeling naughty; they sure ain't votin' for Sophistication. And when Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, and Muddy Waters, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Smokey Robinson, and Holland/Dozier/ Holland make the cut, I'll let you know. Until that time this isn't a movement, it's a cultural tic from the same people who brought you Disco. And Nile Rodgers can send me all the unkind emails he wants.

Without question the real issue here is just that Hamilton County, Indiana, is the poster-child for solid Republican rule/ pro-bidness, anti-tax rhetoric division, while taxpayers are still on the hook for anything their elected representatives fancy, though it won't be public housing or low-cost medical insurance. But, y'know I look at that picture and see two accomplished professionals whose marriages Indiana does not recognize, by order of the party that Hamilton county bankrolls. This is between them, their consciences, and their accountants. I'm sure there are bigger and more fitting windows I could be breaking elsewhere, myself. But just for the record, I'll be skipping the Spamalot touring company, thanks anyway.

You Expect Full Credit For Turning In This Paper Sixty-Five Years Late?

SURE sure, it's Politico. But then we're the country that hosts Politico, and worse, like agar-agar hosts the pneumococcus bacillus. This is the fucking United States of America, which used to mean something; if Rick Perry and Karl Rove are significant players in our national politics it no longer means anything better than Hold Your Nose. Rove's artificial genius is founded on the fact that his man--the poster boy for unearned privilege, alcohol-induced Korsakoff's syndrome, and the worst President this country has even been inflicted with, bar none--"won" an election decided by the Supreme Court in a fucking decision it tried to disavow at the same time it announced it. If America really was exceptional, in a good way, that never would have happened. If America had the fucking sense God gave most mammals Karl Rove would be hiding out in another hemisphere. Meanwhile, Rick Perry is almost literally a Bag of Hair. A feud between these two is not news, because neither of them is anyone worth giving a shit about. And we're not going to solve anything until the public discourse is reported on by people who are honestly dedicated to the truth, who think it matters, not overgrown versions of the kid on the playground who'd eat a worms for a quarter.

Sorry, this started out to be the caption to that photo, but for fuck's sake. You don't think there's something deeply, deeply disturbing about a country where those two holes in the atmosphere play a meaningful role in politics? I don't know how anybody believes that Rick Perry is a game-changer, a bull in the bullpen, a formidable candidate assuming-the-race-will-be-decided-on-Phony-ass Telegenics, a sort of bargain-basement version of The Candidate, other than the fact that it worked for Sarah Palin * four years ago, when "Hey, she's hawt" was the only Right/Redneck reaction (that is, public reaction) that initial weekend, while everyone in the country with an IQ above hypothermia went "Wha' th' fuck is this idiot the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee?"

Okay, so there is reason to take Rick Perry seriously as a candidate, because, c'mon, lookit who's actually been President the last few decades. It doesn't mean you can't register a little shock.

Jacob Weisberg, " Lessons of the Crisis: The debt-ceiling debacle revealed that politics is broken in every possible way and there's no point in explaining complicated matters to the American people." August 4

At the level of political culture, we have learned some other sobering lessons: that compromise is dead and that there's no point trying to explain complicated matters to the American people. The president has tried reasonableness and he has failed. It has been astonishing to watch Obama's sheer unwillingness to give up on his opponents after their refusal to work with him on the stimulus package, health care reform, or the extension of the Bush tax cuts last fall. A Congress dominated by mindless cannibals is now feasting on a supine president. But surely even he now realizes there's no middle ground with antagonists whose only interest is in seeing him humiliated.

This is what I came here to say something about, and it's similar. Namely: where th' fuck have you been? It isn't like this behavior is something new in the Republican party. This is how the Republican party has been behaving for forty years now. This is the economic version of Adam and Eve on a Dinosaur, and a Christmas Tree on Every School Lawn Republicanism. And it's not like nobody's mentioned this in your adult lifetime, Mr. Weisberg.

What it is like, is like everybody agreed to treat these people as though they were not seriously disturbed, and disturbing, in exchange for fewer angry phone calls, now emails. The party of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, of Phil Gramm, eventually, and Newt Gingrich, had to be treated as though its crackpot schemes and transparent scams and residual (ha) racism and Bronze Age skygazing were just alternate ways of ordering the universe.

Seriously, this didn't just all th' sudden jump up and bite you in the ass, did it? In your adult lifetime, Mr. Weisberg, the US Congress has contained Strom Thurmond, John Stennis, and Jim Eastland. Okay, sure, they were all Democrats, but it ain't like Ronald Reagan didn't out-crazy a coot in nesting season. C'mon. The mass-market media has been cozying up to Republicans since Reagan got hold of telecommunications regulation, not that Big Business and Republicanism are particularly strangers in the night. Your bosses like tax cuts, lack of supervision, and stock-market upticks. The attitude trickled down. Now the Republican party is all intransigent and crazy and shit? Now? By any chance was that Schiavo business the first time you noticed any religious nuts in those parts?

It's been crap all along. And not the sort of crap people repackage as Tootsie Rolls **, either. Really disgusting crap. And no one called it. People fucking celebrated the "roaring" "success" of "Ronald Reagan" in the 1980s. After that it just became a question of how big the scam could get, and how much lower, ethically. If any.

_______________

*And, earlier, for JFK.

**And no offense intended to the fine people at Tootsie Roll, Inc. It's just the old saying about how someone couldn't tell a Turd from a Tootsie Roll, coupled with the fact that big name confectioners were among the most gleeful of compliers when Ronald Reagan asked all patriotic industries to please cheapen their products while obfuscating the change from consumers, with their Protections and their Complaints and their contribution to Democratic causes, although this was something the candy companies had pretty much been doing on their own already. Merchantilism, schmerchantilism. See that Stephen Jay Gould essay on the incredible shrinking candy bar, circa 1978 if memory serves, for once. † Look up what happened in the cattle industry under Reagan, while you're at it, in case you don't know.

† The author has an eidetic memory--he was that young--of the first time he scrounged a nickel for the candy machine at the local swim club, obtained his preferred (already odd/snobby at such a young age) Polar bar, which was a knock-off Milky Way with a white glazed top, I think, the icing signifying the cool crispness of the Arctic, tearing off the wrapper, and discovering that the shape of the candy bar was now being played by a black cardboard insert, notable for its previous absence, and the bar itself had withered by 10%.

The Battle Elephant In The Room

WAS it depressing, or just depressingly familiar, when David Leonhardt told Stephen Colbert Tuesday night that "Medicare is by far the dominant source of our deficit"? Leonhardt has a Pulitzer for his work explaining the intricacies of the economic system, yet he can't be bothered to look.

And sure, sure, he meant well. He meant we have to get health care costs under control. He meant we have to raise taxes to pay for the shit we buy. He wasn't calculating how many poor people can die in the streets before the stench starts wafting over to some of our tonier gated communities.

But he's fucking dead wrong, and wrong seven ways from Sunday.

Medicare--it provides less than half the medical expenses of its beneficiaries, the elderly and the disabled--is 13% of the Federal budget. Total Medicare spending in 2009 was $484 billion. In 2009 the total interest on the National Debt attributable to military spending was $390 billion. That's the interest we pay on all things military (including VA costs and military pensions) for having acted, since 1946, as though it were perpetually 1944.

Our ten Nimitz-class supercarriers represent a $450 billion collection of holes in the ocean in construction costs alone; they're scheduled to be replaced by 2040 by an equal number of Gerald Ford-class hulks at twice the cost, assuming you believe 2005 estimates, which you shouldn't. That's construction costs. Not development, nor maintenance, nor upgrades, attendant fleet, staffing, planes, aviation fuel, or the cost someone will eventually bear to do something with the twin reactors when we don't need 'em anymore. That's our supercarrier Navy. No one else in the world has any. Their role is to intimidate tenth-rate military powers, since we haven't figured out how to invade any on the ground.

Which is distinct from figuring out why we need to invade any, since that answer is either too amorphous to pin down, or too brutally self-reflective to ever see the light of newsprint.

Why in the world would someone like David Leonhardt make this mistake? Is it because, as a Reagantot (born 1973) he's spent his entire life being lied to about it? Medicare, like Social Security, is a trust. You pay a separate tax bill into the fund. Eliminate it altogether and you get that portion of your taxes back, and good luck saving it for when you can't work. This has been lumped into the "social spending" category--public health, hospitals, schools--by the American Right and Democratic centrists since the Vietnam war, in order to insist it was The Great Society, and not a wasteful and useless jungle conflict, which was destroying the US economy. It's an argument disguised as a fact, and apparently no one born after the Nixon administration can be bothered to notice. Fer chrissakes, we spent nearly $700 billion on "Defense" in 2010 not including the costs of however many wars we're in now, and that's if you believe it's the one thing the government doesn't lie about. Subsuming this as "national security" is like imagining Wal*Mart is the most successful Mom & Pop hardware store in the country.

Look, children: you've been sold a bill of goods, including the confusion of the honor of military service with the less-that-honorable uses to which it's been put over the last sixty years. You got sold the idea that the war in Vietnam was divisive because dirty hippies spit on returning veterans, and not because the goddam thing was a lie from beginning to end which a large portion of the citizenry slowly came to realize, and object to. There's nothing in this country so bloated and wasteful as our military budget; there's no government expenditure anywhere else in the world that begins to match it. Caring for our elderly and disabled citizens is not a discretionary item; it's a measure of our humanity. I don't know how the argument got so twisted, but I do know that a moment's thought should be enough to untangle it.

And so long as we're here, could we just mention something else? Namely, that even if you buy the "conservative" "argument" this shit doesn't work, or even make sense. If "social spending" was the sole, or even the largest portion, of our budgetary woes, then it ought to be reformed. If doing so is too much for our career legislators, we ought to encourage them in the most direct fashion to find new careers. Anyone who believes the same party which hit the fucking roof because its own man--Bob Gates--proposed scrapping so worthless a piece of military marital aid as the F-22 is not going to address the real problem. We're fucked. We've been fucked since Ronald Reagan tore down the solar panels on the White House. At least we could get the history right while we swirl down the drain.

Forget It, Jake. It's What Passes For Wisdom.

Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake, "Liberals hate the deal. So what?" August 3

David Weigel, "Bachmann vs. Romney". August 3

SOMETIMES you gotta wonder whether Sarah Palin is too smart for the room. Cillizza:

Liberal anger and disappointment with the president is real. But will it have real political consequences heading into 2012?
The answer is “sort of.”

The most obvious impact will come in fundraising, where virtually no one in the Democratic donor base — affluent (and liberal) individuals, trial lawyers, organized labor — is happy with the deal.

While Obama’s $86 million haul in his first three months of active fundraising suggests he will have few problems raising the money he needs for his reelection campaign, it will almost certainly be more difficult for House and Senate Democrats — many of whom voted for the final deal — to collect cash from a disgruntled donor base.

So fundraising "sorta" affects politics?

A secondary, but far harder to gauge, impact is on the question of enthusiasm.

One of the keys to Obama’s sweeping victory in 2008 was the fervent following — in terms of campaign contributions and volunteer hours — from the liberal base of the party. Their energy proved infectious as the Obama effort went from campaign to cause.

Even before the president cut this debt deal, some of that intensity of feeling had worn off as liberals grew discouraged by what they believed to be a series of concessions made by Obama — from not closing the Guantanamo Bay prison to an extension of the Bush tax cuts.

I know, I know: that's Chris Cillizza twice this week, and it's only Wednesday; next stop, correcting the grammar at Townhall. And I know it's nothing new, or out of the ordinary, but just look at how the argument is constructed: Liberals are angry. This may affect campaign contributions for the people they're angry at. They may also lose enthusiasm. Bear in mind, the next time some schlub at the Post fills six column inches with a piece about how the sticker on his toaster warned him not to use it in the bathtub, that this is how their own wise men speak.

We will hear, shortly--from "a Democratic consultant sympathetic to the liberal cause"--that liberals and progressives have no where else to go (and nowhere is this truer than for the sympathetic Democratic consultant). Interesting, then, that a couple years ago "conservatives"--who'd just been shellacked at the polls the second straight time--could form An Entirely New Party, to widespread Press acclaim, which later just happened to be captured by the Republicans.

We might add here that the Obama campaign famously succeeded in, and by, motivating large numbers of new voters, a bloc which had a proven track record in losing interest immediately afterwards, and that their lack of motivation helped seal the 2010 midterms. With any luck, not voting will develop into a life-long habit. Meanwhile, if I might suggest it, any "Liberal" or "Progressive" who now finds himself with Nowhere Else To Go should consult a specialist about how the 110th and 111th Congresses were wiped from his memory. I can't personally recall when Liberals and Progressives had any place to go at all, let alone One Glowing Possibility. Maybe back when the Washington Post practiced journalism.

Meanwhile, I was gonna write about Weigel's backhand "defense" of Joe "They're All A Bunch of Terrorist Bombers" Biden's unprecedented use of metaphor, a piece which was supposed to inform curious Slate imbibers that David Weigel Is Immanently Reasonable while reminding them in a stage whisper that Joe Biden is not. But when I went back to quote the thing he was on to Round 14 of Michele Bachman Talk Like This, But Mitt Romney Talk Like This, a game which, for the life of me, I can't imagine who Weigel thinks is interested in. On their recent ads:

One's a primary ad; one's a general election ad. They really are polar opposite campaigns. When Romney eventually opposed the debt limit hike, he did it as a press release, an afterthought, because who is this voter who's going to cast a November 2012 vote based on which presidential candidate wanted to hike the debt limit?

When, y'know, Iowa hasn't been relevant to a Presidential primary since Carter '76, and that was just from the novelty factor. The only reason anyone would pay attention to Iowa is in the hope that it propels some cracked bride of Jesus into Serious Candidacy, apparently just for the sport of it.

If you're a Republican, either the distinction between Mitt Romney, rich guy panderer, and Michele Bachmann, insane Tax Cutting Jesus Lady, mean everything to you, or they mean nothing. Is there some middle ground? Some Centrist Undecideds out there trying to make heads or tails of the race? Pah. Republicans are either gonna hold their noses and vote for Mitt, because Hair, or they aren't. If you're nutty enough to believe Michele Bachmann is qualified to be President--even of the United States, the Satis House of Geopolitics--then no evidence of anything matters. If you aren't a Republican, why do you care about either of them?

Mostly I enjoyed how once again with Weigel Disingenuousness pats itself on the back for being so even-handed. Bachmann "remain[ed] elusive on just how the budget would be balanced this year." S'funny, but as far as I recall it, you could say that about every Republican candidate for anything, going back at least to Ronald Reagan's first campaign. That's not criticism; it's hitting fungos to yourself. Mitt, on the other hand, eventually opposed the debt-ceiling hike. And this is supposed to be a slashing criticism of a guy who's changed every single one of his original positions in search of the Republican nomination?

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.

Look On The Bright Side. Now We Won't Need Death Panels.

Chris Cillizza,"The debt-ceiling deal: Winners and losers". July 31

Peter Wallsten and David Nakamura, "Did Obama capitulate--or is this a cagey move?" July 31

Ezra Klein, "Democrats will lose now. But they can win later." July 31

IF you'd like to forget for a moment what input you had into the Great Debt Ceiling Compromise, or "Compromise"--your choice of fries or cole slaw with your shitburger--I recommend casting about until you find The Cool Kids' Analyses. Because just think about it: which would you really rather do, get the 1500 calories a day you might manage in your golden years from premium cat food, or escape, without medical assistance, a world where Ezra Klein and Chris Cillizza don't just have jobs as political commentators and open-mike-night standup comics, but are charter members of the Liberal Media Emailers Club?

Wallsten and Nakamura:

But for a White House eager to improve its standing with centrist independents who have been fleeing Obama, even a losing deal can be a winning strategy.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of where, besides "inside the skulls of Beltway insiders", these centrist independents reside, let's ask exactly why they've been fleeing Obama. Because he was too centrist? Because the reasonable, middle-of-the-road Republican party pointed out his Socialist World Domination scheme? Because previously he just hasn't shown the leadership that utter whimpering capitulation signals to your average demanding Difference Splitter?

Cillizza:

Losers

Liberals: As the basic framework of the deal emerged, liberals began voicing their discontent about a bargain that left their side wanting more. With no revenue in the initial phase of the legislation and Medicare cuts on the table in the second phase, there’s not much for the ideological left to celebrate.

Same question, in reverse: where are these people, aside from the actual America none of these fucks knows anything about except how to fly over? The only liberal official I heard from during the whole mess was John McCain.

(Okay, I heard Chuck Schumer with David Gregory. Schumer made sense. Which meant nothing he had to say would be reflected in any final deal. As if we needed confirmation.)

Klein:

But Democrats will have their turn. On Dec. 31, 2012, three weeks before the end of President Barack Obama’s current term in office, the Bush tax cuts expire. Income tax rates will return to their Clinton-era levels. That amounts to a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years, three or four times the $800 billion to $1.2 trillion in revenue increases that Obama and Speaker John Boehner were kicking around. And all Democrats need to do to secure that deal is...nothing.

Look, I don't give a fuck if you really are only 23-years-old. You've already had a lifetime's worth of proof that the Democratic party will never be able to take advantage of any hand it's dealt. Saying "oh, wait, the Dems will get it back in a lame-duck session when the Bush tax cuts expire" is like saying "Good news! The Democrats have a fillibuster-proof Senate majority!"