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For whatever reason there is, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t really pay attention to the news and current events on the weekends.
Sure, I have apps on my phone which pop up headlines and final scores for my selected teams. Beyond that, I don’t hinge my weekend activities to what’s going on like I do during the week.
With that in mind, I had really hoped to wake up this last Saturday morning to a sun that shined a little brighter, birds that chirped a little chirpier, and a more relaxed tinge of guilt from stealing the neighbor’s paper. Why I expected this, you may ask.
You know you asked, because you’re still here.
I had hoped for a little bit better of a day on that fateful day. The potential was there the night before when I went to bed that the government was going to shut down that evening.
There’s nothing like that feeling you get when the bureaucratic red tape of government isn’t present to legislate the way you run your life. I had pulled out the incandescent light bulbs from that special hiding place in the attic where I keep Plain M&Ms bathed in Red Dye #2 and a bucket of fried chicken loaded with trans-fats. The hope was that I could remove the mercury loaded cfl bulbs from light sockets throughout the compound with complete and audacious disregard for the good intentions a flaccid, non-functioning government could ever legislate on my behalf.
Sadly, it would seem the freedom we all yearn for was out of reach when the doosh baggery in D.C. continued with a budget agreement. The old light bulbs would have to be returned to their proper place in the attic next to the porn… um, other banned items.
Ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag.
So let’s state the pure, unopinionated facts about the current budget issue.
1. The 2011 budget was due last fall.
2. The 2011 budget did not get done last fall. I haven’t researched it a whole lot, so I don’t know what the reasons Congress and the White House provided as a reason for not doing it.
3. In the fall of 2010, Congress and the White House had carte blanche to pass whatever they wanted without needing a single vote from the minority.
4. The Republican controlled House is now tasked with getting the budget done.
Those are the indisputable facts.
Oh, by the way. There’s one more glaring fact.
This stuff is pissing me off.
I should probably take this moment to let you know right here and now that everything you’ve read prior to this sentence was written last week. I was sitting in the living room of my son’s viola teacher in the middle of said son’s lesson. I think he was playing something from the baroque period. I had broken out the notepad option on my iPhone to compose this masterpiece.
As much as I’d like to tell you that I’ve relocated to the TharpSter desktop or even the new TharpSter laptop, I won’t. It’s a week later, and I’m at another viola lesson.
Non-sequitur. Yeah, yeah, I know.
It’s very rare that my dispatches take more than one sitting before they are ready launch to the web. I’ll blame this event on resource contention. The rigorous demands of the recently ramped up TharpSter PounDown, my responsibilities at the auxiliary office, and a recent bout with pink eye (I think the pit bull farted on my pillow) have laid assault on the time I traditionally use to exercise my verbal brilliance for my adoring readership.
Let’s get back to the contents of the five pound bag. The list of elected officials whom have been sent to D.C. to represent the electorate is quite long when it comes down to determining which one is going to open their front door one evening to find said five pound overflowing bag in a state of immolation. I’m thinking their cherished pair of Bruno Magli’s (the O. J. design) will not be sufficient to stamp that little fire out.
After the budget deal was announced, something stunk immediately. It wasn’t just a hint of stink either. It was one of those “Hey pal, how about a courtesy flush over there?” type of a stink.
Seriously people? All you could muster was $38 billion in cuts? Excuse me Congressman, there’s not enough crap in this bag.
Naturally it was going to get worse. Mid-day campaign speech shrouded as an important speech about the budget, you’re on in 5…4…3…
That’s right. Obama leaves the White House to make a speech about the budget. Presidentially speaking, the show Obama put on at George Washington University that afternoon was an embarrassment. It was not a speech which would have been given during prime time from the Oval Office.
But wait. There’s more.
A little later in the week, either the OMB or the CBO announced that all of the cuts which came up through the budget deal counted somewhere in the millions.
Picture a nasty battle in the Civil War where a soldier has taken a nasty shot to the thigh. Nineteenth century medicine being what it is that whole leg has to be amputated. The soldier is in excruciating pain. The leg is getting severely infected because he’s probably had to wait several hours wading through death panels to get any type of medical attention. The flesh will start to smell bad soon and the infection is going to move into the rest of the man’s body.
Did I paint the picture well enough for you? Good. Now get your metaphor on.
If our wounded soldier which is in dire need of an amputation represents this country’s budgetary woes, then Congress and the White House are playing the medical staff who are patting themselves on the back for taking care of a minor ingrown toe nail which rests on the leg which needs to be removed.
The level of bitter disgust I’ve developed for these people through this process can’t even be described, and I’m already over a thousand words into this tirade.
Now there’s talk that the real battle is just ahead. The 2012 budget needs to be handled. Paul Ryan has suggested a plan which could do a great deal of good over the next 10 years. I know this because TOTUS & The Symbiant, along with all of his minions have already demonized it.
In all candor, Boehner should have moved to shut the damn thing down. Period, end of sentence. Gingrich did it 1995, partially as a result of a bruised ego. Did it kill the Republicans in 96? Not really. The retained their Congressional leadership. It was their own fault that they threw a dud out there to run against Clinton that year.
In all seriousness, what did the Republicans have to lose this time?
I have no doubt that the budget battle this last month was planned by the White House and the Democratic leadership last sometime last summer. Consider the fact that said leadership read the tea leaves of what was going to happen during the November mid-term. Knowing that the Republicans would have the House and possibly the Senate by the new year, the Obama / Pelosi / Reid machine engineered a scenario where the White House would battle with Congress over the cuts proposed by the Republicans. The government would shut down. Obama, the DNC, and the media would mercilessly demonize the GOP for what happened, and then……
I don’t have to spell the rest of it out for you do I?
Do I?
Okay, but just this once.
Just a few weeks ago, ladies and gentlemen, the charismatic, post racial, post partisan, inspirational leader of the free world announced his intentions to run for re-election to the office he currently holds. Even though he announced such an ambitious undertaking just a matter of a few weeks ago, I am of the full and faithful belief that the actual campaign for re-election actually kicked off on the evening of the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, 2008.
Prove me wrong.
