Down to a Week

I splurged last night.  Actually went out and bought a few brews.  This has been verboten of late as I am hoarding my coin for a potential period of no checks at the VA.  It was still good to relax a bit and see some blue sky.

I am really getting fascinated by the dance in Washington.  Especially those poor saps in the Republican party.  The Republicans have created the most unwieldy coalition of folks you can imagine.  I think that the current Republican party actually is less organized and less coherent than the Democrats, and that my friends, is saying something..

You have the old money, suck off the rich people, white shoe crowd in a shotgun marriage with the tea-bagger, gun-nut, xenophobia crowd.  Wow.  It is like going to a Hamptons party and having the Clampetts from the Beverly Hillbillies on the guest list.

The Tea Baggers are folks that I could probably get along with if they would bother to display just a little adaptability.  Their central premise, to wit: Government is out of control, is self evident.  Getting control of it has to be high on everyone's list of things to do.

The white shoe crowd is probably appalled by this behavior.  They are the folks that have been making a far-too-healthy living sucking off the banks, military contracts, corporate loopholes, and other large scale government largesse.  To them, the idea of reducing the revenue stream provided by government is anathema.

Enter Obama and Geithner and their crowd.  Not only does Obama have the absolute temerity to be black (well, sort of), which in it's own sense drives most folks in the Republican party into gibbering shit-fits, but he is absolutely wedded to maintaining the status quo, even if it does bankrupt the country.  

So the Republican geniuses, being completely incapable of letting go of their little private greed and petty bigotries, have come up with the brilliant idea of handing Obama all the rope that he needs to hang himself.  Raise the debt limit 2.4 trillion in three tranches and give Obama the keys to the car in deciding whether to use them.

You see this will give the white shoes another run at sucking money out of the Guv'mint, it will allow the tea-baggers the opportunity to paint Obama as a spendthrift for the next election, and it will give Obama the money he needs to keep the party going until the election.

I really can't see anything changing just yet.  We are getting closer to the denouement, but we aren't quite there yet.  I think that we will manage to slip through the rest of 2011 and into 2012.  But the fat lady is just stage right my friends, she is starting to warm up.