Collapsing Shack, AZ—Last night, the undead rallied in front of the White House in a bid for unliving free of persecution, prejudice, and violence.  The walking dead, many carrying signs smeared with blood and gore, were unable to comment.

Former President Nixon was willing to spill his guts, literally, “Uuuuuugggggghhhhhhptht.” 

After dodging the teeth of numerous Walkers, I did manage to track down a vampire willing to speak for the group. I sipped the oddest tasting Merlot with him while hordes of zombies banged their fists against the outside of his darkened trailer.

“If the White House doesn’t meet our demands by sundown, we will wreak havoc on the worlds of men.”

When I asked the spokesman, known only as The Kahn, what these demands were, he said, “We want the right to be able to walk down the streets without our heads being blown off or some wannabe-hero driving a stake through our hearts.  We also want a zombie housing assistance program. Do you know what happens when you die? People just start living in your home. And then who gets the flack for staggering around town all day, yeah, zombies—hardly fair when their houses are stolen, is it?  And don’t get me started on the Death Tax.”

“Zombies also want to be able to date the living,” continued Khan.  “This dating only other breathers is a discrimination that runs deep within your species.  As far as my people go, we just want you all to admit that vampires are superior to mere mortals and your laws do not apply…take my life insurance policy, for example.  Anyway, in return for letting us do whatever we wish, we promise not to enslave your race to harvest blood.”

Kahn was really nice. He even helped me escape the zombies on the way back. It was so romantic how he held me as he leapt over their snapping teeth. I loved the way the wind caressed his bald Nosferatu head.  He was so handsome.

Then I found Jack Primus on the north side of the mall trying to defend a toppled school bus full of kindergartners. A ghoul had a small girl by the ankle and was dragging her out of the bus until its head exploded into paste when Jack’s sledge hammer hit it.

“Do you have a minute, Jack?” I asked.

“Not really—a little busy here.”

“So I take it this means you are not in support of the Undead Freedom Act?”

“These Nezzoroth bastards will never get my vote, just my hammer to the face, and maybe one of my girlfriends now and then. A bloody X on a ballot does not a vote make.”

“Girlfriend?” I asked.

“No,” he replied.  “Palin’s Undead Registration Bill is a sad attempt to find enough undead ghouls to win an election.”

Jack kept asking me to help save the children, but I have to meet the Discord’s deadline or Zano won’t feed me his family’s scraps behind the dumpster. So naturally I pressed on—Friday is fried chicken night and sometimes they leave the skin!

I caught up with Imhotep, who was on the western side of the mall, looking on at the proceedings in disgust.

“This is all mindless politics. Republicans are using zombies to help raise the dead ceiling, or some such, vampires want to be treated fairly, and Elvis wants to move back into Graceland. All meaningless, of course, for soon I will rule!  My darkness will sweep like an evil tide over your puny world.  Soon you will all become my slaves, pets, and in some cases my furniture.”

After I got his business card, I asked him when he planned to start his campaign for world domination.

“As soon as I find the Mystic Jars of Nyrloarlethep and get a hold of a good tailor. You’d be surprised how many men are hitting on me with this skirt.  Sometimes it’s a fine line between master vampire and Goth chick.”

“Especially in this neighborhood,” I added helpfully.

I thanked Khan but knew I had one final stop to make. I found Senator McCain in one of his eight or nine houses; somehow I managed to pick the right one.  He agreed to an interview after I helped him escape a mob of hungry corpses.  Oh, and I told him I worked for the Koch Brothers.  On a side note, I’m willing to do anything for an interview, but I swear whatever Russell Crow claims I did for him in the back of that cab is a lie!

“These ‘Life Impaired’ things aren’t U.S. citizens,” said McCain.  “They don’t work, they don’t pay taxes, and they certainly shouldn’t be allowed to vote.  I think they would be happier in California.  Now if we could teach them to kill terrorists or pat down people at airports—”

“Without eating their brains,” I added.

“Right.  If we could control the dead like Aragon did in that Harry Potter movie. Heck, if we could have raised the dead back in Nam, I might have…”

Obviously this is a complex situation when even people in the same party don’t agree or can’t stop eating one another. This isn’t an issue you can bury, because they keep digging themselves out. In some ways that’s true freedom, isn’t it?  It’s what our forefather’s would have wanted.  I know, I asked one of them earlier. But in the end, we have to ask ourselves, what would Conan do?”

“Or Leno,” added Zano.

No, no, the other Conan…tell you what, I’ll see you in the sword aisle, folks.

Once again, the Crank has reduced all eternal truths into someone else’s stock options. So everything is wrong in my last post, eh? Let’s assume he’s right for a moment, ha ha ha hahahaa.  Sorry, that was funny.  Mr. Crank, you have a singular ability to misrepresent all of my positions and points.  Some would call that consistency; I call it something else.

As I mentioned in my last post, and many others, global warming has been politicized and to some degree fudged.  So I’m wrong about that?  But if that’s wrong, then you must be wrong when you mentioned that very point.  But if you’re wrong and I’m right about being wrong, er, you must be…wow.

Oh, and my statement from Ken Wilber, “The data just isn’t there to support global warming” must be wrong too, which means the facts do exist, so you’re wrong and I’m vindicated somehow, right?  I’m right for being wrong…right?

I also relayed in my last post this possible ice age scenario:

Stage 1: Polar ice caps melt

Stage 2: Oceans lose salinity (salt)

Stage 3: Ocean currents stop

Stage 4: No warm water currents circulating = ice age

Wrong again.  Sean Hannity was right!  Damn, I’m going to kick my 7th grade science teacher’s ass.  He’s old now, so I should be able to do it. Damn you Mcgraw-Hill textbooks and your pathetic over reliance on the scientific method!

I have had the same basic themes throughout my climate change posts.  Here’s a recap from my first post on the subject.  For those of you who already clicked on that thing, sorry, it’s right here:

1) There are Earthly cycles we don’t fully understand.

2) Man’s impact on this phenomenally complex system is not fully understood.

These first two can be treated as one. So if I’m wrong on this, Mr. Crank, then we fully understand these Earthly cycles.  Wow, it’s amazing what you can learn by watching Fox & Friends.  For instance, last week I learned I can reach my flat screen with a focused stream of vomit.

3) Pollution = Bad.

My mind is officially blown.  You’ve outdone yourself, Mr. Crank.  You think you know something and then pollution forms a protective ring around the Earth, in essence, saving us from those harmful UV rays.  So give a hoot and keep polluting. Wow, Crank, you really…forget it…I can’t do this.  If you go line by line from my last warming post, which I sadly did, here’s the crux: I don’t really claim to know what’s happening with the climate, or even how to fix it, but at least I understand that something’s happening.  My three global warming posts are essentially a list of what we do know thus far and some common sensical advice for the future.  Yet, everything is wrong?  So we can’t even agree on the basics?

Have you ever wondered if your blogversary is huffing carb cleaner?

I had two more pages of this shit, which, to save our last few readers, I tore out of my hard drive with a pair of forceps.  You’re welcome.  So there’s no Pacific garbage patch, Crank?  We’re not overfishing our oceans, Crank?  The coral reefs are healthy, Crank?  We’re not heading for a high period of solar activity, Crank?  Bush didn’t roll back forty-years of EPA regs?  Sanjaya should have won American Idol, Crank?

Hey, I got it!  Let’s try looking at every potentially subjective line from my post.  He couldn’t possibly mean all of my—well, actually, I don’t know what the fuck he means.  Do you?  But let’s look at every point that can be argued:

Found three potentially subjective quotes from my last, totally wrong post!

1) “Republicans don’t and won’t give a shit until it impacts their stock options, which is certainly part of why people with foresight think they’re dangerously shortsighted—the rest involves Sarah ‘the British are Irish’ Palin.”

Actually, you’re right, Crank. This Paul Revere/Palin joke from my other post is much funnier.

2) “Hearing you, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity espouse wisdom on the subject of Earth Science is kind of like getting your medical advice from Dr. Demento (which I do…so bad example). But Dr. D, am I really going to need to have my dead puppies Yankoviched?”

Maybe bringing up Weird Al just muddied the debate. I’ll give you a point here as well (that’s two!).

3) “When have you, Mr. Crank, ever left even the faintest hint you might be wrong about something? I haven’t seen it…well, I’ve seen the results…but, don’t worry, your defense mechanisms are cleaning up your messes, almost instantly, through the magic of cognitive dissonance.”

You started off your last post saying everything in my last post was wrong, soooo I think I’ll stand by this one.

Whew. You know what would have been easier?  If you would just take off your Foxeteer filter, Mr. Crank, which seems to hinder blood flow to the brain, maybe then we can discuss a whole bunch of topics based on something I like to call reality.

I have understood for years there’s a difference of opinion about how warm it’s actually getting in the last decade. Of course, NASA says it’s the warmest decade on record, but for that article you have to go way back to last Saturday.  And, as for your own backyard, you only need look at Phoenix’s record breaking 118º last week (with cloud cover).  I know, history is a bitch…actually a single instance is meaningless.  It’s a Drudge tactic, but at least I know when I’m employing one.

Sure, some say there’s been a halt in the century-long warming trend.  This is the Crank channeling Sean I-Never-Studied Hannity again.  In Earth time, even if there is a decade long lull in an otherwise century-long increase in temperature…ummm, how do you ignore the other 90-year trend?  That’s a metaphor for the Foxeteers.  This should be their mission statement:

Fox News: let’s focus on that one flimsy shred-of-a-fact that supports our tenuous ill-advised position and repeat it ad infinitum.

I think I can coin a new phrase debating the Crank, selective cognition.  Yes, American Psychological Association, you can use it, but only if you defer my student loans.   Shit…it exists.  Damn you Google!

The Crank plan is this: America, please don’t lead on this issue, wait for China and India to address pollution control in the hopes that ever-thickening ring of pollution around our planet will stave off further global warming—er, which according to you doesn’t exist.  That’s quite a position.  Oh, and if attempting to save the planet is gap-toothed stooped, what’s not even trying?  Hmmm.  That gap is getting bigger, Cleetus.  Sorry, but I’ll take my chances with less pollution, Einstein.  Roll them dice, baby! Come on protective pollution cloud.

Check out this outrageous Stuart Davis dialogue with his clone: Foothill in the mouth .  It mentions both arguments and that pollution shield back in 2005.  Yes, what I remember in 2005 is apparently news to the Crank today.

The main points of my last article did little to dent the Crank’s inherent programming, so let’s put this into a Crank-worthy analogy (CWA): the evil educated and liberal professor on Gilligan’s Island says, “We need to leave the island now.  The volcano is going to erupt and drown us all in lava!”

Really, the professor understands it’s probably the ash, not the lava, that will get them, but he’s trying to encourage the Skipper and Gilligan to stop whatever they’re doing on that hammock and start toward the exits in the quickest possible fashion.  I have condemned the doctoring and politicizing of global warming, but a few bad apples do not change the main premise of the episode: the volcano is erupting.  So picture Gilligan taking a fifty from Thurston Howell III and fanning Lovey as the pyroclastic cloud hits.  Great job, Crank.  You could have gotten a hundred if you had only agreed to feed her grapes.

Don’t worry, I don’t really understand that either.  But according to the Foxeteers (and by proxy, the Crank), no scientists are right, no media is right, and no statistics are right—yet the Crank has figured everything out through the power of Greyskull.  What a Heman Master of the Universe!  So what do you base any of your conclusions on then, Sparky?  Probably those few scientists, media, and statistics that support your position.  

We can’t even have a rational conversation about anything anymore, which is also why we might default next week as a nation.  Thanks.  Nicely done.  What do you do for your next trick?  Wait, I don’t want to know.

For a related example, one has to go all the way back to today when a CNN reporter tried correcting a Teabagger: 

CNN reporter: “Umm, but raising the debt ceiling is about money we’ve already spent.” 

Teabagger congress someone: “No it isn’t.”

Why didn’t that reporter just bitch slap him with his microphone?  Why stand there and let people misunderstand the basics?  We can’t even agree on basic facts anymore because the Foxeteers don’t know any.

It’s like people calling Obama a liar all week for saying, “Hey, if we default we might not be able to pay for shit like social security.”

The Right: Liar!  There’s plenty of money to pay for social security.

The Zano: Er, well what about paying our military personnel?

The Right: Liar! There’s plenty of money to pay the military. 

The Zano: Umm, where’s that microphone?  The point is we need to pay them both at the same time, you morons.  How do Foxeteers fall for this shit?  It’s a like playing that shell game with one shell and they keep picking a nearby lamp.

As I have said before, I am a tard when it comes to the economy, so what the hell are they? In nearly ten years, one of the only valid points the Foxeteers have even identified is our deficit issues.  Apparently, if our deficit dollars were all stacked on top of one another the pile would reach the stratosphere.  And they’re now very proud of themselves for identifying this tower of debt.  Ummm, it reaches to the stratosphere, dude?  Very observant.  And this is the only good thing we can say about the Foxeteers? In the last decade?  It’s like a kid bringing a dead animal into the house shouting, “Look at this! Look at this!”  I never thought I’d have to say this to nearly forty percent of our population but, “Put that thing down, wash your hands, and go play.”  You really should all go play, because you’re no help whatsoever, and I’m only saying this because you haven’t been any help since I’ve been interested in politics.  So go play.  It’s all right.  As a matter of fact, don’t vote.  You can vote in your world.  Heck, maybe in that other dimension your arguments will actually make sense.

I’m kidding, of course, it wouldn’t make sense there either!

Ok Mikkey, here is another one of those generalities you hate so much. All your statements on “climate change” “global farting” “death warmed over” or whatever you choose, are wrong. All of them (Geeh, I so love doing that).

First, the earth hasn’t warmed in over ten years. Know why? I do J! China’s spewing of sulfur dioxide from burning coal, that’s why. A recent study indicates that so2 actually reflects sunlight in the atmosphere. Of course, it also causes acid rain. (Oops) Lets not stop them from doing what they’re doing, there is nothing in it for the “warmers”, let’s do something here, like then paying the scientists even more to now figure out how we (the US) can negate the effects of the rest of the world, while simultaneously going broke doing it.   Money

Second, it has been admitted by UN scientists that they repositioned most of the temperature sensors worldwide closer to centers of population, to skewer the results. They all make quite a lively hood of it all, hundreds of millions for the scientists and the likes of fat Al, with his jet and mega mansion, and G.E, with its already set up carbon credit Ponzi-sham money robbing system. Mo Money.

Third, let’s look at facts: we (the U.S.) have all but stopped so2 emissions , lowering them some 70% from 1980. We also have added hundreds of millions of cars and trucks to our roads from 1970’s numbers, yet we have not increased the amount of pollution directly from them one iota. How, by re-engineering the way the internal combustion engine works, and using wind tunnel testing for aerodynamics. The U.S. is a world leader in many areas of pollution control. Hell, even Canada and Mexico are producing more so2 than we are. That is exactly why more and more companies flee to Canada/Mexico (our own auto industry) and China/India for most of the worlds manufacturing. Less energy costs, less labor costs (no unions), less governmental incursions. Even Mo Money

Fourth, most of the CO2 that we expel into the atmosphere does not increase global temperatures one degree. It is diluted into the oceans, and then what is left is re-released into the lower atmosphere where it is all absorbed by plants. By regulating CO2 as a harmful gas, the E.P.A.(Evil Pay-me Administration) will only cost us billions, and help no one, no one but those evil Chinese Indians with emphysema. Want to really help? Go to the equatorial rainforests and stop them from clear cutting hundreds of hectares a day for uselessly farming the land (it does not farm well at all), or worse still, burning the trees to make coal for energy. Whole Shit-Loads O’ Money

Fifth. The United Nations whole environmental plan is not based on China and India doing anything. Look it up, sir. What t is all about the U.S. paying monies to so- called “third world countries” like, well, China and India, (surprise face now) to “help them clean up their act”. Fuck them. We did it on our own. The UN cares nothing about anything except the re-distribution of wealth, from our pockets to theirs.

It is all questionable at best, junk at worst. Just to show you how money related it all is, here if the best example I can find. In Australia, there is a company that requested it receive some form of “carbon credits” or the monetary equivalent, from their government, for killing Camels. Yes, those lovely, spit in your face, multi humped dromedaries. Evidently, Australia has a shit load (sorry) of camels, who knew? It wants to shoot them by helicopter. They are using actual studies by the so called climate scientists that show that in The Land Down Under, (where women swoon and men plunder), camels release too much methane, thus help cause global whatever. This is no shit, (pardon the poopy pun) it is real.

So, to close, dear Mik, cause not the US to fall further towards the event horizon of the black hole that is failure of the U.S economy by making us the only ones paying for all this shit. Move your ass to China or India and work on them for a while. Make them catch up to us, and then we can talk about further restrictions. Having us do something that is negated a thousand times by other countries, all the while costing us billions, and sending all of our manufacturing to China and India, is just plain gap-toofed stooped.

Talk to the hand

Crank

We are at yet another critical juncture in our history and we have dumb and dumber duking it out in DC.  This is when you have to ask yourself, do you want dumb to stop dumber (D: raising the debt ceiling and revenues and then failing to reduce spending), or do you want dumber to stop dumb (R: those forcing spending cuts only)?  Oh, did I mention there’s also dumbest (the Tea Party who won’t allow any tax increases or any debt ceiling management)?  Good times…

Here’s the equation again:

Dumb = Democrats: continue spending at current levels until our debt surpasses our annual GDP (collapse within 2-3 years)

Dumber = Republicans: austerity measures and spending cuts only (collapse within 1 year).

Dumbest = Tea Party: austerity measures only and don’t raise the debt limit (collapse next Tuesday)

See? This formula always works.  It’s like magic. 

Integral thought alert:

Whichever party wins, the country is likely to lose. If the Republicans win, we’re going to get an unbalanced debt deal that relies too heavily on frontloaded spending cuts, forgoes tax hikes that could further reduce the deficit, and rewards a reckless and dysfunctional model of negotiating through brinksmanship. If the Democrats win, we’re likely to see some sort of crisis before we see any sort of action, and this isn’t an economy or market that can handle much more bad news. Heads, dysfunction. Tails, catastrophe.

—Ezra Klein

Let’s get the one thing Republicans have been right about out of the way first (hint: it’ll be short). President Obama never understood the depth of this collapse, never.  He was told perceptions rule the stock market, so act all business as usual.  At the end of the day he suffered from the normalcy bias.  He should have listened to his Budget Deficit Commission and started some of the necessary spending reductions across the board.  He would need to balance those cuts carefully as not to trigger a double dip recession.  But, at the end of the day, if he fails to change the trajectory of our deficit, his presidency will plummet like a Gingrich campaign in Seattle.  This current direction is unsustainable, kind of like me at the Brewfest last week.

The right needs to focus on responsible spending cuts.  So get to work on that… instead of all the other nonsensical bullshit you typically focus on during any given news cycle. I’m being facetious; we’re not going to get that help.  The right is all Bachmann-bat-shit-crazy these days.  Cuts from the right will not be across the board—they will likely be ideologically and lobbyist driven and only target those must vulnerable in our society.  What’s worse is this: today’s Republicans must now sip from the tea cup of stupid, or risk political extinction.   Those least in the know are holding those barely in the know hostage.  Good times…  It’s not about Bush, Crank, it’s about those people who voted for Bush, twice, becoming even less insightful since.   Stephen Hawking is going to need to determine if this is breaking any Universal laws; this level of ignorance could start bending space. 

My agency, in the field of behavioral health, has been subjected to about 37% cuts in the last three years.  No shit.  You want to keep drawing blood from that stone?  Of course you do.  How much did Gates agree to cut defense again?  Zero percent?  That’s reasonable.  When I talk about responsible cuts, they can’t cost us more money in the long run, nor can they destroy or end countless lives (see: the Ryan plan).  My field could probably have survived 15% cuts (leaner and meaner, baby!).  But now at 37%, Arizona will have to rebuild the programs currently being gutted on the tax payer’s dime.  They will do this about a year or two from now when they realize, “wow, that was stupid.”

The right’s ideas fall into two main categories: 1. totally wrong or 2. partially right.  I can’t think of any recent examples where they nailed it.  Can you?  When did you ever say, whew, that was a close one; thank goodness we listened to those folks over at Fox.  This being-wrong-all-the-time stuff wouldn’t be so bad if they were capable of negotiation.  Example: even when they’re partially right about something, like the deficit, they’ll screw it up anyway with that all-or-none thinking. Their perception of reality is the most skewed, the most compromised, and the most detrimental to our future (see: Hannity’s America).

Need more delusional examples?  When The Crank says something always happens EVERY TIME, let’s take tax cutting to create jobs as an example…well, a journalist over at Slate Magazine researched this phenomenon globally.  If Annie Lowery is correct, then The Crank’s “ALWAYS happens EVERY TIME” can be translated roughly as:

Throughout the history of all economies on the planet, it’s only happened a couple of times and the direct correlation between tax cuts and job creation remains dubious at best.  

Again, we have that situation where nine out of ten economists think one thing, but Fox shoves the microphone in the face of that one economist left behind. Yeah, that’s the ticket… just like that 97% of all climatologists thing.  I’d love to see The Crank in Vegas.  Of course, in this case he’s thankfully only gambling with the global economy instead of the inhabitability of the Earth.   Roll them dice, baby!

And when The Crank says something like this or that “never EVER worked”, like socialized medicine, he really means, its working great in Germany, well in Australia and OK in Canada.  Watch, his rebuttal will be “Canada’s healthcare doesn’t work!” thus proving his point…er, somehow.

What does this all mean, you ask?  The Republicans are now the ones living in the land of the theoretical.  The Crank is just a symptom of a greater illness.  It used to be the liberal professors were the only ones operating wholly in the philosophical realms.  Some Prof would suggest some progressives (aka, expensive) idea, but there was always some neatly trimmed, small glasses type reminding him of the actual budget.  These were the debates of old; these were my father’s Republicans. Somehow, to the detriment of this country, that has all changed. It’s not that we dislike conservatism, Crank, just your version. 

Fareed Zakaria over on CNN covered this radical Republican transformation (of course, you heard it here first on the Daily Discord).  So how does one become a theoretical bean counter anyway?  You were supposed to be the ones to say, “No, America, you can’t buy that Dodge Viper.  Let’s get a sedan.”  Then they pulled out some bills and bank statements and started clicking on a calculator.  Now, they pull out a Ouija board, some Tarot cards, a Magic Eight Ball and start burning some sage (speaking of eight balls, where’s my “package” Mr. Shaman?).

So Mr. Bean Counter Foxeteer guy, this means you no longer have any function in this society.  So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m buying the F-ing Viper, bitches.  Dems will continue to ignore you, on cue, because you have no credibility and, as a result, we will spend ourselves into oblivion.  But, meanwhile, we get a Viper!  Liberals are doing what they do, spend money, and Republicans are not doing what they used to, which is make fiscal sense.  It’s a recipe for…what’s today’s date again?

Where is the right’s economic evidence?  Probably on some Beckian chalkboard somewhere. Taxes as a percentage of GDP are lowest since the 50s; we have amongst the lowest in the industrial world.  The hostility to business, for the most part, is invented propaganda designed to Rush the Limbaughs back into power to finish us off.  You know what hurt businesses?  The biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, that’s what. 

Pragmatism means cutting the Grand Bargain of the 21st Century: tax reform, revenue increases, and entitlement and defense cuts. You cannot take away one of these three legs and hope the stool will stay upright. By insisting on new no revenues, the GOP is not taking responsibility for its own role in creating this debt, is ignoring the real dangers of total gridlock, and refusing to play an adult role in resolving it. By never offering anything substantive to restrain healthcare costs or to insure more Americans, the GOP is unserious on healthcare policy. By refusing the only solution to immigration – tighter border controls and a path to citizenship for those already here – they are merely making amnesty a reality while making the lives of many hard-working people and their US-born children more precarious.

—-Andrew Sullivan

Andrew’s gets it.  The problem is this: these more integral solutions to our problems typically piss off both liberals and conservatives alike, which is why I have little use for either of them.  D and R will only agree to their half of the solution, which isn’t going to work.  We need less D, less R, and more Transcosmetic party! Three members and bloating.

There was a really great debate on Fareed Zakaria last week, wherein Robert Reich (liberal) battled David Stockman (conservative).  Reich made a compelling case for the group who believe that tightening everything now, through austerity measures only, “would be repeating the history of Hoover.”  Stockman, meanwhile, made a strong case that the kitty is dry and that the only way out of this is to cut entitlements (like Medicaid), defense spending to some degree, and raise some revenues (he’s at least one Republican not giving a pass to the Bush tax cuts).  This is where the debate should be.  Somewhere between these two gentlemen lies the answer.  I actually lean a little toward the conservative guy, Stockman—although it will likely cost me my job.  Now, The Crank, as usual, is choosing some imaginary door number three.  We’re just going to pretend lobbyists don’t exist.  We’re going to ignore that people need basic services and we’re just going to pull 14 trillion dollars out of our collective asses by next Tuesday.  Great plan…er, great depression.  The Crank’s plan has always been, “Let everything fail, have that depression, and then we’ll be OK in a few years.” Ummm, when the dollar is not the currency of choice on this planet, we’re not going to be OK, we’re going to be Greece.

So listen up Mr. President, no negotiating with Teabaggerists.  Bad enough we have to negotiate with Republicans. As Sullivan, Stockman and Klein, and anyone else with a clue can attest, we need a multi-pronged approach to tackle a 14 trillion dollar deficit.  We do not need to be held hostage by people with just those two switches in their head, good/bad, up/down, lobotomy/electro convulsive therapy.  We need nuance, not nuisances. You will get your spending cuts and tax reforms, but ending the Bush tax cuts for at least some of the population has to be part of the solution.  Sorry, reality again.  To negotiate, one needs to negotiate, not storm out of the room after refusing to fund two wars.  Oh, and robbing from China to pay Paul Allen hasn’t helped either…imagine that. 

Hear ye, hear ye: the negotiating will be limited to this: for what income group will the Bush tax cuts expire?  Will it be for those earning over $250,000 a year? over $500,000? over a $1M?  Let the real negotiating begin.

My posts remain based on independent thought and The Crank’s are primarily fueled by propaganda.  This is why I agree with you sometimes, Cranko and you never agree with me…er, even when I’m agreeing with you.  For you, Obama is always wrong, so if he develops a plan to solve all of our problems tomorrow, you will vote against it on principle. If one puts this into historical context—coming off the heels of eight years of Incurious George—then, sorry, I have the right to be angry and you have the right to remain silent.