You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
We are going into our 2nd week of a governmental shut down in Washington D.C.
Congressman get paid to spin around like drunken dradels on New Year’s Eve while hard-working Americans try and make ends meet.
While that is sadly disgusting, I am frightened to say the bigger issue may be the looming debt ceiling.
What’s the debt ceiling you ask?
Well, trust me. You will be hearing plenty about this as the deadline approaches, but in short: If lawmakers don’t vote to raise the nation’s borrowing limit by October 17, the U.S. government won’t have enough money to pay its bills.
What happens at your house when you can’t pay your bills?
Your power gets shut off. Your wife leaves you for the milk man. You start personally subsidizing the fiscal future of the Anheuser Busch company through personal consumption.
Well the same goes for the Government which is sort of like your home only different times a trillion.
If the nation defaults on bills, some predict we could send the world into a financial abyss.
Remember 2008?
Here’s the headline: Foreclosures! Banks hesitant to lend money for homes for cars for consumer spending. Layoffs!
If we don’t figure out the debt ceiling issue in one week, these headlines will feel like a Hallmark Christmas greeting.
This Week with George Stephanopoulous interviewed Speaker of the House, John Boehner.
The shut down in Washington D.C. was barely discussed. It was brushed off like a cigarette girl in a sleazy casino.
Stephanopolous was tough on the Speaker, but at end of the segment, it was not encouraging, on any level.
It was a one sided viewpoint and did not seem to hold much hope for bi-partisan discussion.
“All the President has to do is call me,” He said over and over and over.
It sounded a lot like “I’m taking my ball and I’m going home”
Then the round table of pundits came on set. They ranted and dissected the stagnation, the political implications and the governmental shell game.
“I am surprised, George Stephanopolous says. “That both sides wouldn’t give in more.”
“The Speaker is being honest when he says he doesn’t want to default,” A pasty-faced analyst says. “He is caught between the president and his party base. He’s saying, why should we negotiate?”
“But we are six days in?” George bellows.
“He’s playing with fire,” another chirps in. ” But so is the President.”
The proclamations of doom spread like a Montana wild-fire.
“If we go over the edge, we will all go over the edge!”
“They are a bunch of kids playing in the sand box!”
“You say you can’t negotiate with a gun to your head. Well, I’d rather negotiate with a gun to my head than have someone shoot me!”
ABC White House correspondent John Carl says “There is no back room negotiating. The white house thinks the republicans have misbehaved. The white house thinks they can demand unconditional surrender and the danger and the consequences are great, because it’s the president who will also fail”
“Wall Street doesn’t believe we will default,” one argues.
“Last time this happened, the stock market decreased by 16%,” another says.
“So who will get the blame? If it is a catastrophe everyone will get the blame.”
“The Republicans own this shut down.”
Then in the sign of the apocalypse, and with the financial security of the free world hanging on every word, ABC puts up the graphic:
COMING UP: Washing Redskins controversy!
Huh?
They are referring to whether the team’s name REDSKINS is insulting to native Americans.
Really? I think to myself.
Redskins? They’ve been the Redskins since 1932.
We’ve had 81 years to figure this out. You’re going to tease this Now?
Who cares? compared to a fiscal melt down that has the possibility of cascading across the planet, the tease is a pimple on an elephants posterior.
And so it goes.
You the American public are powerless to stop it. We are the pimple and the government is a run-a-way Jack Ass that has no coral, no rules, no conception of reality.
We voted for these schmucks. I guess they thought we elected them to be a run-a-way train barreling down tracks which seem to be coming apart before our very eyes.
Fasten your seat belts folks. It’s going to be a bumpy flight.
Life’s Crazy™