Monday, December 31, 2012

Progressive Comedy on the Brink

Dennis Kucinich reaches into American History to describe America on the brink of the fiscal cliff:
The Anasazi were Native Americans whose culture dated back 2,000 years. They were the cliff dwellers who built into the sheer walls of canyons extraordinary places to live. Yet, in 1300 A.D., these cliff dwellers, these great architects of culture and civilization,
mysteriously disappeared. 
 The people of this great Nation, the United States of America, are dwelling on real cliffs of fiscal insecurity: the cliffs of joblessness and low wages; the cliffs of mortgage foreclosure, homelessness; the cliffs of retirement insecurity; the cliffs of small business failure and investor uncertainty; the cliffs of violence at home and war abroad. 
 At a time when the government should be demonstrating its capacity to meet the practical aspirations of the American people for jobs, education, health care, and retirement security, the government instead would have America dwell at the edge of a fiscal cliff in a manufactured crisis to manufacture consent for a deal that would otherwise be unacceptable. 
 Leaders of both parties would do well to remember that the original cliff dwellers, as great as they were, disappeared.
 Meanwhile, Sheila Jackson Lee finds her wisdom on a coffee cup, in a bag of potato chips, and on an AARP card:
I think it is enormously important that, as Starbucks said, we ``come together.'' And we can do so. We can do it in a rationality that takes a simple analysis. A simple analysis says that if I like a bag of potato chips, that's a luxury item, I can run in and get it. I don't have to think about it. Its cost is manageable. If I want to go in and get a high-end Cadillac, I'll think about it for a couple of days. 
 That should be the thought process for this fiscal cliff. Pass the $250,000 that will give 99 percent of Americans a tax break. Protect hose who are unemployed who have worked and provide for their unemployment insurance. Protect those with the AMT--30 million taxpayers will fall over the cliff if we don't fix that, 222,000  Texans. And then if we have to deal with looking at how we address the question of reforming those benefits of Americans who work like Medicare and Social Security, we can do so. But I join the AARP, I join senior citizens: Leave Social Security alone. The changed CPI will not
work, and that is not a time to deal with it in these waning hours. 
 We, Republicans, created this quagmire with the sequestration. We need to go and be able to address the immediacy. Get your bag of potato chips, cut the taxes for 99 percent of the American people and protect the unemployed. 
 One takes the humor where one can. Because the cliff is here, we are going over, and men and women of good will seem unable to win their points in Washington. Because the GOP recognizes spending is an issue -- but can't seem to accept that if there is to be sacrifice, a Democracy is going to require that it be shared. And the Democrats, in their Progressive bleeding hearts, think that they can always find revenue to fund their spending, so why stop spending?

There's not good cheer for this moderate today. Think I'll spike the egg nog and down a few...

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