Fiscal Cliff-Jumping, Anyone?

"Fellow bravehearts, men of iron, you amazing specimens, you, my stalwart congressional brethren - you loyal true-believers, undaunted by satirists, late-night comedians and feckless bloggers,  ready to accomplish any mission, no matter how difficult or messy or unpopular...it's time to go fiscal cliff-jumping! Who wants to be first?"

"Cliff-jumping. Oh, my! I feel faint...'

"Golly...."

"Yikes...that edge is steep, chief!"

"Has the other side made a proposal yet?"

"A cliff! A cliff! My first real fiscal cliff! How exciting, how vibrant, how manly..."

"I haven't felt this level of brinksmanship since the Cuban Missile Crisis...and I don't even remember that episode..."

"Never saw Dr. Strangelove - huh?"

 "Ya. Ya. This is a job for guys like us: the few, the proud, the Super-Uber-Congressmen on steroids!"

"Me first, me first, me first....I want to go first!"

"Who said that?"

"Uhm...on second thought... I was just kidding....we're gonna wait until the 11th hour as usual - right?"

"That's the spirit. Wait until the other side stumbles - then we'll make our move."

"Our non-move you mean..."

"I mean our counter-move to their move."

"Which is simply to negate their forward movement."

"Exactly."

"Leading back to stalemate?"

"Ed - have you ever heard the old saying: don't let the actual attainable good stand in the way of the perfect-utopian-fantasy-dream-world that no one has ever seen?"

"No - I never heard it said that way - is that our new talking point?"

"Weren't you listening to Rush this morning?"

"Mums the word ... here comes an innocent bystander..."

"Gentlemen...I'm confused...What is the meaning of all this?"

"We are doing the will of the people, sir I assure you."

"The will of the people?"

"Yes - the will of the people who gave me this Orwellian headpiece that I'm now forced to wear - with the talking points reverberating in my mind until I just can't take it!"

"And you accept the fact that you're being held hostage by a vast minority of primary voters with no clue as to how a modern economy operates???"

"You're talking massive government outlays intertwined with public sector budgets and private corporate welfare?"

"Of course, for people like us who just lost the election, I can't see what else you'd rather have us do? We have earned the right to be angry, disgruntled and obstinately non-cooperative given our recent showing at the polls..."

"So this plan of yours to not raise revenues in any way and to cajole the other side into making the first move on entitlement reform .... all that will help jump-start the economy then, if we follow you guys on your latest foray into obstructionism and nay-saying?"

"Quite the contrary...it will unleash a series of draconian budget cuts while allowing the prior middle-class tax cuts to expire (something we used to vociferously support by the way) - sort of like an anti-stimulus package - strong enough to plunge the economy back into a major recession thereby further discrediting the incumbent."

"And it that the goal - your only goal?"

"What else would you have us do? We are men of principle after all..."

"Mr Speaker - is that your position also?"

"You know...I was outside just a minute ago...and I saw this little girl holding an American flag...and something about the way she was looking at me...like I was going to do the right thing...like she believed in my sincerity...and did not suspect...for one moment... that there was anything fraudulent about my behavior...it made me get kinda weepy all of a sudden."

[a voice from within chambers]: "Mr. Speaker - your handlers would like a word with you!"

IT happened AGAIN

So I'm minding my own business - not even watching the news when IT happens again. And it's not like I've been keeping track of events like this because - when this type of thing happens, everyone is supposed to come together to find a "solution" of sorts - or at least confront the problem, i.e. admit that we've got a situation on our hands that keeps giving us nightmares in the form of actual, hideous scenes of carnage. This time it was an NFL player who shot (with a gun) his twenty-two year old girlfriend upwards of nine times in front of his own mother and baby daughter, thereby murdering her before driving over to the stadium in Kansas City to inform his coaches/employers and despondently thank them for all they had done for him, prior to ending his own life - again with a gun. Before this it was the angry guy who killed members of the Sikh community in Wisconsin with a gun ; prior to that it was a mentally deranged young man in Colorado who shot up a movie theater with a gun; before that it was another mentally deranged young man who shot Congresswoman Giffords in the head, killing innocent by-standers, including a little girl, with a gun. And in case anyone is starting to think - "well hey, that about does it for recent gun violence," if I happened to include the not-yet-completely-forgotten Virginia Tech massacres (with assault weapons) or the Fort Hood shootings (with a gun), would that get us thinking about the weird continuity of events? Do you happen to see a pattern developing here, folks? Does anyone think it's time we advocate for a mental stability litmus test of some sort to go along with with waiting periods and back-ground checks? Is that too much "gun control" for us to withstand? Maybe this shouldn't even be spun as a "gun regulation" issue so much as a "mental health" epidemic. Everyone has issues with anger, anxiety, stress and depression - and maybe for some of us, a gun is not the best item to always keep ready-to-hand. I've heard the line "guns don't kill anyone without people pulling the trigger," and I suppose that's true enough, but for those who subscribe to this point of view - just out of curiosity -would you not also agree that "people who happen to be using guns kill people more ruthlessly and effectively than people who are reaching for knives and clubs"? Remember that terrible news story about the insane person who went completely ballistic with a kitchen knife in a public place? Hmmm... I don't remember that one either. Or how about the guy who took a sword and took down several innocent shoppers at Walmart? Nope. That doesn't ring a bell.  How about that bloody domestic dispute where the boyfriend grabbed a chainsaw and just went nuts? Or the one involving a disgruntled ex-employee who showed up to work wielding a 2X4 and proceeded to mow down dozens at a stretch? Strange....I don't remember any such case of random violence in America involving those weapons - or at least nothing that can even approach the no-questions-asked availability of guns - as  the weapon-of-choice that people in America reach for when something inside of them "snaps." But now you're thinking: "fine just go ahead and take my guns away and leave me vulnerable to that day when the jackboots start knocking on my door and dragging me away in the middle of the night. How am I suppose to defend myself against a fascistic governmental raid on my person and property???" My response to this sentiment is twofold: 1) if things have gotten THAT BAD in America, it's time to either emigrate to Australia or build a fall-out shelter in upper Montana (as many have already done) and 2) anyone who thinks that owning a single gun or rifle or stockpile or arsenal of automatic weapons would improve their odds in the event of a standoff with the Feds,  (putting aside for the moment all accusations of paranoia and magical thinking) gives indications of actually believing that a person could shoot their way out of what many neutral observers would call death-by-government-search-and-seizure-firing-squad. I admit it. I don't understand THIS LOGIC...

Shopping Madness - A Photo Essay

Turkeys

Something symbolic going on here, folks .... Not quite sure what it is...but tomorrow is Thursday and...

"Three Cedars" by Sandra Lynn Gray

Colors are like bounded infinities...as this painting illustrates.

Jill McCorkle

The renowned author of such short story collections as Crash Diet and Creatures of Habit along with her superior novels: Ferris Beach, Carolina Moon and Tending Toward Virginia.

Joseph Conrad - Prose Stylist

"The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver - over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it, too -- God knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it -- no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as smiled, he would -- though a man of sixty -- offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies -- which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world -- what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see -- you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . ." - from Heart of Darkness