Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, April 14, 2011

This About Sums It Up

How crazy?  This crazy.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/04/whirlwind_1.php#more?ref=fpblg


TPM Reader MO:
So, let me see if I have this straight. In the period of less than 7 days:
- It looked almost certain that the Federal government was going to be shutdown.
- At the 11th hour, Boehner, Reid, and Obama "made a deal."
- For the next few days, everyone was crowning Boehner as the master politician -finally a Speaker of the House who was an effective leader of his entire coalition and could use that clout to muscle the political opposition.
- At the same time, Dems were in great despair. Obama gave up too much. Our economy was now going to be in free-fall. Obama was now about to sell out Medicare and the Middle Class too!
- Then, come yesterday, it seems pretty clear that the budget deal was, in fiscal terms, pretty minor. The amount of money that was negotiated, let alone the punch-the-hippies policy riders, was all small potatoes.
- And, yesterday, Obama came out hard, at least rhetorically, against the GOP.
- And today, Boehner looks less powerful than Hastert. Eric Cantor must be struggling to suppress a permanent grim. And the most prominent GOP figure right now in the news is Donald Trump.
Truly a bizarre week in Washington ...

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