It should be added that Congress has no exclusive rights to the Rabbit Hole. Here's some "objective" reporting, for instance, from Politico:
Going over the cliff is not how Americans want to start 2013: with hefty new tax hikes and spending cuts that could send the stock market plummeting, slash defense spending and interrupt an economic recovery that was just beginning to spark....
The McConnell-Biden talks look like they could avert this potential disaster.
Reality: Both the "hefty new tax hikes and spending cuts" could be deferred for days or weeks, until, that is, a clean tax bill passes (which, with proper presidential agitation and public pressure applied, it would); defense spending, which, even in relative peacetime, is twice what it was only a few years ago, needs to be "slashed"; and at any rate the stock market's plummet and recovery's interruption have yet to meet the second monstrous round of madness which comes their way--Republicans' debt-ceiling apocalypse.
And what of the bloodiest casualty of a cliff deal as presently outlined by McConnell-Biden; that of Democrats stiffing an electorate which just strengthened the former's hand by granting it a decisive victory at the polls? Is the nation's confidence in its elected representatives really that negotiable? That expendable? That worthless?
I'm with the Tea Partiers. Screw this deal. For that matter, and in general, to hell with the Dems, too. I'll take my disorienting anarchy straight, no chaser--and with no Democratic imprimatur.
This is one of PM's most disappointing posts. Implicit in the post - or forgive me if I am unfairly projecting onto the post - is that PM held onto hope for some other outcome.
What is that old saying? "A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | December 31, 2012 at 10:53 AM
Personally, I prefer to panic when there's...you know...something to panic about.
Posted by: Beauzeaux | December 31, 2012 at 12:04 PM