As an elected official I'd last, I figure, about three minutes, because my silence, my patience, my resistance to publicly going full Howard Beale over this kind of mass muddle-headedness would last only two. A Bloomberg National Poll:
[Sixty-one percent of Americans] disagree with President Barack Obama’s contention that Congress should raise the U.S. debt limit without conditions ... [and] say that it’s "right to require spending cuts when the debt ceiling is raised even if it risks default."
Fifty-six percent of Americans see across-the-board federal spending cuts imposed by Congress this year as doing more harm to the economy than help.
So on the one hand we have a sado-masochistic majority in favor of--if necessary--cataclysmic fiscal restraint, while on the other hand we have another majority in favor of greater spending. They really can't equal more than 100 percent--yet they do!
I take it back. One minute.