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Pay the damned bills!

Nobody can accuse us, here in the U.S., of single-mindedness.  We are about as divided of mind as it is possible to get, short of pure madness.

We call ourselves a two-party system, and we are, sort of.  That is part of the problem.  With only two parties, everything gets reduced to A or B, left or right, tax or spend, right or wrong.  The fact is that nothing is that simple.

Even if it were that simple, we find ourselves with two parties well to the right of center.  Nobody knows where the liberals went.  No!  That is not quite right!  We know where Bernie Sanders of Vermont is, but he doesn't know where all the others went.

It is even more hilarious than that.  (I use "hilarious" because if we cannot laugh at our self-mutilation, we will begin to weep at the injury.)  The Republicans are our conservatives, but they--the conservatives--have been ambushed by the Tea Party, which is so conservative it has trouble taking down the Nazi signs at its street rallies.  They aren't all Nazis!  Hardly any of them are!  But they certainly do make the rest of the Republican Party look like irrelevant, old-fashioned, pay-your-bills politicians.

"Raising the debt limit" simply is an authorization to pay the bills Congress has long-since decided to incur.  It simply means, "Pay our bills!"  We have already borrowed the money, and used it.  Payments are due.  Pay them!  If we don't, all fiscal hell is going to break loose.  It will mean that we promised to pay the bills, and that we aren't going to do it.  Maybe later.  We'll see.

That is why the European Union is bailing out Greece, and Ireland, and maybe Spain and Portugal.  We don't have a European Union to bail us out.  Our credit rating will be ruined, borrowing money will cost more, everybody will be paying more in interest on everything, if the loans can be had.  It is playing chicken with our nation, at blinding speed, on a dark road.  It is Russian roulette with a fully-loaded gun.

The Republican Party has been hi-jacked by ideologues.  Pretending it is "compromise", the Democrats have moved almost all the way over to where the Republicans used to be, and Bernie Sanders is up there in the woods of Vermont, lost, calling "Rachel!" to the trees, and not even hearing an echo.

Pay the damned bills!  Don't cut government spending just now when we need jobs!  Reform the tax code! Invest in roads and bridges and trains and super-high speed-electronic networks!  Reshape our educational system and train engineers, and scientists, and technicians, and mathematicians, and everything we need to become an economic and cultural and political powerhouse, again!


And for God's sake, send those Tea Party people home!  Tell them to go look for Bernie Sanders!

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