TomFlannery.com

I don’t understand the “debt ceiling”.

I sorta tried to understand it but gave up after a few minutes because I have a hard time taking anything seriously that involves John Boehner.

I suspect it’s monumentally important in some way, but Stevens, whose latest missive deals with his gaggle of toy trucks, is obviously unconcerned. I bow to his age and wisdom.

I guess we keep borrowing money and then borrowing more to pay off the penalty for not paying the first batch back. Or something to that effect. Meanwhile the US defense budget is $687,105,000,000, roughly 6 times as much as China, who we borrow much of our money from.

Hmmmm….

People with large brains get paid a lot of money to delve into things like this. Maybe it’s not as complicated as it’s made out to be.

$687 billion seems more than sufficient, yet 10 years ago a few guys with box cutters were able to bring this country to its knees with alarming ease, goading our government into hacking away at our civil liberties in the name of “freedom”…..which made sense to Dick Cheney and others like him, but mainly scared the rest of us into meek compliance. Even today none of us can board an airplane without stripping down, being poked and prodded like farm animals, and generally given the massive stink-eye by someone making $7 an hour. It’s all fairly depressing.

Over the last few years we’ve been bombarded with warnings that our nation is on the verge of economic collapse. Our first attempt to deal with the situation was to hand over billions of free money to the very people who botched things up so royally in the first place. Huge banks were thus saved, via government welfare, to rape and pillage some more, all in the name of the free market. Meanwhile, my mortgage bill kept coming (banks are very reliable in some respects), and every time I called my congressman to ask him to pay for it, he hung up on me.

I’m one of the lucky ones who can still pay my mortgage bill. My job hasn’t been off-loaded to Sri-Lanka yet. I can’t pay much more than my mortgage bill mind you, but still, I’ve got what I need and my kids are safe.

I should feel good about this….and I do. But then I don’t, because so many others are suffering and I’ve never been very good at ignoring the guy stuck on the side of the road. But when I see that the guy on the side of the road has a “Tea Party” sticker on his car…..that’s when I need pills and beer.

Fear can do all kinds of things to all kinds of people. Fear makes us want to blame somebody for our being scared. So the guy on the side of the road blames me and I blame the guy on the side of the road. Meanwhile, John Boehner gets re-elected and we still can’t bring mouthwash in our carry-on bag.

And we’re still on the verge of economic collapse.

And so now, it’s the “debt-ceiling”, which is a term I’ve never heard until this year. I suspect it will fade away eventually, much like “balanced budgets” and our fear of a depleted ozone layer. It’s amazing how there’s always something new to give us the willies.

Stevens is a wise old buzzard. He had it right all along.

I should be writing about toy trucks too. I can remember the one I got from that gas station in North Scranton….

In a bit…

–tf