Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

"T.S. Eliot wrote that the world ends "not with a bang but a whimper,” but I fear our great nation is careening toward a third manner of demise: descent into lip-blubbering, self-destructive idiocy.

How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb? Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world?

Read the headlines and try not to weep:
Our elected representatives in the U.S. Senate, which laughably calls itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” agreed Thursday not to wreck our economy and trigger a global recession — at least for a few weeks. Republicans had refused to raise the federal debt ceiling, or even to let Democrats do so quickly by simple majority v**e. They relented only after needlessly unsettling an international financial system based on the U.S. dollar.

The frequent games of chicken that Congress plays over the debt ceiling are — to use a term of art I recall from Economics 101 — droolingly stupid. In the end, yes, we always agree to pay our obligations. But the credit rating of the planet’s greatest economic superpower has already been lowered because of this every-few-years ritual, and each time we stage the absurd melodrama, we risk a miscalculation that sends us over the fiscal cliff.
Today’s trench-warfare political tribalism makes that peril greater than ever. An intelligent and reasonable Congress would eliminate the debt ceiling once and for all. Our Congress is neither.

In other news, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was speaking to a crowd of Republicans at a country club in his home state Saturday when he tried, gently, to boost South Carolina’s relatively low rate of v******tion against the c****av***s. He began, “If you haven’t had the v*****e, you ought to think about getting it because if you’re my age — ”

“No!” yelled many in the crowd.
Graham retreated — “I didn’t tell you to get it; you ought to think about it” — and then defended his own decision to get v******ted. But still the crowd shouted him down. Seriously, people?

C****-** is a highly infectious disease that has k**led more than 700,000 Americans over the past 20 months. The P****r, M*****a and Johnson & Johnson v*****es all but guarantee that recipients will not die from c***d. I have, or had, an acquaintance who refused to get v******ted, despite pleas from his adult children to protect himself. He got c****-**, and it k**led him. Most of the deaths the nation has suffered during the current delta-variant wave of the disease — deaths of the unv******ted — have been similarly needless and senseless.

C****-** is a bipartisan k**ler. In the tribal-political sense, the safe and effective v*****es are a bipartisan miracle, developed under the Republican Trump administration and largely distributed under the Democratic Biden administration. People in most of the rest of the world realize, however, that v******tion is not political at all; it is a matter of life and death, and also a matter of how soon — if ever — we get to resume our normal lives.

Why would people not protect their own health and save their own lives? How is this anything but just plain stupid?

We are having other fights that are, unlike v******tion, partisan and political — but equally divorced from demonstrable fact.

Conservatives in state legislatures across the country are pushing legislation to halt the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools. I put the term in quotes because genuine critical race theory, a dry and esoteric set of ideas debated in obscure academic journals, is not actually being taught in those schools at all. What’s being taught instead — and squelched — is American history, which happens to include s***ery, Jim Crow repression and structural r****m.

I get it. The GOP has become the party of White racial grievance, and this battle against an imaginary enemy stirs the base. But the whole charade involves Republican officials — many of them educated at the nation’s top schools — betting that their constituents are too dumb to know they’re being lied to. So far, the bet is paying off.

And then, of course, there’s the whole “s****n e******n” farce, which led to the tragedy of J*** 6. Every recount, every court case, every verifiable fact proves that Joe Biden fairly defeated Donald Trump. Yet a sizeable portion of the American e*****rate either can’t do basic arithmetic or doesn’t believe that one plus one always equals two.

How dumb can a nation get and still survive? I***tically, we seem determined to find out.

Eugene Robinson--The Washington Post 10/08/2021

Rose42

“An intelligent and reasonable Congress would eliminate the debt ceiling once and for all. “

That is not an intelligent or reasonable statement. We have to live within our means and be responsible or face repercussions such as bankruptcy and/or homelessness. Why don’t we demand our congress critters be responsible with our money?

The nation has become dumb all right. Two parties that don’t work for us but for themselves and each blames the other for various problems. And the public does the same.

Triple G

Insanity is expecting a different outcome for same actions. Setting and resetting the debt ceiling with no other changes is insanity. Of course, you'll get the same outcome! Time for something else.

Rose42

Indeed it is! We should demand a change but we don’t.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Does this mean that our personal "budgets" should never be increased?

Good luck with that.

Triple G

Big difference..in personal finance, you figure out where the money will come from when the credit card bills come due and prepare beforehand for them.

Frank T Loc: New York, NY

I think we all need to remember that Trump raised that national debt 7.2 trillion dollars. Now when it comes time to pay off the debt, the Republicans are playing the "We're the fiscal responsibility party".
They're full of s**t and if you believe them, you are lacking intelligence.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

That does not address my query and is a ridiculous statement at best, unless everyone has the income to enable a contingency fund and at the same time have no reductions in planned income to prevent borrowing or deficit spending. Further, should we expect that there should be no increase in our budget be it personal or gov't? I think not.

Triple G

Ridiculous? What’s wrong with getting to a system where reserves are set aside to pay for all the pre-approved fixed costs to avoid the game of chicken (i.e., government shut down threats) played constantly?

I support $0 based budgeting.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

[quote=Triple G]Ridiculous? What’s wrong with getting to a system where reserves are set aside to pay for all the pre-approved fixed costs to avoid the game of chicken (i.e., government shut down threats) played constantly?

I support $0 based budgeting.[/quote

Quite unrealistic for the billions to be spent on disaster relief for example. Or unforeseen mass unemployment that reduces tax income...

Rose42

Not the same thing Most people are a paycheck or two from being homeless They can’t do what our government does without repercussions.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

My point was that I believe most personal budgets, for several reasons, must increase every year and sometimes there are unexpected, or careless reasons to aid in need for this increase. To think that the fed budget can be accurately forecast and should therefore not increase just doesn't make sense.

skylane5sp Loc: Puyallup, WA

Most people don't pad their personal budgets with massive pet project pork spending.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Having said that, what are you suggesting?

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

You have constantly decried the two party system as long as you have been here, but if you have ever suggested an alternative, along with some sort of mechanism for achieving it, I, for one, have missed it. Always making sure to v**e for someone who can't win doesn't count.