‘The Shining’ — national debt edition
By Matt Miller, Wednesday, April 20, 12:01 PM
Remember that great scene in the 1980 film classic, “The Shining,”
Remember that time when political writers didn’t defer their responsibility to generate a compelling narrative to tenuous analogies? Yeah, neither do I, but then, I was born in 1986. Holla back, old people.
when the wife comes upon the typewriter
Or, as those of us born after 1985 call it: “a prop from the set of Mad Men.”
of the Jack Nicholson character,
Dammit, Miller. You’ve already ruined Nicholson for me once. http://embracethedivide.blogspot.com/2011/03/ruining-jack-nicholson.html
who’s supposed to have been working night and day for months on his novel?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest would be only slightly more appropriate, but I'll accede to your obnoxious choice of references.
To her horror, she finds thousands of pages on which Jack has typed, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” formatted in countless, crazy ways.
I’ve seen The Shining, and I’m still kind of shocked that you can format text on a typewriter. I'm still kind of fixated on those creepy sisters. They kind of remind me of Katrina Vanden Heuvel.
Suddenly his suspected madness becomes all too frighteningly real.
Like any good horror movie, the audience is perpetually annoyed at the characters' blissful ignorance at the incredibly suspicious behavior around them. So we watch in a state of nagging irritation as the miserably oblivious characters stumble in and out of situations created by pure stupidity. OF COURSE MATTMILLER IS BATSHIT CRAZY; HE WROTE AN ENTIRE COLUMN IN THE FORM OF A FICTIONAL GAME SHOW ABOUT WHY WE NEED HIGHER GAS TAXES! LESS THAN A MONTH AGO!
If there’s a way to scream a semicolon, I just pulled it off like a champ.
Well, debt limit mania has driven me to a similar frenzied state.
As in…axe murder in a hedge maze?
If my wife came across my manuscript it would read, “The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit. The House Republican budget adds $6 trillion to the debt in the next decade yet the GOP is balking at raising the debt limit.”
Not exactly punchy.
I thought about making this week’s column that one sentence printed over and over 30 times.
I have to give it to him. He actually could have written something dumber than this column.
It would have been the opinion page equivalent of a Dada-esque protest against the inanity of the debate —
The opinion page is not artistic in any way. Neither is Dadaism. The only common link between opinion writers and Dadaists is a stifling morass of self-importance.
and a cry for every news outlet to focus on this simple, clarifying fact.
First, you compare yourself to an axe murderer.
Then you flirt with Dadaism—an artistic movement/philosophy literally based on the ideal of nonsense.
Clarity, you dim-witted miscreant, is an attribute that has never introduced itself to you.
(Close your eyes for a moment
Around a guy fantasizing about being an axe murderer? Fuck no!
and picture such a column — kinda fun, don’t you think?
You need some new ways to have fun. No one give Matt a slinky. He’ll have to spend the next three weeks delighted that it walks down stairs.
And imagine the trend it might have sparked among pundits who found they could do their jobs with more zen-like elegance than ever before.
There’s nothing zen-like or elegant about murderous rampages.
Just distill and hammer home the single thought readers need that week to alter their worldview — more powerful than a haiku;
Things more powerful than a haiku:
The tensile strength of saliva
The lyrics of a Ke$ha song
The fielding acumen of Manny Ramirez
(you get the idea)
less evanescent than a tweet.)
Is that really desirable?
Why bother with evidence, logic, or compelling arguments at all. Just assert. Because the common man doesn’t need proof; all he really needs is the reassurance of being able a script generated by the intelligentsia.
But there’s more to say.
And yet you’ve said absolutely nothing more this entire column (except of course, some very revealing fantasies about wilting into a murderous psychotic).
For the life of me I don’t understand why the press
Note that he regards the press—to which he is inescapably melded—as monolithic. Kind of depressing.
doesn’t shove this fact in front of every Republican who says the debt limit cannot be raised unless serious new spending cuts are put in place.
Ostensibly, this would be a good argument for more extensive spending cuts.
The supposedly “courageous,” “visionary” Paul Ryan plan — which already contains everything Republicans can think of in terms of these spending cuts
Not by a long shot. This is still a political document, after all.
— would add more debt than we’ve ever seen over a 10-year period in American history.
Which, of course, is an asinine factoid for two reaons. 1) it again argues for more aggressive spending cuts (which I support and Matt Miller opposes) and 2) budgeting is done using a baseline. That baseline is calculated off of trended projections. Because of the last two years, the trend has been significantly upwards, which means that the cuts from the baseline are still adding debt.
Yet Ryan and other House GOP leaders continue to make outrageous statements to the contrary.
And then of course there are the proposed alternatives: “The People’s Budget,” so beloved by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, is designed to tax people until there is no more wealth created in the United States. There can be absolutely no doubt that it will not provide the economic benefits that it promises because it refuses to factor in the negative impact of tax increases on economic growth.
The second alternative, which the Ryan plan combats effectively, is the status quo. This is the comparison Republicans are drawing. Without giving too much credit to a man who is clearly off his rocker, Matt Miller understands this.
Without blushing. And without anyone calling them on it.
Seriously now, you’re saying we should cut more? You sure?
“The spending spree is over,”
Note: Spending. Not deficit.
Ryan said the other day, after the House passed his blueprint. “We cannot keep spending money we don’t have.”
This week from Obama: “We can’t spend more than we take in.”
Except that by his own reckoning Ryan is planning to spend $6 trillion we don’t have in the next decade alone.
Considering that the 2010 budget deficit alone is somewhere in the range of $1.3B, this represents an average annual deficit reduction of 43%.
The more you know!
“We have too many people worried about the next election and not worried about the next generation,” Ryan added.
Which is a signal to any reasonable person that the demonstrable benefits of the Ryan plan come years, even decades down the road.
So Ryan is expressing his concern by adding at least $14 trillion to the debt between now and when his plan finally balances the budget sometime in the 2030s (and only then if a number of the plan’s dubious assumptions come to pass).
Compared to, say, the progressive caucus’ “People’s Budget,” which balances the budget only when the rules of economics and the fundamental state of the human condition are rewritten.
“We cannot afford to ignore this coming fiscal train wreck any longer,” Eric Cantor says. “Complacency is not an option.” Well, if $14 trillion in fresh debt and unbalanced budgets until the 2030s do not amount to “complacency,” I’d hate to hear what the GOP definition of “profligacy” is.
Those two words aren’t antonyms.
Yes, I know: The Democrats’ plans are no better on the debt
Great. You're right. Stop here. You’re going to embarrass yourself if you keep going.
(though it must be noted that the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far;
Too late.
it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts).
Also, a giant government program called the Found Money Trust. Basically it hires 50,000 new government employees to sit around and wait to stumble upon a giant pile of money, The budget is more or less dependent on the revenue generation from this program.
But at least Democrats aren’t rattling markets by hypocritically holding the debt limit hostage while planning to add trillions in fresh debt themselves.
Did he even notice that Standard and Poors downgraded the US
It’s amazing how some memes, once established as conventional wisdom, are almost impossible to dislodge,
For example:
George Bush is a dullard.
Sarah Palin is a dullard.
Michelle Bachmann is a dullard.
Condaleeza Rice is a dullard.
The Tea Party is racist.
The Tea Party screamed racial slurs at a Black Congressman.
Scott Walker hates all Unions
In case it wasn’t patently obvious, all are demonstrably false. We done?
Nope. Let’s try one more:
Barack Obama is eloquent.
however at odds they are with the facts. Griping about this to a Prominent Media Figure
That prominent media figure should know enough about media to tell you that “prominent media figure” is not a proper noun.
the other day, I suggested that maybe if I set myself on fire in Times Square while spouting the truth about Republican debt, the truth would break through.
No, but you would be on fire, you crazy son of a bitch.
“Maybe,” he said. “But then you’d be seen as the radical.”
I hate to break it to you, but you are a radical. Not only do you want an asinine gasoline tax, but you also have presented a highlight reel of inaccurate and out-of-context statements about the budget proposals. That this “prominent media figure”—still not a capital noun, mind you—doesn’t already know this about you buttresses what conservatives have said about prominent media figures for decades.
The classic definition of chutzpah was a kid who kills his parents and then asks for the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.
Good lord, your mind is a twisted, wretched place. I've never read a major political contributor so unnecessarily obsessed with murder, death, and destruction.
The new definition of chutzpah is Republicans who vote for the Ryan plan that adds trillions in debt and who then say the debt limit goes up only over their dead bodies!
Republicans aren’t categorically refusing to raise the debt limit. They are simply demanding something in return. This is, after all, politics.
If I were Barack Obama, my mantra on this week’s debt tour
He’s not doing a debt tour; he’s campaigning. Yes already.
and in the months ahead would be that we should lift the debt limit only by as much debt as is needed to accommodate Paul Ryan’s budget.
Republicans would absolutely agree. In fact, let’s pass the legislation to raise the debt ceiling with the Ryan budget. Let's do it tomorrow.
The president and his team should say this every time they’re asked about the debt limit until people can’t stand hearing it any more.
They would only have to say it once. The Republicans would take them up on it so fast that there’s be a stampede back to the Capitol.
All I know is somebody better start saying this soon or I may be forced to do something desperate.
Your life is desperate. We are all now slightly more pathetic for having shared in your tragic ramblings for a few minutes.
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