Prickly

My boys were wanting cactus plants, so we went to the plant store and I had them pick out a cactus plant they liked. B2 originally picked one cactus plant, then settled on another, and B1 suggested I take that plant, too, so it wouldn't feel bad at not getting picked. Anyway, it's cute how much the boys are loving their plants. I put'em on the sill, and named my plant Stickler. B2 named his "Giant Red Spikeler," and B1 named his "Spikeless."

Left to right: B1's, mine, and B2's cacti.

It's cute how much B2 loves his cactus. Also, the lemon seeds I planted are sprouting, so we have some seedlings growing, too, along with the other plants. I like for the boys to have their own lil' plants like that. B2 keeps checking out his cactus, told me its nickname is "Jabber."

Amazing that my boys have grown so much over the past couple of years -- B1 has grown 5 inches in the past 2 years; B2 has grown 4 inches in the same time. They're growing so quickly.

Endgame

So, we're about a week from economic helter-skelter, yes? Kinda curious how this all pans out. We have the neofascist Tea Bagger faction hell-bent on killing Social Security and Medicare by any means possible, and clearly willing to destroy the economy to do so (and adopting the oddly contradictory stance that raising the debt ceiling will destroy the country, but failing to do so will cause no problems whatsoever -- so, paying our bills is cataclysmic, not paying our bills is fine?? Right, guys.) We have the establishment Republicans squirming, trying to deliver results their Wall Street masters wish for them, and we have the ever-keen-to-appease Democrats bowing and scraping to this rabidly partisan faction, trying to offer a number of sweetheart budget deals that would eviscerate the Democratic base and screw poor folks in general, and still the Baggers turn their noses up at it. It's a curious situation. I know the GOP's strategy of keeping Obama from getting anything accomplished they pursued when he won is central to this approach, but it's still curious to see how far they'll take it.

Because I think the political fallout of their recalcitrance in the face of Obama's supine negotiating posture (to date) is going to make them look like the neofascist dogs that they are, and will banish them to the electoral weeds for a generation. I mean, the worst thing they could do to Obama would be to approve the invidious budgets he offered them, because they would scuttle everything Democrats still pretend to stand for -- it would tar the Democratic label worse than ever. That would be a political deathblow. But the reactionaries are so partisan that they are willing to frag the nation's economy in an effort to get at Obama.

I mean, they lose their shit over Obamacare, which is the most pro-corporate, pro-private insurance "reform" ever foisted on the American people. It's no illusion that it's Romneycare under a new label, which says everything about how pro-industry it is. Obama isn't a socialist, isn't a Marxist; he's a right-center Democrat, which is effectively Republican Lite -- Obama is governing like a Reagan Democrat, circa the 1980s. He's nowhere close to LBJ, JFK, Truman, or FDR. He's far closer to Reagan or Eisenhower in his governing approach, sorry to say. But the Tea Baggers have goose-stepped so far off to the right that they can't even see it -- because Obama is to their left (and, at this point, only the Nazis stand to the right of these Tea Baggers), they cry "socialist" without a shred of evidence behind it. Ludicrous. Insane.

The financial markets of the world have to be watching this and thinking "America is losing its fucking mind." And we are. The country is having a nervous breakdown. Needlessly, I might add -- the Baggers are a loud, media-manufactured minority with an incoherent agenda centered only on seizure of power, nothing more. They want "less government" but favor "more military" (FYI, dumbshits: the military IS government), they want their piece of the action but don't want to pay for it through taxes, they favor lower taxes for the rich (and, sadly, the vast majority of the Baggers aren't even among the top 1% they worship), blah blah blah. Pathetic.

They are a faction, and, as Madison pointed out, long ago, faction is deadly to a republic. What a faction wants is contrary to what the rest of the country wants, and that is exactly the pickle they find themselves in. Their ideas run counter to what the majority of Americans actually want, so the Bagger solution? Destroy the country, rather than change their tune.

Anyway, should be interesting. Will the Democrats come up with an even more craven, conciliatory slab of gristle to offer the American people in their effort to please a rabid minority that only wants Democrats to be destroyed? Will the various establishment Quislings find some way of appeasing their corporate masters with some "compromise" the Gliberal Media will solemnly pimp to Americans as a statesmanlike way out of the headlong charge into the abyss? Will Obama show some leadership and either nix the debt ceiling unilaterally and/or come up with a ballsy budget that raises revenue and sticks a thumb squarely into the eyes of the reactionaries? Or will we actually plunge into the abyss? Stay tuned.