Sometimes you have to step back and just marvel at the madness of it all.
Congressional Democrats, clinging to the last vestiges of their power, are tied in knots over how to pass middle class tax cuts in the face of Republicans howling that the wealthy deserve tax cuts, too.
The White House meanwhile announces that it is undertaking good faith negotiations on tax cuts with those same Republicans who have made clear that they will never support raising taxes on anyone. Ever.
At the same time, Republicans have privately reached agreement among themselves that they will not allow anything through the lame duck session of Congress — not START, not DADT repeal, nothing — until an agreement is reached on the tax cuts that they refuse to budge on which will dramatically inflate the very same deficit that they publicly declare to be the gravest threat to America’s future.
Not to be outdone, the debt commission appointed by the President releases its prescription for deficit reduction comically titled “Moment of Truth” — except that the commission can’t seem to agree on its own recommendations and has had to delay its own vote on whether to actually, you know, recommend the recommendations it just released.
No amount of shrewd analysis can get you around the rampant dysfunction we’re witnessing.
