the warrior

"Harumph... Harumph... Is this thing on? Good afternoon. As most of you know, Speaker Boehner and I met with President Obama yesterday to talk about ways in which we might work together in order to confront our crippling deficit. We imagined that we had seen a little bit of light in the darkness, a little clarity coming from underneath the door of bureaucracy, but when we opened that door, do you know what we found? More darkness. In a way it was darker than the darkness we thought we were leaving because it was full of terrifying sounds which appeared to be coming towards us with breakneck speed. Can you begin to describe what that sounder like, Boehner?"   "No, I really can't Mitch, because with the absence of light I was unable to ground my imagination to objective reality."   "Which is exactly what is wrong with Obama's views on the way to save our financial future. The President's imagination is not grounded in objective reality. For example, the one thing we told him in no uncertain terms is that we will absolutely will not be discussing any increase in taxes. And then Boehner repeated his shopworn cliché about how we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem."   "I do say that a lot, Mitch, in part because I believe it. Of course if you looked at it objectively, you'd have to say that they're actually two different ways of looking at the same thing."   "But we can't look at it objectively, Boehner, because of the aforementioned lack of light and the unspeakable places it causes our imaginations to wander. Now, hard as it is to believe, an hour after we had spoken to Obama, in spite of what we had ordered him, he was on national television talking about increasing taxes. It was as though we had never had a dialogue at all, and was perfectly willing to thwart the will of the American people. It's time for us to put our foot down and say no."   "It's time to say hell no."   "It's time for us to stop the Obama agenda dead in it's tracks, but that is something the American people are not able to do, because they will not have the ability to vote him out of office until November of a future year. By then it will be too late. The new Republican president won't take office until late January. Even then it may take three or four weeks before he can extend the Bush tax cuts, because through parliamentary trickery, the Bush cuts will not be able to be extended. Instead a new bill will have to be crafted."   "It will be as though the Bush tax cuts never existed... That really boggles the mind."   "As well it should.. It's like the Twilight Zone, and that's another dimension America is not interested in visiting. But the entire issue is irrelevant, Boehner. We don't want the Bush tax cuts."    "We don't?"   "No we don't, Boehner. We want the Ryan tax cuts. If I may addle your sifter-like memory, your own caucus introduced that a couple of weeks ago. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you were pretty quick on your feet to endorse it."   "I tend to support the most constructive..."   "Much like the citizens of this great nation, there is very little I can do to help Boehner's dream of an American oligarchy come to fruition. I am saddled with a contrarian Senate seemingly unable to bend to my will. I cannot stop the motor of the world. No, only one man can do that - Boehner."   "Well, I don't know about stopping..."   "For stop it he shall, with the help of his mighty House majority. Thanks to him, there shall be no precipitous rise in the debt level. And though I am only able to cheer him on from the sidelines, Boehner is alone. He is above us and below us."   "I don't even know what that means... But I do have a mighty House majority..."   "But that will not stop a majority of the house of our nation to retch at the very mention of the word Boehner, and to cause him and his seed to suffer the scorn of many a haughty pundit."   "You're kind of bumming me out, Mitch..."   "And though you might think he would be able to find solace in the fellowship of his fellow Republicans, they will deny him as such, claiming that he deceived them into betraying their own by-and large-quite reasonable political inclinations in a vain search for corporate approval."   "You know, a lot of my business friends have been calling me to say that they believe the debt limit is kind of sacrosanct..."   "America does not know that word, and if they did, it would not sheild you from the curses that will arise whenever your name is uttered aloud for eons into the future."   "Thank God I have a lot of sick leave built up..."