Day 70...Dear Mr. President... "I wouldn't give your troubles to a monkey on a rock."

Day 70

Dear Mr. President,

Trying to follow all the news about the debt ceiling/budget talks, listening to all the commentators, and fact checking everything to see who’s accurate and who’s not is a big job. So big in fact that I’m quite literally worn out just trying to sort out everything that’s being said and wondering if anything is actually being done.

As David Letterman would say… “I wouldn’t give your troubles to a monkey on a rock!”

With the troubles you’re having you must be beyond exhausted tying to work the GOP gang. Trying to work with Boehner and Cantor reminds me of something that John F. Kennedy said… “You cannot negotiate with people who say ‘what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.”

And therein lies the problem… the Republicans want what they want, and they don’t want what you want… no matter what it is. Even if you wanted the same thing they wanted they would figure out a way to not want it after all. In other words… you simply can’t win.

So here’s what I would tell them in the next round of talks… I’ve stolen it from Alan Greenspan, but I don’t think he’ll mind because he’s already come to the same conclusion… along with the rest of the rational world… that you can’t please the GOP. I don’t know when Greenspan said it, or what he was referencing, but I believe it’s apropos to how your ‘negotiations’ with the GOP are going. "I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant” – Alan Greenspan

Isn’t that pretty much what’s been happening Mr. President? Confusing, twisted, difficult for the rest of us to follow the logic of it, but on the other hand, somehow true.

And something else Greenspan said recently, is also quite telling… “The fact that I am in favor of going back to the Clinton tax structure is merely an indication of how scared I am about how the debt problem has emerged and it’s order of magnitude.” – Alan Greenspan

                 

I think that about sums it up for the rest of us too. We’re scared. It’s impossible to keep up with what’s going on in the talks, and sorting the facts from fiction. I think you’ve tried to give us a good idea from your perspective and I appreciate it very much. However, I’m still confused as to how it’s all going to work out, and concerned that once again the ‘average American’ is going to be put on the sacrificial alter and offered up as a ‘compromise’ just to ‘please’ the GOP.

And as so many commentators have recently asked, “Has the GOP gone insane?” I have one suggestion that might work as a cure for the GOP’s insanity… send them all to Michele Bachmann’s husband…  maybe he can ‘pray away the insane.’

Most Respectfully,

Marcia Reimers

Your Gadfly Granny