Rancid Fake Mayonnaise on the Table

In the Spirit of Bipartisanship, which Washington politicians cluelessly seem to think is the nirvana of every unemployed, underemployed, uninsured, underinsured, struggling shlub in these United States, the two Senate Whips are going to sit down. At a table. With everything on it. Like adults. Let the nation rejoice while they feast, because just watching them stuff themselves on their own egos is reward enough for us, the little people.






They Put Excitement Back in the Baloney Sandwich!

  
Here is how it went down in what Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace called a moment of Television Diplomacy. Senator Dick Majority Durbin told Jon Minority Kyl (pronounced Kyle, not Kill, but don't ask me why) that he would discuss not only "improving"  Medicare and Social Security and keeping all the Mexicans behind the border fence where they belong, if only his "friend across the aisle" would agree to talk about the DREAM Act. And Jon said OK, the two of them can have a visit, a prelude to a dreamy conversation.

Never mind that Kyl helped stop the DREAM Act (which would give amnesty to young undocumented immigrants who have lived, worked and studied here for at least five years) in the Senate last year. Never mind that he railed against Obama's "moat joke" during his El Paso visit last week. He called it "mocking demagoguery." 

 Let's face it-- Kyl knows how it feels to be mocked.  Everybody made fun of his own little bit of mendacious demagoguery last month, about that 97 percent of Planned Parenthood abortion business. And still being the junior senator from Arizona at the advanced age of 69? That has got to hurt. So he is taking a premature retirement.  In the Senate, few people have the grace to retire until they die, or are indicted. 

But, mind you, the retirement is only from the Senate. Kyl has taken the unprecedented (and some would say presumptuous) step of announcing he will be a candidate for Vice President in 2012. He is obviously thinking ahead and realizes that whoever gets the nomination is going to be a supreme lightweight. And if by some miracle a Republican nutjob actually wins the election, Mr. Miracle Whip will become de facto president. Dick Cheney proved that this could be done. Junior Senator is demeaning, Vice P not so much. 

Moreover, despite being an semi-lame duck senator, Kyl not only retains his power --  he is increasing it. He was tapped for a new job in current VP Joe Biden's Debt Ceiling Panic Room, which involves walking across the street every day in front of cameras, saying everything is on the table, and that they are having an adult conversation. Nobody is really telling the truth and calling out the "negotiations" for what they truly are: a blatant threat by Republicans to default on the national debt unless the New Deal is dismantled. The mainstream press still deems it politically incorrect to call the GOP an extortionist criminal mob, just as it used to be politically incorrect to call enhanced interrogation techniques torture. This might take a few years, and then there's always revisionist history to contend with.

  Poor Dick Durbin, on the other hand, is the sole token "progressive" on the boring old "Gang of Six." Those senators have been meeting forever, in secret, at Gazillionaire Mark Warner's posh Virginia townhouse over dinners at a very expensive table. From all indications, those discussions are just plain tabled, although they were very, very serious and adult. 

Durbin's sole function these days appears to be placing entitlement programs on rickety back room tables in imminent danger of collapse. They're pretending to improve the recipe after the goose has already been cooked. He sure doesn't sound like such a big major whip to me. Of course, all this talk of bipartisan slashing and lashing makes me wince anyway, especially since the regular people are the ones in chains.

Time to throw out the rotten phony mayonnaise and whip up a new batch from some new, fresh and nontoxic ingredients. These senatorial food byproducts are way past their sell-by dates.