On The Radar, Not Enough

Peg President Thompson in the "Stunned, But In A Good Sort Of Way" category on the Bowles-Simpson trial balloon:

"...It's the first serious stab at doing something that a lot of us have been talking about for a long, long time and saying 'please, please address this situation before they're taking to the streets here, clamoring for more government money and more government handouts'..."

Actually it's a whole lot of too late if those are the criteria.  Then there's the matter of whether a meaningless trial balloon to a meaningless commission to which Barack Obama will never listen if it produces such sacriledge and blasphemies counts as a "serious stab".  Whether it'll "force" into the national debate the steps that alone can save America from fiscal Armageddon - entitlements privatization, permanent tax reductions, draconian and permament spending cuts bound and gagged by a serious (i.e. spending control-oriented) Balanced Budget Amendment - remains to be seen, and will depend on whether Bowles and Simpson are throwing this out there as an token opening ante to get pulverized before retreating to "safe, acceptable" hardleft pablum.  As the old saying goes, "The race does not always go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet".

Personally I think last week's midterm election did far more than any BS commissionary circle-jerk to put real fiscal responsibility back on the public radar screen.  And so, sort of, does Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad:

The Senate's top Democrat on budgetary issues said that colleagues should be willing to "sacrifice" their political careers in order to get the U.S. on a better fiscal path.

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said that bringing down deficits and debt would require tough choices like the ones proposed on Wednesday by the leaders of President Obama's fiscal commission, recommendations that have already been met with a chilly reception.

"There is no way of doing it that's not controversial or difficult," Conrad said on ABC's "Good Morning America" of the panel's recommendations. "If some of us have to sacrifice a political career to get this country back on track, then so be it."

Of course, having voted for Hogzilla and ObamaCare leaves Conrad with precisely ZERO credibility to be issuing such pronouncements, however superficially accurate they may be.  I tend to think this is his first indication that he may not seek re-election in 2012 after seeing his state's other Senate seat formerly held by fellow Donk Byron Dorgan flip Republican by a better than three to one margin.  The handwriting on the wall, as it were.  Because as we all should know by now, there is no such thing as an honorable, responsible, self-sacrificial Democrat.

On the other hand, by "colleagues" Conrad could simply mean "Republicans":

Sure; you can see it now, can't you?  All these TPer-agitated rightwingnuts flocking to D.C. certain of their mission of slaying the Obamunist debt beast, and old Donk bulls like Kent Conrad will happily stand back and let them try, secure in the smug knowledge of their utter and complete self-destruction.  Once those unwanted "colleagues" are out of the way, eradicated by an American public that really is Obamunist to the core after all, the "transformation" of America into the United Soviet Socialist States of Obamerika can continue.

Unless something really has changed over the past two years.  Unless the Tea Party really is the manifestation of that change.  Unless We, The People really are at long last willing to accept Change That Can Save Us from economic destruction and national oblivion.

Throws a whole new spin on this ridiculous notion, doesn't it?

Or, rather, the same old one.