So Darn Cute!

Conservatives are just so precious! As Art Linkletter might put it, right-wingers say the darnedest things.

Their reaction to then-President-elect Obama's stimulus package proposal? Pure comedy gold! During their years in power, Republicans never met a spending bill they didn't adore. Expand government's scope drastically? Sure, why not? Squander our budget surplus upon giveaways for the ultra-wealthy, rather than paying down the national debt? Absolutely! An unnecessary and unfinanced war? What could be better?!

But now, with Democrats having been placed firmly in charge by the American people, righties have suddenly found religion on the subject of fiscal responsibility. After years of proclaiming (as Dick Cheney put it) that "deficits don't matter," Republicans are now awfully worried about all that darn money we collectively owe.

They essentially seem to be positing the notion that, during good economic times, government should spend like a drunken sailor, but, when the economy is performing badly, the Federal belt must be drastically tightened. See if you can get an economist to buy into that load of horse hockey.

*****

As of yesterday, the four-year right-wing whine concerning Barack Obama's Presidency began simultaneously with said Presidency, in the form of incredulity that any money would be spent on his inaugural gala. (The comical cognitive dissonance involved in decrying this expenditure after having embraced similar expenditures in 2001 and 2005 seems to have been lost on them.) And thus, presumably, begins the pattern that will dominate conservative "thought" for the next four years: "Whatever it is, I'm against it." (Thank you, Marx Brothers.)

*****

Today, I listened to the radio rantings of drug-addled Rush Limbaugh for a while. It was hilarious -- though unintentionally so. He spent well over an hour telling us, "his friends," that the end is near, that American democracy is doomed -- right up to the edge of warning us that the black helicopters were on their way.

And then he accused Democrats and their evil media conspirators of being purveyors of negativity!

I laughed so hard that I nearly wet myself.

*****

But, hey, no matter what may come, the next four years should be interesting, if only to watch the insulated and privileged on the right wallow in their own imagined victimhood, to listen to the endless whining.

Good times!