Katoomba, Australia 2011: Shopping for a cliff over which the US economy could mercifully throw itself could be a worthy full-time job for some government operative. But short of finding the perfect location, Feds seems rather content to keep on strangling the economy in the public square.

From Trent Ling:

In yet another partisan tizzy over nothingness, the Democratic President and Senate, and the Republican House continue to mouth wall-to-wall nonsense over what has been deemed “The Fiscal Cliff.”  For starters, the dire term is a misnomer.  On November 17 of this year, this writer tweeted: “Fiscal Cliff is what awaits when shell game finally ends & US becomes Greece.  The January Cliff is just a set of items forever postponed.”

The agreement to automatic cuts (which are now inappropriately called “The Fiscal Cliff”) resulted from the 2011 brouhaha wherein the silly and ever-cowardly political parties agreed to a debt-ceiling increase with the proviso that an inability to agree upon later budget cuts would automatically effectuate various spending cuts.  Of course, the 100% certainty that no intervening spending-reduction agreement would be reached has now been realized.  So, the anemic partisans now spend their days and nights scurrying about and trying to undo what they last agreed to do when they last actually had to do something.  Could any rational person consider this anything other than a full-blown, excruciatingly unfunny circus?

With no money, even less wisdom, and hardly a scruple, government leaders will make a big show across these two post-election months trying to rearrange their prior decisions and allocations.  No new ideas, no solutions, no surrender, and no conscience will be brought to bear.  Only more of the same to the drumbeat of Chinese water torture.  The stunning myopia of all involved has reached inconceivable depths.  The President retains only the idea of robbing the rich; House Speaker Boehner has already taken multiple conflicting positions before renewed negotiations have even begun; and a Senate that has not passed a budget in many years has not yet mustered the decency to recuse itself from the discussion.

On July 10 of this year, this writer tweeted:  “It’s not about taxes, it’s about spending. All would gladly pay more in taxes if it wasn’t going to vaporize immediately in federal hands.”

Still true!

In reality, the collective “fiscal cliff” harangue concerns less than 10% of the actual annual budgetary crisis.  But, rather than address the real problem of chronic spending, “leaders” sit around and decide how to dole out funds that do not even exist. Neither the President nor the Senate has issued any meaningful words ever concerning the other 90+% of the crisis (the unconscionable runaway spending).  But, in a world where nobody understands this stuff, and with a government where ethics are only constraining to the extent demanded by a dozing electorate, this current state of disarray will seem like a party for all when compared to the coming days when the immutable laws of physics, mathematics, and reaping/sowing calculi take hold of this mess by the throat.  Then, the real fiscal cliff will hit, and as is usual and predictable, the vast majority of numbskulls will boo-hoo and take to the streets rather than wake themselves up into human beings with half of a modicum of decency and sense.

What a quagmire.  And worse yet, there exists zero-point-zero indication that any of these decision makers have learned anything at all, ever.  Still worse, the people look to these office holders to fix the very messes that never would have existed had these same office holders not invented and propagated the messes in the first place.

Solace can be had in the undeniable fact that at this pace, the end of civilization must be near.  No anarchy or any associated chaos could be nearly this corrupt.

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