You think this is ridiculous? Wait until you see what Harry Reid said.
The United States 2011 final budget deficit was $1.3 Trillion. Spelled out, that’s $1,300,000,000,000. (We really need to bring the zeroes back.) Soak that in: In 2011, we spent $1.3 Trillion more than we collected in revenue. Now soak this in: Harry Reid wants credit for the deficit not being $1.301 Trillion.
Silly season in politics used to be the time leading up to the November elections, when candidates desperately made outlandish promises to voters and issued increasingly ridiculous attacks on opponents. In the perpetual crisis atmosphere of Obama’s America, silly season has joined campaign season in a never-ending insipidness. This atmosphere, in conjunction with the impermeable inside-the-beltway bubble that seems to be running out of oxygen and starving the already challenged minds of insiders, led Senator Harry Reid to say last week:
“Now remember, we’ve already done more than a billion dollars worth of cuts. We’ve already done that. So we need to get some credit for that.”
Essentially, Harry Reid is asking for credit for getting 1/1,300th of the job done so far. Even George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner was offended by Reid’s presumption.
To put this in perspective (and due to the lack of total ridicule from every serious person in the country, this actually needs to be done):
Imagine asking your mortgage holder for credit for paying them $1 on your $1,300 monthly mortgage payment.
Imagine a baseball team asking its fans for credit for scoring one run in the ninth inning in a game you’re losing 1,300 to nothing.
Imagine a food delivery truck driving from Lincoln, Nebraska to Washington, DC and asking grocery stores in DC for credit for getting one mile outside of Lincoln.
Need a few more? Here you go:
Imagine a college student who failed every other class expecting a pat on the back for the ‘C-‘ he got in media studies.
Imagine a toddler pooping in the bathtub and then claiming he’s potty-trained because he learned not to rely on his diaper (let’s assume this un-potty trained toddler is surprisingly articulate).
Imagine only one person dressed as a Smurf at the Muckno Mania Festival and wanting credit for the Guiness World Record for most people dressed as Smurfs?
Each one of these examples is utterly, farcically absurd. And that’s the point. Yet the Majority Leader in the United States Senate, one of civilization’s greatest deliberative governing bodies over the last two hundred years, reached this level of absurdity, and 53% of our mathematically-challenged country will still blame Republicans for a deal not being reached on the fiscal cliff (a poll conducted after Senator Reid’s comment).
One wonders what kind of credit Harry Reid would expect for actually solving the deficit crisis. To be declared Emperor of Earth? Well, maybe not that. Obama’s already got his eyes on that gig. Perhaps since Democrats have for so long perpetrated “the soft bigotry of low expectations” that Harry figures they deserve some of it to come back their way.
In HBO’s Girls, notoriously creepy Obama supporter Lena Dunham plays a mid-20s, college graduate living in NYC, working an unpaid internship, and writing a book. In the show’s opening scene, her parents threaten to stop enabling her lifestyle by cutting her off monetarily, and she reacts with an angry tirade claiming that they should give her credit for not being a drug addict.
And in a country where the absurd Harry Reid gets to be leader of the Senate, why wouldn’t she think that way.
BIASBREAKDOWN 
Longtime reader, First time poser!
First, “Emperor of the earth”? Obama is certainly ambitious but not nearly assertive enough to fit that title; however, you have produced a wonderful image for me–two juxtaposed images in a single frame actually! One in which Alexander the Great bows to the High Priest in Jerusalem whilst expanding his empire and another in which Obama bows to the Saudi king whilst… well, I supposed you called it. Emperor it is.
Second, some of the analogies you have chosen to illustrate the gravity of the situation also produce interesting images. In some of them, the characters wanting credit are set up against what seem incredible odds. And the reasons are thus: either (I will start with the baseball team analogy) the team with 1 on the board completely sucks OR (onto the baby analogy) the task of taking a crap is “baby step” maturing into full strides of development. We can spin either positively or negatively. For instance, if a team manages to score on another that has already managed to score 1,300, that’s relatively impressive considering the unbalanced match up. And, still maturing or not, an extraordinarily articulate toddler should be also aware that pooping in the bathtub does not constitute proper bathroom etiquette.
That being said, the question in this particular case is whether we want to look at Harry Reid and the current administration as being too big for their britches, britches that some qualified representative could fill like they were skinny jeans, OR we see the situation as being like a game against the alien team in Space Jam in which the looney tunes team is without Michael Jordan or Bugs (yea, I switched to basketball)!
Of course, we can also save time and consider that the problem with analogies is they try to parallel two things that cannot be perfectly parallel; at some point, they collide. I am confident the source of your anger is that Reid and the administration facilitated (take notice I did not say created) the problems that contributed to the final deficit. Baby Reid could have just went boom boom in his diapers like usual and saved Mom and Dad the clean-up duty. But nope! Somebody has to clean up someone else’s mess while that person runs down the halls, pants half-way to his ankles, singing “I’m a big boy now!” The current singing in this situation certainly doesn’t help. But, hopefully, one day we will have representatives that can reminisce and think, “aww, wasn’t that cute?” while they wipe and flush like adults.
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hahaha… wow, evan. I’ve been known to overextend an analogy myself but you really took it to a new level there. Well done!
At $16 Trillion, maybe we are in Space Jam range. If that’s the case, I’d prefer Bill Murray over these current clowns. At least he’d be funny.
As for you last sentence… Yes, “hopefully”.
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