S-0-S

Me listening for those voices, at the Large Visual Array - Magdalena, NM

Can any American not be totally embarrassed by the dysfunctional mess that is currently masquerading as our government? I don't care which side of the aisle you are on, it is time for the politicians to act professional, pull their big boy pants up and cut through the bullshit. Get something done.

Currently we have the usual suspects pointing fingers at each other over who is really to blame for the pending doom that is the sequester. Aren't you sick of the ever present blame game? We all act so pious in treating the other guy and other side as dastardly evildoers intent on bringing down civilization as we know it. Everybody is on their high horse. So sure of the purity of our motives. Get over it already.

With the country split fifty fifty, what we have going now is no way to run a country. Something has to give, we have to start listening to each other and compromising. Because the way it lays out now, nobody is going to get their way.  So divided, we can look forward to a dismal future pattern of temporary flips and power shifts, in which we get to vilify the other side for four years and we accomplish nothing as a nation in the interim.

It's a real bad marriage right now but we are going to have to stick it out and talk to each other civilly, at least until the kids are grown or we get hit by that comet, whichever comes first.

*
Having said that, on a strategic level, the Democrats would probably be smart to sit back and watch their opposition immolate themselves. The fear of the current mainstream republican at the moment is getting attacked by their own on the right flank and losing the next primary election. With dour conservatives like Mitch McConnell now getting pilloried as too moderate and establishment, there is in reality a little civil war going on in the GOP. Watch Rove get lambasted by the tea party. Watch him strike back. Very entertaining to a political junkie. As any cop will tell you, it's dangerous to get involved in a domestic dispute. Probably smarter to just sit back and watch them have it out.

Boehner and Rubio seem to be blaming Obama for not providing coverage from the cannibals in the Republican Party and for being insensitive to the plight and pressure they are under from the most extreme right. The reality is that it is not the president's job to referee the republicans and protect them from themselves.  The leadership needs to show that they can bring their membership together to make a deal, any deal. I am not sure that it can be done. There has not yet been enough political blood spilled in the street. Their street.

Of course now is the time that the skillful scholar and devotee of game theory would start considering his or her triangulation gambits. Like the Israelis' adept work with the House of Saud, all practiced under the cover of darkness.

I guess it all depends on what your motivation is. If it is about issues and principles and creating effective legislation or merely excoriating your enemies and keeping political power. Will be interesting.

*