What: "Sacred Cows, Angry Birds", The New York Times
When: February 19, 2011
The House of Representatives has been cutting like crazy! Down with Planned Parenthood and PBS! We can't afford to worry about mercury contamination! Safety nets are too expensive!
But keep your hands off the Defense Department's budget to sponsor Nascar racers.
"It's a great public/private partnership," said Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican.
The Defense Department claims racecar sponsorships are an important recruiting tool for the Army. The House agreed — although this might be news to the Navy and Marines, which decided a while back that a Nascar presence wasn't worth the money.
"What makes U.S. Army's motorsports initiatives successful?" Ryan Newman, driver of No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet asked his Facebook readers as he urged a show of support for the program. "In a 2009 study among fans nationwide, 37% feel more positive about the Army due to its involvement in motorsports."
I know. I know ... I know, I know, I know, IknowIknow ... I know!
Just ... let it go. Look, it's easy to pick on Gail Collins, but just ask yourself this: If you can tell this narrative, and we might find it reasonable to think it may be true, what might this suggest about society?
Just, you know—
On Friday, the House was working its way through 129 amendments to its continuing budget resolution. There would have been 130, but Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas retracted his proposal to cut off financing for President Obama's teleprompter ....
.... Let's give Speaker John Boehner credit for keeping his promise to give members more chance to debate and offer amendments. Really, if things get any more open, the members will start throwing themselves off the balcony. But not such high marks on consistency. The newly ascendant Republicans have been howling that the deficit is so big, so threatening, that no target for cutting is sacred. "Everything is on the table. We're broke," said Boehner.
But the table is mainly crowded with stuff the Republicans didn't like to begin with. Family-planning money and environmental protection, but not oil tax breaks or Nascar sponsorships. "Sesame Street" is fair game, but the Daytona 500 is untouchable.
Or what if I told you that a Wisconsin's Democratic senators have fled across state lines to avoid the band of brothers making up the Senate majority leader and Assembly speaker, who dispatched the state patrol chief—their father—to locate and retrieve holdouts denying the Republican majority the quorum required to pass a union-busting measure that has drawn thousands to street protests?
At what point do we get to hold our hands out and say, "Really? We're having this conversation?"
Sometimes I joke that if anyone ever wants to understand what's wrong with Generation X, all they need to do is watch Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire. Yes, the Brat Pack classic. And that's part of the point—this movie is apparently a classic.
My father once criticized the film, suggesting the characters were so high-strung as to be unbelievable. Perhaps he has a point.
There are about ten years of my life I can't explain to people because the story is not believable. No, it's not religious, and the aliens didn't get me. But I couldn't tell you what I was thinking through those years. Just one brilliantly stupid decision after another.
What will the tale of these years tell? Are we really, truly, actually, genuinely having this conversation? NASCAR versus Big Bird?
Something about today is simply unbelievable.
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