Yeah, take that love to the CBO with those budget forms, you chirpy red granola bar

GateHouse — Big losers in the budget passed by the House of Representatives: Ira Glass, people who have yet to realize the dream of having Carl Kasell’s voice on their home answering machine, people who hate eating hairball-and-sawdust-contaminated hot dogs, women, Elmo. Actually those last two may be redundant, as I’ve never been able to satisfactorily determine the gender of Elmo (despite its name, which can be either a boy or girl name in his Kenyan birthplace), but it doesn’t matter, as funding to research the gender of Elmo has also been cut.

Welcome to month one of Budget Nightmare Hellscape Awful Craptacular Hatefest, only the very beginning of almost certainly intolerable decades-long hypocrisy slog in which everyone will light torches and carry pitchforks and light pitch-torches (the latest new thing in angry mob chic, Kanye blogged about them even) about how important it is to cut the budget, and then light torches and carry pitchforks and light pitch-torches when things they like start getting cut from the budget.

Indeed, many Americans, having failed after the last election to see an instant, glorious and revelatory increase in their quality of life, have made a Drastic Change, which will remain firmly in place precisely until the next election cycle, in which people will very likely fail to see an instant, glorious and revelatory increase in their quality of life, and make a Drastic Change. This will continue to go on for time immemorial, until hopefully, Earth is hit by an asteroid, which we won’t know is coming, as asteroid-looking-for funding has been cut by the House.

The budget is a slashfest of non-defense discretionary spending, which is pronounced “the part that isn’t Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or the military,” so it’s a little like carrying a $79,000 credit card bill but being really serious about maximizing the Red Lobster gift certificate. Luckily, many of the of the most visible targets are all Muppets, like Snuffleupagus and Big Bird and Jim Lehrer, as the House budget zeroes out funding from those controversial Juan Williams-firers at NPR, PBS, and other stations that occasionally contain programming that doesn’t involve something like Bret Michaels crossing a rope bridge over a pond of flaming crocodile, which I’ve just realized I’ve written like it’s a bad thing.

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Tom Waits – ‘Til The Money Runs Out

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