The Loop / Golf Digest — White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus reportedly emerged from the GOP’s House healthcare victory last week by telling a reporter, “The president stepped up and helped punt the ball into the end zone,” a statement that assumes:
You can score touchdowns while punting.
Punters have helpers, and . . .
Trump wanted to… safely return the ball to the opposing team?
Styrofoam cups, which Republicans approve of more than Natalie Portman.
GateHouse — If you should happen to find yourself enjoying a twilight stroll this spring, if you should be out soaking up the blood-warming sunshine, breezes and birdsongs and thinking there might just be some hope left in this wacky world after all, look up the story about Republicans, Capitol Hill and styrofoam cups. If you are anything like me, which you’re not, because you’re probably not crying inconsolably, it’ll send you into instant depression and a degenerative terror spiral that will culminate with your packing your valuables into a tied-up handkerchief, slinging it over your back and vanishing forever into the frozen Canadian wilderness where, with any luck, you will be mauled by a bear.
Let me hop back a step: Most clear-brained Americans, and by that I mean anyone who has never appeared on TV identified by the word “Commentator” or (ED.: PLEASE INSERT SHEEN THING HERE, THANKS) would agree that in a rational universe there can, and should, be debate about a kamikaze budget. There should be debate about the appropriate and wise way to proceed with health care reform. Apparently there can be debate about how much health care the school teachers in Wisconsin should get which is OK but you know what, whatever, debate is good, right?
There is no longer debate about Styrofoam; the matter, much like the hazards of smoking and the mathematical whole of that rap-metal movement of the early 2000s, has been settled, at least by anyone who doesn’t spend a good deal of time commenting on message boards in the dark. Styrofoam is petroleum-based and if it was brought over by the Pilgrims it might have broken down by now. No one likes Styrofoam, there are only people who disapprove of it by varying degrees, ranging from “Gravely Concerned 23-Year-Old Whose Parents Are Buying Her A Volt” to “It’s A Cup, I’ll Use This One Instead, And Why Are We Still Talking About This Again?”
And yet it’s in the news again, because after a lengthy, yearslong and complicated debate over matters of environmental concerns, political posturing and oh for God’s sake Republicans are being children about it.
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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