Deck Chairs on the Titanic

It appears that our little ship of state has another captain at the helm. I give you Grover Norquist. Instead of the Captain Edward Smith who went down with his ship, Grover seems bent on ramming the iceberg to prove a point. I re-read the constitution the other day and some related documents that have to deal with the "oath" that congressmen and senators take when they assume the elected office. It goes something like this: Now some of our elected representatives have taken an oath issued by Grover and it reads as a pledge to be signed and mailed in to some Taxpayer thing that he runs. Some of the fellows in the House of Representatives adhere to the pledge they signed and mailed in to Mr. Norquist. It appears that Mr. Cantor and more than a few others are going to uphold their pledge rather than their oath. Let's be clear. Here is the Norquist oath:

With me so far?

So we are in a bit of a crisis mode right now. The country runs out of money in about 3 weeks and it takes a bit of time to get legislation written and voted on etc., so there isn't any time left really. It is realizing that the mortgage payment is due in 3 weeks and there is no money in the bank and one has to find a job and it has to issue a paycheck in a very small period of time. It might not happen and Grover's Pledge is a sticking point. Simply his pledge is trumping a constitutional oath.

Norquist is, essentially, authoring and ratifying an amendment to the constitution and now that a majority of legislators of the majority party in the House have signed this pledge they are, we would think, between a rock and a hard place but not so. There is a certain "cake and eat it too" mentality afoot here wherein a few of these clowns - well more than a few - are rationalizing it with the "the problem is spending not revenues" or "there is no need to consider raising taxes" type of statements. Actually revenues are down because of both the recession and the lowest tax rates in 50+ years....well that and 57% of corporations paying NO taxes and the top 20 actually getting money back after paying no tax whatsoever. Warren Buffet pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary.

So now Boehner has announced that he has abandoned the big picture solution and just wants to cut spending - he also signed the Norquist pledge. Cantor and a bunch of others are missing in action, long ago taken the pledge over the oath of office.

So here we are. Captain Grover is pushing the full speed ahead control and the lookouts are shouting iceberg. The captain has no control because there is a pledge floating in the sea ahead and it is trumping the constitution. Grab a deck chair. All hands on deck.