Friday Funday: Weddings and Holidays

By the time you read this today - even before we publish this today - the future King of England, Prince William, and his new bride, Princess Catherine, will be married, have gained new titles (Duke And Dutchess of Cambridge), and will have been celebrating for some time at Windsor Castle.

To be frank, while we admire some of the pomp and circumstance of such a massive event, the media circus that goes with it is something we could do without.

We think the most important part of the young royals' wedding will be the same as any other wedding of two people we hope to see live a long and happy life together - the marriage.

Every current member of our staff has been with their spouse for a long, long time. Even though we have all been involved in professional pursuits that - at times - have had our significant others concerned about our finances (if not our sanity), our spouses have allowed us to work in cartooning, broadcasting & media, and language translation & editing without much complaint or persuasion to choose other, more lucrative, career paths.

To say our spouses are fantastic is an understatement. They've all been nominated for sainthood, in our hearts, for standing beside each of us every step along the way.

We understand, in part thanks to our careers, some of the kinds of twists and turns that Kate and William will likely experience. Everyone thinks that the royal family members have life easy - and in some ways, they do. We doubt, for example, that either William or Kate will ever go truly hungry. The benefits of their station are enormous and unique, much as many of our own benefits are to us. The people we know, and the connections we have, make us blush sometimes at what seems like our sheer dumb luck. While we rarely acknowledge it publicly, we often wonder how we got to such fantastic places in our lives.

There is a price to pay for that good fortune, however - for us, as well as for William and Kate.

The responsibilities we have are heavy and many. For example, we will be, once again, traveling this weekend, to several events and meetings, and our abilities to truly rest will be limited, as they often are when our duties and loyalties call us away from our reading corners and couches. But as we noted, we've been blessed with some incredible people in our lives, and we're more than happy to trade a few harried trips down the interstate, and through airports, in order to collect the benefits of friendship and our careers that we've been so lucky to obtain.

To whatever degree you have been blessed, we're sure you also understand about the weight of your responsibilities, and the benefits of your own place in life too.

We also know that those benefits are always made sweeter by having our significant others in our lives, to share those great moments with them.

In the midst of all the hustle and bustle this weekend, we hope that Kate and Will do what we entreat all newly married couples to do: take a minute, just a moment, to be with each other, not as prince and princess, or media celebrities - but just as a couple of people who care about each other deeply.

We hope they take our suggestion for a momentary holiday from the craziness of their own wedding day to celebrate the one thing that always has gotten each of us through our own difficult times in life.

Our very significant others.

May you have a moment of your own this weekend to share with the people you care about most.

Obama To America: It's Time To Grow Up

There has been action on political topics of note around the country - like the latest infuriating news about the attempt by the Keystone Cops of safe oil handling, TransCanada. They continue their efforts to drive the Keystone pipeline through places in Nebraska where the people who live there really don't want it. Today, though, we're going to follow the President's lead from Wednesday.

We're going to address this issue just one more time.

In case you missed President Obama's press conference on Monday, we can give you the "Shorter Obama" as they say on Twitter. In short, he presented his long-form birth certificate, and told the nation - especially the media - to grow up.

We have a whole slew of problems to handle as a nation, problems we discuss and debate with you every day here at The Daily Felltoon. The Federal budget. The Federal debt ceiling. State budgets. State laws. Wars that our country is involved in, like Afghanistan and the cleanup still going on in Iraq. Wars we're just sending drones and aid supplies to, like the evolving civil war in Libya.

We've got diseases to fight, education to fix - and even our professional sports franchises aren't immune from the war on workers.

There are more challenges facing our country at one time than we've ever seen before. These challenges don't just affect one small group of us;  they are facing all of us together, regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or any other divisive measure one can conjure up. Yet millions of idiotic Americans have chosen to consciously, purposely, be obtuse about the truth of this President's birth - Americans who we feel are, to be blunt, racists.

No other President has EVER had to go through this kind of a ridiculous media circus before. This insult to logic and decency called "birtherism" has dishonored the office of the President, in ways no botched election, no ginned up excuse for war, and no stained intern's dress ever could have. In short, it's an embarrassment.

Yet, instead of simply calling out the idiots and the racists, our President has been courteous, genial, and tried to ignore the insane accusations of the birthers for years now. He has given them not just the initial, fully legal birth certification that Hawaii considers the ONLY legal proof of birth (which he did over two years ago). He has also finally gotten the clearance to release the "long-form", not technically "legal" birth certificate - which he did Wednesday.

We are proud of how he stood up for himself on Wednesday, as are all Americans who actually want to get to work solving the problems we collectively face.

There are still those who will say that this was just another ploy by President Obama.

So instead of insulting those people, and calling them worthless, we're going to let President Obama have the very last words on this topic that we hope to ever write:

"I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest.  But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press.  We do not have time for this kind of silliness.  We’ve got better stuff to do.  I’ve got better stuff to do.  We’ve got big problems to solve.  And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them -- not on this."

Now Is Not Then

For our faithful readers, the fact that we have a long-standing dislike of false equivalencies - especially in politics - is nothing new. It's not that there aren't similarities between the parties and their supporters, especially the fanatics on both ends of the spectrum. We've pointed out those comparisons numerous times over the years.

The problem we've always had with false equivalencies - especially in the modern political sphere - is when those comparisons are based on superficial similarities, and not true factual differences.

Like the comparisons that are beginning to pop up in the media on the town hall meetings we're seeing all over the nation right now.

In case you missed it, during the current Congressional vacation - the fifth one they've taken so far this year - Congresspersons of both parties have been holding town hall meetings. Some of these town hall meetings have been passionate affairs, much like the raucous events of the summer of hate in 2009.

If you were paying scant attention to the news, you might simply dismiss this latest round of town hall meetings as another group of disaffected, ignorant people, probably supported by some kind of outside money.

If that's what you're thinking about this current set of events, you'd be wrong.

On the merely superficial level, there have been no significant acts of violence at any of the current town hall meetings, to our knowledge. Nor have there been credible threats of physical violence towards congresspersons, or attendees toting weapons, loaded or otherwise. Those factors alone make the current meetings different from those of 2009.

As journalist Josh Marshall pointed out yesterday, there are those in the media who will simply stop with the ostensible resemblance, come up with some simple label to slap on the current discontent of voters, and attempt to blow off the real reasons behind this current display of anger about what Republicans, under the proposed Ryan plan, would do to Medicare.

As another journalist, Steve Benen of Washington Monthly pointed out on Tuesday, Democrats and those who support Medicare are hammering Republicans  everywhere over the insane idea of a voucher-based, all-private health insurance plan for seniors replacing what we now know as Medicare. Republicans and corporatists are crying like babies, accusing left-leaning Medicare supporters of scare tactics.

As Mr. Benen also points out, "Political rhetoric isn't "demagoguery" when it's true. If a political message leads the mainstream to feel scared, it's not necessarily "scare tactics" if people have good reason to worry."

The fact is, the current Republican budget plan will end Medicare as a stable, long-term, entitlement for American citizens - one that most working Americans have already paid into and have earned. Further, it's a plan that not even all Republican leadership fully supports.

This year, 2011, is not 2009, and we wish some of our colleagues in the media would stop for a minute and focus on the facts, and not just the stupid pictures and audio coming from the current set of town hall meetings.

The Real Fuel Problem

If you're a consumer in the United States - and that's pretty much all of us - it's been almost impossible not to notice the rising price of gasoline. Even if you use public transportation, the cost of most goods and services has gone up sharply as higher fuel prices put more pressure on the costs of doing business.

For partisans on both sides of the aisle, we have to note that your standard bearers are not doing as well as we think they should be on issues related to energy policy. We don't even have to look at energy policy as a whole - just gas and oil - to see both positive signs of acknowledgment, as well as failures to act, from both political camps.

We're aware the President recently had the U.S. Attorney General's office form a new commission - the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group - to supposedly root out cases of fraud and collusion. Recent events give us at least a small sliver of hope - for example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's recent $30 million civil penalty on a less than honest natural gas trader.

Still, we think our skepticism of President Obama's actions on this subject has been earned. Every President since Jimmy Carter - Republican and Democratic alike -  has promised they'll organize a committee to search out fraud and price collusion in the energy industry over the years. Their success rate has been about the same as George W. Bush's at finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

For those partisans on the right, it was somewhat of a surprise on Monday when Speaker John Boehner admitted to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl that oil companies share some of the blame for the ridiculous increase in gas prices. Mr Boehner even was willing to open the door to cutting some subsidies for the massive oil companies, according to his comments.

While it was a shock to hear those words coming out of the mouth of a Republican like Mr. Boehner, his conclusion is similar to one that President Obama already made last week. That slight admission that even our leaders have knowledge of collusion by the oil companies on the price of oil - and therefore, gasoline too - was something we've all assumed to be true for years. Our reaction is much like police Captain Renault in Casablanca being shocked to find out there was gambling going on in a place known for illicit games of chance.

There are those who still attempt to claim that the extreme increase in gas prices is driven by supply and demand pressures - but we're not sure how. That load of balony has been proven bogus time and time again. It's been debunked so many times, it amazes us that anyone with a shred of intelligence or decency even brings up the idea.

This time, OPEC just announced last week that they're cutting production due to weak demand. The Saudis admitted they see a glut of supplies in the world market for raw crude oil. Those who understand how oil markets work agree - it's the sharks on Wall Street, not the sheiks in the Middle East, who are responsible for the price of gas shooting up near or above $4.

Everyone knows what the true problem is. However, much like the problem of the U.S. not bringing in enough revenue - a different problem that even Mr. Boehner admitted to on Monday - no one seems to have the political will to actually DO anything about the speculators.

We all know what's broken. It's time to fix the problem. The problem isn't in the Middle East - and it can't be solved by drilling. The problem is on Wall Street.

No matter what the excuses of any of our politicians are on this issue, the problem needs action to fix it - and that lack of action is what is truly fueling the anger of most Americans.

The True Costs Of Bad Ideas

As people and media organizations seem to note every few years, the cost of nearly everything - including mailing a letter or package - keeps going up. While we generally know this to be true, there are often hidden cost increases that really should be receiving more media attention than merely the cost of a stamp.

We point this out as many communities across the country are discovering the "hidden" costs of electronic communication, as their post offices face the very real possibility of being eliminated.

A post office for a community is often more than just a building where mail comes to be sorted and delivered. Just like small-town schools and businesses are key to sustaining life in rural America, so too is the American Post Office, even in our modern era of electronic mail nearly everywhere.

As our staff have sadly noted more than once; no matter how fast your internet connection, you still can't send Grandma's cookies via your computer.

A similar issue has come up with the GOP's latest ideas on how to cut the budget, specifically Republican Paul Ryan's plans to turn Medicare and Medicaid into voucher-based, privatized systems.

Thankfully, it appears that an ever-growing number of America's seniors may not be conned by this particular GOP attempt to funnel more money to the wealthy and to insurance companies from those who can't afford it. In both CBS/New York Times and Washington Post/ABC News polls released last week, it's obvious that Americans are NOT in favor of sacrificing the stability of Medicare and Medicaid in order to continue financing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

To us, that's a no-brainer. The barely hidden cost of such a voucher system is obvious to anyone who has ever had to try and get private health care insurance in America, as every member of our staff have attempted, with varying degrees of success.

If you think it's difficult getting health insurance when you're young, healthy, and employed with a decent income, imagine trying to get private health care coverage when you're over 65, retired, and in less than perfect health. Even if you have a voucher, if no one is willing to take it - or costs are insanely high - any voucher the government would give you to cover the cost of health insurance would be rendered meaningless.

This is often the case with the attempt to privatize services that have worked well under government direction. In Washington state, they're finding this out with the cost of privatizing their state liquor control and sales systems. In Florida, the effort to privatize prisons is gaining the attention of many as a bad idea. There are growing numbers of bad ideas just like these.

We understand the appeal that ideas like this have for bean counters; privatizing the profits while socializing the losses of a business is, from the perspective of someone who is selfish, greedy, and myopic, a wonderful idea over the short term.

As we can see from the effects of the internet on the U.S. Postal Service, the hidden costs that come later - like the speeding up of the collapse of rural American towns - are the kinds of costs that corporate number crunchers rarely if ever figure into their claims that privatization will fix all of America's woes.

The true costs of bad ideas are rarely something their promoters will advertise up-front.

Friday Funday: Thanks And Hope

Every weekend, when each member of The Daily Felltoon staff usually gets some time away from our regular jobs, we like to do what we can to spend time with our friends and family, to recharge our internal batteries.

Whether that means we tinker around with an old vehicle, visit a national monument, or simply go to a baseball game, we think the time spent remembering NOT to work so hard is good for each of us, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

This weekend is a confluence of holiday celebrations, for those of many faiths. For nature worshipers, today is Earth Day. For people of both the Christian and Jewish faiths, this week, and this weekend, also have a very spiritual meaning to them.

In short, Earth Day to pagans, Easter to Christians and Passover to Jews, all have similar and related meanings.

For Christians, the season is about rebirth, and the belief that hope springs eternal. For Jews, the holiday is also about hope, and thankfulness, that we've been spared a horrible fate. For pagans, it's all about giving back to the world that we all live in.

We realize that not everyone is as lucky as we are.

For example, there are those in Japan who have lost their entire cities; their homes, their families, all the things in their lives that were so familiar, things they will never have again in quite the same way. Those across the U.S. who've been affected by tornados, or fires, or floods, are facing many of the same problems their neighbors in Japan are suffering through.

One of our own staff members suffered a similar series of tragedies nearly three years ago. In a very short time span, three sharp losses - including a major fire - destroyed the stability, and some of the income, of this staff member's life.

The rest of our staff, even before we began working together, helped out - as friends do.

When things seemed darkest, there was a comfortable chair, a place to work, words of kindness - and hope.

No matter what your spiritual beliefs are, we hope this weekend - or sometime soon - you take a moment to celebrate both of what two of the world's major religions are celebrating this weekend.

Be thankful for what you have, thankful that your life is as good as it is.

Then, give someone else the gift of hope.

Do something for someone they don't expect. Take a younger person under your wing, as a mentor. Or make a donation to your favorite high school or college athletic program. It doesn't have to be expensive, or even be something you purchase. You could simply give a smile and a wave to that neighbor you'd usually rather ignore.

Whatever you do, we ask that you give someone else some hope.

That's a gift that everyone can appreciate, and that the world needs more of all year long.

Either/Or

When the subject of politics arises, rarely is there a time when we can say that simple, binary, either/or positions tend to yield better results than a thoughtful, nuanced approach.

That being said, when a political topic moves from future speculation to reams of proven facts gained over time, the likelihood that a binary decision is the right one also tends to move from the realm of art, to the science of hard data. For example, over the last thirty years, it's been quite solidly proven that trickle-down economics doesn't work.

Politics is the art of compromise. It's a truism that is both simple, and yet, seems to be often forgotten these days, especially by those who claim they're leading the Republican party.

We say that not because we don't think there aren't leaders or wise thinkers who label themselves as Republicans. Rather, those individuals who seem to be directing the efforts of the Republican Party currently can't seem to listen to anyone but themselves.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin - one of these self-appointed leaders - displayed a perfect example of that this week.

Rep. Ryan is holding a series of town hall meetings for his constituents this week across his home state. At one such event, Rep. Ryan was confronted by a constituent who described himself as a "lifelong conservative". This constituent wanted to know - in the face of massive and growing income inequality, and with such large fiscal pressures on governments of all sizes, why Ryan continues to fight to keep the Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich, the same ones that President Obama aims to see eliminated.

Frankly, Ryan couldn't answer the man acceptably, in large part we believe, because Mr. Ryan chose to be obtuse, not because Mr. Ryan doesn't know the answer.

Conversely, many other Republican leaders seem to have forgotten the binary rules they insisted were immutable facts during the health care insurance reform debates last year, regarding polls and what the American people think. Thankfully, writer and journalist Steve Benen pointed out the hypocrisy on that issue already.

In short, Mr. Benen points out that Republicans said, according to the polls they chose to read, that the American people didn't want health insurance reform - so Republican leaders insisted it should not happen. Although many polls and statistics taken before reform was passed did not agree with the GOP claims, for the sake of their argument, we'll agree with them on the polls they cherry-picked.

Now, when looking at the polling on how Americans want to fix the nation's budget problems, Americans OVERWHELMINGLY, in every poll we've seen, by WIDE margins, oppose massive cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Instead, they want the wealthy and corporations to pay more taxes. They also want the rich and big corporations to actually PAY those taxes, not play paperwork games with numbers.

As Mr. Benen points out, the Republican Party leadership has now painted themselves into one of those rare, binary, either/or political corners, that will require them to make a hard choice. Either the GOP leaders truly want to listen to what the American people want. Or they don't, and they were lying when they fought those health insurance reform battles.

There is more than one reason that politics is the ART of compromise. Art requires nuance, after all.

Rarely is it as simple as "Us" and "Them".

Not Blowing Smoke

While Congress is taking yet ANOTHER vacation this year - their fourth in four months, in case you're counting - we're remaining focused on the topic that will face them when they return in early May: the debt ceiling.

Many members of what currently passes for leadership in the GOP still want to use the debt ceiling negotiations to push their social agenda. However, as we explained a little over a week ago - and as others have explained in greater detail since - the debt ceiling is not a mechanism of our government that should be subject to political baseball.

We mentioned on Tuesday that Standard & Poor's, or S&P, one of the world's largest financial services companies, recently gave a poor outlook on the future of the U.S. debt. As S&P has confirmed, they have not yet changed their bond rating on U.S. debt, so much as made it clear, that they have no faith in the ability of our political process to make genuine and effective moves toward fixing our country's long-term debt issues.

In short, at least some of our politicians are being childish, selfish, and ignorant of how credit works on a macro scale.

We are of two minds about S&P's downgrade of our government's long term ability to repay its debt.

Political strategist Paul Begala recently pointed out something we remember very well about the run-up to the Great Recession: "Given that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission called the credit rating companies ‘key enablers of the financial meltdown,’ it’s difficult to know how much credibility... should be given [to S&P's opinions]."

Even if you dispute the legitimacy of S&P, or their forecast, the facts are very clear - and something we fear we may need to repeat constantly in the same way some people nag their friends and relatives to quit smoking.

The facts remain the same no matter how you look at them: our country has been spending more than we take in for too long. Over the last thirty years, the method of financing our government's responsibilities that members of both parties have either pushed or accepted has proven unsustainable.

Addiction and denial are a cycle - in governments as much as in individuals. During the election cycle, we tell voters that we'll always cut their taxes and give them everything they demand of their government. Then - when it comes time to actually pay for our responsibilities - we cough, gag, scream, choke, and insist that everything is fine as we gasp for our collective fiscal breath - then take another long drag of long-term debt financing.

The issue of whether financial agencies like S&P are hacks, or whether they have any credibility left to lose after enabling the massive financial collapse is completely moot. Even a hack finance guru can recognize when a fiscal addict has reached a point where their actions are dangerous and self-destructive.

We do need to stop spending so much: on tax credits for people and corporations that don't need them; like many military hardware programs, that are more wasteful than useful; and on subsidies for companies that obviously do not need them, like oil and gas companies. We also need to bring in more revenue - if a business is in the 25% tax bracket, then the business should pay 25%, not weasel its way down to 1% or less.

As we have said more than once, getting America's fiscal health back is not a cut OR raise revenue choice. Both actions MUST be taken together.

It is time for America to deal with its many addictions - or else.

The Truth About Taxes

We hope that you remembered yesterday was the deadline to file your Federal Tax statement for 2010. Truthfully, we don't know of anyone - or anyone willing to admit it, anyway - who hasn't either completed their taxes or filed an extension by this point.

All the same, there are still some folks who forgot to pay their taxes last year - and millions more who are paying less than then they likely ever have.

We're not going to debate the facts regarding taxes;  we have them all here. The richest of the rich continued to see their tax rates plummet last year. For the wealthiest 400 Americans, their tax rates have dropped nearly 10% in the last decade.

For the rest of America, the amount they pay in Federal Income Tax is at historic lows, lower than at any time since 1955. Even if we factor in state and local taxes along with federal tax dollars, Americans are still paying a lower percentage of per-capita income than at anytime since the 1960's.

With all of those things being true, our government, at nearly every level, still seems to be having money issues. In short, everyone wants to know:  where did all the money go?

If you listen to the partisans on the political right, you're hear our recitation of facts blasted as "Class warfare!" Those dirty immigrants and the lazy unemployed are to blame, according to many of those on the right. If the poor would just suck it up and take jobs that pay less than unemployment (even though they'd need even MORE financial assistance down the road if they did so), the poor should just buck up and accept their status as members of the economic slave class.

On the left, there are those who blame corporations and the ultra rich for every monetary problem that America and other countries are facing. Those on the left may be operating from a larger set of actual facts - for example, that the rich have more tax shelters, and (as we pointed out already) the richest of the rich continue to watch their tax rates drop. Still, the corporate pigs and the greedy rich aren't even the biggest reason why America's collective bank account is short more than a few sheckels.

The biggest reason why we are all still struggling is that we are all STILL recovering from the second worst economic disaster in American history.

We think sometimes - many times, actually - that the collective memory of Americans is no longer than that of a chicken. This disaster we're all still climbing out of didn't happen overnight, and it won't be over like a sitcom or a cheesy horror flick, in a relatively short time.

We also weren't the only ones to suffer.

Our government is powered by the taxes we pay. If we don't earn anything, government doesn't fill it's coffers either. Our government isn't some strange magical creature that steals money from us and gives us nothing. If we have no money to give it, it can't afford to provide all the services we expect from it.

As we've quoted before, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." If we do not pay the price, our society is LESS civilized.

To us, when certain elements in our society raise the battle cry of "Class warfare!" where there is none, that's merely another example that our economy is anything but back to normal.

The Time To Choose Is Now

When it comes to Senator Ben Nelson, The Daily Feltoon staff has been of at least two minds on Nelson for many years - even before we began working together.

In general, as a Senator - and before that, as a Governor - our opinion of Mr. Nelson has been generally positive. He has often made decisions that make sense for those he represents, even if those decisions haven't been fully understood or investigated by the media and the general public.

For those persons who think we're merely partisan, and that we like Ol' Ben just because he's a Democrat, we remind you that Sen. Nelson was once a Nebraska Republican, the kind who have lately been run out of the party. If you think the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle is endangered, you should try being a moderate in the present-day GOP. Nelson has said - more than once - he wouldn't change back to being a Republican because they have become too inflexible for someone like him, and we applaud him for his honesty on that subject.

The one thing that has perpetually disturbed us though, about Sen. Nelson's conduct over the years has been his apparent blindness to both history and basic math, in regards to the wealthy paying more in taxes.

When he was state insurance commissioner for Nebraska, Nelson supported several actions that protected the wealthy at the expense of the working class. Recently, that record came up again when Nelson expressed support for legislation which would protect insurance brokers from having to pay their fair share of the Affordable Care Act, aka the health insurance reform law.

Nelson's defense of the rich at the expense of the rest of us doesn't stop there.

When President Obama made brutally clear last week a point we've made for years - that fiscal responsibility for our government will require BOTH budget cuts AND tax increases - Senator Nelson stepped forward again to protect those of his constituents who are on the upper end of the income scale.

We do not have an issue with anyone being wealthy. We have more than a few friends who are better than comfortable, and to be honest, none of us is exactly starving. Most Americans also aspire to be wealthy someday, even if most will never achieve that goal.

The problem with Sen. Nelson that we see, as his 2012 re-election race approaches rapidly is not the good things that he's done in the past, or even his growing support by such far-right wing backers as the Koch Brothers.

It's his continual standing up for the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else, and in the face of basic math. As President Obama pointed out last week, even if America made insane amounts of cuts, we are simply not bringing in enough revenue as a nation. We are not collecting what we say we do - and some politicians keep attempting to collect more money by taking it from those who have the least.

Mr. Nelson, and his staff can most certainly do simple math. His actions in the Senate have proven that more than once. If he does not do the budget calculations, however, there are many things he may not be able to count on over the next year and a half.

The winning number of votes in Nebraska, in both primary and general elections, for example, might not be so easy to come by this time around.

Friday Funday: Watch Out For Me In The Spring

In case you had any doubts, Mother Nature has quite solidly reminded our staff in Nebraska and DC that springtime is fickle, and not always so warm and gentle (It's nearly always warm in our Florida location, so they don't really have "spring" anyway).

While it was a bit nippy in our DC location, at least we had plenty of beautiful sunshine yesterday, and we're supposed to have more today.

In our Lincoln quarters, we've been receiving some welcome rain and not-so-welcome wind in Southeast Nebraska. At least we're not out in "Cattle Country", in western and central Nebraska. They've got blizzard conditions in some parts of Nebraska today - which somehow seems terribly wrong and yet perfectly normal, as a fellow Lincoln wordsmith might have said.

In case you haven't heard, that wordsmith, former Lincoln Journal-Star columnist and longtime Nebraska Wesleyan English professor Leon Satterfield, passed away this week. He was 77, and died of complications from Alzheimers, a fate we wish on no one.

We knew Leon Satterfield in various ways - including through his daughter Amy, whom both Paul and Shawn have worked with before. Paul and his wife initially met Amy Satterfield in 1982, as part of a UNL/Wesleyan/UNK summer program in Guadalajara, Mexico. Amy was sick as a dog near the beginning of the adventure, and ended up at the American hospital, suffering from a burst appendix. That was the end of Amy's Mexico trip. The rest of the group went on to Guadalajara for the next six weeks while poor Amy Satterfield recovered from her surgery and then returned to Lincoln. As Paul recalls, the trip sponsors had a devil of a time contacting her dad, Leon, and her mom, who both spent summers in Colorado in a family cabin way the hell out in the boondocks.

Leon Satterfield had a truly unique way of "drawing clarity from confusion," as he used to say at the end of his columns.

We hope that as the weather rages - or, if you're in sunny West Palm Beach, doesn't - this spring, you think about gathering your own clarity from the confusion of your busy life.

Go to the Red-White Game on Saturday, if you get a chance. If the weather holds, grab a P.O. Pears Burger at the East Campus UNL Dairy Store. Find your favorite local record shop and celebrate National Record Store Day, whether it's in downtown or north Lincoln, one of the many down in Dupont Circle, or at a spin shop west of I-95 near the coast.

The world is moving so fast these days, every moment we spend laughing, enjoying cartoons, and enjoying life, helps every person to get through the confusion this modern world seems to create.

If nothing else, curl up in your favorite spot, and grab a book - Mr. Satterfield would recommend 'Huckleberry Finn' we believe - and get away from wherever you are for a while.

Wherever you are, remember - it's a warm, gentle, spring-like day somewhere right now.

Probably in West Palm Beach.

Fightin' Words

For all of the technology and educational opportunities that most Americans have access to these days, it continues to amaze us exactly how many people choose to be obtuse when the facts don't agree with the outcome they wish to see.

Wednesday afternoon, after the President's direct and honest speech about the fiscal situation in which America finds itself, it became quite clear that the Congressional Republican leadership members were perfect examples of that sad truism.

What the President said on Wednesday is what we have been preaching from these pages, and elsewhere, for quite some time.

America IS a great country - but it's great because of many of the things Americans have done TOGETHER. As President Obama noted, those include a strong military, solid public schools and universities, our great highway system, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and more. These are all great commitments we've chosen to make as one nation, and as the President said, "We would not be a great country without those commitments."

The President acknowledged that we've borrowed too much as a nation, and that most of that destructive borrowing came before he ever set foot in the White House.

He also drove home a hard fact: no matter how much anyone tells you to the contrary, we cannot solve our massive monetary problems by cutting to death only TWELVE PERCENT of our total national budget without touching the rest of it. Even if we do only that, just cut... our budget problems will still not be solved, because WE NEED MORE REVENUE.

It doesn't take a genius to understand the difference between the President's plan and the Republican plan, as laid out by Rep. Paul Ryan. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out recently, Ryan's plan calls for $4.3 Trillion in program cuts - and $4.2 Trillion in tax cuts, that would mostly go to the wealthiest Americans.

As President Obama laid out Wednesday, his plan calls for about $4 Trillion dollars in budget cuts as well - but it also calls for reinvestment in education, transportation, Medicare, Social Security and more.

Only a blind, insane, lobotomized fool would choose Rep. Ryan's plan over the President's. Still, the GOP leadership is doing just that.

Sadly, uncomprehending blindness to facts didn't appear to be strictly a Washington, DC phenomenon yesterday.

As we pointed out nearly a month and a half ago, Nebraska's Governor Dave Heineman and other anti-labor forces within the state of Nebraska still don't seem to understand the basic truth already laid down by the Nebraska Supreme Court many years ago: Either Nebraska has a Commission of Industrial Relations to mediate disputes between the public labor unions and employers... OR public employees of the State Of Nebraska will be allowed to strike. The original purpose of the CIR was to avoid strike scenarios and to give labor and management an independent mediator to work out their differences. When you have reached an impasse, the CIR is there to rule on the issues. Generally, neither side is happy with the outcome. The system works; the participants make not like the outcomes, but it works.

Yet, on Wednesday, the Nebraska Legislature held a hearing where certain members of the Legislature were trying to eliminate the CIR, by trying to justify it as a cost saving measure. Sadly for conservatives, even THEIR figures say neutering or eliminating the CIR would not be cost efficient. It may even cost taxpayers more in the end.

This isn't rocket science, people. If you start with the facts, you're almost always likely to come to a logically defensible result. If you choose to start from what you wish the outcome would be and work backward, blindly ignoring any inconvenient facts, you're either delusional or just plain stupid.

Short Faces Are Never "In" - But They're The Fashion Right Now

"Cutting off your nose to spite your face" is a phrase we're sure most of our readers have heard before. Maybe you've even done it to yourself a few times. We certainly have.

It's not an action we normally undertake when we are thinking logically and clearly, however.

Unfortunately, this spring short faces seem to be the fashion trend in many places around the world. It's like a style change gone horribly wrong.

In Washington, DC, certain members of the Republican Party seem intent on throwing a temper tantrum about the budget, as we pointed out on Tuesday. The political left isn't doing any better, as President Obama continues to cripple his ability to govern effectively by giving in to the idea that the political center is where those on the far right say it is.

The behavioral version of this fashion faux pas doesn't just stop in DC.

In Pakistan, the CIA has basically been thrown out of the country.

This isn't entirely an unseen or unexpected event. It's been reported that U.S.-Pakistan intelligence cooperation has been frozen since January, with no real thaw on the horizon. Things only got worse when Pakistanis captured a CIA contractor in January who had killed two Pakistanis who were rumored to work for their comparable security service, the ISI.

CIA Director Leon Panetta met with the head of Pakistan's ISI in DC on Monday, to try and straighten things out. So far, reports seem to suggest the only thing they may have worked out was that U.S. drone strikes could continue.

That the CIA has been expelled in a way not even the Russians were at the height of the Cold War is bad news, indeed, for the U.S., and its intelligence services, who continue to try and catch or kill al-Qaeda members either because the Pakistanis can't or won't. It's also bad news for the Pakistani government, which is not entirely stable or secure and in many ways more in danger from al-Qaeda than is America.

This is an action that is, in no way, good for Pakistan. Sure, it temporarily allows Pakistanis to square their shoulders, puff up, and say to each other, "See how we tossed those arrogant Americans out of our country?"

At least they'll have something to be proud of when the al-Qaeda operatives who are likely hiding in their midst overthrow their government, as al-Qaeda  did the government of Afghanistan, not that long ago.

We'd like to say that this trend of insane, self-destructive, ego-driven actions by politicians is a temporary worldwide fashion aberration - like hoop skirts, zoot suits, or polyester Nehru jackets all were at one time or another.

We'd like to say that - but we're not sure we can.

What we can say is that it appears that leaders, both at home and abroad, are being too short-sighted for their own good - or ours.

After all, we understand behavioral fashion enough to know that cutting off one's nose to spite one's face is never a good idea.

Some things are just not meant to be cut short.

Bumping Our Heads On The Next Big Battle

This may surprise some of our new readers, but the biggest thing on the minds of most members of Congress this week isn't the budget.

It's the debt ceiling.

For those people that haven't heard it defined before, the U.S. debt ceiling is, quite literally, our collective credit limit as a nation. Unlike your personal credit card, where your limit is set by some nameless, faceless bank, our national credit limit is set by a formula built into Federal law - and it's a formula with a ticking clock.

The effect of going over our national credit limit, while similar to what happens when you go over your own credit limit, could be substantially worse. If you go over your personal credit limit, your credit score takes a hit. Because your credit score goes up, the cost of what you've already spent - meaning your interest rate - will likely go up. So your debt gets a bit harder to pay. Maybe you can't quite get the bank to loan you enough money for that car or house you really want - or maybe they won't loan you money at all. Chances are, though, you probably won't starve if you go over your credit limit. And the worldwide financial markets won't collapse either.

If the United States goes over its credit limit, however, it could very well be the end of economics as we've known it.

The reason many nations currently use the dollar as a foundation for their currency, instead of gold, is that - historically - the dollar has been more reliable than gold. The Untied States has never failed to pay off its debts over the long term, and has only had a few minor defaults in its history. In short, over time, we've proven we're good for it, whatever the amount is.

If our current Congress decides NOT to increase our debt ceiling however, the representatives who vote against the increase will be voting to default on our debt. They will be voting to increase - SUBSTANTIALLY - the interest rate we have to pay on the debt we already have. They will be making it substantially harder for our government to get loans in the future, for any reason.  And because many other major economies have tied the value of their currency to the value of a dollar, it could cause the collapse of world financial markets. And it's not as though people like Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner hasn't warned Congress about it.

In short, those who vote against raising the debt ceiling will be showing that they're willing to let the whole world economy collapse, just to prove their point that America has been borrowing too much.

Now, as our long time readers know, the staff at The Daily Felltoon tries to be fiscally responsible, if not a bit fiscally conservative. However, we support raising the debt ceiling, if only to stave off worldwide financial collapse. Even John Boehner, before he was cowed like a whipped child, acknowledged the mature and sensible nature of raising the debt ceiling. It's not that anyone, on any side, is denying America has borrowed too much for too long. But this debt didn't happen overnight. It happened mostly over the eight years of the Bush administration, and it will easily take many years more for us to pay it down.

Except, as we mentioned initially, we don't have many years.

The debt ceiling is on a timetable all of it's own, and it will not wait months or years for Congress to hash it out, as Congress did with the Affordable Care Act - or as it's been doing with the Federal budget, limping along with continuing resolutions since late last year.

The responsible choice is an obvious, if not distasteful one. But it is a clear choice.

Satisfy the whining of the infantile Tea Baggers who don't understand economics, and don't care what their actions will do to the world economy. Or... raise the debt ceiling - and then work to bring in more revenue, so that we can pay off our creditors once again.

To us, finding the right answer to this question doesn't require some kind of crazy circus feat.

While You Were Out...

We're back from our two weeks away - and it's not as though the world paused while we were gone. For each of us, during these last two weeks, we wondered how we could have even taken time away in the first place.

More than a few things happened while we were gone; more unrest in Middle Eastern nations - and maybe even peace in Libya, continuing disaster in Japan - including another earthquake, and continuing attacks on the rights of working Americans in various places across the country.

All things being equal, you could say we missed a few things while we were away these last two weeks.

The infantile behavior of those in both major political parties wasn't one of the things we missed.

When we left, the U.S. Federal budget was still at a stalemate between Democrats and Republicans. Last Friday, they almost shut the government down because of their inability to agree on financial matters - and to agree to disagree on social ones.

We've watched this "debate" go back and forth for some time - and frankly, we're appalled at both sides.

President Obama and the Democratic leadership stated what we knew to be true at the outset of these fiscal wranglings - that America has a revenue problem, NOT a spending problem. Yet instead of holding their ground, the Congressional Democratic leadership did what they seem to do best: capitulate to the ignorant, whiny voices of the extreme right in the Republican Party. Programs that help the poorest and least able to succeed, programs that Democratic lawmakers have pledged, promised, and pleaded that they'll protect? They didn't.

Republicans haven't been any better than Democratic politicians. Initially, Congressional Republicans said they'd be willing to settle with Democrats for $33 Billion in cuts from the Federal budget for the rest of fiscal 2011. The Democrats gave them $39 Billion in cuts - but suddenly that wasn't enough for the extremist Republicans, even though they got more than they wanted.

All the while, most Americans don't seem to notice how badly they're getting screwed. Citizens have gotten so frustrated with the whole political environment, they'll do nearly anything to tune out reality. As long there is beer, ignorant propaganda with pretty faces and exciting graphics, and an educational system that continues to slide toward third-world mediocrity, too many "Middle Class" Americans are either too busy keeping the meager jobs they have, too frustrated to care, or too ignorant to realize what's going on. Very few seem to understand that those who still have the most wealth - both individuals and corporations - are still not being asked to make any real sacrifices, especially by the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, The Democratic Party seems to have once again lost its nerve to stand up to the insane Tea Partiers.

We honestly wish President Obama had the spine of the television President Bartlett from the TV show "The West Wing". Instead, he seems to be missing. or continuing to worry about what the independents think and how close they are to the Tea Party - even though more Americans seem to be coming to their senses and abandoning the extremist rhetoric and methods of that bunch.

By the way, if you think this budget fight is over because a shutdown was narrowly averted while we were away, then you've been away from the news longer than we have. Congress still has to approve a budget for THIS year, 2011 - and then the fighting, wailing, temper tantrums and capitulating will begin on the 2012 budget. And they have yet to address the looming debt ceiling.

We're glad to be back. We just wish someone else had cleaned things up while we were away.