The news media was agog on Sunday because the sacred holyday, the 12th Annual “No Pants on the Subway” event, took place around the world.
Yes, people on subways crossing metro areas everywhere dropped “trou” and showed the world what ought to be kept between a person’s significant other and their proctologist.
The internet today is full of colorful and creative- and mostly chaste- pictures of public transportation riders in their skivvies, yucking it up for cameras.
And why?
Probably because while 25 percent of Americans chose to spend Sunday worshipping God and football, in capitals around the world- especially in DC- politicians have been going pantless for going on two decades.
Flunky see flunky do.
It’s not just that our emperors have no pants, it’s that they don’t want pants and it never occurs to them to wear any. Pants just make raping hotel maids- and the taxpayers- a tad more difficult as we lie back and think of England.
Twenty five years into the non-stop fiscal crisis brought to us the Ying Party and the Yang Party, the burning issues of the day remain sidelines, distractions meant to cover for our betters’ lack of appropriate cover.
“Unemployment?” you say.
We killed Osama, they say.
“Debt ceiling?” you groan.
Here are some apples for your Happy Meal, they grin.
“Deficit?” you politely ask.
“Unemployment” they gravely tell us, shaking their head, as if we didn’t know.
“Unemployment?” we echo hopefully.
And then the Laurel and Hardy act begins again.
While liberals celebrate their mandate and conservatives celebrate their impotence, neither side can last much longer going on this way.
Three things that people in Peoria will eventually catch on to is that our system is: 1) broke; 2) brokered and; 3) broken.
Politicians are passing laws that don’t address the issues that they say they want to solve. Government today has the sustainability of Social Security, the efficiency of the Post Office and the manners of the IRS.
That was all well and good when government was expected to be heard but rarely seen.
But now that both sides have promised that government can solve any problem with a lot more money and a lot more legislation, the natives are getting restless.
“You give us the money, and we’ll do the hard work of writing laws,” says the US Senate.
Believe it or not, it takes a lot of money to write laws that don’t work while filling up 2,000 pages. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at our budget deficit.
Can anyone from either side of the aisle say that country is better off having incurred $16,432,705,914,000 of federal debt?
If they can, let them make that argument. But I haven’t heard it.
In fact, even liberals agree that the money has been mostly wasted.
“We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet,” said Democrat US Senator Michael Bennet (D-Obamacare), according to my friend Michael Sandoval, and “in my view we have nothing to show for it.”
That’s was before Bennet helped waste another $3.5 trillion with nothing to show for it and right after Bennet became the architect of Obamacare.
Remember the 2,300 page gag bill the Senate wrote with the hilarious title “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”?
That was Senator Bennet at his finest. He was the chief architect in the Senate of the healthcare law that promised to make healthcare more affordable
And guess what?
We have nothing to show for it.
Insurance rates are going up, not down.
"All those new consumer benefits packed into the health reform law - birth control without a co-pay,” says Politico, “free preventive care and limits on when insurers can turn down a customer - had to be paid for somehow."
“Healthcare?” Senator Bennet.
Thought so.