disturbing the comfortable

When you negotiate a contract, you ask for more than you think you'll get. The rules of the game require this. Then you can negotiate down to what you'll settle for, what you want. Say you need to borrow five thousand dollars. You ask for ten thousand and, after dickering around a great deal, you'll get five thousand—maybe six thousand if you're lucky. Like selling a car or buying a house. The buyer offers less, the seller asks more. I hope this is what's happened with the stimulus bill. It seems to me that absolute honesty in these negotiations is about the last thing anyone wants. Are there other ways to finance more food stamps? Head start programs? I imagine there are.

I wonder if what the Dems are doing is letting the Republicans dig their graves a bit deeper by being such unrepentant assholes. By letting them fluster and buster and go on pursuing policies that have driven us to the edge of the cliff, I think public opinion is building against them, more and more. The posturings of people like Rush Limbaugh are not helping. There're too many bitter people right now, people realizing they've been sold a bucket of shit and were told it's gold, and to have lard-heads like Limbaugh saying, no it really is gold isn't helping the Republican cause. At least that's what I'm hoping...