Earnings Season

An AP story this morning reported that operating earnings per share of reporting corporations are, on the average, higher than they have ever been. Operating earnings are profits before interest and taxes paid. I could post the link if I wanted to find it, but I practice "fact free" polemics in the tradition of my enemies - tit-for-tat is, I am afraid, the rational response; I've studied my PD and read my Rappaport. But those who doubt me may use the term "earnings season" on the Google News search and read as they will ...

So I say: Let the Teabaggers have their way the next few weeks. Let all those people who say they want less government go without any at all, and see how much they ask to be returned. (Why try to read their minds or figure it out for them? Make them tell you.) Shut down the INS, Customs, the Coast Guard, Agriculture, Commerce, The Courts, The Cops and DEA and FBI, NOAA, The FAA (oops, being done), the CAB, the Parks, the embassies; leave forces in the field and let them forage off the land like armies used to do, when men were men and didn't need no govumint to provision them; no more Fed money for roads; let every tornado and flood disaster area fix itself; underpay or just don't pay SS or Medicare or Medicaid. Let's just see how much the States want to be the Sovereign entities some of their nitwits in charge claim they are. Give people the Night Watchman State, then tell the Watchman he's laid off, and wait to hear the screaming.

50 Sovereign States, the Postal Service, and the Federal Reserve (but only to process checks for banks that remain open - no policy shit, to Open Market Operations, nada zilch zip) would make for a wonderful experiment.

Crash and burn. I'll take the gamble - well, I'd gamble me and all the rest of you - that by mid-August, Teabaggers not in hiding or not tarred and feathered would be hanging by their necks from bridges and oaks. I'm gonna go find me some piano wire ....

But no, Obamaramaman will capitulate; he will again insist that he is the most reasonable adult in the room; and Republickers will gloat.