Balls

It's like waking up on another planet (maybe one in which there's oxygen but only, say, about 10%; and, you know, weird plants and animals with ten legs and seven eyes, yeah, and you're not sure how you got there and maybe there's no way to get back unless it's a dream but it's not but it could have been something you ate) when hearing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemn Moammar Khaddafi (pick your spelling, who cares) for shooting at his own people. Really, he did. I don't think the word "hypocrisy" even applies to something like that, any more than "damp" applies to the ocean.

I must say, though, that I felt a little bit of astral projection when I heard that John Boehner was on a golf-gig in Florida, after having condemned President Obama for distracting us from the people's work, during the most impactful budget debate in all of history, on this planet. Because, remember, he's the one that famously said this, about President Clinton. Not long before Clinton balanced the budget over the no-votes of every Republican, leading to the surpluses which Bush turned into unprecedented deficits, leading us to where we are now.

I couldn't care less who plays golf, or when. But he's the one that threw down the marker.

Boehner's no Ahmadinejad. There are matters of degree, of course. But there's still something nearly incomprehensible about people who are so easily able to do the very things they criticize in others, without even a suggestion of irony. I won't claim that it's only tyrants and Republicans who do it. But in them there's a certain ease, a facility, comfort, that speaks of a special kind of mind...