Are you?
Or is DK once again just going to be an echo chamber of people wringing their hands over this godforsaken, stupid, corrupt tax deal and moaning about how awful it all is?
Personally, I vote for the former.
I vote for putting that angst and anger to some good use and getting on the damned phone and making sure that your Congressperson and your Senators know that you are NOT HAPPY about the impending cave-in.
I vote for letting them know that their constituents are capable of basic arithmetic, and basic arithmetic tells us that this is a bad deal. A tiny group of people will benefit while the vast majority of Americans will shoulder an ever-increasing debt that will take generations to repay -- if it ever can be repaid.
I vote for letting them know that their constituents are capable of remembering that these tax cuts have been in place for ten years already -- and have added hundreds of billions of dollars to the aforesaid debt -- but have NOT stimulated the economy and have NOT created American jobs. Let me repeat that. They have NOT created American jobs.
I vote for letting them know that progressive Democrats are NOT "sanctimonious" and we are NOT "purists". Sanctimoniousness and purism are luxuries that precious few of us can afford these days. We spend way too much of our time worrying about losing our jobs (assuming we have one), worrying about losing our homes (assuming we haven't been foreclosed on already), and trying like hell not to get sick or hurt because tens of millions of us STILL have no heath insurance and therefore little or no access to health care.
I vote for letting them know that their sad little attempts at "fixing" this hideous mess of a "deal" isn't good enough. I vote for letting them know that the best and only constructive thing they can do at this point is to kill the deal altogether. I vote for telling them to walk away from this joke of a "negotiation" and telling the Republicans that they aren't going to play their sick little game anymore. No economic terrorism, no taking of economic hostages.
I say all of this knowing that the chances of it making any real difference are slim to none, but I vote for doing it anyway. We're stuck with a metric buttload of Democrats in Washington -- and I specifically exclude Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown from this sweeping generalization because of what they did on Friday -- who are at best incompetent and at worst every bit as corrupt as the Republicans they try so hard to appease. But I vote for trying anyway. I vote for not sitting silently by and letting them screw us over without letting them know that we know they are screwing us, and that what happens today is something that we will not forget.
More Democrats? Yeah, that's worked out so well for us.
I'll end with this quote from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams, wherefrom I took the inspiration for the title of this diary:
[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship...]
"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
UPDATE: You can add your calls to the count over on MoveOn's Phone Filibuster campaign page: http://www.moveon.org