But not yet. Until the last hour the party’s gonna rollick on. Folly has always been like that. You drink down the champagne and then when it’s gone you crack the bottle against the edge of the desk and defend yourself with the shards. How does one avoid the fate of Detroit, or Fannie Mae? Improving things each year with a fix until there’s nothing left but ruins? That’s the characteristic of all these hare-brained schemes; the signature of the Ponzi racket. Everything is described as improving and getting better until the hour the whole thing collapses.

Please submit this for the 2012 Republican nomination speech.

I might quibble with the fear that it is necessary. OTOH, it’s also just Parkinson’s Law of sorts, all available resources will be expended, hence the trouble with building a “lock box” for social security, etc. But screw that, it’s a lovely, poetic, concise indictment of the Democrats, and there is enough Puritan work ethic yet in the US that it would hit a nerve.

Of course, in response, the Democrats could pass an extension to the health care bill that covered unlimited free beer and seven hundred billion dollars to the Ringling Brothers for a national circus stimulus program, and I suppose the voting might be close.