"Have we fallen over the Fiscal Cliff yet?"

From the relative safety of the sidelines, I'm watching the game, enjoying my munchies, and not making any bets. Good old Anonymous put it this way: 'A politician can appear to have his nose to the grindstone while straddling a fence and keeping both ears to the ground.'

Why haven't they reached a compromise yet? Because: too many of them spell the word 'compromise' as 's-u-r-r-e-n-d-e-r', and this is a confrontational system in which too many of them would rather die than surrender. Trouble is, it's their own survival and future well-being they're so willing to die rather than surrender to, and they're quite determined to go down with guns blazing, intractable to the bitter end.

As long as I'm leaning heavily on 'Quotations With An Attitude', here's one from George Burns: 'Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.' And Gallagher, the guy who liked to smash watermelons on stage with a big wooden mallet, once said: 'You couldn't get the Ten Commandments through Congress if Moses was buying the drinks!' Right on.

Here's a novel idea: why don't they just go ahead and fall over that fiscal cliff, and then learn how to live within their means, instead of going around saying things like: 'Our credit's good - everybody's got it!' Warren Buffett, the third-richest man alive, says that America will survive, because its womenfolk will rise to the occasion and save its ass, or words to that effect. The implication being America's wives and mothers have more sense than its menfolk and especially its politicians. He could be right.