Editor’s Note: For those who follow the antics on Capitol Hill, this is a dizzying morning. We think, after all the travail and rhetoric, that nothing except a “Continuing Resolution” made it across the Magic Minute when the old year died and the new one leapt into our collective consciousness. We are in “Fiscal 2022” now, an untrod chapter in our forward march into the blessed fields of a generous future. Or something. There were four things going on yesterday. The first naturally was the Budget Ceiling, which will enable us to borrow more money we do not have so we can spend it on those who in large part did not contribute to it. Then there is the Continuing Resolution, which says that every crazy thing in the old budget is fine and will continue, by resolution. And then the two crazy spending bills, the smaller of which was huge, and the larger of which, according to Senator Manchin, is a reflection of lunacy. We only know this morning that maybe we will resolve to continue. More on that elsewhere. But Marlow nails this one as a hypnotic dance. Join him for the kick-off to another episode of the Continuing Whatever.

– Vic

Reading articles and watching clips of yesterday’s spiralings inside our Capitol’s deepest legislative pits made me seek the cool comfort of today’s title music by Saint-Saëns. This slow-mo train wreck was like a medieval cathedral frieze on how mortality is brought home to people of every station — yes, even to the wily old and vain young who think they possess some magical and clever potions that allow them to be in charge and lead. Snarl ON — they deigned to feign that which was and is not there – snarl OFF.

The Grim Reaper has taken up residence on Capitol Hill this week.

“You lie!” was the rallying cry a last week.

The new catchphrase seems to be “We all die!”

Death has orchestrated various cavortings about the Capitol Mall in Danses Macabres many times for brief moments in the past. But this current standoff is like an angel of death “end of life” moment for the majority party with its multiple reconciliation bill provisions for new trillion-dollar social programs reform bills clanking around the House.

The majority party’s tyro power gangstas seemingly want the old order of things to die quickly.

As the chill of Death returned to Capitol Hill this morning, I’m planning to flame up our firepit for a fall football weekend of weisswürstes, marshmallows and Hershey bars.

Meanwhile the political firestorm our betters are stoking up North may consume them and their ideas. They won’t be able to cheat Death.

Will they soon discover that electoral and legacy death is barging in on them at flank speed, remembering we all must die, and accept some life-giving compromise — OR will they, as I am reluctantly starting to suspect, fully embrace their self-made effigies and images of their own epic “aux barricades!” heroism and imprint upon our collective memory the internet-streamed gore and viscera of their needless political suicide with more force than all the whiny rhetorical descriptions of the preening media ever could?

I plan to enjoy these ghosts’ danse macabre until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the opening of next year’s Congressional session begins.

Film at 11 the half hour.

Danse Macabre et lunatique

Lunatique!

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