Good read from Gene Lyons: Sure, the government is just like your family

[flpoljunkie]

WEDNESDAY, NOV 24, 2010 20:20 ET
Sure, the government is just like your family
Dems have used this dreadfully misleading metaphor to show Washington media courtiers their "seriousness" for years

BY GENE LYONS

So your mortgage payment's overdue and you're lying awake at 4 a.m. wondering where the money's going to come from when the kitchen smoke alarm starts beeping. What to do? If you're like the two jokers who jumped the gun on President Obama's ballyhooed deficit reduction commission while he was visiting Asia, you'd jump out of bed, ignore the fire, back the car out of the garage and slap a "For Sale" sign on the windshield.

Mission accomplished!

Never mind that the nation currently has 9.6 million unemployed, and upward of 25 million either out of work, struggling to make do with part-time jobs, or who have simply given up. The really big problem facing the nation is that Social Security may exhaust its reserves 25 years from now. Why, it's an emergency.

All of Washington's Serious People say so. Katie Couric was at her gravest interviewing Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson on CBS Evening News. "In Focus: Debt and Deficit," they called it. Except Katie's focus wasn't so hot. The broadcast pegged this year's deficit at a record $1.5 trillion. The actual Office of Management and Budget projection is $1.29 trillion, marginally lower than the FY2001 shortfall left by the Bush administration. Hey, what's a couple hundred billion?

No matter. Over on CNN, cohosts John King and Ali Velshi assured each other that deficit reduction will be the single biggest political issue over the next two years.

more...

http://www.salon.com/news/us_economy/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/11/24/lyons_government_family