A Little Hope

"And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand." I Kings 18:44

When I was a kid, that passage was preached on as a sign of water coming to a parched land, a sign of hope, so last night when this story moved onto the NYTimes site and was suddenly everywhere else in Left Blogistan, we felt a quickening of the pulse and our nostrils flared with the scent of precipitation after months of drought.

It's progress if the White House (Rahm, we're looking at you) is getting over its pipe dream of "bi-partisanship," if it's finally realizing that negotiating with Republicans is akin to negotiating with a croc that has already swallowed one of your two legs and is bent on munching your private parts.

As much as the tea-baggers et al. scream that they speak for America, they speak for a minority that lost the last election, that is bloody-minded and wedded to lies, that totes loaded firearms to presidential appearances, that confuses the noise of talk radio and cable TV with "the voice of (all) the people," that is into bullying and bluffing and (now, apparently) dancing with the stars.

Let 'em scream. It's music to our ears, 'cause as long as those particular jerks are screamin', we figger something good is also happening.