Any mention out of the mouths of elected Democrats, including President Barack Obama, of the words singled out above, should send every rank and file Democrat or progressive dashing to the consoling bosom of Mommy.

Over the last several years, crack Democratic negotiators from congress and the administration have given away so much of the store that little remains of the place but the sign hanging out front.

I’m well aware elected Democrats, and our otherwise highly admirable president have been forced to contend with the always-escalating psychopathologies of The Last of the Republican Mohicans fighting for their very lives, before they’re swept away by the political and demographic undertow; not to mention, the challenge of operating in an environment where prominent media venues actually believe false equivalency is standard journalistic operating procedure. Shame on those insufferable fuckwits of abysmal inadequacy and damnable professional delusion.

Still, the fact is, every new bargain reached in the last two years had the overall net effect of chopping away at the safety net, of contracting government and what it should be doing, at a time when the economics demanded it be expanded and its functions improved. Whether we like it or not, and the majority of us don’t, we are currently living the Republican dream. Sequestration has made a very regressive situation even worse.

The only acceptable deals that should so much as think about rearing their heads in the future would reflect the majority party and the majority of citizens’ predilections for the direction of the country, not the minority’s. This means restoration of previous cuts, expanded programs and expanded investments: in other words, progress. Not going any further backward no longer is an acceptable win in a negotiation. The only acceptable win is, you know, a win.

The good news is that we do still retain two of the grandest, most successful, widely popular programs American democracy ever produced: Social Security and Medicare. The bad news is that the mere fact they are still here means parts of them can be bargained away in order to appease Republicans threatening whatever form of Jihad against America they threaten next. Paul Ryan has been suggesting in Republican circles that Republicans use the leverage of the next Republican engendered freak out of America’s well-being in order to extract a hammering of Social Security and Medicare in exchange for easing of the sequester cuts.  I would, with all decorum and sober analysis address the viability and acceptability of such an outcome thusly: Fuck that shit.

The President recently said: “If House Republicans have new and different additional ideas on how we should move forward, then we want to hear them. I’ll be listening,”

Why? When is the last time they said something remotely productive, or in fact, more reasonable than the Bellevue psychiatric ward mascot?

The President also has said: “I will look for willing partners wherever I can to get important work done. And there’s no good reason why we can’t govern responsibly, despite our differences, without lurching from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis.”

For the love of all that’s holy, I hope those words were intended for the peanut gallery and he doesn’t actually believe them.

I’m sorry, Mr. President, but there is a very good reason Washington can’t govern responsibly: because far from having willing partners, your partners are the species of partner Brutus was to Caesar. And you should know that by this point….maybe you do.

To paraphrase the widely popular paraphrase of the line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, we don’t need no steenkin’ deals, bargains or negotiations, or as they are more accurately known, ransom payments to the corporations-in-populist-clothing crazies. I agree it is admirable perhaps to first attempt to negotiate with the saliva-drooling dog in front of you baring its teeth who has taken several pounds of your flesh in previous interactions with the meatiest part of your calf, though in the end, it likely is a tactic that once again will prove largely unsuccessful, second by far in efficaciousness to a righteous kick.