Randi Rhodes: Tax Deals & Dead Things

Today the Senate begins debate over the tax cut deal. It looks like they’re ready to start talking about it, after everybody had a chance to yell about it. It’s kind of like Obama supporters had to go through the five stages of grief over this deal. We’ve seen denial and anger. Now the bargaining begins. Then we still have to go through depression before we come to acceptance.

There’s a lot of good in this deal. Liberal commentators are acting like Obama walked out of the negotiations with a handful of magic beans. They characterize Obama’s deal as a surrender. In reality, it’s more like a negotiated cease-fire. Obama didn’t cave. He dug himself a foxhole to ride out the next couple of years. Remember, in any negotiation, Republicans have a huge bargaining chip in the fact that they’re perfectly willing to let the country go to hell.

The rich aren’t the only ones to make a killing recently. On the latest episode of her reality TV show, Sarah Palin hunted, killed, and butchered a caribou. Man. And I thought reality TV hit rock bottom of gratuitous violence when Snooki got punched on “The Jersey Shore.” As Aaron Sorkin pointed out, Sarah Palin is a millionaire. She wasn’t shooting the caribou for meat. She was shooting it for fun. But then how did you expect Sarah Palin to relax… by doing crosswords? Nice. Sarah Palin unwinds by killing things. As far as how politicians relax in their spare time, I have more respect for Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, and Larry Craig.

As real hunters have pointed out, not only was Sarah Palin slaughtering animals, she was doing it all wrong. Pathetic. Most killers take a little pride in their work. Just look at Dexter. Palin made a truckload of basic hunting mistakes. She’s no better at handling a gun than she is at handling the English language. For starters—she missed. Repeatedly! There were bullets flying everywhere but at the caribou. Palin looked like Al Pacino at the end of Scarface. “Hey Caribou, say hello to my little friend!” Palin missed the caribou five times before finally hitting it. Really Sarah, at a certain point, just call in an air strike. People who oppose hunting always say that the animals don’t stand a chance. Well, they do when Sarah Palin is handling the rifle.

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Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, tackles the Obama tax deal in the latest edition of “White House White Board”…