Strange - rationality is now exteme.

Senator Reid has announced that the coming tax fight in due to Tea Party extremism. I'm not necessarily a Tea Party supporter, but it does seem to me that arguing that we should cut the ballooning deficit is a rational position, not an extreme one.  The extreme position, I should think, is to argue in the face of the ballooning federal deficit that we ought to increase the deficit yet more, and faster -- that is essentially the Democratic position, based on the budgets they have proposed.

This whole debate feels like the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland - Europe has at least faced the fact that they have a fiscal crisis, even if they are bumbling in their responses. The party in power in Washington has just as serious a looming fiscal crisis but has yet to even admit it exists, let alone propose any reasonable remedy.  Only people who propose (necessarily painful) remedies get labeled "extreme".