For once, Wall Street stocks are beaming truth out to the rest of us. The stock market is falling, because it’s perfectly clear that the deal struck betwixt Obama and the two houses of Congress is a lousy one and will do us harm in the near future.

What is “balanced”? That’s how the president described the plan he extended to Boehner. But it was all negatives with no positives. I’d hate to see Obama try to jump-start a car.

And speaking of brinksmanship —

All governing is done on the edge, now.

It would be really nice to have a government that acted responsibly.

I just got another of those political emails that come to you after they find out you have opinions. This one, immediately after the signing of this atrocious debt ceiling fiasco, was asking me to pat Obama on the, uh, hand, I guess; they wanted a donation because he’d helped, supposedly, to force automakers to start making cars that can get 54.5 miles per gallon. (They will start making them, I think, several years from now.) I responded to the automail asking, How about you don’t bother us with this sh__t that should have happened a decade ago? Why didn’t the president invoke the Constitutional option and raise the debt ceiling without awarding the Republicans all these budget cuts that’ll hurt us later?

I shouldn’t write things like that — although I did receive a very polite autoreply thanking me. Because the car thing should have happened two decades ago.