I say we won this one

  Following politics is ugly.

  It's probably not for the faint hearted either.

  If you're really unlucky, you've been condemned by some family tradition or moment of enlightenment in recent years to follow what's going on in Washington like a zombie, watching elections carefully and with bated breath while other family members roll their eyes and sigh at your distracted state and agitated behavior.

  Maybe you've also been contributing to carefully selected political aspirants who you hope will actually keep their word.

  Or viewing each advance and retreat with hope and curses.

  Wondering when and if they'll cave.

  Trying to figure out how the heck to get your old life back.

  Knowing that that ain't gonna happen as long as the current crew is in charge, and even if we are successful in booting them you'll have to watch the rats so they don't relapse into the orgy of greed and power currently in vogue in the nation's capital.

  So when this budget deal came up, it was like betting money on the horses, except you can't decide if you won or lost.

  To be truthful, it's hard to tell what anybody thinks in DC about this too, since everybody's playing their hand to the hilt these days, saying and doing contradictory things to try to win at whatever cost.

  Boehner's position in all this has been tenuous, uncertain.

  I can't decide if he looks like a deer in the headlights or a saloon gambler from a Louis L'Amour western.

  Tea Partiers are angry and relentless; they see what's coming down the pike and it ain't far away and it ain't minor.

  Being new at politics, Tea Partiers aren't patient and they aren't nuanced, which explains why they aren't pleased with the deal that was cut a couple days ago.

  To many, it seems like he caved, like he didn't get much.

  Which he didn't, of course (continuing my bad habit of using incomplete sentences to make my point).

  A few billion in light of the trillions in debt we are running up through the insane spending policies seems like, well, is, nothing.

  What some fail to understand is that this is a long haul deal.

  The people who are trying to overthrow capitalism in this country have been planning this carefully for a very long time; the problem isn't going to go away easily, even if Obama cut a substantial amount of money from some of the ludicrous spending projects he's put into place.

  Yet the conversation has changed and for the first time Washington is talking about cutting spending rather than increasing it. 

  The (untrustworthy) Obama is actually trying to take credit for cutting instead of increasing spending, climbing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to crow that he'd actually worked together with Republicans on something, in spite of reports that indicated negotiations were "tense" and "heated."

  In fact, Obama (the praise from previous years still ringing in his years) agreed to actually cut something and to some riders that have significance, if not symbolic, then at least discomforting. Washington Post:

 Plus, the rider preventing D.C. funds for abortiona remained in the deal. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will also bring votes to the Senate floor on Planned Parenthood funding and on defunding ObamaCare. If this isn’t a rout I don’t know what is.

  Politico, also not to be trusted, says Boehner won big in this deal:

Here’s the unvarnished pitch House Speaker John Boehner would love to make to his conservative critics if he could just let it fly: “You are winning, and winning decisively. So stop your whining.”

And here’s the unvarnished truth about that pitch: Boehner would be spot on.

  WE citizens, we fleas on the back of the DOG, aren't going away.

  And we're looking forward to watching those so-called blue dog Democrats vote AGAIN to fund the most unpopular Obamacare.

  I say we win this one.