Meeting at the Halfway House

Sometimes when your golf game is even worse than normal, the best thing you have to look forward to is the halfway house. Your team has lost every hole, and every "press" has been a disaster. Even worse than the money lost so far is the prospect of the 19th hole verbal drilling you are going to take from your opponents. Most of the fun is ripping your buddies anyway.

So even the watery beer looks pretty good by the turn. It also gives you the chance of washing down your pride along with the hot dog by trying to re-negotiate the wager. Only the guy who is losing big is willing to de-testosterone himself. It has to be a desperate situation.

So when a President tells his political opponents that he is "willing to meet them halfway" on the legislation that he couldn't even get his own partners to agree to, it's a sure thing that prospects for his "all in" bet are dropping faster than the putts are. But you can't blame him for trying.  His opponents (Republicans) have been chumps so many times in the past it's almost a given that they will let him off the hook again.

In this case, for the Democrats, meeting "half way" would mean that since everything they wanted in their bid for socialized medicine (and control of Americans' lives) was rejected, they will now be willing to settle for most of what they wanted without giving up anything. I guess they might be willing to say in public that sometimes the Republicans are reasonable people because they "negotiated" away some of the citizens rights in return for the avoidance of looking like obstructionists. Sweet deal for someone I guess.

If I was "down nine after nine" and asked my weekly nassau opponent, Gary, for a deal like that at the Halfway House, he would pretend he didn't hear what I said (because it was me who was mumbling for a change) and march out to the tenth tee driver in hand.

For our sake, I can only hope those in opposition to the preposterous health-care scam are as clever as Gary. Turning a deaf ear to nonsensical proposals is always a good way to stay healthy.