Taking can-kicking to a whole-new professional level

First, there's this headline: "Trust in federal government hits a new low."

And why wouldn't it when it's packed with brave and principled leaders like the iconoclastic Senators known as the Gang of Six? Look upon their mighty works to avoid the financial collapse of our government:

Yesterday, the so-called Gang of Six—a cadre of Republican and Democratic Senators working independently from the administration and Congressional leadership—released a proposal to reduce the projected federal deficit by $3.7 trillon over the next decade. According to The Washington Post, it "requires lawmakers in the coming months to cut agency spending, overhaul Social Security and Medicare, and rewrite the tax code to generate more than $1 trillion in fresh revenue." It's so...so...bipartisan. But maybe not in an entirely good way.

The logic of this approach is unassailable: the federal government must raise taxes and cut spending in some manner yet to be determined.

The underwear gnomes were more responsible.

And then there's our President who keeps mouthing poll-tested words like "balanced approach" without ever deigning to provide the smallest clue what he would do to solve the debt crisis. Still, you gotta tip your hat to a guy who has the overarching self-regard to say things like this:

"This is actually a self-created crisis in some ways. It has to do with folks who are digging into set positions rather than saying how do we solve a problem," the president told KMBC, a CNN affiliate in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ah, you see, Obama doesn't believe he exacerbated the debt crisis or the poisonous Washington culture that has prevented resolution. It's all those other guys who aren't providing solutions, darn it.

Extra - USN&WP "How Obama blew a big debt deal": "Yet Obama has had plenty of chances to do something big about runaway spending and the mushrooming national debt, and he's taken a pass every time." Unless you count speeches and commission-assembling.

More - Zero Hedge goes for the "air quotes" record.