The phrase of the day is “Grand Bargain.”

Balderdash!

The first issue this raises is: why do we need a title? This evil practice hies  back to the days of the Iran hostage crisis, when a pusillanimous president cowered in the White House, allowing American diplomats to remain captive by the heirs of the Barbary Pirates for 444 days. How did the brave media respond? With loud cries for brave action? (You know, “to the shores of Tripoli” and all that stuff.) Nope.

What they did was have their graphic designers, who otherwise would have been designing logos for “John’s Other Wife,” design nightly changing cover pages stating “The Iran Hostage Crisis – Day N” for a one-hour news report whose burden was “Nothing Happened Today.” (The format was easy to update: N became N + 1).

The floodgates were opened. Now everything needs a catchy title: “The Fiscal Cliff,” “The Grand Bargain,” phooey! The populace has become so dumbed down that they can’t tell the topic without a scorecard.

But the Grand Bargain is not restricted to the pursuit of a Federal budget compromise that will inevitably leave everyone completely miserable. (Think about the results of compromises. Remember the Missouri Compromise in the 1800’s, the solution that was going to prevent  a civil war. How did that work out?)

But the Grand Bargain has descended from the sublime to the ridiculous. What other Grand Bargains are being touted? How about the fracking Grand Bargain, which will only permit fracking if the frackers are forced to inhale the natural gas released for at least three hours a day? How about the school districts in Miami and Hong Kong (really!) looking for a Grand Bargain to equitably distribute the school funding extorted from the starving populace (OK, not actually starving, but you get my drift). How about the North Korean nuclear Grand Bargain, pursuant to which they will only immolate the populations of U.S. cities with a population of 378,264 or less? How about the EU budget Grand Bargain, under which the Germans will agree to eat moussaka and drink retsina at least six times per week in order to prop up the Greek economy instead of snarfing down bratwurst and beer? How about the Middle East Grand Bargain, under which absolutely nothing will change?

“Bargain” would be bad enough; after all, “bargain” connotes an agreement in which both parties gain, in contrast to the current rash of bargains in which everybody loses, a plethora of demolition derbies. But “Grand?”

We’ve heard that before. Remember the “Grand Alliance” of WWII, which joined the U.S. with our traditional friends the UK (Revolutionary War, War of 1812) and the USSR (old Cold War, new Cold War)? How about the ocean shipping Grand Alliance, which allows the major ocean shipping lines (owned, of course, by fat sweaty Greek billionaires with super-celeb trophy wives) to collude on shipping rates and thus prevent WalMart’s price structure from declining too sharply, or the Chinese economy to overheat due to excess demand?

In all fairness, “Grand” was already a problem in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was the “Grand Tour,” a rite of passage in which the over-indulged scions of the robber barons and baronesses traveled the world for a year, contracting new and interesting venereal diseases in each European country they visited, before embarking on their careers of rapine and plunder. Ah, the good old days!

How can we deal with the Grand Bargain onslaught? I know, I know! We will make our own personal Grand Bargains!

The ideal one is the one with the Internal Revenue Service. Of course, we all know that the IRS, in its infinite generosity, does negotiate payment plans when you are in arrears, either because you ran afoul of the unbelievably arcane Revenue Ruling that (foolishly) disallows a deduction for purchases of medically required single malt scotch whisky, or because the dog ate the original copy of your return so you could not file on time, thus subjecting you to a 786% penalty, plus interest. But that’s just a Little Bargain.

A Grand Bargain would run something like this: we agree to assign all of our income to the IRS in perpetuity. In return, the IRS agrees to enroll us in every Federal subsidy program in existence: milk price supports (even if we do not possess a single cow); green energy credits (even if we live in a styrofoam shack heated by an open coal fire); bank bailout support (even if we do not own a bank and our personal checking account has a balance of twelve dollars).

I will write to the IRS as soon as I finish typing.