Sarcasm Missed on the Political Jokes

The children are stomping their feet because daddy won't let them eat cookies all day long:

In a sarcasm-laced letter, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday brusquely rebuffed DFL legislative leaders' invitation to a summit meeting that would address the state's ongoing financial crisis.

Late last month, Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller and House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher invited former governors, speakers and majority leaders to a "Minnesota Leadership Summit."

In Tuesday's letter to Pogemiller and Kelliher, Pawlenty declined the invitation. "The state already has a 'Minnesota Leadership Summit,'" he wrote. "It's called the legislative session and it lasts approximately five months."

He then went on to lambaste the DFL legislative leadership for having "wasted the first few months of the session," only to pass budget bills in the waning moments of the session.

After the disaster that was the last session Marge and Larry are still crying for some manner of do-over.

The summit, scheduled for Sept. 8, will also feature economic experts and specialists in fiscal management. The summit's immediate goal is to devise strategies to deal with chronic state budget deficits. By some accounts, the state could be $7 billion in the red by 2011.

How to deal with chronic state budget deficits? Simple; stop electing chronic spenders. There; solved. Go home Larry, go home Marge.

During the past year, Pawlenty wrote, "DFL legislators have done a thorough job of admiring our state's budget difficulties, but have refused or been unable to take action to address them."

The summit, he wrote, would do little more than "rehash already established concerns."

Of course it also will give Larry and Marge more time to spin and weave their blankets of political cover; their situations made tough by that mean old daddy, Governor Pawlenty.