I guess I better tell you upfront that Juanita has a crush on Paul Krugman.  She will hush everybody in the beauty shop to listen to him when he comes on tv and has read all his books like they were Teen Beat Magazine. She even has a “What Would Paul Do?” checkbook cover.

“He’s hotter than a two dollar pistol,” she says.  “Honey, if I ever got the chance to flirt with him, it would set off smoke alarms in a five state area.  It’d melt diamonds.”

One of Juanita’s beauticians, Winston Taylor “Twirlie” Harrison, also has a crush on Paul Krugman.  Winston delights in teasing Juanita by swooning and dissolving into a puddle of glands every time Paul Krugman comes on tv.  Juanita, who according to Wikipedia invented teasing, prefaces all remarks about Krugman by beginning, “Paul Krugman, who is notoriously not gay ….”

It’s a Paul Krugman day at the beauty shop.

Juanita begins, “Okay, so we have ourselves a 10% unemployment rate in this country and that may become 11% if Thelma is late again today, and the big solution that’s gonna be announced is that we’re freezing spending on everything … except the things we spend money on.  Goodness sake, on the one hand, you feed the 20% of folks with mental health disorders and their anti-government frenzy and then on the other hand, you don’t help the economy any at all.  What goat came up with that idea?”

I guess I need to stop here and tell you that Juanita is wearing leopard print capri’s this morning with a turquoise silk top.  Even while doing hair, she waves her hairbrush around when she gets excited, her bracelets providing background music for her comments.  She once accidently knocked Miss Verdelia upside the head during a particularly impassioned explanation of Iraqi policy.  Miss Verdelia is 88 years old and doesn’t have all that many head whacks left in her, so Juanita stands silent when she does Miss Verdelia’s hair.  That’s love, because silence is hard, hard, hard for Juanita.

Where there is ying, there is yang or at least something akin to it.  So, where there is Paul Krugman, there is Rahm Emanuel.

Juanita developed a true dislike of Emanuel back when he was Chairman of the DCCC.  Her opinion is probably not fixable because she personally saw Emanuel waste money like a drunk cowboy on payday.  “Hey, at least the cowboy is wasting his own money.  Emanuel was wasting Democrat money,” she stomps.  But, that’s a whole ‘nother story we’ll save for later.

Juanita is not pleased with the coterie of economic fixers in the Obama administration.  “You’d think it’s their first rodeo,” she grimaces.  “They couldn’t drive a nail into a snowbank with a sledgehammer.”

“Now, I know there are people who will argue with me,” she says as she looks over the top of her half rim rhinestone glasses at Thelma, who arrived late.  Thelma always attempts to argue with Juanita by quoting Glenn Beck.  Glenn Beck is her Paul Krugman.  Thelma is a Republican and a provisional member of the Belles of Heaven Republican Women’s Club.  Bless her heart.

“Obama is a communist,” Thelma starts and stops in four words because she can see Juanita has a pink slip in her back pocket and an attitude in the front one. Juanita fires Thelma at least once a month but Thelma just keeps coming back to work.  That, and the fact that she does the best up-do in town keeps Thelma employed for the most part.

Oh yes, Paul Krugman day.  Let me get back to that.

Juanita is a tad disappointed that she has to wait until his next column to see what Paul Krugman has to say about the planned freezing of government spending on everything but what we spend money on.  But she thinks she knows what he’ll say.

“He’ll say,” she is betting, “what goat came up with that idea?”

Except probably in Harvard economist terms.