.

As most of you know, Paul Krugman is Juanita’s heartthrob.  “They have to hold ice cubes on my forehead when I read his column or else I’d flat melt,” she acknowledges.  “Once I was watching him on teevee and my garter belt flat welded to my thigh.”

“Well, people are gonna think we’re dating because he’s caught whatever it is that I have.  I don’t know what social disease it is that makes you think Rick Perry is dumber than a sack of hammers and lies so much that his wife has to call the dog, but whatever it is, Krugman caught it, too,” she says.  “And what it is, not enough people in Texas have it.”

Krugman wrote about Perry’s “Texas Miracle” being a smoke and mirrors trick except that the mirrors are Texas children and the smoke is them going up in flames.

The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force?

Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”

“Nice going, boyfriend,” Juanita smiles.