The two factions of Congressional Republicans have come together to pass a bill that is so insanely divisive it has zero chance of passing in the Senate and less than that of President Obama signing it. From Politico:
In closing remarks, from the well of the chamber, the weary Ohio Republican was alternately defensive and defiant. “I have worked with the president and the administration from the beginning of this year to avoid being in this spot. I have offered ideas. I have negotiated,” Boehner said emotionally. “I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States. I put revenues on the table in order to come to an agreement to avert us being where we are.”
Left unsaid was how much the forces in his own party had pulled him back—especially on the revenue issue. “To the American people I would say we’ve tried our level best,” Boehner said. “We’ve done everything we can to find a common sense solution that could pass both houses of this Congress and end this crisis.”
And of course, this:
In an emotional moment Thursday, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) angrily accused the GOP Thursday of mounting a thinly-veiled campaign to browbeat Obama over a debt crisis that had been building long before his presidency. “No other president has been shook up’, shook down or held hostage as president of the United States over this debt vote,” Jackson shouted over the pounding gavel. “This is fundamentally unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game.”
Here’s the Washington Post story on the House’s bill and The Guardian’s piece on the stock market hit caused by all this crap. In case you want to read more about the ongoing collapse of the United States. Whatever. The idiotic and psychotic Tea Party continues to hold their country’s and the world’s economy hostage to their insane delusions of no-government, no-taxation anarchy (but naturally there’d be a huge military budget somehow).
Wonder if they’d be such dicks if there was a white, Republican president (answer: no, the Tea Party movement is maggot-shot with racists as well as troglodytes).
This is not going to end well for anyone, but it’s definitely the beginning of the end of what will turn out to be an irreconcilably-divided Republican party. The majority of Americans are not Tea Party hosepails who can’t negotiate and won’t compromise on their extremist views. Since the Repubs can’t keep their imbeciles and psychopaths in line, Americans will inevitably leave the party.
Or alternately someone like Michele Bachmann becomes president and the world is annihilated in thermonuclear apocalypse. Yay.
(This post has been injected with additional ranting since its publication.)
POST-BAR UPDATE: The Senate shot down the idiotic Tea Party bill, as expected. Here’s the story. Want a ray of sunshine? Well, there’s this paragraph on the difficult position of the Republican House leader, John Boehner:
Boehner is likely to suffer defections if he brings up a Senate-passed compromise, and he would need House Democrats to fill in the gaps — a difficult position for him politically. But GOP senators said they believe Boehner stands ready to do what it takes to avoid a default.
And if he does, the Tea Party will doubtless eat him. Still, at least there’s some confidence that someone is willing to take a political bullet for the good of the American economy.
