These things happen:  House not voting on debt ceiling, instead taking up Post Office naming. I assume that you can look up the previous Democratic Congress and find an example of something like this — where reaching an impasse in figuring out how to get a major item — a crisis item even — rolling keeps things rolling through inane business.

The thing you need to know about the Debt Ceiling impasse is that the International Press is reporting it as wholly “contrived”.  And there’s a certain amount of cynicism in the Financial Pages.  See here:

Credit swap gamblers are speculating that the the greatest superpower and biggest economy is more likely to default on its debt than the Philippines.
but is ultimately a buying opportunity as this is a contrived crisis.”

Charitably I can suggest that the “Tea Party” has taken the opportunity to solve a long term problem on their own terms by bringing it to a head right this minute.  Less charitably I can suggest that we have fallen into a split of ideologies — one we will call the “Ron Paul Reboot the Economy and take out the false traction building since Woodrow Wilson’s Federal Reserve and the Roosevelt – Nixon Gold Standard” ideology.  The other driving the debate is something along the lines of the auto-opposition to anything Obama might possibly agree to.  Understand that latter one as a more absurd version of what greeted Clinton — Clinton could at least find the price in what he termed as his “Eisenhower Republicans at war with the Reagan Republicans” battles.  Now it’s a certain arena of Conservatives versus Anarchists.  The recent poo-poohing of Reagan found by Republicans (sort of prophecized by an American Conservative article, actually) has slid things to the next docket.  And we’re in that realm of Pat Roberts dreams about beating Obama at basketball.

The politics makes a sort of sense.  Even if we see Congress’s approval faltering at the same rate as Obama’s — which I saw at a low of 40 percent down down down from a recent 50 — it’s unimportant: the Congressional candidates aren’t running nationally against Obama, and the referendum in 2012 brings to the unsullied Mitt Romney.  Obama I had understood as bringing forth, in domestic arena, a bit of good old fashioned late 19th century Legislative Presidencies — which worked alright under a Democratic House where, by dent of how the Senate deigned its rule bars, fell to whatever Olympia Snowe Joseph Lieberman Ben Nelson deigned to allow pass through.  Obama’s second two terms would normally be defined by a measure of standby, gridlock to be unlocked by the results of the next election.  But there was a firing shot by Grover Norquist with this thing, who said right after the last election that the Republicans would win a Budget showdown this time, as opposed to Clinton in 1995, because this time “we have Fox News”.

The Atlantic Magazine contributor Clive Crook has shuffled away from a pronounced optimism on America’s future to a pessimism. The basic assumptions under-girding his belief system holds that in the past, a positive inaction tended to grip America’s politics — where the two sides argued a lot and a lot of Sound and Fury signifying nothing lay ground to minor bad and minor good tweaks.  Currently we have a backdrop of a show case of concerted decision making leading us in a negative direction — the politics of the moment.

There were two absurd moments from Speaker John Boehner’s speech, the response to Obama’s speech.  Two gimmicky alottments of unseriousness.  There was this:

“You know, I’ve always believed, the bigger government, the smaller the people.”

The Terror of Tiny Town, indeed.  Also see ant colonies and their majesty Queens.  Maybe Don Rosa can fill in the details that Carl Barks only sketched out on the society of the Micro-Ducks?  (Okay, only the first involve humans.  The other two are ants and ducks.)

Conversely, Jack climbed the bean stalk and saw that society that Ayn Rand discussed — the Giant he encountered was Jon Galt!

Boehner comment number two, lamenting:
“a ‘stimulus’ bill that was more effective in producing material for late night comedians than it was in producing jobs.”

There are a lot of cousins to the Liebeck v McDonalds suit in those jokes — items that aren’t really jokes that can be turned into jokes.  The Bridge to Nowhere served a pretty legitimate function, for instance — argue away on whether it should have been where funds were used but it’s not the joke it was made out to be.  We’re in the realm of why our politics is stupid, why Americans get rolled at the polls, why…

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