Wrestlemania in The House!

When last I posted, the government shutdown was just getting revved up--but now, after only the span of a fortnight bloated by a 3-day holiday weekend, it is rolling to a stop.

Congressional Republicans conceded defeat on Wednesday in their bitter budget fight with President Obama over the new health care law as the House and Senate approved last-minute legislation ending a disruptive 16-day government shutdown and extending federal borrowing power to avert a financial default with potentially worldwide economic repercussions.

I'm kind of bummed that it's ending so soon. I was just getting packed up to head out west to the shuttered Yellowstone National Park to see how long I could dodge the remaining Park Police before getting kicked out--it was going to be a giddy recreation of my childhood in Troy, NY,  where we entertained ourselves by riding our bikes all over the campus of the renowned Emma Willard girls' school, while the "pinkos" (for some reason that's what we called the campus security officers) in their golf carts tried to catch us.

Anyway, the inevitable result of the Congressional melodrama has finally, um, resulted: House leaders, including Speaker John Boehner, along with a modest number of fellow Republicans (87 in total, which is about the number of people serviced in a span of 15 minutes by any given Starbucks), conceded and approved a bill to reopen the government and avoid pulling an economic Thelma and Louise.

Not surprisingly, Boehner made an upbeat, folksy statement to save face while finally abandoning the cynical and myopic obstructionism that his party has been engaged in for the last 2 weeks:

“We fought the good fight,” said Speaker John A. Boehner, who has struggled to control conservative faction in the House, in an interview with a Cincinnati radio station. “We just didn’t win.” 

Good fight? You lost the good fight in September. This was a baaaaad fight. This was you losing the fight, and then clobbering your victorious opponent with a folding chair as soon as he left the ring. This could only be considered a good fight if your entire political ethos was based on professional wrestling.



Of course, Boehner didn't really need to save face--he already did that simply by admitting defeat without crying.

Anyway, now that this is all behind us, we can finally get back to some serious political issues, like exposing our president for the Kenyan Islamist pinko that he is.