Thanks Don.

The debt limit's been threatened a few times. Once it even expired. We don't include that one because the deadline wasn't "really" threatened and that makes for cleaner, expurgated rhetoric. That demands have been included as the price of a budget or CR, or even a debt ceiling increase, is also ignored. These things happen. They happen at specific times for specific reasons, and those reasons haven't much changed over the last 40 years.

He didn't write the article he could have written. Instead he went for the low-hanging, incredibly tasty--albeit mostly irrelevant--fruit.

I prefer to think of the Republicans as "uppity" and "ungrateful." Like any minority that's disenfranchised and respected more in the rhetoric of those running them over than in what they consider important, seeing nothing in the system to defend they not only fail to defend the system but have no problem with running it into the ground. Sensitized, they start hearing dog whistles where none are intended; they also hear intended jibes that the majority fails to hear.

Nationwide public workers strikes are the same. Huge economic loss, massive inconvenience, but their goals are worth any(body else's) sacrifice. Same for teacher strikes. In some countries, healthcare workers strikes. Steel unions tried to strike during wartime because they felt oppressed, not getting their due, and even if it meant an steel supply when we were experimenting with concrete boats, that was okay.

The typical response is to point out how powerful this dog-wagging ass of a minority is, how much has been given them when they don't deserve it, point out all the times we-the-majority have been gracious and understanding and put up with their childishness (because "adult minority = child" is a deeply rooted metaphor in our culture). Finally we insist on being the parents to their infantilism, to break up the treasonous groups standing in the way of the just majority, to silence them, marginalize them, and, when we're tired, of criminalizing them. Like that works. Especially in a "democracy" that aims to represent all of the people instead of "wee-the-people".

What Boehner, Cantor, et. al used to engineer this debacle- the rule change in the House that prevented anybody but him or Cantor from bringing anything to a vote and Boehner's unwavering allegiance to a rule that wasn't really a rule ("Hastert Rule&quot - was what caused everything. Having a "debt ceiling" law doesn't help things either when some members of Congress are perfectly willing to prevent it from being raised as leverage for getting what they want but, of course, nobody seriously played around with not actually raising it until 2011 regardless of who was in charge. I wouldn't have begrudged Boehner and the House GOP a SINGLE frivolous vote to get their insanity out of their system but once the Senate stripped the defunding Obamacare language and sent it back to the House, they should've just passed it and sent it on so as to prevent the shutdown. Also, I don't really care if most Republicans vote against raising the debt ceiling as long as they allow it to finally pass in the end like it needed to be. Republicans need to win elections if they want their agenda passed just like Democrats and if we have divided government both sides need to work together to get things done in order to keep government functioning correctly. Elections come and go but the business of running the country goes on no matter who is in charge. Democrats understand this. The Republican Tea Party evidently does not.

the government when they don't get their way.

Honestly, when this happens, new elections should be called, immediately, so voters can vote out the obstructionists, and so it will also serve as a deterrent in future sessions.