The last damn thing I'll say about the Debt Ceiling thing. I hope.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords showed up to cast her vote on the debt ceiling, returning to Congress in a scene that was touching and inspiring.  She said, "I had to be here for this vote. I could not take the chance that my absence could crash our economy."

Now, you can say what you want about Rep. Giffords returning for this particular vote, and some people have.  I tend to be a cynic because I like to be right every now and then--but this is a woman who was shot in a brutal attack and who initial reports from the scene declared dead just seven months ago--and she made it there. I think that says a lot about both her personal determination and her dedication to the job of being a legislator; if the vote were that close, she wanted to be there to make a difference.   You don't have to even like the deal, the stupid bill with the cuts and the triggers and the messy procedure and the wretched anomaly that made the usually pro forma debt ceiling rise into a crisis situation, to at least appreciate what she did there.  She understood the seriousness of the vote and showed the hell up.

This debt ceiling bill didn't have to go down this way.  For one thing, a bunch of Tea Party dilettantes and cranks didn't have to get the media play they did, and Tea Party candidates didn't have to get elected into office.  And even so, the Republican party leadership didn't have to give them as much influence as they had.  Obama could have made different choices at different stages, and if this rotten scenario didn't play out--well, I suppose a different horrible scenario would have played out, because that's the world we live in. Legislation gets passed with the Congress we have, not the Congress we want to have--doesn't it?

If only there was a mechanism by which the composition of Congress itself could be changed--oh yeah, that's right:

Understand the seriousness of the vote and show the hell up, I guess.