Sunt Lacrimae Rerum

 Call me the eternal optimist, but there's a little part of me that thinks we might just get somewhere with this discharge petition thing, largely because I've lost the last bit of faith or patience I've had for the Squeaker of the House. Yes, there is the possibility that this kind of move will cause him to play "harder ball" over the debt ceiling--

And I find myself fresh out of fucks. He's at this point promised Christmas to his Tea Party caucus, implied he would not permit a debt default regardless, but still wants to play games with both the normal functioning of the government and debt ceiling talks while bellowing that this is not "some damn game".

Well, of course it's not some damn game. So he might as well stop playing, because as Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell have helpfully and inadvertantly informed us, the White House is at least being privately as well as publically consistent in their message. Boehner can't even keep his public face on straight. If you don't have the cards, at some point you have to fold or show, to borrow a gaming metaphor. And then everyone will know.

And yes, there is the possibility that Boehner will lose his Speakership over dealing fairly and in a bipartisan way--and once again, I am out of fucks. He can end doing something correct, or he can end looking for "no disrespect" from the disrespectful Tea Party monster that both got him his speakership, but brought him to this ugly impasse. It can be argued that he might be replaced with someone worse--I would respond that once he became so hollow inside that the arm of freshman Senator Ted Cruz conveniently fit inside and made his mouth work, I no longer thought worse was necessarily probable. I think the ad nicely delivers the blame and points in the direction of what is truly embarassing about this situation. It's either Boehner's call what he does about it, or he's about as weak in that position as we already guessed.