Tea minus three

The nation's Congress continued the nation's plunge into ungovernability and political obsolescence today, with Republicans getting ever closer to their aspiration of successfully snatching failure from the jaws of victory through a combination of intractability, partisanship and good old fashion stupidity. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell delivered a letter to Majority Leader Reid containing the names of forty-three senators who promised to prevent his bill from ever ever ever being brought to a vote even though it contained almost all of the concessions they had been asking for.   "Almost is the operative word," chuckled McConnell. "Even though it gives us more than we ever dreamed we could get, it is a pointedly partisan bill which would deny us the opportunity to put Obama and the Democrats through all of this repeatedly over the next year. I have clearly stated that the number one priority for Senate Republicans is to ensure that Obama is a one term president, and in light of that goal, this bill will not stand."   In the House, this reasonable tone of enlightened self-interest was unable to prevail, with Speaker Boehner opting to have a 'symbolic vote' on legislation that will never reach him.   "Symbolism is important, as anyone who has ever seen the great hit movie 'Inception' can readily testify," explained Boehner. "Like most things in real life America, the story takes place almost entirely in dreams. And it's really trippy. The lead, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is quite obviously a Barack Obama type of character, and we discover that the world he sees as paradise is in reality Limbo. He can't ever really wake up and he never will. Plus, there are a whole lot of phallic symbols, like the skyscrapers that suddenly rise and thrust into the sky, and the trains that appear from nowhere and scare the bejesus out of you. Trains are always phallic symbols. And don't forget that the plot is all about penetrating someone's dream and planting a seed. My god, that movie is full of dicks, and so is the House of Representatives."