Romeo and Juliet!

A couple of days ago, Kentucky libertarian senator Rand Paul approached Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell and informed him that the republicans were going to win the government shutdown fight if they simply continued to repeat their mantra that they were willing to compromise because Paul felt as if President Obama had not poll tested his refusal to compromise line that he has used since this conflict began. The mike was open and all the world could here what was said.

Perhaps President Obama should say that he is not willing to compromise with political extremists who wish to set the country back because that is exactly who these republicans are and that is exactly what they want to do at almost any price.

Time ran a cover this week which showed a grey tinged picture of the nations capital with the words “majority rule� with the word “majority� crossed out. And Michelle Cabruso Cabrera opined that White House press secretary Jay Carney had been fear mongering when he stated just how serious the threat of a government default on its obligations might be for the country and the world as a whole. Cabrera, a CNBC financial anchor, stated that defaulting on our debt would not mean much to the financial world because if the debt were paid three days late it would not really be a default. There is no guarantee that if the default occurs that we would pay our debt three days later, or at all. As crazy as the tea party extremists are, there is no guarantee that they might just say to forget the debt repayment in its entirety.

Cast into the middle of all of this swirl is the most weak speaker of the house in memory--John Boehner. There may not ever have been a speaker this powerless to affect what his caucus does and what it wants to do going forward. It has been said that this whole mess has been predicated by about thirty members of the Tea Party in the house and one senator from Texas in the senate. And one republican commentator has stated that senator Ted Cruz led the republicans out into traffic and then simply wandered away. No matter what anyone thinks, they are out in traffic and the rest of the nation is there with them. We were at a meeting where an acquaintance of ours stated that a relative of hers in Arkansas who heads a government program that distributed milk to needy children including infants on feeding tubes cannot get their milk. And then there is the case involving children with cancer at the National Institutes of Health who cannot get the experimental cancer treatments that they so desperately need. And we were on a government web site seeking information on a long dead relative and were told that it was not available due to the shutdown. It goes on and on!

Perhaps the best way to show that government works is to show it not working!

John Boehner is an interesting character who seems very pleased to be the Republican speaker of the house. We don’t know why he might be so happy in this job because other than having the perks of office, as we stated previously, he seems to have no real power. This is not really true because he can call bills to the floor if he wished to but he seems to have adopted the Hastert Rule named after former republican speaker Dennis Hastert which states that if one does not have a majority of the majority a bill cannot be called. Even Hastert commented the other day that when his party needed to compromise with democrats in his day, they did so, which nullifies the Hastert rule if it ever existed to begin with. In point of fact, John Boehner seems to have no backbone at all, simply going with the flow of whatever the radical tea party wishes to do next in the face of possibly losing all of the perks of his office. It seems not to matter to him at all that one New York newspaper had a cover depicting his sitting on his house throne under the headline entitled “House of turds.� And the ever exuberant Michelle Bachman of Minnesota stated that Republicans had never been happier than they are now. And there is truth to the statement that Bachmann made because, in point of fact, the tea party republicans would be most happy with very little government at all. But, here we are with the house majority passing bill after bill restoring parts and parcel to the government and its functions in the hopes that public opinion will swing their way and force President Obama to come to the negotiating table and give up on his landmark health care legislation just as they want him to. It seems not to matter to them that all of the news cycles are taken up with the shutdown instead of the glitches in the rollout of the sign up procedures to acquire the new health care packages that begin on October first.

John Boehner has stated that he will not allow the nation to default on its obligations later this month but he should be aware of what month that he is talking about. This is the month of October and it has a great history in America and the worlds financial affairs. It was toward the end of this month eighty four years ago that the great depression began which changed all of our lives, the living and the dead. Despite what anchors on outlets such as CNBC would like for us to think, there may be great ramifications to what this group of characters led by mister Boehner do in the coming days and weeks. No one has ever seen an American default and there is no predicting what the fallout from it might be in a dynamic financial world climate. The American dollar is the backbone of the world economy and investments in our bonds also underpin much of the worlds financial safety. It has long been stated that things might not be good in the United States but it is still the safest place to house ones money. Quite frankly, if the Republican carry out their pledge to default it might throw the whole world off of the edge and into a depression that would make 1929 look like a school picnic. Gas prices are down right now and this writer always looks at them as a harbinger of what the world economy looks like in a snapshot at the pump.

The world is really not aware of the shape that the United States political system is in right now and when it becomes aware of those cruel realities by the slap on the face that a default might bring, it just might upset the applecart completely. It has taken this nation a century to built up the full faith and credit that underpins everything that makes this government run and is a place where the world wishes to deposit its money for safe keeping. A default could raise those interest rates and cause this nation to have to pay vast sums more to fund its already massive debt for decades to come. And, in tea party republican eyes, this might be a good way to end government in the United States as we know it. That is what is so frightening about the whole thing.

And so we have one John Boehner who holds the key to the whole shebang. Will he emerge from his amoeba like political existence and do what is right for the nation and the world or will he cave into tea party demands once again and send us wherever we may be want to go.

The theme song for the 1968 movie Romeo and Juliet was called “A time for us.� It spoke of the love of two star crossed lovers who ended up, as we know so well, dead across each others bodies by the mistakes and miscalculations that they made because of their great and abiding love. It reminds us of the young couple who were so much in love that they decided to drive their car off of a cliff because they knew that this was the height of their love and they wanted to keep it for an eternity, or so they apparently thought. The political situation that we currently face leaves very little time for those who so depend on this government for their very existences. And once we plunge those daggers, there will be no turning back. And so here we sit in this year that ends with a “13� hoping that our luck has not run out and depending on a man with no prior backbone to bail us out. Oh Romeo, Romeo, where forth art thou?

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe