Moving Forward?

If there's anything generous to be said about Washington, D.C. - and I'm stretching it here - it's that the wiser and cooler heads in the nation's capital know when to pull back from the abyss when things get dicey.  The debt limit threatened to explode in our faces and wreck the global economy, but House Speaker John Boehner did the right thing by allowing the House of Representatives to vote on a clean debt ceiling increase so the government could pay its bills.  The Tea Party got angry, but Boehner knew they didn't have the votes for a debt ceiling increase with conditions.  Some Tea Partiers though, are most likely calculating that they will be in a much better position this time next year if the Republicans retake the Senate this November.  (The debt ceiling is to be raised again in February 2015.)  And so, what budget legislation in place and the debt ceiling increased, the GOP thought they had avoided causing an unpopular shutdown.

Then, ironically, the government closed down for a day due to snow.

Back to Sochi later . . .