How the Tea Party put a knife to world’s throat

[Jim Warren]

Per usual we have to look beyond our borders to find MSM with much integrity.

WASHINGTON—Some call them “Hobbits,” others brand them the Republican Party’s “Hezbollah wing.” Others still see them as economic suicide bombers, so dedicated to vaporizing the Obama presidency they are willing to blow the global economy along with it.

The self-made crisis that barely a week ago was written off as high political theatre now is on a collision course with reality, as a time-challenged Congress works around the clock to browbeat the Tea Party’s austerity hawks toward face-saving compromise.

Many of Washington’s oldest hands acknowledge they’ve never seen anything like it. A simple lifting of the $1.3-trillion U.S. debt ceiling — a gesture once routinely matter-of-fact — now is stuck against the unbending fiscal purity of Tea Party lawmakers, for whom rage is all the rage and compromise a dirty word.

“I’ve been in Washington for 50 years. We’ve seen various groups come and go but we’ve never seen an uncompromising insurgency the size and concentration of the Tea Party,” said Stephen Hess, of the Brookings Institution, an adviser to four previous U.S. presidents.

“They are holding a gun to the heads of their own folks, egged on by Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the 24/7 media universe that in itself raises the temperature".

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1032552--how-the-tea-party-put-knife-to-world-s-throat

[snappyturtle]

1. Yesterday I was scared. Today I am terrified. Where does this end? nt

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

3. They win. The US collapses.

Big mess, various small wars, warlords and the mafia take over some areas. Assassinations, killings, kidnappings, mayhem, the rich fleeing for elsewhere and somehow making loads of money off of the whole thing. Then a coalition of saner nations invades us to protect the world from our instability, declaring concern about our crazier factions taking control of nuclear weapons. Maybe we're split up like Berlin after WWII. I'm hoping France gets my area, which is too far south for Canada. Got my beret ready.

Edit. This sounds sarcastic to me when I read it, and it isn't meant that way. I'm worried, too. :(

[snappyturtle]

4. Odd you should say this! I was thinking earlier this evening that this

would be the time for some nations to band together and attack us....that's bizarre! but it did cross my mind too.

[Initech]

2. I'm convinced the Tea Party is a greater danger than anything Osama could have dreamed of.

[AsahinaKimi]

5. More Troll than Hobbit...