I know the House Republicans bastardized the debt ceiling vote yesterday to set up some sort of a trap for the Democratic Party and usually I would have posted about it quickly, but watching it go down, it just left me numb to the whole scam.

It was such a blatant hoax that Bruce Josten of the Chamber of Commerce even was quoted saying as much.

Republicans had hoped their legislation would embarrass Democrats while demonstrating their willingness to force the United States into default on its fiscal obligations, but because the legislation included a partisan attack blaming President Obama for the debt accrued under President Bush and because Republicans privately assured their corporate backers that the vote was a charade, nobody is taking the vote seriously. For example:

And for all the talk of economic crisis should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling by August, the financial markets are likely to yawn at this vote — if only because Republican leaders have privately assured Wall Street executives that this is a show intended to make the point to Mr. Obama that an increase cannot pass absent his agreement to rein in domestic programs.

“Wall Street is in on the joke,” said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The debt ceiling isn't something to play with, but I'm glad Republicans are having a good hoax day. Hey, should we dock their salaries for this bullshit? If you or I spent all day playing practical jokes at work, I doubt we'd get paid for it.

Digby makes a great point about the fact that Republicans were willing to weaken market confidence over their political ploy after they live and breathe at the feet of the free-market altar..

I don't know what kind of sick nihilism makes a scenario like that remotely possible, but again, I don't believe it. We are talking about Big Money here and there are a lot of things that aren't working right in this country right now, but the greed mechanism isn't one of them. I don't believe "the markets" are going along with that plan. And I don't think even the Republicans are going to take that kind of risk going into an election year.

But if these people are actually planning a financial panic in order to destroy the safety net, can someone explain to me just how it is they can possibly be considered anything but criminals? This isn't a joke. Panics have a way of getting out of hand --- it's not like you can wave a magic wand and it stops. At the very least can we at least admit that every single sentence they've ever uttered about the desperate need for market "confidence" and "uncertainty" was unadulterated rubbish? (If this happens keep an eye on the short sellers because somebody's going to make money on it and you have to assume the people who caused it are among them ...)

I don't trust Joe Biden's group at this point until they prove to me otherwise, but looking on it today, it's pretty depressing to see the House used like a pinata since House Republicans passed Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing budget, and now they have seniors, a usually reliable vote for them, freaking the f*&k out. This proves they'll do anything, anything at all to besmirch their own jobs.