GOP's 'Blazing Saddles' bluff on debt ceiling (AGAIN!)

By mocking CNN's Ali Velshi on the debt ceiling, Rush Limbaugh proved Velshi's point that Republicans don't understand the difference between the debt ceiling and the debt (which comes from spending authorized by Congress).

No, Rush and the rest of you, the debt ceiling is not like the spending limit on your credit card. Bad analogy. It might be a fitting analogy if you were allowed, in some crazy alternate universe, to set your own credit limit on yourself...and then decided to exceed that limit every 6-12 months without paying down your balance, and then "threatened" to default on your own debt and ruin your credit history as an inducement to yourself to stop spending so much, without really intending to cut any expenses except groceries for your kids and prescription drugs for your elderly mother, but not your gun club membership or ammo purchases. 

I know, I know... that doesn't make much sense, it's still a pretty bad analogy, but that's as close as I can come to describing, in household-finance terms, (since that's all Republicans will understand), what the Republican Congress keeps doing to itself -- and to us, by extension.

As Walter Dellinger, the former solicitor general under Bill Clinton, remarked, the House Republicans' stance on the debt ceiling is like that scene in Blazing Saddles when Sheriff Bart (played by Cleavon Little) takes himself hostage by pointing his own pistol at his head, where the townspeople are Wall Street, cable news and most of the media:

Bart: [low voice]  Hold it! Next man makes a move, the ni**er gets it! 

Olson Johnson:  Hold it, men. He's not bluffing. 

Dr. Sam Johnson:  Listen to him, men. He's just crazy enough to do it! 

Bart: [low voice]  Drop it! Or I swear I'll blow this ni**er's head all over this town! 

Bart: [high-pitched voice]  Oh, lo'dy, lo'd, he's desp'it! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy! 

[Townspeople drop their guns.  Bart jams the gun into his neck and drags himself through the crowd towards the station] 

Harriet Johnson:  Isn't anybody going to help that poor man? 

Dr. Sam Johnson:  Hush, Harriet! That's a sure way to get him killed! 

Bart: [high-pitched voice]  Oooh! He'p me, he'p me! Somebody he'p me! He'p me! He'p me! He'p me! 

Bart: [low voice]  Shut up! 

[Bart places his hand over his own mouth, then drags himself through the door into his office] 

Bart:  Ooh, baby, you are so talented! 

[looks into the camera] 

Bart:  And they are so *dumb*! 

Yep, Republicans sure must think we're dumb to keep pulling a Sheriff Bart on us again and again....