Pity Party

You know, I go do one little Web video show and all hell breaks loose on the House floor.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi's refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m. and are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz..) was speaking, the lights went back on, and the microphones were turned on shortly afterward.

But C-SPAN, which has no control over the cameras in the chamber, has stopped broadcasting the House floor, meaning no one is witnessing this except the assembled Republicans, their aides, and one Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has now left.

This reminds me of a group of adolescents putting up a tent in the backyard for a sleepover and telling dirty words to each other while their parents are inside.

Since nobody asked, here's what I think about this drilling issue. I think it's the immigration issue of 2008. Republicans think they have a winning hand and they keep playing it, to the exclusion of everything else, and the country is in a wildly different place that what is believed. There's actually some documentary evidence of this. And with all the big oil companies rolling out record profits, and GOP whiners (who are heavily tied in with Big Oil) demanding we give the same companies making those record profits off high gas prices the opportunity to LOWER them, a smart political party would know exactly how to parry this.

Where can we get one of those?