The dumbest game of chicken ever

Since the Republican Party took over the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, its battles with the Obama administration have taken on Wagnerian levels of grandiosity. Increasingly, the current political showdown over the federal budget and the debt ceiling looks less like a domestic policy disagreement and more like a militarized dispute between two enduring rivals in world politics.Both sides say they want a deal that raises the debt ceiling and funds the federal government -- but their behavior suggests that they're willing to risk a protracted conflict to get what they want. At this point, both Republicans and Democrats seem to care more about politically crippling the other party than they do about promoting the general welfare of the United States.