Ryan's War

Perhaps the end is finally near. Yes, yes, I know you've been seeing that here since last week. But now, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) is signaling that an end to the Armageddon death threat is in sight.

Yet even with the encouraging signs from the Senate, President Obama is still warning the nation of the consequences of allowing Armageddon to commence. Perhaps he just wants to drive home the point in case the House G-O-TEA Crazy Caucus tries to force Republican "leaders" to derail any last-minute budget deal.

Of course, it doesn't help that the G-O-TEA Crazy Caucus is getting a boost from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-"TEA" Curious). Over the weekend, he threatened to blow up any budget deal if it doesn't deny women access to contraception. Oh, yes. That's right. He went there.

Salon's Joan Walsh noticed this... And she noted what we had discussed earlier on how this melee must be resolved.

Ryan, who was savaged by some on the right last week for seeming to trade the goal of repealing Obamacare in exchange for Obama embracing most of the infamous Ryan budget, is now back to Obamacare. In fact, he’s insisting the House GOP shouldn’t back any deal that opens the government or extends the debt ceiling deadline without major changes to the Affordable Care Act, including letting employers withhold birth-control coverage from insurance plans for religious reasons.

Get it? They’re back to their crusade against birth control access. If that doesn’t define delusional, I’m not sure what does. [...]

Now Ryan is really, really angry at Senate Republicans,according to NRO’s Jonathan Strong, and he’s going to take his ball and go home. “They’re trying to cut the House out, and trying to jam us with the Senate. We’re not going to roll over and take that,” Ryan told reporters on Saturday.

The only way this ends is the only way it ever was going to end: with House Speaker John Boehner, having let extremist GOP babies cry themselves out, finally passing a deal with the support of Democrats. And he shouldn’t count on them being the Democrats who approved the debt-ceiling “deal” that ultimately imposed sequester cuts, or the fiscal-cliff deal that compromised on tax rates and kicked those cuts down the road. On both the Senate and House side – where Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi openly frets that Democrats have “been enablers” of the “irresponsible” GOP – there’s a new tone of toughness. Let’s hope it holds.

They just couldn't help themselves. They had to go there. They just had an urge to slip another Culture War battle into the Shutdown Shitfest that they started.

Did they really think they could get away with this? Does Paul Ryan truly believe he has some special license to subject his extremist agenda on the nation, an extremist agenda that most Americans rejected last year?

We've said it before, but we'll have to say it again today: Contraception saves lives. And if Paul Ryan was serious about pursuing "pro-life" policies, he'd admit this.

While the G-O-TEA culture warriors may be thrilled about the prospect of another battle in their War on Women, everyone else just wants an end to both the Armageddon death threats and the nonsensical attacks on women's health care.

Guess what Americans now consider to be the nation's biggest problem? Hint: It's not contraception. It's also not abortion. And it isn't even women making their own health care decisions. Nope, it's actually government dysfunction (according to Gallup). So instead of threatening to force Armageddon upon America if we don't force more women into unwanted pregnancies, why can't Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans agree to solve America's actual biggest problem?