Hey, Congresspeople! This isn't kindergarten

It's like a big, festive carnival up there on the Hill. Whee!

I'm going to digress to politics for a week. (I'm in DC; I can't help it.)  But it's not as much of a digression as you might think. When it comes to our elected officials, we're all the customers. We elect them, and we pay for their salaries and their utterly fabulous benefits. So, I expect and demand a little service in return.

And what I'm getting now is a cross between a soap opera and a circus, with as much nuance as a kindergarten recess.  I just read the current status: Principal Obama has invited the kids to come have snacks and juice in his office so that they can all work it out. I only hope that all the snacks are locally grown so that I can have some kind of positive feeling about the whole thing, because otherwise it's just a giant mess.

Seriously, this is how Paul Kane and Jon Cohen of the Washington Post described it today:

As the deadline neared, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) exchanged insults, each side blaming the other for the stalemate.

Swell. Did they fire their Nerf guns at each other, too?

You've got a job to do folks. Stop the drama, and start behaving like the educated negotiators that you all claim to be.