So, The Speaker of the US House of Representatives makes a public pronouncement that opposition to the bailout deal is “unpatriotic”; takes to the floor and excoriates the executive branch for a legislative matter in a bid to pass the buck, but gives a pass to 40% of her own party membership, including 16 Freshmen members in tight re-election bids, 5 Democratic committee chairs who directly owe their positions to the Speaker (Conyers - Judiciary, Peterson - Agriculture, Filner - Veterans Affairs, Thompson - Homeland Security, Green - Ethics) - more than enough to comfortably pass the measure, then, without hesitation she blames the failure on Republicans, many of whom have the conviction that more government meddling will only exacerbate the problem at hand?

Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

So, if the Republicans are to blame for being 12 votes shy, and this makes it their fault, anyone care to explain Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Chris Van Hollen telling the 16 Dem freshman it was ok to do so? Or The Speaker not convincing her 5 Committee chairs? [Update] The entire Dem Banking committee contingent? Or that they couldn’t convince 73 other Democrats to vote with them?

Damned Rethuglicans. Man, they sure can Fug up just about anything, I guess.

::Update:: - Seems I’m not the only one wondering about this point, but, you know, whatever, it’s all the fault of those retarded Rethuglican bastages. Didn’t you know it was their bill, after all?

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told me yesterday that he felt no pressure at all to vote for the bill.

“For me it was an easy decision,” Johnson said. “The bill has nothing in there that mandates workouts of these foreclosures that are pending. We have up to 5 million that are meant to occur over the next year.”

“It was a Republican-caused bill and the Republicans, it looks like they failed to muster enough support to get this thing passed,” Johnson told me.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

::UpdateII:: - You Rethugs better vote for this so we can use it against you in the election! That’s a pretty good summary.