Watching these bozo Republicans play chicken with our economy with every budget deal is like watching rehashed episodes jammed into “new” episodes of a worn out television show that should have been canceled years ago.

Mike Johnson:

Ross Thomas was a Washington reporter turned crime novelist. His thrillers almost always revolve around corruption and/or dirty politics. In one over-the-top book, "The Fool's In Town Are On Our Side," a band of mercenaries is hired to clean up a small Southern city. The plan is to make things so bad that 'even the pimps will vote for reform.'

Somewhere, Mr. Thomas is laughing his ass off.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Just five days remain until a key government funding deadline, and even after congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle announced a deal to avert a shutdown until March, the schedule leaves little room for error.

Johnson said in a statement the short-term spending bill “is required to complete what House Republicans are working hard to achieve: an end to governance by omnibus, meaningful policy wins, and better stewardship of American tax dollars.”

Caught between hardliners and moderates and navigating an extremely narrow majority, Johnson is under intense pressure and has already faced fierce criticism from conservatives over a topline spending deal he struck with Schumer, which was announced earlier this month.

The topline deal has set in motion a bipartisan effort to negotiate full-year spending bills, but there is still much more work to be done in that process, and the consensus on Capitol Hill is that both chambers must pass a short-term funding extension this week or else trigger a shutdown.

Congress passed stopgap legislation in November extending government funding until January 19 for priorities including military construction, veterans’ affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department.

A large number of House Republicans, however, have warned that a Senate compromise over border security stands virtually no chance of passing their chamber, making clear instead they will only accept a deal that mirrors the hardline immigration bill HR 2.

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So, why is Johnson doing this? I think it’s possible they’re just talking their usual bullshit and won’t actually boot him, but they totally could. I don’t follow politics enough to understand his motives here.

It would be a decent bet to gather favor with the majority of the party, even if ousted, but politicians only really have a brief phase of enough public attention to rise meteorically. I think being ousted would end any shot at that kind of upward trajectory.

Just kind of odd to me that veritable loony Mike Johnson is acting reasonably and with like, some vague facsimile of courage. I guess he could still back out. But all of this is confusing to me if he sees it through