Thomas Friedman has had quite enough of Republicans, thank you very much

Perhaps Joe Scarborough, who as I write this, is arguing that since we ordinary people can't possibly understand what those geniuses on Wall Street do, that government is not equipped to regulate it and getting ready to continue fighting Jim Cramer's war against Jon Stewart, to which I have one question: Who has been correct more over the last two years, Jon Stewart or Jim Cramer?

But while I have often had my problems with Thomas Friedman, there's no arguing with this:

I read that we’re actually holding up dozens of key appointments at the Treasury Department because we are worried whether someone paid Social Security taxes on a nanny hired 20 years ago at $5 an hour. That’s insane. It’s as if our financial house is burning down but we won’t let the Fire Department open the hydrant until it assures us that there isn’t too much chlorine in the water. Hello?

Meanwhile, the Republican Party behaves as if it would rather see the country fail than Barack Obama succeed. Rush Limbaugh, the de facto G.O.P. boss, said so explicitly, prompting John McCain to declare about President Obama to Politico: “I don’t want him to fail in his mission of restoring our economy.” The G.O.P. is actually debating whether it wants our president to fail. Rather than help the president make the hard calls, the G.O.P. has opted for cat calls. It would be as if on the morning after 9/11, Democrats said they wanted no part of any war against Al Qaeda — “George Bush, you’re on your own.”

And no one, not even Your Humble Blogger, did that. At worst, what people like me thought was "I sure hope he can rise to the occasion, because he might not be much but he's all we've got." This is a dim hope for a man we knew wasn't up to the job, which despite the tendency of wingnuts to conflate the trivial with the important, is a far cry from "I hope he fails because it means we can get back in power."

The Republican Party has shown its true colors over these last few weeks, and it isn't pretty. As if the race-baiting and thuggery that the party resorts to during elections wasn't bad enough, now they're perfectly happy to see millions of Americans become homeless and jobless if it means they have a shot at convincing enough Americans fed on a diet of Joe Scarborough and Fox News that their party, which started all this back when Ronnie Reagan said you can cut taxes, increase spending, and the budget will magically balance, and everything you want is free, can just get back the keys to the car.