Greetings from America’s capital, where a small minority of teabag congresscritters insist on shooting the hostage sooner (October 1) rather than later (October 17):

Washington stumbled toward a shutdown as the Republican Party’s rebellious right wing on Thursday blocked a strategy by House Speaker John A. Boehner for navigating a series of deadlines to keep the government funded and avoid a first-ever default.

Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team revealed the first step of that plan to rank-and-file lawmakers early Thursday, urging conservatives to shift their assault on President Obama’s health-care law to the coming fight over the federal debt limit.

That would allow lawmakers in the meantime to try to reach an agreement on a plan to fund federal agencies into the new fiscal year, which begins Tuesday, and avoid a shutdown.

But about two dozen hard-liners rejected that approach, saying they will not talk about the debt limit until the battle over government funding is resolved.

“Quite frankly, I think that’s primarily where we need to be putting our attention,” said Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), who has led the drive in the House to use the threat of a shutdown to defund the health-insurance initiative, Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

Late Thursday afternoon, Boehner convened an emergency meeting of his leadership team to try to hash things out. They emerged with no answers, and no clear path forward for any piece of legislation, either to keep the lights on in Washington or to make sure the Treasury Department can continue to pay the nation’s bills by raising the borrowing limit.

“We’re getting a lot of feedback, so there hasn’t been a decision that’s been made yet,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (Ill.), a top vote counter for the House GOP. “Our members are . . . very reasonable, they’re thoughtful, and they want to move forward. But they want to move forward on something that’s significant.”

As Republicans struggled in the House, GOP hard-liners also were blocking progress in the Senate, where most members of both parties were ready to vote late Thursday on a plan to keep the government operating through Nov. 15.

But Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) objected. Although both men voted earlier this week to advance the measure, they argued Thursday that Republicans should now unite to kill it.

Nobody in his caucus cares what their own GOP House Speaker, let alone the American public, wants. Inmates running the asylum, etc

Right now I put my odds of showing up for work as a federal bureaucrat as scheduled this Tuesday at about 10%.