Ted Cruz is finding out what it's like being on the receiving end of Tea Party anger. This is unusual, since he's normally dishing Tea Party abuse out, not taking it. The reason for all this anger? Cruz committed what is known as a "Washington gaffe," defined as "accidentally speaking the truth when politics dictate you espouse a lie." That's what Cruz just did, and that's why the Tea Partiers in the House are coming down on him like a ton of bricks.

Cruz is generally known as being the Tea Partiest of the Tea Partiers in the Senate. Other contenders (Marco Rubio, for instance) pale in comparison to the rhetoric which Cruz comes up with on a regular basis. More importantly, Cruz has been the one leading the fight to hold the budget hostage to defunding Obamacare. It's his baby, to put it another way. And to the House Tea Partiers, Cruz just strangled that baby right in front of them, before the fight was even truly joined.

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The politico-media empire which writes the rules of the Washington "What Serious People Are Saying" game have apparently decided that the government shutdown is now melodramatically going to happen. Cue ominous organ music blast (dum Dum DUM!). The key word in that opening sentence is "melodramatically," because our government can now be seen as nothing more than a continuing soap opera. Call it "As The Boehner Turns," or perhaps more appropriately "The Boehner And The Restless."

Personally, I don't buy it. I'm taking the contrarian position on this one. John Boehner just announced that the House will vote on a continuing resolution (to continue funding the government past the first of October) which attempts to "defund" Obamacare, and that the vote will happen this Friday. Across Washington, in newsrooms everywhere, pearls were clutched and editors swooned (and had to be revived with smelling salts). The sky is falling! The shutdown will happen! Oh, my goodness! What a calamity! The melodrama was turned up to eleven, and the knob was then snapped off. The car was about to careen off the cliff (right before the commercial break), so stay tuned, folks....

But, as I said, I don't buy it. In fact, I will go so far as to say that the timing of the vote increases the chances that the government shutdown will not in fact happen. The vote, I suspect, is nothing more than John Boehner showboating within his own caucus -- nothing more than a sop to the rabid Tea Party members who are demanding this showdown. The reason I reach this conclusion is that if Boehner were truly serious about using this bill as his only negotiating position, he would have waited until the last minute to introduce it. Instead, he's going to hold a vote this Friday.

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This entire article is going to deal with nothing but spin. In fact, it's going to get so downright spinny that you may wish to haul that old turntable out of your closet, place it on your chair, and then sit right down on it -- so you'll be able to spin right along with the twisted logic I'm about to espouse. Just a friendly warning.

Reince Priebus, leader of the Republican National Committee (whose name when stripped of vowels, in an amusingly apt coincidence, reads: RNC PR BS) opened the latest spin salvo with a claim that Republicans really really want to believe -- and, even more importantly, really really would like to convince themselves average Americans will eventually come to believe if they just repeat it enough. It's been attempted before, but the media is treating it as a "new" story, so we'll just play along for the time being. The RNC PR BS claim: "[President Barack Obama] wants this thing to happen, a shutdown of the government. I'm totally cynical on the thing. I think that's exactly what he wants."

The Republican logic behind the spin (such as it is): Obama wants the House Republicans to force a government shutdown by refusing to pass any budget or debt ceiling legislation unless it includes killing off Obamacare (which they know isn't going to ever make it into actual law). Obama wants this shutdown, because he thinks the American public will then blame Republicans for this Tea Party temper tantrum, and it will affect the 2014 election... which could possibly lead to Democrats retaking the House of Representatives. Given such an upside, why wouldn't Obama want such "domestic paralysis" (as the RNC PR BS puts it) to happen?

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This isn't a changing-of-the-seasons article, it is in fact an article marking the withdrawal of Larry Summers for nomination to the head job at the Federal Reserve. I suppose I could have made it both, but then I would have had to title it "Summer's Out: Summers Out" which somehow just seems even more confusing. All kidding aside, though; liberals, lefties, progressives, and populists alike are heaving a giant sigh of relief at this news. Larry Summers has now realized he very well could lose a Senate confirmation vote and so he decided instead to take his name out of consideration for the appointment.

Two recent "anniversary" news stories seem particularly relevant here. The first is the five-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a giant trigger for the financial meltdown on Wall Street and all that followed. The second is the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.

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Before we get this ball rolling, we have two minor points which relate to the calendar which we feel merit mentioning. First, for the superstitious among us, it's not only Friday the 13th, but it's actually a double-dose, being 9/13/13. Wooo! Scary!

The second is more near and dear to this column's own heart, as this week marks our sixth anniversary. Way back in September of 2007, we thought it'd be a worthwhile idea to put together a column recapping the week and offering up suggested talking points to Democrats, since they have historically been downright awful at explaining their politics in memorable and snappy ways. Also, Democrats have never been good at singing from the same playbook in the manner that Republicans routinely manage to achieve. The idea for the awards came soon after, and, well... here we are... six years later and still enjoying the heck out of overusing the editorial "we" every week here in this space (ahem).

OK, enough of that. Let's get on with it, shall we?

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That headline does not refer to the movies based on Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," but rather to this week's successful recall elections in Colorado. Two Democratic lawmakers were just kicked out of office for voting for gun control legislation. And two for two is, in this case, total recall.

Beyond cute phraseology, though, the Colorado recall shows once again why many Democratic politicians consider gun control legislation so politically dangerous. Back in the 1990s, gun control (the assault weapons ban in particular) proved to be a motivating factor in many Democratic politicians' defeat at the polls. The pro-gun side is well-organized, well-funded, and fervent in its beliefs. The anti-gun side, not so much (even with Bloomberg's new organization). For many voters, guns are a litmus test in voting. But only really on the pro side -- for antis, it may be an important consideration, but it is rarely a deal-breaker when it comes time to vote.

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This is not an article about Syria. It is an article about a diplomatic solution meant to prevent a catastrophe, but the subject falls entirely within the realm of domestic policy. Just wanted to be straight on that, in case that headline was misleading.

Speaker of the House John Boehner today had to postpone a vote on the budget. He had thought he had a bill which could appease both sides of his own party's caucus but it seems his diplomatic solution to the crisis was not acceptable enough to pass with just Republican votes. Boehner has proven, once again, that herding the cats of the GOP is currently nearly impossible, given the gaping split between the Tea Party hardliners and the saner Republicans who still care about the possibility of winning future elections. Boehner's diplomatic compromise was insufficiently catastrophic for the Tea Party, and rather than watching it go down in flames on the House floor, Boehner decided to suffer the lesser embarrassment of "delaying" the vote.

This is not exactly a new problem for Boehner. In the past few years, virtually all of the significant legislation that has passed the House has done so with the lion's share of the "yea" votes coming from Democrats. Boehner half-heartedly goes along with the brinksmanship emanating from his Tea Party wing, but then at the last minute agrees to put a bill forward which passes because most Democrats join with the saner Republicans to avoid catastrophe (usually of the financial kind). Boehner has a very thin tightrope to walk with his own party, where he allows the extremists plenty of time to rant and rave and pass ridiculous bills that don't have a prayer of making it through the Senate -- but then, in the end, forces on his own party a reasonable compromise. He hopes that, by doing so, the extremists will be placated while at the same time avoiding the meltdown of the American economy (which seems to be the extremists' favorite hostage).

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I waited to write today to provide a snap reaction to the speech President Obama just gave from the Oval Office. I cannot remember another instance when the situation has changed so dramatically between when a presidential speech was announced and when it was actually given. When the White House announced both tonight's speech and yesterday's marathon interview schedule for the president, the goal was clear: convince the American people and Congress to support a limited military airstrike against Syria as punishment for using chemical weapons. The speech was seen as critical to gaining such support, and was scheduled to occur days before Congress would vote on the use of force. By the time Obama gave the speech, however, the question of whether Congress would even vote or not any time soon wasn't even clear, due to a new diplomatic initiative from Russia which would remove all chemical weapons from Syrian control and eventually destroy them. It must have been a busy couple of days for the Obama speechwriters, to put this another way, as the ground shifted significantly hour by hour.

The speech Obama just gave was a balancing act in several respects. I heard post-speech analysis by David Brooks on PBS, and he came up with an excellent way to put the problem Obama faced -- a "Goldilocks moment." How much of an airstrike would be "too much" and how much would be "too little," in other words. The other big balancing act was between calling for military action and pursuing the diplomatic solution.

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News broke today on Syria, but it's not exactly the news everyone was expecting. The political world was really expecting today to be a day of dueling interviews, beginning with Charlie Rose's "scoop" interview with the leader of Syria, Bashir Al Assad. Later in the day, President Barack Obama would blanket the airwaves by granting six network evening news interviews. This was to be followed up tomorrow night with a primetime presidential address from the Oval Office. That's what everyone was expecting the news to all be about, at any rate.

Instead of a competition in the arena of press relations, however, a possible solution to the Syrian crisis appeared (almost mirage-like) on the horizon. Details are scant as of this writing, but Syria seems to be looking favorably towards a Russian proposal that they turn over all of their chemical weapons stores to international monitors who would then destroy them -- putting all chemical weapons completely out of reach of both sides in the conflict forevermore.

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Due to the fact that Congress is still on vacation and also due to the fact that it has largely been a one-subject week in the political world, we are going to pre-empt our regular talking points for a discussion of where the country seems to be on the question of attacking Syria. But first, let's wrap up the week and hand out our awards, as usual.

Today's big economic news was that the unemployment rate is down to 7.3 percent, the lowest it has been since 2008. In the first year President Obama took office, the Great Recession spiked the rate to 10.0 percent, to put this figure into perspective.

In China, a wealthy CEO decided he had enough money for the moment, and gave his multimillion-dollar bonus to 10,000 of his hourly-wage employees, who (on average) received a bonus of a month's wages. Maybe this will start a trend in America, who knows? Not exactly holding my breath or anything, but hey, it could happen.

When the Supreme Court earlier ruled on gay marriage, many (ourselves included) predicted that in the future there would be more direct challenges in the courts which would eventually provide the sweeping civil rights victory that Loving v. Virginia gave to interracial couples. The high court was obviously giving the country enough time to get used to the idea before they proclaimed gay marriage as a civil right guaranteed to all under the Constitution. The federal government has been moving almost across the board to recognize gay marriage as valid, from the I.R.S. to the Pentagon. In the states, court cases are now moving slowly forward, as gay couples get married in one state and then move to another. A federal judge just ruled that Ohio must recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere. Look for many more of these cases to begin working their way through the federal court system -- and a Supreme Court case in perhaps four or five years.

On the subject of religion, a man in Texas won the right to appear on his driver's license wearing the religious headgear of his choice. The headgear in question was a pasta strainer, because the man is a worshipper of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As a "Pastafarian," he should have the right to look as silly as he wants in his license photo (the colander does not obscure his face or hair color), and the state of (are you sitting down?) Texas agreed. So strike a blow for religious freedom! And may His noodly appendage touch you, too. Heh.

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