"...They're Lousy Dealmakers, But We Keep Dealing Them In..."

Poker.

That's what it really boils down to, you know.

More on that in a minute.

Washington (CNN) -- The congressional impasse over extending the payroll tax cut became a showdown Tuesday between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.

After the Republican-controlled House passed a measure calling for more negotiations, Boehner made public a letter to Obama that urged him to order the Senate back from its holiday break to take part in further talks.

Leaders in the Democratic-controlled Senate reject that idea, and Obama agreed, telling reporters in a previously unscheduled appearance that the House must approve the two-month extension passed by a strong bipartisan majority in the Senate.

"The bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January 1," Obama said. "It's the only one."

The House motion, passed with no Democratic support on a 229-193 vote, expressed House disagreement with the Senate plan and called for the dispute to be immediately taken up by a House-Senate conference committee -- something already ruled out by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada.

However, Boehner and the Republican leadership prevented a direct vote on the Senate plan, signaling they may lack enough GOP support to defeat it in the face of unrelenting pressure from the White House, Democrats and some Senate Republicans.

Reading these kinds of stories day after day, I'm mindful of a couple of acronyms.

D.C.

District of Columbia.

S.S.D.D.

Same shit, different day.

But, today, while reading the latest road report from the clown car that is our Congress, another word popped to mind.

Poker.

And how that's really what all this is about.

There's an old saying amongst card players.

"When you sit down to play, look around the table and try to decide who the sucker is...if you can't figure out who it is...

...it's you."

We rail and rant and bitch and moan about the complete wastes of space these elected officials are and how they fail to serve even the slightest of our needs, instead, bickering constantly amongst themselves and serving only their own interests.

Yet, every two, four or six years, we send them back to Washington.

The classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time.

Seems like two things are clear.

We're all a little crazy.

And we suck at poker.