The US has managed to restart its government and avoid causing a global economic collapse because a handful of extremists couldn’t admit a mistake – Lawmakers in both houses passed a deal to fund the government and continue paying America’s bills.

Ultimately, the Tea Party – a subset within the republican party, funded by a shadowy set of billionaires through think tanks and lobbyists, and egged on by Rupert Murdoch’s US media holdings – got nothing.

The US Senate passed a bill to reopen government and allow it to pay its debt on a bipartisan vote of 81-18, with all of the dissenters being Republicans.  The House of Representatives, the lower chamber from which all of the commotion radiated, passed it 285-144.  Again, the majority was made of a coalition from both parties; the losers were all Tea Party Republicans.

When the drama began a couple of weeks ago, the Tea Party republicans refused to play ball with a simple measure to keep the government running unless the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was defunded.  The ACA, commonly known as “Obamacare”, basically lowered medical insurance rates for working people and forbids insurance companies for refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.  President Barack Obama refused.

They wanted Obamacare delayed.  The President refused.

They wanted to deny health coverage to the President, then to his cabinet, then to their own staffers.  The President refused.

The Tea Party then demanded their wish-list of pet projects be approved before they’d agree to restart the government and pay the bills; items like oil drilling, weakened regulations for coal-fired power plants, and decreased access to birth control were thrown on the table.  The President refused.

Obama and the Democrats refused to bend to what they called blackmail and hostage taking, and that policy had not, would not, and should not be changed at the threat of causing chaos in the world economy.

The funding lasts only for three months.  By 15 January, we could all be living this story all over again, with international markets nervously watching to see if a handful of rural Americans who don’t understand the world economy will screw everything up because they don’t like the President of the United States.