;)
The Commentariat -- Oct. 4, 2013
Here's a clip of the presser contributer MAG refers to in today's Comments. BTW, if a White House aide really said, "We don't care how long this lasts; we're winning," the aide should find some other employment:
... David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Obama has canceled the rest of his week-long trip to Asia, pulling out of two regional summits to remain in Washington to try to break a budget impasse in Congress that has shut down the federal government, the White House announced late Thursday. Obama 'made this decision based on the difficulty in moving forward with foreign travel in the face of a shutdown,' press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. 'This completely avoidable shutdown is setting back our ability to create jobs through promotion of U.S. exports and advance U.S. leadership and interests in the largest emerging region in the world.'" ...
... Sarah Dutton, et al., of CBS News: "As the partial federal government shutdown continues..., nearly nine in 10 Americans are unhappy with the way things are going in Washington, including 43 percent who are angry - up 13 points since March and the highest since CBS News began asking the question in 2010." ...
... Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Even as President Obama insists that he would be powerless to save the economy from catastrophe should Congress fail to raise the nation's debt ceiling, some law professors say he does have options. They may be politically unattractive, unpalatable to the financial markets and subject to legal challenges, these experts say, but these choices are better than failing to live up to the nation's financial commitments." CW: We've discussed this before, but Liptak's summary is quite good. No mention of the platinum coin -- my favorite! ...
Some recent stories have even suggested the speaker's keeping government shut because I hurt his feelings. If that's true, I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings.... We met the first week we came back in September, and [Boehner] told me what he wanted was a clean CR and a $988 [billion] number. The exact bill that he now refuses to let the House vote on, that was our negotiation. I didn't twist his arm, he twisted mine a little bit to get that number. I said, 'John, I can't do that.' He said, 'You've got to do that.... He couldn't live up to that, so he has been doing gymnastics with himself ever since then. -- Harry Reid, to reporters yesterday
He's a coward. -- Harry Reid, describing John Boehner in a private discussion with other Senators this week
... Zachary Goldfarb, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Speaker John A. Boehner, apparently sharing Obama administration alarm about a possible debt default, has told colleagues he will act to raise the federal debt limit even if he has to rely on the votes of House Democrats, GOP aides said Thursday. It was not immediately clear, however, whether Boehner (R-Ohio) would stand by such a position publicly or whether it would prove to be a trial balloon allowing him to gauge the reactions of the GOP's tea party wing." ...
... Here's the New York Times story, by Ashley Parker & Annie Lowrey. ...
... Greg Sargent: "... this is Boehner's 'big give,' as one Dem aide put it to me sarcastically. Boehner is signaling flexibility in the sense that he just may be willing to give Dems the 'clean' debt ceiling increase they want, but only in a larger context where Dems will be expected to make concessions in exchange for keeping the government open." ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The hard-line stance of Republican House members on the government shutdown is generating increasing anger among senior Republican officials, who say the small bloc of conservatives is undermining the party and helping President Obama just as the American people appeared to be losing confidence in him." ...
... Brian Beutler of Salon: "After struggling for weeks and weeks in stages one through four, Republicans are finally entering the final stage of grief over the death of their belief that President Obama would begin offering concessions in exchange for an increase in the debt limit." ...
... CW: as late as Wednesday night, Rand Paul & Mitch McConnell weren't there yet:
I don't think they poll-tested 'We won't negotiate' ... We're gonna win this, I think. -- Rand Paul to Mitch McConnell, Wednesday night ...
... One fabulous hot-mic moment, picked up Wednesday night:
... Wherein President Obama Saves Our Constitutional Form of Government. Ezra Klein has a good piece on the "White Houses's view" (stupid term -- yes, buildings can have views, but they can't have opinions) of the crisis created by John Boehner & his Tea Party wing: "It's nothing less than an effort to use the threat of a financial crisis to nullify the results of the last election. And the White House isn't going to let it happen." ...
... BUT the Band Plays On. Digby: "... the White House must make it clear that you cannot hold the world economy hostage over wingnut bullshit every year. And I'd guess the GOP leadership is happy to have them make that point --- the Tea Party faction is too stupid to understand such an abstraction when it's explained to them. But there is no way the Republicans are prepared to just tuck their tails between their legs and run off into the woods.... Sooo, what seems to be happening is that we are doing some kabuki dancing around the shutdown and the debt ceiling while a deal is being quietly made outside the process." And the deal, Digby reckons, is "entitlement reform" -- all on the spending side. CW: I hope she's wrong. This was a deal Obama was willing -- nay, eager -- to cut in 2011, but even with the sequestration hanging over our heads, I'm not sure he is now. After all, the sequestration cuts in every way, & a number of the programs it cuts are GOP favorites. ...
... Elinor Clift of the Daily Beast: "There's been a lot said in recent days about the so-called Hastert Rule. It is cited as the main reason why House Speaker John Boehner won't allow a vote to fund the government with no Obamacare strings attached -- under the rule, no legislation can be brought to the floor without a majority of Republican votes. But the rule's namesake, former House speaker Denny Hastert, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday, 'The Hastert Rule never really existed. It's a non-entity as far as I'm concerned.'" ...
... Tim Egan: "About 30 or so Republicans in the House, bunkered in gerrymandered districts while breathing the oxygen of delusion, are now part of a cast of miscreants who have stood firmly on the wrong side of history." ...
... CW: When a contributor suggested the other day that the administration could end the shutdown by making it closer to a 100 percent shutdown, I noted in a comment that he might be right but that the people who would be most hurt -- Medicare, Social Security, food stamp recipients, etc. -- were the vulnerable "freeloaders" the teabaggers disdain anyway, so holding back their benefits might not much change the dynamic. BUT, as Maya Rhodan of Time points out, the shutdown as it is has a disproportionate impact on poor families. ...
... BTW, if we're looking for seeping tea, here's Pajama Boy Farenthold on September 30, supporting the shutdown & minimizing the impact on federal employees: "First off I don't think there's going to be a government shutdown and second of all, if history is any indication, they will be made whole and they will receive their back pay and it'll basically be a paid vacation." ...
... AND here's Farenthold yesterday, after Capitol police -- who got a round of applause from the House but no paychecks -- locked down the Capitol to protect legislators & staff when a deranged driver threatened the building (see yesterday's News Ledes): "I've been advocating to end [the shutdown] as soon as possible anyway. It's unfortunate that this happened, but maybe some good will come out of it."
... Geoffrey Kabaservice, in a New York Times op-ed, blames the current dysfunction of the Republican party on moderate Republicans who opted to move Newt Gingrich into the party leadership in the late 1980s. As time went on, " the moderates ... failed to protest as Mr. Gingrich transformed their party into an ideological faction and set it on its present course of anti-government radicalism." ...
... "Darkness in Washington." George Packer of the New Yorker tries to psych out John Boehner's motivations, which he doesn't think necessarily fall into the rational, practical sphere: "Gingrich was a far more volatile and aggressive individual than Boehner, but the institutional norms of self-restraint, and perhaps even self-interest, have broken down under the pressure of an increasingly abnormal Republican Party. In this atmosphere, a hack can be more dangerous than a revolutionary." ...
... Here's video of the exchanges(s) P. D. Pepe refers to in today's Comments:
Paul Krugman: ObamaCare is here to stay. ...
... ** Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "... the states where the Medicaid expansion [under the ACA] would have done the most good for the most people are precisely those states where Republican governors and legislatures have told their poor citizens that they're out of luck.... You'll be shocked to learn that in those states, the poor are disproportionately black. Could that have anything to do with it? Heavens, no!"
CW: For those of you who are depressed by the current state of national affairs, David Atkins of Hullabaloo assures us that the situation is both extraordinary & temporary; this too shall pass. He points to trends that suggest he's right.
Gubernatorial Race
Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "Exactly 100 days after the legislative filibuster that defied the Republican establishment and turned her into a Democratic star, State Senator Wendy Davis announced Thursday that she would run for governor, opening an underdog campaign to lead a state that last sent a Democrat to the governor's mansion nearly 23 years ago.... Ms. Davis's main opponent is likely to be one of the most popular Republicans in the state: Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general, who has already raised more than $20 million. Republicans have reacted calmly to Ms. Davis's rise to political prominence." ...
... Richard Whittaker of the Austin Chronicle: "Abbott's ... statements on Davis seem mainly to have involved retweeting statements calling her 'Abortion Barbie' and 'too stupid' to run for governor. However, Abbott doesn't need to get his hands dirty this time, when he has right wing corporate sock puppet Texans for Fiscal Responsibility to do the job for him.... Her name at the top of the ballot is considered by Democratic campaign activists to be a boost all the way down, simply because she will raise awareness of other candidates and add a boost to baseline turnout...."
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Reader Comments (21)
Saw as much of the MSNBC coverage of today's episode of "The Shutdown" as I could stand, which wasn't much. But the picture of the R Congresscritters who once upon a time received a medical degree and then abandoned that honorable profession to become anarchists, all uncomfortably sporting white doctors' coats (how 1950's was that?), stethoscopes draped de rigeur around their necks, prompted two reactions.
First, the anger: Stethoscopes applied correctly would make fine garrotes. And second, the laughter: If you were going to stage an amateur night tableau, you couldn't have done any better than that utterly ridiculous display. I have seen high schools homecoming skits done better.
The Ryan clip ("destoy healthcare") is great, but it was not two days ago, was in March, I think.
@Patrick. Help me out here. What Ryan clip?
Marie
Sorry, Marie, please erase the comment. For some reason the "hot mic" clip showed up on my box as Paul Ryan saying that they would never give up on destroying health care. Now I see that it is actually the McConnell-Paul moment.
Often, the YT clip you post is for some reason not the clip that shows up in box. I'm sure you put the right ones in -- but there seems to be a glitch that allows the clip to change to another.
Again, thanks for doing all the work you do to bring the goods.
@Patrick. Ah. Not sure why this is happening, as I haven't had that trouble. (And I thought I'd had 'em all.) YouTube videos often link to other vaguely related videos at the end, so maybe they're sending you right to one of the linked videos.
Try removing your YouTube cookie if you're having this or any other problems with playing YouTube videos. The other day all my YouTube videos were coming up on my site with black screens. I could play them, but I couldn't see them until I played them. I tried the usual fixes, & they didn't help. Then I noticed that the vids appeared normally when I called up Reality Chex in a private window, so I figured YouTube -- perhaps because of something I did inadvertently -- had decided I wanted videos to appear in protected mode. Removing the cookie fixed the problem.
For those who don't know how to remove cookies in their browsers, just Google "how to remove individual cookies [name of browser]," & you'll find links to instructions (in Firefox it's options -- options -- privacy -- remove individual cookies -- scroll to cookie, highlight it & remove cookies [NOT remove all cookies]).
The private window feature, which Firefox & Chrome have, & which I expect other browsers have now, too, BTW, is pretty useful. If you like to access sites that have "soft" subscriber firewalls (i.e., one that allows nonsubscribers to read a limited number of articles) -- like the New York Times -- you can access any number of them via a private window. When you get close to your limit, close the window; open another private window & you're back in business. I don't know how long this stunt will work, but it works now.
Hope this helps.
Marie
@ Marie; Here I was thinking we were trying to remove crackers not cookies.
"Shelter in place"
This has been a public service message from the NRA.
THE HEIGHT OF IRONY:
Watch Rep. Randy Heugebauer (R-Texas) make a complete ass of himself but unaware that he was making a complete ass of himself. This, my friends, takes the cake!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/congressman-park-ranger-memorial_n_4037524.html
More revelations into the murky workings of the teabagger brain.
Lil' Randy's open mic moment offers a clear example of how your average teabag brain processes real world data. Every real world index of the president's stance on not negotiating with terrorists is passed through tea stained filters so that "What part of NO do you not understand?" is transubstantiated into "You teabaggers are right! We give."
His whispered intimacies with Sen. Flapping Jowls also reveal how important--despite routine and angry denials---poll testing is to the teabag nervous system. The problem is that they only poll other baggers in order to ensure that what comes back to their little tin ears is the sound of their own voice saying "Oh Randy! You are right. You're always right."
The significance of their denials on poll testing is a holdover from the Bush Debacle. Bush loved to pretend that his decisions were strictly based on principle, not popularity. Which, funnily enough, is what Lil' Randy unwittingly asserts regarding Obama's position, the fact that he is acting on principle.
Unlike the baggers.
@P.D.Pepe: Yes indeed. As Gawker's Tom Scocca observed, ",,, the lawmakers who voted to shut down the government went to the World War II Memorial to demand it be opened for the veterans' sake — an act of civil disobedience against themselves. They are unable or unwilling to process the information that a government shutdown means that government-run facilities are shut down.... A war monument is the very definition of an inessential government service."
Marie
Speaking of Jowl boy, I've been wondering if this great leader of the GOP would ever emerge from his hidey hole and say anything. Anything at all. Well now he has. He wagged his finger at Democrats and told them that they better start acting responsibly!
Pardon while I chortle uncontrollably.
Isn't this a little like a career criminal, on the run from the cops, lecturing upstanding, law abiding citizens that they better straighten up and fly right?
Then again, as I've said many times, he can't help it because conservatives are only concerned with their rights. Responsibility is for everyone else.
PD,
Not only is such grandstanding hypocritical and craven, it's cowardly. Cowardly for not standing up and taking responsibility (there it is again) for his own actions, eager to cast full blame for the consequences of his sins on a poor (and getting poorer by the day), innocent park ranger.
But Neugebauer, another GOP chicken hawk, has been described as the most conservative (ie dense) member of congress. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this cowardly dolt also sits on the science committee. Doh!
These assholes are testing the outer limits of despicability.
The desperation in the Republican ranks is palpable.
I was talking to someone who operates a medical insurance brokerage and I asked him why it was that people like him were fighting this ACA so hard. Wasn't this going to be a windfall for his industry with millions of new customers?
He said (on condition that he remain anonymous) that, while it will be a short-term windfall for his business, he and everyone else in the medical insurance business was pretty certain that the ACA was merely step one down the road to a single-payer health care system (i.e., Medicare for all). He's afraid that, if the ACA proves popular - and he's pretty sure that ultimately it will - people will one day ask why Medicare or Medicaid can't be one of the plans in their exchange. Once that happens, his industry is dead.
I asked why that worried him so much. He, after all, is nearly 60 and will be retired long before his livelihood is affected. "Well, yes," he told me, "but corporations don't retire or die. We. have to take the long view since the company will be here long after I'm gone, and the needs of the company come first."
What I wanted to say (but didn't out of politeness) was, yes, the needs of the company come first. And apparently first means before those of the country.
Watched the Jon Stewart video with Randy N. leading the veterans into the memorial area. How interesting. Do the veterans always arrive in matching color t-shirts? Is this typical of the visiting groups that arrive daily? Or, why am I suspicious that if the cameras pulled back we'd see the buses? And, gee golly, how did Randy N. happen upon the scene. Too coincidental!
...then on CNBC there's a bizarre press conference clip with John Boehner blasting "...this isn't some damn game." (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101065750 ) he looks and sounds like a man who's had more than a splash of cream with his coffee.
MAG,
I read the Boehner whine complaining that the current "Slimdown" (cute, no?) is not a game, dammit!
Well gee whiz, Johnny, it's been a game all along for your side, hasn't it? But it was only fun while you and your teabgging bosses thought you had sufficiently stacked the deck in your favor. Now that it's become clear that much of the public sees through your cheating and your lies, you need to distract everyone by claiming that it's the president and the Democrats (the only adults in the room) who are trying to game the system and end-run the Constitution. After all, you can't have the rest of the country pissed at you for trying to pull that shit. Might as well try to pin it on someone else.
Interestingly, I hear fewer and fewer wingnut whiny babies making reference to the "Democrat" Party, especially now that they've painted themselves into a turd filled corner and need leaders of the Democratic Party to throw them a lifeline and help them escape the drastic consequences of their own idiocy and treason.
As for Faux News' use of the smarmy, hypocritical, snd dishonest use of the slimy "slimdown" euphemism, this phrase helps accomplish several wingnut goals. First, it says, oh well, the government shutdown our congressional mob bosses have ordered isn't all that bad. Government is too big anyway.
Next, it allows them to pooh-pooh the vicious, inhumane misery the Republican Shutdown is causing to Americans. Most of those Americans, however, neither Faux nor the GOP care about anyway, so let's make fun of it, and them.
Finally, and most insidiously, it gives Faux watchers the sense that this is nothing but a necessary trip to Weight Watchers for all those lazy moochers who need a lesson in what it means to be a real Rush Limbaugh American.
That is, until services they rely on are no longer available. Then the tune will change to "Evil neegroe denies real Americans essential services."
Can't wait for that one.
@PD: Rachel Maddow played a clip from a Texas winger radio station where Neugebauer boasted the DAY BEFORE of being instrumental in shutting down the gubmint. Look no further for the personification of chutzpah than Neugebauer.
MAG - yes, those WWII vets brought to the memorial on Honor Flights, and in other group visits, usually do get identical t-shirts and caps, and are brought there on busses. Much like the school class trips. And the old guys (and gals) often have tags around their necks saying who to call in case of emergency or getting lost, like the kids. They don't just go to the WWII memorial, but all over the Mall and surrounds, and Arlington of course. It helps the organizers/guides keep track of movements if they wear "uniforms" and move in groups.
@MAG
Boehner had definitely been slurpin' on the syroop before the press conference. He sounded a bit like me in college after a keg party. Yet, being the responsible adult I was, I held off around finals. This man is walking through the clouds while the country crumbles.
Looks like the GOPers are starting to crack up and show their true colors here. They're getting sloppy in message and image control, which are both essential covers for Republican leadership. The "rank and file" loonies have been damaging their image long enough, but now we're getting both House and Senate leaders on camera looking like the asses they are. Images are forever, part of our unique patrimony that constantly constructs our history. These fuckers are frozen in place holding their dicks and looking for cover.
I particularly love how Boehner erupts right after claiming the Democrats proclaim that they're "winning." Yeah, you're right Boehner, this isn't a fucking game, but in Congress it certainly is. Wasn't it just the Tea Party proclaiming victory with the shutdown???
I figured in the end the Democrats would give Boehner some flimsy olive branch so he could "save face" with the fanatics. I hope Reid and Obama don't budge an inch. I hope we hold this shithead to the fire, put a little red into that orange tint, and send him home crying. He's proven his worthlessness. Not even his own party respects him anymore and with Reid spilling the hypocritical beans to the media the public likes him even less. He's got nowhere to go, but back inside his bottle. Fuck him.
Words, words, words...(hope I'm not infringing on Ray Charles here, but....) but, listening to the spinning by Boehner, Cantor, et al brings the old song to mind (altered here) :
Yeah, yeah, what'd I say?
Well, don't tell me what I said today
Tell me what'd I say right now
Don't tell me what'd I meant to say
I'll tell you what'd I'll say today
Don't tell me what'd I said yesterday
Don't remind me 'bout my lies I said
Don't remind me 'bout my lies I said
(repeat chorus).
@Ak, re: Boehner a serving of "...whine before its time."
@Patrick. Good info to know. (I'm getting to the age where maybe I'll need a color-identifying tee!)
I'm going to stick my neck out and make a prediction. At the end of the day when all the dust settles, one of the fuckees will be those who depend on Social Security. Even though I would still vote for Obama, I no longer trust him to protect SS. Nor do I trust the Democratic party to protect SS anymore. Today's Dems are not the Democrats of yore. I sure hope I'm wrong but I doubt it.
Well, we've seen alot of Dumb and Dumber the past two days, but that "senior WH administrator" who said (paraphrased - are quotes needed?) who cares...we're winning, does not improve my mood. A fast dispatch is needed.