The Commentariat -- Oct. 12, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

Here's the Washington Post's liveblog of the shutdown/debt ceiling crisis. ...

CW: The WashPo & NYTimes stories seem to conflict about that Obama-Boehner phone call. ...

... Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Republicans were told by Speaker John Boehner Saturday morning that negotiations between the House GOP and President Obama have ended, with Obama’s rejection Friday of the House’s latest offer. At a closed door meeting in the basement of the Capitol, Boehner urged members to hold firm, several said, even as Senate Republicans work to negotiate their own proposal to end the impasse." ...

... Ashley Parker & Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: " The House and the Senate met on Saturday to continue parallel — and at times competing — negotiations to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling less than a week before the Treasury’s borrowing authority runs out on Thursday. The mood on Capitol Hill and in the White House was one of tempered optimism, even though neither the House Republicans nor the Obama administration has yet to produce any tangible areas of agreement. A phone call from President Obama to Speaker John A. Boehner on Friday afternoon yielded little more than an exchange of pleasantries." ...

Jeremy Peters & Ashley Parker: "Republican senators emerged from a meeting at the White House on Friday afternoon expressing confidence that a deal could be reached in a matter of days that would end the government shutdown and extend the nation’s borrowing authority, but cautioning that details of an agreement, including the length of an extension, still needed to be worked out." ...

... Lori Montgomery & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Congressional Republicans rushed late Friday to develop a new plan for reopening the government and avoiding a first-ever default in hopes of crafting a strategy that can win the support of the White House before financial markets open Monday.... Details were still fluid late Friday, but the latest 23-page draft of the emerging measure would immediately end the shutdown and fund federal agencies for six months at current spending levels. It would maintain deep automatic cuts known as the sequester, but give agency officials flexibility to decide where the cuts should fall. In addition, the proposal would also raise the debt limit through Jan. 31, 2014." ...

... Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg News: Sen. Ted Corker (R-Tenn.) & Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) tell Al Hunt of Bloomberg TV that the end of both the government shutdown & the debt default threat is in site & votes should come mid-week. Ted & Pete are thrilled that the President is going to help them "chip away at entitlements." CW: As a certified "entitlement moocher" whose future COLA is almost certain to get chipped, I couldn't be more thrilled. Hmm. Wonder if Congress will chain Congressional pensions to the lower COLAs a/k/a "chained CPI."  ...

... Steve Benen: "House Republican lawmakers are saying they want to make catastrophic threats a normal part of contemporary politics, and justify this extremism by saying voters haven't left them any choice." They're afraid to vote for a clean debt ceiling because "it will establish a precedent" & they might never again be able to hold the nation hostage. "But -- and I'm just spitballing here -- Republicans could try ... working on a policy agenda and then reaching out to Democrats in the hopes of reaching compromises. This would, I'm afraid, require both sides to make concessions..., but if GOP lawmakers were willing to try this, I have some good news for them: There's plenty of precedent for this approach working quite well." ...

... Digby: " The only thing that will stop them from doing this again is for them to lose many seats in the next election. I'm not sure why people are fooling themselves into believing otherwise."

A Day in the Life of a Megalomaniac

MORNING. Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "The shutdown according to House Speaker Ted Cruz" -- is going great! ... 

BUT. If I’m never seen again, please send a search-and-rescue team. -- Ted Cruz, worrying aloud to a roomful of "Values Voters"/conspircy theorists about his upcoming afternoon appointment at the White House

AFTERNOON. Burgess Everett of Politico: Cruz tells off the President:

I told the president ... that we need to work together and fund the government and at the same time provide substantial relief to the millions of people who are hurting because of Obamacare, who are losing their jobs, being forced into part-time work and losing their health insurance. If the outcome doesn’t impact people who are struggling, who are hurting because of Obamacare, then I don’t think it would be a good outcome. -- Tailgunner Ted

No. -- Jay Carney, when asked to give a breakdown of the exchange between Cruz & Obama

ALL DAY. Ted's college roommate Craig Mazin tweets about Ted, reveals it's more than Ted's ideas that stink. Funny stuff.

No one has done more to strengthen Obamacare than Ted Cruz. -- Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.)

... for most party actors, including many sympathetic to Tea Partyism, [Ted Cruz is] going to be the guy who ran up the wrong hill.... He's probably off the list of serious contenders [for the GOP presidential nomination]. He still has the basics of a viable candidate (conventional credentials, if only just barely, and he's within the mainstream of his party on public policy positions). But I think it's extremely likely that he's in the process of being winnowed out. -- Political Scientist Jonathan Bernstein

... "The Zombie-Eyes Granny Starver" Emerges. Charles Pierce: "Paul Ryan is staking his claim as a reasonable guy on the very narrow criterion of Not Being Louie Gohmert. But there isn't an ounce of daylight between their essential positions."

... Tom Kludt of TPM: "Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) channeled his inner-maverick Friday during an appearance on Fox News Channel, repeatedly reminding the conservative network that the government shutdown was brought about by the quixotic effort to halt the Affordable Care Act. When anchor Martha MacCallum asked him about the White House's handling of the suspension of death benefits to military families, McCain said that while the administration deserves blame it was a GOP-induced shutdown that caused the problem in the first place."

Paul Krugman: "What [a new Democracy Corps] report makes clear is that the current Republican obsession with attacking programs that benefit Americans in need, ranging from food stamps to Obamacare, isn’t about some philosophical commitment to small government, still less worries about incentive effects and implicit marginal tax rates. It’s about anxiety over a changing America — the multiracial, multicultural society we’re becoming — and anger that Democrats are taking Their Money and giving it to Those People. In other words, it’s still race after all these years." ...

... Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker remarks on how much the Tea Party is like the John Birch Society. "The common core belief, then and now, is actually descended from “Huck Finn” ’s unforgettable Pappy and his views on the 'guv’mint': the federal government exists to take money from hard-working white people and give it to lazy black people, and the President is helping to make this happen." CW: BTW, I agree with Gopnik's assessment of the roots & character of white racism. I would add that much of today's racial resentment is a direct result of the economic trends in this country -- people see they're not getting ahead & they look for someone to scapegoat. In this regard, the GOP agenda is brilliant: surreptitiously make life harder or your base, & they will be even angrier & even more devoted to their crazy beliefs & conspiracy theories -- who was it who said "clinging to their guns & religion"? I thought then & I think now that guy was right. ...

... John Judis of the New Republic: "We could be witnessing the death throes of the Republican party.... Under pressure from grassroots radicals and the new outsider groups, the old Republican coalition is beginning to shatter. The single-issue and evangelical groups have been superseded by right-wing populist groups, which are generally identified with the Tea Party, although there is no single Tea Party organization. These groups can’t easily be co-opted by the party’s Washington leadership. And the business groups in Washington, who funded the party over the last two decades, have grown disillusioned with a party that appears to be increasingly held hostage by its radical base and by outsider groups." ...

... Ed Kilgore: "I dunno; this is a song we’ve heard before. Time and again yesterday’s conservative radicals have become today’s and tomorrow’s 'Republican Establishment;' that’s a big part of why the GOP has move so steadily to the Right over the years." ...

... Steve M. of NMMNB: "Trust me, these folks are going to work this out. First of all, crazy-base disappointment with the GOP is not exactly new. Crazy-base voters thought John McCain was a pathetic RINO. Did they bolt for a third party? No. They felt the same way in 2012 about Mitt Romney. Did they bolt then? No. They never bolt, because they hate liberals, Democrats, and the Democratic voter base as they perceive it (i.e., non-white moochers) far more than they hate one another."

Brendan Sasso of the Hill: "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted the National Security Agency (NSA) permission to continue its collection of records on all U.S. phone calls. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced the court's approval in a statement late Friday. The court authorizes the program for only limited time periods and requires that the government submit new requests every several months for re-authorization." ...

... Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The C.I.A. said Friday that it did not suspect Edward J. Snowden of gaining access to computer files without authorization when he was working as a technician for the agency in Geneva in 2009, and did not send him home as a result."

Senate Race

The New Jersey special election for the U.S. Senate is this coming Wednesday, & Gail Collins has a few thoughts about GOP candidate Steve Lonegan, whose view of the social safety net (& philosophy of life) could be summed up in this classic: “I’d hate to see you get cancer, but that’s your problem, not mine.” Also, she ruminated on Chris Christie, who set the election on a Wednesday in mid-October so he would get all the headlines in the November election: "People, do you think Governor Christie used to be one of those kids who refused to share? When other children came over, do you think he put all his toys in one big pile and sat on it? I once had a friend like that, but I don’t think she grew up to be in charge of a state." ...

It was just weird. I mean, to me, you know, hey, if he said, 'Hey, you got really hot breasts man, I'd love to suck on them.' Then like, yeah, cool. But like, he didn't say that. It was like kind of like, I don't know, it was like what a gay guy would say to a stripper. It's the way he was talking to her. It's just like like there was no sexual interest at all. I don't know. To me, if I was single and you know like some stripper was tweeting me, I might take advantage of the perks of the office, you know? ... This is strange. It's just weird. ... It's like, 'I don't know who she is. I don't know anything about her.' Get the fuck out of here dude. You can't follow her Twitter page and not know she's got those great breasts. How do you fucking not know? -- Rick Shaftan, top aide to Steve Lonegan, speaking on the record to a TPM reporter about Democratic rival Cory Booker's Twitter exchange with that vegan stripper Collins mentioned

And Democrats have been complaining about the quality of Booker's campaign? -- Constant Weader

... Shaftan Gets Shafted. David Giambusso of the Star-Ledger: "Hours [after TPM published the interview], Lonegan fired Shaftan, saying the comments 'are not reflective of my views or that of my campaign. His comments are distasteful and offensive, and his contract as a vendor for my campaign will be terminated immediately,' Lonegan said."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 11, 2013

** Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "Just as Edward J. Snowden was preparing to leave Geneva and a job as a C.I.A. technician in 2009, his supervisor wrote a derogatory report in his personnel file, noting a distinct change in the young man’s behavior and work habits, as well as a troubling suspicion. The C.I.A. suspected that Mr. Snowden was trying to break into classified computer files to which he was not authorized to have access, and decided to send him home, according to two senior American officials. But the red flags went unheeded.... The supervisor's cautionary note and the C.I.A.'s suspicions apparently were not forwarded to the N.S.A. or its contractors...." CW: Just jaw-dropping.

CW: I have been waiting since the debt ceiling crisis of 2011 for a teabagging Constitooshunal scholar to say this out loud, because I had a sneaking suspicion it's what they believe. As Charles Pierce points out, yesterday Rep. Jeb Hensarling (RTP-Texas) went there: " Andrea Mitchell was interviewing Rep. Jeb (Jeb) Hensarling of Texas, and she felt compelled to point out to Congressman Jeb that lifting the debt ceiling meant only that we would be paying bills for bills and programs that Congress already paid for. Congressman Jeb replied that 'this House' didn't vote for the stimulus, and that 'this House' didn't vote for Obamacare." Got that? It's nullification writ large: one Congress does not have to pay for the costs of laws written by previous Congresses. I wish Nancy Pelosi had thought of that; the national debt would have taken a deep dive if she had just written off the Iraq War & Medicare Part D &, well, every debt incurred by previous Congresses. ...

... Thomas Beaumont of the AP: "... veteran Republicans across the country are accusing tea party lawmakers of staining the GOP with their refusal to bend in the budget impasse in Washington. The Republican establishment also is signaling a willingness to strike back at the tea party in next fall's elections. 'It's time for someone to act like a grown-up in this process,' former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu argues, faulting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and tea party Republicans in the House as much as President Barack Obama for taking an uncompromising stance. Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is just as pointed, saying this about the tea party-fueled refusal to support spending measures that include money for Obama's health care law: 'It never had a chance.'" ...

... Paul Kane, et al., of the Washington Post: "House and Senate Republicans offered competing plans Thursday to resolve Washington's debt-limit and government shutdown crises, as President Obama held the latest in a series of meetings aimed at persuading them to accept at least short-term solutions with no partisan strings attached. The White House described President Obama's conversation Thursday afternoon with House Republican leaders as a 'good meeting,' but said no deal was reached to reopen the government. 'After a discussion about potential paths forward, no specific determination was made,' the White House said in a statement to reporters. 'The President looks forward to making continued progress with members on both sides of the aisle.'" ...

... Jackie Calmes & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "President Obama on Thursday rejected a proposal from politically besieged House Republican leaders to extend the nation's borrowing authority for six weeks because it would not also reopen the government. Yet both parties saw it as the first break in Republicans' brinkmanship and a step toward a fiscal truce." ...

     ... Update. If Republicans can be believed, the Times story is incorrect. Jonathan Strong of the National Review: "A group of key House Republicans came out of a meeting with President Obama, Vice President Biden and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew saying aides to both parties would begin negotiations this evening over a CR to end the government shutdown. 'The president didn't say yes, didn't say no. We're continuing to negotiate this evening,' House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan told reporters." Etc. Via Digby. ...

     ... Update 2. Oh. The Times has materially changed it story. Same link. ...

     ... Here's the AP version, by David Espo. If the Tea Party is in charge of Boehner, maybe Harry Reid is in charge of Obama. ...

... Ken Sweet of the AP: "The Dow Jones industrial average soared more than 300 points Thursday after Republican leaders and President Barack Obama finally seemed willing to end a 10-day budget standoff that has threatened to leave the U.S. unable to pay its bills. The news drove the Dow to its biggest point rise this year and ended a three-week funk in stocks. It also injected some calm into the frazzled market for short-term government debt." ...

... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Republicans are unhappy with a House GOP plan to raise the debt ceiling for six weeks without funding the federal government. They are coalescing around their own proposal to pair a short-term debt-ceiling increase with a year-long stopgap to fund the government." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "The White House announced Thursday night that President Obama has signed a bill that ensures the Department of Defense can pay death gratuities and related survivor benefits to the families of military service members who die in the line of duty." ...

... James Warren of the New York Daily News: "It would be 'more expensive for Americans to buy a car, own a home, and open a small business' if the 'chaos' of a debt default comes next week, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned Congress Thursday. Lew's early-morning appearance before the Senate Finance Committee was the first head-to-head encounter between an administration official and dubious Republicans since the federal government shutdown began Oct. 1." ...

... Mark Murray of NBC News: "The Republican Party has been badly damaged in the ongoing government shutdown and debt limit standoff, with a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finding that a majority of Americans blame the GOP for the shutdown, and with the party's popularity declining to its lowest level. By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama -- a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96." ...

... Nate Silver! weighs in on shutdown polling & related phenomena. Via Jonathan Bernstein. ...

... Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post: "What's happening today is quite unlike the 'Contract With America' movement of the 1990s. The tea party is a grass-roots movement of people deeply dissatisfied with the United States' social, cultural and economic evolution over several decades. It's crucial to understand that they blame both parties for this degeneration.... This explains why the Republican Party has seemed so unresponsive to its traditional power bases, such as big business." ...

... Paul Krugman dispels a few debt-denier myths. ...

... Humor Break. "John Boehner Is Borrowing a Plan from Homer Simpson." Jonathan Chait: "Here's the best rule for determining what John Boehner will do in any situation: If there is a way for him to delay a moment of confrontation or political risk, he will do it. That's why Boehner's current plan is to raise the debt ceiling for six weeks while keeping the government shut down. Business is freaked out and will be furious with him if he triggers a default. So he's raising the debt ceiling for long enough to get them off his back. And tea-partiers will be furious if he abandons their quest to defund Obamacare by shutting down the government. So he's leaving that part in place.... Basically, his plan is to hide under some coats and hope it all works out somehow:"

Jennifer Medina of the New York Times: "With enthusiastic backing from state officials and an estimated seven million uninsured, California is a crucial testing ground for the success of President Obama's health care law. It is building the country's largest state-run health insurance exchange and has already expanded Medicaid coverage for the poor. Officials hope that the efforts here will eventually attract more than two million people who are currently uninsured." ...

... Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: "First the [Florida] State Legislature roundly rejected the [Affordable Care Act], refusing to create a state insurance exchange and punting it to the federal government to run the new insurance market. It also rejected $51 billion in federal funds that was available over 10 years to expand Medicaid coverage for the state's poor. As the day neared for consumers to enroll in insurance plans, state officials announced that so-called navigators -- a group assigned to help people sign up -- would be barred from state health offices.... But blame this week shifted to the federal government. Its Web site remains so error-prone that the overwhelming majority of Floridians who have tried to buy affordable health insurance have had little luck. Anecdotal evidence across Florida, which has 3.5 million uninsured residents, the second highest in the country, indicated that few Floridians managed to enroll." ...

... Janine Reid in a Washington Post op-ed: "ObamaCare saved my family from financial ruin.... If I could get John Boehner and Ted Cruz on a conference call, I would explain this to them. I would tell them that, while they were busy trying to derail the Affordable Care Act over the past two years, [my son] Mason has again learned to walk, talk, eat and shoot a three-point basket."

Gubernatorial Race

Elizabeth Titus of Politico: "A chaotic episode erupted in the Virginia gubernatorial race late Wednesday, as The Associated Press published and then retracted a story that said court documents alleged Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe had lied to a federal official."

News Ledes

Reuters: " U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Afghanistan on Friday to advance negotiations with President Hamid Karzai on a bilateral security pact which have hit a wall over two issues that have become deal breakers for the Afghan government."

Washington Post: "The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based agency responsible for destroying Syria's chemical weapons, has won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Friday in Oslo."

New York Times: "JPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest bank, reported a third-quarter net loss of $380 million on Friday as it continued to grapple with a raft of regulatory and legal woes. The added costs dragged down JPMorgan's results as the bank posted a net loss of 17 cents a share. JPMorgan's earnings were eroded, in large part, by a legal expense of $9.2 billion."

AP: " The administration of Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani has cancelled an anti-Israeli conference as part of his outreach to the West and efforts to map out a new diplomatic path for Iran. The annual event was set up by Rouhani's predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and showcased the former president's vitriolic anti-Israeli rhetoric and promoted his anti-Israeli sentiments."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 10, 2013

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "President Obama on Wednesday announced one of his most important economic decisions, nominating Janet L. Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve system and be his independent co-steward of the American economy. He called her 'one of the nation's foremost economists and policy makers.'" ...

... Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times has a long profile of Yellen. ...

... ** Kevin Roose of New York: "Janet Yellen is ... a new kind of Federal Reserve governor -- a humanist. She looks at the economy not just as a series of charts and figures, but as a moving, breathing organism, a collection of millions of people who are struggling to make their lives better today than they were yesterday."

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "... by dint of her intelligence, her technical expertise, her judgement, her creativity, her work ethic, and her willingness to coöperate with people rather than elbow them aside, [Yellen] has risen to the top of the one of the most demanding professions there is. That, surely, makes her a role model for all women."

NEW. Strings. Attached. Paul Kane, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Republican leaders said Thursday they will offer a temporary increase in the federal debt ceiling in exchange for negotiations with President Obama on longer-term 'pressing problems,' but they stopped short of agreeing to end a government shutdown now in its 10th day. In a news briefing following a closed-door meeting of House Republicans to present a plan to raise the debt limit for six weeks, House Speaker John A.Boehner (R-Ohio) said, 'What we want to do is offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling.' He described the offer,to be presented to Obama in a White House meeting with House Republicans on Thursday afternoon, as a 'good-faith effort on our part to move halfway to what he's demanded in order to have these conversations begin.'" ...

... Zachary Goldfarb & Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Treasury Secretary Jack Lew plans to warn lawmakers Thursday that he will be unable to guarantee payments to any group -- whether Social Security recipients or U.S. bondholders -- unless Congress approves an increase in the federal debt limit.... Lew plans to tell a Senate panel that he would do all he can to minimize the pain of breaching the $16.7 trillion debt limit, according to Treasury officials briefed on the testimony. But Lew will also note that in an unprecedented situation in which he would be relying entirely on the erratic flow of incoming revenue, the economy would suffer and there would not even be certainty that the government could make all interest payments." ...

... Burgess Everett & Manu Raju of Politico: "After taking a back-seat role in this fall’s fiscal battles, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republican senators are quietly seeing whether they can break the political impasse between House Republicans and Senate Democrats. Behind the scenes, the Kentucky Republican is gauging support within the Senate GOP Conference to temporarily raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government in return for a handful of policy proposals.... House Republican leaders are expected to unveil a short-term debt ceiling increase at a closed-door Republican Conference meeting on Thursday morning. Drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), that proposal calls for a short-term, four-to-six week increase in the debt ceiling while negotiations begin on revisions to the tax code and major changes to entitlement programs. President Barack Obama has said he would sign a clean debt ceiling but has ruled out including any policy measures." CW: Guess Mitch & Paul missed that part where the President said "No conditions." ...

... Lori Montgomery, et al., of the Washington Post: "The White House on Wednesday announced a series of meetings with lawmakers from both parties to focus on the government shutdown, looming debt crisis and festering fiscal stalemate, but a dispute promptly erupted over a presidential confab with House Republicans, and the Pentagon was forced to scramble to ensure death benefits for the families of fallen service members.... Shortly after Obama directed that the $100,000 payouts [of death benefits for military personnel] be made as scheduled when necessary, the House voted 425 to 0 to approve a measure that would ensure the Pentagon is able to pay the death benefits.... Saying that he was 'offended, outraged and embarrassed' by the lapse, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Wednesday that the Pentagon will enter into a contract with the private Fisher House Foundation to ensure that the death benefits are paid. He said the Defense Department will reimburse the foundation once the shutdown ends. House Republican and Democratic leaders met around midday Wednesday to discuss the current impasse.... Aides said the meeting lasted about 40 minutes but did not yield any new agreements." ...

... Jake Sherman, et al., of Politico: "President Barack Obama told House Democrats Wednesday that he would negotiate with Republicans but 'not with a gun at my head,' according to one lawmaker who attended a caucus-wide meeting at the White House. As he has before, Obama said he was open to short-term agreements to open the government and raise the debt ceiling if that's what it took to help Republicans out of what he described as a political box, the lawmaker said." ...

Sir, we are not a department of the government. We’re simply trying to be able to spend our own money. -- Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray, to Harry Reid on the Capitol steps

I'm on your side. Don't screw it up, okay? Don't screw it up. -- Harry Reid, to Mayor Gray

... Tim Alberta of the National Journal: "House Republicans remain committed to forcing negotiations with President Obama and Senate Democrats over a range of long-term fiscal issues, including the debt-ceiling and budget deficit. But they also are beginning to accept that for such talks to take place, they must first approve a short-term debt limit increase. On Wednesday, Republicans sounded prepared to do precisely that.... House Republicans said ... they are on track to approve a debt-limit extension -- lasting between four and six weeks -- that would establish a framework for subsequent fiscal negotiations. Lawmakers said this short-term deal ... could pass [the House] as soon as Friday." ...

... Humor Break. Paul Krugman: Republican leaders' "attempts to get something by repeating over and over the same old lies and misdirections -- we're not practicing extortion, he's just refusing to negotiate! -- makes me think of the classic tourist, believing that locals will understand English if only you talk loud enough." ...

... ** Jonathan Chait: "Cracks are forming everywhere in the Republican line.... The current Republican line does suggest a way out: if Republicans 'win' a promise to negotiate the budget, with the debt ceiling not being subject to the outcome of the negotiations. That this has actually been Obama's goal all along, and the thing Republicans have been trying to avoid, does not mean Republicans can't talk themselves into it. The negotiation would probably end in a stalemate..., but by the time it was finished the crisis would be over and conservative activists would have moved on to other issues -- a new Obama scandal, maybe." ...

... Brian Beutler of Salon: "At the risk of mistaking advancement for artifice, I think we're reaching the return-to-reality phase of the debt limit standoff, where Republican leaders figure out a way to answer to the right for their undelivered ransoms, and Democrats grudgingly help them preserve their honor, on the presumption that the risks of seeing this ritual humiliation to its conclusion are too severe." ...

... CW: Read Chait, then read the Washington Post Editors, who see Paul Ryan as the savior who will end the political impasse. -- if only everyone will listen to his "sensible" ideas about "entitlement reform" & the "tax code." Unbelievable. ...

... TBogg, in the Raw Story: "Paul Ryan has an unused agenda he thinks you might want to reconsider." CW: Yeah, and the Post editors have a worn-out editorial they think you might want to consider. ...

... Jonathan Cohn: Extortion is still extortion whether you're insisting on defunding ObamaCare (Tea Party) or demanding social safety net cuts & tax code"reform" (Paul Ryan). ...

     ... Here's Ryan's Wall Street Journal op-ed. I quit reading at the first lie, which means I didn't get through the first sentence. ...

... Humor Break. Dan Amira & Jonathan Chait: "The 8 Most Plausible Ways a Debt-Ceiling Catastrophe Could Be Averted." With Ted Cruz's likely reactions to each. ...

... Shutdown Forces Cruz Daughters to Become Apple-Pickers, Upsets Mrs. Ted. Ted "Cheerful." ...

... Also Upsets Koch Brothers. Michael Isikoff of NBC News: "In a move that highlights a growing rift in conservative ranks,Koch Industries ... today distanced the firm from allied political groups lobbying to keep the government shut down unless Obamacare is defunded. A letter, signed by the company's chief lobbyist and sent to members of Congress, says ... Koch Industries wants Congress to focus on 'balancing the budget' and 'cutting government spending,' among other goals.... The letter comes in the wake of media reports documenting how Freedom Partners -- a newly formed conservative trade association closely associated with the Koch brothers -- has helped finance many of the conservative and Tea Party groups that have been pressuring Republicans to link defunding Obamacare to the passage of a continuing resolution to fund the government and extend the debt ceiling." CW: if you read this conjunction with Jon Chait's piece linked above, you just might conclude the Koch boy pull Paul Ryan's strings. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... Howard Fineman learns that Heritage Action -- funded by the Koch Boys -- & Freedom Works -- founded & funded by the Koch Boys -- want to drop the ObamaCare condition from debt ceiling negotiations (but keep it in the shutdown ransom demands). CW: If you don't think the Koch brothers are running the country, this is your wake-up call. They control enough of the GOP caucus to wreak havoc, and the fate of the global economy & the U.S. government rests in their hands. ...

... Dana Milbank: Michael Needham, the CEO of Heritage Action, is enforcing the shutdown. CW: So some guy you never heard of has more influence over Congress than the POTUS. ...

... OR Anybody ...

... Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "... some of the country's most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain." CW Words of Advice: Change your name to Koch. Those MOCs will jump like they'd set their asses down on a pile of steaming teabags. ...

... The Salmonella Caucus. Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "The government shutdown is endangering what America eats, food safety experts said this week, as all inspections of domestic food except meat and poultry have halted and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recalled furloughed workers to handle a salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds of people in 18 states." CW: We have climate deniers; we have default deniers; let's hear it from the salmonella deniers. ...

... The Salmonella Caucus. Gail Collins looks into which agencies Republicans in Congress have been voting to open. Not the IRS. But "Good news: The Congressional gym is open."

CW: Meant to link this yesterday -- Thomas Edsall of the New York Times looks into the hearts & minds of Republican voters. A pathetic picture that helps explain how someone like Mrs. Crazy Minnesota was chosen to go to Washington to represent the people. ...

... NOW for a word from Mrs. Crazy Minnesota ...

Not a Parody. President Obama waived a ban on arming terrorists in order to allow weapons to go to the Syrian opposition. Your listeners, U.S. taxpayers, are now paying to give arms to terrorists including Al-Qaeda.... Now what this says to me, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God's End Times history. Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand. When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah. -- Rep. Michele Bachmann

Local News

Florida Secretary of State Vows to Suppress Votes. Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: Paving the way for a new attempt to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, Florida's election chief, [Secretary of State Ken Detzner,] tried to stoke confidence on Wednesday in the revamped plan before a largely skeptical crowd in immigrant-heavy South Florida."

News Ledes

New York Times: "M. Scott Carpenter, whose flight into space in 1962 as the second American to orbit the Earth was marred by technical glitches and ended with the nation waiting anxiously to see if he had survived a landing far from the target site, died on Thursday in Denver. He was 88 and one of the last two surviving astronauts of America's original space program, Project Mercury."

Detroit Free Press: "Seven months after his historic conviction for public corruption, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison today for running what the government called a money-making racket out of city hall that steered millions to himself, his family and his friends while the impoverished city hobbled along."

New York Times: "Alice Munro, the renowned Canadian short-story writer whose visceral work explores the tangled relationships between men and women, small-town existence and the fallibility of memory, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. Ms. Munro, 82, is the 13th woman to win the prize." ...

... The Guardian is covering the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature live. And the winner is -- my favorite contemporary writer Alice Munro.

Al Jazeera: "Libya's state news agency said Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has been freed after being captured and briefly detained, reportedly by government-aligned rebel groups. It is not clear if he was released willingly by his captors, or if security forces intervened."