The Commentariat -- Oct. 6, 2013

According to James Hohmann of Politico, the right's new litmus test is sabotage. Anyone who wants to "compromise" by passing a clean CR is a suspect squish, & the Tea Party plans to primary him/her. This really is extraordinary. ...

... AP: Appearing on ABC News's "This Week," "House Speaker John Boehner ... says he doesn't know when the government shutdown will end and says it's up to President Barack Obama to start negotiations. The Ohio Republican said Sunday that he will not allow his GOP-led House to vote on a bill reopening the government without serious talks about spending. He also says he will not go forward with a bill increasing the government's borrowing authority without a similar conservation." CW Translation: Woe is me. I'm the Speaker of the House and the only thing I can do is make a long series of unreasonable demands. Alternate CW Translation: Ask Ted Cruz. ...

     ... Thanks to Julie in Massachusetts. ...

... ** Nicholas Kristof on governing by blackmail. If the President did it, we would think he had gone mad. "... in that kind of situation, I would hope that we as journalists wouldn't describe the resulting furor as a 'political impasse' or 'partisan gridlock.' I hope that we wouldn't settle for quoting politicians on each side as blaming the other." ...

     ... Mark Sumner of Daily Kos: "And now, let's flip back to the front page of Kristof's own New York Times for continuing coverage of 'the budget standoff.' See? It's not an impasse, it's a standoff. Glad that got cleared up." ...

... Paul Krugman: "Ever since Reagan, the Beltway has treated Republicans as the natural party of government.... There was a general presumption of Republican competence.... I think the last two years have finally killed that presumption. It wasn't just that Romney lost -- his shock, the obvious degree to which his campaign was deluded, was an eye-opener. And now the antics of the Boehner bumblers. Suddenly the old Will Rogers line -- I'm not a member of any organized political party,I'm a Democrat -- has lost its sting; the upper hand is on the other foot. And that's going to color narratives and shape campaigns for a long time." ...

... Thom Shanker of the New York Times: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made a surprise announcement on Saturday that he would recall next week almost all of the 400,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department who had been sent home when the government shut down. Mr. Hagel said the decision that 'most D.O.D. civilians' would now be exempted from furloughs came after Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers interpreted a budget law passed just before the shutdown to include a larger number of workers." ...

** Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "... interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 -- waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.... The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law....

... CW: It should never go unsaid that the groups who form the loyal opposition are people who will never directly benefit from it: (1) the funders are rich old white guys (Koch boys, Ed Meese), (2) the politicians are legislators (retired or active) who already get government-backed health insurance, & (3) the so-called grassroots are people on Medicare. They are nasty, selfish bastards, one & all. ...

... Jeff Simon of the Washington Post: "As the fifth day of the federal government shutdown began, members of the House came together in a moment of rare bipartisanship to pass a bill, by a vote of 407 to 0, approving back pay for furloughed government workers. President Obama has expressed his support for the measure. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid supports the measure, but said Saturday that if furloughed workers are guaranteed back pay, there's no reason to keep them out of work." ...

... AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Saturday the political standoff paralysing Washington was 'reckless' and would weaken the United States' standing abroad if it did not end soon." ...

... Teabaggers Suddenly Love Federal Programs. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "After defending such actions by saying they were taking aim at a major new government program, House Republicans set about reassembling the government they had shut down, piece by piece. Programs that conservatives had tolerated at best were suddenly lavished with praise: nutrition assistance for women and children, federal medical research, national parks, the Smithsonian Institution, even the government of the District of Columbia, which was authorized to spend money to pick up Washington's trash, maintain its needle exchange program for intravenous drug users and even implement the health care law." ...

It takes serious chutzpah for Republicans to portray themselves as the defenders of N.I.H., parks and other critical services they gutted through sequestration and proposed cutting further for 2014. -- Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y."

Are we meant to believe that today they have come to Jesus, or is this just politics? -- Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)

Dave Weigel of Slate: "The intransigence of Democrats, from Obama on down to red-state senators, has surprised the GOP.... Democratic aides say that the red-staters are 'scared straight' by the House GOP. They're not getting the calls from home to defund Obamacare. Their home-state papers aren't dogging them, either. They're in no fear of losing an 'optics' battle to John Boehner and company."

Dealing with terrorists has taught us some things. You can't deal with 'em. This mess was created by the Republicans for one purpose, and they lost. People in my district are calling in for Obamacare -- affordable health care -- in large numbers.... You can't say, OK, you get half of Obamacare -- this isn't a Solomonic decision. So we sit here until they figure out they fuckin' lost. -- Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.)

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson gave Rep. Darrell Issa (RTP-Calif.) what-for when he petitioned to allow his suit against Attorney General Eric Holder to proceed despite the shutdown, which has furloughed DOJ litigators. Berman wrote in her denial of Issa's motion: "... while the vast majority of litigants who now must endure a delay in the progress of their matters do so due to circumstances beyond their control, that cannot be said of the House of Representatives, which has played a role in the shutdown that prompted the stay motion." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... "Mitch McConnell's Vanishing Act." Dana Milbank: Mitch McConnell's Tea Party rival for his Senate seat is keeping McConnell -- who has been the Republican to avert crises in the past -- from doing anything useful in the present debacle. ...

... Mary Reinhart of the Arizona Republic: "Policy experts say Arizona appears to be the only state in the nation so far to have withheld welfare checks because of the federal shutdown, a move key state lawmakers want Gov. Jan Brewer to reverse. The shutdown halted funding Tuesday for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, which states use to provide cash assistance and other support for low-income children and parents. Arizona officials announced this week that 5,200 eligible families would not receive payments, which average $207 a month.... States are allowed to use contingency funding or move money around to fund the cash-assistance payments, and other states have done so. In a letter to state welfare directors this week, federal officials said states would be reimbursed once the budget impasse is resolved. Arizona is one of 11 states that use only federal funding for the welfare payments, and the state uses the majority of its TANF funds for its burgeoning child-welfare programs." ...

... CW: Loved this David Kirkpatrick, et al., New York Times story (also linked in today's Ledes) on the U.S. raids in Somalia & Lybia: "With President Obama locked in a standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for a policy reversal in Syria, the raids could fuel accusations among his critics that the administration was eager for a showy foreign policy victory." The story, which is a long one, is all about the raids except for this graf signalling the wingnuts to attack Obama for, um, competence.

Julie Pace of the AP: "Defending the shaky rollout of his health care law, President Barack Obama said frustrated Americans 'definitely shouldn't give up' on the problem-plagued program now at the heart of his dispute with Republicans over reopening the federal government. Obama said public interest far exceeded the government's expectations, causing technology glitches that thwarted millions of Americans when trying to use government-run health care websites. 'Folks are working around the clock and have been systematically reducing the wait times,' he said. The federal gateway website was taken down for repairs over the weekend, again hindering people from signing up for insurance." ...

... AP: "President Barack Obama conducted an interview Friday with AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace that covered a wide range of topics...." Here's a text of the interview.

** Mark Sherman of the AP: "The Supreme Court is beginning a new term with controversial topics that offer the court's conservative majority the chance to move aggressively to undo limits on campaign contributions, undermine claims of discrimination in housing and mortgage lending, and allow for more government-sanctioned prayer. Assuming the government shutdown doesn't get in their way, the justices also will deal with a case that goes to the heart of the partisan impasse in Washington: whether and when the president may use recess appointments to fill key positions without Senate confirmation." ...

... David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: Ditto.

** Sorry I missed this. It's important. Leonard Downie, former WashPo executive editor, in the Washington Post, "based on his report 'The Obama Administration and the Press,' forthcoming Thursday from the Committee to Protect Journalists": "Many reporters covering national security and government policy in Washington these days are taking precautions to keep their sources from becoming casualties in the Obama administration's war on leaks.... The Obama administration has drawn a dubious distinction between whistleblowing that reveals bureaucratic waste or fraud, and leaks to the news media about unexamined secret government policies and activities; it punishes the latter as espionage."

Local News

Photo of the Nebraska Supremes via Digby.Margery Beck of the AP: "In a split decision released Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court rejected a 16-year-old ward of the state's request to waive parental consent to get an abortion, saying the girl had not shown she is sufficiently mature and well-informed enough to decide on her own whether to have an abortion. The girl, who is not named in the opinion, was living with foster parents this year when a juvenile court terminated the parental rights of her biological parents, who had physically abused and neglected her. In a closed hearing this summer, she told Douglas County District Judge Peter Bataillon she was 10 weeks pregnant and asked for a court order allowing an abortion. She said she would not be able to financially support a child and feared she might lose her foster placement if her foster parents, whom she described as having strong religious beliefs, learned of her pregnancy." CW: You have to read the whole story to get the impact of how horrible this ruling is. ...

     ... Digby: "She is competent to raise a child, however.... Just the image of a group of old white men (and one woman) in black robes, sitting up on a dais, making such a personal, intimate decision like this from on high chills my blood. It's medieval.... By the way, a majority of the Nebraska Supreme Court are Democrats. And according to the article, it appears that the lone Democratic woman on the court sided with the majority in this case."

Presidential Election 2016

CW: In case you Hillary fans are still wondering whether she will run in 2016, the answer is, "She's already running." Just take a look at this AP report by Ken Thomas about Clinton's campaign speech at Hamilton College. It's 2013, & I'm already sick of the 2016 campaign.

News Ledes

Al Jazeera: Japanese "Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Sunday that Japan is open to receiving overseas help to contain widening disaster at the crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima, where radioactive water leaks and other mishaps are now reported almost daily."

Guardian: "Italian divers have recovered 83 more bodies of migrants who died when a fishing boat with an estimated 500 people onboard sank within sight of the tiny island of Lampedusa."

Al Jazeera: "A day of demonstrations has left at least 51 dead and 268 injured across Egypt, according to the government's Health Ministry. The toll has risen steadily through Sunday and includes at least one dead in the province of Minya, 150 miles south of Cairo, where police are reported to have fired live rounds into a crowd protesting the military-backed government. Police have used tear gas to disperse protesters in Cairo, near Tahrir Square, and in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city."

New York Times: "American commandos carried out raids on Saturday in two far-flung African countries in a powerful flex of military muscle aimed at capturing fugitive terrorist suspects. American troops assisted by F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents seized a suspected leader of Al Qaeda on the streets of Tripoli, Libya, while Navy SEALs raided the seaside villa of a militant leader in a predawn firefight on the coast of Somalia.... Abu Anas, the Libyan Qaeda leader, was considered a major prize, and officials said he was alive in United States custody." ...

     ... Update: "An accused operative for Al Qaeda, [Abu Anas al-Libi,] seized by United States commandos in Libya over the weekend is being interrogated while in military custody on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea, officials said. He is expected eventually to be sent to New York for criminal prosecution." ...

     ... Update: "Libya's fragile interim government condemned the United States on Sunday for what it called the 'kidnapping of a Libyan citizen' from this capital city a day earlier, and Libyan lawmakers threatened to remove the prime minister if the government was involved.... The government denied an American assertion that it had played a role in the operation amid anger that the nation's sovereignty had been violated. But ... some Libyans angry at the raid expressed exasperation at their government's failures to bring any measure of security to its people."

... Here's the Washington Post story on the U.S. raid on a Somali al-Qaeda-linked leader. Wire story linked in yesterday's Ledes.

AP: "International inspectors began destroying Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons and the machinery used to create it, a United Nations official said Sunday, racing under a tight deadline aiming to eliminate President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons program within nine months."

AP: "President Barack Obama says U.S. intelligence agencies believe Iran is still 'a year or more' away from producing a nuclear weapon, an assessment he acknowledged was at odds with Israel. 'Our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates of Israeli intelligence services,' Obama said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 5, 2013

"In this week's address, President Obama said that Republicans in the House of Representatives chose to shut down the government over a health care law they don't like. He urged the Congress to pass a budget that funds our government, with no partisan strings attached. The President made clear he will work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul -- but not under the shadow of these threats to our economy." -- White House

Blackmail, extortion, hostage-taking and brinksmanship are the tools of terrorists, not legislators. -- Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution

We Have No Idea What We're Doing. Lori Montgomery, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Republicans on Friday continued to demand changes to President Obama's signature health-care law as a condition for funding government operations.... Privately, a number of GOP lawmakers are pushing for a shift ... to exploration of a broader deal to reduce the nation's debt.... But Boehner seemed anything but conciliatory when he and other senior Republican lawmakers appeared before reporters on Friday, angrily denouncing comments from an anonymous White House official who said the Democrats were 'winning' in the funding impasse. 'This isn't some damn game,' Boehner said loudly.... [See video clip in yesterday's Commentariat.] President Obama sought to correct the official's comment when he spoke to reporters Friday during a visit with Vice President Biden to Taylor Gourmet, a deli near the White House.... 'As long as they're off the job, nobody's winning, and that's the point,' Obama said in response to a question, referring to furloughed federal workers. 'We should get this over with as soon as possible.'"

... We Admit We Have No Idea What We're Doing. Jonathan Weisman & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "The overarching problem for [Boehner]..., say allies and opponents, is that he and his leadership team have no real idea how to resolve the fiscal showdown. They are only trying to survive another day, Republican strategists say, hoping to maintain unity as long as possible so that when the Republican position collapses, they can capitulate on two issues at once -- financing the government and raising the debt ceiling -- and head off any internal party backlash." ...

You really have to call Cruz, I'm not even joking about that. That's really what you have to do, because he's the one that set up the strategy, he's the one that got us into this mess, and so we've got to know what the next move is. -- Dave Nunes (R-Calif.), when asked what the House was doing

... Michael Bender of Bloomberg News: "U.S. Representative Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican, said he would support a broad spending deal that didn't include changes to the health-care law, becoming the first Tea Party-backed House lawmaker to publicly back off the fight that has shut down the government for five days. Ross, ranked among the House's most conservative members..., said he shifted his position because the shutdown hasn't resulted in changes to the Affordable Care Act, which started Oct. 1, the same day government funding ran out. The shutdown also could hurt the party, he said." CW: I guess the old folks in Lakeland & Plant City are letting Ross know how fearful they are that President Obama will personally confiscate their Social Security checks if the shutdown goes on. ...

... Greg Sargent: "Dems have hit on a way to use a 'discharge petition,' which forces a House vote if a majority of Representatives signs it, to try to force the issue. Previously, it was thought this could not work, because a discharge petition takes 30 legislative days to ripen, so if this were tried with the clean CR that passed the Senate, this couldn't bear fruit until some time in November. But now House Democrats say they have found a previously filed bill to use as a discharge petition -- one that would fund the government at sequester levels.... Dems say that if they get enough signatures, they'd be able to force a vote by October 14th." ...

     ... CW: Various political scientists (here & here, ferinstance), are saying that the plan won't work, largely because few Republicans will sign on to a Democratic discharge petition even if they favor the Democrats' position. However, these experts assume the House leadership would be weakened by the defection & would therefore oppose it. I'm not sure they're right. Boehner knows he is going to have to work with Pelosi on this somewhere down the line; this would be an ideal way for him to get the CR through with no visible blood on his hands. It would not surprise me if Boehner was in on the Democratic plan. He retains his creds with the Crazy Caucus & gets the clean CR he wants. Perfecto. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "... a negotiation is not a shakedown. Pretending the two are the same doesn't make it so." ...

... Molly Ball of the Atlantic: "Friday's campaign-style back-and-forth over who said what and who cares more about the suffering American people during the shutdown started with an anonymous senior administration official's declaration, quoted and paraphrased by the Wall Street Journal, that "'We are winning .... It doesn't really matter to us' how long the shutdown lasts "because what matters is the end result.'" [See also the top of the October 3 Commentariat.] ... For all the accusations of gloating hurled at the White House..., I heard something very different from senior administration officials Thursday: an awareness that Obama doesn't have to get elected again, and that that has freed him to take politically risky positions in the service of dragging the American political system out of chaotic and destabilizing patterns. As senior administration officials portrayed it, Obama has been working throughout the course of this year to rightsize the presidency." ...

... ** "The Triumph of the Ratfuckers." Charles Pierce ties the House teabaggers to Nixon plumber Donald Segretti. ...

... ** Colbert King of the Washington Post goes back further in history to locate the ideological foundations of the Tea Party saboteurs: "Today there is a New Confederacy, an insurgent political force that has captured the Republican Party and is taking up where the Old Confederacy left off in its efforts to bring down the federal government.... The New Confederacy, as churlish toward President Obama as the Old Confederacy was to Lincoln, has accomplished what its predecessor could not: It has shut down the federal government, and without even firing a weapon or taking 620,000 lives, as did the Old Confederacy's instigated Civil War. Not stopping there, however, the New Confederacy aims to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States, setting off economic calamity at home and abroad -- all in the name of 'fiscal sanity.'" ...

... MEANWHILE, if you stick with Right Wing News, here's what you're learning. Alex Pappas of the Daily Caller: "Priests threatened with arrest if they minister to military during shutdown." The post is worth a read for the shear audacity of it. And don't think members of Congress -- Eric Cantor, Ted Cruz -- aren't fully exploiting this fabrication. ...

... AND, Speaking of Ted. Igor Bobic of TPM: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), or 'the joint speaker of the House' as Harry Reid calls him, argued Friday that Republicans have already offered Democrats a concession in their stand against reopening the government by demanding not a full repeal of Obamacare, but merely the defunding" ObamaCare.

** Gail Collins: "Over the past few years, Republicans have terrified their most fervent followers about Obamacare in order to disguise the fact that they no longer knew what to say about their old bête noir, entitlements.... Not so very long ago, worrying about entitlements was central to Republican identity. Then, they began to notice that the folks at their rallies looked like the audience for 'Matlock' reruns. The base was aging, and didn't want to change Social Security or Medicare.... It's not easy leading a political movement that believes the federal government is at the core of all our problems while depending heavily on the votes of citizens who get both their retirement money and health care from the federal government." ...

... Ezra Klein & Evan Soltas of the Washington Post: The ObamaCare site sucks, & not just because it can't handle a lot of traffic. ...

... Arit John of the Atlantic: "Web developers, or at least people who know that Unix and OS X share the same lineage, took to Reddit to ridicule the coding errors plaguing the newly-launched Obamacare exchange websites this week."

Serge Kovaleski of the New York Times: "The mother of Aaron Alexis, the military contractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last month, told his bosses one month before the shootings that he had a history of paranoid episodes and most likely needed therapy. But Mr. Alexis' managers at the Experts Inc., an information technology firm, decided to keep him on the job and did not require him to seek treatment, an internal company investigation has found."

News Ledes

Reuters: "A U.S. Navy SEAL team is believed to have killed a senior leader of the al Shabaab militant group in a raid on his seaside villa in Somalia on Saturday in response to a deadly attack on a Nairobi shopping mall last month, the New York Times reported. The unidentified target was believed to have been killed in a predawn firefight after the SEAL team landed in the Somali town of Barawe by sea...."

AFP: "Tunisia's political rivals agreed Saturday on a timetable for the unpopular Islamist-led ruling coalition to quit and be replaced by a government of independents, aiming to end a festering political crisis.... Saturday's deal, signed in the presence of politicians and media, was brokered to end a simmering two-month crisis sparked by the assassination in July of opposition MP Mohamed Brahmi."

Times Picayune: "New Orleans native, former Black Panther and member of the Angola Three Herman Wallace died Thursday night because of complications from liver cancer, friends and counsel confirmed Friday morning."

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...."