(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
Could not happen to a more deserving bunch of nihilists. Dave Weigel reports on the sorry scramblers:
Ideally, as of [Tuesday] morning, Republicans were hoping that Democrats would come to Jesus and agree to form a conference committee to hammer out the continuing resolution. As of this afternoon, Republicans thought they had a Plan B (honestly, more like a Plan F at this point) that would scramble the “narrative” of the shutdown and bring Democrats back into the ring.
The plan sort of came from Sen. Ted Cruz. On Sunday, Cruz could see that Barack Obama would demagogue the shutdown by wailing that Republicans were taking away veterans’ benefits, closing public parks, playing the new Miley Cyrus single on blast, and so forth. “I think we ought to start passing continuing resolutions narrowly focused on each of the things the President listed,” said Cruz.
On Monday evening, a few House Republicans started talking this up. Again, this afternoon, it became full-on GOP strategy, with the House GOP reading a small bill that would fund veterans’ benefits, public parks, and the District of Columbia. After 7 p.m., it would get a vote.
Before that vote, you could find plenty of Republicans high on the strategy. Mike Lee, Cruz’s Senate life partner, gave a speech attempting to flip the “taking government hostage” attack onto the Democrats. “Let’s leave Obamacare for another day and not hold the vast majority of government functions hostage when the vast majority of government functions don’t have anything to do with the implementation and enforcement of Obamacare,” he said. His phrasing confused people, and on a conference call Sen. John Cornyn seemed to think that Lee had just surrendered…
Lee and Cornyn made the same mistake. They didn’t see how the Democrats could bring down the bill. But they could, easily. Republicans were trying to suspend the rules to pass the mini-CR, protecting it from Democratic tricks or amendments. That meant they needed a 2/3 vote of the House; since 428 members were voting, they needed 286 of ’em. That freed up most Democrats to kill the bill, and 164 of them did so…
So: For the second time, the GOP pursued a Ted Cruz strategy to embarrass Democrats into taking tough votes, underestimated how many of them would take them, and won nothing but a talking point.
TNR‘s Noam Scheiber thinks “Conservatives Have Already Lost Control of the Shutdown Narrative”:
It’s no secret why Republicans are facing a PR debacle over the shutdown they triggered. Not only have conservatives chosen an unpopular issue on which to make a stand—polls consistently show that Americans oppose defunding Obamacare by a fairly wide margin. The Tea Partiers have exacerbated the problem by choosing a massively unpopular approach to getting their way. The latest Quinnipiac poll finds that voters object to defunding Obamacare under threat of shutdown by a yawning 50-point margin. (In fairness, an earlier CNBC poll put the margin at a mere 41 points.) …
… Watching Fox on Tuesday inspired that rubber-necking impulse you typically only get when a Fox anchor is forced to pronounce a foreign-sounding name… Fox was all ready to go with its Obamacare set pieces—overburdened websites, 800-number backlogs. And it dutifully looped them into its coverage. But given its investment in the appearance of keeping viewers informed, it couldn’t exactly go AWOL on the biggest political story of the year. Instead it spent the day flailing…
As if to mock the despairing apparatchiks, every half hour brought another report from a correspondent in the field surveying the landscape of shuddered facilities. The Statue of Liberty. Bunker Hill. My favorite was a group a World War II veterans who’d trekked to Washington to tour the World War II memorial, only to find it barricaded when they got there. Fox played the footage over and over, clearly sensing a prime Kulturkampf opportunity—aging war veterans made to suffer indignities by socialist president. But none of the Foxies narrating the story could quite figure out what to do with the fact that it takes government money to build memorials, and government money to keep them open. And so it just hung out there as an implicit rebuke of Republicans…
Much more to enjoy, at the links.
piratedan
h/t to simoom over at LGF…..
They propose that it would be sweet to see Reid actually append sequestered items that the Dems conceded on into the next CR that doesn’t come in clean from the GOP House. Then bring that up for debate on the Senate floor. They expect this “concession” thing to only work one way? You want to hammer out a budget now, after showing your ass to the nation and telling the Senate to pound sand for the last ten months?
johnny aquitard
Jeebus. They’ve stepped on their dick by a 50 point margin.
Damn I am glad teabaggers are as fucking stupid as they seem. Bless them! Bless them all!
Linda Featheringill
I stand amazed at the ability of the Righties to lie to themselves about what is possible and what isn’t.
They have left the state of Denial and have entered the land of Delusion.
FSM help us if one of them decides that human sacrifice would force concessions from Obama and the Dems.
raven
Forty-two years ago a group of Vietnam Vets and the mom’s of soldier’s killed in Vietnam went to Arlington National Cemetery to hold a memorial service and place a wreath on the grounds. The ceremony was held in front of Arlington and, as we turned to go in and lay the wreath, the Park Service Police slammed the gates shut in our faces. I don’t recall a great hue and cry about it.
billgerat
I found out today that I am exempted from the government furloughs. Despite being sick with pneumonia, I was told that I had to come in to work to get paid for at least one more day or automatically be placed in furlough status. When I got there I was told I was exempted and will continue to work through the shutdown. Technically we are working for IOUs, but are promised in writing to be reimbursed when the shutdown ends. The rest of the shipyard that are furloughed have nothing saying that they will get paid back for sure (most likely they will), but I wouldn’t trust the GOP not to sabotage that. Under furlough rules, all leave taking is cancelled, so If I were to call in sick over my pneumonia I’d lose my exemption and be put on furlough status – so if I fall down face first, I’d better be in the next day on crutches with IV bag in hand.
All my co-workers and the other trades I’ve talked to at work have been blaming the GOP for the shutdown. This is a very conservative town I live in, but I’ll bet that by the end of the day the Democrats are going to pick up a lot of votes come next year. I just don’t understand why the GOP doesn’t think that they won’t get burned by their hostage stunts. Schadenfreude for breakfast will be especially tasty this time around.
raven
@billgerat: Because they are stupid motherfuckers?
Amir Khalid
@raven:
That we know already. I think billgerat is wondering, as I do myself, what sort of internal narrative they have that makes their actions seem wise and brave.
amk
what amazes me is that the media and their pundtwits still think rethugs are genius in legislative maneuvering. Both boner and mcturtle lost out on almost every ‘smart’ legislative skulduggery they tried since 2009.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Amir Khalid: Part of the answer: Even most non-Tea Party journalists I’ve read seem to be slightly puzzled by the fact that “the public disapproves of the law” “yet” oddly, only 23% want it erased from the books or think that shutting down the government to do so is a good idea.
Yes, because “the public disapproves” not at a rate of 100% but more like 53%. Furthermore, at least some percentage of that is people who check “disapprove” because they think it was too conservative, a gift to insurance companies, and so on. They don’t want it erased, they want it stronger. So all boiled down, those who actually “disapprove” for the reasons that the Tea Party does amount to around 23%, AKA the Bush Constant.
The Tea Party however looks at this and sees “The public is with us!” Or well some of them do, others just hear themselves repeat the bullshit so many times on Fox News that they forget that it’s bullshit. Or they don’t forget, and just figure what the hell. The media believes our bullshit, maybe the rest of the public will also.
In this one, small way, we’re served by the cluelessness of the Villager media.
geg6
Holy shit! Has Cole seen the news? Somebody at Bethany College stole millions from the school and was just fired along with the CFO. Bethany isn’t that big a school and I can’t imagine that that kind of loss will be easily absorbed. What the hell was going on down there?
Baud
Assuming there are a handful if sane Republicans in the Senate, can Harry Reid pass a clean CR (preferably with a debt limit increase), get all the House Democrats to sign a discharge petition, and invite about 20 House Republicans to prove their sanity by signing on?
I’m tired of hearing how there are reasonable Republicans in the House. Time to put up or shut up.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie
raven
@geg6: “Two Bethany College employees have been fired after an investigation revealed more than $500,000 was embezzled from the school.
Read More at: http://www.wtov9.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/2-bethany-college-employees-fired-after-embezzlement-scandal-1768.shtml“
SiubhanDuinne
Heh. Nicely done, Weigel.
Even the liberal New Republic needs a copy editor now and then.
Schlemizel
@billgerat:
The big reason the GOP acts so stupidly is Fox News. Every Republican lawmaker in DC has that shit on in their offices all day every day. The result is that those clowns and their fluffer staff hear an endless loop of how much every American hates ACA, how the Dems will be blamed for the shut down and how unpopular President Obama is. They are choking to death on their own propaganda because they are stupid enough to believe it!
@raven:
Yes, exactly what I said but you are so much more succinct!
raven
The White House announced on Wednesday that President Obama canceled his trip next week to the Philippines and Malaysia, citing the budget standoff embroiling Washington.
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid: Just heard on the news that the shutdown means that President Obama has cancelled his planned trip to Malaysia next week. Unclear at this point whether other parts of the Asian trip — or maybe the whole thing — will be scrapped, but Malaysia and the Philippines are out.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Kerry going.
Bill E Pilgrim
@raven: @SiubhanDuinne:
Well shit, I heard that his trips cost $200 million a day, so depending on how many days were planned, that could balance the federal budget right there!
@raven: Oh never mind then. His probably cost $300 million, what with the windsurfing and all.
Schlemizel
BTW – if you wonder why the elected Dems in DC are such a gutless, clueless bunch of knobs the answer is similar to my theory on the GOP problem in #15. Every gottamm Dem office has CNN on all day every day. The result is they also are getting dumber and dumber with a heavy dose of “both sides do it” and “some Dems say”
billgerat
@Schlemizel: I don’t think FOX News is the answer. It’s like a crank snorter who finds out that smoking it gives him a better high; FOX News is just a better delivery system for their drug.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Thanks, NPR neglected to mention that.
@Bill E Pilgrim: LOL
amk
US shutdown puzzles and pisses off other nations.
R-Jud
@Bill E Pilgrim:
And the manicures. Don’t forget the manicures!
Frankensteinbeck
@Schlemizel:
These are going to be a very confusing few days. It turns out that Obama is not Clint Eastwood’s empty chair. Half the Republican House knew – knew, with flat-out certainty because it was obvious – that Obama would be crawling to them on bended knee today begging for Obamacare to be repealed, while the country cheered. The bubble they live in will slow down their realizing the opposite is happening, but they will find out. The Tea Party won’t care. People like Bachmann are on a holy mission, and hurting as many people as possible is a feature, not a bug. I don’t know what the rest will do. There does come a point when the shutdown does more damage to their reelection than a Tea Party primary.
slightly_peeved
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I think the Tea Party also hate government more than a lot of Americans. I’m not American, but I think there may be some contingent of Americans who while they don’t like the law, figure that reversing a major law in the middle of it being rolled out is a bad idea. Some of these people are people who think the government should actually run, even if it results in things they don’t like. This is the flip-side of the ‘why can’t Congress get together and get shit done’ view. Others would figure that while Obamacare (in their uninformed opinion) is going to make their lives worse, stopping it at this stage would probably result in a greater clusterfuck.
If you’re in the Tea Party, it’s because stopping Obama is one of the most important things in the world. The greater majority of Americans, of people in general, don’t care enough about politics to hate like that.
Alexandra
Everyone happy that Tbogg’s back in the saddle…
Meanwhile, more importantly, according to Politico, David Plouffe is back advising the White House during this period. Always thought he was the most competent, aggressive and unequivocal messaging guru Democrats have.
SiubhanDuinne
@amk:
Love how you improved the original headline, while retaining the commitment to alliteration.
On topic, I would estimate that close to half of my FB friends live in countries other than the USA, and they are universally aghast (if occasionally mocking) at the shutdown and the ostensible reasons for it.
TriassicSands
@Baud:
I’m afraid the way one qualifies to be called “reasonable” in D.C. is to occasionally utter some words that aren’t completely bat shit crazy. Then, having earned your lifetime Badge of Reasonableness, you are free to go on supporting bat shit crazy legislation and bizarre political maneuvering.
Are there a handful of sane Republican senators? I’d say “no.” After all, not a single Republican voted for the PPACA, which is legislation loaded with ideas from conservatives. Further, they continue to require 60 votes for judicial nominees who would have been approved unanimously in the past. How many reasonable GOP senators showed up in committees investigating Benghazi? The whole party believes a bunch of myths, legends (the legend of Saint Ronald), wishful thinking, anti-science nonsense, and outright lies.
One of the problems today in getting the media to label the GOP as what it is — mindless, delusional thugs who don’t care if people die for lack of health insurance or get enough to eat or go bankrupt, again from lack of worthwhile health coverage — seems to be that the party has become so unhinged that people can’t really believe that an entire party could be so dishonest, so stupid, and so crazy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I remember seeing that years ago, but never kept the link. So glad to have it again. I’m definitely going to make that pie. Thanks!
MattF
Here, Marc ‘War Criminal’ Thiessen comes out in favor of hostage-taking, because ‘both sides do it all the time’:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-the-gop-flunks-hostage-taking-101/2013/09/30/43a4ff00-29d2-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html
And you thought I was joking. Ha ha.
ETA: Linkee fixed.
Alexandra
@TriassicSands:
I think more than a handful as individuals are sane. However, they’re tightly bound to a sinking ship by powerful institutional forces – money, wingnut media and welfare, their gerrymandered constituencies and so on. They tend to go revealingly off message when they no longer need any of these things e.g. retirement.
Bill E Pilgrim
@slightly_peeved: They love government when it’s waging war. Or regulating who you can and can’t sleep with, and how. Tea Partiers forcing women to undergo government-ordered trasnvaginal ultrasound wand insertion to try to convince them to adopt their own right-wing right-to-life views are the farthest thing from people who “hate government”.
Re this:
there may be some contingent of Americans who while they don’t like the law, figure that reversing a major law in the middle of it being rolled out is a bad idea.
I think there is such a contingent, and as I said, it definitely includes at least some people who “don’t like the law” for precisely the opposite reasons that the Tea Partiers don’t like it. That is, they want it stronger, not reversed.
The slice of that 53% who disapprove for reasons similar to the Tea Party, and with a fervor matching the Tea Partiers, is probably around 23%, IMO anyway.
Baud
@TriassicSands:
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Senate did pass a clean CR to avoid the shutdown, and the House voted it down.
Suffern ACE
@TriassicSands: yes, but to a man, the republicans believe that we shouldn’t trouble rich men with taxes, an idea that many men who own the media companies that pay journalists and make them stars find reasonable and appealing. So all republicans need is one other reasonable idea and the reporter can then claim that he’s found a trend toward reasonableness.
It’s the same reason that Democrats need to give detailed presentations using charts and graphs while Republicans seem to be able to get by with catchy rhymes and slogans. Because democrats might believe that wealthy men like those who hire journalists might need to pay taxes, democrats need to prove that they aren’t crazy.
BruceFromOhio
Yay, schadenfreude. Yay, stoopid conservative idiots being stoopid.
Unfortunately, they are FUCKING WRECKING MY GAIA-DAMNED COUNTRY.
@TriassicSands:
This x a jillion, though I usually use “soulless ratfucking criminals” to describe them. Yours is more kindly.
Dave N.
@raven:
Wingnut response: “Why is Obama snubbing our Asian allies?”
the Conster
Carl Bernstein just went there on Morning Joe, calling Cantor and his Republicans the greatest threat to the national interest since Joe McCarthy, and he’s watching heads explode. Go Carl.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’d like to think that was intentional. Everyone shudders at the GOP’s absolute stupidity.
cvstoner
@johnny aquitard:
Unfortunately, they’ll be gerrymandered back.
@Schlemizel:
That, and the fact that they have nothing to fear from the left. Nothing at all.
@Alexandra:
Exactly. Gerrymandering is a two-edged sword. They’re safe in their seat, but have no life raft, either.
amk
@Baud: And then they turned around and caved in to the house thugs meekly by voting against tabling the stupid house bill. If there are any gooper moderates at all, then they are all cowards.
Baud
@amk:
That actually makes sense. No reason for Senate Republicans to vote against the House bill. I don’t expect Senate Republicans to fight for Obamacare. I just want them to vote for a clean CR.
agrippa
The GOP may have a flat learning curve. They do not perceive any consequences because the election is Nov 2014 and apathy will remain high; many of them are in safe districts and cannot lose; they despise Obama.
And, probably the best reason: It seemed the thing to do at the time.
Sometimes, consequences take a long time to work out. In the 1970s, the GOP took in the “Dixiecrats”. We are now seeing how that is working out.
And, times are changing; culturally, economically; demographically. That is not working out for the GOP either.
It would be nice if politics were based upon rational problem solving. It is not. Politics is based upon power and passion.
dogwood
I think the Republicans have put themselves in a dicey situation. This shutdown is just too close to the need to raise the debt ceiling. The public will forgive and forget a relatively short shutdown, but when they come back in a couple of weeks threatening to default if they don’t get their way, they are going to piss of a fairly significant portion of those forgivers and forgetters. Some of that group might just start remembering come election time when Democrats are going to be consistently refreshing their memories.
MomSense
So according to Mornin’joe, if Obama weren’t such an extremist there wouldn’t have been a tea party.
I hate these people.
WereBear
Not only that, they have been marinating in the crazy for so long it has seeped into their sensory system.
It’s the new normal!
gnomedad
Can’t stop laughing at the cartoon. If it weren’t such a sad clusterfuck, I’d be tempted to add “meep-meep”.
TS
@MomSense:
Heard that & now Chuck Todd says the GOP won yesterday cause they beat up Harry Reid
The pundits are on the wrong side of history – the GOP is going down over this – they and the media have lost any definition of sanity.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
There was an article in ‘Science’ recently (I think one of the August issues) how economic stress impedes rational decision making. I have little doubt that rage has a similar effect.
MomSense
@TS:
They are a pathetic bunch.
SRW1
@TS:
For the pundits it’s always a horse race, isn’t it?
Baud
@TS:
Hard to believe there was a time when Chuck Todd was a darling of the liberal blogs.
gnomedad
Deuce Bigalow: I haven’t made a movie in 7 years because of Democrats
Win/win.
dmsilev
@TS:
How the fuck does that work? I don’t think the Senate did anything yesterday; Boehner’s latest gambit crashed and burned in the House (needed 2/3s majority, didn’t even come close). The only thing Reid did was stick a shiv into Boehner by leaking those emails saying that Boehner was privately working to keep healthcare subsidies for Congressional staff while publicly blathering about how evil said subsidies were.
TS
@MomSense:
Any show that includes Bill (always wrong) Kristol as a pundit is by definition pathetic – or stupid – or both.
Baud
@dmsilev:
It’s like that reporter in the last election: “The polls showing Obama ahead in Ohio can’t be right because Romney needs Ohio in order to have a chance of winning.”
Suffern ACE
@MomSense: cripes. We really do need more actual left wing extremists if Obama passes for one. All in favor of abolishing private property and killing the landlords say “aye”.
weaselone
@dmsilev:
It’s the need to maintain the horse race narrative. It’s not really a much of a race if the actually reports that the race is not in fact neck to neck, but rather the conservative horse is in the process of being lapped.
amk
@Baud: The house bill didn’t have a clean CR. Voting for tabling it would have shown that gopper senate critters wanted one. They didn’t and thusly they’re cowards.
OzarkHillbilly
@Alexandra:
Senators can’t gerrymander their constituencies.
Baud
@amk:
I have a rule against expending more than one comment trying to justify Republican actions. You win.
Punchy
@TS: Lolwutz? “Beat up Harry Reid”? Whiskey Tater FoxNews?
TS
@Baud:
Damned if I can remember it – a couple of weeks in 2008 – and then Todd discovered the President had more important things to do than talk to pundits and his (Todd’s) feelings were hurt – by a black guy to boot.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
My congressman, the honorable Tim Walz, is donating his salary to food banks in Mankato and Rochester for the duration of the shut down.
Go dawg!
Edited for spelling.
WereBear
That was when he was a number cruncher, and he just crunched numbers.
We are so pathetic; a MSM reporter saying 1+1=2 gets us all grateful.
Botsplainer
I made the mistake of calling my mother to excitedly tell her that I’m no longer going to have to economically self-limit on routine care and diagnostics due to my 15000 deductible, as I now get a policy with a 1500 deductible for essentially the same money with my SE deduction and being able to to drop youngest daughter’s extra college policy. Her bitter-toned response, at age 69?
That’s what we’re up against. This is a woman who has never been without gold-plated insurance, first through my dad (who was a schoolteacher) and now through Medicare. She always was a bit of a wingnut by disposition (at the young age of 25, she voted for George Wallace in 1968), and a steady diet of hate radio and Fox News have made her what she is today.
She did ultimately acknowledge that my insurance travails as a self-employed person have been difficult, and that it would be a shame if my youngest daughter would have no chance on the individual market due to atypical cells revealed on a biopsy, but she ALWAYS comes around to the same place for blame for high costs of care – lazy coloreds.
Par for the course of someone who blames all societal ills on young bucks and welfare queens, she works as sort of a bookkeeper for an organization that services the families of mentally retarded adults by providing housing and training, and spends a great deal of time processing SSI checks. Also, she has spent years coddling my lazy, mendacious, selfish and narcissistic grandmother, who has received awesome medical services from Medicare despite never having cranked out a compensated day’s work in her life.
Botsplainer
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
I’d rather that they donate their salaries to job training programs for young adults. That’s where the real need is.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Amir Khalid:
UNSKEWED POLLS, BITCHES!
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Botsplainer:
There’s real need for food too, given that 25% of kids are food insecure.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@agrippa:
To the usual list of instructions when her son visited other kids, a friend of mine had one addition: no good ideas.
Speaking of good ideas, a truly good idea:
Hyundai to defer payments due from US government staff
liberal
I came up with a metaphor for the Rethuglicans trying to fund the “popular” parts of the Fed gov’t: “OK, we’ll release a few women and children.”
dogwood
Where people donate their money is their own goddamn business.
Ash Can
@MomSense:
They’re not blowing dog whistles, they’re driving the whole fucking locomotive engine through the building, laying on the horn all the way, and supplementing it with an air-raid siren mounted on top of the engineer’s cab.
Botsplainer
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
I understand that. I just hate that the instant reaction to anything which involves public donations always winds up with money being directed to homeless shelters and food banks. In this instance, the suspension of government fund transfers overwhelmingly impacts programs which substantially benefit lower middle income working stiffs. As a nation, the movement activists of both right and left have ignored them, implicitly deriding their efforts as somehow not deserving of adequate recognition and compensation. The activists of the right seem to do it out of an elitism that only rewards paper shuffling and the left for reasons that seem effete.
Botsplainer
@dogwood:
Then they shouldn’t make a point of announcing where it goes in order to make a public statement.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Botsplainer:
There’s also a logistical question. It’s much more practical to donate to organizations that operate on mostly donations.
Lots of work programs have grants upon which they operate, and don’t have an easy mechanism to take in public funds.
I’m just glad he’s doing something rather than nothing. You’re from AU, IIRC, so I won’t ask what your congresscritter is doing during the shut down. ;)
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Botsplainer:
Jesus, dude.
agrippa
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I agree. The GOP Reps were told, as children, that good ideas are forbidden.
I am glad that Hyundai is doing that.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@agrippa:
If you ask my friend to unpack that rule, it becomes “don’t do anything when your only excuse later will be ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time'”.
The GOP Reps probably needed to hear that, often, as kids.
Botsplainer
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Kentucky. Multimillionaire career public servant Yertle is salving his conscience by donating to Dare to Care. Rand Paul is probably donating new pointy hoods and creosote crosses at his next Klavern. I work in Louisville, and John Yarmuth has always donated 100% of his to local interests and charities (he’s independently wealthy). I have no idea what the frosh Teatard who reps my gerrymandered district does.
Southern Beale
Unfucking-believable.
Check out the PR stunt Gohmert, Bachmann and the rest of the Teanut Congress orchestrated at the World War II memorial THEY shuttered. And the media ate it up.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Still curious what the teatards think is the end game is here. Sooner or later the government will have to be funded and there is no way now they can do that without appearing to cave and end up looking soft on Obama to their rabbid base.
Poopyman
@weaselone:
Edited for accuracy.
Botsplainer
@Southern Beale:
Oh yeah – the media lapped that up like a dog eating its own vomit.
Pardon me for stomping on The Greediest Generation yet again, I found myself feeling less than charitable toward a group of oldsters that enjoyed significant public investment in the advance of their personal lives (the vast majority of that group undoubtedly a bunch of Foxtards that think of the guy in the White House as a usurping seekrit Muslin Kenyan communistical socialist atheist who loves Wall Street and hates honest heartland white folks).
I will also add that the disproportionate beneficiaries of postwar largesse were white, the vast majority of which never heard the sound of a shot fired in anger.
Ash Can
@Baud:
He was a solid number-cruncher, in the style of Nate Silver and Sam Wang, and his skills were appreciated by us folks who saw his presentation of plain facts and numbers as a welcome counterpoint to the heaps of election-night horserace crap being flung at random by everyone else on TV. Then he was given a permanent reporting gig, and it all went straight to his head. A shame, really.
MomSense
@Suffern ACE:
What happened to the dreaded union thugs? Can’t we at least get them back in the fray? Otherwise I’m going to have to hunt for my pitchfork and practice my scary face.
@Ash Can:
It’s soooo obvious and yet it is completely overlooked by the village.
Kay
@Botsplainer:
Head Start cuts and closures will harm working people here. The program is hard to manage. It’s easier to drop little kids with relatives and go to work, because that’s a full shift.
The parents who sign up are the most motivated, because they have to juggle the kid transfer from daycare to Head Start and then back to daycare, but they do it, because they’re told the kids need early intervention (they do).
I just get the sense that there’s no appreciation of how hard these peoples’ lives are. If you pull one string, the whole plan unravels. To put a big pain in the ass roadblock of uncertainty in front of the most motivated parents is just so unfair. They’re trying. Is there some reason we have to keep cutting them off them at the knees? Their lives aren’t stressful enough?
Southern Beale
Apparently I can’t yell at my TV loud enough for anyone on the other side to hear me ….
Southern Beale
@Botsplainer:
I’m sure we can look forward to more of these stunts as the GOP scrambles to deflect any responsibility and put all of this on the Democrats. This was the plan from the beginning, after all. Trying to avoid what happened in 1995-6.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer:
Why? There aren’t any jobs for them to be trained for.
We need massive transfers of wealth to lower-income people to work up some aggregate demand. Food banks do that; these are often people who have to choose between eating and paying the rent.
Botsplainer
@Kay:
Exactly, and to my point.
This tendency to run publicly announced, visible donation money to food charity and homeless shelters never makes work look attractive to either the salvageable among the homeless or those working at the lowest couple of rungs of the economy. Programs to assist with basics like reduced-cost child care, affordable independent living, job training and baseline life skills training (household budgeting, how to navigate credit, kitchen hygiene, diet, minor home medical care) do an infinite amount of good far beyond satisfying the TRVE PROGRESSIVE advocacy of the rights of aggressive panhandlers to take over city sidewalks.
Ruckus
@Linda Featheringill:
Would it be OK if it was self sacrifice? Maybe one or more of the tp could set themselves on fire on the steps of the capital. Better yet, they could play russian roulette with a loaded semi auto pistol. Not like them to figure that one out.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Botsplainer:
So we should never give the indigent and poor money lest we disincentivize them to pull themselves out of poverty?
Where have I heard that before?
celticdragonchick
A lot of wingnuts on twitter are really pimping the WW II memorial thing and claiming that Obama deliberately shut it to show his contempt for veterans.
Of course, a lot of these folks were also agitating for open armed rebellion or a military coup d’etat last night as well. I got blocked by several armchair seditionists last night :)
weaselone
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
I don’t think that Botsplainer was suggesting that the poor and indigent were unworthy of resources, rather that it’s important to devote sufficient resources to those only a rung or two above to keep them moving forward and prevent them from sliding backwards.
celticdragonchick
@Botsplainer:
So $137 a month in food stamps is a disincentive to work?
I was there after I was badly and permanently injured on the job and had only short term disability to cover all my bills and feed my family. Food stamps saved us from starving and being thrown out onto the goddamned street
Jilli
I’m starting to think this fiasco could have an even bigger unintended consequence for the republicans. With all this hooey about Obamacare/ACA – it just may trigger enough interest in some to actually investigate the legislation – and the benefits. More are hearing about it now than they have in the past. The republicans may inadvertently be doing a PR job for ACA and increasing the number signing up. That may be a polly anna view, but the gop certainly isn’t doing itself any favors with this debacle. I almost choked on Cantors cynicism yesterday when he said his concerns were for fairness for all Americans. Who is buying their nonsense?
Ruckus
@Jilli:
Who is buying their nonsense?
Off hand guess – 27%
celticdragonchick
@Suffern ACE:
I find myself increasingly favoring the sans-cullottes as time goes on. Anybody ready to put together a Committee of Public Safety?
gogol's wife
@liberal:
Perfect!
celticdragonchick
@Jilli:
A lot of fucking seditious, paranoid idiots on twitter, I can assure you.
schrodinger's cat
Tom Friedman figures out the obvious!
Gex
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): I didn’t know you are from MN! Dang. When’s the next MN meet up? I couldn’t make the last one.
Felonius Monk
@dmsilev:
Because Chick Toad is a fucking imbecile. Perhaps if everyone ignored him, he might just slither away into the muck.
Mike in NC
@celticdragonchick:
To paraphrase the late Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution will not be Tweeted”.
Felonius Monk
@Baud:
Nobody ever claimed that liberals were perfect.
Felonius Monk
@schrodinger’s cat: Best part of that is the term “punditubbies”!
Botsplainer
@weaselone:
This. You get a lot more “bang for the buck” for charitable resources directed a couple of rungs up the ladder, along with generalized economic expansion.
Elizabelle
It’s not enough those poor conservatives are getting pilloried for their principles.
Now one of their favorite authors has died.
Oh noez! The shutdown has killed Tom Clancy!
schrodinger's cat
@Felonius Monk: Thanks!
@Elizabelle: I have never read any of his books, are they any good?
WereBear
So true. They have NO idea how difficult it is to juggle a slim payment and a patchwork of resources.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat:
I just read the first one or two, and they are page turners.
I vaguely remember a sex scene in one of them: He looked at her chest. Something along those lines …
They seem like potboilers for the military-industrial complex.
zizi2
@Botsplainer:
Your story makes me very sad. Your own Mom can’t feel happy for you that you now have affordable healthcare? SMH
Hang in there. Perhaps eventually she’ll be infected by your joy and relief
GregB
Has the mainstream media already forgotten that the GOP was supposed to have learned a lesson from the 2012 election and were supposed to be undergoing a big change, a rewrite, a redo, a rebranding?
Seems the media and the GOP have some short fucking memories.
WereBear
The first one was The Hunt for Red October and I enjoyed it very much. Each successive book slipped further down the ladder which separates military thrillers from imperious wingnut screed, until he farmed it all out to ghost writers.
schrodinger's cat
@GregB: Remember how everyone was touting immigration reform? Which seems dead for now.
Elizabelle
@Botsplainer:
It’s lovely that you turned out well, and are breaking the narcissistic and selfish cycle.
Did you get your values from your schoolteacher dad? Tell him your good news, even if he’s no longer in this realm.
(When I have a tricky problem, I ask “what would my dad say?”, because my late dad was very kind and very wise. My mother is a nightmare. Albeit a physically attractive one.)
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: I remember that movie, seen on TV a long time ago. Something about a submarine, was it?
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense:
The intern killer just admitted that the Tea Party is all about the ni*CLANG*.
Citizen_X
@Elizabelle: Yeah, pretty much. Reasonably interesting, tech-heavy pageturners. But relationships/sex scenes/female characters? Yecch.
nineone
@GregB: Wait, the GOP didn’t do what they said they were gonna do? That’s just crazy talk. Everyone knows it’s the Democrat Party who are the original, True Squishes.
BobS
@Botsplainer: Your mother and grandma sound like real prizes- you have any clever nicknames for them along the lines of “Griftwald” or “Special Ed”? Apple meet tree.
I have the mixed blessing of living in a beautiful part of Michigan that is somewhat politically reactionary and very near the former stomping grounds of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols- I regularly drive by the farm where it’s rumored they practiced their ‘skills’. One thing that I’ve noticed about that area is that many of the people who were formerly proud members of the Michigan Militia (at least until April 19, 1995) are now proud members of the Tea Party.
Personally, I think it’s a lot more descriptive to refer to the faction driving the shutdown as the McVeigh-Nichols wing of the Republican Party, and it’s how I referred to them when I called Candace Miller’s office complaining about her deference to them.
celticdragonchick
@Elizabelle:
Red Storm Rising was actually a pretty good WW III story.
His stuff started turning into wingnut fantasies by around 1990, though.
DavidTC
@Baud:
Assuming there are a handful if sane Republicans in the Senate, can Harry Reid pass a clean CR (preferably with a debt limit increase), get all the House Democrats to sign a discharge petition, and invite about 20 House Republicans to prove their sanity by signing on?
I too would like to know if a discharge petition would work. We keep hearing there’s enough votes in the House to pass a clean CR, which means there’s enough votes to pass a discharge petition to force it to the floor.
And Huff Post explains:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/a-discharge-petition-will_b_4019663.html
With the requisite number of signatures (made public here), a majority can extract any bill that has been stuck in a committee for more than 30 legislative days. … The House considers motions from the discharge calendar on only the second and fourth Mondays of the month.
So it would take getting the CR into a commmittee (Which I guess is easy enough.), waiting 30 days, and then waiting for the second or fourth Monday.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer: Andy Barr?
MCA1
@dogwood: I agree. Those like Thiessen calling for a fallback now so that Republicans can focus on the next hostage taking opportunity are, I believe, panicked. Because they can see, now that it’s in motion, how much of a shitstorm even this comparatively low level of recklessness is bringing in terms of public disapproval of Republicans in Congress. If this goes on for another week, and they come back in just 10 more days to pull the same shenanigans with the debt ceiling, it’s far too fresh in voters’ minds. Better to give in now and hope attention spans really are as short as they think.
There’s still some both sides do it being peddled out there, and far too many news reports that make it sound as though there really is something to “negotiate” here, but by and large R’s are getting hammered right now. Hammered. When you’ve lost Tom Friedman, who claims you’re a grave threat to the republic in today’s column, you’re done.
This is why I think they’ll blink even faster when it comes to the debt ceiling. The non-Tea Partiers will pledge their fealty to Boehner, allowing him to work with Pelosi and cut the legs out from Gingrey and King and their merry band of miscreants. Those not safely ensconced in gerrymandered 75% white conservative districts will be panicked after this event.
fuckwit
@Bill E Pilgrim: My fucking god these pollsters are stupid with their narrative. Has anyone… ANYONE… considered that people are unhappy with the law BECAUSE IT DOES NOT GO FAR ENOUGH?? I mean, just this idiotic assumption that this country is all totebagging rich people. Maybe people are unhappy with the law because it makes you do all this confusing and complicated Rube Goldberg shopping for private insurance instead of just giving us Medicare For All?
That said, I’m going full on into the Rube Goldberg this week and hope to be insured by Jan 1st. It’s MUCH better than nothing, and I think most people will realize that, hopefully before November 2014.
fuckwit
@TriassicSands: It’s kind of like the “big lie”, but in this case it’s the “big stupid”.
The “big lie” is a lie so huge people refuse to believe that anyone could actually be lying about that.
The “big stupid” is a person or group so stupid that people refuse to believe that anyone could actually be that dumb.
fuckwit
@TS: The Daily Show?
Botsplainer
@Paul in KY:
Thomas Massie.
gorram
@TriassicSands: Quite literally it’s “It can’t happen here”: The Political Philosophy.
It’s scary to realize that that’s an essential part of the GOP retaining power – that they won’t use it the way they say they will.
MCA1
Adding to my example of losing Friedman, I note (probably covered on the front page somewhere) that the WaPo editorial board tore Republicans a new one over this today, too. Perhaps some who believed Jeff Bezos took that over with a specific purpose in mind were right, considering this is, literally, the first edition under his completed ownership.
Anyway, they actually explain, in language any rube can understand, what this is all about and how radical the Republican actions are, basically saying “Look, we’ve been all about ‘both sides do it’ for as long as we can remember, but there’s no both sides here. This is one party being assholes.” They might even adopt the “economic treason” line if the debt ceiling ploy goes forward under the same pretenses from Republicans.
BH in MA
I don’t remember the exact percentage, but memorials and monuments are almost entirely funded with private donations, so it doesn’t take government money to build them.