Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This blog is Obama’s Katrina.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Shocking, but not surprising

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

This is a big f—–g deal.

We have all the best words.

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

The willow is too close to the house.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

Historically it is a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Call the National Guard if your insurrection lasts more than four hours.

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

Women: they get shit done

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

False Scribes! False Scribes!

I personally stopped the public option…

What fresh hell is this?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Han shot first.

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Reeeealy?

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gop bipartisanship toles
(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
.
Cue the world’s tiniest violin. Dave Weigel, at Slate:

The Most Powerless Republicans: They’re Not Who You Think!
Monday morning, former New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg—a Republican who was briefly and abortively Barack Obama’s choice to run the Commerce Department—published a column that excoriated his party. It was massively popular, as columns excoriating one’s own tribe tend to be, especially when the topic is debt limit Mexican standoffs. “The rigid stance will also cause massive collateral damage to all Republicans,” wrote Gregg. “Even those who may not support it will be harmed by the label of incompetence that will stick to the whole party as a consequence. The idea is being put forward by people who do not really care what the impact is of a default or a near-default. These are folks who have never governed and are not inclined to do so.”

Online, where the column was shared 1,000 times on Facebook, Gregg was not identified as anything but a former senator. He’s moved on, though — he runs the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Gregg’s panic looks even starker when put next to the letter written by former Michigan Gov. John Engler, a Republican who now runs the Business Roundtable…

Pity the Republican who quits politics to become a business lobbyist. He can ask his former colleagues to do what’s in the business association’s interest, but he’s got less oomph than any random staffer at Heritage Action or a blogger at Red State… [I]f you’re a Republican elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2012, you’ve figured out that you can win the support of a business interest that generally distrusts Democrats and go about ignoring their high-profile cries for regulation or a sequestration fix.

My emphases, of course. Weigel is paid to be sympathetic to these “conservatives”, but of course we do not labor under the same burden. If the Robber Baron branch of the GOP comes to open warfare with the Talivangelical “purists”, I will be on the sidelines rooting for injuries.
*************

With that cheering thought in mind, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

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I Just Hate What Passes for Journalism

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The Politico, spewing what is currently the conventional wisdom:

The Obamacare that consumers will finally be able to sign up for next week is a long way from the health plan President Barack Obama first pitched to the nation.

Millions of low-income Americans won’t receive coverage. Many workers at small businesses won’t get a choice of insurance plans right away. Large employers won’t need to provide insurance for another year. Far more states than expected won’t run their own insurance marketplaces. And a growing number of workers won’t get to keep their employer-provided coverage.

Every branch of the federal government played a role in weakening the law over the past three years, the casualty of a divisive legislative fight, a surprise Supreme Court ruling, a complex implementation and an unrelenting political opposition. The result has been a stark gap between the promise of Obamacare and the reality — one that has fueled a deep vein of skepticism about the law as it enters its most critical phase.

Of course there are going to be hiccups. This was a massive piece of legislation. The problem isn’t, though, that the initial legislation had flaws. Every single major piece of legislation has had flaws and unexpected problems. The difference between all those laws and the ACA aka “OBAMACARE” is that we had functional congresses in the past who would work to fix problems. But that can’t happen now, because one branch of our government is completely and irredeemably insane, and want the bill to fail. Problems are a plus to them.

That’s the god damned story. Not that there are some problems in a major piece of legislation that need to be addressed. The story is that the Republicans hate Obama and America so much that they will refuse to work to fix those problems.

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President Obama’s Speech at the UN

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Here’s the full transcript, from the Washington Post; I’ll put up a video link if one becomes available.

Via John B. Judis at the New Republic, who had his own interpretation:

President Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday to the United Nations was his most significant foreign policy statement since becoming president. It showed he had clearly learned something from the recent “red line” fiasco in Syria. The speech also displayed what has always been the most attractive feature of Obama’s foreign policy, one that clearly sets him off from his predecessor—his willingness to court erstwhile enemies and adversaries, or to put it in negative terms, his not possessing what my former colleague Peter Scoblic called an “us versus them” view of the world….

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Glorifying the FSM Through Blog Content Production (Open Thread)

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christ_construct

In case you can’t make out the message on that roadwork trailer, it says, “Serving Christ Through Construction.” Lord knows that particular stretch of highway could use some patchwork, and if the project makes bike lane users less likely to get sideswiped by a rock truck, we shouldn’t begrudge a job creator a few jewels in his heavenly crown, right? Please feel free to park your random comments, complaints and observations here.

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Just the Balls on These People

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Jump

The lack of self awareness and sense of entitlement of these folks is just breathtaking:

AIG’s CEO Robert Benmosche — who came in to rescue the company after the 2008 financial crisis — told the Wall Street Journal that the outrage over the bonuses promised to AIG’s members was just as bad as when white supremacists in the American South used to lynch African Americans:

The uproar over bonuses “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitchforks and their hangman nooses, and all that — sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.”

Yes, enduring some public criticism for receiving multimillion-dollar bonuses after helping crash the global economy is a lot like being hanged from a tree by your neck until you die.

I just really loathe these people.

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Do what you want to whenever you want to

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I don’t believe there’s anything the Republican party could do that could hurt them that much in the short term. If Ted Cruz got a hold of his own nuke and launched it at San Francisco, the Fox/Limbaugh crowd would applaud, the GOP establishment would tsk-tsk ineffectually, Charles Lane would write it was no worse than the time Paul McCartney made fun of W for being a dunce, and the polls would only move against Republicans by a few points at most.

So, in terms of the 2014 election, the government shutdown is indeed a big nothing:

The former is definitely true. Republicans clearly took more blame for the shutdowns 17 years ago. Today, though, the “margin of blame” is 16pt smaller – with Americans surveyed only 3pt more likely to blame congressional Republicans than the president (the margin was 19pt in 1995-96). That suggests that Republicans are much in better shape now than they were then.

But even if the polling today did look like 1995-96, I would argue that this looming shutdown will offer nowhere such a clear win for Obama and the Democrats as it did for Clinton. The 1996 elections didn’t differ at all from what you’d expect – given the state of the economy and the outcomes of congressional elections in presidential years when there is split government.

[….]

Indeed, only 10% of Americans said the government shutdown was their greatest reservation about Republicans, following the 1996 vote, per a post-election poll. The exit polls didn’t even ask about it.

A shutdown will harden anti-Republican attitudes among younger and better-informed voters, and that’s a bad thing for the GOP long term. But it won’t mean shit for 2014.

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The Cheney Wyoming Shitshow Continues

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In today’s episode, Lynne opens her piehole:

Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney and mother of U.S. Senate candidate Liz Cheney, on Saturday night told former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson “shut your mouth” about his support for her daughter’s opponent, according to an online account by Simpson’s daughter-in-law.

“So I’m at the Patrons Ball tonight and Lynne Cheney, the mother of Liz, comes up to my father-in-law and tells him to… I believe the direct quote was “Shut your mouth” regarding his support of Mike Enzi,” Deb Oakley Simpson wrote on her Facebook page.

I don’t know how much worse this can get, but I will note that Dick hasn’t done anything stupid lately. I guess it’s time for him to pull out his shotgun and shoot Cowboy Joe at the next UW football game. After which, Liz should do the right thing and euthanize her campaign before the governor signs a proclamation banning her family from the state.

(By the way, the Patrons Ball is a big deal social gala in Cody, the Simpson’s home town, for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. The Simpsons have been the kingpins in that town since Al’s dad, Governor and Senator Milward, was an attorney there.)

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