How is it that Democrats consistently fail to turn these situations to their rhetorical advantage? Look who it is who is stopping popular initiatives from being implemented! Look who it is who is suspending government services! Stop voting for these assholes! But they're so fucking scared that someone might accuse them of "politicizing" the situation, despite the fact that the situation is INHERENTLY POLITICAL.
I've been pretty worried recently since reading MY's comparison of the debt ceiling shenanigans to the run-up to the English Revolution. The government shutdown thing is annoying, but if it stops a debt ceiling showdown it may be worth it. The debt ceiling stuff is an attempt at a revolution.
I was at a party last night with two congressional staffers. They both seemed to think the House would pass the clean CR on Monday afternoon. (They convene at 2 pm! Nice work if you can get it.) I hope they're right. Really, though, funding for a few months at sequestration levels is kind of a lousy compromise. Then, the debt ceiling fight will be more of the same. It's just awful for so many decent, hardworking govt employees who have already gotten no COLA for five years and whose pay has already been cut by sequestration furloughs.
3.last: the War on Government Civilians is going WAY better than the War on Terror (or Drugs).
How is it that Democrats consistently fail to turn these situations to their rhetorical advantage?
They do?
Anyhow, as to the shutdown, as previously mentioned, argh. In addition to everything else, the process of funding scientific research (which is already completely broken by the sequester) grinds to a complete halt, and this time it will be right around the time that everybody's grant applications are due. Will people get rejected for submitting late, even though the government was shut down when things were due? Who knows!
3: Yep. We were getting fist bumps for having "diversified." Last time, both of us were wondering whether we'd suddenly have no income. I feel worse for the contractors, since last time they didn't get back pay and this time, there are so many more. Because god forbid the government hire FTEs without Lockheed-Martin making some money.
6: Strongly recommend against late submission. NIH has sent informal letters saying that their submission process will remain operational, although no applications will be processed. So, a late timestamp will not be helpful, especially given the poor rate of success.
5: They half-ass it horribly. There should be ads all over TV saying the GOP is shutting down the government over provision of healthcare to people who need it. Focus on the most popular individual components of the ACA and blast the message out. As is there will be blabbering on the Sunday morning talk shows and a bit of face time on the evening news, carefully 'balanced' with straight up lies from the right.
How is it that Democrats consistently fail to turn these situations to their rhetorical advantage?
Because they're a motley and unstable coalition without the Republicans' advantages of unanimity and rule by fear.
7: NSF was apparently informally recommending people submit early, even.
6, 7.last: DOE (at least the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences) is looking for any excuse to shitcan applications. They have far more than they can possibly fund, and they are understaffed for people to review and process them. This is based on talking with a senior person at OFES. OFES is a particularly hard case, so YMMV. I don't have a clue how it is in other areas, but I'd be really careful about not giving any excuse to overlook an application.
9: on what level does the republicans doing something spectacularly ill advised (politically, specifically), against the advice of their leadership, because they're terrified of a lunatic minority of their base indicate that they have more "unanimity" than the democrats? I feel like you're commenting from like eight years ago. Boehner rules by, essentially, flailing, insofar as he rules at all.
7, 11: you guys are nice to worry, but no, we are going to submit on time, obviously, insofar as that's possible. The only question is how well that will work if there's nobody there to receive the thing.
12: Fear of this battle station Hate of the O-ster will keep them together.
Anyhow, 12 continued: the problem is not that the Democrats won't be able to take advantage; sure they will. And the problem is not at all that the Republicans have enough party discipline to do this. The problem is something like exactly the opposite; Republican party discipline has completely broken down such that a bunch of lunatics in completely gerrymandered, impossibly safe districts can force the party to do politically masively self-destructive things (that also happen to be horribly bad for the country) because 1. they will never face a challenge from the left but 2. are terrified of a challenge from the right. There's essentially no amount of political advantage that could be gained that would allow Democrats to be competitive in these seats, so whether or not they'll be able to take maximal advantage in districts that are competitive is fundamentally irrelevant. They're already won nearly all of those, and control the senate and the presidency. What is more political advantage going to buy them?
13: It's not technically scientific onanism if there might be somebody there to receive it.
Boehner rules by, essentially, flailing, insofar as he rules at all.
People talk about how Obama's heart is in the right place, and he is subservient to various other forces. Maybe.
But Boehner is unambiguously being jerked around by the Tea Party. The Republican Party, at least for the moment, has a high degree of unity around doing as much damage to the economy as possible, and the better angels of Boehner's nature - such as they are - are (for the moment) irrelevant.
14: together how? They're likely dvided as can be right now, but as long as the Hastert rule is in place (and you can bet the Boehner doesn't have the juice to push back against that) it doesn't remotely matter if they're together. They can vote for a bill that at least some of the tea partiers support -- which is to say, they can vote on bills one hundred percent of which include defunding obamacare and flogging sexually active women in the town square -- or they can fail to ever bring any bills to the floor. Those are the only two options.
Rhetorical advantage doesn't get you much. Structural advantage, demographic advantage, and financial advantage are much more useful.
Sifu gets it right. The Republican party is imploding, but also has a critical mass of complete raving lunatics who are determined to scorch as much earth as possible.
I don't understand why Boehner cares so much about having the speaker title if he never gets any actual say or power. Either he should lead or hand the gavel to Cantor.
The Hastert Rule has already been set aside for some big things, right? Maybe Boehner can't afford to do that right now, but the rift is getting so externally obvious that I wonder if that will start happening more often, to the extent that we get a two-and-a-half-party system like in the fifties.
Otoh, there have been clashes farther back too and there seems to be a life cycle in which one generation's firebrands become the next generation's old guard.
(All this is aside from what Democrats do, which I agree should be a lot more.
Orange skin dye isn't free for ordinary members.
For me, at least, I think the problem identified by AWB is a function of the structure of the media. There's a real Overton Windowish aspect to the coverage, where you've got one side saying crazy stuff that, merely by the fact of their saying it, becomes a legitimate point of view.
Any time a sensible person reads an NYT story on the subject, you get the sense that the Republicans are getting the better of it because the article always fails to mention that the Republicans are batshit crazy.
One hopes that the public will come to recognize this, in the same sense that one hoped that the public would recognize the obvious lunacy of re-electing GWB, or putting Republicans in charge of a branch of Congress. But the record is not reassuring.
24: Democracy doesn't work.
or putting Republicans in charge of a branch of Congress.
To be fair, this required a shit-ton of gerry-mandering.
to the extent that we get a two-and-a-half-party system like in the fifties.
What was the extra half in the 50s?
27: Conservative/Southern Democrats, who often voted with Republicans.
Ah. Which continued in large numbers until the early 90s, no?
It's really remarkable how much the national scene now looks like how California looked for years.* Tweety's absolutely right that a rhetorical advantage doesn't buy you anything -- the problem is being driven by conservative Republican dead enders who are wildly popular in their districts full of conservative Republican dead-enders, and there just aren't that many moderate-ish Republican house members who Democrats could reasonably knock off (there are a few). I'd say the only medium-term hope is for enough Mexicans to move enough places so that the gerrymandering stops working, and for old white people to die, but that will take a good long while, and in the meantime keeping the Senate has been pretty lucky.
I'm not sure the public made a lunatic decision in reelecting GWB. The economy was doing relatively well, the country was at war and thus not keen to switch horses, and Kerry was (and is) a complete buffoon. Yes, Kerry would have been a better president, but I only think that because I'm a lifelong Democrat, because I don't hate Muslims, and because I have history to serve as a guide.
Having said all of that, I don't read the Times, but I have a strong sense that, as Tweety and heebie say above, the persuadable portion of the public understands full well that the Republicans are completely nuts. The problem, then, is gerrymandering on the one hand, the nature of the Senate on the other hand, and that the public also hates the Democrats (for some very good reasons) on the third hand.
As I've said before, I think we're probably* in the early stages of a political realignment, which, as ever, will be terribly uncomfortable for everyone. If you need me, I'll be under the bed.
* Historians: bad at predicting the future.
Meanwhile, the impending shutdown, which I still think probably* won't happen, is a sideshow. Everything we're experiencing now is: a) Bullshit. As ever, we have no clue what's actually happening behind closed doors. and b) A prelude to what the Republicans hope will be a real negotiation over the debt ceiling. Sigh. It's their Crazy Town; we all just live in it.
* Historians: notoriously bad at predicting the future.
The Republican party is imploding
Sort of. The Republican Party is transforming from a governing party into an insurgent party whose goal is to make the country ungovernable by throwing as many wrenches into the federal machinery as they can. They don't need the White House to accomplish this; all they need is control of one or two chokepoints in the system.
It's also not just districts where full-nutjob Republicans can win by twenty points, of course. It's also districts with enough motivated full-nutjob Republican voters that the F.N.R.s could mount a successful primary challenge; those reps are not going to push stupid, stupid plans like "let's try and force the Democratic president and senate to enact the full Texas GOP platform" but they are not going to publicly fight against them and are going to support the maintenance of whatever procedural mechanisms they have to hide behind (which is to say, the Hastert rule). Given participation numbers in primaries, the number of F.N.R.s that need to be present in a given district to make said situation obtain is probably pretty low. (Twelve percent? Ten?)
I'd say there's almost no chance of a moderate wing of Republicans breaking off and voting with the Democrats to create a stable party system (I could see it happening to avoid an immediate shut down, but not what Minivet is talking about). Most of the purportedly reasonable Republicans are (a) pretty crazy already (b) more scared of challenge from the right than the left in well-gerrymandered districts.
As far as I can tell they're an insurgent party for just as long as they don't control the White House, at which point they settle down to enjoying the fruits of their labors and chipping away more slowly and disguisedly at the New Deal. But it will be interesting to see if that pattern holds next cycle.
Or not really more slowly, probably. More deliberately because of the greater grip on reins.
I suppose my musing could seem like a bid for complacency, which it isn't.
34: They seem to be having a slatepitch competition between their writers this summer. I thought nothing would top the flip-flops article, but this one is a noble effort (mostly to the headline).
32 A prelude to what the Republicans hope will be a real negotiation over the debt ceiling.
"Negotiation" is a strange word to use here, right? Because there's no possibility of give-and-take. I mean, even in their own heads, it can't possibly be a "negotiation," can it? The debt ceiling has to go up. They know this, just like everyone else does. It's just straightforward extortion.
almost no chance of a moderate wing of Republicans breaking off and voting with the Democrats
Practically all of the moderate Republicans have already migrated to the Democratic Party. When John McCain and Orrin Hatch represent the left wing of your party, your party doesn't have a left wing.
41: I can't tell if we're having a rhetorical disagreement, in which case whatever, or if you're forgetting that a portion of the House GOP caucus really is out of touch with reality (in which case whatever). I mean, these are people who make the Larouchites seem relatively sane. Moreover, even the "sane" parts of their caucus, including the real leadership, like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, genuinely believe they're going to get concessions from Obama.
Right, exactly.
Also worth noting that more than 50% of the aggregate House vote in 2012 was for Democrats, so these guys, even the "reasonables" are almost all people who know that their own particular district can survive a general national move to the left. I'd say the choices until at least 2020 are either (a) Republican legislators destroy as much as they can or (b) Republicans take over everything and destroy even more.
42: right. When Norm Ornstein and what's-his-face, the Jewish neocon from Canada, are considered apostates for their flaming liberalism, the GOP has gone completely off the deep end.
44.1 to 42, but 43 is also right.
43: Just rhetorical, I guess. "Negotiation" seems to me to imply good faith that isn't present in the leadership. They're not thinking they'll get concessions in response for giving up some things they want, they're just issuing a list of demands that they think will have to be complied with.
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If you were to read a local news article mentioning a public-sector executive official leaving his job, and someone refusing to discuss details because of "personnel rules", would you read that as an unambiguous indicator of his being fired for cause?
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Well, if it were the decision of the individual who is leaving, they would be leaving to spend more time with their family, right?
31 re: persuadable voters, I disagree. I think there are quite a few low information voters who do not know that Republicans are generally far, far right and crazy. It's hard for me to understand their persistence, but they exist. Look at states like Wisconsin or Michigan, who have elected crazy conservative governors. I wouldn't call WI a red state.
Wisconsin, by all accounts I've seen, has now become a deeply radicalized state where the moderate Republican-Democratic working consensus no longer exists. And it happened there very quickly. Which is consistent with the national story.
Again, it's very hard not to see parallels to what California went through from about 1990-2012. The good news is that the state got consistently, on the whole, more liberal over that period. The bad news is that the Republicans got crazier and crazier in response, their voters got more isolated, and for a variety of reasons the Republican radical minority was able to make the State completely ungovernable.
50: persuadable voters are the ones who matter in a two-party system. And there are very few of them. For instance, as we've talked about before, I'm not sure what it would take for me to vote Republican. It's almost impossible for me to imagine. Heck, based on the lesser-of-two-evils principle, I won't even sit out elections after the Democrats have erected vast networks of domestic surveillance, shredded parts of the Constitution that are dear to me, and refused to fight (hard enough, in my view) for what I've always thought were the party's bedrock values around socio-economic equality.
The Wisconsin story is so terribly depressing.
Contra 15, I think political advantage still matters. The 2014 Senate race is a toss up and the Senate is not gerrymandered. Also, the Rs will try some kind of stealth moderate route in 2016 and the overall national view of them as a party matters.
The other thing that really worries me is this. If you try to think of the world from hard-right perspective (in other words, take the view that 'the GOP have been captured by smart, driven ideologues who I profoundly oppose' rather than 'the GOP is stupid/crazy'), then defaulting on the debt is the single most effective way to wipe out New Deal governance and restore governance to the 1890s. Having successfully locked down taxes as a source of additional revenue (to the point that Obama extended the Bush tax cuts), modern big government is completely dependent on the capacity to borrow. The costs of borrowing are sufficiently indirect that there is major public opposition to cutting entitlements to 'reduce the debt'. (Which is why it is so important and so damaging when Democrats get on board with the 'responsibility'/deficit alarmism caucus). But if you default on the debt you overnight do more to damage to government borrowing capacity then you could do in decades of political fights.
52 -- Agreed. It's not a matter of persuadable voters, but of turnout. Blue side doesn't turn out as well in the off years, which is, I think, a big part of the Wisconsin story.
Our situation here is kind of interesting. Not a gerrymandered House district, and our congressman wants to succeed Max Baucus next year. He's currently running with the nutjobs -- which is probably good for fundraising -- but may well moderate as time goes on.
Up until yesterday or so, I was thinking there'd be a clean CR on Monday. Now I think Boehner maybe has to let them have their shutdown: the radicals don't believe him when he says the country is not behind them, and like radicals of all stripes, they've bought into the theory that if they just fight harder, and stay purer, their dedication will attract followers. As I understand it, the theory of the Cruz 'filibuster' was that the public would rise up, pitchforks in hand, against O-care. Didn't happen, but that doesn't mean (to them) that a shutdown won't be enough to get it.
Yeah, 56 is the nightmare scenario. One wonders if Boehner is choosing to have the grand showdown now, rather than over the debt, for precisely this reason.
55 -- I'm far from convinced that national party ID is anywhere near as important as national zeitgeist (which affects turnout) and local issues, even in the Senate races. Right now, holding Baucus' seat looks nearly impossible, because no matter what people think of Obama and the direction of the country, there's no real Dem candidate who looks able to win. (I'm only aware of one announced candidate -- he's not bad enough to make me sit out the general, but not getting my vote in the primary, that's for sure.)
58.last: This might well be the case--not sure*. I do wish that the understanding that if Boehner introduced** a clean CR bill it would pass the House would make it into the mainstream narrative.
I'm also wondering exactly what in the hell is going on with the contraception thing slipping in? WTF on that one. How much shoring up of the nut base is needed?
Also let me be the first to say fuck the military families (Not really, they are routinely fucked already, but I despair of ever coming up with a way to illustrate to people what utter disingenuous cowards the Republicans (and Joe Lieberman during the Florida recount) are in the way they hide behind them. Pathetic sub-cunts.)
*The non-crazed money wing*** of the Republican Party surely are counting on him to not blow it up completely.
**Yes, I know, that's the problem. And what a slimy. corrupt piece of work Hastert was anyway.
***I would love to be a fly on the wall when Cruz and his platinum-level-health-care-providing Goldman-Sachs executive wife talk politics.
60 Lots of money to be made from things going to hell, if one really believes that's what's going to happen.
And that would be Ted "get a job" Cruz.
61: Are you going bob mcmanus Naomi Klein on us?
I'm not sure I understand how 55 is actually contra 15, except perhaps reflexively. As for 56, there are, in the end, a number of options available to Obama. If the GOP really chooses to tank the full faith and credit of the United States, I have to think the president will avail himself of one of those options, including, perhaps, minting a platinum coin. I just hope he sees that option as preferable to negotiating with the suicide caucus. In the end, as ever, we have no idea what either side is actually thinking, because everything that's being said in public is posturing for position or for public consumption.
I'm just not sure the money guys are much of a brake anymore.
65: Not in the short term, anyway. (Almost threw that into my comment.) And particularly now given that "their" guy lost. But longer term...
This is time when any decent book or movie some completely unrelated existential threat shows up and exposes this whole thing as a stupid farce. Like if the whole planet were heating up or something science fiction-y like that.
+ in or +would have ... something coherent-making
If you follow him on twitter, you've probably seen it, but Kotsko has a nice slatepitch: Watching the budget and debt ceiling saga unfold, I have reluctantly concluded that the Republican Party is not corrupt and power-hungry enough.
Fallows has good quick summary.
My guess is that the masters of the universe think that they can make money any which way, and that they have sufficient control to keep things from getting out of hand.
OK, the house has now voted for the shutdown (effectively). Now what?
64: Now that the GOP dead-enders have (fortunately for us) closed off the 'grand bargain' option, I think Obama will almost certainly avail himself of a Constitutional or legal options for short-circuiting the debt ceiling fight if it comes to that. But all of these options refer the matter to the Republican-controlled Supreme Court, which will be the final decider in such a confrontation. The R Supremes are very much not tea party types so chances are they would look for a way to maintain the status quo, but they could perhaps seek a middle ground that would still be harmful. Also, even a showy Supreme Court fight will harm U.S. borrowing capacity, as it would be interpreted as a close call.
The Kotsko piece is great. But the actual way that the Rs remain as a permanent minority party that is a sink for ideologues who actually believe their ideologies, while the Ds are the governing party that distracts any nominal liberals that remain. Then the governing party can perpetually point to the crazy minority as an excuse for never doing anything, while the crazy minority is in place to block change. The only reason that isn't working well is that this debt limit thing inserted the potential for a suicide bombing into the whole process. Once it is gotten rid of then the system works pretty well to maintain the status quo. After all, the Tea Party got in line behind Romney.
I still maintain that if we could just figure out a way around the white supremacy issue, we could get a lot of these hard right folx over to class-struggle anarchism. Many of them aren't even that homophobic nowadays.
This country just gets more and more like a banana republic every year. Hopefully that means that we'll have leftist guerrillas in the hills soon.
Hopefully that means that we'll have leftist guerrillas in the hills soon.
I find myself thinking that it's easy for you to feel this way, since Minnesota has no hills to speak of.
I thought someone I knew was making a big mistake by turning down a job offer at a national lab a year ago, but maybe I was underestimating how stressful it must be to know your job depends on people in Congress not doing stupid things.
At some level, all of our jobs depend on that. It's very stressful!
I am thankful that we are not counting on any federal grants at work right now. There's one for November that it would be really nice if we got, but we're not holding our breath.
Leftist guerrillas in Minnesota generally congregate in collectively-run coffee shops.
74: I think Obama will almost certainly avail himself of a Constitutional or legal options for short-circuiting the debt ceiling fight if it comes to that.
Huh. On one level I'd welcome this -- let's get it over with once and for all, lest Republicans continue the hostage-taking game every damn time raising the debt ceiling comes up.
But I've been concluding that Boehner is going with the shutdown in order to avoid debt default - per 58.last. I keep reminding myself that Republican extortion doesn't end with a shutdown: things still have to be ironed out in such a way as to restart government operations. A budget will still have to be passed post-shutdown.
Continuing 80: Given a shutdown, and given post-shutdown negotiations prior to restart: what's at stake with the medical device tax? Is that a lot of money, crucial to the ACA's success? Or can Dems give on that?
This country just gets more and more like a banana republic every year. Hopefully that means that we'll have leftist guerrillas in the hills soon.
I wish. At this point we just appear to be a Banana Republic with a radical right and a completely disorganized Left that dare not speak its name. If current trends continue, I see standard of living in the US rapidly devolving into developing country levels at breakneck speed. In fact, for the bottom 50th percentile of Americans,* I would say that their standard of living may have already reached this point.
*America no longer has a standardly distributed class system. "Middle class" as a sociological label probably only applies to the top 40th percentile.
A House-passed clean CR -- assuming the House gives in after a few days of shutdown -- should be amended in the Senate to include an abolition of the debt ceiling.
Or the debt should simply be paid off in dimes.
I wish there were party-specific metonyms. It's clear that "the White House" refers to the Democratic President. It's less clear that "the House" refers to the actions of the Death Eaters.
I also agree with 58.last. At some level a brief shutdown now serves everyone's interests -- the Dems think it will discredit the House Rs, the tea party folks can show the extremist base they did something extreme, and the establishment Rs are annoyed it hurts the party brand but assume that this will let the tea party folks get it out of their systems before the debt ceiling. If it does, then it could clear the way for Boehner et al to use the debt ceiling to actually bargain for more cutbacks. I think if he had full leeway from the start to trade off a debt ceiling increase for SS and Medicare cuts he could have pulled it off, but hopefully now given what Obama has said he does not want to bargain in this context. Maybe trade off eliminating the debt ceiling altogether for cuts.
Just keeping the sequester permanently would be a significant win for starve-the-beast Republicans.
83: You're a man after my own heart; indeed the absolute ideal would be an abolition of the debt ceiling, but I don't see it happening absent a Supreme Court decision. (Er, can an abolition of the debt ceiling be attached to a (mere) appropriations bill? I wouldn't have guessed so, but that's a bit too far into the weeds for me.)
But I fear that the House isn't going to pass a clean CR post-shutdown: they have 17 days, until the Oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline, to strut around mentioning that if they don't get some kind of give from Dems on the CR, they'll repeat their act over the debt ceiling. Maybe I'm wrong.
The debt ceiling is statutory, and can be repealed by a rider attached to the bill that declares national pickle week.
I agree that the politics isn't there yet for this.
If anything could be constitutionally challenged I think it would the current scheme. Can't see who would have standing, however.
I don't recall who wrote this some time in the past week, but: there's also something to the notion that Boehner is, in a sense, playing the Tea Party faction. They've made increasingly impossible demands, and finally Boehner said: Okay. Since you don't believe it when it's pointed out to you that what you demand is impossible to achieve, we'll demonstrate it to you. Go ahead and demand it (you dumbasses).
Worth noting that Republican demands have been ratcheted down three times now. (1) Demand a full defunding of the ACA; (2) Okay, not happening, demand year-long delay of the ACA, plus a hilarious laundry list of GOP dreams, essentially Mitt Romney's 2012 platform; (3) Okay, not happening, demand year-long ACA delay plus ditching the medical devices tax plus a 'conscience clause' regarding contraceptive coverage over ACA.
I hate to say it, but a shutdown is probably the way to go at this point, in order to make perfectly clear to them that what they want is not going to happen. I suppose they can always claim they didn't fight hard enough, and that's why they failed.
86.last: Just keeping the sequester permanently would be a significant win for starve-the-beast Republicans.
Yes! Would that the media who insist that Dems don't appear to be negotiating at all would note that: Dems have given on the sequester.
86: Maybe trade off eliminating the debt ceiling altogether for cuts.
Huh. What kind of cuts, again? Like going to chained CPI for SS? Obama's been okay with that for a while, and though I do not like it one bit, it's something that's probably going to happen one way or the other anyway.
And for Medicare cuts -- what, means-testing? I'm okay with that.
I'm serially commenting and will desist, but one further on 91 and 86.last: making the sequester *permanent* is not something I'd get behind.
In fact, for the bottom 50th percentile of Americans,* I would say that their standard of living may have already reached this point.
So not the case, unless you think that pre financial crisis places like Spain and Italy were 'third world'. The US has very high levels of inequality but that's partially compensated by still being very wealthy even by first world standards.
Also, we shouldn't attribute too much of the Republican advantage in the House to gerrymandering - it hurts but even if there were no gerrymandering at all they'd have a natural advantage because of the greater degree of concentration among Democrats.
I dunno but I am not that confident that Obama won't find a way to cave. He has done it before after all.
For instance, as we've talked about before, I'm not sure what it would take for me to vote Republican. It's almost impossible for me to imagine.
I thought that about myself, too, but I've just now realized what it would take -- namely, the exact inverse of what we have now. If the Democratic party were imploding and being taken over by deranged (and that's certainly a crucial ingredient) ultra-far-left ideologues who would (continuing the parallel) rather destroy things than make anything whatsoever better for anyone, and the Republicans had meanwhile all transmogrified into middlingly leftish types who generally supported socialized health care, protection of minority rights, etc., that might do it.
So you're not going to join the guerrillas in the hills outside Pittsburgh, then?
Well, depends on their style, you know?
A bit more on the medical devices tax, for those interested.
I still cannot make out how much this 2.3% tax is expected to gain toward funding Obamacare. This link says it's projected to raise $20 billion in 10 years, but no idea where that figure is coming from.
96: Yeah, as someone noted upthread, a number of Republicans have defected at least in voting behavior, if not in official affiliation. As I recall, Colin Powell voted for Obama.
On the local news here last night, the shutdown was presented in a brief segment with mostly Republican soundbites framing things however they wanted - this will protect us from job-and-whatever-else-killing-and-chaos-producing Obamacare for at least a year! - a weak quote from someone who may have been a Democrat, and a dull pre-recorded blandly stated clip from Obama's radio address with a still picture on the screen that may have shown the Presidential seal but I can't remember now.
As far as I know, this is a vaguely liberal, but maybe Lieberman-style liberal, region.
In her most striking sellout, Elizabeth Warren opposes the medical device tax. That was a straight-up cave to a powerful Massachusetts industry during her election campaign. No real substantive justification.
103: Thanks, good to know. As far as I can tell so far, the medical device tax opposition is an utter case of scaremongering and industry lobbying.
OH, THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK, HUH? IT'S SOCIALISTS LIKE YOU WHO ARE RUINING THIS COUNTRY FOR DECENT, HARD-WORKING MEDICAL DEVICES.
102: The average citizen is being highly encouraged to believe that not only the ACA, but also the shutdown/debt ceiling fight, is so incredibly confusing that even your friendly local newscasters are too stupid confused. So cannot understand.
Media coverage has really been a disgust.
I voted Republican one time! We have open primaries, and I took the Republican ballot because the most crucial primary was the for the state school board. There was a moderate Republican and a severe nutjob, and I wanted the moderate one on the ballot.
And then the moderate one won and became a nutjob?
Nope, the severe one won both the primary and the general election and continued to be unpassably extreme.
Forgive me, but government workers' demands for back pay in the event of a government shutdown kind of annoy me. This would be pay for time not worked, furloughed time? Welcome to the rest of the working world.
My understanding has been that government workers are not anticipated to get any back pay this time. At least that's what people were saying a couple years ago.
I'm sorry it annoys you--we weren't given any choice in the matter w/r/t not getting to work. You know, going in, we were generally given to understand that this employment, while not lucrative, was mostly stable--as clear from the fact that it has only happened a few times in a long span.
Further, we have been looked upon by the congress as a turnip to squeeze for several years now, with little to no defense by the Executive.
Come debt ceiling debacle, we'll be working without pay, too.
Oh, and even during regular order shutdown, a bunch of people have to work with the promise of pay and no payday actually scheduled. This go 'round, for stupid reasons, that may include me for some interludes. Apparently the department management thinks that "rolling" exemptions are somehow acceptable under the law.
I actually think their demands for backpay are the root of this whole clusterfuck. Assssssssssshoooooooles.
114: Back pay for those who continue to work (even though technically furloughed) makes total sense. Of course. That should be demanded.
116: That is compulsory, actually.
But anyways, I'm awfully fucking sick of assholes treating public employees like some combination of parasite and piggy bank.
It is inhumane, parsimon. Maybe that'll break through your resentment.
Look, if you're going to condemn what Parsi's saying, you're going to have to condemn Ted Cruz at the same time.
This might seem naive but don't public sector workers have contracts? And thus presumably the right to sue some fuckers? Or is there a loophole that allows for non payment in the event of the legislature being captured by fuckholes?
Yeah, I have to say I'm shocked to see you insisting on this, Parsimon. First, because public employees are among the last American workers to have any kind of protections, which is why they're such targets for tea party resentment. Second, because government employees could, in almost all cases, be making more money working for private industry. If we want our government to be in the hands of competent professionals, we have to offer them something to make up for lost salaries, something like stability.
Stand your ground, Parsi! Don't let the public sector bully you!
First it's a regular paycheck you want, then what? Benefits? Child care expenses? A 40 hour work week?
what it would take for me to vote Republican
Sarah Palin was the tipping point for two life-long Republicans in my family, and they have seen nothing in the Republican Party since to change their mind -- rather the reverse. One of them, an economic moderate, agrees with me that Obama is the best Republican President since Eisenhower. The other is conservative in all ways, and yearns to vote against liberal economic ideas, but is repelled by the overt nihilism and ignorant bigotry on which Tea Party Republicanism seems to be based.
I'm trying to imagine who the GOP could nominate for President that would bring these two back into the fold, and I'm not coming up with anything.
123.last: We only get to pretend to be salaried employees. Technically we have to record our time in I think 15 minute increments. But the kicker is, we can only record 8 units of time. Regardless of how much we work.
125 cont'd: And because we get to pretend to be salaried, we have to act like we are--i.e., if it takes 60 hours to get the job done, then you work that long. Don't even ask about overtime, though.
Your job sucks less than mine does! The obvious solution is to make your job suck more.
It is true, we could have to do true tps type accounting. And six or ten minute increments.
Second, because government employees could, in almost all cases, be making more money working for private industry.
Nah, I think the "giving up money for job security" thing hasn't been true in a while, except jobs that require advanced degrees. This adds to the resentment people feel toward government workers.
129: it was precisely what I did, more the fool I.
If the Democratic party were imploding and being taken over by deranged (and that's certainly a crucial ingredient) ultra-far-left ideologues who would (continuing the parallel) rather destroy things than make anything whatsoever better for anyone, and the Republicans had meanwhile all transmogrified into middlingly leftish types who generally supported socialized health care, protection of minority rights, etc., that might do it.
This apparently happened in California, screwing up the state government for two generations because a certain subset of reasonable people thought no party that had Ron Dellums in high office should be taken seriously.
Because I'm an ignorant pig-fucker, Your job seems like it maybe sucks even a tiny bit less than mine does! The obvious solution is to make your job suck more.
It's the American way. Woo! Hook 'em!
I choose to believe that a lot of the current horror is an outgrowth of the economy sucking over a long period of time. But of course that's bullshit. This has, other than during a four decade window that seems to have closed, always been a country built atop a bedrock of faux individualism and rugged resentment.
Woo! Hook em!
But at least we've got our guns and our religion. A nation of bitter clingers, that's what we are.
125, 126: I get the same deal except that I don't have to track my time nearly that costly and nobody ever asks me to work 60 hours a week. It makes a huge difference and would be perfect if they paid me better.
Amoral power-worship and bigotry disguised as individualism, I think.
135: functionally we don't, instead merely estimate.
It's hard to separate the bigotry from the resentment. Or at least it's been hard since ratification of the 13th Amendment. Fucking Lincoln. What a dick that guy was.
131 -- It's a pathetic excuse, to be sure, but there's really no floor for people who want to go all-in with the self-interest. Or the warmongery. Or both.
Further to the salaried thing. Generally, if a person is salaried and willing, ready, and able to work and the boss says no work for you to do today...you get paid! And when the boss says I have 60 or 80 hours of work for you to do this week, you don't get more money either.
Oh, and as to means testing Medicare...fuck that shit. It has little to recommend it other than making it a program for poor people. And that's only a positive to the GOPers who can then tag it as "welfare" and kill it. SNAP!
(I cast my first vote for Dellums, and would gladly trade him for the guy I have now, the guy before him, and most of the people before that.)
131 is insanely wrong as history, or maybe there's some joke that I'm missing?
but ...but ... David Horowitz says it's true.
The country has a parasite whose head is rich idiots from old money on both coasts and whose body extends into the deep south, choked with its own shit and too ignorant to understand that it can't last.
When tea-partiers realize that they have been marching at their own expense to return to power the people who have been benefiting the most from public expenditures over the past thirty years -- and they will realize it, likely soon -- I would not want to be a high profile Republican living in the South.
For the government lab near me, the budgetary hijinks has led to them being unwilling to fund contracts for more than a couple of months. After all, you do not know what the funding situation will be in six months or, maybe, six weeks.
So they have more contracts of smaller size and, thus, more work. But, with the furloughs, they have less time. And you better not think about actually doing some research, instead of contract management.
146: And where is the government lab near you, and what do they do? If I were Obama, and realistically understood that I would not be getting money out of Langley to fund a mid-term majority, I would be happy to let the government shut down and stay that way. If I were a middle class citizen of Alabama, and I weren't connected to the military, I'd feel the same way. I suppose the question is how highly leveraged are the bloated federal contractors -- can they hold out as long as medicare recipients? I don't know.
I suppose that, if it breaks its toy badly enough, the right will eventually lose support of the rank and file military as well. And that will be the end of it.
Let's not get drunk on our own whiskey, there, text. We're all just guessing that O will (a) skate and/or (b) not cave if the going gets a little rough next week. This has to be done, yes, but no one should assume it can't possibly go wrong.
I would not be getting money out of Langley to fund a mid-term majority
Wait, what?
Things can only possibly go the way they go, Charley Carp. I may be drunk on my own whiskey, but I am capable of recalling the barest essentials of a federal expenditures pie chart which I looked at once or twice about a year ago. If I were Obama, I would want the government to shut down at precisely this point, and for a good long while.
150: The industries which will most hurt from a government shut down do not give Democrats money.
What scares me most about the current crop if Republicans us that, I think, unlike the immediately preceding Karl Robe/Cheney generation, they don't think they have a viable permanent national majority. They can read a demographic chart and know as well as anyone else that Latinos hate them and young people hate them more. And the "let's make Latinos and young people hate us less" faction doesn't have much say. Instead, the main bulk of the party seems engaged in what I think of as the "let's kill all the Jews before the Russians get to Berlin" strategy -- since you know the current long term trend is that you're losing, if you have a shred of short term power you need to use it to enact maximum evil, while hoping against hope that somehow there's some Hail Mary where your evil plans will actually work to win the war.
That strategy makes it basically impossible to conduct normal horse trading politics, and seems designed simultaneously for maximum implosion of the Republican Party and maximum harm to the country.
Karl Robe
Stonecutters! I knew it.
Intelligent politicians in the House would recognize a third option, which is: change policy positions and remain in power. If you don't actually have a private fortune invested in non-essential government contracting, there would be no real reason to stay with those who do while the titanic sinks.
153: I think a lot of these guys only care about maintaining a viable, local majority.
Facebook right now is making me think I'm the only person in the world not watching Breaking Bad tonight.
I have to write a conclusion for a shitty essay that's been stinking up my desktop for about a month. Breaking Bad can wait.
Is that the show about the talking pig and the hillbillies?
(I have stolen several I'm-not-watching-breaking-bad jokes tonight.)
A couple of the Facebook posts had me kind of worried about people until I realized that show must somehow be the context.
I actually haven't seen any posts from people watching the show, just from people talking about not watching the show. It is kind of nice! Maybe many of my friends are watching the football?
I think now that someone posted a photo of their cat reacting to Breaking Bad, we can declare that social media has achieved its goal and stop now.
My FB is all full of BB stuff too. It looks like people enjoyed the finale.
When the government shuts down, do the representatives in Congress stop getting paychecks, because that's what they deserve.
You guys both have the same birthday Jerry Lee Lewis. Huh.
Hope you had a good one. And don't marry your under-aged cousin.
When the government shuts down, do the representatives in Congress stop getting paychecks,
No.
Parsi, I don't want to pile on, but I am really puzzled by your comment above. Why shouldn't government workers be paid, if they are ready, willing, and able to work, but unable to work due to crazy circumstances well beyond their control? It seems highly unfair to deprive them of pay because the funding process has been hijacked by lunatics.
And don't marry your under-aged cousin.
Now you tell me. (And thanks.)
While looking for pictures of the stripper twittering with Booker (because news), I found this on the sidebar. It doesn't look promising, unless your of the "heightening the contradictions" sort.
Your s/b you're. I blame vegan strippers.
This whole thing makes me thing somebody should update The Day of the Jackal replacing the OAS with the Tea Party and the suavely international assassin with a pre-diabetic, skeet-shooting champion from Arkansas.
So not the case, unless you think that pre financial crisis places like Spain and Italy were 'third world'. The US has very high levels of inequality but that's partially compensated by still being very wealthy even by first world standards.
I measure standard of living not merely by amount of stuff one can accumulate, but also amount of risk one has to bear. One of the key differences between middle class or working class and below is the precariousness of one's current status.* In Spain and Italy, even today, no one is one heart attack away from bankruptcy or losing their house. A significant number of Americans do not receive basic medical care because they can't afford a doctor or feel it useless because can't afford treatment if they do have a problem. Minimum wage is so low that people with full time jobs have to live in homeless shelters in large cities. 15% of households in the US, comprising a total 50 million people, are "food insecure." These are not the living standards of a developed country. By any standard measurement of well-being, America's bottom 50th percentile do not rank up with those of people in more egalitarian developed countries.
What's also so incredibly irritating is that we're a wealthy country but we're behaving like we aren't. Unlike Spain or Italy, we have an easier way out, but we're refusing not to take it. Watching the meltdown from China is interesting (by which I mean maddeningly frustrating), because it means on a regular basis I have to explain to puzzled people why we as the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world have chosen to piss that privilege down the drain. That we would voluntarily damage our economy and global reputation and lower our standard of living just simply does. not. compute. People keep asking me what America's longterm secret strategy to maintain global domination is, because they don't believe that we would actually be that dumb.
*With the proletarianization of white collar jobs, this is and has been creeping up the ladder. Pretty soon we'll probably all be expendable workers with no benefits.
Remember, a clean CR would pass the House.
You're right on health care, but not on low income workers. Low income workers in Spain and Italy earn less than American minimum wage. Median wages are also lower and the effective tax bite is higher on both low and middle income people because of higher payroll and consumption taxes. There is no minimum wage in Italy and in Spain it's 4.52 euros/hr.
True, and I would say Spain in particular and parts of Italy are also sliding towards developing world status as well. I mainly meant to compare healthcare between the two countries and the US, though how I wrote it was unclear. I would argue though, that a social safety net as of now still exists in those two countries, and it makes a big difference in quality of life. Healthcare and free or cheap decent public education through the tertiary level make a really big difference between a life of precariousness and no social mobility and a life of some comfort and possibilities for social mobility, and as of now at least Spain and Italy still have those two. Also, comparing US 50th percentile to Spain and Italy's 50th percentile, Americans are much worse off. Median wealth in the US is $38,786 (mean wealth is $262,351). Median wealth in Spain is $53,292 (mean $104,773), and in Italy is $123,710 (mean $212,910).
It's true that life in Spain and Italy has gotten markedly worse over the past few years in large part to neoliberal policies out of their governments' control, and they are in worse financial straits than we are. However, even though we're in a much better position and still have control over our financial fate, and we may be choosing to screw ourselves over even worse than Spain and Italy. That's just what I find so mind boggling.
151 -- I'm still recovering from the alarm over Syria, where O seemed much more captive the Village sensibilities than is safe. The fact that federal workers/contractors in and around DC will be blaming Congress is good, and keeps the Villagers in check. If Boehner can find a way to float a Grand Bargain, though, then some Villagers will defect.
Nah, I think the "giving up money for job security" thing hasn't been true in a while, except jobs that require advanced degrees.
Well, maybe not for college dropouts like myself but my wife has degrees in both chem and geology and her first internship in college was for a geologist doing consulting work for oil companies. This year as a middle school teacher in the highest paying district in the state she's going to make about 50K. She'll top out at 60K in another four years. I'm going go out on a limb and suggest oil company work would have been more lucrative.
|| NMM Marcella Hazan. Make something Italian tonight. |>
Consider the recent House Republican-driven bill to continue subsidies to large businesses in agriculture, while cutting food stamps (aka SNAP) by $4 billion dollars over 10 years. According to Dean Baker that is less than 1% percent of Federal spending.
So the data is consistent with the hypothesis that the Republicans are trying to maliciously hurt the most vulnerable in America. That is, the data is consistent with the hypothesis that Republicans hate the overwhelming majority of Americans.
184: And it's amazing to me that the fact that several dozen of them have personally benefited from the subsidies over the years* is a fact that you need to read "progressive" outlets to become aware of. "Dependency" apparently only applies to the little people.
But you know, no more amazing than the fact that contemporaneous with the debate and passing of the ACA there was an ongoing (warped) discussion about the deficit and "entitlements" which did at least sometime touch upon the fact that it was medical costs which were the real potential looming disaster, and almost never did the "serious people" discussed that the ACA was in fact a mechanism to control those cost (and the only mechanism of any significance despite the caviling about malpractice costs.
It's deeper than the media, but if the the economy takes a hit from all of this, personally I'm calling it the Chuck Todd Downturn.
*In amounts ranging from trivial** to quite significant.
**"Trivial" but generally still a lot more than any single food stamp recipient would have received.
As Atrios pointed out recently, Heller captured a lot of this in Catch-22.
Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle and extort for as much as he could get from whomever he could.And speaking of that book, my daughter sent me the following last night which I thought was pretty apt:
then I realized that the perfect metaphor for this already exists: at the end of Catch-22, after all their maneuvering, General Peckham and ex-PFC Wintergreen call each other in a panic because somehow they ended up with Lieutenant [Genral at the end - JPS] Scheisskopf in charge
Republican leaders, have unleashed the tea party scheisskopfs, and now we're all going to march. All the sane Americans should start rowing for Sweden.
||
Forgot to mention (since I had mentioned the original stuff here first), after several weeks finally sorted out that my wife had shingles. Still lingering as a matter of fact. No rash had appeared when she was looked at before, and the location on the trunk was right about where the gall bladder is located. But all gall bladder tests turned out fine. The rash first appeared after she had been doing some gardening (we never can seem to get completely rid of the stuff) and she is quite susceptible so we did not put 2 and 2 together until she noted the rash was not developing like poison ivy and my daughter suggested the two were linked. A little web research and back into the doctor for a confirmation.
So a different way to hurt like hell. I guess the vaccine is supposedly somewhat effective (she can't get it until sometime after the current outbreak quiesces). Given the chicken pox virus -> shingles mechanism for the disease I'm curious about the vaccination mechanism (and how it would further help someone who has already had an outbreak). A quick web search did not illuminate.
|>
New poll shows 65% of uninsured plan to get the insurance and 28% to pay the fine (for once a relevant question rather than the usual bullshit). In Politico, so no link (no time to find it reported elsewhere). But no one important in the debate really cares about those losers*, so who cares.
*Except for the young healthy 'bros who understandably refuse to be oppressed by the Man and his petty rules.
Haven't read the whole thread yet but regarding the grant discussion near the top, we got this notice about agencies looking for any excuse to boot applications.
Please be aware that NIH has been enforcing with new vigilance the rules regarding font size. In the past this may not have been a reason for not processing an application but now applications are being subject to a different level of scrutiny. Also, take note of what can be included in tables (data in what NIH defines as a "table" can be numerical only the only words included should be labels for numerical data).
When my dad very nearly died of shingles about ten years ago -- it came on fast over a weekend and his temperature shot up dangerously high, luckily a GP came out to see him even though they didn't really do visits anymore -- it subsequently caused a quarrel between mum and dad over whether dad had had chickenpox as a child. Dad's mum (long dead by this point) had always said yes; my mum took the whole affair as yet more proof that dad's mum was an irresponsible ignorant snobby idiot -- dad somewhat demurring on this last, except he could not remember himself whether he had had it or not. Throughout the quarrel the "if you've had chickenpox then you will/won't get shingles" factoid was deployed with dizzying bcz contradictory regularity. No one seemed to have the slightest idea which it was.
Anyway it is miserable* so get well soon mrs JPS.
*I haven't had it but I did have chickenpox as a kid: so I am in/out of the frame.
Hey-Ho! Hey-diddle-diddle!
Aunt Emily's shingles have met in the middle!
190: Your grandmother was right and your mother was wrong -- you can't get shingles without having previously had chickenpox.
185.2: [re: media and "entitlements] Another curiosity from the debate: That an old guy who labelled oldsters as "greedy geezers*" while running around giving speeches on the subject at $40K a pop** wasn't laughed off the stage.
*I will admit there is some truth here. If we do end up going Weimar it will in large part be due to the political power of the older segment of the population with their net worth spreadsheets from hell inducing the gov't folks to keep squeezing things until it all blows sky high***.
**OK, $20K since he had to split it with Bowles.
***Wouldn;t it be nice if we had an actual functioning, independent Federal Reserve who took their full mandate seriously. Ok, they have done some half-measures in the face of semi-treasonous accusations against them by the tea party scheisskopfs. But I still feel there is much more threat**** to my family's future prospects from folks like the "conservative" Fed governors (not to mention the actual scheisskopfs) than I do from a group of losers like Al-Qaeda. The Fed guys have actual power to fuck things up good.
****And to some extent actual malice. Given the power and wealth of this country and its military might, the powerful right and its media enablers are for all practical purposes***** the actual worst people in the world. Tywin Lannisters with Ivy League educations teaming up with powerful-in-their-local-goobered-up-geographies Walder Freys. Nice day for a Red Wedding....
*****And by all practical purposes I mean for all intensive purposes.
Boy do I have a lot of work to get done today. Thank God I got up real early to get to it.
You guys will have to pick up the cudgel of outraged commentary, or else it will certainly all go badly.
Mum is dead too, but she is a MUCH livelier and more prankish* ghost when it comes to such matters, so even protected by a pseud on the faraway internet (which she never once interacted with) I shall remain studiously diplomatic.
*Appliances breaking down, sausage meat absurdly misplaced/move (till unusable), once a whole shelf of crockery leaping onto the flagged kitchen floor. It is loving mischief at worst but it never not time-consuming.
Look at the stuff she did with my grammar there.
198: Don't you mean. "That was real good what you done to my grammar, Mum. It's a good life here on the internet. A real good life."
Also I don't know if this was already mentioned, but the debt limit thing is obviously about creating an impeachable offense. Everyone who knows him agrees that Cruz is not stupid. So you create a situation where the law simultaneously says, "The President shall jump," and, "The President shall keep his feet in contact with the ground at all times."
You can now get shingles without having had chickenpox because Obamacare.
200 is a good point. But you people aren't whinging loudly enough and now Tinkerbell has to die.
190, 202: The "acute" part has seemed to have passed and it's more of an ongoing nagging thing now. Worst part seems to be that it flares up at night, so not sleeping as well as she would like.
At least she's not having trouble sleeping because she's destroying America or haunted by a ghost that breaks appliances.
In mum's prankish ghostwatch: just noticed the washing machine had turned itself on (with nothing in it), on a cycle I have never used ("Delicates"). So I consider myself delicately warned.
||
Rosenberg Recaps BB ...spoilers in there and here. Meh. Just good American TV.
The pleasures of a gentle touch, of powerful love, of bacon-be it turkey or pork-on your plate on the morning of your birthday are the things that really matter
Yes, BB was partly or largely about "Love vs Glory" but Walt died with a smile on his face.
I frankly do not listen to women telling me that Love is always better than Glory until we have a few centuries when women have the equal opportunities at the Glory that has been denied them.
And sticking to the "Love and Family are the bestest things ever" is just reinforcing the Patriarchy at its worst. Men will affirm "women's wisdom" that the world is well lost for love as they go for the golden ring. That's how it works, and likely how it will always work until women trample the dudes on the way out the door.
Glory may well be inferior to Love and Family. Maybe its just an equal alternative. We won't know until after the End of Patriarchy.
|>
Ted Cruz is Lenin. Which seems to make sense, if we're allowed an analogy. I think that means Obama is Kerensky, or maybe John Boehner is.
206: It maybe wasn't a warning about anything you said, but about how you are brutalizing your fine washables.
193: Can you get shingles if you received the varicella vaccine against chicken pox. Because I never had chicken pox and chose to get vaccinated when I was 27 or so.
I'm sleeping fine, and I have my wife's ~$40,000/yr worth of health insurance from Goldman-Sachsto fall back on if I'm not.
Actually, as part of blood pressure follies, my doctor has prescribed a sleep lap for me (I've not yet checked whether insurance would cover). I don't actually think I have sleep apnea, but am intrigued by what they'd find. My wife thinks she should warn them that no matter what I say in my sleep/semi-sleep that I will probably not actually harm them. Or their dogs.
a sleep lap
Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.
210: Yes, but it is supposed to be less likely that you'll get shingles after the vaccine than after an regular infection.
211.2: Somehow my comment got appended to Ted's. Look into that if you would, neb.
Sympathies for the shingles, that's horrible. They terrify me, in part because of the disease name and in part because I had early-adulthood chicken pox and that was like the worst thing ever.
I had shingles, and it really wasn't that awful.
I had the flu and positively enjoyed it.
I think I'm getting arthritis in my thumb. Thanks, Obama.
187: Quick search says highest tracked recurrence risk might be as high as 1 in 20, although not all were confirmed with lab testing, and the vaccine should prevent recurrence at least as well as it prevents initial cases (which is not well, but it does seem to be good at preventing tailing pain). The chicken pox to shingles as I understand it is just that the immune system becomes less effective as you age, and earlier infection can re-activate with different symptoms.
210: The vaccine for shingles is a higher dose of the chicken pox vaccine. Both are live, attenuated virus. It would probably be smart to get the shingles vaccine at a later date. I'm not sure whether there is reliable data for people who got chicken pox vaccine at a relatively young age and their relative risk of shingles, so I defer to Moby in 213.
219.2: I was reading the Wikipedia page, so maybe deference isn't necessary.
216: Same for both me and my father. Shingles can be excruciating, but isn't necessarily. (Dad and I both had no pain, some weird tingling sensation.)
208: I was making the same Menshevik/Bolshevik analogy in my head. In a way I admire the Republicans for the way they try to take every advantage. In a way I admire the Bolsheviks. This probably makes me a bad person.
216, 217: I HAD LUNG CANCER, AND I MADE THE BEST OF IT.
On topic, I am spending my day preparing for shutdown. My boss just blamed Harry Reid - ?! This is just such an insane waste of time and money. At least this time around, everyone seems better prepared, and it seems like communication about what to expect has been much better.
I feel worse for the contractors, since last time they didn't get back pay and this time, there are so many more.
I suppose the question is how highly leveraged are the bloated federal contractors -- can they hold out as long as medicare recipients?
The fact that federal workers/contractors in and around DC will be blaming Congress is good, and keeps the Villagers in check.
IME (n = 1, plus the people at the cubicles next to and across from me), contractors are likely to do better than government employees. Our contract is renewed annually, so we're bought and paid for until it next expires, right? So we get paid either way. As long as this office is open, we're expected to come in. If government employees aren't around then we'd have even less to do than usual, and we've had e-mails from our supervisor asking us for a list of projects we could work on without government input, but as of this morning we're told we're still expected to show up and get paid for it.
Contractors may be easier to fire than government employees, but apparently we're harder to stop paying.
That being said, 200 is worrying. It's a frighteningly simple and credible plan. Are we really going to go through that again too?
My boss just blamed Harry Reid - ?!
Cruz has been playing the "Why are you hitting yourself" card pretty heavily lately. Statistically, somebody eventually is going to believe him.
Also I don't know if this was already mentioned, but the debt limit thing is obviously about creating an impeachable offense.
Really? I hadn't realized this.
(So NOT OBVIOUS, jerkbutt.)
225, the situation you describe for contractors was certainly not the case for us last time. It varies quite a bit. Most of ours work onsite (which was closed) and did not get paid during the shutdown or receive back pay.
I don't think it's obvious, but it's very plausible.
This topic is sort of disheartening. Can we go back to everybody being in a relationship that is collapsing or horrible?
If it's not obvious you're probably some kind of government employee.
Tywin Lannisters with Ivy League educations teaming up with powerful-in-their-local-goobered-up-geographies Walder Freys. Nice day for a Red Wedding....
By not watching Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, I think I'm missing out on at least 10% of all internet-based communication. It's like you're speaking a slightly different language.
I swear, from Day 1 of Game of Thrones I was continually hearing talk about people like "Tyrion" and "Rob Stark" and "Hodor" and "Khalisi" and "Cersei Lannister" and "Jamie Lannister" and "Joffrey" and "Khal Drogo", and yet it took until summer of 2013 for the culture at large to make me aware of any Breaking Bad characters other than Walter White, Jesse and Gus Fring.
Contractor here. Ours is funded for its 1st six months using FY13 funds so there is money and the government can't (easily) claw it back. The office will have at least one gov/mil person so we will be here as long as there is work to do. I have a list of things to do that I wouldn't mind getting caught up on.
236: The Game of Thrones characters do pop out out of the background noise more than the Breaking Bad characters, because the names are sillier. It's funny, I'm pretty hard up for television to watch right now, but I can't talk myself into starting either of those -- GoT because I read the first three books, and got irrevocably bored by the end of the third, and Breaking Bad because I'm not really good with the depressing violence. (Okay, I finally broke down and watched The Wire, which was the best tv I'd ever seen. But BB doesn't sound as if it'd be in the same category.)
240. First season of Malcolm in The Middle if you haven't seen it, maybe. There's a PBS show about bird flight that's been really strongly recommended. Blue Planet.
Based on exclamations I hear from the other room from time to time, some seem to like The Bridge. Maybe read 2666 as a companion. But I think full of the depressing violence.
I have some hopes for Agents of Shield. (I'm not proud of this, but I've realized that a large part of what I want out of tv is at-least-sometimes-funny violent-in-a-way-that-doesn't-depress-me drama. The Wire was genuinely excellent as art, but it was also clever and witty, which broke up the shocking violence and depressingness of it all, so it fed that jones. But something like Buffy fell into the same category, despite having been in an entirely different class in terms of quality.)
I guess you should watch Orange is the New Black, which is admirable in some ways and meets your criteria well, although as previously discussed I don't really like it that much.
I've been considering it, based on some other recommendations. Buck's rejected it as "Women in prison? No." but I may return to talking him into it.
Or you could be like me and watch "That Metal Show" (aka "The View for Idiots" -- the wife), the program where overweight 40 year old men interview people like the bassist from Dokken and get into long debates over whether Van Halen I or II is better and Overkill's position in the thrash metal pantheon.
Sketch comedy is also good -- we just watched both seasons of Key and Peele available on Hulu -- but I don't have anything lined up right now.
Currently stressing some of my friends out:
"What happens to my military pay if a Continuing Resolution or an Appropriations Act is not signed into law by Oct 1 and there is a Government shutdown?
Active military, Reserve, and National Guard members will be paid on time for pay entitlements earned September 30th or earlier. Military members cannot be paid for duty performed after the expiration of the FY 2013 appropriations act on September 30th. Once a CRA or another appropriations act is signed into law, normal disbursement of military pay will resume."
That said, it seems that USAA and the various services' credit unions are going to either advance troop pay or offer zero-interest loans.
Humanity Has Declined has started its run on the animenetwork ondemand channel.
But that's all I got.
I'm not sure how easily obtainable it is, LB, but there's a BBC America/CBC's "Orphan Black" might fit that niche for you. Also, maybe a BBC series called "Utopia" that I really liked, but that's stylish moody violence rather than funny moody violence.
Oh hey: I only have a second at work here, but I want to apologize for my comments about back pay upthread. I think it's just that as a self-employed person, I'm used to the notion that if you don't work, you don't make money, and I forget sometimes that that's not the normal way to look at things.
Spiral is on Netflix - sort of a French knockoff of The Wire (I'm told, not having seen the latter), but quite enjoyable in its own right.
Sketch comedy is also good"That Mitchell and Webb Look" is on Netflix.
#humblebrag
One of my colleagues has a settlement approval hearing scheduled in a federal court for late October. If it happens, the law firm gets a $3 millon fee for this year's Christmas bonuses. If the Courts are closed for nonessential matters as happened in the last government shut down, and the hearing is reset for 2014, we all wait another year to buy new yachts or whatever.
#humblebrag
253: Been there, done that, enjoyed it a great deal.
240: Orphan Black. The three main characters are played by the same actress.
253: Actually recently it seems to have been removed.
Si vous attaquez le roi, il faut ne pas manquez
And now typing that accepting all autocorrects:
So void attaquez Le too, il fair me pas man queer
In her most striking sellout, Elizabeth Warren opposes the medical device tax. That was a straight-up cave to a powerful Massachusetts industry during her election campaign. No real substantive justification.
*Yawn*. There's no high principle at stake here. The device tax is a more or less accidental policy that arose out of the administration's perceived need to pay for Obamacare without raising taxes on middle class taxpayers. Instead, we got a dab of Medicare taxes on high incomes and an assortment of measures like the device tax that were designed to claw back a portion of the windfall that healthcare providers and suppliers will get from the law. If the device tax were replaced by some other revenue source (or even deficit spending), the polity would not be appreciably worse off. It's purely a distributional struggle among monied interests, in which it's commonly understood that legislators take the side of the monied interests within their jurisdictions. I give Warren (and the rest of the med-tech Democrats in places like New Jersey and California) a pass on this one, as long as their advocacy does not lead them to undercut the leadership on procedural votes.
262: I agree with you that it's not much of a sellout, but beginning comments with "Yawn" is the single most irritating thing on the Internet.
263: there's a lot of competition for that, just sayin'.
beginning comments with "Yawn" is the single most irritating thing on the Internet.
If it helps, I originally wrote "Meh" instead of "*Yawn*", but I was concerned that this wouldn't be proper usage.
Anyway, my point was that if the device tax is the weightiest evidence on offer, liberals can hold off on issuing the indictment of selling out.
I think it's just that as a self-employed person, I'm used to the notion that if you don't work, you don't make money, and I forget sometimes that that's not the normal way to look at things.
I've never been self-employed, but I remember being amazed the first time I got paid for not working, when I took a sick day at my first job with benefits.
Parsimon, surely you get summers off, right?
Huh, I was going to say that "meh" was more annoying than "yawn."
BBC America/CBC's "Orphan Black" might fit that niche for you
I think it would! Watch this, LB. It's smart-dumb good fun. (In other words, a smart, well done version of dumb fun. And the main actress is really a pleasure to watch.)
Shutdown?
What happens ultimately is Medicare and Social Security get gutted 'cuz our President's back was to the wall, he had to compromise doncha' know. Then Dems lose big in 2014. The end.
I stole that comment from FDL. I may need a lawyer.
262: I more or less agree, I wasn't saying Warren *was* a sellout (far from it) just that that position was.
The device tax won't get replaced if it's eliminated, it's incredibly hard to pass taxes, and the medical device manufacturers rake in the money from the status quo and will rake in even more from HC reform. It's a sensible tax as it falls on medical providers who benefit from the law.
I seem to remember that "Meh" has a specific meaning in the Unfogged house style.
I just got an email about wearing black and gold tomorrow to support the Pirates. It took considerable effort to not "Reply All" with a message reading "Meh."
Listening to NPR's execrable coverage this morning, I thought "could there possibly be a worse political correspondent than Cokie Roberts?" And then I realized duh, of course there can be, and there are many, many of them. But if NPR is that bad, how much chance is there of any hint of reality making its way into the Fox News bubble?
This is fairly funny: US reporting on the shutdown as if we were another country.
275: For me this will officially now be the Chuck Todd--Mark Halperin--Cokie Roberts Economic Slowdown. Or name it like a military campaign.
Operation Whining Thunder
Operation Blackcheck
Operation False Equivalence
Operation Unjust Cause
Operation I've Got Mine.
In some ways the elite pundits and the Tea Partiers are of a kind: both reacting badly to the slow but unstoppable erosion of their unearned privilege.
An impeachment is the best thing that could possibly happen for the country, right? The House impeaches. The Senate trial forces everyone to recognize that the House Republicans are fucking nuts, and the Republicans lose the 2014 midterms in the House. Once Congress is back in Democratic control, fiscal policy will become less contractionary, leading to an economic boom. The Democrats romp in 2016, and the Tea Party becomes a reviled memory.
,i>The Senate trial forces everyone to recognize that the House Republicans are fucking nuts
Ha!
Well, that's what happened the last time the Republicans impeached. This time the grounds for impeachment would be even more incomprehensible.
NSF just announced that their website, including FastLane and research.gov will be unavailable in the event of a shutdown (via a prof friend on FB). They'll issue guidelines once the shutdown ends.
282: yeah, read that earlier. Doot de doo.
I think "Actually do the shutdown!" should be the new "Do a filibuster for real!" As in, police disappear off the streets, nuclear bombs are left unguarded, the Bonneville Power Administration leaves the sluices set at whatever seems reasonable, tick and tock 404 (or whatever the NTP error code is).
279: Sign me up! Which planet do I go to?
Surprise! You're already standing on it!
NSF just announced that their website,
Yeah, we have a .gov website that is funded with current fiscal-year money. No current FY money? No website. Buh bye.
I've also seen some very childish reactions from some government employees regarding just how much they are not going to do tomorrow.
As in, police disappear off the streets, nuclear bombs are left unguarded, the Bonneville Power Administration leaves the sluices set at whatever seems reasonable, tick and tock 404 (or whatever the NTP error code is).
That's a terrible idea. What they should do, though, is require US financial markets to close. (I know the SEC says they have enough money to keep things for a few weeks, but that's because they're trying to make the shudown as painless as they can. My point is I don't think that's the right goal.
The Senate trial forces everyone to recognize that the House Republicans are fucking nuts, and the Republicans lose the 2014 midterms in the House.
That happened in 1998, as you observe, but to little lasting harm to Republicans. There was solid popular opposition to the Clinton impeachment too.
Doot de doo.
I like *yawn* better.
What they should do, though, is require US financial markets to close.
I could get behind this.
The Republicans lost seats in the House and failed to gain them in the Senate. They only eked out a Presidential victory in 2000 thanks to the Supreme Court.
Favorite tweet of the evening:
Obama may "win" a clean CR tonight, ensuring spending levels devastating to his priorities
Which constitutes a relatively minor setback in the grand scheme of things. They weren't discredited, just got rid of Gingrich and slapped on a new coat of varnish and did pretty well for years more.
It's no big deal, the US has government shut-downs the same way that France has public transit strikes.
295:Repubs:We want the fucking moon!
Obama:Not gonna happen bozos
Repubs:OMG, the people will hate us. We give in and surrender, and are sending up a CR that slashes the welfare state.
Obama:Well I'll sign that for the good of the country. I sure hope you have learned your lesson. Don't fuck with me.
Repubs: Coises foiled again. He's just so smart, makes so mad.
Democratic Faithful:Yeahhhh Victory! God those Repubs are such losers.
Sure they were discredited. Bush had to run away from the Republicans to win, and that he barely did. If Bush had lost, they would have been discredited even further. Their structural position in winning the Presidency has worsened since then, so another go-round will hit them harder.
I'm just not sure why you think impeachment would "force" everyone to recognize that the House Republicans are fucking nuts, while, say, them threatening to force a debt default hasn't done that.
289: Through the magic of time zones, my federal employee spouse is already hard at work on Oct 1 and has at least one more day of work + official travel before she even gets home. Hope she'll get paid for it eventually.
Interesting that the six defectors on the one resolution kind of bracketed the GOP: Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN), Rep. Paul Broun (GA), Rep. Charlie Dent, Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX), Rep. Pete King (NT), Rep. Steve King (IA). I think 4 nuts and 2 "moderates" (at least on this kind of stuff).
Repub staff complaining about potentially being thrown under the bus for political points. A teaching moment on the larger context of employer/employee relationships? Yeah, right. But maybe they'll hate their bosses that smidgen more.
When Peter King is in the moderate wing, God help us all.
304: Yes, I know; I struggled with what term to use.
I even bore myself with harping on the media stuff, but I do not think you can have any kind of sane governance with the massive cancer of bigoted hate media that we have. Especially when the establishment does not call it for what it is. It's just all raw emotions and fears and bigotry and then a Ted Cruz is there to feed off of it. It's a symptom rather than a root cause, but can we at least work on the symptom.
The question always is:
How are the rich fucks doing? Very well, fuck us very much.
There are folks who say that the rich fucks would love a shutdown and default, because it means Bernanke would open the floodgates.
I can link (Jacobin) to Alexander Cockburn standing next to a guillotine saying:"This is all they fear. Without it we are slaves"
293: Given that the financial industry already deals with Columbus Day and Veteran's Day every year, this might not actually make much difference. In the sense of shutting down the Fed etc. If you just shut everything down, it would be like a regular holiday. Only problematic if it lasted more than a couple of days. And as crazy as things were after 9/11, the industry got back on its feet pretty dam quickly. Some lower-middle class people might be hurt a bit, but per 307, the rich fucks would be doing fine.
Because I'm kind of in a bad mood -- also: realistic -- I predict that very few people, other than government employees, will care very much that they're going to shut down the government. So much have people's expectations for the behavior of their government been dumbed-down.
It does bum me out that class-struggle anarchists don't do more to take advantage of these opportunities. Lots of absurdist street theater could be created around government "shut downs" -- i.e. the cops and the military are just as funded as ever, but working people suffer -- but people tend to focus on the most boring parts of electoral politics instead. Sigh.
Lots of absurdist street theater....
I want to be sympathetic, but my original reaction was "Oh, God, no."
I want to be sympathetic, but my original reaction was "Oh, God, no."
I feel you, brother.
309: Some recipients of government services will presumably care very much, but no, I suspect you're right, not many people who are not government employees will think it's the end of the world.
Sure, in the grander scheme of things this is a nit on the ass of gnat. It just opens the kimono a bit so we can gaze in horror at the mixed metaphors.
When it's all done, everything moves on as if the sequester were written in stone.
315: I'm afraid that most people increasingly expect the government to be utterly dysfunctional, and so the shut-down will seem like business as usual. Moreover, I think the shut-down, insofar as it further normalizes government dysfunction, serves the GOP's longterm goal of destroying the federal apparatus. Eleventy-gazillion dimensional chess!
315: I'm afraid that most people increasingly expect the government to be utterly dysfunctional, and so the shut-down will seem like business as usual. Moreover, I think the shut-down, insofar as it further normalizes government dysfunction, serves the GOP's longterm goal of destroying the federal apparatus. Eleventy-gazillion dimensional chess!
Speaking of utterly dysfunctional.
Unfortunately I fear VW is right. When the goal is discrediting government, there's no such thing as bad governance.
Shutdown, butt down, everybody wants into the crowded line. You're busted.
serves the GOP's longterm goal of destroying the federal apparatus
Yep. Where's the Sedition Act when you need it?
315.last: That is a pisser, isn't it? The second round of sequester cuts will inflict further damage.
Sorry for the link to a website I actually know nothing about -- it was just the first most obvious choice among Google results on this. This one is a bit more wonkish.
I've had to remind myself that the sequester isn't a single year deal. Per Wikipedia,
The reductions in spending authority are approximately $85.4 billion (versus $42 billion in actual cash outlays[note 2]) during fiscal year 2013,[2](p14) with similar cuts for years 2014 through 2021.
I've begun drinking like I'm not going into work tomorrow. So I guess I'm on Team Shutdown now!
But seriously, fuck the Repblicans. As heebie said, so much needless fucking around with people's lives.
I mean, 323 is at least a small positive benefit.
You'd rather be hungover around your family than your boss? You're scared of funny things.
I think any shutdown will be brief and they might even work something out in the early morning, just to screw with Mitch.
323 has made me mentally sing the Armadillo song again, which is the only happy bit I've found in any of this. I need to go to sleep.
And stories like this make me want to shut down the Washington Post.
Shutdown, butt down, everybody wants into the crowded line. You're busted.
I wanted to read this again, lower down.
Crap, I'm out of practice. Stories like this.
332: The Onion just gave up. "We're not worthy."
On September 2, 1939, the Washington Post headline was "Invasion of Poland due to mutual misunderstanding and provocation."
"Bullets Strike Kennedy, or Kennedy Strikes Bullets?"
"Negroes, Thurmond Filibuster Each Other"
"Southern Plantation Owners Finally Overcome 200-Year Entrapment Scheme. Blow Struck to Dependency Culture,"
"President Amin is right; humans are delicious"
"Neil Armstrong and Moon Reach Compromise Position"
Some of the class of 2014 were conceived during the last shutdown.
I guess 340 is not centric enough. "Slaves and Slaveholders Agree, The Other Side Benefits the Most."
"All Sides Agree: Soylent Green is Carbon-based."
Huh, they actually did it. I appear to have lost my capacity to feel surprise anymore.
Douglass Decries the Slave System, but his Life Story Shows the Value of Hard Work, Some Planters Say
"Shop Owner and Gangster Agree; It'd Be a Shame If Something Happened to the Shop."
In Sumter, Disagreement over Federal Base Closings
Saw a bunch of commercials for exchanges on Hulu tonight.
Local paper says that farm payments aren't going to be made on account of the shutdown. I'd like to see Tester making some serious hay with that.
It seems like some sort of poetic justice that Obamacare is launching on the same day that the GOP shut down the government over it. I'm not sure what sort exactly, though.
If there is one and only one positive to the sequester, it's that next year's cuts apply mostly to defense (non-defense discretionary cuts are "only" 1.6%).
Argh, stupid Republicans! I forget what the consensus is that those of us in red states (at the national level only, in our case, but particularly awful at the national level) should do beyond move, which doesn't seem productive. We have a good alternative candidate for the next senate election and I'm hoping this will give the incumbent plenty of chances for nasty comments that will come back to haunt him, but none of that is consolation. It all just makes me really sad.
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New Yorkers should all go vote today in the run-off for Public Advocate!
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Apparently, this time they sent the White House interns home because blowjob jokes to show they are being treated the same as regular employees.
I thought they were already not paying them.
Now they're not being paid and not working, which is more fair.
355: "And who doesn't like dogs?"
NPR's pox-on-both-sides coverage this morning made me furious. "The House and the Senate traded bills late into the night but the parties were unable to reach any compromise solution", or something close to that. Then cue Boehner talking, then Reid talking, then Obama talking. Look, everyone blames everyone else! Fuck you, NPR.
Along the lines of the comments above, wasn't there an Onion 9/11 article about how the hijackers were first rate architectural critics? No one really liked how the twin towers looked.
I will say again (mostly contra Walt) that as a country, the US has not yet hit bottom, and there's no real telling where the bottom is.
Ted Cruz and his gang understand that they are well-served by calamity. Consider the fact that they are engaged in open sabotage, and the public hasn't rebelled. As others have pointed out, the worse things get, the more evidence they have of their central thesis: Government is worse-than-useless.
The Left still seems to think that Romney lost because he was too right-wing or too racist or something. That's nonsense. The Right understands that its failure to completely fuck the economy cost Mitt the election. The only reason it was close is that rightwingers were able to do a lot of damage to the economy.
There's a bit of potential conflict between the plutocrats and the grassroots, but there's an emerging vision - the vision of the Kochs - that encompasses both. The current situation is a threat to Republican unity, but it's also a threat to U.S. national stability, and it's not clear which is going to break first.
Halford is correct that what's happening nationwide mirrors the California experience, and while there's some evidence that California has hit bottom, we ain't there yet nationally.
I don't understand the shutdown details at all. I've gotten an email from some people I work with at a government agency and it says that they have 40 some days funding appropriated and they'll only shut down after that. But I thought everything was already appropriated and the issue was the debt ceiling means what was appropriated can't be borrowed to be spent.
363: I think you may be recalling my father's reaction, as reported here: "Architectural criticism has gone too far!"
LB's father writes for The Onion!?
I second 361 and 362. NPR really pisses me off.
California hit bottom a couple years ago and is doing better now, right?
I don't like NPR news, but I've started to listen to the music on the independent station that carries NPR news. Because old.
369: One of the few bright spots at present is the fact that Californians eventually got tired of the nihilistic obstructionist assholes in the state legislature and voted them out, even with the crazy gerrymandering to create "safe" districts.
So there does seem to be some level of disfunction that people won't tolerate.
Another hopeful sign is that Sarah Palin was the last straw that caused several life long Orange County republicans in my family to finally jump ship.
The California analogy is tempting, but I kinda think it should be banned with the rest of them. There are just too many differences in political culture between a state (even a very large state) and the country.
The biggest difference is that California can't print its own money.
I'm taking my hopeful signs wherever I can get them these days.
Okay, wait, now I have a question: am I correctly understanding that the house offered a bill that linked continued funding to a one year delay of the individual mandate? (While still keeping the exchanges, the subsidies, the community rating, the ban on denials for preexisting conditions, etc.)
I understand the general principle against negotiating with lunatics, but, setting that aside, isn't that a good deal? Why not accept? Insurance companies would hate it--it would cost them a lot of money--but let them complain to Republicans in Congress about that. Democrats would probably be willing to put the mandate back in whenever the Republicans came to Jesus. (And if they never did... so what? Insurance companies go bankrupt? Whose fault is that?)
Silver lining: the shutdown will distract attention from the inevitable teething pains of the exchange launch. People may even assume that the glitches are caused by the shutdown.
NPR's local reporting is very good. (At least here.)
Anarchy for the USA, it's comin' sometime, maybe!
377: Ending the individual mandating is functionally equivalent to destroying Obamacare. I don't think it will hurt the insurance companies a bit.
OT: This just in from the Flip-Pater: the sound quality at the Fillmore East in the late '60s was not very good.
You can't offer universal coverage (or something close to it) that includes pre-existing conditions without either a mandate or a single-payer system. You can't get a single-payer system without a new law, which obviously won't happen.
Stupid question: why doesn't the TSA shut down? Or maybe I mean: why doesn't Obama order the TSA to shut down? Grounding all air travel would be a great way to get people in an uproar about how disastrous the shutdown is, wouldn't it? (Plus I kinda want my next trip to get canceled by factors beyond my control.)
There are just too many differences in political culture
Hmm. I'd be curious to see how you view those differences in political culture, and I myself am arguing that the analogy potentially falls short because it's not clear that the U.S. can pull out of the negative feedback loop. (Fucking up the economy creates more opportunities to fuck up the economy, which leads to further efforts to fuck up the economy, which leads to a more fucked up economy ...)
But the analogy is more about political structure than culture. A minority with no incentive to do the right thing can effectively have their way for a long, long time. That's the similarity that I see.
Mind you, I don't actually think Armageddon is on the agenda. If nothing else, the Republicans (and bob) could well be right that the Democrats will cave. But the fact that there's, say, a 10% chance of meltdown is pretty damn scary to me. And a "compromise" would necessarily be pretty damn grim, too.
So I've been refining my entryism plan, thusly: What if the problem (from our perspective) with the Republican Party isn't too much extremism, but rather not enough? I mean, there's basically three tendencies in the GOP, right? Anti-taxes, Pro-guns and Pro-Jebus. And of course, they're all white-supremacists. But the thing about tax, gun or fundy extremists, is that they've all been willing to compromise with each other. Xtians may not all be crazy about gun proliferation, but as long as they're getting their way on abortion and homosekshuls, they're not gonna buck. What if there was an influx of grassroots Republican activists who wouldn't compromise on their non-core concerns? Like the anti-tax people would oppose any government program, including the military (which the gun nuts support) or something that the Christers like? Similarly, what if the NRA caucus insisted on new military spending, regardless of the tax consequences? Seems to me things could get awful chaotic awful fast.
Just something to think about on No Government Day.
369: One of the few bright spots at present is the fact that Californians eventually got tired of the nihilistic obstructionist assholes in the state legislature and voted them out, even with the crazy gerrymandering to create "safe" districts.
We didn't, though. Not really. We re-districted, so there were more, more even districts. Then we elected a super-majority of Democrats, even while keeping most of the obstructionists.
That's what worries me about the example. We never were able to negotiate with the minority who rightfully feared their next election more than anything that could happen to California. We lost to their demands for years.
You can't offer universal coverage (or something close to it) that includes pre-existing conditions without either a mandate or a single-payer system.
Because it would destroy insurance markets. I don't think there's a mystery where the blame for this would lay. Which is why I don't think it would ever actually happen--Republicans would have had their grandstanding and then would relent within a few weeks. The "gov't shutdown" grandstanding is easier for them to maintain than "no individual mandate" grandstanding would be.
385, 390: OK, there goes that bright spot.
Stupid question: why doesn't the TSA shut down? Or maybe I mean: why doesn't Obama order the TSA to shut down? Grounding all air travel would be a great way to get people in an uproar about how disastrous the shutdown is, wouldn't it?
Because that would be politicizing the issue.
I think it much more likely that the insurance markets would be destroyed and the Republicans would use that to argue that Obamacare failed and needs to be killed. And that this would be very successful.
395: Huh. That sounds wildly implausible. I mean, sure, some large percentage of the public could be fooled, but not the insurance companies. And wouldn't they fight like hell?
395: Huh. That sounds wildly implausible. I mean, sure, some large percentage of the public could be fooled, but not the insurance companies. And wouldn't they fight like hell?
I think it would be simpler than that. The good pricing we're seeing on exchanges is based on the companies' expectation that they're going to get some of those younger healthier people -- along with a whole lot of subsidy money. Kill the mandate, and they have to re-price everything.
Oh, 399 is true. I guess that wouldn't work.
Urple, if you want single payer, move abroad or to Vermont, because you are never going to get it in the U.S. And you might not like it if you did. For one thing, you'd still have to pay for it: 7.4% of wage and salary income in Germany*, 7.5% in France**, which is not too far from the maximum that an individual is mandated to pay under Obamacare, and much more than low income people will pay for Obamacare***. In terms of the sources of funding, Obamacare is substantially more progressive than the Bismarckian systems.
*Not actually a single payer system
**In practice it's a little less
***Albeit for more comprehensive coverage
I think it much more likely that the insurance markets would be destroyed and the Republicans would use that to argue that Obamacare failed and needs to be killed. And that this would be very successful.
Yeah, 391.last seems crazy to me. Of course it's easier to grandstand the mandate than a government shutdown. People don't understand the mandate but they know they don't like it. And as 399 points out, the consequence of pushing it back will be higher premiums, which is easily spun as Obamacare pushing up premiums.
Pre-existing and community rating without mandate is what NY had. No one except the sick signed up so the rates were astronomical so no one signed up etc., which is why they were one of the states with the biggest drop in rates for the exchanges (>50%). Also only a few thousand people even participated.
I can't speak to what Urple likes, but my still having to pay for it is not a problem. It would be nice if broke people didn't have to pay for it. Also there is a real quality-of-life advantage (and fiscal benefit, surely, regarding lost time) in not having to deal with insurance companies, billing craziness, mystification on every level, etc. etc. etc.
Are you seriously arguing with a straight face that "Obamacare" is (a) better and (b) more progressive than a single payer system? I mean, I'm a huge Obamacare supporter in the current context and I get that someone is paying you to know a lot about the technical details of the law, but come the fuck on.
386: I don't know if this is law or policy, but the rule seems to be it stays open if it's otherwise funded (Medicare, Social Security), part of law enforcement, or necessary to protect life or property.
Single payer doesn't have to be regressive - it could come out of higher progressive tax revenue. But given how Medicare is funded, I see that as the most likely outcome in our case. (Not that that would be a dealbreaker.)
Urple, if you want single payer, move abroad or to Vermont, because you are never going to get it in the U.S. And you might not like it if you did. For one thing, you'd still have to pay for it: 7.4% of wage and salary income in Germany*, 7.5% in France**, which is not too far from the maximum that an individual is mandated to pay under Obamacare, and much more than low income people will pay for Obamacare***. In terms of the sources of funding, Obamacare is substantially more progressive than the Bismarckian systems.
But the progressivity can (and sometimes does) come from the structure of the tax system. It's not like everyone pays the aggregate percentage. Germany's system (such as I understand it, which isn't much) isn't very progressive, but then Germany isn't very progressive.
I'm pretty sure no matter how well Obamacare works, we'll still my miles ahead of Germany in terms of billing craziness and general irksomeness.
Are you seriously arguing with a straight face that "Obamacare" is (a) better and (b) more progressive than a single payer system?
No. I'm saying that (a) single payer is not going to happen in our lifetime; (b) Obamacare is to a first approximation the next best thing; and (c) single payer isn't the magical rainbow unicorn farm that some around here seem to think it is (urple and gswift being notable examples). You still have to pay for your healthcare in a single payer system, and in most countries, it is paid for in less than progressive fashion (the UK being a notable exception).
KR, I think you may have me confused with someone else.
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I saw Minivet's doppelganger at Menard's on Sunday. I was quite taken aback, the resemblance being so strong.
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It would be nice if broke people didn't have to pay for it.
This is consistent with my point that Obamacare is actually a better deal for the lowest income employed people than your typical Western European healthcare system. If you are eligible for the Medicaid expansion, you get an essentially 100% actuarial value policy for free. If you are under 250% of the federal poverty line, you get (after cost-sharing subsidies) an 85-95% actuarial value policy (comparable to the French system) for much less than you would pay in France.
Also there is a real quality-of-life advantage (and fiscal benefit, surely, regarding lost time) in not having to deal with insurance companies, billing craziness, mystification on every level, etc. etc. etc.
This is true, but unfortunately I don't see how you get around that given the realities of path dependence and a political system strongly biased toward the status quo.
Of course you have to pay for healthcare, and it's hard to do so. Obamacare does it in a manifestly more shitty way in numerous ways (including, but not limited to, progressivity) than any single payer system that I'm aware of. Saying that it will achieve anything like the level of actual "on the ground" progressivisty (ie, how beneficial on net is this to the non-rich) of, say, the French system strikes me as disingenuous in the extreme. I agree that single payer is unlikely here and that, for the US, Obamacare is a huge progressive accomplishment but let's not get too drunk in our own hootch here.
See More Minis at Menard's.
Between geography and "I don't even own a TV" the audience for this joke has to be pretty limited. So allow me to be the only one to say LOL.
...but let's not get too drunk in our own hootch here
That's the single least persuasive metaphor ever.
419: I had wondered if anybody got it. Thanks.
I don't know why 418 is so angry. The fact is that in most of these European countries with better systems of health care provision, it's funded by taxes that are not progressive.
364: There's calamity and then there's calamity. Default is somewhere in between invading Canada and invading Russia in terms of its badness of an idea. Nobody knows the consequences exactly if the US decided, because of its fucked-up political culture, to default on its debt, but they could be gigantic. Nobody really has a backup plan if US debt stops being safe. In a way I admire the tea-baggers willingness to roll the dice, but in the same way I admire someone to play Russian roulette using a six-shooter holding five bullets. They're pretty brave, but they're still probably going to end up with their brains splattered all over the wall.
422: Isn't that Halford's normal writing style? I like to picture him as an old man with an earhorn.
Well, I just went in and did my shutdown duties and am back at home.
Parsimon, I hope you don't mind that they tell me I'll get paid for the morning's work.
Earhorn? That's the funnel we use to empty colostomy bags.
418: you seem to think that KR is arguing something that he doesn't seem to be arguing. So far as I can tell, all he's saying is that we're not getting single payer here (this seems non-controversial to me); that the ACA is not a bad consolation prize (this part is totally controversial, but whatever, we've had that discussion over and over and over again); and, related, that the ACA is a better deal for poor people than most advocates of single payer realize (this strikes me as the interesting part of what he's saying).
I don't disagree with 422 as such, but I think it's crazy to think that (given overall levels of social support, plus the actual structure of the system) the lived experience of non-wealthy people in health care is going to be better under Obamacare in any meaningful sense than in the French system. We have our own non-progressive taxes, shitty social structure, etc, plus the general bureaucratic-bullshittyness of Obamacare, which still at its core links insurance to employment and to private health insurers.
I think you may have me confused with someone else.
I'm thinking of threads like this one. And this one.
Default is somewhere in between invading Canada and invading Russia in terms of its badness of an idea.
If it's up to me, I would much rather we invade Canada please.
427: Exactly. But please, call me Kermit, or "Kim" if you must. I don't want to be confused with that other guy.
Canada's certainly more convenient.
415: Can someone on my behalf quote some sappy song about seeing one's old love's face in every face on the street?
Hey Kermie, if Heebie U is using ominous tones to discuss our health care costs, are they just being assholes? Or is there a reason why a small liberal arts university would see its health care costs rise as a result of ACA?
Is there a chance that their benefit costs will fall? Or are we largely outside the scope of the changes altogether?
Or 435 to Minivet. But I assume 436 was not to 435.
I'll find you a sappy song in exchange.
435: I got a letter from my employer about the ACA and how it might affect me. I threw it away.
"You will find yourself involved in protracted internet debates."
435: Kermit knows more than me on these details, but I believe that while most of the law doesn't apply to self-insured plans (like student plans or most large employer plans), there are some elements of the law that are being applied to them, like the annual and lifetime limit ban, that could increase costs somewhat.
If it's up to me, I would much rather we invade Canada please.
Do we have to burn down the fucking White House again? This is getting boring.
I thought the annual and lifetime cap bans kicked in back in 2011?
442: Might I suggest the Capitol instead?
Ugh, person on Facebook who's 37, runs a small business, currently has just a catastrophic plan, no major health issues, complaining about being forced to buy insurance for $500/month, wants to know why she can't just pay for doctors out of pocket. Yes, that's the segment that gets moderately screwed, suck it up.
425: Best wishes for a rapid return. I hope it's not a hardship and that you get your well-deserved back pay when the shutdown ends.
445: Unless she's either got enough money that the $500 is peanuts to her or is planning on just dying without treatment is she gets cancer or something, she isn't really losing much except the ability to free-ride on the Medicaid she'd have to use if she got really sick.
but in the same way I admire someone to play Russian roulette using a six-shooter holding five bullets. They're pretty brave, but they're still probably going to end up with their brains splattered all over the wall.
It is not at all clear whose head the gun is pointed at. I say again: Had the Republicans brought down the economy before the last presidential election, Romney would have won.
However it turns out, you can bet the Koch brothers won't be on food stamps, even if they take a financial hit "for the good of the country" (read: in order to damage the lives of non-99%).
I get the sense that you and I disagree about how crazy these fucks are - in that I think they are both crazier and less crazy than you think. Crazy because they're prepared to bring the whole edifice down; not crazy because they've made an arguably correct calculation that they benefit from calamity.
Can someone on my behalf quote some sappy song about seeing one's old love's face in every face on the street?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5oLV745q_8
443: Yes, nothing new in 2014, except maybe the benefit of less cost-shifting to commercial payers.
I mean, she'd probably do better with a catastrophic plan and the current comprehensive plan, but that's apparently no more an option than single-payer.
I say again: Had the Republicans brought down the economy before the last presidential election, Romney would have won.
I suppose it's possible, but the Republicans brought down the economy before the 2008 election and it's why they lost. It wasn't even as obvious it was there fault as it is now.
I could also cite songs by Jennifer Love Hewitt and Taylor Swift, but will refrain from doing so.
430, 431, 433: Especially with winter coming up on us.
it was there fault
Here a fault, there a fault,
Leading up to default
Mitch McConnell ran a funny farm
E-I-E-I-O
Uh. "there" s/b "their". I blame Canada.
365
I don't understand the shutdown details at all. I've gotten an email from some people I work with at a government agency and it says that they have 40 some days funding appropriated and they'll only shut down after that. But I thought everything was already appropriated and the issue was the debt ceiling means what was appropriated can't be borrowed to be spent.
It seems to vary literally from cubicle to cubicle.
Like I said, at my office there are fewer people telling us to do things but it's an otherwise normal day. Some contractors have it worse, though. It partially depends on whether the office building itself is open. In general, I think anything that is funded out of the general government revenue and is not "essential," has already shut down or is going to today. But lots of other things have dedicated revenue streams, like Social Security or medical research. Some things are paid for in advance, like some contractors. DC itself is doing what it can to keep all municipal government and services open like normal. For one thing, all district employees have simply been declared essential by fiat. Congress or someone in the executive branch could overrule that, but they haven't so far. If they do, there's an emergency fund, already budgeted for, which would last for a week or two. Some agencies probably have something like that too.
And of people who are going to work, some are getting paid, some aren't. Of those who aren't getting paid, I don't think anyone has any idea yet whether back pay is likely.
In California, the terms of furloughs depended not just on department, but also funding source (feds, general fund, bond monies) and bargaining unit.
448: So if causing chaos is such a great tactic, why didn't it work in 1998?
The Democrats generally strike no one as profiles in courage. Why are they so unwilling to cave this time? Because they know that government shutdown and default are two of the few events that low-information voters will notice.
The Koch brothers are fanatics, and the Tea Partiers in Congress are a bunch of rent-seekers who fancy themselves genuine businessmen. Actual businessmen will turn on the Republicans in the event of default.
423: They're pretty brave, but they're still probably going to end up with their brains splattered all over the wall.
Not brave: dumb. They may think they have some kind of canny political plan, but that's where the dumb gets in.
Oh you must mean that it didn't pay off in the midterm elections.
449: Thanks. Didn't think it would be quite that on the nose.
Thanks ydnew. We can make it for some months. Still and all, the whole thing is very disappointing. Obviously there's a pain caucus in the house that just refuses to wither.
Republicans have, in the last two terms, masterfully whittled down federal spending, often with precisely this form of brinksmanship.The Senate bill [the clean CR] funds the 2014 government at a level 18 percent below the president proposed five years ago; 17 percent below the Democratic Congress proposed four years ago; 10 percent below Paul Ryan and Republicans proposed three years ago; and 8 percent below the debt ceiling compromise two years ago (see graph, via Michael Linden and Harry Stein). The Senate bill is less than 2 percent away from Paul Ryan's own 2014 budget.
"Repubs have?" The Senate passed that shit, and Obama signed it. Kabuki. God knows R's don't mind playing the heavy.
I suppose it's possible, but the Republicans brought down the economy before the 2008 election and it's why they lost. It wasn't even as obvious it was there fault as it is now.
Huh. I was a bit worried that I was being tedious and obvious. Now, I'm worried that I'm being tedious and obscure.
I'm not saying that Republicans generally benefit from a poor economy. But there's a very strong tendency for incumbents to be hurt by a bad economy, particularly when we're talking about elections involving the executive.
Obama, and by extension the Democrats, stand to take the blame if the economy goes south. It may be that a non-incumbent party could be tied to the calamity, but that would be more-or-less unprecedented in history, as far as I know.
And the crazy fucks know it. Thought experiment: Would the Republican House be threatening not to raise the debt ceiling had Romney been elected? Sure, there'd be some posturing, but there wouldn't be a chance of it actually happening.
I don't know any details of the French system, but it seems weird to compare it in terms of the metric of out-of-pocket cost to the poor and use that as an argument for the relative benefits of Obama vs single payer. I mean, we already had before Obamacare free (if shitty and ludicrously bureaucratic, thanks federalism) state-insured health care for the poor, through Medicaid. In turn that's paid for by a largely progressive tax system. So yay us. Obamacare will extend that out to a larger number of people, including the working non-destitute, in states that accept the expansion. So far, so awesome. But then to take a relatively small slice of the working population who happens to benefit from what's basically a progressive taxation/single payer system (albeit to get Medicaid, which sucks) and to say yay behold the awesomeness of Obamacare versus non-progressive systems seems weird, since you're cherry-picking a limited slice of the population and evaluating only on the basis of out of pocket costs for those folks, whereas the key features of a single payer system is that it's (a) universal (b) provides something better than Medicaid (c) manages to hold down overall costs to the system as a whole. Put differently, whatever you're paying for in a comprehensive single payer system (and, sure, the more progressive the better) is different and better than what you're paying for in Obamacare, and picking out the one group that gets the absolute max progressive payment (though into a crappy system) under Obamacare as the key comparison metric) seems wrong.
I mean if the only point is that the limited number of folks who benefit from Medicaid expansion may do better on the sole metric of being taxed less for health care than their precise equivalents in countries that combine single payer and non-progressive taxation, fine, but it doesn't seem like a very important point. I'm happy to agree that Medicaid expansion is a very good thing.
466: That's too schematic. Voters don't know what the hell is going on, so they blame the incumbent President when the economy is bad. This time they'll know.
467: The Medicaid expansion is only one part of Obamacare.
I really actually thought that the red states would expand Medicaid. That some cover would be invented about how their way would benefit businesses or some shit, and they'd quietly accept the federal dollars.
I suppose there's no deadline exactly for this, but it's seeming less and less likely.
469 - Right, and it's the part that looks most like a (very insufficient, but still very important) move towards single payer, so I'm not clear why pointing out the most important benefit to the people who benefit the most from that expansion (which, to be clear, is a good thing) is an important metric for comparing Obamacare overall to a single payer system.
Well, at least the stock market is up today. Does anything else matter?
I don't know. I'm comparing Obamacare to what we have now. It's made me a happier person.
Sure. Fist bumps all around.
That some cover would be invented about how their way would benefit businesses or some shit, and they'd quietly accept the federal dollars. I suppose there's no deadline exactly for this, but it's seeming less and less likely.
This is happening now, mostly under the radar. Pennsylvania wants in on those terms, Indiana maybe as well. Missouri is privately exploring a deal where HHS would give them a waiver similar to Arkansas' face-saving deal. Kansas' legislature is so scared that the governor will do this behind their backs that they're trying to put up legal barriers to it. Texas, as usual, is the exception to the rule; it's a safe bet that Texas will the one of the last, if not the last state to finally sign on.
Plus, the exchanges mean that if I don't get a raise soon, I can try consulting with much less risk.
Fucking Perry was grandstanding the other day about passing legislation that would require 40 extra training hours before anyone could talk about the health exchange system in Texas.
OTOH, Perry's wife is pro-choice.
429: I think you're misinterpreting my comments in those threads. To be clear, I don't imagine that single-payer is/was achievable, and I don't think it would be a panacea. (I do think something more progressive than the ACA may have been achievable, and at the very least it would have been nice if someone had been fighting for it, but that's a boring conversation that we've had about 100 times at this point.)
though into a crappy system
FWIW, Medicaid is becoming meaningfully less crappy as a result of the ACA. The federal government is "temporarily" subsidizing an increase in physician reimbursement rates for primary and preventive care to Medicare levels, which will make it much more attractive for doctors to see Medicaid patients (there are more doctors accepting new Medicare patients than accepting new commercial patients). I'd bet money that the temporary Medicare parity becomes de facto permanent, because looming physician pay cuts invariably spur Congress to vote more spending (see the annual "doc fix").
Also, there is a whole body of new rulemaking that hamstrings the red states from gratuitiously making the program more sucky, and a whole lot of innovation being sponsored by HHS to improve the way care is delivered to Medicaid patients. It's still a flawed program in many ways, but it's not so dissimilar from the stingier versions of socialized medicine.
The NSF website takes care to point out that people working on NSF funded research are welcome to keep working on it, as long as they don't need any more money. I don't know why, but I find that sort of funny.
|| quick, what are the major feminist blogs so I can pretend I read them every day for a job interview I probably won't get for a job that pays too little to live on!
Oh I forgot the question mark. I forgot that was a question.
|>
Hugo Schwyzer has a good one, I hear.
Kidding aside, I haven't visited them in a while but Feministing and feministe still post a bunch.
465 to 459.
We're handicapped a little in this conversation because we're using (or at least, I'm using) Republicans vs. Democrats as a proxy for conservatives vs. liberals.
Personally, I don't give a fuck about the Democrats, except to the extent that helping them helps liberals.
Sure, there have been minor victories for the liberals since 1998 (or 1995, if you prefer), but the overall trend has been wildy favorable to the Right, and continues to be. Leaving aside some progress on social issues, even the Left's victories have often resulted in the adoption of right-wing policies. Ask yourself: Whose idea was Obamacare?
Following links on feminist stuff, I end up at Racialicious a fair amount -- I suppose it's primarily on race issues, but seems to do gender about as much.
I haven't read Pandagon in ages, but if you need more names to bring up, it's a name.
Never mind on Pandagon -- either it's down today or it doesn't exist anymore.
I read that the Pandacam was off because of the federal shutdown. Maybe all "Panda" stuff was affected?
Personally, I don't give a fuck about the Democrats, except to the extent that helping them helps liberals.
The Democratic Party has been run by moderate Republicans since the early 1990s.
That's too schematic. Voters don't know what the hell is going on, so they blame the incumbent President when the economy is bad. This time they'll know.
"This time is different."
Could be. I don't see any mechanism by which "voters" will be made aware that the tanking of the economy is the result of Republican behavior.
Mind you, the government shutdown will probably be blamed on Republicans. Default, if it happens, will initially be blamed on the Republicans. Come election time, an ongoing financial crisis will be blamed on the incumbents.
Anyway, I'm satisfied that we understand each other, and I think you've identified our central disagreement. Hopefully, we'll never settle this argument because the Republicans will fail in their effort to wrest the steering wheel from Obama and the economy won't be driven into a ditch.
488: Pandagon moved to Raw Story; the original domain was sold.
I'm comparing Obamacare to what we have now.
As of now you're at least comparing like with like.
A href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/category/pandagon/">Pandagon. Marcotte isn't as funny as she used to be though.
Jezebel is honestly the only one I can remember reading recently and that's basically just when someone links it.
494: For someone in my situation, it is quite a bit different. As of 1/1/2014, I can lose my job without either paying $1,400 a month or gambling with illness.
gambling with illness
Floating craps games are always a bad idea, no matter how ill you are.
Pandagon is a case of "bury a good blog behind a shitty URL and its dead to me."
Has anyone credible done an estimate of the number of people who will die as a result of the government shutdown?
I've been sort of turned off by the Raw Story website when I've visited.
It seems sort of like a left variation on right wing talk radio. Not in the sense that they push bullsh*t, but that just like conservatives listen to talk radio in order to stay cranked up into a state of surly outrage 24/7, it looks like the point of reading the Raw Story is to stay permanently enraged by a constant stream of updates on the latest obnoxious thing that some conservative somewhere just did or said.
502: Alternately, you could read Gawker and be plagued with nightmares about giant killer hornets.
T-NCoates linked the-toast.net a couple of times recently, and it's been amusing, and Feminism is one of their topic headings.
I've been sort of turned off by the Raw Story website when I've visited.
Except they've now picked up tbogg, whose hiaitus lasted about 10 days.
Floating craps games are always a bad idea, no matter how ill you are.
Floating craps are a sign you have too much fat in your diet.
Or too much mercury in your toilet.
Or your toilet bowl has run dry.
Or you crapped in the mixing bowl. Again.
Why doesn't NASA just send up a bunch of mixing bowls and cling wrap? It wouldn't be perfect, but it would get the job done for less.
I've been trying to come up with a funny email auto-reply message.
"Sorry, the federal government is CLOSED."
"We'll be back soon! maybe."
"HELP WANTED. Can you pass a budget?"
"Missing CR. White with patches of gray, answers to 'Fluffy.' If you've seen him, call Congress."
"Hey, I just voted on you and this is crazy, but here's Congress. Close me, maybe?"
Wow, so I replied to FB person explaining how social insurance works and that some day she'll be in her 50s and if she still runs her own 1-person business might want the option of buying a plan, and one of her friends popped up with this:
FU#K OBAMACARE AND FU#K OBAMA !!! BUSH WAS BETTER
EXCUSE MY LANGUAGE !!
Sorry, I am one of those Republicans that You hate !! An Educated, Catholic, God Fearing Conservative that believes in REAL Marriage like ADAM AND EVE, not ADAM AND STEVE and LIFE AND NOT ABORTION !! You my friend so like a liberal MATZA EATER that loves gays and Blacks and ever other loser they can fit into the Democratic Party !!
Why doesn't NASA just send up a bunch of mixing bowls and cling wrap? It wouldn't be perfect, but it would get the job done for less.
If House Republicans get their way, this will end up in the NASA budget for 2014.
It will make space exploration just like staying at the houses of friends.
Just followed by this:
Thanks Phil !! Chris Christie will be our next president or Marco Rubio ! Why dont You give more of YOur hard earned money to all of the LOSERS on food stamps and I will keep more of mine ! I would rather work in a graveyard digging graves then be on any government assistance. Your and Your liberal scum people want to feed the world and give EVRYBODY FREE MEDICINE, well heres news for You, WE CANT AFFORD IT PHIL !! Obamacare is a joke and You know it !! Hillary would have been president but AMERICANS chose OBAMA instead, doesnt that tell You how much AMERICA loves her ?? NOT !!
Anytime a LIBERAL scum tard cant beat You in an arguement or at least lacks the skills or knowledge to come back with a logical response they always try to attack Your intelligence level !!! lmao
Especially coming from someone who eats Jesus-wafers.
I am one of those Republicans that You hate
Probably so!
Yeah. There's a lot of subtle anti-Semitism out there, but it's disturbing seeing someone just go for it.
521: What funny is they are both unleavened because of Passover laws.
And those were his first comments in the thread, it's not like anyone attacked him (until responding that their first comment didn't seem too intelligent.)
Also, I doubt this person has ever dug a grave in their life.
520: Go ahead and try to attack her intelligence level more explicitly and see what happens.
Anecdotes from unfogged continue to confirm the wisdom of my decision not to use Facebook.
I might post the Jesus-wafer point, that's a good one.
I think 515 may be the least funny thing Moby Hick has ever written.
Barack Obama: Jewish where it counts (in the minds of the unhinged)
Aw, the original poster stepped in to stop the argument- she's Catholic but at least somewhat more liberal, included this comment (she's a masseuse):
I love all people until they prove otherwise. So if Adam and Steve want to marry great. The bible also says you can't touch a woman who is on the rag, and I'd be out of work 20 percent of the time...tmi, I know
531: That isn't indexed on medline, probably.
You could probably find some quote from Pope Francis that would send this person nicely over the edge.
send this person nicely over the edge.
It appears that bridge has been crossed.
You my friend so like a liberal MATZA EATER that loves gays and Blacks and ever other loser they can fit into the Democratic Party !!
Yeah. There's a lot of subtle anti-Semitism out there, but it's disturbing seeing someone just go for it.
Huh. MATZA EATER isn't the part of that excerpt that's most jarring, for me.
You could probably find a quote from John Paul II that would send this person over the edge.
Yeah, they're still going at it but it's pretty ugly.
You're used to seeing it spelled "matzoh"?
Matzoh are pretty much the same as salines anyway.
For example:
I hate people who make statements with no regard to what they mean ! I pay 24k a yr in taxes and Im paying for all of the Guatamalen Kids who get free lunch and bus service. Tell me that I am wrong !! My people who lived next to my Mother. a nice Young Jewish Couple just pulled their kid out of Public School and MOved because their Child was the only WHITE KID in a school that was 80 percent Latino. What is that all about ?? I thought the Jews loved Black and Spanish ?? But only if They dont move into the same neighborhood as them huh ??
SP, I'm going to recommend you stop reading this facebook thread. No good can come of it.
I'd like to see all his government-supplied extra punctuation marks suspended and redistributed to poor kids on Twitter who don't have any at all. Hashtag exclamationpoint
544 is right. You should probably do a little bit of unfriending.
Really, how do you carry on the debate?
"Stop stereotyping. There are plenty of racist Jewish people."
What are the odds this guy is somehow on the government teat? I'm guessing he's a defense contractor.
537: I'm not saying it's the worst bit, just feels like the weirdest bit.
If he's complaining that much about Guatemalans, I'm guessing retired School of the Americas instructor or he works for Chiquita Brands International.
Tell him to keep talking: that kind of stuff does more for our side than anything we can say to anyone.
Maybe he's a scout for the Honduran soccer team.
You could ask if the poster has a newsletter to subscribe to. (I read the wacko as a woman, I'm not sure why.)
I think he left after arguing that his property taxes were so high because of food stamps, and after someone called him on this insisted that county taxes go to WIC. Oh well.
||
What is an appropriate gift to send a colleague whom you don't know well at all, but who's gone above and beyond their stated job responsibilities to help you get something done? I'm looking for something that seems neither cheap nor patronizing nor overly personal.
|>
Well, as we all know, paying taxes for something you don't approve of is the World's Greatest Injustice.
Or something nice from the hosiery department.
Chocolates or alcohol. Or a fruit basket?
556: Food is what I usually give. That way, if it's not their thing, they can set it out to share with the office. Stuff like cookies or candy that won't go bad immediately. I try to get stuff that lists ingredients in case of allergies.
556: http://fab.com/product/brillo-box-pouf-white-338135
||
Via Emerson, elsewhere:
"George Will, ABC News commentator and "This Week" panelist for 32 years, joins Fox News as contributor, incl. Baier, Wallace panels."
|>
556: http://www.firebox.com/product/6046/Psychedelic-Cat-Sweater
Finally Fox News is doing something to draw in young viewers. Who's news, Mort Zuckerman?
Yeah. I'll tell you who is an attractive man: George Will.
||
Dick Cheney cancels Toronto trip, says Canada is too dangerous.
Fools! Invade Canada, would you‽
569: "Ticket holders can either bring in their tickets for a refund, or go to a replacement talk by author Mark Steyn."
I'm sorry, but O.J. Simpson will not be available for autographs after all. However, one of the trainers from the 49ers team he played for in his final pro season will be here instead. The police were once called to his house regarding a noise complaint, so it's kind of the same.
There's even better from Francis later on in the interview -
"Ñeoliberalism makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded. We need great freedom, no discrimination, no demagoguery and a lot of love. We need rules of conduct and also, if necessary, direct intervention from the state to correct the more intolerable inequalities."
Fucked up cut and paste so the first the words may not be verbatim.
556: http://www.patek.com/contents/default/en/5116R_001.html
This looks like a nice watch. There's no price listed, so it can't be that expensive.
If you have to ask the price you can't afford it.
Didjya read that jeweler's expose in Harper's a few years back? He talked about people paying a premium for used, off-the-rack Patek Phillipe watches from just a couple of years previously, while the exact same watch was still in production. Weird.
The Aquanaut is more my style anyhow.
In a better world, Cheney would be avoiding Canada out of fear of arrest, not fear of protesters.
Shouldn't Moby be claiming right now that representatives of his city will soon eat the still-throbbing hearts of the representatives of Thorn's city after their victory in battle? Just a suggestion, don't want to speak for you!
re: 568 / 571
I have to admit, I'm quite pleased with a lot of the new Pope's pronouncements. They aren't too bad in the context of 1600 years of patriarchal religion in cahoots with the rich and powerful.
581. OK, as long as you bear in mind that this is Kosygin at best, not Gorbachev.
re: 582
He's starting from a low bar. So yeah, it's not like I'd want to go wholesale on the approval, but it's better than the last one or two.
There's a lot of subtle anti-Semitism out there, but it's disturbing seeing someone just go for it.
OPINIONATED VISCOUNT ROTHERMERE: the jealous God of Deuteronomy is inserting rootless cosmopolitans to key points in the administrative machine.
True, the last one or two are not a hard act to follow.
My faceboook feed is full of good stuff today.
I really expected more tumbleweeds blowing across empty streets with this government shutdown thing. Then I remembered it's government on strike. Not people who work and make the world go round
So funny!
Ditto to 580, but I'm tired of fireworks anyway, so that would be fine with me. Plus I kind of like to see the local fans suffer.
You can hear home game fireworks from your house too?
Oh can we ever! At first they only did fireworks for home runs and wins, but eventually someone sponsored a display for every home Friday that means all we hear for half an hour is BOOM BOOM BOOM.
I'm sure it will be a great game. The Pirates haven't lost wild card game in the history of the franchise.
501: Has anyone credible done an estimate of the number of people who will die as a result of the government shutdown?
Interesting question. People who might die might be those denied food help, and/or those denied health care in various ways (studies and trials suspended, maybe?) I'm not sure.
The WaPo has a list of the impact of the shutdown on each gov't department. HHS and HUD seem relevant. I really don't know how to translate the departmental functions that are suspended into real world results, though.
People currently enrolled in trials continue to be treated. Hospitals relying on government funding declare their clinical staff essential. The shutdown closes trials to new enrollment. You are correct that HHS and HUD are relevant agencies, but a lag of a few weeks to enroll in a trial (which would probably not cause an immediate miraculous cure) wouldn't likely kill someone. I think programs like WIC and new disability applications (especially for veterans) are the most painful for the most vulnerable.
I'm having a hard time not rooting for Pittsburgh here. Russel Martin home run. One of you say something.
Selfishly, this is what is killing me:
Census.gov is down.
I am stricken. (No, seriously, I am really, really grateful I was uncharacteristically early in pulling some key data I need for a presentation next week, but how am I supposed to write grant proposals with no American Fact Finder?!)
(Just in case anyone else is panicking over demographic data, CodeForAmerica has some backup: http://forever.codeforamerica.org/Census-API/shutdown-2013.html)
Reduced inspections by the FDA, and reduced capacity at CDC (especially the flu program), probably carry some real risk of loss of life.
It looks like we get two weeks of WIC benefits yet. My friends with foster children in Head Start programs have reported closures and no food, apparently, though it varies depending on whether there's outside funding. Good lord.
598 is smart. I was just reading about the CDC/flu thing. CDC did say they have the capacity to recall employees if it seems there's a disease outbreak. It's true, though, that a delay there would be awful.
Russel Martin home run.
One of the people NY was stupid to let walk while signing washed up veterans to multiyear contracts. His WAR was 4.3, 2/3 of the gap by which the Yankees missed the playoffs (the actual NY catchers were basically replacement level.)
If it goes long enough that cold weather matters, LIHEAP.
MJ has an article listing a bunch of things.
Why is it that when any private company with 50 employees closes down it's a tragedy, but when the government with 2.5 MILLION employees shuts down no one can tell the difference??!? Because the private company had people doing real jobs to support the economy; the federal government is UNIONS so they weren't working anyway LOL.
601 makes me awfully happy. Embrace the bitterness, Yankees fans!
Listen to me! You gotta tell them- federal government is UNIONS!
Oh, I've been bitter all year, it was clear early on (even before injuries freak and expected) that the ownership was tanking the team to get their salary cap reset.
While we're on this:
TJ at 425: Parsimon, I hope you don't mind that they tell me I'll get paid for the morning's work.
I really hope you don't think that's my view. It's not. I sympathize with furloughed federal workers, and contrary to the assumption some commenters upthread seem to have made that my expressed annoyance had to do with shitting on public employees out of resentment or the thought that they're (you're) parasites or some such -- no.
Rather, my sense of the impact of the shutdown is spread more widely than that felt just by furloughed public employees. I'm concerned about members of the general public who will go without services and protections, in some cases to quite ill effect. Also aware of employees of government contractors. (My workpartner ran into an acquaintance today employed by a contractor, who said that they had enough funds to last through the week, but after that, he'd be laid off, and much longer than that, the business might not be viable at all any longer.) Also aware of small local businesses who rely on income from visitors to national parks -- which might seem like a minor thing, but 7 million visitors were turned away during the last shutdown.
Anyway, my annoyance was expressed in the wake of hearing a young man I'm acquainted with -- aged 25 or so -- who's a member of the military. He declared in strong and sober terms that obviously if anyone needed to protected from a shutdown and paid on time, it was him. Well, no. He was viewing it as all about him. And it's not.
601 is true, although he was only worth around 2 WAR last year and there was pretty good reason to think that even that wasn't a great guide to future performance. Also Fangraphs WAR is way weird and IMO pretty unreliable for catchers. All that said of course the Yankees shouldn't have let him go.
One of the people NY was stupid to let walk while signing washed up veterans to multiyear contracts. His WAR was 4.3, 2/3 of the gap by which the Yankees missed the playoffs (the actual NY catchers were basically replacement level.)
Adding up the catchers the Yankees actually played, it's 0.2 WAR, pushed into the black by 17 games of Francisco Cervelli.
598: reduced capacity at CDC (especially the flu program)
Yeah, I just saw that too. And Head Start's not doing well.
Well, at least they've got Vernon Wells and Ichiro (5th worst full-time hitter in MLB this year) signed through next year. They'll be lucky to be over .500 next year.
Keep Swisher (3.8 WAR) and Martin (4.3) instead of Ichiro (1.4 WAR) and whoever was catching (0.2) and they're close to the playoffs.
That's IT! They shoulda signed Tebow!
whoever was catching (0.2)
Well, it was Cervelli, who had his wrist broken by a foul ball and then took a fifty-game suspension for PEDs. So then they went with Chris Stewart, who played like the backup catcher he is. Their backup backup catchers had negative WAR, which is kind of awesome.
I am hoping they give Cano the $300 million people have been muttering about, and/or let the Dodgers have him and sign Brian Roberts to a seven- or eight-year-contract. Proven veterans! Cano's a True Yankee! And Paul Konerko's looking for work; remember how well he used to play against you guys?
Well except that WAR doesn't exactly work that way, but yes I agree.
You know who else had negative WAR, and now has a significantly negative career WAR? The person who played half their games at shortstop.
You know who else had negative WAR, and now has a significantly negative career WAR? The person who played half their games at shortstop.
a) You should look at WAR instead of dWAR, and b) Don't be mean to your team captain.
Hey, Halford, just for you I turned on the game and there was also a Khan Academy ad. (Did anyone else here read the dude's book? I appreciated his jeremiad about how America's gone wrong in making all school decisions be about YOUR kid rather than about all the kids.) I should really be cleaning the kitchen, though.
How can you clean the kitchen when the Pirates are winning. Also, when sick. Maybe fuck the kitchen.
I knew Lee would be upset if she got home and the kitchen was a mess, even though of course the kitchen would be a mess. It was only part-mess by the time she got home, and she's changed the tv to Modern Family reruns and I've got the dishwasher going and so I can go to bed.
596, 597: I don't know what kind of library access you have, but one of the librarians here suggested Simply Map and Social Explorer as alternative ways of getting into Census Data. Both sound like subscription services, though.
Witt (or anyone else), let me know if you need to get to data that requires a subscription.
Backdoor access to the Library of Congress seems still to be available, so that's good.
618 -- nice, I am taking over your mind. Now, fuck the kitchen.
Thanks, JR and eb! I should be OK unless the shutdown goes longer than 10 days.
Thorn, pretend I said 624. Seriously.
Oh gosh. Sorry about the memory slip. I need to go to bed.
How can you clean the kitchen when the Pirates are winning?
I'm actually listening right to the radio broadcast right now. Hard not to cheer them on, though I suppose it'll be heartbreaking for Pittsburgh when they lose to Oakland or Boston.
I got an email from the DOE today asking me to follow up my preproposal with a full one, so... I guess they didn't shut down yet? I heard something about national labs still operating for a month or so before running out of funds that were allocated earlier.
My FB feed has very, very few pro-Republican comments visible anywhere because, I guess, I'm Pauline Kael and also I've aggressively filtered out all the people I went to middle or high school with who turned out to be awful. But what's striking about the few pro-Republican comments that I do see showing up on comments to other people's posts is that they all read like word salad to me. I literally can't understand a single one of them. Partly I think they're incoherent, but partly I think they're tuned into a completely different set of media and alluding to memes I've never heard of. Like one that says something about how Obamacare's reputation has already been dragged through the mud by script kiddies who have leaked personal details of subscribers, and that the Senate would overwhelmingly approve the CR with one year delay if Reid brought it up for a vote and that this will lead to crushing defeats for Democrats in Senate races in 2014. Am I living in the same universe as this person?
Jellyfish Invasion Paralyzes Swedish Reactor"
In an episode that evokes B-grade sci-fi movie plots from the 1950s, but actually reflects a continuing global problem, nuclear engineers in southeastern Sweden have been wrestling with a giant swarm of jellyfish that forced the shutdown of the world's largest boiling-water reactor.
Wasn't that NYRB article linked to here recently?
But what's striking about the few pro-Republican comments that I do see showing up on comments to other people's posts is that they all read like word salad to me.
Someone on my FB feed posted a link to Healthcare.gov with a message encouraging people to sign up for the exchanges. Someone else--a person I don't know--responded that they were hardly going to celebrate, seeing as they were now required to spend twice what they'd ever paid in health care costs on premiums that they'd just get back annually at tax time. I pointed out that, in fact, the subsidies are applied when you buy insurance, not in a lump annual sum (I should note that it took me a bit of websearching to be confirm this to my satisfaction; it would be nice if it were spelled out more explicitly in the first-stop ACA info places I looked). He grudgingly conceded that this was interesting, he hadn't known that, but it was probably moot for him anyway because he had a religious exemption.
Sigh.
From an otherwise not awful article in the NY Times* on why Republicans fear the ACA:
And yet the argument that half the Republican Party has simply lost its mind has to be an unsatisfactory answer, especially considering the sophistication of some of the deep-pocketed backers of the Tea Party insurgency.
I'm not exactly sure how to describe it (Timesian?), but it is damn near perfect.
*Of course they are leading with their version of the glitchety-glitch article.
The internet and mobile phones are good because when I am bored and disgruntled at a work dinner I can surreptitiously scan a a list of David Bowie's 100 favorite books and people assume I am reading some kind of important work-related email.
You cannot be deranged if you have a nice place in the Hamptons.
605: Surely you meant: The Federal government is MOLE!
(Boehner came and he cocked it, but it's MOLE)
Guess I got what I deserved.
2,200 views on YouTube as of Sunday morning, ~2.7 million currently.
633: Well shit.
In a funny way, it's kinda nice to come across a list like that from someone you respect and accept that you haven't read most of them and likely won't. Steiner is someone I mean to get round to.
It does look like a list too deliberately eclectic and meant to impress. Not so many complete obscurities.
Interesting. Can't do justice to books like that on a "one a day" routine. Sorry shalizi.
I'm up to 5-6 a month.
Better than the CT threads where everybody has read the same books and seen the same movies.
I've never even heard of most of those books.
The list seemed somehow too random to reflect a real personal taste.
...the most exciting moment being his concert in Anchorage. He rode in on a dog sled and played for 60 Alaskans that have no running water and have never even heard of most of his favorite books.
I suspect most Alaskans have not heard of most of those books, yes.
People in Anchorage generally have running water, though.
Re the Bowie list: the guy who runs the Bowiesongs site suggested it be read as a list of clues to the source/content of Bowie's songs over the years. And he (if anyone) should know.
^^^me (my work computer never remembers who i am)
People in Anchorage generally have running water, though.
Watch out where the huskies go, don't you eat that yellow snow!
Not just the computer.
Republicans really do not have a good media strategy for this, regardless of the media's amazing determination to say that both sides are equally at fault.
They are trying to push some sort of line that it's actually the Democrats who refused to negotiate and it's the Democrats who want a shutdown. And they are also going around saying they are overjoyed with their own bravery and it was a fantastic moment when they all agreed that they were really going to do it and shut down the government! And they are also taking the mockery approach as if it was Sequestration Part II, saying "Will anyone really notice? Ooh, so afraid! Look, it's been a day and the sky hasn't fallen!"
It does look like a list too deliberately eclectic and meant to impress.
This is David Bowie we're talking about. The famously eclectic musician. Also, if it were meant to impress (solely - all these lists are in some way), I doubt he'd have included Viz.
haha the Viz inclusion was exactly what tickled most of my (admittedly cynical and jaded) chums
("adult comic"
s/b ("adult comic": I love this usage, where "adult" means the exact opposite...)
I'm not even clear on their motivation for shutting down the government. They are claiming its Obamacare, although most of the previous times we've been through near shutdowns, its been over teh Deficit. These reasons feel like pretexts to me. Why do they really want to shut down the government?
I think Obamacare is the real reason. Unless you mean asshole. But still, Obamacare is the proximate cause.
Obamacare is what they say its about, but if it wasn't Obamacare, they would find another reason. It seems they just really, really want to prove they have bigger dicks than Obama.
They are trying to push some sort of line that it's actually the Democrats who refused to negotiate and it's the Democrats who want a shutdown. And they are also going around saying they are overjoyed with their own bravery and it was a fantastic moment when they all agreed that they were really going to do it and shut down the government! And they are also taking the mockery approach as if it was Sequestration Part II, saying "Will anyone really notice? Ooh, so afraid! Look, it's been a day and the sky hasn't fallen!"
But a very small percentage of the population pays enough attention to even notice this. I get the sense that the most common reaction is "I'm so frustrated with Congress; why can't these idiots just get together and strike a compromise deal?!" It's true that more people blame Republicans for the shutdown than blame Obama/Democrats, but still a minority of the population blames Republicans.
To me, the overwhelming lesson of the shutdown* is that in our current political environment (and probably in most political environments), conceding everything your opposition wants as a first offer, in an attempt to avoid negotiating the issue (and to appear "reasonable"), is a doomed strategy. Far better to ask for what you want and then compromise. It's not hard to imagine a world where Democrats pushed for restoration of normal spending levels, Republicans pushed for defunding of Obamacare, and a "clean" CR ultimately passed as the compromise position (bordering on Republican victory) that it really is. And, in that world, if Republicans really held their line and refused to negotiate while Democrats offered the clean CR as a compromise, I think the media narrative and public perception would much more closely track reality.
* In some ways, of course, this is the overwhelming lesson of the Obama administration, one they seem incapable of learning. Since they're not actually incapable of learning, the McManus in me does sometimes have to wonder about the extent to which governing-class Democrats are basically okay with all of this.
I don't think they'd find another reason to shut down the government is Obamacare went away. I think the general view is that Obamacare is a huge expansion of the welfare state and that it will be impossible to undo once it gets working.
Because Obama, for all his flaws, has restored a lot of competence to government (FEMA, for example). If government is dysfunctional, "drown it in a bathtub" Rs gain more power and "big government" Ds have a harder time winning elections. Not implying Rs actually believe in small govt, just that they want power.
Even TSA has improved in a small way. They got rid of the machines that say Rapescan or whatever.
The latest proposal shows that they don't mind using the shutdown (Obamacare or not) to achieve other goals, so I believe they'd use it again in the future with some other pretext. They've always wanted to kill the EPA and DOE, hobble the IRS and SEC, so shut down everything then recognize all those important things causing people pain (like the WWII memorial) and generously offer to fund just those and whoops, it's conservative Nirvana.
I think they'd shut it down over Bengazi if they could.
The media has decided to blame "Congress" for the shutdown. That's unsatisfactory in some ways because it doesn't really describe which players are responsible, but I think the public is going to read "Congress" as "not Obama" and therefore "not the Democrats."
In a public-polling sense, this will play well (or at least less poorly) for the Democrats, but the Tea Partiers are smarter, crazier and more long-term in their thinking than they are given credit for. (And they are given credit for a lot of craziness.)
Why do they really want to shut down the government?
Because the darkies got control of it. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they weren't totally motivated by simple racism, but the more I read them in their own words, the more apparent it becomes.
663 Well, there's also misogyny.
I was listening to news radio this AM while getting dressed for work. They had Sen. Mark Warner on for a brief chat. Warner made the point (one I have seen around the net) that the Senate had accepted the House's funding numbers in the CR. he noted that the House GOP could be claiming victory and yet they still chose to create a crisis. Interesting to hear that message from a conservative Democrat.
Every time I turn on the news I think of Ripley's plan.
663: This seems to explain 99.9% of the facts, but they acted just as crazy when Clinton was President.
Because the darkies got control of it.
This is also an important part of the answer to the question: Why did they impeach Clinton? I think Toni Morrison's opinion was in many ways unjustified, but she wasn't the only one who thought Clinton was the first black president.
The darkies and the matza eaters, but they've always secretly been controlling things.
668 actually written before seeing 667, but in keeping with my role in this thread of attempting to cure Walt's political naivete.
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No more masturbating to Tom Clancy. Dead at age 66.
I confess that I thought both that he was already dead, and that he was about 20 years older than that.
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I though the second of those, not the first.
they acted just as crazy when Clinton was President
They have always been crazy, but there is a different edge to it now. Or maybe I just didn't have the Facebook window into the Heart of Darkness in the 1990s.
673 -- I have one word for you: Mena.
Sure, and Fort Marcy Park and the militia movement. Like I say, the crazy has always been there.
Tom Clancy was probably the wingnut's #3 favorite author. After Ayn Rand and whoever wrote the Bible.
Crazy has always been there, but the modern media environment (internet + Fox News) is a force multiplier that wasn't a factor in the 1990s. On the other hand, they did have right wing talk radio, which was a pretty powerful thing at the time.
670: We're going to win this thing, pf. We're going to make the world a better place. We are going to live to drink beer out of Ted Cruz' skull.
Elitist. Beer doesn't taste better from a skull that went to Princeton and Harvard Law.
676: Although every time he comes up, someone here (ajay? I think ajay) points out that one of his pre-Iraq war books has a nice treatment of torturing suspects as a pointlessly useless way of screwing up an investigation. I can't remember the book -- I read Red October and Red Storm Rising, and gave up after that.
I feel bad for having read and enjoyed a few of Clancy's books, after discovering just how kooky and asshole-y he was. I think the tipping point was the WaPo interview where he claimed that Congress was a disaster because it was full of people who had never made more money than Congress pays.
I really liked Red October. I can't recall any of the others, if I'd even tried to read them.
Plus, Hilary Clinton really shouldn't have had Vince Foster wacked on account of some misplaced travel documents. That was bad style on her part.
679: Spoken like an uncultured slob who's never tried it.
I liked some of Clancy's books in my youth too - he was a good writer - but at some point I grew out of the "military fantasy" genre.
Another pro-Clancy-the-novelist vote. For the thing that he did, he was really quite good, if you like that sort of thing.
he was a good writer
Well, I don't know if I'd go that far.
688: Bah. If you don't want to read about sexy weapons systems, then you don't want to read Clancy, but I thought a lot of the criticism was way off.
Sure, Clancy writes a lot about the efficacy of precision and careful planning, but random fuckups play a huge role in his narratives. Clear and Present Danger features a detailed narrative about a series of errors that lead to the a nuclear weapon being misplaced.
It's genre fiction. You might as well complain about that James Bond couldn't have really have survived that ridiculous trap.
I'm prepared to say entire genres are stupid. Such as James Bond movies.
Red Storm Rising is probably the premiere narrative accounting of a tabletop wargame, give the guy that.
Boy meets weapons system. Boy loses weapons system. Boy gets weapons system back again.
I haven't read any of those in a while, but I think it's both true that he included some particular failures (I'm thinking of one description in particular of a dozen missiles launched at a target, about half of which make it there), but the general level of competence and successful operation of systems seems unrealistically high.
It's kind of like giving the entire military-industrial complex PC glow.
This thread is far too long, and maybe a new shutdown thread could be had, but I must say:
I'm pretty sure John Boehner is the problem. For all the excuse-making that's been proffered on his behalf, and all the faux concern over whether he might lose his position as Speaker of the House, I don't care: if Boehner says no, no 'clean' CR put to a vote in the House, then he's the problem. I am rather tired of hearing explanations about how his hands are tied.
695: My understanding, which I'm happy to have corrected if it's wrong, is that Boehner really isn't the problem. In this specific instance, it maybe fair to say he is the problem, in that you're correct that he's saying "no, no 'clean' CR put to a vote in the House", whereas if he did decide to allow a vote on a clean bill it would very likely pass (with lots of Democratics and a minority of Republicans voting in favor). So, problem solved, I guess. But that would be the last problem that Speaker John Boehner would ever solve, because he'd be ousted by his party and replaced with someone else (Cantor? Ryan?) who wouldn't be so weak-kneed. So... would that be an improvement? Is it fair to blame Boehner? It's hard to see how he can be called "the problem" if the problem would be exactly the same if he were removed from the picture.
I hate to make excuses for him, but he's only got one bullet in the chamber. If he's saving it, I'd rather he save it for the debt ceiling. (Which admittedly, there is no evidence at all that's what he's doing. Maybe he'll never budge and we'll crash into the debt limit with Boehner callously looking only to hold on to his Speakership.)
Can he be ousted in the middle of the term?
Yes, but not really. It's never been done.
If he did something like brought a clean CR to the floor, it would take a majority of the House, not the Republicans, to get rid of him. I think the Democrats would give him enough votes to stay because there's no way he's not replaced by somebody worse for them.
The internet says "yes". There is, however, a catch.
There is, however, a catch. Speaker Boehner may presently be the highest ranking Republican in Congress, but speakers are elected by the entire House -- not simply the majority party. A resolution removing Speaker Boehner -- most likely because of a Tea Party revolt seeking to replace him with someone even further to the right -- would require either overwhelming support in Boehner's own caucus or collusion with the Democrats.
Competely pwned. But I did provide a link.
The link in 700 is what I was looking at earlier this morning.
696: "Hey don't blame me, if I did this eminently reasonable thing that eliminates the immediate bad effects and mitigates the chance of an already-fragile economic recovery getting trashed, there is a small chance* that I will move from a position of massive political power in the most powerful nation on Earth to that of being a mere senior member of one of its two national legislative bodies."
And if that cunt of infinite derpitude had done it right off the bat he would have been given a lot of support from the non-crazies outside of the Republican caucus. But now he's one of them. John Boehner can cry me the biggest clown river in the history of the world.
*Most Repubs say he *would* not lose his speakership, but of course he might.
Has a dented shield strategy ever actually benefited the people it was supposed to help in the history of the world?
According to google, "cunt of infinite derpitude" is a unique coinage. I'm going to borrow it.
Anyone can be Speaker--does not even need to be a member of the House. I suggest urple (unless Wry Cooter is available).
705: He wasn't actually removed as speaker. Also, if you went to school in the 80s in Nebraska, you would at some point have experienced George Norris Day. There was no cake or presents.
Betty Boothroyd is available, and eminently qualified.
Also, no mention of the Norris-La Guardia Act or the irony of celebrating Norris in a right to work state. But mainly the lack of cake and presents doomed the holiday.
690, 694 - I think there's a pretty obvious distinction to be drawn between early Tom Clancy, who wrote a bunch of thrillers about heroic military stuff, and later Tom Clancy, who wrote warporn. Later Tom Clancy would never have had military dudes torturing someone or the president illegally deploying Special Forces be a mistake. Was the line drawn in that Clinton-era novel where Perfidious Japan wakens the sleeping dragon again by launching a decapitation strike against Wall Street?
Was the line drawn in that Clinton-era novel where Perfidious Japan wakens the sleeping dragon again by launching a decapitation strike against Wall Street?
We should have been so lucky.
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Seriously stressed right now. I have a job interview tomorrow, and I am desperate to get it, because my current situation is so shitty.
This will be the third interview. I met with the program director and the Coordinator of an affiliated program, then I met with the Clinical Coordinator for this program, now I have to meet with the Program Director's boss.
It was supposed to be on Monday when I have the day off, but the director's boss is unwilling to do it with the Clinical Coordinator and requires the presence of the Program Director. Yesterday evening I got a call that it has to be Thursday after 4PM, Friday at 1PM or Wednesday at 9:30.
I will have to lie on short notice.
And right now I think that my boss is getting so much pressure from her bosses and is being unsupported in terms of resources (long story) that she is paranoid. She called me out in the middle of a big meeting with clients for taking notes. (Mostly I was doodling, but I did write someone's name down so that I could remember it.) She pulled me aside afterwards to ask me about the note taking and said "Everything that happens in the Clubhouse needs to stay in the Clubhouse." WTF?
Fingers crossed. This is a supervisory position for a program for young adults which will involve a practical piece (money management, medications and a clinical piece--treatment plans and the like).
What do you think I need to show at this interview to get the job. Because, Lord, I can't handle my current boss.
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Good luck, BG! You seem to have already showed them quite a lot of what you need to show them, or you wouldn't be called back for the latest interview.
The time of the interview ought to be negotiable, if it creates a real problem for you. If it's not negotiable, that doesn't speak well of your prospective employer.
Good luck job interviewing BG. If you have them, I'd line up references who aren't your current boss but are recent.
"With five weeks until Election Day, the race for New York City mayor is shaping up to be a landslide, with Bill de Blasio holding a 50-point lead over his Republican opponent, Joseph J. Lhota, in a poll released on Thursday by Quinnipiac University."
But he loves the Sandiniiiiiiistas!
716: I lined them up already, and I have the sheet done. He hasn't taken them even when I offered them. I come "highly recommended" by someone he's worked with in the past.
717: The Republican candidate for mayor in Pittsburgh moved to Israel between the primary and the general. And it's possible he won't lose as badly as Lhota.
714: I was given a few options. The problem is that they need to coordinate 2 people's schedules who work about an hour away from each other.
The main office may be terrible, but I like the small program I'm interviewing with. My current employer is so terrible right now that I have to get out. I think they need someone soon, and I live 5 minutes away from the office, so if I have to look for work, I'll have a lot more time. The funding at my current job is extremely precarious, so I just need t get out ASAP.
716: My last team leader but one agreed, as did a nurse I worked with and a previous LPHA. My last supervisor (supposed to be temporary) was a serious jerk. My last team leader deiced to leave the agency after only 9 months in that role.
But getting upset with me for taking notes is crazy, isn't it?
Yes. It is. Looking for a new job is a good idea.
"Everything that happens in the Clubhouse needs to stay in the Clubhouse."
This sounds like something Jerry Sandusky has embroidered on a throw pillow. There's no way it can't be a bad sign.
So... would that be an improvement?
Well, at least we'd have a funded government to go with our crappy Speaker of the House. While I can accept that Boehner isn't Cruz, or even Cantor, I'm struggling to see what difference having the latter as Speaker would have made to any significant legislative initiatives. Would the Republicans have voted to repeal Obamacare 45 times instead of 40 or whatever it is now? What exactly has the House achieved under Boehner that it wouldn't have done under Cantor?
726: well, we ultimately got a debt ceiling deal last time. 11th hour, but it happened. Would it have happened with Cantor? Who knows. And we have another debt ceiling deadline in a few weeks. There is plenty of talk that maybe allowing the gov't shutdown will help get the tantrum out of the tea party's system before we hit the debt ceiling. I guess we'll see.
Why doesn't some relatively moderate republican decide they really want to be speaker, and work up a deal with the Democrats. Wouldn't Pelosi happily trade up from minority leader to majority leader even if it meant having a republican speaker?
It would take a 17 Republicans. What would the other 16 get from it aside from the joy of being slightly less responsible for fucking up the country?
Chairmanships?
What would the other 16 get from it aside from the joy of being slightly less responsible for fucking up the country?
A well-funded primary challenge from the right.
730: Some policy concessions they'd get from neither a Democratic nor the current Republican majority?
Or huge pork barrel projects for their districts?
732: They'd likely run as independents in the following election.
730: Maybe we could all chip in and have donuts delivered to them? Or would that be considered bribery?
Agreement from the DCCC not to support democratic candidates in their district?
I'm deriving certain amount of pride from living, or working, or playing, or something (who knows, with all this gerrymandering) in the district of Charlie Dent who seems to literally be the only moderate Republican left. (Peter King has suddenly appeared to claim such, but he is a reliable foreign-policy maniac in addition to his horrible football columns).
Maybe we could all chip in and have donuts delivered to them? Or would that be considered bribery?
Yes, that's bribery. If you don't want it to be considered bribery, you have to give them cash. Then it's free speech.
726 was me, sorry.
well, we ultimately got a debt ceiling deal last time. 11th hour, but it happened.
Yes, we got a "debt ceiling deal", which consisted mainly of the sequester, which was the thing so unspeakably awful that it would force them to produce an actual deal. Which they didn't. It's also exactly what the likes of Cantor wanted.
Wait a minute, Peter King the SI football columnist and Peter King the republican representative are the same person?? (Or was that a joke? I suppose I could google.)
738 is correct. To be legal, bribes have to be delivered to an congressman's PAC, not to the congressman himself. As a nonhuman person, a PAC can only accept money, not donuts or hookers, or even gift certificates to hookers.
No, that was a joke. Peter King the football columnist is the same person as Peter King, the computer science professor at Heriot-Watt University. Peter King the repellent representative is the same person as Peter King the Nigerian saxophonist.
727: There is plenty of talk that maybe allowing the gov't shutdown will help get the tantrum out of the tea party's system before we hit the debt ceiling.
I'm convinced that the shutdown will last until the debt ceiling fight and the bargain will be struck to deal with both at once. I'm not entirely sure it will be done before there's a default, though. There are some in the TP caucus who want a default since it would force a massive shrinkage of the government, at least in theory. I suspect that the more moderate Republicans would force a compromise before then, but they've been remarkably passive so far.
739: The sequester was a dumb attempt at 11-dimensional chess by the Obama administration as much as anything else.
I'm deriving certain amount of pride from living, or working, or playing, or something (who knows, with all this gerrymandering) in the district of Charlie Dent who seems to literally be the only moderate Republican left.
Ironically, the last holder of his seat was noted moderate Pat Toomey. My memory of Dent as a state representative was that he was entirely unimpressive, but "entirely umimpressive" would be a massive improvement these days. Still, I don't really want to see his actual compromise occur. Losing the medical device tax would still be rewarding these shenanigans.
Side question: Why is it always 11 dimensions? I use it because of I read Rudolph Rummel in graduate school and he has a very vivid metaphor about nations as maggots moving in 11 dimensional cheese. But I don't think he is that well known outside of poli sci and even in poli sci, I think he is known for more recent work than his factor analysis stuff.
Willie Brown pulled off something like the move in 728 in California when he controlled the legislature, IIRC twice. Plus he had cool hats. Unfortunately Pelosi probably isn't an equally masterful SF pol.
I think Dems should be pushing for a permanent debt ceiling solution. It's the only longterm solution I can think of that doesn't involve the government changing or the Republican Party collapsing. Unlike in CA, dems just aren't going to get single-party control of all veto points.
Uh oh, Rs are starting to talk 'Grand Bargain' again . Since I completely mistrust Obama whenever that phrase is involved, that is a big worry.
745: yes. I was one of those people who thought the sequester was smart, because the defense cuts would force the Rs to step back. In retrospect, wow could not have been more wrong.
When you step back and look at the whole trajectory of deficit politics, the Rs are winning. If you don't have a president willing to use the bully pulpit to challenge the whole rhetoric of austerity and deficits, then you are just fighting on bad ground.
I think people are underestimating the chances of the debt ceiling stuff leading to a really outside-the-box outcome: secession, party realignment, military intervention, congress kicking out some of its members, the Supreme Court trying to remove the president, etc.
I feel like the "11 dimensions" detail came from string theory, or at least popular-science accounts of same.
752: How would the Supreme Court remove the president?
I believe that genius-level-at-being-annoying internet political commenter Joe From Lowell would earnestly say things like:
Obama is a better strategist than you are. You can play chess in one dimension. He is playing on 11 dimensions.
But you can't see that, can you?
The politics of austerity are bad, because the household budget analogy is so compelling. The US has seen much less austerity than Europe. (The UK, in particular, has followed a completely insane course.)
President tries 14th ammendment solution, Supreme Court decides along party lines that its unconstitutional, president says his oath to uphold the constitution trumps that and refuses to agree, case goes back to the SC and they declare that he's no longer the valid president.
Re the debt ceiling, this may deserve its own thread, but the U.S. has defaulted on its debt before and the world did not end. Leaving aside the Continental Congress case, it happened once in 1933 (associated with going off the gold standard), and once in 1979 .
Right, but can they do that, though? Just invalidate the presidency?
I said here before that if Obama tries the 14th amendment solution it would go to the Supreme Court, but now I'm not so sure. Who would have standing as the aggrieved party? I can only think it would be the House Republicans, and would they want to actually sue to FORCE a debt default?
759: um, no. Only the Senate can do that.
If the Rs take the Senate in 2014 (a distinct possibility) then I suppose it might be possible, although I doubt it.
I feel like the "11 dimensions" detail came from string theory, or at least popular-science accounts of same.
M- theory, I think. String theory requires fewer dimensions.
The 1979 case is different. A default for part of a day on a few items generated by a glitch is not a big deal.
1933 is a better parallel, and we're lucky that FDR was committed to democracy, because most countries had revolutions around then and we came pretty close. The 1930s are exactly what I have in mind when I say people are underestimating the odds of really crazy shit.
We also had a more stable financial sector in 1979.
I just want credit for bringing extremely obscure prior debt defaults to the attention of the group. I am agnostic as to their lessons for today.
758: The world will end this time. In 1933, the world had already ended. 1979 was a technical fuck-up.
Actually I doubt the outcome this time would be as bad as the Great Depression, because the administration would use one of the maneuvers people have discussed: platinum coin, 14th amendment, something. If the administration said "Fuck it, we're not borrowing for the rest of our Presidency" and went with the coin, it would be the biggest non-traditional expansionary monetary policy ever.
If military paychecks stop coming how sure are you that army kids aren't going to show up at congress for a protest? Once you have a bunch of teenagers with no money and guns at the Capitol who knows what happens.
Once you have a bunch of teenagers with no money and guns at the Capitol who knows what happens.
How is that different from school visit week?
"The representative from the great state of Mississippi would like to recognize the presence in the gallery of the Junior NRA branch from Jackson."
I put the odds of a major constitutional crisis at maybe 3% or so. Highest since Nixon's resignation.
768: If the US went and defaulted altogether, we would have a revolution. While the chances of this are bigger than zero of this happening, which is disturbing enough, I find it hard to believe that in a crisis somebody wouldn't blink, or the administration wouldn't use one of its maneuvers. The stock market would tank, which tends to focus the minds of lawmakers.
I should have picked someplace whiter and richer.
President tries 14th ammendment solution, Supreme Court decides along party lines that its unconstitutional, president says his oath to uphold the constitution trumps that and refuses to agree, case goes back to the SC and they declare that he's no longer the valid president.
Justice Roberts has made his decision, now let him enforce it.
Is Speaker election majority or plurality? Could Pelosi slip in with a splintered Republican vote? Or would it just stay deadlocked (I'm guessing the vote to hold an election is a majority, then the vote itself is ?)
If some kind of center-right Dem-Rep coalition came out of this, the bones of David Broder would have a posthumous orgasm.
772: the problem is what happens after the administration does one of its quasi-legal maneuvers and the house impreaches.
How sure are you that Perry and Cruz wouldn't move to secede at that point when Texas is more credit-worthy than the US?
Unfoggetarian, there is no legal mechanism to remove the President that does not involve a majority vote in the U.S. Senate (or I guess his own staff declaring him medically incompetent or something).
775 think it is absolute majority of ballots cast
Can you filibuster an impeachment trial in the senate?
760.last -- Anyone who bought Treasury bills would have standing, I think.
"Texas is more credit-worthy than the US"
In what possible scenario could that happen?
777: How is this not the greatest outcome ever? What could be better than sending the US Army into Texas to arrest Perry and Cruz for treason? This would easily be worth a default.
780: What would that get you? You need 67 votes to impeach and only 60 to close debate.
I know you're all smart enough to know this, but if the Supreme Court wants to rule on the constitutionality or legality of a hypothetical Presidential rejection of the debt ceiling, it can find a way to do so, and if it wants to get the issue out if the courts entirely, it can easily find a way to do that. Viva lawyering.
But if John Roberts wrecks the presidency and we have to set up a new one, does he get to keep the broken one or do we have to throw it in the trash?
785: Just gets you more chaos, and lets you say that the president hasn't been cleared of wrongdoing by the senate while you do some other crazy shit.
Also I wonder if 778 is right. I think the constitution clearly grants sole power of impeachment to the house, and sole power of a trial of removal to the senate, but is silent on whether or not a Court could also order a remedy of removal in an extraordinary case, perhaps as a contempt sanction or as an order necessary to enforce a judgment (eg, UPETGI's idea that Obama persistently refuses to abide by a SCT ruling on the debt ceiling). I mean obviously that would be a total disaster but I'm not sure it's obviously prohibited. Haven't thought about this much and could be wrong.
784: You can't have the support both of black mobs and the army at the same time. If the race wars come, the military will be firmly on the side of the white supremacists.
Right, I guess removing the president is less likely than just temporarily stripping the president of his powers until he agrees to abide by the ruling. You first find the president in contempt and say that the VP is now acting president, then if he doesn't fold you move on to acting president John Boehner who implements the court's ruling and reluctantly stays as temporary president for the rest of the term.
The US Army is 21% black, and 26% minorities in general.
784: Before you guys go all McManus here
I'm breaking the analogy ban big time with a Breaking Bad analogy and no one can stop me! Reckless, self-centered country goes rogue ostensibly in support of its families. Saga for the times.
Guess we got what we deserved.
Country experiences blue screen of death after staying up for 237 years. Survived a very rocky upgrade in the 1860s but tea party malware proves more virulent than experts predicted.
I have to believe that any Supreme Court action purporting to strip Obama of his powers would get the Andrew Jackson answer: "They have made their decision, now let them enforce it." It'd be unprecedented, and I think so patently politicized and illegitimate that it could just be ignored.
Which means that I don't think it'd ever happen (outside the context of something really crazy, like a simultaneous coup. In which case sure, it might be window dressing for legitimacy. But without some other more practical power grab, it wouldn't happen.)
791, 796: It seems like a bad idea to provoke a guy who claims to have the untrammeled right to order the assassination of US citizens at will...
WASHINGTON -- With a budget deal still elusive and a deadline approaching on raising the debt ceiling, Speaker John A. Boehner has told colleagues that he is determined to prevent a federal default and is willing to pass a measure through a combination of Republican and Democratic votes, according to one House Republican.
The lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of not being named, said Mr. Boehner indicated he would be willing to violate the so-called Hastert rule if necessary to pass a debt limit increase. The informal rule refers to a policy of not bringing to the floor any measure that does not have a majority of Republican votes.
Other Republicans also said Thursday that they got the sense that Mr. Boehner, who held two meetings Wednesday with groups of House moderates, would do whatever was necessary to ensure that the country did not default on its debt.
At this point, if Boehner told you that the sun was going to set in the west, I would advise going outside around dusk to check.
I think Boehner would like a way out of this mess, but he needs to be given a bone so he can save face.
Maybe if Obama agreed to issue an Executive Order that all federal government employees have to say "Merry Christmas!"
Just name the bill after Ronald Reagan.
Eh, he's willing to "pass a measure" as long as it has sainthood for Reagan, elimination of the EPA and NLRB, and Obama has to pay 10x for his personal health insurance. Call me when he says he'll ignore the Hastert rule for a clean debt ceiling measure.
Boehner's original plan was that when it came down to the last momemt, he would have a meeting with Obama, and he(Boehner) would start weeping uncontrollably. Since he was a tiny baby, no one has been able to say no to him when he wept. Boehner is still trying to recover from the shock that it didn't work this time.
Call me when he says he'll ignore the Hastert rule for a clean debt ceiling measure.
That's what people are saying he is saying.
Holy Christ why I am listening to NPR about this? There are two sides, and neither is giving in! We need a bipartisan solution! STAB STAB KILL
Other people (such as Yggles) are saying that it isn't what he is saying.
Here is what else he said (from link in 801):
"The speaker has always been clear that a default would be disastrous for our economy," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner. "He's also been clear that a 'clean' debt hike cannot pass the House. That's why the president and Senate Democrats should drop their 'no negotiations' stance, and work with us on a plan to raise the debt limit in a responsible way, with spending cuts and reforms to get our economy moving again and create jobs."
Where "grand bargain" means democrats roll over on many issues at once instead of just one issue.
Yggles is being dim -- of course, Boehner's official position hasn't changed. The NYT article is saying that off the record Boehner is saying he'll relent rather than let the country go into default.
The NYT article could still be wrong, but what Boehner's spokesman is saying now on the record doesn't prove that.
Imagine a bank robber who swears no hostages will be harmed under any circumstances but also says no one gets out alive if his demands aren't met. That's more or less Boehner's position.
No one can match the investigative journalism prowess, or sheer mastery of political knowledge, of Matthew Yglesias.
You're just jealous because Van Heusen oxfords look better on him.
U.S. Capitol now on lockdown after shooting incident. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of Americans when it comes to applying Second Amendment solutions to intractable problems.
Lockdown has been lifted, says NYTimes.
Apparently Obama is again preemptively rejecting the trillion-dollar coin possibility.
Someone just posted Eric Cantor's talking points on Facebook, as if they were her own. I want to call her out for plagiarism, or at least mock the phrase "respected author Bob Woodward".
Alas, I take pains to avoid Facebook fights.
820: he should go straight 14th amendment. The coin thing looks underhanded even if its legal.
Nice of the city to provide some entertainment for tourists locked out of the Smithsonian.
820: I think the Fed has already said they wouldn't accept the deposit, right?
They'll accept it, but won't give Obama the free blender.
822: Going straight 14th amendment is really what he's said he won't do.
I'm not sure if it's really a legal decision, or a political one?
It's looking like it wasn't actually a shooting incident, all shots came from officers.
It's looking like it wasn't actually a shooting incident, all shots came from officers.
Um...
Whether Obama intends to use the 14th amendment or not, the only thing he can say right now is that he doesn't intend to use it.
It would be irresponsible to spread rumors at this point, but has anybody seen Rep. Bachmann this afternoon?
A running tally of Republicans willing to pass a clean CR bill. (Moot, obviously.)
I just want to second Walt's 783 without reservation or qualification.
The car of the not-shooter was apparently an Infiniti. I guess that's like a Lexus for poorer rich people?
Every time I see a politician's affiliation listed as "R-Tex" I read it as T-Rex.
Interesting post on why a discharge petition isn't an easy solution.
That should have been posted by "OPINIONATED VODKA SAMM"
Sure, from the last season of Falcon Crest!
Oh, college friend who has gradually destroyed my opinion of them:
I think to blame the Republicans for the shutdown is too short sighted. There is a chess game going on in washington right now and i think both sides are playing the game.
You are trolling me.
FROM THE FINAL SEASON OF FALCON CREST BITCHEZZZWHOOO
842: you should tell her the problem is it's one dimensional chess so it's really hard to gain an advantage.
My bad. I don't know why I had her name wrong. Wendy Davis WOOOOOO!
Wait, "eleven-dimensional chess" must have originally been a joke about M-theory, right? So one of the dimensions is time. I think. Which means normal chess is three-dimensional?
Well, that, or in 11-dimensional chess one of your options is to move a piece back to the move before last.
The horses are really important in one dimensional chess.
Real Americans don't play chess, do they?
Bobby Fisher showed how you have to pick one or the other.
829: That chart at the Klein link is worth looking at; the MSNBC folks have been showing it a lot lately, extremists that they are. I hadn't realized how close the the 'clean' CR's funding levels, preserving the sequester, are to the Ryan budget.
Whoa. The NLRB has only 11 employees working.
799: It seems like a bad idea to provoke a guy who claims to have the untrammeled right to order the assassination of US citizens at will.
Speaking of which, maybe we should shutdown the government:
Hayden noted that Snowden has been nominated for a European human rights award. "I must admit, in my darker moments over the past several months, I'd also thought of nominating Mr. Snowden, but it was for a different list," Hayden said during a panel discussion on cybersecurity hosted by The Washington Post.
This detail about trying to get to Snowden's email at Lavabit was pretty funny:
"Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type."
As annoying as he is, I have to say the best coverage of the shutdown is Andrew Sullivan's "View from your shutdown" updates from readers. I wish other outlets tried a bit more to actually communicate what happens as a result of the shutdown.
I checked Sullivan on a whim the other day, and he had a post where he pointed out the obvious racial subtext to the Republican party's craziness. It was so unlikely that I kept looking for a byline to indicate it was by somebody else.
I'll be glad when this whole generation of fuckers are dead, and a whole sly vocabulary of ever-so-slightly covert racism dies with them. This is an entirely selfish reaction, but more than anything else I'm just fucking sick of hearing about "the government" and "welfare mothers," where you can just hear the wink.
I think that when Rush Limbaugh got fired from ABC for trashing Donovan McNabb it was because football fans who weren't total Neanderthals were just so fucking sick of the entire discourse around "the black quarterback." I saw online that Limbaugh's remarks just took the fun out of it for Giants or Cowboys fans to say that McNabb sucked, because instead of talking about how McNabb couldn't hit the open man or win the big one, or whatever, they were back to talking about "the black quarterback." Can we talk about something else? I've reach that same point here -- can we talk about something else other than your barely controlled racial hysteria, Mr. Republican Fuck-nob?
Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, I hear he's written a children's book. Apparently my grandmother is super-excited about giving copies of it to her great-grandchildren at Christmas this year.
and a whole sly vocabulary of ever-so-slightly covert racism dies with them
You are the most optimistic optimist in Optiville.
I don't think racism will end, but at least a certain style of racism will.
857: Joan Walsh did a Salon piece on that a few days back. Quite the firestorm including one precious tweet from Brit Hume*.
*Among the many pathologies of Beltway media is that succeeding Brit Hue as the gravitas** loss leader at FoxNews is
**Laughable of course, at his core, he's yet another bitter, virulent, racist bob mcmanus just like his new colleague (did I hear that?) and unctuous twit, George Will.
I posted the Unfogged two trillion dollar coin design to my brother's FB when he said people should start submitting designs, and one of his wingnut friends (who started talking about Zimbabwe and hyperinflation and how FedBen is stealing all the gold) asked if it was a photoshop or a picture of an actual coin.
861: Made sure to get that into the archives, huh? Pathetic.
862: The Reagan front design is from an actual commemorative medal. That may be what he was thinking about.
863: No, I believe it was *you* who made sure that got into the archives.
Good news for feds: The House voted 407- 0 to pay them for the furlough time. Payment coming after the furloughs are over. (So, not totally good.)
Good news for the GOP: I just saw the news and the Department of Defense will be recalling almost all of its employees because the Pay Our Military Act appropriates funds to pay all civilians who support the armed forces. Plus, it appropriates funds to pay contractors too! Since about half of the laid off are DoD, and the contractor lobby is very powerful, the GOP has removed a big counter from the board.
(Not that I want DoD feds or contractors to be wondering about when they will next work or get paid. But piecemeal funding of the government like this is crap.)
866: Honestly I don't think the piecemeal is crap; I mean, the appropriations bills are done one-by-one as usual. But I do think the GOP is just doing it to fuck with ACA, which is.