Vimeo of the Day: "In New England – Fall 2013"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's a beautiful and poignant video that I especially like as a former resident of the great region of New England. Here's how its director, Vincent Urban, describes it:

This October, we did a hiking and leaf peeping trip through beautiful New England (Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut) for just 12 days. It was right at the same time as the US government shutdown which turned out to be a rather odd experience. This is a collection of moments and thoughts.

It is also a reminder of the importance of the preservation of nature, and remember too that it was the Republicans who shut down the government, including national parks.

Enjoy.

In New England - Fall 2013 from Vincent Urban on Vimeo.

Uncivil war: Tea Party radicalism and the deepening divide in the Republican Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You gotta love it when the Tea Party, a movement largely co-opted by an increasingly extremist Republican Party (as it was largely a creation of opportunistic right-wing Republican interests), comes out and calls Republicans traitors for not being extremist enough and for daring to work with Democrats to address the country's problems, subjecting them to primary challenges from the even further right and otherwise driving the wedge deeper into the party's disease-ridden carcass:

A tea party group has launched a campaign to support primary challenges against all 87 Republicans who voted for the deal in late October to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. 

The Tea Party Leadership Fund, a PAC affiliated with the group TheTeaParty.net, began a fundraising push — dubbed the "Primaries for Traitors Fund" — shortly after the shutdown deal passed in the House, and they are now ramping up efforts to find "credible candidates" in each of the districts, said the fund's treasurer, Dan Backer.

"From our perspective, we see this as a signature vote. You can't be a conservative and vote to raise the debt ceiling," Backer said. "I recognize there are some places where voters may actually think that was the right vote. And there may be places where you have an incumbent who wins with 90% of the vote every time and there's not a credible challenger. I recognize that, but we're certainly going to do our best."

Backer says the group has honed in on a few specific members to start: Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, New York Rep. Peter King, North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger, Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany, and most importantly, Backer said, House Speaker John Boehner in Ohio. 

Of course, even Ronald Reagan, like every Republican president, supported debt ceiling raises, but, oh, no matter. These are crazed ideologues long divorced from reality.

And for Republicans like Boehner and so many others, this is what is called making your bed and having to lie in it. Or playing with fire. Or being hoisted with your own petard. Or getting bitten in the ass.

Not that I think it's a great thing that this is what American conservatism has come to -- it's awfully dangerous, given that this is one of the country's two main political parties -- but this is one of those times when you may want to grab some popcorn and settle in for what is sure to be an entertaining ride.

Facts lie

By Capt. Fogg

So what did we learn here? Oh come on, we're Americans, we already know everything we need to know and if fact and experience differ from received wisdom? Facts lie.

What did experience have to say about the shutdown? That we love our National Parks says CNN, but did we learn that Democrats want to shut them down and keep veterans from seeing veterans' memorials? Depends on whether you're a Palinist or not, because veterans weren't actually kept out of such places even if she did the dance of the Sugar Plum Furies at the WW II memorial. If you saw it on Fox you'll do doubt see it that way - a humiliation for Obama.

We believe what we want to, and if you think Obama was "inflexible" in refusing to bend over and let the minority party nullify the law, you still think so. Why should a false equivalence be anything but false? If you still think the failure of years worth of legislative initiatives and court battles and seditious propaganda crusades against the Affordable Health Care Act means the will of the people is not served by Democracy you still think so. If you think a system of providing universal care opportunity at lower cost using private insurers who compete in the free market is Marxism, then you must think the Swiss are Marxists who hate Capitalism and will sleep soundly through the cognitive dissonance.

Read more »

They learned nothing

By Mustang Bobby

You would think — and hope — that the wingers would have learned something from the 16-day shutdown that cost the country $24 billion and tarnished the already dim reputation of the U.S. economy in the world.

Yes, they did. But it’s the wrong lesson.

For a certain block of House conservatives, the ones who drove Speaker John Boehner toward a government shutdown and near-default against his will, the lesson of the last few weeks isn’t that they overreached. Not that they made unachievable demands, put their leadership in an impossible position, damaged their party’s position with the public and left a deep uncertainty about whether the GOP conference can recover and legislate.

No, what they’re taking away from the 2013 crisis is: They didn’t go far enough.

They aren’t angry with Speaker John Boehner for ultimately capitulating to Democratic demands. They’re frustrated with their more mainstream colleagues who put him in that position.

“I’m more upset with my Republican conference, to be honest with you. It’s been Republicans here who apparently always want to fight, but they want to fight the next fight, that have given Speaker Boehner the inability to be successful in this fight,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) told reporters Wednesday. “So if anybody should be kicked out, it’s probably those Republicans… who are unwilling to keep the promises they made to the American people. Those are the people who should be looking behind their back.”

In other words, the shutdown didn’t fail; the Republicans failed the shutdown.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Back to work

By Mustang Bobby

From the Office of Management and Budget via TPM:

Federal employees furloughed as a result of the government shutdown should expect to return to work tomorrow morning, Office of Management and Budget director Sylvia Matthews Burwell announced in a statement on Wednseday night.

“Now that the bill has passed the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, the President plans to sign it tonight and employees should expect to return to work in the morning,” Burwell said in a statement moments after the House passed a deal to avert default and reopen the government. ”Employees should be checking the news and OPM’s website for further updates.”

For the employees who were furloughed, the bill passed by Congress includes back pay for the days missed.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The Republican Party is destroying America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's pretty much as simple as that:

With the federal government on the brink of a default, a House Republican effort to end the shutdown and extend the Treasury's borrowing authority collapsed Tuesday night as a major credit agency warned that the United States was on the verge of a costly ratings downgrade.

After the failure of the House Republican leadership to find enough support for its latest proposal to end the fiscal crisis, the Senate's Democratic and Republican leaders immediately restarted negotiations to find a bipartisan path forward. A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Mr. Reid was "optimistic that an agreement is within reach" with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

With so little time left, chances rose that a resolution would not be approved by Congress and sent to President Obama before Thursday, when the government is left with only its cash on hand to pay the nation’s bills.

"It's very, very serious," warned Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. "Republicans have to understand we have lost this battle, as I predicted weeks ago, that we would not be able to win because we were demanding something that was not achievable."

A day that was supposed to bring Washington to the edge of resolving the fiscal showdown instead seemed to bring chaos and retrenching.

McCain, pragmatism renewed, is right. But the problem runs deeper than he imagines. His party has embraced an extremist, anti-American right-wing ideology and policy agenda that is simultaneously nihilistic and absolutist. The pragmatists are recoiling, but they've been playing along for years now, and now it's coming back to bite them. (Consider how McConnell is one of the key players trying to get a deal done. This is a guy who made it his mission, and his party's mission, to obstruct Obama at every turn, to paralyze the government with its disloyal opposition.)

And it's so bad that the relatively sensible House leadership can't even control its own caucus, to the point that John Boehner's speakership is simply a joke.

Read more »

Senate close to deal ending the shutdown, raising the debt ceiling, and further enabling Republican extremism and obstructionism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Senate leaders are closing in on a deal to reopen the government and extend the U.S. debt ceiling until next year, marking a major breakthrough in an impasse that has paralyzed Washington and struck fears across the globe.

In a furious round of last-ditch negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were discussing a proposal to reopen the government until Jan. 15 and extend the national debt limit until Feb. 7. The plan would also set up bicameral budget negotiations over major deficit issues, that are to conclude by Dec. 13.

Now, there's hardly any guarantee this would get through John Boehner's House. There's some cover here in forcing Democrats to negotiate, which is usually done on mostly Republican terms, but would the extremist Tea Party minority of Republicans in the House, goaded on by the likes of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin, really agree to anything without major concessions like Obamacare defunding and/or, oh, I don't know, the immediate obliteration of Social Security? (There would have to be concessions on both sides in any deal, and the ones reportedly in this one are relatively minor.)

But let's assume this deal were to go through? Is it a good one?

Well, it could be worse. Apparently Democrats have rejected McConnell's proposal to prevent the Treasury Department by law from using "extraordinary measures" to deal with the debt ceiling and prevent the country from going into default. (When you're dealing with Republicans, you just can't agree to this. Given Republicans' dysfunctional extremism and rabid partisan obstructionism, you have to have recourse to such measures.)

My initial reaction, though, is that it's a bad deal. Republicans hold the country hostage, shut down the government, threaten economic catastrophe, and see their approval ratings collapse with most of the country blaming them for the shutdown, and what they get is more time to keep doing what they're doing and the opportunity to shift the focus to bipartisan negotiations where they're more likely to be able to control the narrative and redirect the blame for this whole mess onto Democrats?

Yes, this seems like capitulation on the Democrats' part.

Read more »

Fucking idiots converge on Washington to protest government shutdown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A group of mostly Tea Party protesters waving the Confederate flag, saying stupid bigoted things, and otherwise pushing their extremist right-wing agenda were in the nation's capital today, forcing open the World War II memorial and taking their loud-mouthed ignorance to the White House to blame President Obama, who also happens to be a black man, for the government shutdown, as if they have any fucking clue what's really going on.

Don't get me wrong, not everyone involved in this "Million Vet March" is a right-wing wacko. It's just that the whole thing was grossly misguided and then taken over by the same old Republican interests that so often hide behind patriotism and use veterans and active-duty personnel alike as pawns in their political game:

Members of the Million Vet March planned on gathering at the World War II Memorial on Sunday despite the memorial being closed due to the government shutdown.

According to a statement on the group's website, they feel military personnel and veterans are "being used a political pawns in the ongoing government shutdown and budget crisis." Organizers say they are not a political leaning group, but call the shutting down of memorials "a despicable act of cowardice."

However, conservative political commentator Sarah Palin and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) arrived and spoke to the people gathered at the memorial.

"This is the people's memorial," Palin said. "Our veterans should be above politics."

Yeah, sure. When Palin and Cruz emerge as the leading voices of your protest, you know you're way out of touch with the rest of America and that you're no longer non-partisan. And if veterans should really be above politics, then Palin, one of the most shameless partisan self-promoters around, should just get the fuck out of the way.

Oh, and if these people are serious about protesting the shutdown, they should have taken their march over to Capitol Hill, where Tea Party-dominated Republicans who have taken the country hostage are the ones responsible for the whole damn mess.

Lindsey Graham is "very dangerous"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

John McCain's little sidekick is pissed off:

Sen. Lindsey Graham is angry. He’s frustrated. He's upset. In his own words, he's "very dangerous."

With the government shutdown now in its 12th day, and a possible U.S. debt default looming on Oct. 17, the veteran Republican was in the mood to lash out at everyone Saturday. President Barack Obama, House Republicans, Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans — they were all the target of Graham’s ire.

"The president is a pathetic leader. He's only engaged in the last couple of days," Graham said after the Senate blocked action on a Democratic plan for a "clean" debt-ceiling increase through 2014. "Every time you get close to getting a deal over here with our Democratic friends, they move the ball because some poll comes out. Our friends in the House apparently can’t muster the votes to send something over here to open up the government. So it's dysfunction at every level."

But the 58-year-old Graham wasn't through venting yet. "You can blame us [Republicans], we've overplayed our hand, that's for damn sure," Graham said. "But their response, where the president and [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] basically shutting everybody out, and when you try to negotiate, they keep changing the terms of the deal... it's very frustrating."

"This is a very frustrated Lindsey Graham," he added. "Which is a very dangerous thing."

With all due respect, Senator Graham, which admittedly isn't very much, go stick a fist up your self-righteous ass.

It's your pathetic party that's doing this, holding the country hostage over its extremist right-wing agenda, threatening global economic catastrophe over the debt ceiling, shutting down the government because you and your fellow Republicans refuse to accept the results of democratic elections that don't go in your favor, because an insanely irrational hatred of Obamacare has taken hold of your insanely irrational party.

And you're a huge part of the problem, sucking up to the far right because you fear a primary challenge, engaging the Tea Party when it can boost your and your party's electoral fortunes, putting your own ideological and partisan priorities ahead of the country whenever it suits you.

Like I said, go fuck yourself.

President Obama and the Democrats are fully within their right not to negotiate with terrorists.

Quit while you're ahead

By Mustang Bobby

Michael Kinsley thinks President Obama should give in to the GOP.

The media will no doubt call Obama weak because he gave in. So let them. Sticks and stones. Meanwhile, will the Republicans really take the past couple of weeks as a precedent and push him around on every issue that comes up? Highly unlikely. They are already getting most of the blame. They surely don’t look forward to trying to convince voters it was such a swell experience that they’re going to put us through it again and again.

Yeah, because the Republicans have a deep sense of shame and self-awareness.

Sheesh.

(On the other hand, this will get him a lot of invites to Beltway cocktail parties where, after a couple of vodka and tonics, folks are going mumble something about how he might have a point there.)

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Behind the Ad: A veterans group slams the GOP

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)  

Who: VoteVets.org. 

Where: National cable outlets.

What's going on: In this piece, a national veterans organization criticizes Republicans for the government shutdown. 

GOP craziness may end crisis

By Frank Moraes 

Jonathan Chait wrote what I think is a very insightful article today, even if the title is a bit deceptive, "House Republicans' Ransom Demands Falling." What I would say is that their demands are changing, not falling. He provides some important history about the current standoff. The House Republican leadership (John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan) have been planning this blackmail scheme, most likely since Romney lost the last election. The idea was to use the Debt Ceiling to force Obama to accept the usual Republican budget policies. You know: cut tax rates (supposedly without cutting overall taxes, but you know how that goes), cut entitlements, and so on.

Unfortunately, Ted Cruz ruined their plan by getting all the Republicans to support a government shutdown threat to somehow end Obamacare. This was the real reason that Boehner was promising his caucus a fight on the Debt Ceiling and why he tried to get the continuing resolution (CR) out of the way. Most observers (including me!) thought it was just Boehner's usual short term planning: get the CR out of the way and then deal with the Debt Limit. But that doesn't seem to be the case. I was right about one thing, though: all the supposed reasonable Republicans don't exist. Boehner is just as extreme as all the rest; he may just be a little more tactical.

Read more »

Michael Kinsley is an idiot, appeasing the Republicans would be a disaster

By Michael J.W. Stickings

One-time liberal wunderkind Michael Kinsley hasn't been worth reading in, like, forever. But yesterday at the New Republic, which also used to be worth reading, he really outdid himself with his inanity.

I only know this because his stupid piece has been making the rounds. Yes, it is so inane that Kinsley is finally worth talking about again, if only to wonder at the enormity of his inanity.

In brief, Kinsley argues that President Obama should give in. It's not that he, a liberal, sides with the Republicans over the shutdown and debt ceiling, just that the president should do what he has to do for the good of the country.

He says the president should "speak to the nation" and tell Americans, while pinning the blame for this whole mess on the Republicans, that he'll agree to a one-year postponement of Obamacare in return for a debt ceiling increase that would last a year and of course for the government to reopen.

Yes, forget the polls showing how the shutdown is hurting the Republicans, and forget the fact that Republicans are already caving, desperately looking for a way out. Kinsley wants the president to reward the Republicans for their far-right-wing ideological extremism, hyper-partisanship, Tea Party fervor, and hostage-taking ways by giving them what they want. (Because, of course, the only way to ensure peace in Europe was to give you-know-who what he wanted.)

Read more »

Losing badly, Republicans look desperately for a way out of their self-made political crisis

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Gotta love these headlines and what they, and the articles below them, say about the current state of the Republican Party:

-- New York Times: "As Pressure Mounts, House G.O.P. Weighs Short-Term Debt Deal";

-- The Hill: "House GOP 'negotiators' to meet Obama";

-- Washington Post: "Key Republicans signal willingness to back down on effort to defund health-care law"; 

-- Politico: "GOP quietly backing away from Obamacare"; and

-- Politico: "GOP unity frays, frustration builds."

And the divisions on the right, among conservatives and key Republican stakeholders, are only deepening. Consider, for example, John Podhoretz's piece, "Suicide of the Right." (Forget that Republicans across the board are responsible for the rise of the Tea Party and the GOP's ongoing move to the ever further right.) Consider also these:

-- NBC News: "Kochs to Congress: Focus on spending, not Obamacare"; and

-- Huffington Post: "Heritage Action Bails On Debt Ceiling Fight." 

Even Paul Ryan is caving, distancing himself from the Obamacare defunding nonsense and, while obviously remaining unabashedly partisan and self-promotional, advocating (Republican-friendly) compromise that is rather more conciliatory than anything we've seen from him before.

Republicans obviously still think they can get out of this with some of their demands met, and thus far there's no indication they're genuinely willing to negotiate in good faith.

But the simple fact is that the government shutdown, with the fight over the debt ceiling coming up next, has been an utter disaster for them.

Read more »

Senator Warren tells it like it is

By Richard K. Barry

In a speech from the floor of the Senate. Very impressive indeed.

Calling bullshit on the Republicans' desperate supercommittee ploy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republicans have backed themselves into a corner. They've allowed a teabagging minority of their own party to shut down the government, they're toying with global economic catastrophe by threatening to vote against a debt ceiling increase, and, in general, their petulant-child approach to fiscal policy amounts to nothing more than hostage-taking. And the polls are clear: The American people are correctly blaming them for causing the current crisis.

So what do they do? Allow a majority in the House to prevail with a vote on a "clean" continuing resolution to reopen the government? Nope. Rein in their bluster and agree that the debt ceiling isn't something to use as a political weapon? Hardly. Accept that Obamacare is the law of the land and stop trying to kill it by any means possible? Yeah, right. Say enough is enough to Ted Cruz and his teabagging radicals? Of course not.

No, they posture, grandstand, and attempt, with one last-ditch effort, to turn the tables on President Obama and the Democrats:

House Republicans will bring to the floor a bill to create a bipartisan, bicameral committee to address the current fiscal impasse that has shut down much of the government and threatens a debt default.

A GOP leadership aide said the committee wouldn't just handle the continuing resolution needed to fund the government. It would have broader jurisdiction similar to the 2011 Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the supercommittee, and would cover the debt limit and other fiscal issues.

A GOP appropriations aide also described the working group as similar to the supercommittee, but on a smaller scale, and without instructions.

"I want to have a conversation," said Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. "I'm not drawing lines in the sand. I'm requesting to sit down to resolve our differences."

Boehner said, "There's no boundaries here. There's nothing on the table, there's nothing off the table. I'm trying to do everything I can to bring people together and have a conversation."

What complete and utter bullshit.

Read more »

Behind the Ad: Stand up to the Tea Party

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: Organizing for Action

Where: Nationally on cable news programs.

What's going on: Organizing for America is President Obama's former campaign arm.

MSNBC:

Charging that "Tea Party Republicans are threatening an economic shutdown," the ad says that "refusing to pay our nation's bill" would "endanger American jobs" if the country defaults. "Tell them to stand up to the Tea Party," says the ad's narrator. "Enough already."

Presumably the "them" are more reasonable Republicans, whoever they might be.

The House finally does something right

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Hill:

The House voted unanimously Saturday to retroactively pay back federal workers who are not receiving a paycheck because of the government shutdown.

Members approved the Federal Employee Retroactive Pay Fairness Act, H.R. 3223, in a 407-0 vote, with 25 members not voting.

Workers will not be paid until the shutdown — now in its fifth day — ends. About 800,000 workers have been furloughed. 

Right, it's not federal workers' fault the Republican Party has been taken over by a gang of teabagging zealots and that in fact the whole damn party has come to embrace anti-government zealotry as a core component of its right-wing ideology -- and that these zealots shut down their work.

Though while retro pay is really great, of course, it might be better, you know, for these people to go back to work NOW and get paid when they're supposed to, rather than to have their and their families' lives fucked around with like this.

Speaking of the House, what's crazier, more absurd and nightmarish, it or, well, House?

Behind the Ad: John Boehner is a big crybaby

By Richard K. Barry

Who: House Majority PAC (a Democratic super-PAC)

Where: John Boehner's congressional district (OH-8th)

What's going on: In this 40-second spot call "Temper Tantrum," Boehner is attacked for the government shutdown. The ad will air only during the NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the New England Patriots this Sunday.

The line to remember: “Speaker John Boehner didn’t get his way on shutting down health care reform. So, he shut down the government and hurt the economy." 

What is unstated is Boehner's tendency to turn on the waterworks himself, not that there's anything wrong with that. 

Republicans are so damned annoying

By Richard K. Barry

The Hill writes today that Republicans have settled on a message to attack Democrats on the shutdown.

Polls show more people are blaming the GOP for the shutdown than the White House, but Republicans think their work on a stream of bills that would fund specific parts of the government is helping them build a narrative of Democratic intransigence.

[...]

“Republicans have figured out a strategy, by sending rifle-shot bills to open different parts of the government, that has put Democrats into a box of saying no. By voting no repeatedly it allows Republicans an excellent messaging opportunity of painting Democrats as refusing to negotiate,” says Ron Bonjean, a top GOP strategist.

I get that in politics it's not typically a good idea to overestimate the intelligence of the American people, but how stupid do you have to be to be fooled by this?  Republicans first shut down the government and then argue that they ought to decide, piecemeal, what gets funded and what doesn't. 

So far, it's not working as a Fox News poll shows 42 percent of voters blaming the GOP, with 32 percent blaming Democrats, while a CBS poll found the split at 44 percent to 35 percent.

The thing that is potentially dangerous, as Bonjean points out,  is that every time a vulnerable Democrat votes no on any "re-funding" proposal, a campaign ad is being written. 

All that being said, I'll ask along with everyone else, what's the endgame?