GOP back to the same old tricks

You'll be shocked to learn Senate Republicans are blocking critical judicial nominees again. They're damned determined to keep the D.C.Circuit  controlled by cons and they're not afraid to filibuster. (What "gentlemen's" agreement?)

And can we please call the "court-packing" claim a lie?

Cornyn's court-packing claim is misleading -- it is a reference to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's attempts to expand the size of the Supreme Court; Obama merely wants to fill vacancies on the appellate level. But he repeated the talking point in multiple op-eds recently, laying the groundwork for a mass filibuster and pressuring GOP senators not to allow Obama to fill any of the three vacant seats on the D.C. Circuit court.

Republicans don't take issue with Millett's qualifications; they argue that the court's caseload is relatively low and so the size of its active bench should be reduced from 11 to eight judges. If they refuse to relent, it would put Democrats in a difficult position, forced to either surrender on a top judicial priority or possibly threaten to scale back the filibuster.

Filling standing vacancies is the Senate's damn job. As has long been the custom, the winners of the election get to pick the nominees. The losers of the election get to vote against them but they can't be allowed to continuously obstruct the process. Every Democrat inside the Beltway Bubble should be demanding an up or down vote. Maybe if they all changed their name to John McCain and stood on the steps of The Capitol chanting "up-or-down vote" Big Media might report about it on the teevee.

Meanwhile, nobody is scared of Harry Reid and his empty threats.

Republicans aren't fretting. "I don't really take this threat of the nuclear option very seriously when it comes to judicial nominations," Cornyn told reporters.

Screw those smug thugs. Kill the damn filibuster. You know if they ever regain the Senate, the GOPers will kill it on the first day so do it now.

Massive media fail: Health care horror stories

Exactly one honest piece on the Memeorandum right now debunking the embarrassing clickbaiting about Obamacare cancellations. The majority are rife with disgracefully negligent coverage of cherrypicked whiners whose phony horror stories will most probably be debunked within hours. You want facts these days, you have to go to the honest journos like Steve Benen who exposes the media malpractice of the Clickbait Corps.

Bartiromo didn’t follow up with the guest, so Michael Hiltzik did. He discovered that Deborah Cavallaro has a pretty awful health plan, which costs $293 a month in premiums, along with a deductible of $5,000 a year and a limit of two doctor visits a year, each of which come with a $40 copay. If she sees her physician more than twice, she’s responsible for 100% of the costs.

Under “Obamacare,” she can sign up for a “silver” coverage plan for $333 a month with a vastly reduced deductible and no limits on the number of times she’s able to see her doctor. She can also sign up for a “bronze” plan and pay as little as $194 a month. She’d have the same deductible she has now, but she’d save on premiums and have no limits on the number of visits.

Any so called reporter who doesn't start with the specifics about policies being cancelled in their lede is simply a disgrace to the formerly proud profession of journalism. They are many. The honest are few. This is why we can't have an informed electorate.

Your moment of Zen

Pumpkin fairy house via Old Moss Woman.

One dares to call them liars

News you won't see from the Clickbait Corps. BigMedia fears to tread where Brian Beutler dares to go with “Rate shock”: The GOP’s shameful new Obamacare lie. This in particular.

Some people who receive these notices will be pleasantly surprised to find that the most similar new plan offered by their current provider is actually cheaper than their old one. Others will be told that a similar plan will cost more. What they won’t be told, because insurers don’t want to downsell or advertise for their competitors, is that they’re likely to find a different plan available through their state exchange that’s closer to the same price or cheaper. If they can’t find a cheaper one, then there’s a decent chance that federal subsidies will reduce their out-of-pocket costs. It’s only the remainder — and it’s likely to be a small remainder — that genuinely will have no choice but to either pay more money (in some cases significantly more) or pay a fine and go without coverage.

The cancellations are for policies so crappy they don't conform to the bare requirements of meaningful health care coverage as mandated by Obamacare. So people complaining about not being able to "keep their plan" are basically whining they have to pay more to stay with a company that's been ripping them off instead of choosing from the other (far superior) 124 plans available on the exchanges. [Supply your own punchline.]

Your moment of Zen

Pumpkin carving party. [Steve Toutant photos]

California rule raises Obamacare rates

Award for biggest corporate fluffer of the week goes to this annoying hit piece on Obamacare "sticker shock" at the LAT. I've seen this narrative developing in the courtier media for a while now. ZOMG! Some people are seeing their super cheap insurance policies cancelled because, they're crap. Obamacare requires policies to furnish actual coverage for medical care. Wonder hard LAT had to look to find that one disgruntled young healthy person in California?

Fine. I see LAT's self-serving anecdote and counter with this guy who is happy his inadequate insurance was cancelled:

Anyway, you may have seen in the past couple of days how some insurers are being forced to drop thousands of individual policies because they're not ACA-compliant. My current policy is among those, so I've looked for a new policy with my insurer (Anthem). And, thanks to the ACA, I can finally get a more traditional policy because the insurer has to offer ACA-compliant plans and can't exclude for preexisting conditions. As a result, I'm switching to a Silver level plan with a $2,000 deductible, free preventive care, reasonable co-pays ($30-$45) for doctors' visits pre-deductible and reasonable co-insurance (25%) post-deductible, all for a premium that's only $20 than what I was paying. Significantly better coverage, in other words, for about $240 more per year. The media, however, are depicting the end of those policies as a bad thing, apparently because insureds may have to pay more now. But they don't mention that these insureds will be getting much better coverage. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

I've spent years making medical decisions based on the out-of-pocket cost. I've passed on doctor-advised MRIs because they would cost me $1,000 (and don't even get me started on the myth of how patients can negotiate with providers--a notion propagated largely by people who've never had to try it), and just this week I had to decide whether to have a follow-up visit with a neurologist for vertigo or see a podiatrist about an ongoing running injury. I'm ecstatic to have this coverage. And I would not have had it without the ACA.

I've heard a lot more stories like his than I have of whiners like the single one LAT dug up to join the insurance corps spokesmouths parroting GOP propaganda. But the real annoyance is the misleading hed. It blames Obamacare for an additional requirement the state of California tacked onto the policy. Which you have to read pretty far into the dismal piece to find out. Which few will do.

This is why we can't have an informed electorate.

Sweet Jane weeps

And the world weeps with her. Another musical icon of my youth -- gone. He wrote a big part of the soundtrack of my life. The music world will never be the same. RIP Lou Reed.





Adding, I'm wating for the man. Also too, Lou Reed's last tweet, just six hours before his death.

Racism is alive and well in America

It was a very long week. Been mostly offline, but I see this Daily Show segment went viral and got this howdy cracker GOPer in North Carolina fired as county chair. I see he's claiming the video has been edited to make him look racist, to which I say, bullshit. I've lived in this state for going on nine years and believe me when I tell you, it's not just him. Most of the white people I know here say the same things. Often in public. They just don't get on the teevee.



Maybe someone could send a copy of this to Supreme (In)Justice Scalia.

Your moment of Zen

Halloween Fairy. [photo via]

Broken planet

In news that never makes it to BigTV last week, BigOil is still polluting the Gulf of Mexico:

As Coast Guard crews were scouring the Louisiana coast looking for damage from Tropical Storm Karen this week, they made a startling discovery: A tar mat weighing 4,100 pounds, presumably remnants from the devastating BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.

Not as impressive as the 40,000 pound mat they found earlier but the ongoing damage is adding up.

Mats and balls of tar have continued to wash up on gulf shores, despite the more than three years that have passed since a rig explosion left oil spewing into the gulf’s waters and spawned the worst environmental disaster in U.S.

But despite the lasting impact that BP’s oil spill has had on the region, the company discontinued its regular searches for remaining oil earlier this year.

Worse yet, nobody really seems to know what the long term damage will be:

The scope of damage from this tar isn’t entirely clear. What is known is that tar from the Deepwater spill contains the bacteria Vibrio vulnificus — which causes a deadly type of seafood contamination — at a rate 100 times higher than surrounding waters. On top of that, a combination of these tar balls and the dispersants that were used to clean up the spill can hold carcinogenic pollutants that are soaked up by human skin.

And after Fukishima, the Pacific is in even worse shape. Seriously, read this whole story of a man who sailed through thousand of miles of it. The ocean is broken:

"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

Dangerous garbage at that. Big enough enough to sink small ships. We are literally killing this planet and nobody is reporting it with the urgency it deserves. [graphic via]

Your moment of Zen

President Obama in the Oval Office, 10-17-13. [Pete Souza photo]

Secret wedding at the White House

Well, not exactly a secret but somehow they pulled it off without a media circus in attendance. White House photographer Pete Souza got married in the Rose Garden last night. I might not have mentioned it but I found this bit about his bride fascinating.

In a story from January of this year in USA Today, Lease is described as a "close friend" of Souza who gifted President Obama a Petoskey stone for his 50th birthday in 2011.

I had to look up Petoskey stone. It's a very cool bit of fossilized coral, possibly 350 million years old. Obama keeps it on his desk. I would too.

The slow motion shutdown of America

David Dayen has a great piece on how the last GOP shutdown extravaganza was just a side show to the ongoing damage being done by the sequester:

You could argue that the recent shutdown inflicted much more damage than sequestration. You would be wrong. Standard and Poor’s estimated that the shutdown cost the economy $24 billion over its 16-day stretch. Sequestration, meanwhile, will be in place for ten years unless Congress does something, and the spending cuts over that time total $1.2 trillion—50 times the economic impact of the shutdown. And that doesn’t include the knock-on effects to the economy—reduced purchasing power by federal employees, fewer contracts for private companies doing business with the government, and generally lower consumer spending as a result. According to the Congressional Budget Office, sequestration cuts will cost as much as 1.6 million jobs if kept in place through the 2014 fiscal year, with a reduction in GDP of 0.7 percent. The continuing resolution funds the government at sequestration levels through January 15, 2014, so we’re well on our way. As veteran Congressional observer Norm Ornstein wrote, “Damaging as the shutdown is for governance, it is minor compared with the long-term damage of the sequester.”

This should, but never will be an ongoing story in BigMedia. There is a reason the recovery has been so slow and almost maliciously uneven. And it's not just the sequester, it's the whole anti-stimulus policy forced through by the austerity zealots.

Your moment of Zen

1,200 Whimsical Stone Statues at Buddhist Temple in Kyoto. [Thanny Young photo. More at link.]

Crazy cons

Looking around the internets I see the Crackpot Caucus is pretty much in --"well doubling down on the crazy didn't work, so triple down will do the trick" -- mode. Meanwhile, the rest of the old guard GOPers are freaking out about the damage to the brand. Even worse, (for the rest of us), the fiscal grifters have swooped in.

Charlie Pierce is already on the Fix the Debt vultures beat. No point in rewriting this:

This is the real threat to the recovery right here. Not partisan bickering. Not the temporizing in the deal cut last night. Not even Ted Cruz and the members of the monkeyhouse on the other side of the Capitol. It is this permanent class of deficit fetishists and austerian fantasts. These are the people who will wreck lives. These are people who get heard in the White House instead of being told to go pound sand until we elect Paul Ryan to be president. Every time the president mentons the deficit, these guys get their semi-annual woodies and a little bit of actual progressive politics dies again. These are the people whose credentials really should have been revoked last night, if there actually was the kind of Democratic triumph that we're being sold today. Pete Peterson must have bought Purina short. I am so dreading that conference committee.

On the bright side Mitch McConnell's payoff was what the true believers are calling a "Kentucky earmark", meaning $2.9 billion in federal funding for a dam project. Which I heartily approve of, because -- stimulus. Kentucky's economy really needs it.

Your moment of Zen

Sycamore drive in restaurant in Bethel, CT -- with car hops -- 1960s. Still in operation.

GOP in disarray

Went offline for a few hours. Nothing much changed except the GOP's Crackpot Caucus doubled down on the crackpottery. Boehner's House of Dysfunction reportedly adjourned without taking a vote on anything. Hearing speculation they will vote on the Senate bill tomorrow but who knows? I suppose it depends on how well fortified with liquid courage poor ole Johnny is when he arrives on the Hill.

Meanwhile, the fearsome Huckleberry Closet Case** scolds the mean Democrats:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told TPM that he was "proud" of Speaker John Boehner's handling of the fiscal crisis but thought Democrats should have been more flexible with Republicans.

Said Graham: "We won't be the last political party to overplay our hand. It might happen one day on the Democratic side. And if it did, would Republicans, for the good of the country, kinda give a little? We really did go too far. We screwed up. But their response is making things worse, not better."

Kinda give a little? What's the equivalent of 47 votes to repeal Obamacare?

[**yes, Charlie Pierce coined that nym]

House GOP revolting

And I mean revolting in every sense of the word. I would write about the latest "negotiations" (a/k/a hostage demands) but judging from the contradictory narratives in the media, nobody knows what Boehner's House of Dysfunction is doing, including Boehner and his Crackpot Cons.

The maniacal vandals of the Crackpot Caucus are so immersed in their own invented reality, they apparently have no clue that the explosives they're tossing about on Capitol Hill have lit fuses and are about to incinerate the entire world economy. Yet, even though reality based Americans can see the danger, and we will all suffer the consequences, I don't see any remedy for this insanity but to let the crackpots blow the place up. They won't be jolted out of their fantasy world until they're up to their knobby knees in the rubble and even their own deluded base is headed up the hill with torches and pitchforks. Which I have to believe will finally happen when the damage is so overwhelming that even they can't pretend it doesn't exist.

As bad as the damage will be, the alternative -- institutionalizing governance by hostage taking forever -- would be worse. I only hope Obama and the Dems stay strong and refuse to cave at the last minute to spare us the mayhem. Better to suffer now for a better future than suffer for the foreseeable future under the threats and thuggery of reckless Republican crackpots.

Freudian slip

Hilarious. Destined to be typo of the year.

My favorite shutdown typo today: pic.twitter.com/Xs78POBYM4
— Ian Gordon (@id_gordon) October 15, 2013

Your moment of Zen

A portal to another place. [image via]

Standing athwart the graves of murdered children

This bit of horribly bad taste got lost on a weekend. We're two months away from the sad anniversary of the Newtown massacre. These Second Amendment First / True Americans are planning pro-guns for all rallies at the mass murder site.

NEWTOWN -- First Selectman Pat Llodra is asking gun rights organizations to stay away from this town on Dec. 14, the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

Three national pro-guns groups had announced on Thursday that they would hold what they're calling "Guns Save Lives" rallies in all 50 states on the anniversary. [...]

"Using our day of mourning and remembrance to focus on the guns that took the lives of our children and teachers rather than celebrating their memories is disgraceful," said Newtown Action Alliance President Dave Ackert.

So who are these upstanding citizens, you ask?

The president of the Second Amendment Foundation said the rallies are intended to "show America that there is a good side to guns."

"Our mission with Guns Save Lives Day is to assure them our groups are working day and night to thwart government gun-grabbers at every opportunity," said Alan Gottlieb said.

The other groups behind the rallies are the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and DefendGunRights.com.

Larry Ward, founder of the DefendGuns organization, said the rallies are "designed to counteract what certainly will be a day of activism and misinformation from the gun prohibition lobby."

And of course, the gun nuts right to glorify the very weapons that killed the victims trumps the Newtown community's right to mourn their dead with dignity because, I imagine, the media will be there. Such nice people. [photo via]

GOPers sole owners of shutdown fiasco

I've been holding this post for days so it wouldn't get lost in the holiday weekend slump. Gratefully, it's finally picking up some steam. As this video of debate on the shutdown from the House floor makes clear, the shutdown (and now the pending debt default) was, and is, solely a construct of House Republicans.

The video sparked enough clicks over the weekend to finally give the story some legs with BigMedia. Jake Tapper is the first BigTV coverage I've seen with this blog report on his The Lead blog:

That said, van Hollen continues, “On October 1st, the R's passed a Rule to change the Standing Rules of the House so only Cantor or his designee could bring up Senate bill for a vote. I am told that we never played with this Rule when we were last in Majority and we are looking into the earlier history of this matter. In other words, they shut down the government and then changed the House Rules to keep it shut down.”

I suggested he should make this lead segment on the actual teevee program because, the people need to know. No reponse but maybe he'll take it that far. One lives in hope. Meanwhile, here's the original post I wrote:

GOP rejects Tea Party Caucus

Establishment GOP finally reached the point where the Tea Party's brew is just too toxic to swallow anymore. Party stalwarts are rushing to denounce their former compadres in "fiscal responsibility" as crackpots who don't understand how government works. Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Corker and Rep. Peter King assure us the "moderate Republicans" are going to pass a clean CR by the end of next this week. King, who has his eye on a 2016 run for President, went big on promising an end to the Tea Party hostage strategy:

A potential spending resolution without changes in government policy will “pass overwhelmingly,” King said. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, “has the leverage he needs, and I think it’s going to come to the House floor, no matter what.”

If Boehner doesn’t bring a measure to the floor, King said, he would support a discharge petition, in which a majority of the House can force the chamber to vote on a bill. Eighteen Republicans would have to join all 200 Democrats to compel the House to vote on opening the government, partially shuttered since Oct. 1, without conditions.

Maybe he should check with leadership before he makes that promise. In what should have been the biggest news in BigMedia this week (and instead was barely mentioned) House GOPers guaranteed the shutdown by changing the rules. You have to read the link to get how convoluted this ploy was but here's the gist:

Under normal House rules, according to House Democrats, once that bill had been rejected again by the Senate, then any member of the House could have made a motion to vote on the Senate's bill. Such a motion would have been what is called "privileged" and entitled to a vote of the full House. At that point, Democrats say, they could have joined with moderate Republicans in approving the motion and then in passing the clean Senate bill, averting a shutdown.

However, that's normal procedure and there's nothing normal about Boehner's House of Dysfunction. When the Democrats tried to evoke the discharge petition to avoid the shutdown, this happened:

But the House Rules Committee voted the night of Sept. 30 to change that rule for this specific bill. They added language dictating that any motion "may be offered only by the majority Leader or his designee."

So unless House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) wanted the Senate spending bill to come to the floor, it wasn't going to happen. And it didn't.

This should have been on the front page of every newspaper and the lead story in every broadcast. But "many Republicans say" it's Obama's fault -- so -- BigMedia will just as soon leave it there. Because, to paraphrase John Harris of Politico, there's no market for boring facts. The big money is in gossip, speculation and manufactured outrage.

Which is why our government is in such a mess in the first place. The people can't hold their elected representatives responsible unless they know what exactly they're doing. That used to be the media's job. Until it wasn't.

You say you want a negotiation

Well, this is encouraging. It appears our Democrats learned how to negotiate. Helluva a counter offer to the GOP's inane demands:

Washington Post: "Rather than making concessions that would undermine Obama's signature health-care initiative, as Republicans first demanded, Democrats are now on the offensive and seeking to undo what has become a cherished prize for the GOP: deep agency spending cuts known as the sequester."

Much more at Taegan's link.

Game changer!

So the Tea Party faithful held a protest in DC today which was duly addressed by the leading Crackpot Cons who build their own personal reality for them. It was billed as a Million Man March but looking at the photos I'd say 2-3 thousand max at its height and I'm probably being over generous. And a dozen big trucks that showed up for the Ten Thousand Angry Truckers Convoy circled the park while a few dozen true conservatives tore down the gates around the War Memorial. But according to conservative math (real numbers are skewed!) close enough to live up to the billing. Besides, look at all the media there. Oh and those guys with the huge Confederate flags? Obviously librul plants sent in to taint their friendly, non-partisan gathering with the ultimate symbol of overt racism. (Not that we noticed anyone asking them to leave.)

Well, it was mostly friendly anyway. No doubt inspired to action by the surprise appearance of Tea Party temptress Sarah Palin, who is still writing important notes on her hand, (and perhaps a chance to make the nightly news), a group of excited Tea Party enforcers attacked police officers at the event.

It's being touted as a real game changer by the true conservatives on the internets. Suppose they're right. They're running the ball in the opposite direction of their own damn goalposts. They're about to score for the opposing team. Please proceed...

[photo via]

No deal

I hope this is true. The Hill is reporting Obama rejected the GOP's lame offer:

President Obama signaled Saturday that he wouldn't accept the Republicans' offer for a short-term increase in the nation's debt limit.

"Manufacturing crises to extract massive concessions isn’t how our democracy works, and we have to stop it," Obama said. "Politics is a battle of ideas, but you advance those ideas through elections and legislation – not extortion."

Hell, I could have written that statement myself. Meanwhile, the twitter tells me House GOPers are scrambling to pass the buck to the Senate so they can blame them for the failure of the Tea Party tantrums to produce any sweets for the angry base. [image via]

Vidit ergo Lesus. . .

By Capt. Fogg

Yes, yes, we've all heard, Pope Francis may be infallible but the guy who mints the medals isn't. Somebody substituted an L for an I (which can look damned similar in certain typefaces) and somebody else didn't notice and so it went out the door as Lesus instead of Iesus. I'm an old man, I can sympathize about reading small print and at least it didn't say Lexus. We have too many of those on the road as it is.

Of course growing up in the Galilee, the name was יהושע or Yehushua but we won't quibble. The sign on the Cross said IHS, not LHS and of course the J is not part of the Roman alphabet.

"Vidit ergo Iesus publicanum et quia miserando antque eligendo vidit, ait illi sequre me." says the Gospel of Matthew. If we're going to be talking about alphabets of course, it's really מַתִּתְיָהוּ Matityahu or 'gift of Yahoo' (you see, the Bible predicts the Internet) and it's a story about how Jesus didn't despise the tax collector and so the tax collector became a follower, or so I think. My latin has become a bit like a Toyota after ten winters in Chicago. But anyway, like most Bible stories, there's good advice there: "Don't get too chummy with the man from IRS lest he followeth you around, asking questions.

Anyway, I don't know how many have already been sold in Rome. I don't see any on eBay yet, but I'll bet collectors will bid them up if he faithful can part with them. Will we see money changer's booths in Vatican Square exchanging new medals for old, or will they find their way out the back door and onto the collector market? Inquiring minds and maybe pious minds want to know but if you flip these things for a profit, don't forget that publicanus cognoscere cupit nimis -- the tax man wants to know too.

 

Your moment of Zen

My favorite blimp. The Spirit of Goodyear.

Tell me what's going on

Another crazy day out in the real world so just catching up. I see the everything is still all fucked up and bullshit. Also, too. Willing to bet this is the quote of the day:

I feel much better now. “@ByronYork: GOP congressman: 'Most have us have no idea what is going on or what to expect at this point.'”
— Kai Ryssdal (@kairyssdal) October 11, 2013

Our country is being run by wayward frat boys, vandals and other assorted miscreant Republican crackpots. Or I should say, being run into the ground. If only we had some sort of organized system of news delivery to report that...


[Big thanks to Batocchio, (who you should be reading every day at his own blog), for kindly linking in at Mike's Blog Round-up.]

Your moment of Zen

Aurora Borealis over Foster's Bridge in Cabot, Vermont on October 8th 2013. [Jon Vose photo]

GOP brand in the dumper

You all know how I feel about polls but this new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll is so stunning it has even the tragically jaded journos dragging their jaws across the floor.

By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96.

Just 24 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion about the GOP, and only 21 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party, which are both at all-time lows in the history of poll.

...a whopping 70 percent say congressional Republicans are putting politics first.

Once again, thanks Crackpot Caucus. This couldn't happen without you.

GOP seeing the worst numbers in the history of our politics. Dems would be crazy to bail them out. No way should they accept a paltry six week extension. Republicans claim they want to negotiate, then by definition Dems should counter with a demand for at least 24 weeks. With the people tired of the shutdown already, let the GOPers argue against ending it. Not that I'm holding my breath for that.

Profound BigMedia Fail

Real life still keeping me offline so just catching up. As always, outsourcing to Charlie Pierce's eviseration of Politico. Yes, read the rest that goes with this closer:

I think I can assure the kidz here that both the sequester and the government shutdown are having serious material effects on the lives of millions of people all around the country, regardless of what the polls say about their exhaustion with the rhetoric coming out of Washington. That they do not connect that rhetoric with the hardship in their own lives is a profound failure of journalism of which TBOTP is a perfect manifestation.

It's true Tiger Beat On The Potomac exemplifies the form, but they're tragically far from alone. The collective failure to inform is at the root of "what's wrong with everything." [graphic via]

Your moment of Zen

An old street in Prague.

Stating the obvious

Is there really anyone who didn't know this? Anonymous senior GOP source admits they need Democratic help to escape their own snares in the shutdown insanity. Not at all clear they understand yet how little leverage they have but this is a start.

This source believes that at the end of the day, enough people in the GOP caucus could be OK with this because the economic implication of breaching the debt limit "scares people." This source also acknowledged that under this scenario, House GOP leaders may have to agree to pass a debt ceiling bill without all Republicans on board, and with Democratic support.

Meanwhile, Dana dutifully transcribes their phony talking point.

But multiple GOP sources tell CNN it is hard to nail down a path forward because there are still no direct conversations going on, and the White House will not talk.

What Dana fails to mention, (and how hard would it be to add this one sentence of context), the White House is reaching out to the GOP.

The White House had invited the full Republican caucus to participate in a meeting with the president, but the Speaker opted to send a smaller delegation, including leadership members and committee chairmen, a Boehner aide said earlier Wednesday.

So either these Republicans are too stupid to realize they were all invited to air their grievances directly to the President or they're deliberately lying. Either way they're not fit to hold their office.

Your moment of Zen

The last luna moth, somewhere in the south.

In which I thank the Crackpot Caucus

Brian Beutler lays out the stakes and the end game of the shutdown/debt limit insanity today and I realized we actually owe the Crackpot Caucus a huge thank you. They're doing what ten years of solid lefty internet activism and advocacy couldn't do. They're poised to destroy the GOP brand for generations to come. Or least expose its true motives behind the weasel worded rhetoric.

Of course, they still could come to their senses and avert the disaster but for the moment it doesn't look likely. To which I can only say, "Please proceed crackpots." And thanks for the help.

Obama takes to the bully pulpit

This is the president we've been waiting for since 2008. At his presser today, President Obama called out the crazy cons in the Crackpot Caucus. No more catering or cratering to the vandals in the GOP House of Dysfunction. John Boehner is going to have to deal with his own damn crazies or take the blame.

Read the transcript or watch the vid at the link. It was mostly a thing of beauty. The only weak point was when Obama indicated a willingness to accept a short term agreement. To which I say -- no mas. This time it's got to be all or nothing. There's no other way to shut down the Tea Party tantrums. Agreeing to anything will only encourage them to try it again. In fact, as Charlie Pierce wisely counseled yesterday, Dems should up the ante:

For all the talk about how Republican extremism is finally catching up with the party, one can argue just as well that Wall Street-friendly, deficit-hawk, DLC-onomics is finally catching up with the Democratic party. There is no reason in the world now for the Democrats not to trot out a wish-list as long and as detailed as the one the Republicans burped up last week. Every last cut in the sequester agreement should be debated in the Democratic Senate. Medicare For All should get another run around the track. Major stimulative infrastructure programs should be designed. Hell, they should dig up John Maynard Keynes and sit him in the well of the Senate. If the denizens of the monkeyhouse want to gimmick things up with "continuing resolutions" funding those parts of the government that a) poll well, and b) make them look as though they give a rat's ass about poor people -- Tea Party congressmen defending the WIC program? Pull the other one. -- then the Democrats, many of whom actually care about this stuff, should give them a double dose of it in return.

I wish they would. If the GOPers want to redefine "negotiation" as no compromises allowed, then I don't see a down side to making equally extreme counter demands for stuff that would actually benefit the people. Let the GOPers fight against that. What better way to finally draw the bright line between the two party's platforms?

Your moment of Zen

Full circle. Stage one. Stage two. Metamorphosis in Maeve's magic garden.

Truckin' on down the line

Charlie Pierce catches today's breaking news from Crazy Street. Crackpot truckers plan to arrest Congressmen for constitutional violations. The plan appears to be to form a "citizen's grand jury" to indict various Congressmen. They will arrive "by the thousands" in convoys and if the police won't "do their sworn duty" and make the arrests -- well -- they'll just have to take matters into their own hands. Full details at the link including this gem from the Crackpot in Chief.

Reply by Earl Conlon yesterday:i've always believed Obama to be the Anti Christ from the day i first laid eyes one him.. not to mention the dreams i have had for the past 15 years showing me a man in office who i've never heard of before. then comes 2008 and the dreams get more detailed and intense... you figure it out..maybe i am crazy?

This reminds me I saw a truck on the road the other day. Big shiny new semi with a message on the back door of the trailer. It said something like, "The government didn't build this business, I did." Wondering if he's joining the convoy and how long that truck would last if it wasn't riding down a newly reconditioned government built highway... [photo via]

Your moment of Zen

View from my friend's old cottage overlooking the basin somewhere in Scotland.

Media malpractice

Real life taking up all of my time so I've been offline for days. I check the news and see the dutiful stenos of the BigMedia are pushing the GOP's phony "Dems refusing to negotiate" trope. This isn't even malpractice. It's media malfeasance.

I mean, what the fuck good does it to tell the public what stupid ploy the GOPers are using to cover up their responsibilty for the shutdown? How about they ask the damn GOPers what exactly they're willing to compromise on? Or maybe ask them why they're taking the food out of hungry kids mouths to "win" a political point?

Shutting down the government over a settled law that's been upheld by every branch of the government is extortion, not good governance. That clearly is why the shutdown happened. If the GOPers want to make the rules, let them win elections fairly and enact legislation through normal established practices. The media's job is to call the bastards out for destroying the lives of millions of Americans, not cheerlead their evil plots from the sidelines.

Mint the coin

Screw the nattering nabobs of conventional wisdom. The platinum coin is a valid idea well worthy of discussion:

It's not that there's no value in knowing what's possible or likely, it's that it isn't an argument against the value of the proposition. Most things which should happen don't. We talk about them anyway.

So what if it's tied up in the courts for years? It's a legal solution. It would shut down the extortionists. Somebody has to do it. Clearly Boehner isn't up to the task.

Declare Martial Law for Jesus

By Capt. Fogg

I don't know if you're getting your TV using an antenna, but if you are, it's a different world than the TVland you see on satellite or cable.  Docked at a marina, looking for something to watch on the tube with no access to cable, one thing you'll notice is that there are a lot of Christian stations and a lot of boisterous preachers pounding away on the Bible. 6 to 1 on a Sunday afternoon in places like Vero Beach, Florida.

So if your idiot box is fed by an antenna, perhaps you know about Rick Joyner.  Perhaps you have watched his internet program. Perhaps you've identified him as as much of a subversive seditionist as Luigi Galleani, as much of a terrorist as any of the bomb throwing anarchists of that day or ours.  There was a time when Eugene Debbs was thrown in jail for simply mentioning his distaste for US involvement in a European war and Conservative fear of  subversives has continued through the McCarthy era and into the present. Show up at a Quaker prayer vigil for peace in 1965, as I once did and you got yourself on an FBI list. George Bush era government agents were tapping the phones of Quakers not long ago and now, of course they can and they may be tapping yours and mine to make sure nobody is plotting terrorist acts.

But not so for Joyner. He gets to tell us that because Obama's America is so immoral, he's suggesting to God, as his special adviser, that God should use the United States Armed forces to overthrow the government and institute martial law -- to save Democracy.

 “The people are not always right, it depends on what people they are. And another thing the founders warned about is this thing will only work for a moral and a religious people. You remove morality, you remove the religious influence, and it cannot work.” 

Says Rick, God's own Dick Cheney. You see Obama isn't white moral and Americans who voted for him or support better access to health care are pissing off God. We have to overthrow the US government with violence. We have to put an end to Democracy in order to save it for the coming Kingdom of Joyner God.

So you think Christians are being persecuted in America, by those Liberal hellhounds of religious freedom?  Calling for the violent military overthrow of the United States of America by a military junta dedicated to God rather than the lawful Commander in Chief is what the Constitution supports?  If Joyner were Muslim, he'd have been deported or jailed by now and if subversives and terrorist supporters and haters of democracy like him are still out there stinking up the air, the argument that there's a war on Christianity and its special prerogatives smells worse than a manure pile in August. These hate mongers are exempt from taxes and exempt from the law as surely as they are exempt from sanity.

It takes a hell of a lot of dishonesty to prattle about external threats to the US when a cabal of criminals dedicate their lives to crippling it, subverting it, overthrowing it and handing it over to corporate and religious warlords, but it takes something else to sit in front of a TV screen, drink beer and ignore it. Am I talking to you here?

Republicans own this shutdown

Crackpot cons in John Boehner's House of Dysfunction (and their paid and volunteer apologists) are desperately trying to shift the blame for the govenment shutdown onto the Democrats but anyone who plays the "both sides do it" storyline on this one is either a liar or a fool. The irresponsible party here couldn't be more clear:

The federal government shut down for one reason: House Republicans did not pass a six-week funding bill.

That doesn’t mean a majority of the House opposed the bill, however. In fact, the House never got to vote on it. Speaker John Boehner refused to hold a vote on funding alone–a “clean” bill–instead only allowing votes on funding plans that undermined Obamacare. The Senate rejected those bills, and Boehner never brought a clean bill to the floor before the deadline for funding the government. If Boehner had simply held a vote on funding alone, 200 House Democrats would back him and he’d only need 17 Republicans to prevail. The votes are there, according to several Republican members who spoke out this weekend.

By standing in the way of majority rule, Boehner took an entirely avoidable shutdown and made it inevitable.

Boehner could end this in a hot minute if only he could find his balls and stand up to the Tea Party vandals in his own party. It's as simple as that. [photo via]