Bring in the McClowns

By Capt. Fogg

It seems I write the same things over and over again because the Republican pattern repeats indefinitely.  It's OK when we do it or say it or demand it, it's anti-American, tyrannical, too little, too late, too much, too soon when they do it. Even if Republicans invented it or pioneered it or used it until yesterday it's different when "they" do it.

How long ago was it that John McCain and  Fox News and the rest of the merry bunch made a circus act with all three rings full of how Obama is a "tyrant" for appointing all those Czars?  "More Czars than the Romanovs," tweets the funny man.  So where's the big red nose and oversize pants when John McCain tells us that hapless weakling Obama isn't appointing the Czars we need?  That's right, John McCain has joined Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), sponsor of H.R. 3226 (111th): Czar Accountability and Reform (CZAR) Act of 2009  in condemning the administration for this egregious failure, invoking the "if it's bad, it's Obama" clause in the Party rules. 2009 is when George W. Bush left office -- just coincidentally -- and of course George had 33 of them, but let's keep that quiet.


Of course there's no public office with the title Czar on the door as far as I know. It's a media epithet that began in the 1940s and of course there's nothing unconstitutional about the President appointing "other public ministers" no matter how much they chuckle and chortle and lie in the Fox newsroom.
But quoting history and public record never seems to have much effect on the magic thinkers and pea-brained partisans of any stripe.  The public's eyes are always on the jugglers and clowns and what they're doing now, not what they did ten seconds ago.

"No one knows who's in charge," says McCain, his face revealing nothing of how his party, with the help of the NRA has blocked the nomination of a Surgeon General, an office designed to take control and coordinate the process of informing the country of what's being done.  Yes, the NRA, because the Surgeon General might just get involved in gun policy.  Can't have that. Better a plague than risk a gun grabber liberal doctor commie near our weapons. Better this country perish from the earth.

Never forget, never remember

By Capt. Fogg

Good morning Republicans and welcome to another bright new day of  washing our sins in Obama.  And haven't we been having fun preempting the Democrats from using our martial spirit, thanking every veteran for his service by damning Obama for rescuing the one and only soldier (oops, warrior ) who was treasonously disillusioned with our dear war?  Another day, another reason to impeach!

And welcome back to our neocons. Awake after their long sleep to remind us how Obama's weakness has, as we predicted, turned our faultless, perfectly arranged, positively inspiring bastion of freedom in Iraq into a flaming hell of Extremist violence. Let's greet their resurrection with a resounding chorus of  Bonzai Benghazi, Benghazi as we turn his success in capturing a perpetrator into another outrage and let's waste no time since corroboration that the attack really was a response to an Internet video works against us.

It may be another good time to toss out more chaff, more distraction: immigration, gay marriage, climate change racism and Christian rights to make sure the Libtards exhaust themselves chasing the chum while we triumph where it counts, our weapons gleaming in the bright light of a martial dawn.

For lies are the truth and truth lies and Fox is forever.  Thank you for your service. How else would we accuse the father of a war prisoner of being a Muslim terrorist or elevate a rumor to a final verdict but for Fox, the botoxed faces incapable of betraying a lie.  Chemical weapons, Biological weapons, mobile labs, nuclear weapons, centrifuges, yellow cake -- al Qaeda training camps and rape rooms: Saddam and 9/11!  not a smirk, a twitch, a tell.  No, the  America haters were wrong when they said it would be a quagmire with no end and we're right that it's now a quagmire with no end because of Obama.

The quagmire is our glory and our glory eternal, hail Bush and Cheney.  In the words of  Saint Giuliani:

President George W. Bush stood amid the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, and he said to the barbaric terrorists who attacked us, "They will hear from us." Well, they heard from us. They heard from us in Afghanistan and we removed the Taliban. They heard from us in Iraq, and we ended Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. And we put him where he belongs, in jail. They heard from us in Libya, and without firing a shot Gadhafi abandoned his weapons of mass destruction. They are hearing from us in nations that are now more reluctant to sponsor terrorists or terrorism. So long as George Bush is our president, is there any doubt they will continue to hear from us until we defeat global terrorism.

We succeeded and Obama failed and the Fox shall lie for ever and ever.  Benghazi!  NEVER FORGET, NEVER REMEMBER.

Just do it Harry

When last we heard from our intrepid Senate leader he was strongly considering the nuclear option but was giving the feckless Republicans one last chance because he just couldn't believe they would keep blocking votse on critical judicial nominations. Of course, those of us outside of the "greatest legislative body in the world" knew that was a fool's hope. So now having given the GOP yet more time to jam the works of responsible governance we get yet another sternly worded threat from Harry Reid.

“I’m at the point where we need to do something to allow government to function,” Reid said when asked if he would consider using the so-called nuclear option, a controversial procedural tactic for changing Senate rules. “I’m considering looking at the rules.”

Reid said he will insist that Republicans allow up-or-down votes on all three of Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals: Patricia Millet, Cornelia Pillard and Robert Wilkins.

He will insist? What, he wasn't insisting months ago? He was just suggesting? Enough of the wimpy threats Harry. Stop flailing and do it to them before they bamboozle their way into control again and do it to you. Do it now, while there's still time to repair some of the damage.

Keep the reforms, help the people sign up for Obamacare

Have no idea what Big Dog was thinking when he started spewing  GOP talking points. Maybe he was hitting the sauce. Maybe it was some incomprehensible eleventy dimension chess move to help Hillary in 2016 but Bill Clinton has never been so wrong. Letting people keep crap insurance polices is a terrible idea. The whole point of reform is those policies offered no real protection. It would screw up the implementation of the reforms even more than a glitchy website.

Reading the wailing and watching the garment rending over the website reminds me of how spoiled and impatient we've become on the internets. If it doesn't load instantly we're out of there. But that's a problem for the tech savvy. I keep thinking about a tweet I saw showing long lines for signups at a health insurance fair in Sacramento. There are millions of Americans who either don't have good access to the internet or the technical savvy to negotiate the website even if it is working. Seems to me the administrators need to have more events like this especially in states run by GOPers who are sabotaging the rollout. It's clear people want health insurance but many need one on one help with the process.

Nuke the filibuster already

I've long resisted the calls to kill the filibuster but I no longer have any doubt if the Republicans ever manage to bamboozle the electorate into giving them back a majority in the Senate, the very first thing they'll do is abolish it. So if Democrats could nuke the filibuster please. It's not that I don't appreciate this sort of chatter:

From young newbies to the old guards, Democratic senators are clamoring for filibuster reform, and insist that a mass Republican blockade of three judges to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals may be the final straw before going nuclear.

"It would mean they've totally gone back on what they said when there was a Republican president," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the longest-serving member of the chamber, told TPM. "It would be such a reversal that I think there'd be overwhelming pressure to change the rules."

It's just that Democrats have been making the threat for so long it's no longer credible. The GOPers mock it. Shrug it off. As John Mccain said, "Someday Republicans will be in the majority, and if they set this precedent, they may not like the result. What goes around comes around in this town."

Republicans won't need any precedent to ramrod through their corporatist agenda. They've proven many times over, they have no honor. They have no scruples. They're unencumbered by ethics. Republicans will kill the filibuster out of the gate so Democrats can't use their own dirty dealing, obstruction tactics against them.

Democrats have to do it now while there's still time to accomplish something of value. And nothing is more valuable than striking a balance on the D.C. Circuit court. If you missed it last week, Brian Beutler already explained why the GOP are blocking judicial nominations

First, let me stipulate that I believe the Senate rules give the minority way too much power, not just over nominations, but over legislation as well. I think Democrats made an error in 2005 by “capitulating,” instead of allowing Republicans to go nuclear over President Bush’s judicial nominees. And whatever dilatory mechanisms senators want to erect to prevent the Senate from becoming too much like the House, the supermajority cloture era is anti-democratic and unsustainable in a polarized system like ours. [...]

But the trick Senate Republicans are playing this year — the power they’re exerting over both the executive and the judiciary — is new, and disjoined from the question of whether individual nominees deserve to serve in either branch of government. They’re denying (or threatening to deny) confirmation to any nominees in order to nullify laws, stymie legitimate policymaking, and “reverse court pack” — keep liberal judges off of one key appellate court in order to preserve its conservative balance for as long as possible.

That court is poised to destroy decades worth of hard fought for socially responsible progress. By intent and tradition, for the last 200+ years empty seats on the benches have been filled by the winners of the election so as to reflect the will of the people. As was passing legislation without requiring a super majority for every single bill. Republicans have overturned all of that outside the electoral process. The crackpot conservatives have transformed the Senate Gentlemen's Club into a frat house. That precedent certainly can't stand. So stop them. At this point, Democrats have nothing to lose by nuking the filibuster first, except excuses for inaction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The GOP's greatest nightmare

Obamacare is lowering costs for health insurance much more than initially expected.

The most comprehensive study on Obamacare to date finds that Americans’ insurance premiums under the health law will be “lower than expected.” Many Americans will pay even less than the top-line rates after factoring in government subsidies for their health coverage, with some paying nothing at all for crucial medical coverage.

And, it offers actual health care coverage unlike the sort of low cost private insurance with caps on coverage so low it wouldn't cover the cost of treating a hang nail.

Thus it's no surprise Republicans are now trying to kill Obamacare by sabotaging the rollout via cockamamie investigation. With less than a month before open enrollment begins, Republicans issued a massive document demand to the agencies assigned to assist Americans wishing to enroll in health care exchanges.

Welcome to new world of fiscal conservatism where public health is an impediment to thwarting the President. Their timing could not be more obvious. The GOPers are targeting the several states with the most uninsured. Clearly the Republicans aim to prevent as many people as possible from signing up. Once again I wonder, why in hell would anyone vote these heartless cretins into office?

Dueling charts - Updated

Well, this is an editorial so clearly it "was not intended to be a factual statement." For one thing this is not "Obama's Recovery," this is your future under Republican economics.

You might think the editors of the Investors Business Daily would have some interest in telling the whole story because rising tide lifts all ships or something like that. Oh wait, no they don't. The recovery has sucked for almost everyone except the very wealthy investor class, who want corporate friendly Republicans in power. So they won't mention the GOP's obsession with austerity and draconian cuts in government spending they extorted have greatly impeded recovery that benefits all the lower income classes.

Neither will the concern trolling editors at IBD mention how Big Banksters impede the growth of small business.

Neil Irwin highlights these charts from Hyun Song Shin’s comments at the monetary policy summit in Jackson Hole, WY, which provides an “interesting analysis that goes a long way toward explaining why growth has been so disappointing over the past four years.” The chart on the left shows that credit for the corporate business sector has picked up since the recession, while the chart on the right shows credit continuing to flatline for the non-corporate business sector.

Big Banksters got megatons of money on the cheap from the Fed for the express purpose of lending to non-corporate businesses. But they didn't, and still don't, lend to anyone but their corporate cronies because, profit. They like the recovery just the way it is but they're happy to keep the little people angry with half truths so they won't notice who's really screwing them.

Update: Explosive addition to this story by Greg Palast, who has the Bankster's secret end game memo that tells the story of how they invented and enshrined casino capitalism.

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank. If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.

The memo is authentic.

Fair warning. Do not read the nauseating details on a full stomach.

Defeating the propaganda

Where I come from we call it lying, but as President Obama points out, it's perfectly clear the GOPers are trying to confuse the public about the benefits of Obamacare. Of course, they wouldn't have had so much success in doing so if our "liberal media" was willing to point out the inaccuracies (if they need a polite word) instead of simply acting as stenographers for the GOP's false claims. Our insider media is perfectly willing to analyze the political implications (and subsequent benefits of lying) but only Obama is willing to point out the obvious adverse consequences of the GOP's perfidy.

A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they'll somehow be sticking it to me. But they'd just be sticking it to you.

Fortunately for America, albeit unfortunately for the Republican party, the GOP propaganda is not working like it used to. Leaping in where the media fears to tread, the people are calling the Republicans liars to their faces. Far cry from the summer of the angry mob in 2009. To paraphrase Charlie Pierce, at least this summer they're hollering at the right people. So there's that.

Reid threatens to go nuclear

Yes I know we've heard this all before, but this time Harry Reid sounds serious on filibuster reform.

After a tense exchange on the floor with his Republican counterpart, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, planned to recommend to his fellow Democrats at a private lunch meeting that they should vote to take the exceptional step of barring the minority party from filibustering presidential appointees.

The step that Mr. Reid will endorse, which drew strong objections from Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, would not affect filibusters of legislation or judicial nominees. But it would prevent Republicans from being able to require a supermajority of 60 votes for the confirmation of people the president appoints to cabinet level posts or other executive-branch positions.

Greg Sargent has the details on the nuclear trigger:

“We’re going to file cloture on a bunch of nominations, and those votes will occur next week when we schedule them,” Reid said, adding later that if no movement occurred on them, “we know what’s going to happen.”

According to a senior Senate Democratic aide, this means that Reid will file cloture on the following nominations today: Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Obama’s picks to the National Labor Relations Board; and possibly Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary.

These are the appointments the GOPers most want to block in order to subvert the will of the majority. So a real test of the laughable "gentlemen's agreement" Reid and McConnell made at the beginning of the session. Remains to be seen if any of the old geezers have the guts to see it through. As the NYT reports, "Senators in both parties also say they fear it could irrevocably change the nature of the Senate."

One could argue we're long overdue for an irrevocable change in that moribund body.

Predictably, Reid's threat left McConnell spitting out his own threats of revenge on the floor, should the tables be turned in the future. (Warning HuffPo link.) As if that's not exactly what Republicans would do anyway if they ever regain the majority, regardless of whether Reid screws up the courage to make a bold move now while there's still time to pass some useful legislation.

When Republicans refuse to govern

It's not exactly news to anyone who has been paying attention that Republicans have embraced full out obstruction of any meaningful legislation at all since the day Obama took office. What is news is that the Beltway BigMedia is finally acknowledging it. Today Jon Chait remarks on how obstruction has become the guiding principle of the GOP to the detriment of our country. At least for as long as that "blah" man holds the Oval Office.

A rational legislative strategy would consider the relative benefits of a law to maintaining the status quo, and weigh the possibilities of a better bill emerging over time. But tea-party logic simply regards the existence of compromise as disqualifying. The moral purity of opposition has become untethered from any political or policy objective, and appears to have sprouted into an actual freestanding principle.

It’s not such a strongly held principle that it would survive if and when Republicans regain control of government. Lowry, Kristol, and the entire tea party will surely forget their hatred of side deals when they are needed to pass the next tax cuts. But the hatred for legislating has gained a strong enough hold over the conservative mind as to render them unable to consider the merits of any bill at all.

Even more significant, yesterday, Chuck Todd practically accused Republicans of criminal negligence for sabotaging our entire process of governance. Worth reading Greg's excerpts in full. It's that astonishing to see language like this on First Read.

And this all raises the question: What’s the line between fighting for your ideology and ensuring that the government that pays your salaries actually works — or even attempts to work? At some point, governing has to take place, but when does that begin? We know what opponents will say in response to this: These are bad laws, and we have to do whatever it takes to stop them. But at what point does an election have a governing consequence?

Strong words coming from one of the Beltway's most realiable fluffers of establishment politics and biggest promoters of insidery access journalism.

John Boehner's House of Dysfunction

Steve Benen catches the latest stats on the current session of Congress. Last year's 112th Congress is in grave danger of losing its status as the most unproductive session in modern history because:

Mark Murray noted yesterday that the current, 113th Congress is on track to be even worse.

When it comes to productivity, only 15 legislative items have become law under the current Congress. That's fewer than the 23 items that became law at this same point in the 112th Congress, which passed a historically low number of bills that were signed into law. These numbers might not be surprising given the legislative stalemates so far this year -- on the sequester, the farm bill, and student loans. Even the biggest legislative triumph so far of the 113th Congress, the Senate passing immigration reform by a 68-32 vote, appears to have hit a brick wall in the House of Representatives for now.

They have a majority. They should be able to pass bills but Republicans can't even agree among themselves anymore. The only thing they can accomplish as a united caucus are "message votes" to soothe the rubes back home. They believe that will be enough to keep them in office so they don't need no stinkin' governance to screw up their reelection campaigns.

Mitch McConnell threatens Harry Reid

In a facedown between the two old geezers who both have held on to their seats of power for far too long, Mitch McConnell warns Harry Reid about the consequences of shutting down the GOP's obstruction function.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday starkly warned Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) not to eliminate the filibuster on presidential nominations, threatening to end the 60-vote threshold for everything, including bills, if he becomes the majority leader.

“There not a doubt in my mind that if the majority breaks the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate with regard to nominations, the next majority will do it for everything,” McConnell said on the floor.

As if that's not exactly what McConnell would do on the very first day if the electorate is stupid enough to put these crackpot cretins back into the majority. Harry's only and obvious response should be, screw that noise you pompous windbag. Harry should do exactly that to the GOPers now, so at least the Senate can pass some useful policy before the electorate loses it mind again.

Sadly, I doubt Harry Reid, Man of Infinite Indecision, has the balls to do it.

Obamacare must die

For the GOP's hardcore crackpot caucus there is only one overriding mission. They must kill Obamacare by any means possible and they don't care who gets hurt in the process. So this presents an interesting test for the more practical establishment GOPers.

It's inevitable a law as complicated as the ACA is going to need some tweaking. Only as the provisions go into effect will the unintended consequences resulting from the massive partisan horse trading be revealed. One such problem is the law leaves self-insured religious organizations in the lurch.

Months of outreach to Republican Senate offices by religious leaders have yielded no official GOP support to an appeal from a broad coalition of religious denominations to ensure that church-sponsored health plans can participate in the ACA’s health insurance exchanges. Worse yet, from a partisan Republican point of view, two Democratic senators, Mark Pryor and Chris Coons, were the first responders to this call, introducing legislation late last week. Pryor is widely viewed as the GOP’s number one senatorial target in 2014.

Without the requested “fix,” as many as one million clergy members and church employees now enrolled in church-sponsored health plans could soon face the choice of leaving these plans (designed to meet their unique needs, such as the frequent reassignment of clergy across state lines) or losing access to the tax subsidies provided by the ACA to help lower-to-middle income Americans purchase insurance.

I'd guess this will affect red state fundie churches even more than more liberal denominations. So the question is what are the Republicans going to do? Clearly the crackpot cons, considering they rejected a rather brilliant ploy to sabotage Obamacare simply because it would look like they were helping it succeed aren't going to agree to an actual fix. I imagine they believe they can raise some rage among the conservative congregations by allowing the inadvertent exclusion to stand.

Maybe they're right. It's not like their voters, who largely rely on Fox News, are going to be told Democrats are trying to fix the problem. How this plays out will depend largely on whether the rest of BigMedia focuses on the facts or goes for the click-bait and simply reports the controversy without the context.

Obama fights back at last

It's about damn time our President accepted his political opponents are irredeemable crackpots who care only about their own political power and dropped the nice guy routine. You can't meet people halfway when their definition of compromise is they get everything they want and you get to take all the blame for their inhumane agenda. But it is interesting to see how our "liberal" media plays the change. David Graham at The Atlantic lays it out under the headline, Forget the Charm, Keep the Offensive: Obama's Aggressive New Strategy.

Get that? Republicans can say any damn offensive thing they please, vandalize our system of government, advance the most obvious lies about the President's policy proposals, sabotage our economy, deliberately ignore the most pressing problems facing the nation and relentlessly attempt to destroy every vestige of humane government policy while wasting millions of our money on their political chicanery and the media merely transcribes it without any colorful adjectives that might even faintly suggest they're destroying America as we know it. But now that the President has finally decided to fight them on their own damn terms, he's aggressive. On the offensive. You can almost hear the word uppity just dying to get out.

But leaving the media's long entrenched GOPcentric mindset aside, I for one welcome the newly combative Obama. He's the President dammit. He was elected by a landslide by present day standards and this is what people stood in eight hour long lines for. A real fight. Republicans are out of control. They need to called out. Let them whine. It only exposes their weakness and their perfidy.

[Big thanks to Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (Twitter: @mjwstickings) for kindly linking in.]

I feel the bridge fall under my feet

Austerity maniacs are literally going to kill us. When you have a major political party which is effectively one half (or sometimes more) of our government refusing to spend a red hot penny on the public commons while they bleed our national treasury to wantonly pass out tax breaks to the obscenely wealthy, this is what you get.


[RJ Matson cartoon]

This is not a joke. Cutting government funding for infrastructure projects verges on criminal negligence. Our bridges are falling down and it will only get worse. [via]

...The 607,380 bridges in the U.S. are 42 years old on average, and 1-in-9 are rated “structurally deficient,” according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which advocates more spending on such structures.

The deficit is shrinking. We can borrow our own money for practically nothing. Repairing our critical infrastructure would create jobs, improve the economy and reduce the deficit with increased revenues making the cuts unnecessary. The Republicans ongoing refusal to allow these spending bills to even get to the floor for a vote redefines "death by a thousand cuts" as pure homicide. When we weigh this on the "stupid or evil" scale, the obvious answer is pure evil.