The nature of Speaker John Boehner's final battle with the White House on the budget crisis is now clear: It doesn't matter what House Republicans win in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and re-opening government, as long as they win something.

Gone is the big talk about "defunding Obamacare." Gone are the demands for delaying the health law, or delaying the individual mandate, or delaying the medical device tax. The final stand, according to the latest reports, is simply this: remove the health insurance subsidies for members of Congress, some executive branch officials, and some of their staffs. (Those staff members are furious about the potential cut to their incomes, and many have threatened to quit.)

If that seems a paltry prize to win for causing this destructive, embarrassing crisis, that's because it is. But this fight really has nothing to do with the subsidies. It's all about not walking away empty handed, about Mr. Boehner persuading his Republican members that they forced President Obama to give something up in exchange for not wreaking havoc on the economy.

And that's precisely why the president can't agree to it, even though the impact (for all but Congressional staffers) would be minimal.

For the sake of the rest of his presidency, and the presidents to come, he has to make it clear that no chamber of Congress can back the White House into a corner by threatening the full faith and credit of the United States. Even a small concession, like ending the Congressional subsidies, would betray that principle.

Of course that position is irreconcilable with the hard-right faction of the House that sees the debt ceiling as the only leverage that can turn them into a real political force. But the unprecedented use of that leverage has to be stopped here, even at a terrible cost, because the long-term cost would be so much worse.

Once Senate Republicans and Democrats began cobbling together their own plan, Mr. Boehner could have ended the crisis by standing back and letting momentum for the Senate plan build. Instead, he chose to sabotage it, because he and the Tea Party faction clearly want to use the power of hostage-taking again.

One of the provisions in the House's latest plan is a demand that the Treasury not use any special measures to prevent default the next time the debt hits the ceiling -- a provision, in other words, that would make default an even more likely possibility the next time than it will be on Thursday, when the Treasury runs out of borrowing authority. (The actual default will probably occur later this month.)

Mr. Boehner may hope that the diminished nature of his final demand about Congressional subsidies will embarrass Democrats into approving it, but his tactics are as dangerous as ever.

But this is mostly based on an illusion it seems.

After all, we did commit what amounts to genocide on the Native Americans. Without pity. And although there is a bit of a furor at the present about the team name, "Redskins", this very racist issue has been raised for the last twenty years and no one gave a hang. Google the origin of that term. It is truly shocking.

WW2 seems to have been the era that made Americans feel the most proud. It did amount to enormous sacrifice on the part of the American people, and it certainly had at least the appearance of pitting the truly good against the truly evil. I say appearance, because it was many moons before the horrors of the camps motivated anyone to take drastic measures to end them.
And the ongoing business deals with nazis is a buried scandal. However, the bravery of our soldiers and the sacrifices made by our families made us proud.

People, rightly or wrongly, really loved FDR.

And Social Security and the WPA made Americans feel some connection with our government.

And there are the enormous American contributions to the arts and science.

But with the onset of the assassinations of the 1960s, the horrific and unconscionable war in Vietnam (something that the American people have yet to come to terms), our democracy and our moral fiber eroded.

Not coming to terms with the war in Vietnam has cost us dearly. It made us change our true sense of patriotism - love of country based on its goodness and acheivements - to one that used to be identified with the worst of the German reichs - "my country right or wrong".

Not coming to terms with the origins of the war in Vietnam, the lies foisted upon us by our political leadership and a press without integrity or conscience, enabled GW Bush to do the exact same thing to us again.

And the horrors and deaths we inflicted upon the Iraqi people is something that no one in political life cares to talk about. Burying what we did to the Vietnamese, the cruelty, gave us the callus on our hearts that lets us continue to shrug off continuing horrors.

And now, things are coming home to roost.
Surveillance is everywhere. And they don't care if we know about it. There is nothing we can do about it. They have made us afraid of "the enemy", and so we shut up.

And the government is clearly operating in the interests of the few. And they don't care if we know about it. There is nothing we can do about it. We have no opposition party or vocal candidates.

Happy small hill in the middle of the week day. I have housewife duties for the next hour, getting my 13 year-old out of bed, fed and off to school, then it's try to get my current little proj a little close to completion (well, it's not so little, and not so close really either ;-).

May today be the day these idiots get something done in D.C., but I ain't holding my breath.

Of course, this "deal" will be something that will just kick the can down the road and like, last year, we will either spend the holiday week talking about this again, or they may be able to push this off until the end of January.

Their plan was expected to reinstate government spending through mid-January and extend the debt limit through early February. Their plan also called for lawmakers to work toward agreement on an overarching budget by Dec. 13, as well as stricter income verification for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

House aides suggested that the House could work to bring up an agreement as blessed by the Senate leadership, which House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would pass with both Democratic and Republican votes.

Cunning Plans

Maybe next time the opening offer won't be "hey, how about we give you everything you want."

by Atrios at 12:27
105 Comments

Like others have said, this is what you get believing you are somehow magically going to turn people who wouldn't piss on you if your heart were on fire into political compatriots who will compromise with you for the good of the nation. What a dope.

As the French lawyer and diplomat Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre (1753-1821) once observed, "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite." ("Every nation gets the government it deserves.") And given this present level of obliviousness and detachment from reality, nobody deserves this more than those Americans who clearly cherish their right to be both stupid and ignorant.

This obviously presents a problem for the rest of us who find ourselves caught up in this mess as unwilling passengers on the political equivalent of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

Incidentally, BTD, since it's 11:03 a.m. Wednesday out here on Guam, I think that means it's actually Tuesday over there on the U.S. eastern seaboard. Are you working too hard and losing track of the days?
;-D

But at least the GOP is finally going down, down, down. I'm sure the goons on CNN will point to their countdown clock and pontificate some more about who's winning.

In the meantime, I wonder what Janet Yellen is doing tonight. Other than drinking shots to buck herself up for the deluge.

Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed the US economy to the brink on Tuesday night when they turned against a proposal by their party leadership that would have reopened the government and lifted the debt ceiling, just over 24 hours before the country's borrowing limit expires.

The failure by John Boehner, the House speaker, to persuade elements within his own Republican caucus to back a bill designed to placate conservatives underscored the severity of the political crisis facing Washington.

Boehner's bill, which was drafted after Tea Party-backed members of the House voiced their opposition to a deal forged between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, had been expected to be put to a vote on Tuesday night. But it was pulled at the last minute after the House GOP leadership realised that the bill, opposed by Democrats, did not even have the support of sufficient Republicans to pass.

[snip]

The Republican leadership came up with various versions of the legislation through the day as they tried to settle on a formula that would satisfy conservatives. Boehner acceded to rightwing demands to drop the medical device tax provision, which was seen as benefiting only health equipment manufacturers, and retained the proposal to cut healthcare subsidies from congressional and White House staff, which amounted to an $18,000-a-year pay cut for most employees. The resolution got as far as being published on the House rules committee website.

But the plan collapsed in the face of sustained conservative opposition. Heritage Action, a conservative group that holds Republican candidates accountable to Tea Party-backed causes, announced that it would mark down Republicans who voted in favour of the resolution. Support from House Republicans melted away and Boehner postponed the vote.

E.F.F.
The Government Shutdown is Great News For Those Who Don't Want NSA Accountability

Before the shutdown, there were two allegedly "independent" investigations into NSA spying activities taking place--one through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and one through the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). We have heavily criticized these committees for their close ties to the White House and DNI, the same bodies in charge of the NSA, but certainly some investigation is better than nothing.

Now it seems both unpaid boards will be scaling back or shutting down operations even though they are not required to by the shutdown.

The DNI "review group," has decided to shutdown operations because its underlying staff is furloughed. According to an unnamed source in Politico, the five-member panel was still set to meet this week until one of its members--former CIA deputy director Michael Morrell--declined to participate. (Politico needed a source to tell them when the review group was meeting because the DNI exempted the group from US transparency rules that state these types of groups must tell the public when they are meeting.)

Morrell curiously said his job in providing oversight is "a lot less important" than work being done by intelligence workers who are furloughed. Morrell explained, "I simply thought that it was inappropriate for our group to continue working while the vast majority of the men and women of the intelligence community are being forced to remain off the job."  Not off the job: the NSA employees conducting surveillance of US phone records, US internet traffic, and other internet activity of people who are considered 51% foreign.

While spying continues, the NSA's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office has been completely shuttered. The office posted a message on its website saying that it would not be processing any FOIA requests during the shutdown. This is especially troubling given that the NSA's FOIA caseload has increased a remarkable 1054% since the Edward Snowden stories started breaking in June.

"This is my baby, man," Morris told a group of reporters. "It's more than just a car. I didn't grow up with a lot. This helps me remember where I come from and where I'm going."

NYT:

By Tuesday afternoon, House Republican leaders were back with a new proposal to finance the government through Dec. 15, extend the debt ceiling into February and deprive not only lawmakers but all their staff members of employer assistance to buy their health care. By extending that provision to staff members, Republican leaders hoped to appeal to the party's far-right flank, but the proposal angered more moderate Republicans and was not enough for the conservative hard core.