Tuesday, October 01, 2013

EMOTIONAL SHUTDOWN.

Most people probably wonder what these guys are thinking, but from my perspective the shutdown is a natural consequence of a certain habit of mind that conservatives have been cultivating among their Republican homunculi for years.

Though wingnut theology goes back much further, and certain practitioners just naturally think this way and would have done so no matter when they came up, I'd put the origin of this particular wrinkle around the time of the Clinton impeachment.

You have to remember that during the Reagan era, a lot of conservatives thought the party, so to speak, would never end -- that they'd created not only an Administration but an Age, a historic era in which every citizen was taught from birth that nothing couldn't be fixed with a tax cut and the poor had no one to blame but themselves. (You can see it in the way they still invoke His holy name, especially in extremis.)

Then Clinton got in. He was a DLC trimmer and almost as bad as the Reaganauts, and you might say his victories were at least a partial tribute to Reaganism. But Clinton's yak also included some of the old Democratic equities as a point of distinction, and his lines about working hard and playing by the rules must have hit conservatives like a gut-punch -- here they'd been selling America a survival-of-the-fittest gold rush, and Clinton was giving them home and hearth -- and getting away with it!

A saner opposition would have appreciated this turnabout philosophically, as a grifter might laugh ruefully upon discovering someone had managed to grift him. Certainly some of them did. But the true believers simmered and stewed, because for them it was not just a reversal of fortune, but of their whole way of looking at the world. And when they got their chance, they came up with both the 1995 shutdown and the Lewinsky Impeachment -- kamikaze missions of the sort that make no sense unless you actually believe that God is with you, and that the seemingly unconvinced American people will follow once they realize it (which they never do).

In the Obama years these folks have been no less crazy, but much busier. As I've detailed in these pages and at the Voice, they've devoted so much time and energy to developing unflattering caricatures of the POTUS -- he's a socialist! He's a crony capitalist! He's two slurs in one! -- that they can no longer actually see what he's doing, nor why anyone would vote for him, leading to their great confusion in 2012 when their "unskewed polls" turned out to be total bullshit.

In fact they still can't understand why Obama won, and in many cases they can't even admit it -- the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has made a habit of referring to him as "President Asterisk," on the grounds that the IRS scandal proves he stole the election, and the brethren lap up this soothing alt-history.

In choosing to shut down the government, an expensive and injurious procedure, just to show how much they hate Obamacare, they're looking at two well-known survey findings -- that voters don't like Obamacare, and that they don't want to shut down the government over it -- and deciding one is very meaningful and the other is, well, skewed, based on the fairy tales they've been telling themselves for years.

They offer defenses: For example, James Poulos argues at Forbes the "pro-democracy case" for the shutdown -- that is, it's not Boehner's boys who are holding us hostage, "it’s the government that’s holding us hostage — hostage to one-time votes made in Congress for the usual farrago of not-so-idealistic reasons." The rules require that Republicans win enough votes of their own to repeal the law, as they always promise to do, but  the voters wouldn't go along with the gag, so the only thing a true pro-democrat can do is run the ship of state into a reef.

This doesn't make sense to a normal person; none of their arguments do. But they don't have to. They may as well put Because Reasons in all their column spaces. They're not trying to convince outsiders that their cause is just; they're just adding some stuff that looks like arguments to the furnishings of their Reagan Dream House to better resemble their increasingly vague memories of reality.

99 comments:

  1. PersonaAuGratin1:15 PM

    ...hostage to one-time votes made in Congress...


    We are all just hostages to the one-time Creation of the Universe by an unelected God.



    Shut it down!!

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  2. reallyaimai1:21 PM

    Admittedly he was drunk at the time so: points for remaining on his feet and being able to fix his rheumy eyes in the same direction. However, no one watching John Boehner offer the last minute compromise of a "conference" to "bring equity to Obamacare" can be other than slack jawed with admiration at this mass case of political alzheimers. Maybe I should say senility because it hasn't changed their basic personality. Literally every single thing they have said or done, as individuals or as a party, they will deny five seconds later. Daryll Issa explains that "not funding the government is a form of funding it." Ted Cruz calls the entire world Nazi appeasers and then denies having said it. Boehner's caucus has voted over and over again to defund Obamacare because its pure evil while the Republican Senators refused to permit a conference group to be appointed. And each one of them seems able to face the world and their interviewers with the smiling certainity of someone who has had an iron pole pass through some signficant frontal lobe.

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  3. M. Krebs1:30 PM

    Everything they do and say makes perfect sense in Limbaughistan. The disembodied voice of King Rush provides their daily inspiration, and they are grateful.

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  4. XeckyGilchrist1:33 PM

    Yeah, it's fun to see the Constitution-humpers claiming that a law needs to be passed multiple times to really count.

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  5. Jay B.1:35 PM

    it’s the government that’s holding us hostage — hostage to one-time votes made in Congress for the usual farrago of not-so-idealistic reasons.



    Seriously? "No fair! You only had one measly vote in the House and in the Senate and won that after 14 months of public wrangling and endless Congressional preening, then the President signed it and the Court declared it Constitutional, then you had a national election held after the vote and people still didn't vote for us in sufficient numbers — it's clear you are oppressing us!" That's the argument? That's hostage taking? These people are depressingly awful. I can't even get mad anymore. More disgusted.

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  6. Ellis_Weiner1:37 PM

    It's the unconcealed glee displayed by the GOPers as they emerged from a conference that's the tell. They have the mentality and emotional maturity of an internet troll: someone who participates in a site solely and specifically (and gleefully) to subvert and sabotage it. If, thus constituted, they can also get rich (as subsequent lobbyists, e.g.), so much the better. And if, in so doing, they get treated as figures of esteem, with big expense accounts and hot administrative assistants, that's gravy.



    But in the end they're adolescent boys, eager to idolize "heroes" (Reagan) and defy mommy ("government"). It is, after all, "the nanny state." And you'd have to be pretty stunted in your development to still derive satisfaction from rebelling against your nanny.

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  7. In choosing to shut down the government, an expensive and injurious procedure...

    It's a phoney baloney crisis.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/the-speech-obama-could-give-the-constitution-forbids-default/237977/

    But let's all focus on this invented problem, and ignore the real ones (because our real problems are the result of bipartisan agreement).
    ~

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  8. Halloween_Jack1:52 PM

    First of all, let's express wonder and joy at the fact that there's an etymology Tumblr, proving that that platform isn't just for animated porn gifs and obsessiveness over various geek fandoms.

    Also, I have to wonder about some of the vox pops in the NBC post that you linked showing lack of support for the ACA, especially this dude:

    Griffis said he doesn't have health-care insurance now because it costs too much, so he's left a hernia that runs from his navel to his rib cage and heart problems untreated.

    When enrollment begins Oct. 1, he and other uninsured Americans will be asked to go shopping for a plan in state-based exchanges that are supposed to keep premiums low and provide low-income discounts.

    Griffis doesn't plan to sign up.

    He fears health insurance would cost him up to $700 a month in premiums — or 20 percent of his income — though he conceded that was based on prices he was quoted for coverage before Obamacare.

    Those required to buy insurance under the law who opt out will pay a penalty: $95 per adult or 1 percent of their income, whichever is higher, for the first year, and rising in subsequent years.

    Underscoring some of the misinformation and confusion surrounding the rollout, Griffis said he had heard he would be fined $200 a month.

    "I can't pay that," he said. "I guess they'll have to haul me to jail."



    From his navel to his ribcage; by the endlessly-optimistic ghost of Gene Roddenberry, I did not know that such a thing was possible. You think that he might have since looked into how much it would really cost, or is he that married to the suck-it-up-and-walk-it-off mindset? And if the former, that maybe, just maybe, if and when he gets treatment, he might start asking himself the hard questions about the people who lied to him about it? Yeah, I'm a dreamer.

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  9. I remember reading, a few years ago, a theory put forward by a Wall Street Journal writer in which he posited the Republicans for years have been purposely submarining effective governance in order to create a vacuum which Big Business could then fill. He proposed the GOP did this when in office and when they were in the minority. "Preposterous," I thought at the time. Now I think it's one of the most astute political observations I've ever read.
    Let's be absolutely honest here. Republicans, for the most part, are for themselves first, thier party affiliation second and the country they profess to "serve" a distant third. The only reason Cruz et al. have ceated this latest bullshit "crisis" is to further his/their own brand with the rabid base, with an eye to running in 2016. This douchebag and his minions have effectively said "fuck you" to the country for a shot at personal ascension.
    Honestly, there are no words to express the disgust I feel for these people. What evil, mendacious, steaming turds. And that goes double for the "media" darlings of the right who exist solely to polish these turds.

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  10. Halloween_Jack1:58 PM

    Daryll Issa explains that "not funding the government is a form of funding it."


    How many Vietnamese villages did Issa burn to save them? And, by Issa's standards, was that enough? (I'm kidding, of course--Issa did his service stateside, in between stealing cars. Look up his Wikipedia article, I'm not kidding this time.)

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  11. FlipYrWhig2:11 PM

    "I'm worried that this thing deliberately set up to help my specific situation for a reasonable price won't help me and will cost too much so I won't even check" has to be one of the stupidest and, alas, most characteristic statements of contemporary American history.

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  12. What does an article about defaulting on debts have to do with Congress's ability to fund or decline to fund government programs? Or is this just an excuse to indulge in some FDL-style conspiracy mongering?

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  13. Jay B.2:22 PM

    Yeah, I agree with D. I just don't see the difference between an "invented" problem and a real one -- they are both problems and, however it was created, it fucking SUCKS for millions of Americans. I'm sure there's some distinction there that I'm missing, but in the end, they are all invented problems, aren't they?

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  14. That's the part that gets me - this Republican line about the President not negotiating with them (and cheers on picking a term that likens yourselves to a bunch of hostage takers, by the way). Did you guys completely forget the last three years? The whole act is a compromise - it was supposed to be universal Medicare, but we couldn't have that because socialized medicine ARGLEBARGLE. And then we spent that whole awful summer hashing over every inane objection you jerks could come up with, resulting in more compromise - remember the exemption to birth control coverage for religious institutions? Of course not, you were too busy screaming "tyranny" because you didn't get exactly what you wanted.


    I guess I do have a little anger left.

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  15. tigrismus2:25 PM

    James Taranto has made a habit of referring to him as "President Asterisk," on the grounds that the IRS scandal proves he stole the election

    Also, he reads from a teleprompter, can't speak without making gaffes, and read "My Pet Goat" while the Constitution fell.

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  16. I don't really have the research chops for this, but it would be interesting to see a list of every objection Republicans made to the ACA, along with what compromises were offered and whether or not the GOP accepted them. It would certainly show this "The President won't work with us" claim for the lie that it is.

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  17. reallyaimai2:29 PM

    Because it might be able to be averted by the President being forced to 1) Violate some constitutional directives in order to fulfill others or 2) coining a 1 trillion dollar coin, or 3) throwing sleep powder in the eyes of congress and getting them to lift the debt ceiling by his muslimo-hypnotic eyes does not mean that an UNPRECEDENTED and extremely dangerous default on the US's debts and credit wouldn't be an actual crisis. It would be. There's nothing phony about it.


    Your other point which is that we, as a country, have a lot of problems, of course stands uncontested because its so fucking obvious. We have not fully funded our health care, education, ended all war, fed all the hungry, stopped the (actually phony and real) pension crisis but why do you think that is? Do you really think that the President and his party actually welcomes or sought this Republican intransigence? Do you think they passed a signature piece of legislation costing millions of dollars and several seats in power, and then, when the Republicans actually tried to prevent the Government from advertising and explaining the benfit thought "oh, goody, we can have another distraction from working with Iran?"

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  18. reallyaimai2:32 PM

    That's what I thought. Its like that study that shows that people believe whatever lie they heard first, regardless of the other things they may hear debunking it. Wasn't an asterisk, floating in the air, the way Doonsbury represented Bush the younger? Under an enormous, empty, cowboy hat? AS soon as I saw that Taranto thing I thought it was just a natural process by which the injured conservative psyche adopts and absorbs the insults history has thrown at it.

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  19. tigrismus2:34 PM

    One-time votes, laws, what's a little semantic disagreement between fiends?

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  20. Bizarro Mike2:42 PM

    So over at Wonkette they're having a caption contest for this photo. My favorite entry so far is CrankyLttlCamperette: "I'm telling you, Reid's email said this conference room ... Wait a minute, this is from April."

    "I'm telling you, Reid's email says this conference room...wait, this is from April."
    Read more at http://wonkette.com/530340/caption-contest-or-face-punching-contest-you-decide#R8TR3GytSqmWf5uQ.99

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  21. M. Krebs2:55 PM

    Well, the ACA only passed one vote. The House has voted to repeal it 46 times. That's 46 to 1!! It's all so unfair.

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  22. reallyaimai3:20 PM

    One of the weirdest things about this observation is that its a feature or bug of the system that no congress can tie the hands of the ones that come after. Of course they can repeal the law if they want to. All votes are "one time" until they aren't. But they have to win the battle for all the marbles to do it.

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  23. reallyaimai3:21 PM

    I felt so sorry for that guy. He's been so beaten down by a system which tells him he doesn't matter and no one gives a fuck about his suffering that he is experiencing learned helplessness. In the long run, however---if he lives that long--someone is going to come along and hold his hand and help him get health insurance.

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  24. philadelphialawyer3:22 PM

    Again, I really don't see the mystery....some of them are True Believers, they actually believe they are doing the right thing. They feel, in their guts, all the stuff that, to us, and to any reasonable and reasonably well informed person, is crazy. Obamacare looms so large in their psyche that any tactic used against it is a good one, no matter the "collateral damage." The rest of them simply fear being primaried from the right by a candidate who will say "Why didn't you support the fight against Obamacare" and be backed by the Club for Growth and the rest of the Big Money Boys, and the Tea Party legions of more True Believers.
    The first group thinks their crap actually is persuasive. Many of these folks have been raised on Limbaugh and Gingrich and Beck, and Hannity and O'Reilly and the rest of the jokers at Fox News. On all of the stuff that has been polluting the airwaves, the internet, and politics and media generally since the first shutdown and impeachment, including the notion that they, and only they, are fit to govern America and the opposition is per se illegitimate. To them, that stuff was formative. And has set in their brains. They just don't see that it is crazy and stupid.
    The second group wants to win re election. Most of them probably get that the "reasons because" are crazy and stupid, but too many of their constituents, especially in the primary, don't. And that plus Donorist Class money and Tea Party ground troops means trouble for them.
    Funny (if it weren't so sad and infuriating) in that one groups WANTS to upset the apple cart and the other group is going along with that just to get along!

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  25. Mooser3:35 PM

    I think I get it. Republicans are the Scientologists of American politics. Those poor schlemiels!

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  26. XeckyGilchrist3:37 PM

    I think the original asterisk was Bush Sr., with Quayle being just a floating feather.

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  27. XeckyGilchrist3:38 PM

    Well, yes, but they're not trying to repeal it, right? That would mean acting through ordinary legislative processes like putting up a bill and voting on it. This is just extortion, claiming that the fact that the bill passed doesn't mean anything.

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  28. Mooser3:41 PM

    FDL-style conspiracy? So he did cause The Depression?

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  29. JennOfArk3:45 PM

    The most amusing (I choose to be amused lest I puke) thing I've seen is the parade of Repukes in both House and Senate who used their 2 minutes hate at the podium to claim, over and over again, that the ACA is "unconstitutional." It's as if they've never heard of this thing called the "Supreme Court" which decides when things are or are not unconstitutional, and forgot that they asked this thing to review the ACA with an eye towards having it declared unconstitutional, and that they lost there, too.


    That having been said, fuck secession. I'm to the point that I'd like to see the red rump (perhaps we should start calling the deep south Baboonistan) of the country forced out, made to walk the plank, etc. Fuck it. I'll move somewhere sane if the sane places agree to kick the crazy motherfuckers out. Let them have their third-world hellhole with all the guns and poverty they want.

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  30. reallyaimai3:47 PM

    I thought Bush senior was represented by a waffle? No. From the wiki:

    Later, personal symbols reflecting some aspect of their character came into use. For example, during the 1980s, character Ron Headrest served as a doppelgänger forRonald Reagan and was depicted as a computer-generated artificial-intelligence, an image based on the television character Max Headroom. Members of the Bush family have been depicted as invisible. During his term as Vice President, George H. W. Bush was first depicted as completely invisible, his words emanating from a little "voice box" in the air. This was originally a reference to Bush's perceived low profile and his denials of knowledge of the Iran-Contra Affair. (In one strip, published March 20, 1988, the vice president almost materialized, but only made it to an outline before reverting to invisibility.[8])

    George W. Bush was symbolized by a Stetson hat atop the same invisible point, because he was Governor of Texas prior to his presidency (Trudeau accused him of being "all hat and no cattle", reiterating the characterization of Bush by columnist Molly Ivins). The point became a giant asterisk (a la Roger Maris) following the 2000 presidential elections and the controversy over vote-counting. Later, President Bush's hat was changed to a Roman military helmet (again, atop an asterisk) representing imperialism. Towards the end of his first term, the helmet became battered, with the gilt work starting to come off and with clumps of bristles missing from the top. By late 2008, the helmet had been dented almost beyond recognition. No symbol for Barack Obama has appeared in the strip; the May 30, 2009, strip had Obama and an aide wondering what the reason for this might be (off panel).[9]

    Other symbols include a waffle for the indecisive Bill Clinton (chosen by popular vote—the other possibility had been a flipping coin), an unexploded (but sometimes lit) bomb for the hot-tempered Newt Gingrich, a feather for the lightweight Dan Quayle and a giant groping hand for Arnold Schwarzenegger (who is addressed by other characters as "Herr Gröpenfuhrer", a reference to accusations of sexual assault against Schwarzenegger).

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  31. reallyaimai3:48 PM

    The government is holding us hostage? Oh, its pogo. "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

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  32. XeckyGilchrist3:59 PM

    Aha, thanks.

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  33. TGuerrant4:06 PM

    The red rump "Baboonistan" has made the sun rise over my dismal swamp of disillusionment.

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  34. reallyaimai4:13 PM

    Well, that was kind of my point. The whole "we only voted on it one time" thing is the sort of thing they like to say to their constituents because they can count on those mouthbreathers not to know, or to forget, that congress can repeal or change laws it doesn't like farther down the road.


    In fact, a lot of their strategies during this fight reflect the fact that they are petrified of re-engaging with the voters and with their colleagues in the Senate or House because the fact that you have to keep doing stuff over and over, and that negotiating means you open up to compromise, is scary for them. Cruz and the others specifically blocked appointment of people to the conference committee for 129 days because they wanted to make sure that some things couldn't be negotiated.

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  35. XeckyGilchrist4:19 PM

    I see. Indeed, engaging with the voters or the press really does seem to have become a boogeyman to these folks - I think of it as the Palin Principle.

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  36. Republicans, for the most part, are for themselves first, thier party
    affiliation second and the country they profess to "serve" a distant
    third.


    This is completely unfair. "Country" doesn't even make it up to third.

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  37. I'll move somewhere sane if the sane places agree to kick the crazy
    motherfuckers out. Let them have their third-world hellhole with all
    the guns and poverty they want.


    With a truly massive airlift evacuation program, I could probably get behind this. Then, once the involuntary residents are safely out of the way, and the freaks are all clutching their rifles and ammo close, we unleash Giant Mech William Tecumseh Sherman to demonstrate just how much their interpretation of the Second Amendment is really worth.


    ... Oh, okay, we can let them go their way, I suppose. Sure, they'll have the oil, but as Ken MacLeod once noted, they won't be finding much more of it with Flood geology.

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  38. LittlePig4:55 PM

    "WAR IS ALL HELL!" The deafening roar rang from the immense android as fingertips retracted to pour flaming napalm on the rifle-and-shotgun bearing crowd. Shouts of 'Wolverines!' and 'Mommy!' turned to howls of agony that soon became just the snap and crackle of brush burning out. Slowly the behemoth turned and lumbered south towards the next Tea Party stronghold. They would die as these had, unable to believe their own eyes until it was far too late...

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  39. GM522465:13 PM

    Given ifthethunder's politics (basically same as ours, unless I'm mistaken)--the debt default is what the GOP is going to try to do next. or rather, they think Obama will blink. They're wrong. He won't. (I promise to eat my hat on this thread, or at least mimic a man eating his head, if he does).

    There's serious debate about whether or not the 14th amendment solution is Constitutional. It *is,* however, important to note that the GOP did indeed invent this crisis--it is abnormal. Doesn't make it any less real, but it's important to remember: they're screwing with longstanding procedural norms on purpose, and we should not let anyone in the media get away with pretending this is "politics as usual." it's extortion, it's hostage-taking, it's neoanarchism--those are good words for this.

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  40. reallyaimai5:17 PM

    Yeah. I wanted to second that. It is so very flexible, too! We can call them "Redrumpers" instead of deadenders. We can send them to the Rumperroom. While as for Baboonistan, it stands butt and shoulders above all other possible names for the country they would found.

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  41. gocart mozart5:22 PM

    Some good news. He's back.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/category/panic-in-funland/

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  42. fraser6:12 PM

    I know lots of people who considered Bush's presidency via the Supreme Court illegitimate. None of them were as over the top as the Birthers or Taranto (nobody suggested Bush couldn't send soldiers into the field because he wasn't the real president).

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  43. BigHank536:18 PM

    "Illegitimate" is...perhaps not the right word. I don't think Bush won Florida in 2000 (and there's some good questions about Ohio in 2004) but his opponents conceded and he stood there and took the oath of office twice. He was damn well the President, regardless of whatever scummy tricks gave him the office.


    I'm perplexed as to what sort of magic words Taranto thinks will un-happen the last five years.

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  44. tigrismus6:38 PM

    Apparently it's less undoing the past and more thwarting the future: "If Obama, his campaign or his White House aides are directly implicated
    in the IRS's abuses, this will be another cancer on the presidency[like Watergate],
    remediable by resignation or impeachment." This was from May, so I hope Taranto hasn't been holding his breath...


    Aw, who am I kidding.

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  45. satch6:51 PM

    Well, by Griffis's reasoning, that "Do It Yourself Hernia Repair" manual is a real bargain...

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  46. satch6:56 PM

    Perhaps you saw the YouTube clip of Jimmy Kimmel, where their man-in-the-street- interviewer went out to Hollywood Boulevard and asked a series of passersby if they preferred "Obamacare" or the Affordable Care Act". You can probably guess which one the interviewees preferred...

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  47. KatWillow7:03 PM

    A good example of how Repugs believe their own propaganda. With them, the issues are all treated as Religious in nature. Obamacare, like abortion is EVIL, the Bible speaks against it somewhere. So it can't be allowed.

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  48. KatWillow7:10 PM

    they're screwing with longstanding procedural norms on purpose Which is why I'm certain they'll get rid of the filibuster if they ever take the Senate. Reid & other dems worrying about that while they keep the stupid filibuster is truly stupid.

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  49. M. Krebs7:24 PM

    Want to borrow some of mine?

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  50. calling all toasters7:31 PM

    No, stick with undoing the past. I'm thinking of selling Taranto a woodchipper and telling him it's a time machine.

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  51. calling all toasters7:32 PM

    Bassetastic!

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  52. Smurch7:41 PM

    Woo! and hoo, even!

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  53. M. Krebs7:45 PM

    Well, they are human beings after all, and human beings should not be forced to live in a country where they are persecuted for their beliefs. The decent thing to do is to give them the Texas to North Dakota corridor (except Austin should become a city-state). No, wait; make that Texas to South Dakota. We keep North Dakota out of respect for Canada and so that there would still be a decent highway across our country. We could even hold a fundraiser to help out with U-Haul rentals and set them up with mobile homes, used furniture, etc., you know, until they can fend for themselves.

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  54. coozledad7:49 PM

    But what was there left, but death. The Slim Jims, honey buns and moon pies had either been roasted to ashes or deliberately held up at the borders. There was scarcely a hog or cow to fuck, and they'd even eaten all the Herp B monkeys in Florida.


    Former hunting buddies might pause mid-sex to bite off an ear or nose. The whole Confederacy was starting to look like South Carolina.

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  55. Spaghetti Lee8:45 PM

    Even among pretentious "centrist" wingnuts, Poulos seems to have a special gift for taking simply ideas and inflating them into pompous and inscrutable manifestos. Basically he's saying that we're all held hostage by reality and causality. How existentialist! Man, if only smart guys like Poulos were in charge.

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  56. Spaghetti Lee8:49 PM

    What's stuck with me and kept me angry through this is how openly giddy the Republicans have been. And giddy is the right word: when they talk about how brave they feel for doing this and the camaraderie they feel it sounds like a bunch of prep school boys going on a panty raid. It's embarrassingly and obscenely juvenile. About 70% of the public is opposed to the shut down, most of them blame the Republicans for it, and they're not even pretending to care. Their self-gratification comes first. I mean, I guess I'm kind of happy that they're (hopefully) setting themselves up for failure, but seeing so much of the government reject reality and hole up in their fantasy worlds is just depressing.

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  57. AGoodQuestion9:29 PM

    What indeed? How else are bad laws to be disposed of? Repeal? Debates around repeal are the same debates: repealing a law that is a budget item is defunding it (and then taking its penniless body out back and hitting it with the shovel).

    Well yes, once a law is repealed it doesn't require any funds. While our taxes go a lot of places, and even many on the left could find spending they don't like, AFAIK we're not still paying for enforcement of the Volstead Act, which is good because I think I need a drink. But that means that defunding a law is not in fact the only way to get rid of it. You can bring it up for a vote on the basis of it being a bad law. Evidence for and against will accrue while the law is in effect. The right wants to cripple and/or kill the law before it ever goes into effect, so that the American people never know if it can work or not.

    Poulos' sub-byline reads "I write about the politics and culture of business." To be fair he doesn't say that he does it well, so I guess I can't get too mad. (lie)

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  58. AGoodQuestion9:31 PM

    I can't just jump out the window and fly where I want to go, so gravity is oppressing me. Thanks, Obama!

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  59. AGoodQuestion9:32 PM

    proving that that platform isn't just for animated porn gifs and obsessiveness over various geek fandoms.


    Wouldn't that be enough? What's wrong with you, man!

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  60. redoubt9:35 PM

    Because for some of us this will be the third time in less than twenty years we will have been furloughed. All of the reasons for doing so were invented by temper-tantrum-having Republicans, and all of them will hurt us--taxpaying Americans--financially.

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  61. AGoodQuestion10:07 PM

    I've long thought that Limbaugh and the various copycat hosts have damaged conservatives by causing their argumentative abilities to erode. Limbaugh is capable of making sensible-sounding cases for his inane positions, but because of the isolated nature of his job - no co-host, no guests who'll call him on his bullshit - he doesn't have to. And anyway he'll contradict himself in months', days', or minutes' time if that's how the partisan wind blows. So his listeners go out in the world without the ability to respond to opposing viewpoints with anything more intricate than "Fuck you you're a liberal."


    I still believe that but I wonder for whom it actually matters. You can't miss something if you don't know it exists.

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  62. Derelict10:25 PM

    The Republicans demand that the president cut off both of his hands. The fact that Obama will not come back with an off to cut off one of his hands is proof that HE is the one who's just not serious about negotiating.
    Or so the MSM tells me.
    Feh!

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  63. BigHank5312:09 AM

    They have not only started believing their own propaganda, they've forgotten that it was ever propaganda in the first place. Those people who aren't watching Fox News 24/7 are the creeping fifth column, commie-inspired moochers creeping around trying to steal the precious bodily fluids (and tax dollars) of the few and proud job creators...I don't know if it's something in the water, or quasi-religious mania, or just blue balls from being strung along by the GOP for years. They want to burn something the fuck down, and the Obama administration is right there in front of them.

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  64. DocAmazing12:42 AM

    Loosevelt caused the Deplession?

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  65. JennOfArk1:01 AM

    Shit, man, he's in no position to help you escape Atlanta...he, like me, will have his hands full trying to break out of Arkansas.

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  66. A saner opposition would have appreciated this turnabout philosophically, as a grifter might laugh ruefully upon discovering someone had managed to grift him.

    I'd characterize it as even crazier- they succeeded in pushing the Overton Window hard right, but they only resented Clinton even more for implementing their policies. Now, with President Obama putting into place the Cato-derived ACA, the fuckers are getting even more strident, even though they won.

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  67. Jon Hendry4:11 AM

    Third would be "professed coreligionists".

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  68. Jon Hendry4:16 AM

    I fear wingnuts would turn the word Baboonistan into something racist and ugly.

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  69. ADHDJ5:15 AM

    "How else are laws you think are bad for ideological reasons to be disposed of, when you can't win the war of ideas?"



    Imagine you legitimately think that an opponent's policies will fail. How zealously will you oppose them? If you're smart, you vehemently oppose policies you think will succeed, and encourage policies you think will fail. If you're stupid, you oppose everything no matter what, because fuck you, that's why.



    We're seeing plenty of both right now -- people who see that oh shit, Obamacare might actually work out well, and people who can't imagine it won't fail, because Ooga Booga.



    We're at a point where "let's try it and see" has become a radical political position. Hell if I know how that happened, but I'm going to go and blame the end of the space race. Damn you, death of science-based imperialist dick measuring contests!



    Repealing a shitty law that doesn't work is hard, I'll give him that (see Medicare Part C, which Obamacare finallyput out of its misery), but it's a hell of a lot easier than un-bombing a country...

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  70. montag27:23 AM

    Actually, they are trying--they've voted forty-odd times to do that in the House. The fact that all those forty-odd times failed because of the Constitutional process further antagonizes them and heightens their feelings of pique.



    That's why they've gone all Gen. Jack D. Ripper on the government--to them, the only way to preserve purity of essence is to do an end-run around sanity.

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  71. BadExampleMan7:41 AM

    Paging Claus von Stauffenberg. Colonel von Stauffenberg to the white courtesy phone...

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  72. montag27:49 AM

    Now, if only they would all fling themselves off a cliff, convinced that was the first step in learning to fly....

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  73. glennisw8:01 AM

    It's because they don't really want or care if they "convince" enough political leaders to support their views. They don't want consensus, they want combat - they want an identifiable enemy to rail against.



    So when the "centrists" adopt moderate Republican policies, then extremists cast moderate Republican policies as evil. This is why things that have been commonly accepted by most reasonable people - birth control, labor unions, sensible gun policy - have become "controversial." -- it's because extremists must have their foils.

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  74. glennisw8:03 AM

    We'll keep Australia...don't wanna hurt no kangaroos

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  75. glennisw8:17 AM

    So we're supposed to be convinced by a guy who's so stupid he decides he's not going to get health insurance he clearly needs, because he hasn't bothered to find out what it may cost him?

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  76. glennisw8:18 AM

    Superglue.

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  77. glennisw8:22 AM

    Take away the filter, donchaknow. By lying!

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  78. satch9:20 AM

    Staples.

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  79. whetstone10:38 AM

    IMO this is really all you need to know about the government shutdown.

    “We’re going to start picking off those priorities that are important,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), as lawmakers prepared to vote to reopen the national parks and services for veterans. “The IRS was last on the list. The EPA was right above it.”

    I've been to lots and lots of national parks all over the country and our extensive, diverse protection of them is something I'm most proud of as an American, but it's a bit lower on my list than, say, the CDC. It's hard to enjoy Yosemite when you're bleeding out from massive organ failure, or when you're a child dying of cancer.

    They're literally starting with the most fun part of the national government, and in the same breath relegating the agency that pays for it, and the agency that preserves the natural environment, to the end of the line.

    On the other hand, Marlin Stutzman is totally fine with environmental protection, as long as what's being protected is his family farm. Extra dickhead bonus points for saying your daddy got most of the subsidies.



    These people are children. Stupid, mean children.

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  80. Magatha11:29 AM

    They told us from the start just how this would end, when they get what they want and they never want it again.

    "...The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based
    community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions
    emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's
    not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an
    empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
    studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again,
    creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how
    things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will
    be left to just study what we do...."

    From the Wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community, what Ron Suskind said in his New York Times Magazine 10-17-04, the gist of which we are all so hideously familiar with. I would like to put them in the cornfield please.

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  81. I wasn't over being sequestered - what's happening now is like losing two jobs in a single year with no prospects of employment by anyone. Well, there was that one year contract gig at the Navy Yard ... but it would have collapsed on 1 October as well.

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  82. Illogical One12:36 PM

    Office Max

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  83. reallyaimai12:38 PM

    Not only are they "starting with the most fun part" but its the part that they don't actually support during regular times. No one has been a more staunch foe of national parks and set asides for the public than the Republican party. Teddy was literally the last time they thought national parks were a good idea. They threw a conniption fit when Clinton blocked off some more area for national parks at the end of his two terms. They are constantly trying to log or mine those parks and public lands out of existence.


    This gets back to the point I think I made upthread--these are the same guys who would have shot the bonus marchers despite their "veteran" status. And they'd shoot these old codgers right now and grind their bodies into soylent green if those old guys were protesting in favor of Obamacare and VA funding.

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  84. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps12:44 PM

    By "national parks" they mean war monuments. The actual parklands can go screw, but they see a whole lot of opportunity for dramatic photo-ops of them defending veterans by wrestling pedestrian barriers away from jackbooted Park Police.

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  85. BigHank531:44 PM

    Getting out of Arkansas won't be a problem. Drive a Prius and they'll clear a lane all the way to the border.

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  86. drkrick4:30 PM

    Look, they're the Faithful Remnant. The fact that the people won't elect enough of them to actually repeal the law just shows that democracy is corrupt and Extraordinary Measures must be adopted.

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  87. drkrick4:31 PM

    I thought Issa was more interested in "saving" car lots and insufficiently profitable businesses?

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  88. Yes, D Johnston. Let's just keep cheering for our right-wing President, and remain mystified why he keeps having to make decisions and compromises that hurt us, and help the big corporations he's going to make $100 million dollars from after he's done fucking us over.

    Just like Bill Clinton did.

    And here's your FDL link, boot-licker:

    http://firedoglake.com/2013/09/29/lloyd-blankfein-thanks-you-for-being-unemployed/
    ~

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  89. Another great aimai Opologist jerb:


    "Oh no, our President has J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs splooge all over his face again! HOW COULD IT HAVE GOTTEN THERE??? If only you firebaggers and emo-proggies would love him more, he wouldn't have to turn tricks on Wall Street! WAH WAH WAH!!"

    Get some new material, aimai. You're like a global warming denier, at this point. And it's just going to get worse.
    ~

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  90. reallyaimai8:02 PM

    You are decompensating. Get help.

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  91. Guest8:43 PM

    "Given ifthethunder's politics"


    ifthethunder seems to have become a lot more interested in calling Democratic voters bootlickers and collaborators than actually engaging with politics.

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  92. Guest8:45 PM

    Anyone know how to killfile someone on Disqus? Please share.

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  93. ciocia10:10 PM

    It's much simpler than that. Conservative Republicans have come to believe in the last 30 years that they own the United States, that they are entitled to create the agenda for the country. That's why Mitt and his crew were ready with fireworks in Boston Harbor last November. They have been reminded that they do not, and are trying to re-possess, as if the rest of us missed a payment on our country.

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  94. I propose that Congress declare next week to be national Don't Drink Drano week, and let the problem sort itself out.

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  95. fredfnord12:40 AM

    The excruciatingly-white lack-of-courtesy phone.

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  96. RHWombat1:54 AM

    Come to Oz: We've had working universal health insurance for 40 years, despite the efforts of the Tea Party Analogue to get rid of it. OK, Rupert got his pet ape, Toady Rabbott, elected last month, but the shit is already spraying from the fan, so he won't last.

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  97. RHWombat2:18 AM

    Please see above. (& kudos for the Newmanism)

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  98. fraser3:04 PM

    Exactly. They're the Real Americans and they're entitled to get what they want. It's not just that they don't want to compromise, they assume compromise cheats them and God of their rights.

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  99. David Ball11:05 AM

    These people are elected for a reason, and that is to serve the populace and not be tangled in a deadlock trying to outwit the other party. I am hoping these people we trusted our votes with will come up with a lasting solution for this. People and the services that should be accorded to them are compromised. In short, hostage!


    _________________________
    Yarra Glen Accommodation Packages

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