The Prussians are emerging from the Bois de Paris…
Is tonight the end of freedumb in America?
Or is it the start of people being able to buy standardized, subsudized private insurance on transparent marketplaces.
I report, you decide.
Reader Interactions
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Violet
It’s the loss of PandaCam. Twitter haz a sad.
Jerzy Russian
Now you show us clips of the Gipper? Have you no decency sir?
Karen in GA
I was going to post that video on FB and say “Happy Obamacare!” But fuck it. I can’t listen to anyone talking about how giving people access to health care, helping to prevent suffering, is somehow evil and destructive.
Fuck these people with a rusty pitchfork. If they’re dead, dig them up and fuck them with the shovel that dug them up, and then fuck them again with a rusty pitchfork.
Villago Delenda Est
American ‘conservatives’ have always been pretty much in the John Stuart Mill mode. Or, rather, in the mode spoken of by John Stuart Mill.
This is no more obvious than tonight.
Spaghetti Lee
So…you all have your assignments for which Death Panel you’ll help run tomorrow, right? Obama sent me mine months ago, but I just thought I’d check.
srv
If America hadn’t turned away from Reagan, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
xenos
Of course, the Prussians invented the idea of socialized health insurance…
David Koch
@Karen in GA:
You mean you didn’t join self described “true progressives”, who locked arms with criminal Grover Norquist and Fox News, and called on congress to “kill the bill”?
Ryan
If at first, you don’t succeed, try 46 more times and then take the ball and go home when you still don’t get your way.
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. Perhaps we should sell the panda to some country better able to run a zoo.
David Koch
Chuck Todd is near tears cuz Reid didn’t bail Boehner out
Cacti
I support delaying Congressional salaries for 1-year.
xenos
@xenos: And on that thought, the German empire somehow, about 40 years after introducing socialized health care, had a significantly larger population of healthy young men to send off to war against the French, and would have walked all over them if not for the English marching millions of sickly working class boys off to act as cannon fodder.
And after winning the war, the French were unable to staff up a big enough army to stop the Germans the next time around. In the 20th century, at least, there was a significant strategic advantage to supporting the public health and welfare. Meanwhile, conservative power in France left the country too weak to defend itself.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Karen in GA: Jesus must be rolling over in His grave right now as the party He started in 30 AD to provide free health care has completely trampled His legacy.
trollhattan
I recall a time
twenty-five minutes ago
when my freedom was free
and now
I must have health insurance.
Curses!
PsiFighter37
@David Koch: Whatever. Useless fucking prick will still be getting paid while offering absolutely zero worthwhile analysis on the situation.
Jerzy Russian
@Karen in GA:
I like how you have most of the bases covered here.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@xenos:
This is a misrepresentation of the First World War. Actually several of them but I’ll limit myself to saying that the French actually stopped the Germans pretty much by themselves. It was more than a year after the war started before the BEF amounted to enough of a fighting force to really make a difference. The British probably deserve the lion’s share of the credit for eventually winning the war, but the French were overwhelmingly responsible for the equally important task of not losing it.
CaseyL
So… what happens now? The House keeps sending dead gophers to the Senate, and the Senate keeps sending them back?
Over and over? Until we hit the debt ceiling in 2 weeks, at which point the whole economy goes blooey?
Karen in GA
@David Koch:
I’m afraid not. Although I can see how tempting it would be to side with the lovely Mr. Norquist, because hey, Grover Norquist, amirite?
I never understood the “kill the bill” mindset. The ACA doesn’t make all of the gains I’d like, but I can’t name a single person to the left of Paul Ryan who doesn’t feel the same way. But getting rid of lifetime caps on coverage, putting kids on parents’ coverage until age 26, and health insurance that’s actually affordable for many people is a hell of a lot better than what we had.
I would have loved a single-payer system that eliminated for-profit insurance companies entirely, but I know what country I live in, and I know there was no way that was going to happen. But still, a lot of Americans are better off now than they were. I’m sure as hell not going to argue that their well-being is less important than my ideals.
YellowJournalism
Woohoo! A hashtag we can all can get behind: #nobudgetnopants
(Although, I think John got on this a long time ago.)
lahke
They’re upping the ante. Reagan just worried about your freedom, my local Repub Congressional candidate is assuring us that the ACA will strip his children of 10 years of life expectancy, “and yours too!” That’s Mike Stopa, if you’re looking for someone to vote against in the 5th Congressional district in MA.
On the other hand, the other repub on the panel (Tom Tierney) assured us that we didn’t need that stupid Obamacare because we just needed to have Medicare for everyone. We just sat there stupified–did he realize that he’d just endorsed single payer? But then he told us to send him down to that Repub caucus and he’d talk sense into John Boehner, “a good man” who’s surrounded by some bad people. I’m afraid he mostly came across as senile.
The good news–most of the dems were for single payer. Let’s all get out and push the Overton window back to the left!!
scav
Google Doodle’s a bit ironic. They should redirect to a 404.
Hill Dweller
After refusing to participate in a budget conference since April, the House wingnuts think voting for a conference an hour after the shutdown happened will help them. They are both vile and stupid.
I’m actually interested to see how the Beltway tries to spin the shutdown. It’s obvious a clean CR would have passed the House if Boehner had allowed a vote. Dems had already compromised by keeping the sequesters cuts in the CR. Chuck Todd even admitted to not seeing an endgame for Republicans.
Anne Laurie
Great title, Mr. Mayhew… but I’m not getting out of the boat!*
(i.e., clicking on that video)
? Martin
@CaseyL: They’ll start bundling the debt limit and the CR together and trying to get the same concessions for them. I think they miscalculate Reid and Obama over this. I think the Dems are in their Jeb Bartlett place now.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch:
Oh, my heart just pumps buttermilk for Chuckles the Toddler/Toad.
Spaghetti Lee
@? Martin:
I think the Dems are in their Jeb Bartlett place now.
I never watched The West Wing. Is that a good place or a bad place?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Hill Dweller: Chuck Todd is a Republican tool so he’s going to do his best to put a good face on it for Republicans. But I imagine he’s going to be smoking a lot more dope than the copious amounts he’s already notorious for.
RaflW
This, ultimately, is how we’re getting rolled in all this:
Chris
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Really? I remember reading (and it was a French book) that British reinforcements had made a meaningful difference in holding the line at the Marne in 1914.
CaseyL
@? Martin: Right. So this shit continues for at least 2 weeks.
Well. If Obama does have an end game, I guess we’re gonna find out what it is.
@RaflW: Doubtful. I think that possibility came and went. I think the Dems are sufficiently furious to tell the GOP to go shit in the ocean for anything other than a clean CR.
Suffern ACE
@CaseyL: on his way to the senate, the gopher keeps erasing the language that cuts off his health insurance.
Redshift
A friend who’s a government contractor posted a mild rant on Facebook about these bozos and how it’s affecting him personally, and since he post a lot of liberal stuff, most of his friends were behind him, but there was this one guy who posted “I’m sick of seeing my taxes go up! I pay my fair share, and I don’t want to pay anymore here.” Others pointed out that taxes are at the lowest level in decades, and he responded with “I’m sick of seeing my taxes go up!”
That’s the teabagger mentality. He knows his taxes have gone up, and they’re too high. He doesn’t even respond to anyone who points out that it’s obviously false, and that the vast majority of taxes don’t go to the “Democratic social programs” he also bitches about. Just keeps robotically repeating what he knows to be true.
Frankly, though I know about it intellectually, and I see it all the time from professional wingnuts, it’s still a little bizarre to see it in action.
RaflW
So the London market opens in two hours. Will they give a shit?
Hill Dweller
A shit-faced John Boehner is about to slur for the cameras.
BillinGlendaleCA
@scav: My thought on seeing the doodle was, can’t visit that.
Haydnseek
@Violet: The wingnuts are already blaming pandacamgate on the black parts of the panda.
Redshift
@RaflW: Grover’s being a particular ass here. If all they wanted was the sequester caps, the House would have approved the first Senate CR. They want the sequester caps (which they’re pretending are just a fact of life and not something Republicans “get” in the deal) and the Obamacare delay.
Spaghetti Lee
@CaseyL:
The optimistic answer is that the GOP overestimates America’s tolerance for their bullshit, the shutdown becomes a dead weight around their neck, and after a week or two of getting yelled at by constituents, 25-30 Republicans decide to bite the bullet and pass a clean CR with the Democrats. This causes the Tea Party to start a new hunt for infidels, mean words are hurled, open factional war breaks out, and they can’t get their shit together in time to put up a front against raising the debt limit.
The pessimistic answer is that they hold the line for two weeks, the nutjobs retain enough power to fuck with the debt limit, and Obama (who has also pledged repeatedly to not negotiate when it comes to the debt limit) finds some currently-unknown way to sidestep them and get the limit raised.
I’d say whatever happens will be closer to number one than number two, but I’m not betting the farm on that.
TriassicSands
I strongly support Republican efforts to defund ObamaHitlerStalinLeninMaoCare. But so far their tactics have been badly misguided. In order to achieve the end I hope they achieve, they shouldn’t take their ball and go home, that’s immature. Instead, and countless 2-year-olds have demonstrated the value of this approach, they should collectively hold their breath until Obama caves in, as he surely must. I’m positive that after five minutes the real problem with the PPACA will be a thing of the past.
Jeremy
@RaflW: Well it doesn’t really matter because the sequester can’t really be dealt with until a long term budget deal is reached. The CR only lasts for 2 months so we can be in this same situation in December.
Chris
@Redshift:
I always thought these folks were just people who were moving up in the world, and as the amount of money they earn increases, their taxes increase mildly too… and they assume it’s Dem Damn Democrats raising more and more taxes, rather than just them changing tax brackets.
Spaghetti Lee
@Haydnseek:
“Pandas! They just lay around and eat bamboo all day. Probably on welfare. And they’re from China, too! I say, cut ’em up and eat them!”
-Rush Limbaugh, tomorrow.
Suffern ACE
@RaflW: yeah. 46 times they vote to defund Obamacare (aka, roll back the tax increase on wealthy folk) or eliminate the creaping evil of socialized medicine.
I’m thinking that Grover isn’t really controlling the narrative here.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift: that’s why I think there should be a spot on the tax return form where everyone calculates what their effective income tax rate was for the year. It would be easy, wouldn’t it? And Just about everyone would be caught by surprise about how low it turned out to be. Which is also the reason why that’s NOT part of the form. It’s more convenient to keep people in the dark and poke them with pointy sticks instead.
Hill Dweller
That fount of knowledge, Luke Russert, said the House would eventually pass a clean CR within the next 4 days.
CaseyL
@Spaghetti Lee: The GOP wants the country to crash and burn. Either because they figure they’ll emerge from the ashes on top (“We have all the guns!”) or because they just want to destroy everything for shits and giggles. There’s no incentive for them to stop what they’re doing.
@Hill Dweller: That moron? OK, we are fucked.
Spaghetti Lee
@Hill Dweller:
Well, I hope Luke Russert is right, and-wow. That sentence felt weird.
Roger Moore
@Suffern ACE:
As a practical matter, we’re only leasing the pandas from China anyway. They charge something like $1 million/year, and we have to give them back after a set period. Oh, and all the baby pandas have to go back to China, too.
cckids
@scav: No lie. I keep thinking about all the tourists, so many of them from Europe, I see every time I go to any of the Western national parks. Their vacations are just screwed. And we look like incompetent morons to the world.
John O
@Redshift:
I posted that viral video of the wealth gap on FB, and none of my wingnut FB friends even bothered to take a crack at it.
We are living in interesting times.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I’m still of the mind that von Moltke’s variation from the Schlieffen plan- sending three corps and a cavalry division east to fight the poorly armed and poorly led Russians- was key to the outcome of the Battle of the Marne. Where I think xenos has it exactly right, though, is that the Brits did contribute in the Race to the Sea by rushing in unhealthy, under-trained troops to entrench from the end of the French lines to the Channel, and those Tommys were little more than cannon fodder for the next 4 years..
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: are you still filling out your tax forms by hand (shudders).
Spaghetti Lee
@CaseyL:
Oh sure, a lot of them do. But even psychopaths get tired, or distracted, or make tactical errors.
Starting tomorrow, it should be incumbent on all non-crazies to make their opinion known about this BS. Especially if you live in a district rep’d by an establishment Republican. (And honestly, I know we all hate them, but Peter King and Charlie Dent could use a little backslapping. Carrot and stick, and all that. It’s not like you have to actually vote for the guys.)
Roger Moore
@Karen in GA:
What if we used a backhoe to dig them up? Should we use that to fuck them before the rusty pitchfork, or should we get a shovel?
CaseyL
@Spaghetti Lee: I am fortunate, in that my Rep and both my Senators are Dems (I live in the People’s State of Seattle). I’d love to tear a Gooper a new asshole, but since I’m not a constituent of any, they wouldn’t listen to me.
ETA: Holy FSM! TBogg is back! He couldn’t take it anymore, he found a new place to blog from!! Here’s where he’s at now:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/01/beach-blanket-boredom/#.UkpX6go9LWg.twitter
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: what if the lease is contingent on the lessee maintaining at least an aa- bond rating?
FlipYrWhig
@Suffern ACE: used to do them in Excel and then hand-write the numbers onto the form. Then my spouse took over. So I still picture it the olde-timey way, with an inkhorn and a spermaceti candle.
Spaghetti Lee
@CaseyL:
I’ve got Duckworth/Durbin/Kirk. The first two are on the good guys’ side, obviously, and…I don’t know, yelling at Mark Kirk is like yelling at a beige lampshade. I just can’t work up the passion. ‘Sides, the Senate isn’t the problem right now.
askew
Whoever was in charge of healthcare.gov’s testing did a piss poor job as you can’t even register for an account because they forgot to populate the security questions. Seriously, that is a dumb mistake and should have been caught ages ago during testing.
Karen in GA
@Roger Moore: Backhoe works. Or, barring that, an auger.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
They did. The 1914 era BEF wasn’t very large, but they were a professional army made of long-service troops, many of whom were veterans of colonial wars. Their standard of training was the highest of any of the armies at that stage of the war, so they fought a lot better than their raw numbers would suggest.
Alison
@Spaghetti Lee: Something that really confuses me…
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll497.xml
Duckworth voted for the bill with repeal on Saturday….??? But yet has been tweeting about how bad the Tea Party reps are…
I don’t get it.
Suffern ACE
@Alison: it seems like a different set of Dems are voting for the republican bill each time. Not certain why that is. There’s probably some kind of legislative hokey poker that Nancy gets to play.
Spaghetti Lee
@Alison:
I’m not sure, actually. Duckworth’s not the most liberal Dem by any means, but I wouldn’t have expected that vote. I’ll investigate tomorrow, and for now I’ll assume it’s weird procedural BS and assume that what she’s actually saying on Twitter is more accurate of her feelings.
FlipYrWhig
@Alison: something funky with those results, agreed. Isn’t Sinema from AZ supposed to be a battling liberal? And yet she shows up on that roll call too. Same for Jerry McNerney.
Alison
@FlipYrWhig: @Spaghetti Lee: Yeah, I mean…maybe there’s some weird formula to it, but it still made me wonder…
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Chris: It was meaningful but keep in mind that the BEF at the time of the First Battle of the Marne totaled four infantry divisions and one cavalry division. (III Corps, with two more infantry divisions was forming up but not ready at that point.) The French Army at the time consisted of about 85 divisions. That should provide some perspective on who did most of the fighting.
RaflW
@CaseyL:
Sorry, no. The “clean CR” incorporates the sequester into the baseline, exactly as Grover wants.
Any budget resotration to pre-sequester after the “clean” CR will be spun as a massive Democrat budget busting bloto-matic horror of all horrors.
Roger Moore
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
You need to spend more time looking at logistics. Once WWI armies got past their railroad lines, their supply chain was awful, and it took too long to build new rail to affect the outcome of an ongoing battle. The faster they marched, the more they outran their supplies. The deeper into France the German army got, the further they were from their supply dumps and the harder a time they had getting food and ammunition. The reason they didn’t commit more troops was because they knew well in advance that they couldn’t support that many troops that far from base. They were severely overstretched by the Battle of the Marne, and their need to retreat was as much for logistics as for tactics.
That kind of logistical overstretch was by no means limited to WWII. The same thing happened to the Allies in 1944 after the Battle of Normandy and Operation Bagration. In both cases, they had substantially destroyed the German army groups in front of them and could advance nearly unopposed, but they were limited to a few hundred miles of advance before they simply ran out of supplies. The odd slowing of the tempo in the Autumn of 1944 was because the Allied needed to rebuild their transportation networks to supply the armies that had made such big advances before they could start moving again.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): The key to the outcome of the Battle of the Marne was that the German plans inherently tried to do too much. The troops sent to the east wouldn’t have done them a whole lot of good in France because the logistical system was already overburdened with the divisions that were there. There wasn’t any way to square the circle they had drawn for themselves.
The constant theme of German military operations in the 20th century was overreach, muddled strategic thinking, and poor logistics planning. That they are somehow considered a bunch of military geniuses is a combination of a ridiculous amount of luck in May, 1940 and the fact that they really were the masters of the romantic side of military science: tactics and operational thinking. The really boring stuff, like logistics and intelligence, was beyond them.
This is the conventional wisdom. It’s also just flat out wrong. They were cannon fodder on July 1, 1916 when their army was almost entirely made up of green troops that had never seen combat and people seem to think that date, along with some bad decisions before Passchendaele, represents the entirety of the British military experience during the war. In fact, they went through some rather astounding tactical and technological innovations.
Over time they came to accept Henry Rawlinson’s bite and hold approach. They also managed to mobilize the kind of artillery support that Western Front offensives demanded. It was an ugly, deadly learning process but that’s always true in war. By the time of Third Ypres they had the tactics down. What turned that into such morass was forgetting that they needed to avoid launching attacks in the mud and rain. That really was two different battles: in dry weather, when the British took the time to resite their artillery they were quite successful. When they attacked through the mud without adequate protection, they ended up in disaster.
There has been a tremendous revolution in WWI scholarship over the last 25 years, to which the conventional wisdom has remained stubbornly impervious. I recommend the work of Paddy Griffiths (particularly Battle Tactics on the Western Front), Robin Wilson and Trevor Prior if you are interested in this. And Bryn Hammond’s Cambrai 1917: The Myth of the First Great Tank Battle is an outstanding look at some of the ideas the British Army put into practice.
? Martin
@Spaghetti Lee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HZOYoXY5Bs
You decide.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, I understand this, but three fully supplied corps on the right flank means spreading out the use of ammo at Mons, shortening that engagement, which would also save food for both the German troops and their horses and mules. As it went, though, the four German corps that were engaged there used up their supplies and went limping down to the Marne- where they sputtered out.
Redshift
@Chris: My working assumption is that almost nobody has any idea what they pay in taxes or how it changes from year to year, and that people who bitch about paying too much and their taxes going up just look at their tax return every year and say to themselves “that’s unfair and outrageous!”
If you buy into the view that the wingnuts are selling that most tax money is wasted, then you’ll always think your taxes are too high. If you’re a selfish IGMFY type who thinks he shouldn’t have to pay for anything that doesn’t benefit him personally, no matter how much you may have benefited in the past or even right now, then you’ll always be sure your taxes are too high.
I’ve never run into anyone who could back it up with real numbers when challenged. You’ll always hear things like “paying 51% of my income,” (or something like that) which just happens to be what Rush Limbaugh tells them they’re paying.
Yatsuno
@Hill Dweller:
Frig. Now I’m out until at least Thanksgiving.
xenos
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Thanks for the corrections! Are you back from China, by the way?
I am not as well-read on the subject as I ought to be, but what really struck me (among a number of other things) from reading Paxton’s history of the Vichy government was that the French, as a result of their losses in WWI, had a real manpower disadvantage compared to the Germans, and that the conservative wing in the French government had really limited the development of a decent health care financing system (at least compared to the Germans) in the intervening years. Then, when the Germans took over, the Vichyites spent the war period dismantling public educations, settling ideological scores with liberals and lefties (including hunting down and deporting one of Dreyfus’ granddaughters) and reinstituting the power of a reactionary branch of the Catholic Church.
You really see a similarity to the wingnuts in the House, in that they are very eager to institute their version of political correctness and revanchism, and really do not care much about the overall health and strength of the country.
jl
“How dare you presume a failure?”
Another one of Issa’s heroic predictions comes to naught.
The government just shut down on the left coast about ten minutes ago.
No marauding cackling hysterical zombie hordes yet. I guess they will come with the political interviews on the morning news. So, what should I do? Shoot the TV in the head with garlic bullet and drive a silver stake through the radio.
Is that right? Please let me know. I have about seven hours to prepare!
Randy P
@Redshift: I had a similar conversation with a colleague about the size of government, that government sector employment has decreased under Obama and that you can check it at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. His response, “no, it’s gone up. You can check it.”
Apparently Krugman had the same conversation with Rand Paul.
I rarely bother getting into discussions about facts with these people, even verifiable obvious ones. It just leads to frustration on both sides.
Linda Featheringill
I don’t think my little family will be affected much by a federal shutdown. What I really worry about are various food assistance programs.
Botsplainer
I have a commercial client who does a lot of govt contracting work who was already on the ropes due to sequester.
This will drive him under.
CarolDuhart2
@Linda Featheringill: WIC runs out today. Thanks to the stimulus measures, regular food stamps are funded through Fiscal Year 14. Social Security will still pay (funded separately) so is VA benefits (also a separate funding system).
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/What-You-Can-and-Cant-Do-During-a-Government-Shutdown-225824691.html
tybee
@Karen in GA:
amen.
(or, Ramen, for the FSM)
Uncle Cosmo
@CaseyL: I reside in the Least Coast virgin of your domicile, MD-07 (Elijah Cummings, booyah!) & fully concur.
I have this thought of going down to the House Orifice Building & dropping off head-size heavy plastic bags with twist-ties at each Rethuglican Congresscritter’s office with a note: If you’re going to hold your breath over funding the government, do it right so we don’t have to hear it again.. But they’ve probably shut the place to tourists anyway, along with all the other national wildlife preserves…
tybee
@Roger Moore:
get the shovel.
Paul in KY
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): The French had terrible losses during WW I. I sorta give them a pass on WW II.
someofparts
freedumb ?
wonderful
from now on that is the ONLY way I will spell it
one of the many reasons I love the intertubes
and all you snarky young things at this site