This is from the National Congress of American Indians, and it makes their point pretty plainly. (via) Open thread.
One of These Things is Not Like the OtherPost + Comments (169)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 169 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
This is from the National Congress of American Indians, and it makes their point pretty plainly. (via) Open thread.
One of These Things is Not Like the OtherPost + Comments (169)
by Kay| 90 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
More bipartisan gridlock and gamesmanship, obviously:
Late on the night of Sept. 30, with the federal government just hours away from shutting down, House Republicans quietly made a small change to the House rules that blocked a potential avenue for ending the shutdown.
“What people don’t know is that they rigged the rules of the House to keep the government shut down,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, told TPM in an interview. “This is a blatant effort to make sure that the Senate bill did not come up for a vote.”
With less than two hours to midnight and shutdown, Speaker John Boehner’s latest plan emerged. House Republicans would “insist” on their latest spending bill, including the anti-Obamacare provision, and request a conference with the Senate to resolve the two chambers’ differences.
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. But previously, House Republicans had made a small but hugely consequential move to block them from doing it.
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.
“I’ve never seen this rule used. I’m not even sure they were certain we would have found it,” a House Democratic aide told TPM. “This was an overabundance of caution on their part. ‘We’ve got to find every single crack in the dam that water can get through and plug it.'”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that before,” Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told TPM. Republican staff on the House Rules Committee did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
How many ordinary people are laid off, losing money or going without Head Start or WIC as a result of this stunt, again?
Why is it these Tea Party clowns only work this hard when they’re destroying something?
May be difficult to blame this on Both SidesPost + Comments (90)
by David Anderson| 100 Comments
This post is in: Because of wow., Crazification Factor, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Bring On The Meteor
Why Boehner is moving fast: Heritage Action, RedState surprisingly okay w/ short-term debt-limit hike, so he can’t dawdle…
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 10, 2013
Robert Costa has been one of my go to sources for Speaker to the Teabaggers role, although I suspect that his sources are closer to the leadership loyalist faction than the suicide club of the House GOP, but when Red State has an effective veto on policy, I just want to drink.
This post is in: Open Threads
Via TPM, it seems this happened on Morning Joe:
”
conservative historian[former intellectual]* Niall Ferguson joined Scarborough to pile on Krugman. Ferguson said that Krugman lacks “humility, honesty and civility.”
“And there’s no accountability,” Ferguson said. “No one seems to edit that blog at the New York Times. And it’s time that somebody called him out. People are afraid of him. I’m not.”
Too much to do today to go all John Foster Dulles on Harvard’s Folly, but I can’t leave this without noting that if Niall’s honestly not scared of Krugman (he is), he should be.
Cases in point here and here and here and here. This isn’t a fair fight. Ferguson has the debate chops and the accent, but nothing else. Krugman has both technical skill and the willingness to engage actual data to gut the Harvard Bully Boy on the actual merits of the argument. That Ferguson plays better on TV is his reason for being, but not a recommendation. (BTW — for a devastating synoptic view of Ferguson’s style and (lack of) substance — and his pure nastiness in the service of the 1%, check out this overview.)
The bottom line: how you know you’re winning? When they talk smack about you from a very, very safe distance.
PS: I also love the Scarborough line about some unnamed editor claiming Krugman’s column is a weekly nightmare for the paper. I suppose it could be true, in the sense that someone might have said that to our Joe. I kinda doubt it, but that’s the thing w. anonymous quotes.
But (a) this is how bubbles seal themselves — Scarborough’s trying to persuade himself (and viewers) that Krugman is wrong because he’s difficult…which leads to you know where. And (b) if Joe is telling the truth, then it’s reasonable to ask the question: what so terrifying Timesfolk about Krugman’s work? Here’s one possible answer. It may be that Krugman’s writing discomforts the comfortable in ways that the NYT might find inconvenient. People in power don’t like being called out; Krugman does that frequently on a very big stage. That might inconvenience fellow cast members. (Beat that metaphor to death, why don’t you? — ed.) Those colleagues might grumble…and Joe Scarborough would run after that parked car like a loping hound.
In any event, I like anyone who makes the right enemies. Krugman does, in spades.
*fix’t
Image: Auguste Delacroix, Shellfishers frightened by the tide, before 1868.
Very Serious Person Niall Ferguson Haz A SadPost + Comments (120)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Kochsuckers, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Assholes
The Washington Post says that “Thursday is shaping up to be a critical day for any possible breakthroughs, with a series of key huddles of Republicans and meetings at the White House.”
Just possibly, the not-completely-insane members of the GOP might be looking for some disposable figurehead to blame for getting them into a battle it now seems they won’t win. Dana Milbank interviews “The shutdown’s enforcer-in-chief“:
“Obama will feel pain,” Michael Needham predicted.
Needham looked as though he were angry enough to administer the pain himself. The 31-year-old chief executive of the conservative group Heritage Action gripped his coffee cup tightly with both hands as he spoke to reporters over breakfast Wednesday. When he reached for his water glass, there was a slight tremor in his hand.
But the ones feeling the pain from Needham right now are Republicans. His group, funded by the Koch brothers and anonymous donors, is the one that joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to rally opposition to Obamacare this summer. Together, Cruz and Heritage Action deserve much of the credit for forcing the government shutdown — and Heritage is threatening to use its considerable war chest against Republicans who waver in the effort to abolish the nation’s health-care law….
At the moment, Needham is fighting alongside Republicans. But Heritage Action’s broader goal is to turn the GOP into a “libertarian populist” party freed from Wall Street and K Street. Slate’s John Dickerson asked whether Needham was trying to force a confrontation to induce a “massive crackup of the old order” in the GOP.
“I’m pretty optimistic that it’s going to happen and it’s going to happen pretty soon,” Needham said.
Perhaps. But Needham won’t say who’s contributing to his populist movement or how much, other than the $500,000 from the Kochs. “The laws in this country are such that 501(c)(4)s don’t disclose their donors,” he told the reporters. “If you have a problem with that, you should change the laws.”…
And there’s this, from the AtlanticWire:
Koch Industries, umbrella corporate behemoth for the conservative Koch brothers, sent a letter to members of the Senate on Wednesday disavowing any rumored positions on shutting down the government over the president’s health care law. Even for the controversial and unloved Kochs, it seems, the Republican plan to force a shutdown over Obamacare went too far…
What the Koch letter says is not that the company doesn’t support the push to defund or block Obamacare. (This interesting analysis of why they support stopping the law is worth a read.) It simply attempts to put boundaries on the company’s involvement in those efforts: no lobbying, no support for blocking funding to stop Obamacare. And this applies to Koch Industries — not the Koch brothers who are the ones that cut the checks to Heritage Action and Generation Opportunity.
But the point is taken. Even the deeply unpopular Koch brothers think being associated with the shutdown is risky. And that says more than the letter itself.
Nice outcome for Boehner, Cantor, Ryan — even Cruz and the Koch brothers — if the “stupid, damaging” shutdown can be blamed on a thirty-something staffer who can disappear into the damp depths of wingnut welfare until the public outrage blows over. Mike Needham, an Ed Meese for a new generation!
Open Thread: GOP Casting for A Scapegoat?Post + Comments (165)
This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity
Ed at Gin & Tacos highlights a bit of history I hadn’t seen mentioned elsewhere:
One of the most impressive aspects of modern conservatism is how completely a-historical the movement and its ideology have become. Most humans tend to remember things that happened in the past; some even learn from the experience. American conservatives, conversely, not only prove staggeringly ignorant of historical details but they also have a habit of proposing ideas that have failed spectacularly in the past as though they are new and untested.
Let’s deregulate capitalism and let the free market govern us! We tried that during the Industrial Revolution; try Googling “robber barons.” Let’s engage in regime change and nation-building! We won the Vietnam War, didn’t we? Tax cuts produce runaway economic growth! Except for when they don’t. And now we’re hearing the backbenchers who are morons even by the standards of House Republicans proposing that defaulting on debt obligations really won’t be such a big deal. As shocking as this will be for a group of people with the long-term memory of goldfish, we tried that once as well. It ended up being expensive. Really, really expensive. ..
What was that quote about doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results?
This post is in: Open Threads
Big game tonight, and everyone in the region is glued to the tv to see if the Buccos can go to the NLCS for the first time in decades.