Balancing Act

And a giant sigh of relief from Big Media: the longer the shutdown and threat to the economy, the more criticism of the GOP it might have been forced to air.

With predictable lack of proportion, the national health care exchange's website problems were deemed an instant Huge Scandal. Relieved and grateful, the media put their all into covering Republican tears—shed over the public's difficulty in accessing a service the blubberers had done everything possible to deprive them of.

After all, no big website launch ever had problems until now. And never mind that 36 states were allowed to refuse participation, forcing their residents to swamp the national site. And a contractor built the site, because we can't have government performing its own functions, when "business does better."

In other stories, a former Speaker of the House dies; cue fatuous hand-wringing over The Good Old Days of Bipartisan Cooperation.

Pierce weighs in, and commenter John Rogers adds—

I knew people in the Speaker's office at that time and [Chris] Matthews was basically a gopher, regardless of what he's telling people now.

Oh, and remember Ronnie's 3x5 cards? Most of the Tip and Ronnie meetings consisted of Tip listening patiently (if exasperatedly) to Ronnie reading off his cards. The cards were necessary because Ronnie's Alzheimer's (and aberrational behavior) were already showing themselves during the FIRST campaign. Efforts of the NY Times reporter I got this from to report on it were repeatedly spiked.

Followed by Susie Madrak—

How can you not love TipnRonnie, the moral midgets who passed the legislation that, for the first time, taxed unemployment benefits -- to pay for a tax cut for the rich? Good times.

Fair and balanced as we are, there is—what else?—a mere slap on the wrist for one Master of the Universe ("And this is just one bank")—

...Jamie Dimon will never suffer any consequences for this spectacular fail, his calls will always be returned, he will always have a roof over his head, unlike the thousands or millions of people his bank stole life savings from.

As San Francisco area BART workers went on strike— largely over work rules affecting both worker and passenger safety—reaction by local Masters of The Universe said oh so much about their sense of entitlement.

But when it comes to MOUs and "creative disruption," those guys are nothings—not when Big Time is back, and on a book tour.

Philip Toledano

Here CNN touts Cheney's interview with Sanjay Gupta. With extra added sympathy for Bush (He's had heart surgery, too...)

Lest Mr. and Mrs. America be outraged, CNN was careful to note about Cheney and his hack-free device—

SPOILER ALERT: Fans of the Showtime series "Homeland" might find it a familiar scenario. The vice president in that series died after terrorists hacked his heart pacemaker and instructed it to emit a lethal jolt of electricity.

"The Losers Take Victory Lap"

For a while there, it was all placed in the hands of Ted Yoho.

But in the end, the likelihood of blowing up the world economy was a no-go for the Owners. Even if this particular episode of hostage-taking ended with the "losers" taking their victory lap, as Steve M. wrote.

And if all tantrums fail, they'll always have impeachment.

"Thanks for all the salmonella," says Tbogg to GOP, as he drops short-form snark in favor of a longer review—

Now that we can say finally goodbye to the Republican True Colors Fail-athon or, as it is known around the Ted Cruz household: Pledge Week, let's us take a gander at all the damage, Tom and Daisy-like, the GOP left in their wake...

Tbogg outlines the damage to science, including flu monitoring (CDC) and medical research (NIH), and to the economy (an estimated $24 billion taken out, in those weeks). He also goes over the names and situations of some real people hurt, like the cancer patient shut out of a last-hope clinical trial treatment.

Very soon, it will soon be as if the last three weeks never happened: the Austerity industry hasn't missed a beat, and the media is full of "Centrism" touting (just for one example: here).

Yes, let's pretend this is for real, after decades of the how far rightward the "center" has been pushed. And with an indefinite government shutdown of much anything that benefits the public via "sequestration,"even as the next shutdown cycle (or other budget tantrum) will soon be here.

Digby says of the Republicans' purge of "moderates"—

The good news is that the Democratic Party, which held on to its inappropriate reactionaries for far longer than the GOP held its liberals, will finally have a chance to at least fight to a draw on the major issues that separate the two parties. The bad news is that there is plenty of terrain for big bipartisan consensus around taking good care of the two parties' most precious assets: their billionaire benefactors. I'm afraid that's the only thing the "vital center" of our two parties agree on. And they are very much in agreement.

Meanwhile, On Earth...

As usual, nothing to see: as when record flooding in Colorado makes a great human interest story, but only some concerned locals and environmentalists seem to have noticed the concentration of oil and gas drilling in the affected area—or how many wells and contaminant holding tanks were damaged.

It took at least another week before there was a little more national coverage, other than human interest.

In other parts: nothing to see here.


Or here, even as this approaches.

Ticking Coup-Coup Clock

Oops: salmonella outbreak. The need to track its origins across state lines is a sudden reminder of why the CDC and FDA exist.

There are public servants who continue to work without pay.

This essential service certainly was kept open.

Much as the Heritage Foundation turned against its own plan after Obama adopted it, the right's project to shut down the government began when Obama was re-elected. Not only were some of the predictable players at work, the effort was coordinated by the undead Ed Meese.

Ho-hum: the Koch Bros. should soon be free to cut out the money-laundering middlemen, and just buy themselves elections outright.

Digby and Sam Seder, on the Republicans winning their war against the rest of us. The GOPs line about "job creators" is certainly true for one group: right-wing propagandist jobs are being created by grotesquely rich funders. Sam noted that Republicans used to be people who don't want to pay taxes; now, there is a such a huge industry making money by pushing fear narratives, and the payoffs are too great for this to stop.

As Digby added, "it's working for them": Dems accepted the sequester budget, and have already capitulated over the new continuing resolution—even as the GOP keeps pushing the goalposts. The latter has had "an unprecedented win: from control of one house of congress ... [they] now have debt ceiling as a tool to get their way." Here, Sam brought up his worry that Obama will agree to a process change to prevent the ceiling from being used this way again. It's a bargain that would be made at the cost of "reforming entitlements," something that's been Obama's goal, and would be his Establishment-endorsed "legacy winner."

Meanwhile, I have to assume there is unfurloughed federal protection for the honoree of this event.

As Pierce says, "Talk about the waste of someone else's heart." As commenters add—

Rich Jenkins
His continuing ability to walk and talk is a testament to technology and an example of its shortcomings.

Amy Danto Hundert
... It's too bad donors don't get a veto.

This (from Philip Toledano) always bears repeating:

Like Cheney and Meese: far from dead is establishment fawning over Paul Ryan. Steve M dissects the NYT's front page treatment—

We're supposed to ignore the fact that the Republicans are still shutting down the government. We're supposed to ignore the fact that they're still talking about a very brief respite from debt blackmail. A manly man, both tough and gentle, has taken the lead, and we're all supposed to swoon.

The mainstream press always does this -- always tells us that the GOP that just drove the car off the cliff two minutes ago isn't the real GOP. When the party's problem was seen as racism, Marco Rubio was declared to be the real GOP. When the problem is seen as "Washington," Chris Christie is said to be the real GOP. For now, it's Ryan. And if the current talks break down and Ryan gets some of the blame, it'll be someone else. The Republican Party is never at fault, because the Republican Party is endlessly malleable, in the mainstream press's view.

Or, as TBogg puts it, "Paul Ryan has an unused agenda he thinks you might want to reconsider"—

You may remember all of this from before when Ryan called it the Path To Prosperity or possibly you played the EA Sports videogame version: Galtscape – Ayn Rand's Survival Of The Fattest. You may also remember that America rejected Ryan's innumerate plan and the Rafalca it danced in on. But now times have changed with a faction of Ryan's own House having shifted into Bachmann-Gohmert Overdrive and are threatening to burn the whole country down in order to save it at the behest of the Tea Partiers who figure they have enough bullets, bibles, and cans of Vienna sausages to ride out the Fiscal End Times when either Jesus or Sarah Palin returns. So Paul Ryan felt the need to step into the breach and use his "moderate" K St cred to go "Whoa, whoa, whoa there folks. Sure we want to destroy the safety net, deny people medical care, allow children to go hungry in the streets, and turn our country into a crumbling riot-torn post-apocalytic hellscape that will make Somalia look like the Hamptons, but let's not take down the T-bill market in our haste. I mean, c'mon."

Because moderation to the Paul Ryans of the world means methodically burning down one house at a time. And definitely not the nicer ones...

This fantasy is laughable, but the misplaced rage isn't.

Once, working class guys might have been expected to identify with a fat guy whose life looked a lot like theirs...

Then they were offered a fat radio blowhard, who became obscenely rich by inciting their hatreds.

Too bad these guys need ridiculous fantasies of triumphing over an imaginary Evil Guvmint.

Instead of being with Ralph Kramden's pal Norton, who just kept things "rolling along."

A "Coup" By Any Other Name...

TBogg returns to the Internets; just in time for the spectacle.

Yes, the start date of the Heritage Foundation's insurance industry payoff, the House shuts down all possible parts of governance, aside from itself.

As expected, members distinguish themselves—

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) told a local television station that she would not be deferring her pay during the government shutdown, as some other members have done.

"I need my paycheck. That's the bottom line," Ellmers told WTVD in Raleigh, N.C. "I understand that there may be some other members who are deferring their paychecks, and I think that's admirable. I'm not in that position."

According to Ellmers's official website, she was a registered nurse for 21 years before being elected to Congress. Her husband Brent, the website says, is a general surgeon.

On the October 4 Majority Report, Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter got pretty much everything in.

That there are 800,000 furloughed workers losing (at the very minimum) one week of pay; another 1.2 million are working without pay.

That children are deprived of Head start and mothers left without food for babies, thanks to Congresspeople who claim to be "pro-life."

That there will be losses to scientific research, since experiments can't be stopped and re-started on whims.

The damage relates to what Sam presented as the problem of investment. If people don't see an immediate, direct benefit to themselves—and have been told to hate public expenditures—then science, like the general public good, is easily undermined.

It's not as if we have a responsible media to explain why investment matters. Since Reagan, and, as Cliff put it, "the death of news as a public service," the public is led on about "public spending = welfare queens get something I don't."

Of the Republicans' tantrum—shutting down the government over not having been able to overturn "Obamacare," and now "needing something" for their trouble—Sam suggested there might be some offering to ease their hurt feelings; perhaps, "ritual bloodletting of poor people on the floor of Congress."

A long, but interesting post by aimai: The Punishers Want To Run The Country or We Are All Tipped Waitstaff Now, with Republicans as "the dissatisfied and angry diners at the table of life."

Since the Supreme Court's States Rights cleverness with the ACA, it's not hard for the NYT to find people treated this way. Real people, with names and stories, who are clearly being harmed. suffering; so oddly unlike those anonymous welfare queens of legend.

As Sam Seder says, "welfare reform" has been the Establishment's great legacy enhancer, as bestowed on Bill Clinton. In the form of cuts to "entitlements," Obama has begged the GOP to simply consent to its own prior agenda.

Charles Pierce just re-ran an old story, written in response to that earlier round of "welfare reform": the story of a very real family, and the gravely disabled child who died when support for his medical care needed "reform."