The Kroog Versus The GOP's Last Stand

How terrified are Republicans that Obamacare will work?  Terrified enough to threaten to shut down the government.  Paul Krugman:

Leading Republicans appear to be nerving themselves up for another round of attempted fiscal blackmail. With the end of the fiscal year looming, they aren’t offering the kinds of compromises that might produce a deal and avoid a government shutdown; instead, they’re drafting extremist legislation — bills that would, for example, cut clean-water grants by 83 percent — that has no chance of becoming law. Furthermore, they’re threatening, once again, to block any rise in the debt ceiling, a move that would damage the U.S. economy and possibly provoke a world financial crisis. 

Yet even as Republican politicians seem ready to go on the offensive, there’s a palpable sense of anxiety, even despair, among conservative pundits and analysts. Better-informed people on the right seem, finally, to be facing up to a horrible truth: Health care reform, President Obama’s signature policy achievement, is probably going to work. 

The wing of the GOP that actually wants to win elections, specifically, is terrified.  They're now seeing the extremist wing of the GOP that would rather burn the country to ashes juggling flaming torches in a fireworks factory while standing on an oil-soaked tightrope.  They stopped giving a damn the second President Obama got re-elected.  For them, it's about enacting bloody revenge against the people who made Obama's second term possible:  women, working-class parents and their families,  African-Americans and Latinos, and the Millennial generation.

Since these are the groups that will be helped by Obamacare, Obamacare has to go: long-term it's the end of the GOP.  But the wingers are willing now to shut the government down in order to stop it.  Let's be clear here:

It's a bluff.

The corporate interests that control Washington will never allow the government to be shut down.  The resulting chaos will cost them billions and they know it.  They will take the GOP out rather than lose 10, 11, 12 figure sums.  So no, the government won't blow up, and the debt ceiling will be raised.

That puts the GOP in a tough position:  if they somehow do pull the plug, they're done.  If they don't, they're done.  How much damage will they do to America before they grind to a halt?

We're about to find out.

A Knife With A Smile

If you wanted proof that Alison Lundergan Grimes is A) her father's daughter, and B) in it to win it, scope this campaign introduction where she tears Mitch the Turtle a new one, and does it with a pleasant smile on her face.

“Now this part’s for you, Senator. Your campaign wants to play silly games about where I am and where I stand?  Well I’m right here in Kentucky, Senator, where I’ll be holding you accountable for voting to double Medicare premiums on Kentucky seniors, including our retired coal miners, for being against requiring the Department of Defense to buy equipment that’s made in America first, for failing to stand up for women when you voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Violence Against Women Act, and for opposing raising the minimum wage over and over again while you became a multimillionaire in public office.”

I think she just might have a chance, folks.

StupidiNews!

• With seven women now coming forward to claim that San Diego Mayor Bob Filner sexually harassed them, the San Diego County Democratic Party is calling on him to resign.
• Pentagon officials say they will have women moved into combat roles by 2016, but Republican lawmakers warn that the Pentagon cannot lower physical standards for women.
• Lebanese officials say they have stopped a Syrian rebel attack on a Hezbollah convoy in Lebanon, suggesting the scope of the Syrian conflict is now cross-border.
• Swiss scientists say that for the first time, there's solid evidence suggesting lunar cycles can affect sleep patterns.
• The first known test of a 3-D printed rifle didn't go so well, but the fact the maker was Canadian could have some surprising aftereffects.