Last Call: Podcast Vs. The Stupid

Bon and I talked about the impending disaster that is the shutdown and upcoming possible default by the GOP.

New Politics Progressive Internet Radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on BlogTalkRadio

It's all about the punishment on this episode of Podcast Vs. The Stupid:  Gotta Get Up To Shut Down.

Oh Waiter, There's One Of Those People In The Oval Office

Aimai, filling in for Steve M. over at No More Mister Nice Blog, absolutely nails the Republican hatred for federal/government employees, up to and including President Obama.

We've seen a lot of weird reactions on the right wing to the Government Shut down. These range from "it doesn't matter" to "its terrible" but one thing that really strikes me is the rage and antipathy that has been displayed towards Federal Workers themselves. It doesn't strike me as unusual, but it does strike me as significant. Yesterday's on air rant by Stuart Varney makes it pretty explicit: Federal Workers and, indeed, the entire Government are failing Stuart Varney. They cost too much and they do too little. In fact: they are so awful they don't even deserve to be paid for the work they have already done. Contracts, agreements, and labor be damned.

Varney's money quote:

No, I don't think they should get their back pay, frankly, I really don't. I'm sick and tired of a massive, bloated federal bureaucracy living on our backs, and taking money out of us, a lot more money than most of us earn in the private sector, then getting a furlough, and then getting their money back at the end of it. Sorry, I'm not for that. I want to punish these people. Sorry to say that, but that's what I want to do.

Government employees are The Help.  And The Help is supposed to be put in its place whenever it gets uppity.  Aimai again:

Let me unpack this for you as an Anthropolgist, because I think it says something about the enormous gap that lies between these people (Republicans and Punishers) and the rest of us. There are several things at issue here: the status of workers, the status of employers, and the status anxiety Republicans feel when they don't believe that they are treated as an employer should be treated by their employees. In this case everyone in the Federal Government, from the President down to the lowliest Federal Street Sweeper, is not giving Varney the satisfaction that he thinks is his due. And he is damned if they will be paid when they don't do their job to his satisfaction. In this way his attitude is like that of the angry customers, the "Punishers" described in Jay Porter's series of essays about what happened when he moved an entire restaurant from tipped wait staff to non tipped.

Basically the ability to withhold tips from restaurant employees is necessary in order to maintain power over The Help.  When waitstaff in Jay Porter's restaurant went to non-tipped, that power was lost, and his customers were upset.  They wanted to maintain the ability to punish his staff for bad service, and actively looked for other ways to do so, such as a food critic publicly shaming one of the waitresses in a review.  It was OK when Republicans had that power over those people.

But then, one of them became President.  Then it all became about putting all of those people in their place.  Aimai:

What does this have to do with the Republican Party? The Republican Party at this point in time is entirely made up of Punishers who think they are entitled to treat the government--and especially the government of Barack Obama--as waiters who need to be shown their place. This should surprise no one. At heart the entire Republican Party is made up of winners and losers and they are united in just one thing: they think that money is the only way to tell who is who. If you have money, you use that to distinguish yourself from the losers and to demonstrate your superiority by punishing them further. If you are a loser--a worker, for example, or have no health insurance (say) your job as a Republican is to take your status as a given, accept it, and turn around and get your jollies kicking someone else farther down the line.

That's the way the GOP mindset works.  You take the hate and you kick the people beneath you, and government civil servants are the bottom of the food chain.  They exist to serve us, the mindset goes.

Federal workers violate those central principles because they can't be fired directly by "the employer" because the individual Republican tax payer isn't the direct employer. They also can't be humiliated and made to feel vulnerable because of civil service protections and unionization. And in the matter of interactions, one on one, the taxpayer can't command good treatment by offering money (bribes) and thus often feels vulnerable and weak because there is no way to play the "do you know who I am" card which (like tipping) is an attempt to force a generic servant to give non generic attention and service to one class of people. So Federal Employees create an extra level of status anxiety for Republicans when they come in contact with these "employees" who can't be fired or rewarded and therefore are not obligated to be extra nice to the individual Republican.

So no, the Republicans don't care about furloughed federal workers and their families, because the entire shutdown scenario is nothing more than collective punishment against all the people who voted for Obama. Shutting down the government was the plan all along, as this NY Times article points out.

To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known. 

With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe that the public is behind them. Although the law’s opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.

Make no mistake, this shutdown and the threat of default is collective punishment against those of us who dared to opposed the Way Things Ought To Be.  The shutdown is there and the price of that shutdown is the end of the Affordable Care Act.  Republicans will destroy our country at this point, and cause trillions in damage and suffering for tens of millions of us in order to get their way.

John Boehner all but made that threat today on This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

BOEHNER: My goal here is not to have the United States default on its debt. My goal is to have a serious conversation about those things that are driving the deficit and the debt up and the president’s refusal to sit down and have a conversation about this is putting our nation. 

STEPHANOPOULOS: He continues to refuse to negotiate, the country is going to default? 

BOEHNER: That’s the path we’re on. The president canceled his trip to Asia. I assume — he wants to have a conversation. I decided to stay here in Washington this weekend. He knows what my phone number is. All he has to do is call.

We're ten days out from a economic and constitutional crisis, and there's no indication that it will be averted. You, me, and the rest of The Help must be punished, and the Republicans are going to wreck the country in order to do so, then say "We will continue to destroy your family and your economy until you realize that you are beneath us."

What will your answer be then to the GOP economic terrorists willing to destroy your family?

The Breaking Point Has Been Reached

The shutdown ends when enough purple district House Republicans face enough of a threat over the shutdown clown show that the GOP is in danger of losing control of the House in 2014, regardless of the threats the Tea Party makes.

We may have now reached that point according to Public Policy Polling.

The government shutdown is already hurting the GOP in battleground congressional districts, according to new polling in two dozen districts currently controlled by Republicans. 

The surveys, commissioned by the liberal group MoveOn.org Political Action and conducted by Public Policy Polling, suggest that the government shutdown may already be having a bigger impact than most analysts realize. 

"Democrats must pick up 17 seats to win control of the House. These poll results make clear that if the election were held today, such a pickup would be well within reach," said pollster Jim Williams. "The surveys challenge the conventional wisdom that gerrymandering has put the House out of reach for Democrats." 

We're still 13 months out from next year's midterm elections and the shutdown isn't even over yet, so it's too soon to draw any conclusions, but this new survey data is supported by national polls that suggest Americans are more likely to blame Republicans for the shutdown than President Obama and other Democrats. Two polls released last week, from CBS and Fox News, each found that the public blames Republicans over Democrats by about a 10 point margin. Only about 20 percent blamed both sides evenly.

The new PPP polls were conducted on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week, with sample sizes of between 600-700 registered voters in each of the 24 districts they surveyed. Most of the districts, including several in California, New York, Ohio, and Florida, are considered competitive. 

In 17 of the districts, PPP found the Republican incumbent trailing a generic Democrat in a head-to-head contest among registered voters. Most of the incumbents' approval ratings were underwater, meaning more respondents disapproved than approved.

Dems need 17 seats to take back the House.  PPP finds 17 House Republicans are in danger of losing their seats, including locally here in the OH/KY area, Andy Barr in KY-6 (down 50-42% versus a generic Democrat, 50-33% say they are less likely to vote for Barr because of the shutdown) and David Joyce in OH-14 (down 47-44% vs Generic D and 50-34 less likely to vote for him over the shutdown).  In OH-6, Bill Johnson is up 41-35 over a generic Dem, but 41-40 voters are less likely to vote for him, so Johnson's seat is in play.

Of course, you can scream THE POLLS ARE SKEWED all you want to, Republicans.  Just like that coming Romney landslide in 2012 when you said the same thing.

How'd that work out for you, Republicans?  Cause it's about to happen again.

Last Call For One For Two In Africa

The Kenyan government response to Al-Shabaab's deadly siege of a Nairobi mall last month has long promised to be swift and deadly, according to President Uhuru Kenyatta.  Now we know why:  he brought his allies in from the United States in a daring double anti-terror operation this weekend, with a raid against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the capture of a terrorist suspected in the African US Embassy bombings in 1998 in Libya.

U.S. military forces were involved in two separate operations in Africa -- one of them targeting a member of the group Al-Shabaab, which was behind last month's Kenya mall attack, and the other going after an al Qaeda leader tied to the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies.

The Al-Shabaab raid took place in Somalia, where that terrorist group is based, sometime in the past 24 hours, a senior U.S. official said Saturday evening.

The team of U.S. Navy SEALs had to withdraw before it could confirm whether it killed the target because they came under fire, the official said. The SEALs made the "prudent decision" to withdraw rather than engage in further combat, according to the official.

The other mission ended in the capture of Abu Anas al Libi, who is suspected to have played a significant role in the August 7, 1998, bombings of American embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Nairobi, Kenya, U.S. officials said.

The key al Qaeda operative was captured by U.S. special operations forces in Tripoli, Libya, according to the officials. 

This U.S. operation was conducted with the knowledge of the Libyan government, said one U.S. official.

So one operation confirmed successful, the other may have been, but Navy SEALs pulled out of the other one before it could be confirmed.  We'll see what happens next as Africa remains a prime target for terrorists like this.

Standing Tall

Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington State sums up the last, oh, five years of GOP petulance.

“Dealing with terrorists has taught us some things,” said Washington Rep. Jim McDermott after voting no on one of Thursday’s GOP bills. “You can’t deal with ’em. This mess was created by the Republicans for one purpose, and they lost. People in my district are calling in for Obamacare—affordable health care—in large numbers. These guys have lost, and they can’t figure out how to admit it.” Why would House Democrats give away what the Supreme Court and the 2012 electorate didn’t? “You can’t say, OK, you get half of Obamacare—this isn’t a Solomonic decision,” McDermott said.

And he ends it with this classic quote:

“So we sit here until they figure out they fuckin’ lost.”

Republicans believe they've already won. They believe President Obama and the Democrats will cave on Obamacare, social safety net cuts, voting, the economy, everything.

They have no idea they've already lost.

They're about to find the hell out.

The Same Old Song And Dance

We've seen all of this before:  Republicans start out with the catastrophic (destroy Obamacare or plunge the country into instant depression with a debt default) and then everybody acts relived when their demands drop down to merely ruinous (the hundreds of billions in cuts that slowed down the economy in 2013, aka sequestration).

We're seeing it again now.  NRO's Robert Costa floats yet another House GOP Grand Bargain style round of austerity cuts:

But details are floating to the surface as the leadership reaches out to internal power brokers about what’s within the realm of the possible. What I’m hearing: There will be a “mechanism” for revenue-neutral tax reform, ushered by Ryan and Michigan’s Dave Camp, that will encourage deeper congressional talks in the coming year. There will be entitlement-reform proposals, most likely chained CPI and means testing Medicare; there will also be some health-care provisions, such as a repeal of the medical-device tax, which has bipartisan support in both chambers. Boehner, sources say, is expected to go as far as he can with his offer. Anything too small will earn conservative ire; anything too big will turn off Democrats. 

This in return for not blowing up the country's economy.  Sure it's extortion, but it's not a depression, right? Until the next budget shutdown/debt ceiling fight, that is.  And this will continue forever until somebody stands up to these clowns and says no more.

Will President Obama do it?  Hell, will the Tea Party just scuttle the deal anyway?

We'll see.

Last Call For The Fire And The Flames

This is a really depressing story even for shutdown crazy Washington DC.

What has already been a strange and scary work week in the nation's capital, came to a close with a shocking incident on the National Mall: For reasons we don't yet know, witnesses say a man doused himself with gasoline and then set himself on fire. 

D.C. fire department spokesman Tim Wilson tells the AP the man suffered life-threatening injures. The wire service reports:

"He was standing by himself at Seventh Street and Madison Drive, in the center portion of the Mall, when he emptied the contents of a red gas can on himself and set himself on fire moments later, said Katy Scheflen, who witnessed it as she walked through the Mall. 

"She said passing joggers took off their shirts in an effort to help douse the flames, and the man was clearly alive as the flames spread. A police department spokesman said he was conscious and breathing at the scene. MedStar Washington Hospital Center tweeted that the man was taken there but had no condition update." 

Images posted on social media sites showed a rescue helicopter landing on the lawn, the iconic Washington Memorial in the background. They showed police descending upon the scene on a clear, sunny day in Washington with the Capitol building in full view.

One of those tragic stories that makes you think about perspective, and how all this affects our basic, daily humanity.  What would drive a person to do this?  It's bizarre as hell.

Then again, so are government shutdowns.

High-Stakes Calvinball

The shutdown mess continues with no end in sight, mainly because John Boehner is trapped in a hell of his own making.  He claims he won't allow the country to default, but that's exactly what will happen if the House doesn't raise the debt ceiling in two weeks.  The White House is tired of his game of Calvinball, according to Ezra Klein.

As the White House sees it, Speaker John Boehner has begun playing politics as game of Calvinball, in which Republicans invent new rules on the fly and then demand the media and the Democrats accept them as reality and find a way to work around them. 

First there was the Hastert rule, which is not an actual rule, but which Boehner uses to say he simply can't bring anything to the floor that doesn't have the support of a majority of his members. 

The shutdown, the White House argues, is now operating under a kind of super-Hastert rule in which a clean CR is supported by a majority of House Republicans but Boehner has given the tea partiers in his conference an effective veto over what he brings to the floor. 

Then there's Boehner's demand for further concessions on the debt limit, which he now says he can't back down on, but which he made knowing that it would make it harder for him to back down. 

The White House has decided that they can't govern effectively if the House Republicans can keep playing Calvinball. The rules and promises Boehner makes are not their problem, they've decided. They're not going to save him. And that also rules out unusual solutions like minting a platinum coin or declaring the debt limit unconstitutional. The White House doesn't want to break the law (and possibly spark a financial crisis) in order to save Boehner from breaking a promise he never should have made.

So no, the White House isn't going to save Boehner.  But will he fall on his sword in order to save the country from economic catastrophe?

He's a Republican.  What do you think's going to happen?  We've got two weeks, then our economy collapses because Republicans are insane, mean, and stupid.

I'm betting long on disaster futures, myself.

The Republican Mask Slips Again...

...and once again Republicans tell the country what they really are worried about during this shutdown silly season.  Behold, my senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul caught on live mic here by a Kentucky NBC affiliate.

Senator Paul began, "Do you have a second?" 

"I'm all wired up here, um," Senator McConnell replied. 

"I just did CNN and I just go over and over again 'We're willing to compromise. 'We're willing to negotiate.' I think... I don't think they poll tested we won't negotiate. I think it's awful for them to say that over and over again," Paul said. 

"Yeah, I do too and I, and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly," McConnell agreed. 

Paul added, "I think if we keep saying 'We wanted to defund it. We fought for that and that we're willing to compromise on this', I think they can't, we're gonna, I think... well I know we don't want to be here, but we're gonna win this I think."

What the Wonder Twins here don't understand is the vast majority of Americans are against the idea of shutting down the government over Obamacare.  They think that America is going to blame the Democrats for this for refusing to scrap a law that passed in 2010, was upheld by SCOTUS in 2012, and topped by President Obama's re-election 11 months ago.

Like Team Romney a year ago, these idiots think they've already won.  They're completely baffled as to how anyone could side with Obama over this.  They think Obama will cave any minute now.

The one person these two morons don't care about?  You.

Keep that in mind.

StupidiNews!

• Police are still trying to determine why 34-year old Miriam Carey rammed a White House barricade with her vehicle and led Capitol Police and Secret Service on a chase where eventually she was shot and killed.
• Art experts say a portrait of an Italian noblewoman kept in a Swiss vault for centuries may in fact be a rumored Leonardo da Vinci work of art thought either lost or never to have been finished.
• The National Association of Manufacturers says the country has a shortage of workers trained to operate modern industrial machinery, and with the current workforce retiring, the problem is getting worse.
• President Obama has now completely canceled his trip to Asia to meet with other world leaders in Bali, Indonesia next week as no progress has been made in ending the government shutdown.
• Twitter's stock offering is official as the social media company filed for a $1 billion IPO for trading starting in November.

Last Call For Never Letting A Crisis Go To Waste

Republicans are always the victims, no matter what the situation is.

They will despise Obama until they day they die, and that goes for anyone associated with him or who supports him.  These assholes have shut down the government because their God-given right to not have a black Democrat in the White House has been infringed upon, and they will annihilate our country as a result.

Remember who the bad guys really are here.

Well, THIS Should End The Shutdown...

If there's one thing that will set the GOP scrambling to pass a clean CR and end the shutdown, it's this headline right here:

Shutdown Means No NFL Games for Deployed Troops

Uh-oh.

The government shutdown means deployed troops and sailors cannot get their sports fix, as the Pentagon reduced the civilian staff of its Armed Forces Network Broadcast Center in Riverside, Calif., which normally transmits nine television channels and seven radio channels via satellite worldwide.

In a notice on its website, the center said most of its channels are off the air, except for news channels. AFN Europe said mandatory staff reductions at the broadcast center will reduce television to one service: AFN News. 

The AFN sports channel, which broadcasts professional sports live, went dark yesterday along with the network’s movie, family and children’s channels.

Things just got real, yo.   Enjoy owning this one, GOP.

 

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Paul Waldman at the American Prospect asks what will happen when Obamacare survives and the war against it is over.

Ted Cruz admitted to Sean Hannity back in July that "If we don't [defund Obamacare] now, in all likelihood, Obamacare will never, ever be repealed. Why is that? Because on January 1, the exchanges kick in, the subsidies kick in," and they'll be unable to take away something people are benefiting from. And he's surely not the only Republican who gets this, which is part of the explanation for the ferocity with which they're fighting now. But in our future scenario, the fight over the law will be basically over. There might be some debates about adjusting parts of the law, as Democrats will want to do, but that won't concern Republicans too much. Once there's no possibility left that it can be killed, they'll likely lose interest. 

I think that's the most plausible picture of what things will be like in, say, 2015. The question is, if eventually they have no choice but to accept that the argument over the ACA is settled, what on earth will Republicans do with themselves? Because over the last four years, opposition to Obamacare has taken on such an extraordinary power within the movement that all other issues have paled before it. 

Sure, they could revert to the old standbys—Cut taxes! Cut regulations! Strong defense! But those are just positions you can take. Obamacare was a war to be fought. And nothing galvanizes, energizes, and defines us like our wars. That's particularly true of the zealots who are driving the Republican party and form such a key part of its base. And if they aren't fighting Obamacare, who will they be?

In 2015, Barack Obama will still be President.  Obamacare represents the end of the GOP.  Therefore, the war against Obamacare will not end until, minimum, January 20, 2017.  After that, Republicans will do everything they can to "fix" Obamacare and take 100% of the credit.

Will Democrats and the media let them?

There's the real question.

Last Call For Jack Ryan's Boss

Author Tom Clancy has passed at the age of 66, and whether or not you liked his military thrillers, you can't escape the size of the impact he had on fiction, movies, and increasingly, video games.

Seventeen of his novels were No. 1 New York Times best sellers, including his most recent, “Threat Vector,” which was released in December 2012. More than 100 million copies of his books are in print. 

Sales of his books made him a millionaire. His family moved into a five-bedroom house in Calvert County, Md., and acquired an 80-acre farm on the Chesapeake Bay. He became a part owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He even bought a tank. 

Mr. Clancy was an insurance salesman when he sold his first novel, “The Hunt for Red October,” to the Naval Institute Press for only $5,000. 

That publisher had never released a novel before, but the editors were taken with Mr. Clancy’s manuscript. They were concerned, however, that there were too many technical descriptions, so they asked him to make cuts. Mr. Clancy made revisions and cut at least 100 pages. 

The book took off when President Ronald Reagan, who had received a copy, called it “my kind of yarn” and said that he couldn’t put it down. 

After the book’s publication in 1985, Mr. Clancy was praised for his mastery of technical details about Soviet submarines and weaponry. Even high-ranking members of the military took notice of the book’s apparent inside knowledge. 

In an interview in 1986, Mr. Clancy said, “When I met Navy Secretary John Lehman last year, the first thing he asked me about the book was, ‘Who the hell cleared it?’ “

I remember CNN's interview with Clancy within the first 24 hours after 9/11, the plot of his novel "Debt of Honor" had an airliner smash into the Capitol building during the President's State of the Union speech.   I remember thinking "Jesus, we're living in a Clancy novel, and the bad guys just won."

Clancy's books spawned a number of video game series, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and HAWX, which are still going today.  The latest Splinter Cell title, Blacklist, pits veteran black ops specialist Sam Fisher and his team against a group of US military "patriots" gone rogue, calling themselves The Engineers.  Much like George Lucas's Star Wars empire, Clancy knew how to leverage his work.

And yeah, I did enjoy his earlier books when I was younger, mainly because Jack Ryan and his friends were nerds saving America, and back then I was okay with that.

It was fun, Tom.

Feeling The Heat, Boys?

More and more increasingly vulnerable House Republicans are looking for the lifeboats to escape from the sinking ship that is the S.S. GOP Shutdown, and I'm thinking it's not going to be too much longer before they team up with Democrats to deliver a clean CR back to the Senate, and throw the Tea Party overboard.

Some House Republicans facing perilous paths to reelection in 2014 are beginning to budge on the government shutdown, calling for the party to compromise and move on from its fight over defunding Obamacare. 

“Republicans fought the good fight. The fight continues but is not advanced by a government shutdown that damages our economy and harms our military,” Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell said in a statement. “The time has come to pass a clean CR to reopen the government.” 

And Pennsylvania Rep. Pat Meehan said: “I came to Washington to fix government, not shut it down. At this point, I believe it’s time for the House to vote for a clean, short-term funding bill to bring the Senate to the table and negotiate a responsible compromise.” 

New Jersey Rep. Jon Runyan said: “Enough is enough. Put a clean (continuing resolution) on the floor and let’s gets on with the business we were sent to do.”

Of course these are the same House Republicans who voted for the shutdown in the first place and voted 40+ times to defund and repeal Obamacare.  They want you to feel sorry for them, and they want your forgiveness.  The only thing these opportunists care about is saving their own asses now that it's quite possible that somebody other than those people might be the ones hurt by the GOP.

Don't fall for it, folks.  All the Republicans have to go.  They own this disaster together, and together, they can be voted out in 2014.