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Author Topic: Gov't Shutdown incoming
Elison R. Salazar
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2014 can't happen soon enough. [Big Grin] Accelerationism! Burn it all down!

Gonna guess at least three people will post saying its the Democrats fault for not "compromising" with the Republicans and their hostage taking.

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BlackBlade
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I don't find anything funny about the matter. It's a bloody tragedy about to happen. And I hope I'm wrong.
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Lyrhawn
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To be honest, I'm on Blayne's side, and I've held that position for a long time.

I actually hope the default happens next month too and the economy crashes.

I think the system is so fundamentally broken at the moment that the only way to fix it is to have it totally fail and create massive devastation. It's the only way to convince people they need to get actively involved.

So I hope the shutdown happens, and I hope the Republicans are their usual ridiculous selves in a couple weeks and the default happens.

And I'm completely serious.

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Mucus
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Bill Bishop (niubi) on Twitter
https://twitter.com/niubi
GOP nutjobs r again helping to make Beijing's case against democracy… unbelievable the damage they have done to America (& i m no obama fan).

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James Tiberius Kirk
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I suspect the impending shutdown makes a debt ceiling fight considerably less likely, but in the latter case the White House shouldn't come to the table. They did that once, and the WH coughed up the ransom: the sequester. The House learned that the technique was effective, and the White House learned not to do that again.

So you don't negotiate, for the same reason we (generally) don't negotiate with terrorists: it is not really a 'negotiation' if the other guy is holding a bomb.

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Elison R. Salazar
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Bipartisanship doesn't work when one side is literally insane, deluded and destructive to the country's interests. If I want to eat turkey and Bob wants to kill me, it isn't "reasonable" to "compromise" by splitting the difference and letting Bob eat my arm.

So yes, it is a tragedy, but its one that thankfully means the death of the modern Republican Party and the delegitimization of American Conservatism.

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BlackBlade
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Why do you think the government shutting down makes the debt ceiling fight less likely? Ted Cruz has already said it would be good for the government to shut down for awhile.

His clique cannot vote for any budget that doesn't defund Obamacare, and the Democrats are not going to pass any budget that does that.

So we basically have to hope that Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and the rest of the Tea Party are able to find a way to let Obamacare happen, without their extremely conservative gerrymandered constituencies recalling them next election. Not to mention their bluffing and getting called on it.

Unless some really powerful lobbying groups read these Congressman the riot act, I don't see any other force getting them to bend.

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Elison R. Salazar
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Boehner could always side with the democrats with moderate house GOP'ers. There goes his Speakership but whatever.
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Samprimary
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Fallows about nails it. This is what people need to be paying attention to.

And no, I did not cheekily rename this title to take a dig at Geraine. Fallows is aware of and addressing the modern day prominence of equivocation of any sort as a shield for extremist behavior on one side.


Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead
_

Two big examples of problematic self-government are upon us. They are of course the possible partial shutdown of the federal government, following the long-running hamstringing of public functions via "the sequester"; and a possible vote not to raise the federal debt ceiling, which would create the prospect of a default on U.S. Treasury debt.

The details are complicated, but please don't lose sight of these three essential points:

- As a matter of substance, constant-shutdown, permanent-emergency governance is so destructive that no other serious country engages in or could tolerate it. The United States can afford it only because we are -- still -- so rich, with so much margin for waste and error. Details on this and other items below.*

- As a matter of politics, this is different from anything we learned about in classrooms or expected until the past few years. We're used to thinking that the most important disagreements are between the major parties, not within one party; and that disagreements over policies, goals, tactics can be addressed by negotiation or compromise.

This time, the fight that matters is within the Republican party, and that fight is over whether compromise itself is legitimate.** Outsiders to this struggle -- the president and his administration, Democratic legislators as a group, voters or "opinion leaders" outside the generally safe districts that elected the new House majority -- have essentially no leverage over the outcome. I can't recall any situation like this in my own experience, and the only even-approximate historic parallel (with obvious differences) is the inability of Northern/free-state opinion to affect the debate within the slave-state South from the 1840s onward. Nor is there a conceivable "compromise" the Democrats could offer that would placate the other side.

- As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a "standoff," a "showdown," a "failure of leadership," a sign of "partisan gridlock," or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism*** and an inability to see or describe what is going on. For instance: the "dig in their heels" headline you see below, which is from a proprietary newsletter I read this morning, and about which I am leaving off the identifying details.

This isn't "gridlock." It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results that unfortunately can harm all the rest of us -- and, should there be a debt default, could harm the rest of the world too.

_


The debt-ceiling vote, of course, is not about future spending decisions. It is about whether to cover expenditures the Congress has already authorized. There is no sane reason for subjecting this to a repeated vote. And there is no precedent for serious threats not to honor federal debt -- as opposed to symbolic anti-Administration protest votes, which both parties have cast over the years. Nor for demanding the reversal of major legislation as a condition for routine government operations.

In case the point is not clear yet: there is no post-Civil War precedent for what the House GOP is doing now. It is radical, and dangerous for the economy and our process of government, and its departure from past political disagreements can't be buffed away or ignored.

_

Go to this link and read it a few times.

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Samprimary
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And the Atlantic Wire nails the other half of it:

_

All Republicans Want in Exchange for Not Destroying the Economy Is Everything

Republicans gave The National Review a draft of their starting point for negotiations with President Obama on the debt ceiling. It's jaw-dropping.

A quick reminder: the debt ceiling is the amount the government is allowed to borrow in order to pay bills accrued by Congress. Here is what the Republicans offer:

- Suspend the debt limit until December 2014.

- Delay Obamacare for a year.

- Include tax reform measures along the lines of the Rep. Paul Ryan principles.

- Agree to a slew of environmental issues: Approve the Keystone pipeline, kill EPA clean air and climate regulations, increase drilling.

- Approve "regulatory reforms" including the REINS Act, which would basically gut the executive authority to make any regulations.

- Implement spending cuts, including reforming retirement programs, the child tax credit ("to prevent fraud"), and, of course, ending Dodd-Frank.

- Reforming health spending, including tort reform.


This is literally every policy priority of the Republican Party. This is hostage-taking, not politics. "We have been unable to pass our core priorities because voters keep electing Democrats to the Senate and the White House so we are asking that in order to prevent the economic catastrophe of a debt ceiling default, you sign off on doing everything we have ever wanted, is that OK with you, yes / no?"

Some of these things, we will also note, are complete non-starters from a legal perspective. The EPA climate regulations, for example, are essentially mandated by the Supreme Court. George W. Bush dragged his feet on implementing regulations, but lawsuits from various environmental organizations helped force the issue. Adding that to a completely unrelated political measure is pure denial.

We understand that the point of negotiations is to start from an extreme position and then navigate toward a compromise. But it is helpful if you also enter negotiations appearing to be rational.

Obama, for his part, has staked out an extreme position as well: no deals. And he probably means it; a few weeks ago, he said this to ABC's George Stephanopoulos, via Crooks and Liars.

"[I]f we continue to set a precedent in which a president — any president, a Republican president, a Democratic president — where the opposing party controls the House of Representatives, if that president is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills the other party can simply sit there and say, 'Well, we're not gonna pay the bills unless you give us what we want,' that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely."

Which is exactly what the Republicans are advocating. Unable to win elections to regain the Senate — ironically in part because the deeply conservative base supported unelectable Senate candidates in primaries — they've created their Amazon wish list of things, presumably hoping that the president might buy one or two. But unfortunately, he's at his credit limit.

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James Tiberius Kirk
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quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
Why do you think the government shutting down makes the debt ceiling fight less likely? Ted Cruz has already said it would be good for the government to shut down for awhile.

His clique cannot vote for any budget that doesn't defund Obamacare, and the Democrats are not going to pass any budget that does that.

So we basically have to hope that Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and the rest of the Tea Party are able to find a way to let Obamacare happen, without their extremely conservative gerrymandered constituencies recalling them next election. Not to mention their bluffing and getting called on it.

Unless some really powerful lobbying groups read these Congressman the riot act, I don't see any other force getting them to bend.

You hit my point with your last line, and Ezra Klein (quoting some analysts from Goldman Sachs) explains it better than I can:
quote:
As Alec Phillips put it in a research note for Goldman Sachs, "If a shutdown is avoided, it is likely to be because congressional Republicans have opted to wait and push for policy concessions on the debt limit instead. By contrast, if a shutdown occurs, we would be surprised if congressional Republicans would want to risk another difficult situation only a couple of weeks later. The upshot is that while a shutdown would be unnecessarily disruptive, it might actually ease passage of a debt limit increase."

One way a shutdown makes the passage of a debt limit increase easier is that it can persuade outside actors to come off the sidelines and begin pressuring the Republican Party to cut a deal. One problem in the politics of the fiscal fight so far is that business leaders, Wall Street, voters and even many pundits have been assuming that Republicans and Democrats will argue and carp and complain but work all this out before the government closes down or defaults. A shutdown will prove that comforting notion wrong, and those groups will begin exerting real political pressure to force a resolution before a default happens.

If Boehner shuts down the government and loses - and I'm not sure how else a shutdown would end, to be honest - then he goes into the debt limit fight with a weakened hand. Eventually Boehner will have to put a CR on the floor that will can pass the Senate. A clean CR could probably pass both houses, but he'd have to break the Hastert Rule to bring it to the floor in spite of the Tea Party opposition to it. The Right will insist that he's "folded" to Obama once again. Everyone else will see that he's unable to lead the House.

Only then can he move on to the debt ceiling fight. He will publicly insist that Obama has to "negotiate" over the debt ceiling, but if Boehner loses the shutdown fight there will be no one left in his corner. The Tea Party wing won't back him up. So as a result Boehner will be unable to deliver any votes from the GOP side, so why would Obama negotiate with him then? He'd almost certainly have to run to the Democrats again.

On the other hand, if a shutdown happens and Boehner wins the fight/Obama backs down, then there's no point to fighting again over the debt ceiling.

This is the situation that the Speaker was trying to avoid by letting the House pass a 'clean' CR. Of course, the folks that initiated and insisted upon this confrontation are not concerned about Boehner's speakership; rather, they are more concerned about 2014 (and in Cruz's case, 2016).

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Elison R. Salazar
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I don't see why the Republicans wouldn't also fight over the debt ceiling, you outline the inevitable result yes but there's still a "fight" of some form.
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Lyrhawn
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I'm feeling confident that Obama means what he says when he says ZERO negotiation over the Debt Ceiling. When he negotiated with Boehner in 2011, he thought they were having an honest to goodness budget negotiation, but it turned into a hostage situation. He knows that was a tactical error and he knows the ONLY way to solve it is to settle this here and now by refusing to budge. Otherwise the rest of his presidency will be hostage crisis after hostage crisis.

The bizarre point of this whole thing is that the GOP has managed to convinced the country that raising the debt ceiling is a concession. They've got people thinking they should have to give up something in exchange for it and that only Democrats want it, even as they publicly state not raising it would crash the economy.

But even after Boehner basically attached the ENTIRE GOP platform onto the debt ceiling debate, the Tea Partiers STILL said it didn't go far enough to slash spending.

I'm less than optimistic about most of these scenarios, because it looks more and more like Boehner is putting all his eggs in the Default basket. He's trying to get his party to avoid a shutdown to force the issue on the default, but they balked and now we're headed to a default for sure. It's impossible to avoid now unless the Senate can return a clean bill by midnight tomorrow and Boehner simply approves it, but that seems unlikely.

If the shutdown ends without a conclusive victory for Boehner, that will put ALL the pressure on the Default crisis.

As for guesses he will break the Hastert Rule, I really don't see it happening. Can you impeach a Speaker in the middle of his term? I don't know, but if he makes a deal with Dems and moderate Republicans, then his speakership is over. And, judging from the fact that the Tea Party has already forced his hand a half dozen times in the last couple days alone, I just don't see it happening.

I think the shutdown happens for sure. I have no idea how long it will last. And I think there's a 50/50 chance of the default happening. I think that fight depends entirely on how well Obama can convince Boehner he means it this time.

I also think that, while Obama is going to "win," he's bungling the PR. He should be blitzing the media 24/7 on this issue. He should be doing daily press conferences. He should be doing highly publicized phone calls to Boehner and McConnell. Instead he makes one or two speeches and then submerges himself in the White House. He's determined to win the fight and lose the war, because if the GOP manages to write the history on this, he'll come out looking awful. Whoever is in charge of White House Communications should be fired.

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Elison R. Salazar
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Dems have generally been awful at messaging.
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Lyrhawn
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Yes, they have, and they continue to be.

It's just incredibly frustrating, not necessarily because I want the Dems to win, but because it creates a disparity that hinders the overall functioning of the government.

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kmbboots
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Since the Republicans (the Tea Party ones, anyway) basically run on the premise that government is bad and doesn't work, a government that fails is a feature, not a bug.
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Marlozhan
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I think we should just switch to a tribal system. If we are going to go back to our traditional roots, we might as well do it right.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
Since the Republicans (the Tea Party ones, anyway) basically run on the premise that government is bad and doesn't work, a government that fails is a feature, not a bug.

How Dysfunction Helps The GOP: The party says its own mistakes prove government can't work.

As I've said before: they keep doing this national self-sabotage act since they are rewarded by ‘vindication’ when the government does not work (thanks to their policies), they have an incentive to ensure that government does not work, and it has become principally vital to the future of the party that they not let non-conservatives prove that government works, (this is why stopping Obamacare is so vital to their future) so they try to keep government from working. They have advanced this to an undeniably overt level. They are about to shut down the government and cause extreme harm to the nation, and sell up to their dwindling core that it's Obama's fault because he's not participating in their economic hostage-taking, or that Obamacare 'disregarded the will of the people*' or whatever.

There's practically nothing more to say. This event is the fundamentally solid and beyond-farcical extension of their self-preservation in practice, and they're willing to make the entire nation's prosperity some collateral damage in trying to save themselves from cultural and ideological irrelevance.

They're also just .. dead in a ten to twenty year timeframe if government actually shuts down. Go ahead and hold the gun to your head, morons. Say hi to the Whigs on the way down.


*

quote:
Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) said on Saturday: “Obamacare is based on limitless government, bureaucratic arrogance and a disregard for the will of the people.”
Except Congress passed Obamacare, the president signed it, the Supreme Court upheld it, Obama campaigned on it a second time and was reelected. So in what manner was the will of the people disregarded?

haha nope
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Samprimary
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quote:
A government that works, some conservatives fear, is dangerous stuff. It gives people ideas. Universal health care isn't just a bad idea for their buddies in the insurance business; it's a gateway drug to broader state involvement in the economy and hence a possible doomsday scenario for conservatism itself. As two fellows of the Ethics and Public Policy Center fretted in the Weekly Standard in May, "health care is the key to public enmeshment in ballooning welfare states, and passage of ObamaCare would deal a heavy blow to the conservative enterprise in American politics."

On the other hand, government fails constantly when conservatives run it because making it work would be, for many of those conservatives, to traduce the very laws of nature. Besides, as we can now see, bungling Katrina recovery or Pentagon procurement pays conservatives huge dividends. It gives them potent ammunition to use when the liberals have returned and are proposing another one of their grand schemes to reform health care.

This is the perverse incentive that is slowly remaking the GOP into the Snafu Party. And in those commercials and those proclamations we should also discern a warning: That even if Democrats manage to set up a solid health-care program, conservatives will do their best, once they have regained power, to drop it down the same chute they did the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Maybe they will appoint a tobacco lobbyist to run the thing. Maybe they will starve it for funds. Or antagonize its work force. And as it collapses they will hand themselves their greatest propaganda victory of all. They will survey the ruins and chide, "You didn't really think government could work, did you?"

this was literally written in 2009
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Mucus
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2m ago
And the government is now shut down.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/us-government-shutdown-congress-deadline-live

Wooooo!

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BlackBlade
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Time to short the USD!
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Mucus
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Next stop: debt ceiling, how are people here calling whether that's going to go through or not?
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BlackBlade
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I put odds at 30/70 right now.
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King of Men
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So, anyone feel like a small bet on what the bad effects will be? Make a prediction that can be measured some reasonable time from now, give odds, and I'll offer to bet on it.
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Samprimary
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sup everybody is there a happy super fun times list of things that have been completely shut down by republicans today

does the list include things like all national parks, nasa, etc

isn't it like nasa's birthday or something? happy birthday nasa we got you a big fat shutdown go USA

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Samprimary
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Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. This, plainly stated, is your language…

In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me - my money - was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle…


-Abraham Lincoln

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ambyr
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
So, anyone feel like a small bet on what the bad effects will be? Make a prediction that can be measured some reasonable time from now, give odds, and I'll offer to bet on it.

Prediction: I won't get paid.
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Mucus
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Bets on good effects would be interesting as well.
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Geraine
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
Fallows about nails it. This is what people need to be paying attention to.

And no, I did not cheekily rename this title to take a dig at Geraine. Fallows is aware of and addressing the modern day prominence of equivocation of any sort as a shield for extremist behavior on one side.


Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead
_

Two big examples of problematic self-government are upon us. They are of course the possible partial shutdown of the federal government, following the long-running hamstringing of public functions via "the sequester"; and a possible vote not to raise the federal debt ceiling, which would create the prospect of a default on U.S. Treasury debt.

The details are complicated, but please don't lose sight of these three essential points:

- As a matter of substance, constant-shutdown, permanent-emergency governance is so destructive that no other serious country engages in or could tolerate it. The United States can afford it only because we are -- still -- so rich, with so much margin for waste and error. Details on this and other items below.*

- As a matter of politics, this is different from anything we learned about in classrooms or expected until the past few years. We're used to thinking that the most important disagreements are between the major parties, not within one party; and that disagreements over policies, goals, tactics can be addressed by negotiation or compromise.

This time, the fight that matters is within the Republican party, and that fight is over whether compromise itself is legitimate.** Outsiders to this struggle -- the president and his administration, Democratic legislators as a group, voters or "opinion leaders" outside the generally safe districts that elected the new House majority -- have essentially no leverage over the outcome. I can't recall any situation like this in my own experience, and the only even-approximate historic parallel (with obvious differences) is the inability of Northern/free-state opinion to affect the debate within the slave-state South from the 1840s onward. Nor is there a conceivable "compromise" the Democrats could offer that would placate the other side.

- As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a "standoff," a "showdown," a "failure of leadership," a sign of "partisan gridlock," or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism*** and an inability to see or describe what is going on. For instance: the "dig in their heels" headline you see below, which is from a proprietary newsletter I read this morning, and about which I am leaving off the identifying details.

This isn't "gridlock." It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results that unfortunately can harm all the rest of us -- and, should there be a debt default, could harm the rest of the world too.

_


The debt-ceiling vote, of course, is not about future spending decisions. It is about whether to cover expenditures the Congress has already authorized. There is no sane reason for subjecting this to a repeated vote. And there is no precedent for serious threats not to honor federal debt -- as opposed to symbolic anti-Administration protest votes, which both parties have cast over the years. Nor for demanding the reversal of major legislation as a condition for routine government operations.

In case the point is not clear yet: there is no post-Civil War precedent for what the House GOP is doing now. It is radical, and dangerous for the economy and our process of government, and its departure from past political disagreements can't be buffed away or ignored.

_

Go to this link and read it a few times.

Fallows certainly has an interesting, yet biased take on the whole thing. Interesting article.

I am seeing the effect Obamacare is having on small businesses I work with, and even more so among their employees.

Most normal people like the IDEA of the Affordable Care Act (No lifetime maximums, children can be on insurance until 26, no pre-existing conditions) until they find out that their hours are being cut to part time because the company can't afford to pay the premiums.

Premiums have gone up drastically (some companies as much as 70%, meaning a $100 payment is now $170) and companies can't afford to pay the 50% ER . They may go down in the future (one can only hope) but right now people are only feeling the sticker shock.

Is it something that should be talked about? Yes, absolutely. Is it worth shutting down the government for? Hell no.

One minor complaint about the Senate: If they really wanted to get this done, why on earth did they take the weekend off instead of negotiating with the House? Yes, the members of the House were acting like morons for letting it get this far, but why not work with them, if not for politics? Before you say anything Sam, no, I'm not trying to say the Democrats are to blame at all for the shutdown, just pointing out something that I thought was interesting.

In the short term this hurts the Republicans. If this continues and the economy collapses, history may see it differently. Bob Woodward said it best: "He (Obama) said he will not negotiate on the debt ceiling. A reasonable position. “I will not be blackmailed” he said. But he should be talking. They should be meeting, discussing this, because as I think Steve Ratner showed earlier, the American economy is at stake and the president, if there is a downturn or a collapse or whatever could happen here that’s bad, it’s going to be on his head. The history books are going to say, we had an economic calamity in the Presidency of Barack Obama. Speaker Boehner, indeed, is playing a role on this. Go back to the Great Depression in the 1930s. I’ll bet no one can name who was the speaker of the House at the time. Henry Thomas Rainey. He’s not in the history book it’s on the president’s head. He’s got to lead. He’s got to talk. And the absence of discussion here, I think, is baffling element."

[ October 01, 2013, 12:02 PM: Message edited by: Geraine ]

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Hobbes
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quote:
Originally posted by ambyr:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
So, anyone feel like a small bet on what the bad effects will be? Make a prediction that can be measured some reasonable time from now, give odds, and I'll offer to bet on it.

Prediction: I won't get paid.
Didn't the government issue back-pay after the last shut-down?

Hobbes [Smile]

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Geraine
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quote:
Originally posted by Hobbes:
quote:
Originally posted by ambyr:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
So, anyone feel like a small bet on what the bad effects will be? Make a prediction that can be measured some reasonable time from now, give odds, and I'll offer to bet on it.

Prediction: I won't get paid.
Didn't the government issue back-pay after the last shut-down?

Hobbes [Smile]

They did, but back pay doesn't pay bills that are due now. [Dont Know]
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Hobbes
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No question; but if you're going to bet on it I'd imagine that's a distinction you'd have to iron out before hand.

Hobbes [Smile]

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kmbboots
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What would negotiating do except encourage this behavior? We give now and then again at the debt ceiling and again, and again...

We "negotiated" on the law (not bill now, law) to its detriment and it passed. They shouldn't get to re-negotiate the law over and over again.

Our only hope at this point is that people will wake up and decide not to vote for these schmucks anymore. It is a faint hope due to safely gerrymandered districts, but the only one I see.

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Samprimary
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the last 'negotiations' were also, appropriately, a farce.
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Rakeesh
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Why not work with them? Well, it's certainly not the highest road, not the statesman's path, but come on. How *do* you expect someone to 'work with' a party that takes hostages, so to speak? How does the senate go about working with the house?
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BlackBlade
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Put a note certifying that the man/woman who manages to leave the chamber with that note will never have to be reelected so long as they wish to remain in office.

They will solve the problem for us.

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Darth_Mauve
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Negotiating with the Tea Party folks is like Negotiating with an Assassin. He says, "I am going to shoot you, OK?"

You say, "No."

"OK. Let's negotiate. How about I use a bomb."

No

"Ok. A good poison. Not so much pain and you get to live a few extra minutes."

No.

"That's not fair, you aren't negotiating."

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Wingracer
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Well thanks to the shutdown, my career change would appear to be on hold. I have been out of work since Easter but I have been putting the time to good use. I have taken the classes, passed all the tests, met all the requirements and last week, submitted all the paperwork to get a Coast Guard Captain's license. The moment my license arrives, I have a dream job waiting for me. Just one problem, everyone in that department of the USCG stayed home today.
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SenojRetep
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quote:
Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
Dems have generally been awful at messaging.

To the contrary, as is evident in these Twitter word clouds, Democratic Reps (and their staffs) are being significantly more disciplined on messaging than their Republican counterparts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/10/01/tweeting-the-shutdown-a-picture-is-worth-800000-furloughed-jobs/

Subjectively, I think this has generally been true for several years. Democrats have had a much more disciplined conference than Republicans, largely due to the virtual extinction of Blue Dogs after the 2010 wave election.

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Mucus
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As an outsider, I would have thought consistent != effective messaging.
For example, they could just have been consistently giving the same ineffective message.

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Aros
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Sam --

Sweet Lincoln quote.

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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by ambyr:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
So, anyone feel like a small bet on what the bad effects will be? Make a prediction that can be measured some reasonable time from now, give odds, and I'll offer to bet on it.

Prediction: I won't get paid.
Where do you work, and which paycheck (ie what date) did you have in mind?
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SenojRetep
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quote:
Originally posted by Mucus:
As an outsider, I would have thought consistent != effective messaging.
For example, they could just have been consistently giving the same ineffective message.

That's true to a degree, but in public perception consistency is extremely important (see: Head On! ads). Furthermore, the message the Democrats are unified behind (#GOPShutDown) seems like a pretty effective one to me; the shut down is extremely unpopular, and cementing people's preheld bias to blame the GOP for it is good politics.

See also, Joe Manchin's flip-flop on whether he'd vote for a CR that delayed Obamacare implementation for a year. Had he held to his original statement, it would have given the GOP something to crow about ("Dems divided" "Democratic Senate votes down bipartisan budget"). But Harry Reid and Dick Durbin whipped effectively, and none of the vulnerable Dem Senators are breaking ranks. Instead, it's fiscally moderate Republicans in the House like Peter King who've been trying to break Boehner's resolve, leading to conflicted messaging. The result: Democrats can hold the line without suffering significant blowback (except, perhaps, President Obama since the President's approval suffers no matter what when things go badly), people will (rightly) blame the Republicans, and Boehner gets burned. As long as the Democrats remain united and stay on message that this is all the GOP's fault (or "Tea Party anarchists" to use the Democratic PR-approved line that Reid, Carney, and others have been trotting out), they'll win the political fight.

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Lyrhawn
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Geraine

Give historians a little more credit. We're a lot more nuanced in our view than regular people are. When we think Depression, we don't just think the president. We think Smoot and Hawley and a lot of other things. If you're just talking about popular perception, well, that's something completely different than history, since popular perception is often incredibly wrong about a lot of things.

The thing is, if Obama gives in and allows the Republicans to hold him hostage again, historians will write that Obama destroyed his presidency and put a nail in the coffin of democracy by allowing a minority in a single house of Congress to pass legislation by threatening to derail the nation. I think both options have serious longterm implications for the country, but history isn't so blind or forgetful that they'll take Obama's actions in a vacuum.

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Geraine
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quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Geraine

Give historians a little more credit. We're a lot more nuanced in our view than regular people are. When we think Depression, we don't just think the president. We think Smoot and Hawley and a lot of other things. If you're just talking about popular perception, well, that's something completely different than history, since popular perception is often incredibly wrong about a lot of things.

The thing is, if Obama gives in and allows the Republicans to hold him hostage again, historians will write that Obama destroyed his presidency and put a nail in the coffin of democracy by allowing a minority in a single house of Congress to pass legislation by threatening to derail the nation. I think both options have serious longterm implications for the country, but history isn't so blind or forgetful that they'll take Obama's actions in a vacuum.

Right, but the majority of American voters AREN'T historians. Most voters look at who was president at the time, and blame them. Look at Carter for example. Was the mess he had during his four years really his fault? Nope. But to the average voter during that time, it WAS.

In 20 years, people aren't going to remember Boehner or McConnell. They ARE going to remember Obama.

We might realize how big of a deal the last government shutdown was with Gingrich and Clinton. Most people think this is the first shutdown we have ever had. Part of that is the media's fault, part of it is just being uninformed. They are told who to blame, and they blame. (It's even warranted)In the short term that works. It may work for the 2014 election. Will it work past that?

Who knows.

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Lyrhawn
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I'm not sure if that's true. I was only like 10 when the last shutdown happened but I still remember that it happened, and I remember that it was a budget fight.

But either way, while it might take some time, history will remember Obama more favorably than the afterglow. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter what voters think right now. Obama doesn't have to run for anything again, so their perception is sort of superflous.

Just look at how Bush's favorability ratings have changed dramatically. Presidents get remembered more fondly as time passes, whether it's justified or not. A lot of it also depends on the overall arc of his presidency and what the media chooses to talk about for the next two decades.

And while I think the general populace is full of morons, I give them a little more credit for nuance in understanding one guy isn't to blame for everything that happens during his term.

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Elison R. Salazar
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quote:
Originally posted by SenojRetep:
quote:
Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
Dems have generally been awful at messaging.

To the contrary, as is evident in these Twitter word clouds, Democratic Reps (and their staffs) are being significantly more disciplined on messaging than their Republican counterparts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/10/01/tweeting-the-shutdown-a-picture-is-worth-800000-furloughed-jobs/

Subjectively, I think this has generally been true for several years. Democrats have had a much more disciplined conference than Republicans, largely due to the virtual extinction of Blue Dogs after the 2010 wave election.

No. Just No.

Democrats are godawful at the messenging war to the point that significant portions of people think the law is actually called "Obamacare" say they dissapprove of it, but the same people when polled actually love the Affordable Care Act (spoilers, they're the same thing).

Between Republican misinformation of the "Big Lie" told over and over again is easier to believe than the rather complex truth which the Democrats have repeatedly bungled in order to not seem "partisan" and rarely take to the offensive. If they're actually doing something coherent "now" thank god but it would've been more useful starting in 2009. and 2010.

The simple proof of this is the extent that Democrats tend to not turn out for congressional midterm voting except in wave election years.

quote:

and cementing people's preheld bias to blame the GOP for it is good politics.

The GOP are at fault, this is so true its essentially self evident to anyone who has been paying attention.


quote:

until they find out that their hours are being cut to part time because the company can't afford to pay the premiums.

Because of a loophole that wouldn't have existed under Single Payer, remind me again where you stand on Universal Healthcare?
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Geraine:
In 20 years, people aren't going to remember Boehner or McConnell. They ARE going to remember Obama.

We might realize how big of a deal the last government shutdown was with Gingrich and Clinton.

If I were applying your logic consistently here wouldn't the response be "gingrich who?"

because gingrich's Great Leap Forward was just about exactly 20 years ago, and yet we still remember what he did.

Also nothing of what you are saying matters, if instead of remembering Boehner of McConnell, they remember the Tea Party and what they did back when they were a Thing. Which they will, and which doesn't leave Obama holding the bag.

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Elison R. Salazar
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http://i.imgur.com/LSCpkaH.jpg
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Geraine
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by Geraine:
In 20 years, people aren't going to remember Boehner or McConnell. They ARE going to remember Obama.

We might realize how big of a deal the last government shutdown was with Gingrich and Clinton.

If I were applying your logic consistently here wouldn't the response be "gingrich who?"

because gingrich's Great Leap Forward was just about exactly 20 years ago, and yet we still remember what he did.

Also nothing of what you are saying matters, if instead of remembering Boehner of McConnell, they remember the Tea Party and what they did back when they were a Thing. Which they will, and which doesn't leave Obama holding the bag.

Will you please to at least TRY to read my entire post before you respond? Those that are keep up on politics certainly remember Gingrich and the last shutdown. That is the vast majority of those on this site.

I'm saying the majority of American voters probably couldn't tell you anything about it, if they remember it at all. Of those that do, I'd bet a dollar tha majority of those don't even know what led to the shutdown.

As for the Tea Party, I guess time will tell. Generally it is presidents that are looked at, not the political groups at the time. In a couple of hundred years perhaps history books will talk about the Tea Party the way we talk about Whigs today. In 50 years though? People are really going to be looking at who the president was, the same way most people blame Hoover (And to a lesser extent FDR for extending it) for the Great Depression

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