Republicans In crisis and a Nation and a Democracy on the Sacrificial Alter

One problem with this process is conservatives/Republicans/Libertarians or whatever else they want to call themselves these days, don’t understand that Constitution thingy. Because if they did, they would know that the House must produce the budget. And the House is controlled by, guess who? It isn’t the Democrats whom you and those like you to blame. Why is it the House, the Republican House has not submitted a budget? Is it their fear of exposing waste and incompetence? So why are your Republicans breaking the law or are you going to try to tell me Republicans don’t have a majority in the House?

I am sure you would right up until you lost your job. The fact that you can earnestly make that claim reveals a very intellectually shallow and ignorant mind. Unfortunately it is all too representative of the American right wing.

 

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It Can't Rain All the Time

Hint: Republicans have held the House of Representatives since January, 2011.

That's a good one. Nice to see you turning the Republicans' behavior onto others.

An episode from March:

Watching House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on "Meet the Press" yesterday, it was hard not to wonder about the Republican leader's frame of mind. Given the distance between reality and his rhetoric, one question hung over the interview: does Boehner actually believe his own talking points?

For example, the Speaker insisted, "[T]here's no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester." Host David Gregory explained that the claim is "just not true," leading Boehner to respond:

"Well, David that's just nonsense. If [President Obama] had a plan, why wouldn't Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it?"​

Now, I suppose it's possible that the Speaker of the House doesn't know what a Senate filibuster is, but Boehner has been in Congress for two decades, and I find it implausible that he could be this ignorant. The facts are not in dispute: Democrats unveiled a compromise measure that required concessions from both sides; the plan enjoyed majority support in the Senate; and Republicans filibustered the proposal. That's not opinion; that's just what happened.

"If he had a plan, why wouldn't Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it?" One of two things are true: either the House Speaker has forgotten how a bill becomes a law in 2013 or he's using deliberately deceptive rhetoric in the hopes that Americans won't know the difference. It's one or the other.

What's worse, the "dunce vs. deceiver" debate intensified as the interview progressed.

(Benen, "Either")

• • •​

Boehner told NBC, "There's no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester." This, too, was fact-checked and also proven to be incorrect. Asked for an explanation, Boehner acknowledged that he'd made a mistake, apologized, and set the record straight.

No, I'm just kidding. Boehner's office actually doubled-down on the lie, saying the falsehood is true if Republicans are allowed to change the meaning of basic words.

With both of those "plans" easily found in official records and news reports, we asked Boehner's spokesman Brendan Buck how the speaker could claim that none exists.

"A plan must demonstrate it has the ability to pass a chamber of Congress to be worth anything. We've twice passed a plan. We're still waiting for the Senate to pass something, anything," Buck told PolitiFact in an email.​

It would have been very easy for Boehner and his team to say, "The Speaker misspoke. Democrats have a plan, but we think it's an awful plan that would produce awful consequences."

But that would mean taking honesty seriously. Instead, the Speaker and his office have to argue, with a straight face, that they have their own definitions of the words "plan" and "is," which do not comport to any known dictionary.

In this case, Boehner said there is no Democratic plan. Reminded that there is a Democratic plan, Boehner's spokesperson says a plan isn't actually a plan unless it can pass the House or Senate. How did this conditional definition come about? They just made it up.

(Benen, "A Tale")​

As to actually passing a budget, well, think about it this way: House Republicans refused the conference committee.

So think about this for a moment:

• If the Democrats in the Senate pass their own budget package, and ...

• ... Republicans in the House pass their own budget package, and ...

• ... Republicans refuse conference committee for budget reconciliation ...

• ... then that can only mean this is because the "Democrats [would] not submit a budget".

(Do I have your logic about right?)​

As to the problem with Democrats passing budgets in previous years, it's a question that comes up repeatedly, as if conservatives are hauling it out from time to time to see if anyone has forgotten the real answer:

BAIER: Senator Kyl, when you hear the president say this no way to run the government, you know, that we'll likely also face another standoff at the end of September when the continuing resolution runs out and government funding -- you know, we're up against another government shutdown. You know, former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once famously said, "Never waste a crisis."

Do Republicans now risk become the -- becoming the party that's always pushing up to the cliff, always using that cliff to try to extract concessions? I mean, do you fear the American people will have crisis fatigue, if they don't already, and that it will hurt your party?

KYL: You mentioned the possibility of a continuing resolution. Why would Congress have to pass a continuing resolution? Because the Senate Democrats now, for the third year in a row, will not have passed a budget. That's their job.

The House Republicans have passed a budget. Senate Democrats said no to that budget. So I think it's very unfair to suggest that Republicans are responsible.

We don't have the votes in the U.S. Senate. But where they do have the votes, in the House of Representatives, they've done their job.

BAIER: Senator Durbin, why haven't the Senate Democrats passed a budget?

DURBIN: It's called 60 votes. And what it boils down to is this: we have 53 Democratic senators.

(CROSSTALK)

DURBIN: Well, but I can tell you, when we get through all the procedural tangles that we face in getting through this budget resolution, it is not just a matter of finding some agreement, but getting it executed on the floor.

(Baier)​

What gets me about these quick, quippy arguments conservatives are offering is that it's hard to figure just where the dearth is. That is, are my conservative neighbors really so ignorant of the history and politics about which they opine? Are they trying some childish sleight of rhetoric, hoping that people don't remember, never learned, or were misinformed? It all comes back to the point about human frailty: It is one thing to acknowledge human frailty, but another entirely to depend on its exploitation for your success.

Look, I have conservative friends in the real world, and it's always the same. We get it: You're not lying to us. We get it: You're not ignorant. But we also get it: What you're saying has no substantive connection to reality. So what, then, is going on? Our conservative neighbors are constantly repeating inaccurate information, and no matter how many times they are corrected, they will require correction again the next time. What gives? Is this pathological? How do we account for this? Because the steady rain of insults against people's intelligence really does eventually get their attention.

That suggests a shocking hostility toward your fellow human being.

There is always a presupposition, when people are hoping to see their neighbors hurt, that the hopeful are reserved to a class that will be spared the harm of their own insanity.

We're Americans. Not Spartans. The boneyard in the river is a sight for sorely vicious eyes.
____________________

Notes:

Benen, Steve. "Either Boehner is confused or he thinks you're confused". The Maddow Blog. March 4, 2013. MaddowBlog.com. September 30, 2013. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2...ehner-is-confused-or-he-thinks-youre-confused

—————. "A tale of two falsehoods". The Maddow Blog. March 5, 2013. MaddowBlog.com. September 30, 2013. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/05/17194080-a-tale-of-two-falsehoods

Baier, Bret. "Gene Sperling Gives White House View of Debt Talks; Rep. McCarthy, Sens. Durbin, Kyl Talk Compromise". FOX News Sunday. July 31, 2013. FOXNews.com. September 30, 2013. http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-n...lks-rep-mccarthy-sens-durbin-kyl-talk-comprom

 

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Interesting Times

It is worth noting that as MSNBC's ragged hosting crew has made it into Shutdown 2013—everyone still hustling the Beltway media circuit tonight is just exhausted—Alex Wagner, sitting in for Lawrence O'Donnell (why don't they just have her host a special edition of her own show instead of ... er, never mind) was just interviewing the odd coupling of a New York Times reporter and Robert Costa of National Review.

Yes, that is how bizarre this has gotten. In the dead of night, the beltway buzzes, and NR turns up on MSNBC, beside NYT, making no excuses, pitching no rally cry, but honestly trying to assess the damage House Republicans have just done.

I mean, come on, when NR has no smack to talk about Nancy Pelosi tacking a presser question on compromise to the shed, we know we have achieved Interesting Times.

And whatever else, I admit, I do enjoy seeing the Beltway media buzz itself to burnout.

Meanwhile, the Senate left an hour ago, and the intertubes tell us that Speaker Boehner left the building sometime in the last ten minutes.

 

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I really have to ask 2 questions

1) why are there no constitutional provisions to deal with a situation like this? ie if the congress refuses to pass the budget why can't Obama sack the congress and send you all to an election?
2) why would the US public allow this to fly? if anything like this happened in any country I could think of they would face political devastation in the next election, no matter WHAT policies are at stake if you can't keep the government running you don't get to BE government. Yes I know technically the government is the democrats (Obama) and we are talking about congress but still

 

That would be nice, but the founding fathers were not infallible.

Which might be what will happen come 2014.

 

The US does not have a parliamentary system of government. That makes it unique among former British colonial states. The US has a rather complicated system of governance. The POTUS cannot sack congress or any other elected official.

There are many etiologies for America’s current woes. One is the way we elect our congressional districts. The Last election, if every man had one vote that counted as one vote, Democrats would now be in control of both houses of congress, but there is this little thing called gerrymandering which allows congressional districts to be created in a manner that allows a minority to win a majority. Where every Republican vote is worth various multiples of a Democratic vote, and that is why Republicans have control of the House and may continue to control the House.

 

Prophylaxis, and Other Notes

Because the Founders, as with assault weapons and televangelism, could not foresee everything. The idea that men of state should behave in such a crass, repugnant manner as the Republican Party wasn't so much outrageous to them as unimaginable—completely beyond the horizon, kind of like a nuclear weapon and the answer to the eventual question about why the founders didn't provide for exploratory processes when we claim celestial bodies for the nation.

In truth, if they could have known it would come to this, they would have done it differently, I think.

Because truth is a commodity that can be negotiated in the United States. The truth here is not defined as any sort of accurate representation of anything, but whatever story you can sell people on. There is an old joke about why Jews have large noses—"Because air is free"—that sort of makes the point insofar as it doesn't have to stay a Jew joke anymore.

Why are Americans polluting the air? Because we can't sell it, so fuck you.

Why are Americans polluting the water? Because we won't be bound by quaint notions of right and wrong, so fuck you.

Why are we letting so many of our people die for stupid reasons when their illness is easily treated or even prevented? Because we can't charge rent for the privilege of being alive, so fuck you.

And so on, and so on.

Why are Americans so often clueless? Because the truth can't be owned, so fuck you.

If we can't own it and amortize it, Americans will very frequently decide to fuck it. And fuck you in the process.

This is the American way. It is the American heritage we aren't supposed to discuss in polite company, with "in polite company" being a euphemism for "with anybody, including our own individual selves, ever".

This disaster? This is what the people want. Or, at least, this is what enough people want. They made sure this would happen, went out of their way to lie and cheat and fight to make sure it did.

And the thing is that we do have one bedrock principle that everyone will fall back to at some point, even if they never believe in or apply it: We will allow the goddamn KKK to march down Main Street if stopping them means there is no free speech.

The upside to that point, though, is that the KKK is a former glorious tradition now reduced to a shadow of itself that cannot even be respectably called a sad joke, though people will allow it to exist that they might continue to shame its idiocy.

The flipside to that upside, however, is that the KKK is not a major political party, and the GOP is.

You have every right in this country to voice your opposition to it. In theory, we draw the line when you undertake actions to harm the United States and further empower our rivals. However, conservatives, increasingly needing some sort of dispensation, perhaps under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), get some sort of bizarre exemption, and seem to think it's their right and duty to conspire against the United States of America.

And if you watch our history, you'll see it. The reason the Democrats are often so flaccid in the face of right-wing extremism is that the left has already had its turn in the wilderness. Think about the idea that from January 1969 to January 1993, Democrats managed to put one president in the White House, for all of one term that became infamous as the worst presidency ever (it wasn't) until George W. Bush settled the question, except, of course, that conservatives get a pass on their disasters, since everything conservatives do wrong is entirely the Democrats' fault, anyway, well, yeah, there's a reason the Democrats spent the first few years reeling under the Tea Party siege; they forgot the right-wing exemption, and thus spent too much time wondering why the Republicans weren't disqualified after they lost their minds—by the time it got to conservative supporters physically assaulting black and gay lawmakers in order to express their displeasure over having lost the Obamacare fight on a straight, up-or-down vote, it was quite clear that we were somehow obliged not only to let this right-wing pageant of hatred and stupidity proceed uninterrupted, we were also supposed to applaud and tell them what good and noble things they were doing for us.

And I know that last paragraph seems a bit hyperbolic, but if you watch how things actually go, it's true: Conservatives are entitled to greater leeway than anyone else. It's customary, a result of the conservative outlook aligning with the traditions people are trying to conserve, like religious and ethnic supremacy in a secular, pluralistic republic.

But even more than that, the present insanity is also attributable to the idea that people don't believe things are really going on.

For instance, we've had a house guest here, a friend who needed a place to crash while away from home for a week for work. I wandered through the kitchen last night, under a specific request to leave politics, anthropology, psychology, and history out of anything I discussed, since other people don't actually pay attention to those things—and, yes, while that last is sarcastic, wait for the punch line—and tailored my words: "All I'm going to say about it is that we officially went into shutdown a few minutes ago."

Just that statement confused our guest. My housemate explained, "The government just shut down."

"What? What do you mean? What happened?"

"Well," I explained, "basically House Republicans said no Continuing Resolution to fund the government unless we get rid of Obamacare."

Stunned, our guest looked to my housemate.

"I know that sounds like a joke," I said, "but it really is pretty much that simple."

My housemate nodded, and explained how confused she was by the whole thing.

And, see, just because of the amount of MSNBC in the background, and the amount of politics that has crept into CNBC's financial analyses, she has become aware of the stunning details she has long overlooked. And it's true; some people watch soap operas, some follow sports, and I get my fix from political drama—my housemate started to understand how that works. She really had thought I had lost my mind about what was going on in that part of the news until her television habit became more than Squawk Box and watching people buy expensive houses in third-world countries on HGTV. When Foster Freiss popped off with the line about keeping an aspirin between a woman's knees, Andrea Mitchell might have been shocked by the crass idiocy, but my housemate suddenly awoke to the cold recognition that this is really happening. And, now, each time the GOP does something newly stupid, she is slowly adjusting to the reality that yes, this is really happening. She's not an idiot and never has been, but once you notice, so to speak, it's really, really hard to forget.

We crossed a threshold sometime in during the Dubya years, and most Americans didn't notice. We also crossed a threshold in 1993, and most Americans didn't notice. Vicious is a cornerstone adjective for American politics, but conservatives not only set up the Arkansas Project to craft lies about the Clintons and invent scandals, but they actually went after the president's kid. I mean, think about that; it's such bad press that even today it's a bridge too far for Rush Limbaugh. Yes, really. He has a team that suppresses that footage whenever it surfaces, and he will publicly assert that the incident never happened, as evidenced by the lack of footage, which you would think would be all over the internet. (Whatever copies haven't made it to the internet are on videotape, so ... yeah.) And then think about how things changed during the Iraqi Bush Adventure Pep Rallies. When we pass these milestones, benchmarks, whatever you want to call them, people often either don't notice because they're not paying attention, or else not perceiving or comprehending the magnitude° of what they're watching.

The thing is that the public is facing one of those potential shockwave moments, and the question is whether they will respond with ego defense or actually attempt to wrangle with the problem head on. It's kind of a shocking situation if you're still wrapped up in the notion that "America" is the shining city on the hill, instead of simply recognizing our society's mythic potential. If one becomes too accustomed to the presumptuous comfort that this sort of embarrassing, lowbrow, mostly-filler, no-meat sausage grinding doesn't happen here, trying to make heads and tails of it all can be exponentially harder than it is for those of us who follow politics as a passion or, indeed, virtually across the board on this one, actually cover the Beltway for a living.

The seasoned political hands are astounded. The veteran talking heads are flummoxed. The armchair pundits and publick house professors are opining as only fools can. And yes, that all includes me, somewhere, though I hope to come in somewhere above the valence of fools. Of course, the barstool beats the gutter, I guess.

The point being that there are many Americans who woke up this morning to find their shining city on the hill inexplicably aflame.

The people doing it can't explain it. The people analyzing the people doing it can't explain it. The people meta-analyzing the analyses aren't coming up with anything. I would suggest the key lies in the unrecognized dialectic of neurosis, but apparently I'm among an exceptionally rare species on that point.

It is a Freudian theorem that each individual neurosis is not static but dynamic. It is a historical process with its own internal logic. Because of the basically unsatisfactory nature of the neurotic compromise, tension between the repressed and repressing factors persists and produces a constant series of new symptom-formations. And the series of symptom-formations is not a shapeless series of mere changes; it exhibits a regressive pattern, which Freud calls the slow return of the repressed, “It is a law of neurotic diseases that these obsessive acts serve the impulse more and more and come nearer and nearer the original and forbidden act.” The doctrine of the universal neurosis of mankind, if we take it seriously, therefore compels us to entertain the hypothesis that the pattern of history exhibits a dialectic not hitherto recognized by historians, the dialectic of neurosis.

—Norman O. Brown​

Not that holding the key tells me where the lock is. That is to say, even if I'm correct on this point, it doesn't get us any closer than the starting point it provides. Trying to read this neurotic hot mess is like trying to read tea leaves in a moneyshot; the sample data is spattered all over the graph. Trying to find the seed that roots and bursts forth with such self-gratifying produce is an exercise best undertaken only with careful prophylactic reassurance. Vaccines, hazard suit, the proverbial ten-foot pole ... all of it.

These are Interesting Times, there is no denying. Our ministry remains ... dysfunctional.

But, oh, the pretty lights. They do put on a show.
____________________

Notes:

° magnitude — Fun with magnitude. Did you ever see Steve Martin in L. A. Story? I'm thinking of the café earthquake scene, as they all sit there calmly and guess the magnitude of the temblor.

One of my college friends was from San Francisco, and explained his experience during the World Series (Loma Prieta 1989) Quake. Essentially, the game goes to adverts for a side change, and he gets up to do a couple things. Go to the bathroom, smoke some dope, make a sandwich, all that. While he's making the sandwich, the earthquake hits. He guesses a lower magnitude, and goes on with making the sandwich, but here's the thing—his house is on the hill, and in good, stable rock. He finishes making his sandwich, returns to the game, and on his television the waterfront is on fire. That would not have happened in a 4.0 quake. It was a fifteen-second 6.9 with a surface magnitude rated between 6.6 and 7.4 depending on the station, 25 miles south of San Francisco, eleven miles down. The Bay Area got kicked, despite San Francisco rating only light to moderate potential damage (VI-VII) on the MMI. Oakland, to the other, rated moderate/heavy to heavy (VIII-IX).

But, yes, my friend completely missed the magnitude.

Works Cited:

Brown, Norman O. Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1959.

 

I don't think people are going to wake up, we might if we are really lucky see the republicans loss majority of the house, but that is unlikely. The debt ceiling, that will be unprecedented, if they don't raise that then perhaps we will enter a depression, a depression cause entirely by insane politics, then we might see Americans wake up.

 

You can't provide for every possibility. The ultimate provision is the ability of voters to vote the obstructionists out and vote new representatives in. But there's a problem with that due to:

In the US the two party system has resulted in this being effectively impossible. Vote for the republicans who caused the shutdown? Vote for the democrats who weren't willing to negotiate on Obamacare? Those are your two choices - and electing either will result in the same problems in the future.

 

Tiassa, I didn't mean my post to say that other countries are perfect, hell my own country just voted out one of the most effective governments (even though Gillard didn't hold a majority in either house she managed to pass more legislation than even Howard when he held a majority in the senate) because Murdoch told people that they were the worst government in history and spent no time analysing the oppositions policies. So you can throw whatever lies you want around but you simply can't fail to pass supply, it won't happen

It happened once and lead to the constitutional crisis where Whitlam was sacked by the GG at the time and the famous words "we'll may we say "God save the Queen" because NOTHING will save the Govenor General". After that both parties agreed that supply would never be blocked. We also have provisions for times when the house and the senate disagree on a Bill. If its important enough the whole senate (rather than the normal half) is desolved along with the house and we have another election. If its still not resolved then there is a joint sitting and the Bill is voted on and whatever the outcome of the vote is treated as if it was voted on by both houses (which means the house prevails because there are far more members of the lower house than senators)

Anyway I was shocked when the ABC News Radio switched over to NPR last night that the discussion was on the psychology of baseball instead of the fact the government had shut down. When it had been on the BBC earlier that was all that was talked about but not NPR. I am even surprised how few threads there are here on it. How can a government who can't function be concidered "normal"

 

It takes a distant 2nd place to "Blame Game" but today I hear Obama and some republican (I forget who) play the "Claim Game." - Both noted THEY had reduced the rate of deficit growth by more than 50% since they came to power.

 

Making the Obvious Point

Just So We're Clear

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​

Michael Linden and Harry Stein explain:

The Senate-passed measure to keep the government operating represents an enormous compromise by progressives to avoid a damaging government shutdown. The Democrat-controlled Senate agreed to temporary funding levels that are far closer to the Republican-controlled House budget plan than they are to the Senate’s own budget for fiscal year 2014. Moreover, this concession is only the latest of many such compromises over the past several years.

The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a continuing resolution, or CR—a temporary funding measure meant to keep the government operating—that would set the relevant funding levels at an annualized total of $986 billion. That’s about $70 billion less than what the Senate endorsed as part of its comprehensive budget plan back in April. But that actually understates the extent of the compromise ....

.... Progressives have repeatedly made significant concessions in order to protect the economy from a series of manufactured crises. Today’s manufactured crisis is no different. The Senate-passed legislation to keep the government open sets funding levels that are even lower than previous compromises. If the Tea Party shuts the government down anyway, it will not be because progressives were inflexible. Just ask House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)—the compromise incorporated in the Senate CR was originally his idea.​

Alright, are we all clear on the difference, here?

Or is someone going to try that "both sides" excrement again?
____________________

Notes:

Linden, Michael and Harry Stein. "The Senate Continuing Resolution Is Already a Compromise". Center for American Progress. September 30, 2013. AmericanProgress.org. October 1, 2013. http://www.americanprogress.org/iss...ontinuing-resolution-is-already-a-compromise/

 

I went a few rounds with some random Limbaugh apologist on this very forum years ago over that incident. I'm apparently one of only a few people who actually watched it when it happened who will admit to it, or can remember it (or. maybe considering the average demographics of his audience, is still alive). Random nut job was basically calling me a liar, and pushing some transcript from another episode as the explanation for a "misunderstanding". There was no misunderstanding. Limbaugh said to his audience "You all know there is a White House cat", and a photo of socks the cat was shown. "But, did you know there is also a White House dog?" And an image of Chelsea Clinton, at her most awkward stage (a mouth full of braces displayed by her smile), was then shown. The audience reaction was a bit subdued. I think even his tiny hand picked audience thought it was over the line. It's strange though, out of all of the scummy things Limbaugh has said over the years, that's the one that they try to shove down the memory hole.

 

Just a little conspiracy for you, I'd be really interested to see how many Republican's make money through the current shutdown. After all such occurrences create abnormal reactions in the stockmarket which can be easily exploited by the already rich and powerful, really during a shutdown they should shut the trade system down too to stop this exploitation.

 

This and That

I actually think I recall that. Well, okay, I remember a discussion in which someone had to dig up an article explaining how the video surfaced and then disappeared every now and then, and what I remember was the idea that Limbaugh wanted to deny the incident. It reminds me that the individual about which I otherwise have nothing to say actually does have some conscious boundary; not that I could tell you whether it was moral or monetary, but he does have a boundary.

In truth, I just haven't gone fishing for that old discussion yet.

• • •​

Tweet that in the general direction of @mtaibbi; it seems almost obvious that either he or someone in his (ahem!) seminal circle would be watching that aspect.

The thing is that there is a moneygoround on this. The obvious is the idea of job security; keep fleecing people to finance lost causes and you never actually have to win. There is also the bizarre FOX News revolving door, any number of book options, or if you're Newt Gingrich, convincing people to give you thousands of dollars apiece in exchange for worthless certificates of merit for their businesses.

It's just not the obvious conspiratorial moneygoround.

Indeed, it's raw capitalism.

No, really, think of it this way: At the same time the GOP establishment was harpooning Ted Cruz for being a selfish bastard, they were sending "I Stand With Ted" fundraising emails from sea to shining sea. Yes, really.

 

A line from one of my favorite songs comes to mind: "When your heart/s on fire, smoke gets in your eyes."

Actually, I doubt the shut down will be much remembered or discussed in November 2014 elections, especially if my long standing prediction of run on dollar "on or before Halloween 2014" has come true. I even doubt that the affordable health care will be an election issue. Republican's star will be rising with comments like:

"Obama's anti-business attempts at socialism is why you lost your job, why there are food riots and marshal law is needed to keep more cities from burning." Elect Republicans who know how to work with business to make the US great again."

If I am wrong about the economic conditions, things are getting better, the deficit no longer exists, etc. partly because "Obamacare" has reduced rate of increase in medical costs, numbers of sick going to hospital emergency room for care, etc. and population likes Obamacare, the main stream Republican line will be:

"Fortunately the destructive Tea Party is no more and the US has affordable health care because Republicans know how to make things work - It took 44 Republican House lead proposals to fix "Obamacare" - to make it what it is today."

 

I went to the commissary on the army base yesterday and it seemed soldiers and their families were preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse. The lines for checkout looped all the way around the inside of store and not one bit of produce could be had. I asked the cashier what the hell was going on and she said the Commissary will be closed for the rest of the week for sure and maybe indefinitely. This will not affect me as much as it will affect the lower pay grade soldiers with families that depend on the lower food costs along with WiC to make ends meet. As i stood in line and thought about the consequences of this shutdown I did something that is really a no-no in the Army, I began making nasty political comments about the Tea Party to a young soldier knowing that hecoul not discuss politics in uniform, but I was just so rip-snorting mad. All he could do was smile at me sheepishly and nod, so when I finally realized what a predicament I was putting him in I apologized to which he graciously responded, Hooah!

If the shutdown continues eventually the local town who depends on our soldiers for much of their economy will certainly be affected adversely.

 

Nice post quinnsong. I'm guessing more firsthand accounts will be surfacing as people hurt by the various shutdowns begin describing their experiences like you've nicely done here.

This demonstrates the problem of creating a contract with people in uniform, promising them certain things in return for their loyalty and the risk of deadly harm, and the hardship on their families and friends who have a stake in their commitments, and then pulling the carpet out from under them, if only in a relatively small way. A lot of the damage inflicted by the meanness and stupidity of the Republican war on truth will manifest in these less tangible ways. It's hard to put a dollar amount on the cost of deprivation, loss of benefits, unforeseen expenses and anxiety. But one of those is morale, one of the pillars of the military and of any constituency.

It remains to be seen how many voters will accept, that once a law passes and is upheld in the courts, it needs to obeyed until repealed by due process. Any end-around like this to try to whip more right wing constituents into a frenzy (blaming the Dems for any harm accrued) is risky, but having gone into meltdown on other fronts they are hard pressed to dump that caution and thoughtful deliberation that the conservative mind purports to embrace.

I'm not sure how checks and balances has allowed itself to be infected by the Republican worms, but it's probably a reflection on the way that long held theories of government established in the Constitution need updating. For example, it provides for Congressional control of budgets and funding, but it doesn't require the committee members to have credentials in economics and finance. Thus it produces the likes of Ryan, a person trained in speech writing, to divert time and resources to plans that wouldn't pass muster on midterm exam in Economics 101. He reminds us of the unqualified bums G.W. Bush put in high offices.

The theory of the founders was that check and balances, compromise and public accountability would ward off infections likes this, but I think that theory is long obsolete. One thing that would help is a law or amendment which bars any unqualified person from engaging in policy decisions. Minimum guidelines, like the ones they impose on teachers, should be imposed on all lawmakers as a prerequisite to filing for candidacy.

All persons voting on matters dealing with fiscal policy should be required to pass a barrier exam in economics, for example.

Another thing that would help is the creation of a weighted voting system. Voters would be tested and classified into fields of knowledge. Based on how they score, these voters could be allowed to vote in a fourth branch of government, a standing committee of perpetual referenda, which can override the other three branches of government in selected matters (some powers would be left autonomous).

A parallel tax system should be created in which a person who passes barrier exams gains the right to vote their tax dollars to specific allocations--with normalization of the amounts such that there is little or no disparity in weight of the rich over the weight of the poor. A secondary purpose of this would be to restore the sense of democracy that is so ill-defined, plus to draw a finer line between rights and privilege. Voting in matters that require expertise should be treated as a privilege, one freely given to all persons who qualify. The unqualified people would have the option to put up (learn something) or shut up (your vote is worthless).

Additionally, all departments of the qualified colleges and universities should be encouraged to provide, say, 10% of their resources to producing policy recommendations in their fields of expertise which would have the weight of actual votes on the floor. This could be incentivized through public endowments to the contributors, without disturbing the grant process, and without the limitations on winning awards.