Kneecapping Your Own Quarterback (with update)

(see Update below)
So forty-seven U.S. Senators went and did a thing this weekend, where they sent a rather demeaning and error-filled letter to the Iranian government warning them that any treaty deal over stopping Iran's uranium nuclear-bomb projects will be meaningless:

...What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time...

The Senators are basically telling the Iranians "Screw it.  No matter what deal you make with Obama, we'll just vote it down or ignore it and if we get a Republican in the White House in 2016 you are all bombing targets."

One of the sins that these Senators committed: the whole "advise and consent" element in Article II of the Constitution is that the Senate should be advising OUR PRESIDENT and NOT advising the foreign power.  The Senators are openly influencing - through reckless intimidation - another nation into NOT dealing with our government over a possibly peaceful solution to a serious problem.  This sort of move reeks of war-mongering (the GOP wants a war with Iran, in case you hadn't noticed), this sort of move reeks of treason interfering with our government's ability to work with other nations.

The other sin is that this move reeks of the Senators being total assholes.

The Republicans have taken their 6-years-and-counting obstruction against Barack Obama and turned it into an international scandal.

There are certain things in politics, in the halls of power, you just don't do.  There are written rules of conduct, official checks and balances codified into the Constitution itself.  There are the unwritten rules of decorum and behavior, of ceremony and tradition where certain offices are granted a lot of leeway to get work done.  There's the common sense things where you don't go tugging on Superman's cape or spit into the wind.

It's been an unwritten rule since the days of Washington himself where the President, via his executive offices of the State Department, handles all the heavy lifting and deal-making of treaties with foreign nations.  In this, the Senate only comes in either as individual experts on certain topics or nations to consult with the President directly, and otherwise the Senate waits until a treaty gets signed before it comes to them for 2/3rds vote to ratify.  There was a sense of decorum about it: let the President handle the foreign policies as Head of State.

This letter nukes all of that, metaphorically and literally.  It's an open warning shot across the bow.  It's a blatant show of disrespect towards a President they've accused again and again of being un-American, and it's a disgusting display of obstruction no other President has ever had to cope with in the 220-plus years of our nation's dealings with the world.

I've looked at that Logan Act, the law making it a crime to interfere directly or indirectly with a President's ability to form treaties or deal with foreign powers.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

I swear, that Senate letter reads to me like it's violating the part of the Act I've marked in bold.  The only thing that's keeping me from screaming about these Senators committing outright treason is that bit about "without authority of the United States."  As Senators, they DO have authority... but my question would be "do they have THIS kind of authority to directly parley or communicate with a foreign nation, in direct interference with the State Department which DOES have the authority? And in direct interference with the President of the United States who DOES have the authority?"

At what point did the Senate cross the line on the Logan Act?  They sure as hell crossed the line for decorum and decency with this bullshit stunt.  This is an open act of sabotage against the President of the United States.  A President in Barack Obama who's won two majority elections to serve as President.  A President who's been attacked again and again for no sane reason other than the Republicans being hateful bastards.

UPDATE: I think I found the answer to the question above ("At what point did the Senate cross the line on the Logan Act?").  There was a court ruling back in 1936 - U.S. vs. Curtiss-Wright Export - where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the President using his powers to go after arms dealers selling to foreign nations/powers.  Part 9 of the ruling says "In international relations, the President is the sole organ of the Federal Government." To wit:

...In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it... They think the interference of the Senate in the direction of foreign negotiations calculated to diminish that responsibility, and thereby to impair the best security for the national safety...

I really believe the 47 Senators broke the law: they calculated to diminish President Obama's responsibility to negotiate with the world.  I really believe they should be charged and held accountable.  The Logan Act requires it.  The Supreme Court confirms it.  The only question now should be "who has standing to file the charge?"  If it's Obama, dammit man NOW is the time to fight the fire burning down our political system.  If it's the State Department, your very office DEMANDS you secure your ability to negotiate with foreign powers.  If it can be someone in the Senate, dammit Democrats MAN UP.

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Follow-Up to Obama's 2015 State of the Union

While I didn't completely get what I wanted from Obama's address - although he DID push for an economic and tax agenda I can support - I did get to bear witness to one of the epic smackdowns in American History:

During his scripted speech, Obama claimed his position as "I have no more campaigns to run."

This prompted a round of applause from the Republican Congresscritters seemingly celebrating that Obama's unable to run for re-election.

Obama then ad-libbed "I know... because I won both of them."

Boom.

Burn.

Dunk.

Mic Drop.

Linkage to some Twitter reactions - usually the go-to source for the immediate OMG pulse of the moment - here and here and a few others if you look for them.

It was sweet.

If I ever have kids, I will tell them of this moment.

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Can The Elephant Ever Thread The Eye of the Needle?

(Update: The GOP House is attempting to get something resolved, but it's doubtful the bill - something that would nuke DACA with extreme prejudice -would survive its trip to the Senate, let alone getting to Obama's Oval Office where it'll get vetoed.)
I've mentioned before how this Republican-led House in the U.S. Congress may be one of the most incompetent ever, but today's failure to even get a vote out on an emergency border bill takes the prize (via Washington Monthly):

Despite some nativist tweaks aimed at getting conservatives on board, the House GOP leadership (operating for the first time with Kevin McCarthy instead of Eric Cantor holding the whip) had to pull its much trumpeted border bill this afternoon, apparently abandoning the whole effort while Members head off on their long August recess...

This article quickly links to Talking Points Memo for more:

...Immigration-weary conservatives said the $659 million supplemental, and the subsequent measure to end the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, didn't go far enough in rebuking the president's actions.

It was a remarkable defeat for the new GOP leadership team on the day that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) stepped down as majority leader.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced the decision in a joint statement with his new leadership team, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)...

Why the hair-pulling?

Because of three things of direct concern: 1) there is a major crisis at the moment with an influx of children immigrants flooding across the US-Mexico border, a lot of them fleeing an increase in violence and corruption in places like Honduras and Guatemala, 2) the prolonged failure by Republican Party leadership to address any form of immigration reform was starting to show, and 3) the Republicans were poised to use this bill to force draconian cuts to Obama's planned efforts of immigration reform (he had asked for 3.7 billion in comprehensive funding to which the House slashed it down to barely 659 million for border security only, and the Far Right in the House were aiming to slash at other programs like DACA), positioning themselves to look good to their base while making Obama choke on the sh-t sandwich they were going to serve him.  Now they can't even serve him a sh-t sandwich (even with them trying to blame this all on Obama anyway).

Another problem?  The one thing this House did vote for this final week was a resolution granting Speaker Boehner the power to file a lawsuit against Obama's "unlawful" abuse of Executive Orders.  Like I said before, more a political stunt to appease their base, but now this lawsuit creates a paradox.  Because House Republicans can't pass the legislation needed to get things done, they're forcing Obama into the position of issuing Executive Orders to cover the gaps that failure of legislating is creating.  Per the Washington Post:

...When Obama takes some kind of executive action to address the broader immigration problem, Republican complaints that he’s being tyrannical will be undermined by the GOP’s abysmal failure to offer an alternative. If they had passed a border bill he vetoed, or one that died in the Senate, they could claim they tried to solve the problem. But now all they’ve got to show for the end of the session is a lawsuit — one that will probably offer their own right wing nothing but frustration and disappointment, and will validate everything Obama is saying about them.

This is the best that the Republicans in the House could do this summer?

Some of the other things worth mentioning: we were promised an exclusive special committee getting into the bottom of Benghazi, yet I can't recall a single news report about them since May (turns out they're scheduled to hold hearings this September); Congress has been having problems funding bills for our nation's transportation infrastructure; the only thing that this Congress seems able to pass is a major reform and funding package for the Veterans Affairs department that was facing serious breakdowns in service and management... and that's pretty much because the failures at the VA were so great and so prolonged that both parties had to respond quickly to fix it.

We're discussing one of the least productive Congressional sessions in recent memory (barely doing any better than the previous one of 2011-13, which wasn't all that busy anyway).  Like it or not, we as a nation need a functioning Congress to uphold the legislative duties that keep our government working.  When it doesn't work, very little else can...

There is a possibility that the House will delay their planned August recess - for a few days at least - in order to pass something of a border security bill, and avoid the outright embarrassment of heading off to their fundraiser parties at country clubs.  But given the dysfunction of this party - their obsession to embarrass Obama at all hazards, their failure to keep their more extremist factions in check - I doubt the House Republicans will get anything done before they blame their failures on Obama and move on.

This is not a political party geared towards passing any decent legislation.

Reason #4793178 you shouldn't vote Republican.

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Executive's Order, Speaker's Chaos

I had about five other things I wanted to write about - after long weeks of having little to discuss that could be resolved in a simple, "what the hell?" retort - but I spotted this halfway through the day and felt compelled to lead off with this.

Speaker John Boehner is seriously reviewing his options on pursuing a lawsuit against Barack Obama's use of Executive Orders.  To wit (via the Washington Post):

Reports today indicate that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is planning a lawsuit over Barack Obama's use of executive orders. These orders have long been a focal point of right-wing anger, particularly since January of this year when Obama announced he'd be using more of them to bypass a gridlocked and dysfunctional Congress.

After the immediate round of laughing my ass off, I had to consider the actual seriousness of what Boehner's hoping to accomplish.

With regards to EOs (abbrev. Executive Order, natch), there has been a long history of Presidents issuing such things ever since the first one under the Constitution, George Washington himself.  The argument for them stems from the interpretation of Article II, Section 1 Clause 1 that grants Presidents the power to "faithfully execute the laws": in order to execute - or perform duties - under such laws the President has to establish the who, how, where and when those laws have to be enforced (the "why" of the laws fall under judicial review set by the Supreme Court).  The only noticeable time Executive Orders were even considered by SCOTUS, it was when they overturned an EO issued by Truman because it "attempted to make law" rather than enforce one.

Ever since that, Presidents made the effort to relate their EOs to congressional laws.  Legal scholars, however, still consider Executive Orders in a kind of gray zone where their actual constitutionality might or might not exist.  It's in the gray zone that Boehner wants to attack Obama's efforts to use EOs this year to work around GOP Congressional obstruction.

Thing is, Boehner's case is weak to begin with.  Obama's case history of issuing EOs demonstrate he's not the great offender Boehner and the Far Right make him out to be:

That Post chart tells the facts: compared to modern Presidents, Obama's issued the fewest EOs in decades.  For the most part of the 19th Century, you'll note the lack of executive activity... up until Teddy Roosevelt, that bundle of energy who defined the modern Presidency with his progressive activism.  It calmed down by the time of Eisenhower, and even then the EO average hadn't been reached since the days of Jimmy Carter.

And while the modern conservative wingnut faction of the GOP are screaming about Obama's "overreach", his 175 (as of March 2014) EO count in six years comes nowhere near sainted Ronald Reagan's 381 total (Obama would have to double his EO count in the next two years to even come close).

Despite what Boehner claims, this whole thing smells of setting up for cause to impeach.  They couldn't impeach over the birth certificate, they couldn't impeach over Solyndra, they couldn't impeach over ObamaCare, and the Far Right are finding out they don't have much to impeach with over Benghazi, the IRS SuperPAC investigation, Benghazi, the prisoner exchange for the sole POW we had in Afghanistan, Benghazi, Obama's method of shoelace tying, and BENGHAZI.

So they're going after Executive Orders.  The plan looks to be simple:

1) Get the courts to establish that Executive Orders in general are not allowed under the Constitution: that it's executive law-making, conflicting with the Legislative power to make laws.
2) Argue that considering Obama used EOs throughout his tenure, he was committing impeachable acts all along.
3) IMPEACH.

Which brings up the unpleasant reality that EVERY President - save William Henry Harrison (I died in 30 days!) - would have to be retroactively impeached.  Not to mention the fact that any future President coming out of the Republican ranks (if that ever happens again, considering how f-cked the party's becoming at the national level) is suddenly going to have no executive power of his/her own to wield if Boehner and the Far Right succeed at this.

This obsession with stopping Obama at all costs is both ridiculous and dangerous.  Ridiculous in that the GOP's efforts are going against decades if not centuries of effective government traditions.  Dangerous in that if any of these efforts succeed we could see the end of the system of checks and balances that made our federal republic work all those centuries.

The courts already established clear limits on EOs: banning them outright can restrict a President's ability to enact any law not without instructions spelled out by Congress to the letter.  And considering how some laws may conflict with others, it'd end up to the courts clearing that chaos which could take years to resolve, which a smartly-worded EO would otherwise straighten out.  We've been doing this for decades, as history shows us: even during the questionable periods of civil war and world wars, overall this system worked.

Now, just to deny Obama anything, Boehner and his congressional allies want to wipe that all out.

"This is about faithfully executing the laws of our country," says Boehner.

Problem with that, Mr. Boehner, when you were asked which laws weren't being executed, you couldn't provide a single example.

If you were serious about this, Mr. Boehner, you'd have a violation on hand, you'd have an excuse, before coming to the cameras to make your threat known.

The Speaker of the House is inviting chaos into our system of checks and balances.  This is what we've come to.

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Rage: The Long-Term Unemployed Are STILL SCREWED

From Five-Thirty-Eight:

Laurusevage, 52, is one of more than a million Americans who lost payments when Congress allowed the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program to expire at the end of last year. The program, which Congress created in 2008, extended jobless benefits beyond the standard 26 weeks provided by most states; at its peak, the federal government provided an unprecedented 6 million workers with up to 73 weeks of benefits. The Senate earlier this year voted to renew the program, but House Speaker John Boehner (personal note: you sonofabitch!) hasn't allowed the measure to come to a vote in the House.

The case against extending unemployment benefits essentially boils down to two arguments. First, the economy has improved, so the unemployed should no longer need extra time to find a new job. Second, extended benefits could lead job seekers either to not search as hard or to become choosier about the kind of job they will accept, ultimately delaying their return to the workforce.

But the evidence doesn't support either of those arguments. The economy has indeed improved, but not for the long-term unemployed, whose odds of finding a job are barely higher today than when the recession ended nearly five years ago. And the end of extended benefits hasn't spurred the unemployed back to work; if anything, it has pushed them out of the labor force altogether.

Of the roughly 1.3 million Americans whose benefits disappeared with the end of the program, only about a quarter had found jobs as of March, about the same success rate as when the program was still in effect; roughly another quarter had given up searching. The rest, like Laurusevage, were still looking...

With chart from the article:

It's that "Stopped Looking" that should break your heart.  It's more than the ones who found a job in time.  It's the number of people dropping out - despairing - and most likely not coming back.  For bad and for worse.

Regarding Laurusevage:

Laurusevage didn't expect it to be this hard. She had been her family’s primary breadwinner, earning roughly $60,000 as a health and safety officer for a Philadelphia-area heating and air conditioning company. Her husband, David, earns less than $35,000 a year selling truck parts. When her position was outsourced in April of last year, she thought that as a college graduate with a three-plus-decade history of steady work, she would find a job relatively quickly. But in many ways, her experience is typical. The long-term unemployed — typically defined as those out of work more than six months — are slightly more educated on average than the broader population of job seekers. And older workers like Laurusevage face a particularly tough time: The typical job seeker in her 50s has been out of work 26 weeks, versus 17 weeks for the typical 20-something.

There has been, continues to be, massive age discrimination against the unemployed.  Part of it involves the practical issues of re-training someone to new work, part of it the refusal of companies to invest in a worker who'll retire in 10-15 years compared to a worker they can control for 20-30, part of it the irrational fear of hiring someone who lost a job, like as though there was something wrong with that person rather than a problem with the down-sizing company who slashed and cut with haphazard panic.

There's also the problem of the education.  Normally having a college or graduate degree gets you hired right quick.  In this recession, it's two strikes against you.  If you seek a job in a profession unrelated to your degree, your would-be employer is afraid you'll bolt for that other profession the moment you get a chance (this really hurts when you're a graduate-level job-seeker looking for part-time work in anything).  Other would-be employers would fear you would be too experienced, someone less malleable in terms of training and inter-office politicking.

And so, into all of this, we still have a sizable population of the United States struggling to stay afloat, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables.  We have a situation that calls on Congress to provide help as they've provided help before: with emergency aid funding, and laws to fix the discriminatory hiring practices against the long-term unemployed.

And Boehner, that coward that crook that SONOFABITCH, refuses to get the House to act.  Because it's against the Far Right ethos of helping "the lazy".  Because it's too Keynesian for their ideological obsession with austerity and "small government".  Because it's not something that will embarrass or impeach Obama.  Because it's not #Benghazi or tax cuts or repealing Obamacare for the 58th time.

Goddamn them.

WILL YOU PLEASE AMERICA FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OUT OF CONGRESS?!  PLEASE?!  GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.

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Dear Unemployed: Time To Get Your RAGE On

This continues to piss me off, even though - THANK GOD - I am now employed.

...Republican senators on Thursday blocked a three-month revival of long-term unemployment compensation for 1.7 million Americans out of work.

Democrats fell just one vote short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. Four Republicans voted with Democrats -- Sen. Dean Heller (NV), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) changed his vote at the last minute to preserve the option of bringing up the bill in the future. The final vote was 58-40...

...The reality is a large number of Republicans want the program to end but don't want to say so because it's popular. First enacted in 2008, amid economic free-fall, it provides insurance to Americans who are looking for work for up to 99 weeks. It expired on Dec. 28.

A follow-up vote Thursday to extend the unemployment benefits for three months, without a pay-for, also failed 55-43...

I guarantee this continues to piss off millions of long-term unemployed Americans who've been stuck like I had been for years: unable to convince HR departments to hire us, unable to find money to start our own businesses, unable to get into a job market that's biased against anyone with a high-level college degree or is over the age of 40...

In a just world, every damn Senator who just voted to block this emergency extension should stand in the unemployment lines for six straight months and see how THEY like it.  No, better, make it six straight YEARS...

The g-ddamn filibuster needs to go for ALL non-appointee bills coming to the floor.  THIS OBSTRUCTION IS KILLING OUR ECONOMY AND OUR NATION.  I know Dems fear the possibility that they'll find themselves in a minority in the Senate, but DAMMIT we shouldn't have our government stuck on STALL all the time!

Every unemployed person needs to find the nearest Republican Senator's office and start a sit-in protest.  DAMN THESE SENATORS.  They gonna arrest you?  So?  No jury in the nation - unless it's a jury made up of hedge fund managers - will convict you.

RAGE.

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Congress Still Not Getting It, Pt. DCCIV

that's the Roman numeral for Pt. 704, by the by, yeah I'm exaggerating but I'm trying to make a point here...

It took some doing, but the Senate passed a resolution today to get some benefit extensions to the long-term unemployed:

The move means that lawmakers are now wrangling about whether -- and how -- the cost of the $6.4 billion program should be offset.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the White House has indicated it will "run the traps" on "reasonable" proposals to pay for the jobless aid extension but that Democrats believe the program should be extended without offsets. His Republican counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said "there may be a way forward here" if Democrats allow some GOP amendments to be considered.

The bad news: it's for just a measly three months.  We're talking about long-term unemployed who are having a difficult time finding work after six months no wait two years no even worse five years of getting overlooked by HR departments for being too old, too overqualified, too dusty.

The worse news: the House - oh yeah, them - still has to take up this issue.

If the final bill does pass the Senate, it's not clear that the GOP-led House will take it up. House Republican leaders have painted the current proposal as fiscally irresponsible.

In a statement, House Speaker John Boehner said that any extension of the program must be paid for and contain House-backed job creation plans.

"One month ago I personally told the White House that another extension of temporary emergency unemployment benefits should not only be paid for but include something to help put people back to work," he said. "To date, the president has offered no such plan."

By the by, the "House-back job creation plans?"  To ease regulations on onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling (with no guarantees it will create more jobs), to cut regulations overall, and cut taxes on small businesses that economists note won't do much to encourage any increase in hirings.

And when Boehner claims Obama isn't offering any jobs bill, just remember Boehner is lying through his ass.

The worser news: the most obvious way to pay for this - reforming the tax code to close tax loopholes for the uber-rich, or raising the tax rate on capital gains which most rich people live off of and which rates are lower than income tax rates - will be off the table because God Help Us the modern GOP will NEVER raise taxes as long as Grover Norquist and the Club for Greed crowd are around to throw their goddamn hissy fits.

There's a good amount of talk about how income inequality and GOP failure to take unemployment seriously is making the Republicans look bad.  That's not the issue.  The issue is that GODDAMMIT we need to make job creation a top priority in our nation, and that involves getting government (Congress, HELLO WAKE UP) to pass the economic programs we know create jobs: construction and bridge repair, to top the list.  But if we're stuck with a House GOP that refuses to do a damn thing to help the lower classes (this is including what's left of the middle class), then by all means let's make the Republicans look as bad as they deserve, so that when November 2014 rolls around we can get Americans to vote the bums out and vote in people who WILL do something about creating good jobs at good wages.

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Unemployment Emergency Funding Set To Expire as 2013 Ends. Happy F-cking New Year To You Too, Congress

Pardon my Swedish for the blog title.  Still and all.

More than 1 million Americans are bracing for a post-Christmas jolt as extended federal unemployment benefits come to a halt this weekend, potentially impacting the recovering economy and setting up a battle when Congress reconvenes.
For families dependent on cash assistance, the end of the federal government's "emergency unemployment compensation" will mean some difficult belt-tightening as enrollees lose their average monthly stipend of $1,166.
Jobless rates could drop, but analysts say the economy may suffer with less money for consumers to spend on everything from clothes to cars. Having let the "emergency" program expire as part of a budget deal, it's unclear if Congress has the appetite to start it anew.
An estimated 1.3 million people will be cut off when the federally funded unemployment payments end Saturday. Across Florida, 73,000 recipients of federal emergency unemployment compensation stand to lose their benefits.
The average Florida benefit is about $230 per week, which is tied to the amount of wages earned over two weeks at a worker’s last job.
An additional 850,000 people nationwide will also lose state unemployment benefits over the next three months...

I'm a bit upset with not only the Republicans but also the Democrats in Congress, who both failed to recognize the serious issue we've got in this nation with the long-term unemployed.

While the overall unemployment rate has fallen to a nearly healthy (emphasis on the nearly) 7 percent (personal edit: a truly healthy unemployment rate is below 4 percent) – long-term unemployment has been more stubborn. The long-term unemployment rate, at 2.6 percent, remains as high as any previous recession since the end of World War II, reports the LA Times...

The long-term unemployed tend to be higher-educated and older, which are two strikes against them when the only jobs left open to them would be lower-wage service economy jobs that will not hire anyone with a college degree and an expectation of a pension plan.  Trust me: I've been in that boat for 4 years, where applying to places like Target and Wal-Mart led to either rejection or silence.  I swear, Target emailed back the fastest rejection notice I ever got (clocked in at 10 minutes, I sh-t you not).

My problem with the Republican leadership who think ending these benefits would force the long-term unemployed to "get off their asses and take any job they can," they're overlooking the fact that HR departments get their pick of the litter in this jobless recession and those HR departments are under no obligation to hire the better-educated, better-experienced.  HR departments will hire those who work the cheapest and will be the easiest to train (re-training older workers is harder than training fresh minds), and HR departments won't hire someone with education and background in other fields because those employees may bolt for an opening they do qualify for and pay better.

When I got into a shouting match with my twin brother two years ago, he thought much like the GOP did, that I was just loafing about and living off the unemployment benefits (and my parents' financial help).  He never sat with me during my daily job hunts, he never saw the rejection slips I'd occasionally get from some of these companies, he never saw the statistics I'd sometimes get from the HR departments telling me there were 60, 75, 120 applicants for one opening, he never listened in to the phone call interviews I'd have with some firms who politely point out that I'm not really the best fit for what they're looking for...  This is a problem: people don't get it, they don't get the fact that it's not our fault we're unemployed for so long...

There was a reason I was out of full-time employ for 4 years, and why I had a hard time finding or keeping any part-time employ: I was over-qualified for what was available on the local - Florida - job markets.  That was the big reason dad insisted last year I needed to get shipped to Maryland and try up where my educational/research skill sets would be more attractive.  Thank God for Bartow Public Library.  But I have to admit: I lucked out at the right time with a decent job.  The other long-term unemployed out there?  What luck are they gonna find, Republican Congresscritters, when there's no money left to keep them afloat while they look?

My problem with the Democrats is that they're not taking this unemployment problem as seriously as they need to.  For the love of God, the GOP was willing to shut down government and default on our nation's debts just for the lulz of it back in October: the least we should expect from a party like the Dems - who WANT government helping people survive and get out of this economic malaise - to fight harder, like force their own threats of cutting off something the GOP prize above all else, force Congress to stay open this holiday season, force the GOP to stand up there and get brow-beaten by the fact there are still too many unemployed Americans out here.

At what point will our own government wake up to the fact that the number one problem in our nation is that we do not have enough good jobs at good wages?  At what point will we the voters put into office elected officials who will get off their asses and get us the jobs and high wages we need?

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Schadenfreude Florida Edition Pt. 19 - The Hypocrite's Lament

What can you say about a Republican Congresscritter who voted eagerly to have food stamp recipients be tested for illegal drugs... getting caught buying illegal drugs?

Pretty much this: BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Republican U.S. Rep. Trey Radel of Fort Myers is due to be arraigned Wednesday morning on cocaine possession charges.
A Washington, D.C., court document says that on Oct. 29, Radel "did unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally possess a quantity of cocaine, a controlled substance."
The misdemeanor drug charge carries a maximum sentence of 180 days in jail and or a fine of $1,000.

Radel is one of those high-and-mighty judgmental creatures you get in the Republican Party.  The ones who express the viewpoint that everyone in poverty only have themselves to blame... that the poor are all "takers", living off the "makers"... that a lot of the poor and minorities are running around lazy and drunk and high on drugs.  These are the ones who want to make unemployment benefits recipients be tested for drugs, despite the lack of evidence that drug abuse was rampant or a cause of their unemployment: Radel recently voted on having food stamp recipients be tested.

The hypocrisy reeks.

The Republicans are so eager to punish the impoverished and hungry, while the rich and powerful like themselves try to get away with breaking the very laws they're using to punish everyone else.

Radel isn't showing any sign of resigning or stepping aside for 2014, and he's trying to blow this off on his alcoholism driving him to make "bad decisions."  But it's not alcoholism that makes you buy drugs, boss: it's the DRUGS you're buying that make you buy that drug.  Which begs the question how long has he been buying cocaine?  And it also begs the question how many other decisions under the influence he's been doing if alcoholism affects him this way?

And to everyone thinking that food stamp recipients deserve to get drug tested... F-CK YOU.  The net results of the states enforcing those tests have found a LOWER percentage of drug users applying for benefits than the national average.  It's not an epidemic problem among the people desperate for financial assistance.

End this damn hypocrisy.  We're better off drug testing elected officials than food stamps recipients.

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The Long October And The Damage Done

Word is the deal is done in the Senate, and it's pretty much all over but the shouting (except for any last-minute disaster that may yet rear its head).

But the Shutdown caused by this reckless House GOP has left major damage across the board:

• The sciences - which rely a lot on funding from the federal government as much as foundation support - have taken a huge hit.  The ongoing sequestration was cutting back heavily on projects, studies, new developments... the Shutdown piled on top of all that, disrupting a lot of work and forcing a good number of scientists to start over from scratch.  A lot of potential innovation and discovery is going to be devastated by all this.

• Economic confidence - one of the driving forces of a consumer-capitalist system is the willingness of people to spend money on stuff - has dropped as though we're in the middle of another recession.

• No matter how quickly a deal gets done, the Shutdown has forced a lot of government systems to stall or go inert, requiring massive effort to reboot their offices, restart projects, get funding out, get financial aid out, all of that.  It will take weeks even after the Shutdown ends to see government functioning anywhere near normal levels.  And the costs will be enormous.

• Foreign investors - a serious way to get economic growth happening in our nation - have been scared off by the uncertainty of a political system that kills itself on the whim of a mere handful (32 Far Right Republicans in Congress) who under other circumstances would have no power like this anywhere else.

And there's little hope to be certain that this all won't happen again.  This current deal from the Senate, after all, only delays the fight another three months.  The debt ceiling will come up again as an issue.  The threat of a Shutdown can well happen again even though the Republican Party has been hit HARD by the public's revulsion of how this whole Shutdown came to be.  That's because the Far Right Tea Partier elements of the House GOP - and worse their media elite enablers like Limbaugh and Erickson - have not been fully chastened by their screw-up: some of them have even been emboldened by the publicity they think they've received, that they're still heroes to the Far Right Noise Fear-Making Machine.  As Tomasky says over on the Daily Beast:

Today, we have a clavern of sociopaths who know nothing of honor, and we have no easy way to stop them. Except at the ballot box. Except that they've rigged that, too, with their House districts. They've rigged the whole game so that they light the match and then point at President Obama and shout: “Look! Fire!”...

...This is the worst it’s ever been in modern America. But it is going to get worse. They aren't going to stop hating Obama and Obamacare. They aren't suddenly going to decide to make their peace with him or it. They sure aren't going to decide that gee, using default as leverage is naughty. A big chunk of them want the United States to default on Obama’s watch, so they can then blame him for what they themselves caused, say, “The black guy wrecked the economy. Couldn't you have predicted it?” New horrors await us that you and I, being normal people, can’t begin to dream up. But rest assured, they will...

This is why it is very important to stop voting Republican.  Just stop.  Don't vote for ANY Republican at any level.  They cannot be trusted with the jobs.  They cannot be trusted with government.

Please, for the LOVE OF GOD.  Stop voting Republican.  Get your voter identification switched from "Republican" to "No Party Affiliate" or hell even the "Libertarians" at this point (okay, maybe not). I don't know for how long.  Maybe when they're finally down to just three Representatives from one state and they're all thinking "gee, what's the Modern Whig Party got that we don't?"

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The Long October: The Ambitious Damage of The Hollow Men

This is how the world ends...

As I'm typing this, the current news out of DC is that the House, scrambling over the last few days to get any kind of bill up to send to the Senate to end the shutdown, pretty much failed to get anything done.  The Senate is more amenable to getting a deal set up, but there still runs the risk of just one Senator - Cruz or Graham or Lee or another - gumming up the works by delaying the vote on it until the Thursday deadline on the debt ceiling passes.  And there's still no guarantee there will be enough votes in the House to accept the Senate version.

The sentiment right now is that pretty much the House GOP, the Tea Party types and their abettors in the Senate like Ted Cruz, are going to let the nation default on the debt.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow...

I've noted a couple of times that the current Republican Party psyche is geared towards letting the whole thing fail.  They WANT to see what happens if the nation goes into default, they've convinced themselves that it won't be as damaging as all the experts fear it could be.  We're talking about a political party that for the last 20 years or so have been influenced, bullied, led by the likes of Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh and a legion of purity agents obsessed with voting out RINOs and moderates who would dare compromise and govern.  A Republican Party where Norquist could openly pine for the chance to make government small enough - through massive tax-cuts and social spending cuts - to "drown in his bathtub."

Ask yourself this: which political party openly thinks that "government is bad" and which openly thinks that government can be managed and made effective and workable?  The Republicans have been the "Government Is Bad" ideologues ever since the Reagan Era, ever since Goldwater when you think about it.  So which one deserves the blame when government falls apart?  Especially when the branch of government where all the destruction is happening - the House - is the one being run by the Republican Party?

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men...

The Far Right Republicans, the Tea Party faction, the wingnuts... they have expressed before their admiration of Ayn Rand, of Atlas Shrugged and the belief of enlightened selfishness.  They have each of them in their own way expressed the desire to be as brave and noble and correct as John Galt, self-made Hero of the Revolution of the Elite over the base hollow men that seek to bring the Genius and the Artist to heel.  They want to deregulate everything.  They want to privatize every function of public service to corporations that won't answer to laws or accountability.  They want to kill government to let their Utopia become reality.

But these wingnuts have all proved themselves hollow men, all so eager to tear down the world that other better Americans had formed over the last two centuries.  Uncaring, self-serving, scheming, petty.  Hollow to the core.

This is how the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
- TS Eliot, The Hollow Men

UPDATE: the deal's been done, the government's re-opened... but there's been damage done, and the Far Right are still seething. Hollow Men cannot be appeased until they're full of everything they want... and what the Far Right wants is to destroy the United States...

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The Long October: When The Republicans Had To Notice Their Hostage-Taking Suicide Mission Was Failing

...was pretty much the point when the mainstream media noticed that Nickelback was more popular than Congress.  To which I can only beg: can we please stop picking on Nickelback?  I'm not a fan or anything - I liked them back when they were Foreigner -  but even they didn't do anything to deserve getting compared to Congress...

Actually, the Nickelback thing relates to a poll taken back in January, or maybe February, of this year.  Public Policy Polling held a more recent poll (Oct. 4 to 6) and found out these things were more popular than Congress:

• Dog poop
• Toenail fungus
• Hemorrhoids
• Cockroaches
• The IRS (the tax collectors, not the college-radio record label, although I'm pretty sure the record label will poll popular as well)
• The DMV
• The Mother-in-Law
• Public Radio fundraising drives
• Potholes
• Zombies (Must be a Walking Dead fanboi thing)

Sadly enough, neither Miley Cyrus nor Lindsey Lohan proved more popular than Congress, which is sad because both those young ladies are still more coherent and (dammit Miley stick that tongue back in!) reasonable than Congress really is. P.S. can we also stop picking on Lindsey Lohan.  Even she doesn't deserve getting compared to Congress...

On a more serious note, that poll showed only 8 percent approved of Congress' job, with a staggering 86 percent disapproving.  Harry Truman never polled lower than 22 percent.  Bush the Lesser never polled lower than 26 percent.  At a Presidential level, their parties suffered with that unpopularity.  Congress ought to see the same negative result: When you poll that low, no matter how you've got your congressional district gerrymandered to your favor, you are losing voters at an exponential rate.

When voters hate you... you tend not to get those voters back to your side.  No matter how short-term their memories are.  Remember Machiavelli's warning: while being loved or being feared helps, being hated is the worst thing a Prince or any person of power can become.

And making it worse for Congress is that this is a lousy time to be dropping your favorables.  The 2014 midterms are not going to be about Obama the way the 2010 midterms were: the President is not going to be up for re-election again, he can live with having his popularity numbers tank as low as Congress' numbers are tanking right now...  except for the fact that Obama's numbers AREN'T tanking, he's actually going up (he's back over 50 percent in one poll) while the Republicans are going down.  The 2014 midterms are going to be about Congress - much in the way the 2006 midterms were, much in the way the 1998 midterms were - and right now every American voter is seeing how messed up the GOP-led House has been behaving.

Even Obama's signature law the healthcare reform AKA Obamacare - the thing the Far Right Republicans were attacking in the first place as an excuse for the shutdown - is growing popular even though A) people still are confused about what it does and B) the rollout of the Obamacare website was an unforced error and still glitchy.

And the polling is showing a majority of those polled hold the Republicans accountable for the very unpopular shutdown mess.

If the Republicans were doing this whole shutdown / debt ceiling fight to embarrass or weaken Obama, they've done a piss-poor job of it.  I can see how the Republicans would think that if they screwed government up enough, make an incompetent mess of it, they could drag everyone's popularity - not just theirs, but also Obama's - down with them.  A kind of kamikaze "taking-you-with-me" scheme.  The Republicans could normally believe in that, considering that their modern ideology revolves around the belief that government is bad for you anyway.

However, committing suicide thinking your hated enemy is going to fall with you isn't the wisest course of action to take.  All it does for you - for your political party - is bring out the hate from the people who would have normally backed your move... all it's doing is pissing off the people who are/were Republicans suddenly inconvenienced by the shutdown you've caused... and not at all happy with the lies they've been told that "Obama is weak and gonna cave to our demands."

Obama didn't cave.  The Democratic Senate didn't cave.  The current status of the shutdown is that the House GOP is trying to negotiate a short-term extension on the debt ceiling - the big threat looming less than a week away - even though Obama and the Senate Democrats are insisting rightly on resolving the debt ceiling for a longer period along with passing a "clean" Continuing Resolution to get government open again.

We're at the point where it doesn't matter who the "winners and losers" are over this crisis: it's pretty clear the Far Right Republicans took a high-risk gamble and lost.  The smart move for the GOP is to make the deal Obama wants, take the hit from their wingnut voters, assure their financial backers to not support any primary challengers for their gerrymandered districts, and work hard to make voters forget this Long October.

Then again, that plan of action is based on there being enough sane and competent Republicans left in government able to do any of that.

/headdesk

Here's hoping the Nickelback/Miley Cyrus/Lindsey Lohan "Suck On This Congress" nationwide tour generates a lot of ticket and t-shirt sales...

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The Long October: How It Came To This, a Followup Post

Following on a previous thought about how we as a nation got to this shutdown debacle, and how this all echoes back to the obstruction / nullification follies of the 1860 Southern Democrats as well as the shifting of conservative ideology whole-heartedly into the modern Republicans due to the Southern Strategy, I'd want to add a few more thoughts on this, and at best from another person who's been thinking about the same problems and doing a better job of discussing it.

Zack Beauchamp over on ThinkProgress had a great article today on the whole thing: How Racism Caused The Shutdown...

...A lot of people think the only way that racism “causes” anything is when one person intentionally discriminates against another because of their color of their skin. But that’s wrong. And understanding the history of the forces that produced the current crisis will lay plain the more subtle, but fundamental, ways in which race and racism formed the scaffolding that structures American politics — even as explicit battles over race receded from our daily politics.

The roots of the current crisis began with the New Deal — but not in the way you might think. They grew gradually, with two big bursts in the 1960s and the 1980s reflecting decades of more graduated change. And the tree that grew out of them, the Tea Party and a radically polarized Republican Party, bore the shutdown as its fruits...

But the Depression-caused backlash against Republican incumbents that swept New Yorker Franklin Roosevelt into the White House and a vast Democratic majority into Congress also made Southerners a minority in the party for the first time in its history... Yet, Reed notes, the New Deal not only benefited blacks, but brought them to a position of power in the Democratic Party. “The Social Security exclusions were overturned, and black people did participate in the WPA, Federal Writers’ Project, CCC and other classic New Deal initiatives, as well as federal income relief,” he reminds us. “Black Americans’ emergence as a significant constituency in the Democratic electoral coalition helped to alter the party’s center of gravity and was one of the factors–as was black presence in the union movement–contributing to the success of the postwar civil rights insurgency.”

...UC-Berkeley’s Eric Schickler and coauthor Brian Feinstein built a database of state party platforms from 1920-1968 and examined their positions on African-American rights. They found that “the vast majority of nonsouthern state Democratic parties were clearly to the left of their GOP counterparts on civil rights policy by the mid-1940s to early 1950s.” African-Americans and other sympathetic New Deal Coalition constituencies, like Jews and union leaders, deserve the bulk of the credit — these new Northern Democrats made supporting civil rights a litmus test for elected Democratic officials. That explains why, from the Early New Deal forward, congressional Northern Democrats voted more like Northern Republicans than their Southern brethren on civil rights...

That last bit kinda helps explain the hostility Southern states still have (the "Right to Work" laws that are nothing but) towards unions... but I digress.  Continuing on:

...Hence the famous Dixiecrat revolt of 1948, when Strom Thurmond and like-minded Southerners temporarily seceded from the Democratic Party over Harry Truman and the Democratic platform’s support for civil rights. The tacit bargain that Katznelson documents during the Roosevelt Administration, in which the Northern Democrats would get their New Deal if the Southern Democrats got their white supremacy, became untenable.

But the Dixiecrats weren’t ready to migrate en masse to Party of Lincoln just yet. Something needed to happen to make the Republican Party shed its commitment to leading on civil rights wholesale. That “something” was the rise of the modern conservative movement...

...By the Johnson-Goldwater election, it had become clear that overt racism and segregationism was politically doomed. Brown v. Board of Education and LBJ’s support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act saw to that. As this scary recognition dawned on Southern whites, they began searching for a new vehicle through which to shield themselves and their communities from the consequences of integration. The young conservative movement’s ringing endorsement of a minimalist federal government did the trick — it provided an on-face racially neutral language by which Southerners could argue against federal action aimed at integrating lily-white schools and neighborhoods...

...The Reagan realignment of the 1980s dramatically expanded the number of Republicans and conservative independents in the region’s electorate.” The Blacks attribute this to a combination of Reagan’s winning political personality and (more persuasively) the relative prosperity of the 1980s. Not only were white conservatives ideologically inclined to support Reagan’s Republican Party, but they became wealthier on his watch...

...The South’s conversion to movement conservatism led to local and Congressional Republican victories throughout Dixie. These culminated in the Gingrich Revolution in 1994, when hard-line Southern conservatives took charge of the Republican Congressional delegation, seemingly for good...

We all know what happens next. The Southern conservative takeover of the Republican Party pushes out moderates, cementing the party’s conservative spiral. This trend produces the Tea Party, whose leading contemporary avatar — Ted Cruz — engineers the 2013 shutdown and risk of catastrophic default...

It's all there. The obsession with Southern politicians to dismantle everything New Deal, which was the breaking point of the Jim Crow era. The merging of conservative ideologies that were previously unwedded - race, economics, religion - into a broad movement.

From this point, Beauchamp draws his conclusions:

...First, that the shutdown crisis isn’t the product of passing Republican insanity or, as President Obama put it, a “fever” that needs to be broken. Rather, the sharp conservative turn of the Republican Party is the product of deep, long-running structural forces in American history. The Republican Party is the way that it is because of the base that it has evolved, and it would take a tectonic political shift — on the level of the Democrats becoming the party of civil rights — to change the party’s internal coalition. Radicalized conservatism will outlive the shutdown/debt ceiling fight.

Second, and more importantly, the battle over civil rights produced a rigidly homogeneous and disproportionately Southern Republican party, fertile grounds for the sort of purity contest you see consuming the South today. There’s no zealot like a new convert, the saying goes, and the South’s new faith in across-the-board conservatism — kicked off by the alignment of economic libertarianism with segregationism — is one of the most significant causes of the ideological inflexibility that’s caused the shutdown. That’s not to dismiss the continued relevance of race in the Southern psyche. There’s no chance that, when 52 percent of voting Americans are over 45, the country has just gotten over its deep racial hang-ups. Read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ masterful “Fear of a Black President” if you don’t believe me...

As the Southern faction became the face of the GOP in the mid-90s, the GOP’s electorate became a lot more conservative nationally. Panel data reviewed by Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders found that, from 1992-1996, ideological conservatives joined the Republican Party in droves. That’s because Southern elites played a key “signalling” role; their prominent national conservatism signaled to conservatives around the country that the Republican Party was theirs.
Penn’s Matthew Levendusky, who literally wrote the book on conservatives “sorting” themselves into the Republican Party, says that “even when the data are consistent with a nationalization hypothesis, the South still played a crucial role in the sorting process because of the key role of Southern elites.” As conservative Southern elites took over the Republican Party, hyper-conservative Americans followed, becoming the GOP primary voters we know and love today...

Given the evidence that Beauchamp puts together, he paints a situation where a very lopsided Far Right national political party - the modern GOP - has set itself up with an ideology driven by Southern factional needs.  While it's not as overtly racist as it once was, the attitude is still there: the hatred of any kind of social service that could benefit minorities even though whites benefit as well; open contempt for voting rights by way of pursuing voter purges that disproportionately affect minorities; the desire to shut down a federal system that upholds such things as due process and citizenship rights.

The biggest reason this Long October is going to be long: The modern Republican Party is still fighting the Civil War... and the Reconstruction... and the New Deal... and the 1960s... as well as Obamacare and Obama himself.  It's been a long war already, and it's not over yet...

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The Long October: Pretty Good Idea About WHY the Far Right Is Pushing For Default

Well, other than the fact that the Far Right in the House GOP are convinced that Obama is to blame for everything and must be defeated at all hazards, there's this little tidbit - "Crisis? What Crisis?" - coming out of the Capitol Building (via David Weigel over at Slate):

That’s how plenty of House Republicans, who remain the prime movers in the shutdown crisis, are looking at the terrain. They were told for years that a shutdown would be a disaster for the economy and their party. They were told the same thing about sequestration. Neither crisis has really lived up to the end-of-times hype, especially not in their districts. The worst effects, the ones constituents ask about, appear to them to be engineered by a vindictive Obama administration. And they expect the same if they fail to raise the debt limit—a crisis manufactured by Obama, not by them.

To be fair, the wingnuts have a valid point: nobody is really certain what will happen if the debt ceiling gets capped and the nation defaults.

This is despite the fact that there's a lot of financial experts - bank CEOs, Wall Street institutions, foreign investors - are freaking out that if the United States defaults due to the debt ceiling, the global reactions would be on the scale of the 2007-08 banking collapse.

To the Far Right Congresscritters driving this crisis, it's STILL all a bluff on Obama's part.

This is due to the fact that the Far Right are neither true conservatives - who by nature would be cautious and alert to potential hazards - nor real thinkers - they cannot perceive the potential of future effects, they can't ask the "what ifs".  To these people, the only thing that matters is the immediate recognizable past and the immediate NOW, things that can be perceived and understood.  And for what they know, the last time this was a crisis - in 2011 - the worst thing that happened was a slip in the Credit Rating from AAA to AA.  The nation and the planet kept chugging along.  And before that, the major disaster was the banks failing in 2007, which the Far Right still believes was a problem with housing markets and a corrupt Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac system (which is wrong in different ways).

The Far Right can only experience and understand the NOW, what happens in the moment and no further.  And to them, there's really no sign that a default or refusal on the debt ceiling would really cause any serious, long-term, or even permanent harm.

This is akin to a car driver speeding along a narrow cliff-side highway overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  They've been told in driver's ed class of the danger going off the road, and they've had gravity explained to them in physics and astronomy, but that driver really doesn't know what it's like to drive that car off that cliff.  And it's not even a suicidal impulse on the part of the driver: he just honestly doesn't know what will happen once the tires leave the road and the car goes spinning off into the blue.

For all the Far Right driver knows, the car won't even get dinged up all that bad, that the impact into the water won't be that harsh, that there aren't rocks hiding in those waves, and that after all the car is designed to survive impacts or at least protect the passengers from serious injury.  The Far Right driver can expect a thrilling rush, the taste of danger, and then let the airbags deploy and the driver can swim away and let the insurance company buy a replacement car.

And if that all doesn't work out, that Far Right driver can always ALWAYS fall back on the excuse that the car going over the cliff was Obama's fault.  Even though Obama was in the back seat the whole time since the Constitution doesn't allow him to set the budget, uh drive the car, and Obama was the one screaming the whole time at the driver to fucking stop before that car went over the cliff.  "Gee, if Obama didn't make all that screechy noise when the car punched over the guard rail..."

THIS now makes a whole lot more sense.  The Far Right have no qualms about driving the entire government AND the entire financial sector over that cliff... simply because they really don't know, and they really don't CARE to know, what might actually happen if they do.  The wingnuts seem to genuinely think the whole thing's a bluff to make them "surrender" to Obama.

Despite the fact that gravity is real.  Despite the fact that defaults are real.

Welcome to The Long October.

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How To Survive The Impending Shutdown In Three Easy Steps

Considering we're facing the last day before October 1st when a new budget has to kick in - either with a Continuing Resolution or an actual budget - and that the odds are very high that the Republicans' demands will be rejected by the Democrats... we're pretty much facing a government shutdown.

Having survived the Shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, I would like to offer up my expertise on the matter and provide some emotional and spiritual support in these trying times.  So here now is a simple, three-step guide to surviving the Shutdown Showdown of 2013:

1. Don't panic.  The ones inflicting the shutdown - the Far Right - are in fact counting on a lot of people freaking out and calling their elected officials to scream about getting something done.  While the House GOP will get those calls same as the Democrats, the Far Right are so out-of-touch with voters... so willingly out of touch with voters... that they will easily ignore the shouting in their own ears.  They are sociopathic enough to know that while they can endure the screaming, their Democratic opponents - who actually want government to work - may well buckle under the pressure and give in to a handful of demands... at which point the Far Right knows that hostage-taking works and will continue to play this game of destruction.

Now, there will be a lot of people inconvenienced by the shutdown.  That's the whole point of it.  The thing not to do is give the ones pushing the shutdown any satisfaction.  You're just going to have to endure this and wait for the financial sector power leaders to dopeslap enough Republicans for them to pass a clean CR bill.

Voters need to realize something: Washington doesn't really listen to protests anymore unless it's a protest they themselves organized.  When hundreds of thousands marched in the streets against the Iraqi invasion in 2002-03, the media ignored it or dismissed it and the elected officials didn't give a rat's ass.  When hundreds of thousands marched in the streets in favor of immigration reform in 2005-06... take a look, we're still stuck with a broken immigration system.

The only thing our elected officials even pay attention to anymore are election results.  They only care about who wins and who doesn't.  The reason the Far Right Republicans pay no mind to protests is because they've insulated themselves into gerrymandered districts where they can always get re-elected by pandering to the base, not the masses.  Which brings us to...

2. Change your voter ID information.  This will take some time on your part.  You can go online or to a location that will carry voter registration forms - while the federal government agencies are closing down for the shutdown, the county and state offices ought to stay open - and fill out a change of voter identification form.

This step is very important: change your voter ID from whatever party affiliation you've got - Republican or Democrat - to No Party Affiliate or Independent.  Also, change your Ethnic identification - if it asks for one - to Other.  That's all.  This is important because this will eventually screw up the political parties in a variety of ways.  And while it won't do much good right now, hopefully if enough voters change their identities over to NPA as well as hide their ethnic identity on the records, it will screw up the parties' ability to craft out gerrymandered districts.

Now, the deal is the states are not supposed to be creating districts for partisan gain.  But the law is one thing: the practice is another.  Parties dominating in a state use specially designed software programs to calculate out the best ways to carve out districts by ethnicity - some states by law have to carve out minority-majority districts - and by party affiliation (they're not supposed to, but they know the loopholes to mask what they're doing).  This is why here in Florida even though there's a 800,000 voter advantage to Democrats over Republicans, the Republican-controlled legislature still figures out how to create more Republican districts than Democrat.

Ah, but what if a massive majority of registered voters were suddenly No Party Affiliate?  There's a good 2 million now out of 11 million registered in Florida... what if it's suddenly 6 million, more than the Dems and more than the GOP put together?  The state lege could still figure out a few things by ethnicity - Black-majority communities by census are bound to be Democratic by default when 98 percent of Blacks vote that way - but now they can't tell exactly where to make their cuts into urban and suburban areas to ensure GOP-friendly districts.  No more safe districts in Florida for Republicans.  If they gerrymander the wrong way they could make it more Democratic-leaning than if they just did it by population density like they're supposed to.

It's also pretty liberating to not be tied down to one party.  You'll still get their junk mail begging for donations, but you're no longer under any kind of peer pressure to subsume your political beliefs to a group that will just ignore 'em.

Meanwhile...

3. When the time comes, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

Don't listen to the "both sides do it" bullshit.  The Republicans are totally on board with crashing the government and ruining the nation's credit rating.  Yes, the Democrats have voted before against the debt ceiling and they rail against the Continuing Resolutions that make do for budgets when they're in the minority.  But the Democrats don't schedule an entire government shutdown around it.  My God, some of the Republicans came out of their Saturday pep rally openly cheering what they were planning to do.

The Democrats never held up an entire government like this to pass basically an entire Presidential platform (Romney/Ryan's 2012) that got rejected by a solid majority of American voters.

And the Democrats never pushed an agenda like this that was so sociopathic, where the Republicans want to kill off a health care reform package designed to help more people, not less.  We're talking about a Republican Party so obsessed with punishing poor people they are willing to cut food stamp aid by $39 billion under the argument that "the poor just gotta suck it up".

And we're talking about a political party in the modern Republicans who refuse to negotiate on good faith, issuing demands so far to the right there is no room for Obama or anyone on the left to see a point on which to compromise.  A Republican Party that keeps thinking it won everything in 2012 and so ought to get all the pretty prizes it wants.

The Republican Party is going to keep taking hostages and ruin our nation's credit and credibility until they get voted out of power for good.  And even then they may not accept the reality - mostly because the real party leadership (hi Fox Not-News!) aren't elected officials, meaning they won't get burned if the GOP no longer has legislative or executive powers - but at least they won't be in any position to ruin our lives for a good long while.

So there you have it.  Just follow those three easy steps and you'll get through this showdown crisis just fine.

Also, stock up on a lot of bottled water, portable battery extensions for your tablet devices, and food for yourselves and your pets.  ...You know, just in case.

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Hostage Taking Cannot Fail, It Can Only Be Failed...

The Shutdown Showdown of 2013 is kicking into third gear as I type this, and it ain't pretty.

From The National Review and thence to other news sources like ThinkProgress, the GOP House leadership has crafted a list of demands for Obama and the Democratic Senate leadership to surrender to:

As the nation moves dangerously close to a government shutdown on Oct. 1, House leaders are shifting their focus to the next big fiscal fight: raising the nation’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit by one year before Oct. 17. On Wednesday night, Republicans circulated an outline of demands, threatening to push the nation into default unless President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate agree to enact a wish list of Republican priorities.

Though Obama has repeatedly insisted that he would not negotiate over the must-pass legislation, leadership is hoping to satisfy conservative members by including every “major piece of the Republican agenda” save a “ban on late-term abortions — and some lawmakers who oppose abortion were arguing to add that,” the Washington Post reports...

Igor Volsky's ThinkProgress article - alongside Derek Thomspon's over at The Atlantic - proceeded to break down the demands, which I can summarize here as well:

1. Delay Obamacare by one year.  Rather than defund or eliminate outright, the Republicans would at least want Obamacare stopped from being enacted before more Americans find out the health care reforms might actually work.  At least until the 2014 midterms, during which the Tea Party candidates can indulge in more fear-mongering to scare up votes and campaign moneys.  Meanwhile, the delay will cut into elements of Obamacare that have already kicked in, causing even more confusion.
2. Weaken/defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Created as a response to the massive fraud that led to the 2007 Economic Crisis / Great Recession, the CFPB is a bogeyman agency for the Far Right who prefer to deregulate everything and let the uber-rich banks defraud everyone until there's another need for a massive bank bailout.
3. Approval to build the Keystone Pipeline.  This is a pet issue for Republicans who view this as "more oil more money" kind of thing as their energy platform (drill baby drill).  This also includes letting the Coal industry and offshore drilling companies getting everything they want.
4. Enact the budget and tax plan created by Paul Ryan.  It's basically the plan he campaigned for as Romney's Veep partner, and it basically disqualifies the fact that a majority of Americans voted against it by voting against Romney/Ryan.  Plus the simple fact the Ryan budget is evil.
5. Cut funding to health care and social safety net programs, and enact a method of "means testing" Medicare (what is "means testing"?  It's where they test a person's eligibility for Medicare, and the GOP can be mean about it.).  Means testing, my ass: Republicans want any excuse to cut people off Medicare, they just want to cover up what they're actually doing by hiding behind Orwellian wording.
6. Massive cuts to the federal employee pension fund.  Considering the massive number of people reaching retirement age, this is bound to not work out well.
7. Block recent federal regulations capping greenhouse gases.  Because we all know that greenhouse gases are vital to the functioning of our proud country.
8. Tort reform.  Like it was the lawyers' fault doctors commit malpractice or corporations commit fraud/failed safety standards.
9. Passing the Republicans' ideas of "jobs bills"... which are A) cutting safety regulations everywhere and with little to no evidence ending those regs would create more jobs, and B) massive tax cuts to corporations that won't require those tax savings go to actual job creation or wage growth.

I'm with Andrew Sullivan on this: "why not ask for Obama's resignation while they're at it?"

What the sheer gob-smacking scale of these demands means is that the GOP effectively wants to nullify the last election entirely (except of course for their gerrymandered, no-popular vote House majority). The staggering thing about this party as it now exists is that it views the governance of the other party as always effectively illegitimate. Elections do not matter. Only their agenda matters. No compromise is possible, even when this kind of catastrophic default is hanging over our heads. In fact, the danger of catastrophic default is something they relish in order to undo the basic principles of democratic government.

This is not a bargaining position; they already voted for the budget that requires us to raise the debt ceiling. It is a bald attempt to reverse elections as the mark of a democracy and replace them with endless blackmail until they get their way. This isn't conservatism. It’s pure constitutional vandalism...

Sullivan later makes a question about American history where a party in the minority made such an egregious list of demands... and he quickly got an answer from readers who pointed out that yes this has happened before.  Back in 1860, when the Republicans were poised to elect Lincoln into the White House, the slavery-owner leadership of the Southern Democrats faction threatened secession unless Lincoln caved on all demands.  And when it became clear the South had little to threaten with, they seceded and forced the civil war (anyone calling it a War of Northern Aggression is selling you snake oil.  The South wanted a fight and by God they got one).

It shouldn't be a surprise that the end result of Nixon's Southern Strategy would have the southern conservative agenda seek another go at wrecking the nation.  We shouldn't be at all surprised that the Far Right - in the House, Senate, and wingnut media - want push this issue well over the cliff (no matter how much the party's own leadership is aware of the disaster that awaits them).  Their way or the highway.

This "negotiation" over the debt ceiling and the budget by having the Republicans demand this "We Get Everything WE Want" wish list is in my mind akin to a bank robber taking hostages during a heist... and then demanding that not only the cops let him go with all the cash from that bank, but that the cops help him rob three or four more banks right down the road because dammit he's in the right.  That's not negotiating.  That's not even practical hostage-taking.  That's batshit insanity. (pardon my Swedish)

There is no reason for Obama or Reid to answer this list at all.  The Republicans can scream all they want about who to blame when the debt ceiling crisis reaches the Defcon-1 level.  Insisting the majority party enact the worst elements of the minority party's agenda isn't democracy, isn't republican, and isn't sane.

And the polls are reflecting that, yes Americans know exactly who to blame if the shit goes down.

I want every voter to remember this by November 2014: The Republicans do not care to compromise, they do not care to govern, they do not care period.  They want it all.

Please for the love of God vote them out.

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