"It is American families who pay the real price of [the House GOP radicals'] extreme policies" (CAP Action War Room)

Mike Keefe (click to enlarge)

"The party's leadership gave in to a minority of its members who are devoted to pushing devastating cuts to working- and middle-class families in pursuit of rigid and impractical ideological principles. The result has been a government in a state of perpetual dysfunction. And while House Republicans may be paying the price with negative news coverage, it is American families who pay the real price of their extreme policies."

-- the CAP Action War Room, in the
ThinkProgress post "Banana Republicans"

by Ken

Let me just say a couple of things about the current House speakership follies before more or less turning the floor over to the CAP Action War Room.

(1) A singularly insightful take today on Wait Wait ...  Don't Tell Me!: that the House speakership has now become one of those jobs that no American wants to do, and therefore will presumably have to be filled by an undocumented immigrant.

(2) Then, there's the comical take of the cards in the House "Freedom" Caucusites: that the problem with the previous House GOP leadership, and what they plan to make sure doesn't happen with its successor, is that it isn't democratic. This was said even as the "Freedom" militia was requiring candidates for the speakership to fill out a lengthy questionaire in which they were asked to pledge support for a laundry list of the miltia's most radical positions, all aimed at bringing the country closer to the shithole lodged in their heads. In other words, under this cabal, no House speaker could be elected without pledging support for the agenda of 40 rampaging mental defectives.

Ah, it's a lovely thing, "democracy" as imagined by a cabal of crackpots, thugs, and economic predators.

IN FAIRNESS TO THE CRACKPOTS, THUGS,
AND ECONOMIC PREDATORS: A QUESTION

If we on the Left were ever able to bring to bear the political diligence -- and muscle -- to elect 40 House members willing to go the mat for the basics of our political agenda, would we not cheer them on if they played this kind of we're-not-kidding hardball with the Democratic Party leadership? (Would the other side not be denouncing us as "extremists" and "radicals"?)

Just asking.

"THE LATEST HOUSE GOP MELTDOWN HAS BEEN A
LONG TIME COMING, AND IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THEM"

This is the proposition advanced in the post I alluded to earlier from the CAP Action War Room, called "Banana Republicans." In the introductory portion, the post notes:

The media frenzy surrounding these events has focused on intrigue like it is an episode of House of Cards." Was there something behind why McCarthy took himself out of the running? Will Paul Ryan step up and run for speaker despite repeatedly pledging not to?

"But," the post continues (with lots of links onsite),

here’s what is much more important: this self-inflicted leadership breakdown is just one more chapter in a story of House Republican recklessness – and their own caucus hasn’t been the only victim. House GOP dysfunction has resulted in a string of harmful policies and American families have paid the price.

The post proceeds to offer "just a few examples":

• The GOP orchestrated the reckless government shutdown in 2013 which had a devastating impact on our economy. Republican leaders bowed to the will of their extreme right wing to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act. The shutdown lost Americans at least 120,000 jobs, prevented sick Americans from enrolling in clinical trials, forced Head Start programs for children to shut down, stalled veterans’ disability claims, delayed $4 billion in tax returns for Americans, and severely hurt small businesses. Overall, S&P estimates that the Republicans cost the United States economy a whopping $24 billion with their shutdown.

• The GOP has repeatedly used the debt ceiling to manufacture crises. In order to maintain the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid global economic collapse, Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling from time to time. Yet, GOP leaders have repeatedly joined with their unyielding Tea Party caucus to manipulate these once run-of-the-mill debt ceiling increases for their own gain. In 2011, the GOP threatened to force the United States into a default – to “crash the global economy,” as Time put it – which was only averted after both sides agreed to $1.2 trillion in economically damaging sequestration cuts. This behavior led to a U.S. credit rating downgrade. In 2013, the GOP used this brinksmanship again to attempt to make cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the SNAP food program, again putting the credit-worthiness of the United States in jeopardy.

• The GOP also used a manufactured crisis to force sequestration cuts that are still hurting the economy today. The Republican-induced sequester disproportionately hurt low-income and middle class families. It led to significant cuts to funding for education, small business, and health research. Sequestration overall will cause approximately 1.8 million people to lose their jobs.

"CLEARLY, THE GOP'S INABILITY TO CONTROL THEIR
OWN PARTY HAS ALREADY CAUSED A LOT OF DAMAGE"

That's damage, the post continues, "to our economy and the well-being of American taxpayers. "

And yet, as their conference devolves again into chaos, they have no inclination to change their backwards policies or irresponsible behavior. They have no plans to avert the upcoming shutdown or increase the debt ceiling, even though the United States could default on its obligations if Congress doesn’t act by November 5th. House Republicans are not only distracted by their internal pandemonium, going into the upcoming budget negotiations they remain committed to the backwards, policy ideas and reckless political strategy that have caused so many problems for themselves, but more importantly for the American people.

BOTTOM LINE: The GOP’s current state of disarray has been a long time coming. The party’s leadership gave in to a minority of its members who are devoted to pushing devastating cuts to working- and middle-class families in pursuit of rigid and impractical ideological principles. The result has been a government in a state of perpetual dysfunction. And while House Republicans may be paying the price with negative news coverage, it is American families who pay the real price of their extreme policies.

Yes, I think that about sums it up.

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Sunday Classics snapshots: In D.C., still no Lincoln -- or even a Boccanegra

Leonard Warren as Simon Boccanegra

I weep for you, for the peaceful
sun on your hillsides,
where the olive branches
bloom in vain.
I weep for the deceptive
gaiety of your flowers,
and I cry to you "Peace!"
I cry to you "Love!"

Leonard Warren (b), Simon Boccanegra; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Fritz Stiedry, cond. Live performance, Jan. 28, 1950

Lawrence Tibbett (b), Simon Boccanegra; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Ettore Panizza, cond. Live performance, Jan. 21, 1939

by Ken

The great political chronicler Richard Reeves titled his book about the start of the post-Nixon (i.e., post-Watergate) presidency of Jerry Ford: A Ford, not a Lincoln. I think of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt. And while other American presidents have certainly risen to moments of great challenge, it's not something our political system can be counted on to make happen, and if anything even less so with the rabble that makes up our Congresses.

So perhaps it's not surprising that under the combined influence of the fratricidal follies rending the House of Representatives and a not-all-that-attentive watching of the whole of the upgraded-for-HD Ken Burns Lincoln film, and in addition with the notable contrast of the summonses to a very different sort of action delivered by Pope Francis on his American visit, my mind wandered to the rising-to-the-moment of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, the plebeian Doge of Genoa faced with the riot that breaks out in his own Council Chamber between the blood-rival factions of Plebeians and Patricians, following the attempted abduction of the patrician daughter Amelia (in reality Boccanegra's long-lost daughter Maria, as he himself has only recently discovered, in the Recognition Scene of Act I, Scene 1, which we spent a fair amount of time on here once upon a time) on behalf of the Doge's henchman Paolo, which was foiled by Amelia's patrician fiancé, Gabriele Adorno, who killed the would-be abductor.


ABOVE WE'VE HEARD THE DOGE'S GREAT PLEA --

Read more »

About those 47 GOP senators' letter to Iran: Let's play "If the shoe was on the other foot" with the "Crackpot 114th" Congress

Who gave Ted the pencil?

Could the person who gave half-witted anchorman Ted Baxter the pencil be the same person who gave half-witted Arkansas freshman Sen. Tom Cotton his?

"Republicans said they would only agree to talks [with the president] if there were no preconditions, such as recognizing President Obama’s existence."

-- from a Borowitz Report today, "Iran Offers to Mediate
Talks Between Republicans and Obama" (see below)

by Ken

One thing you can't say about the current session of Congress: that the "Crackpot 114th" isn't living up to its name.

Does everyone (anyone?) remember the time half-witted WJM-TV news anchor Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) went on the air and winged his own blitheringly idiotic station editorial? And news director Lou Grant (Ed Asner) came storming out of his office prepared to vent his wrath on newswriter Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), who preempted him by informing him that Ted had written it himself, and the enraged Lou demanded to know, "Who gave him the pencil?"

Well might we ask who gave those 47 mad-as-a-hatter GOP senators the pencil with which they scrivened their "open letter" to "leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran." This is the letter Howie wrote about earlier today, in "Tom Cotton Writes A Letter To Iran"), the letter cooked up by pea-brained Arkansas freshman Sen. Tom Cotton which, as the NYT's Peter Baker put it, "appeared aimed at unraveling a framework agreement [on a "nuclear deal"] even as negotiators grew close to reaching it." The letter, of course, offered those "leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran" a lesson of sorts on the constitutional system, warning them that any stuff that this President Obama fella says can be unsaid as soon as we Americans get ourselves a proper non-Kenyan Muslim president.

Have you noticed that we hardly ever hear the once-revered maxim that "politics ends at the water's edge," once ritually invoked anytime one political party or another ventured close to interfering with the president's conduct of foreign policy? I guess it's just another of those little niceties that's gone missing along with the GOP's sense of responsibility and sanity.

In fact, I suppose you could venture that the root cause of the 47 GOP senators' letter is a smoldering feeling of having been upstaged by "Sunny John" Boehner's House GOP Crackpot Caucus over the invitation to Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu to deliver a campaign speech before Congress. without consulting the White House. That theatrical masterstroke must appear to what we can only call the "GOP mind" as really enviable political showmanship, and the new-to-the-majority Senate GOP may no longer wish to fall back on the excuse that their House crackpot compatriots came into the Crackpot 114th with more experience staging their brand of Majority Crackpot Theater, leaving the Senate GOP-ers playing catch-up.

But you know what we haven't done in ages? Play our fun-for-all-ages favorite game, "If the shoe was on the other foot"!

Can you imagine if a Democratic-controlled Congress had played such games at the expense of a Republican president? The Right-Wing Noise Machine would be in full thundering screech, and demands would be echoing throughout the Right-Wing Echo Chamber for the heads of the "Democrat" traitors.

Howie already reported the startled and dismissive response to the letter by Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, which puts the 47 GOP senators in the hopefully awkward position of being way farther out of touch with reality than the Iranian leadership.

Practically speaking the letter has two practical effects, not counting the domestic political points to be scored among Americans who don't know anything about Iran except that it's evil. Rather obviously, it strengthens the hand of the Iranian hard-liners, who can now ridicule any pretense that Americans can be trusted to be negotiating in good faith. Do the Cottonites understand that they have formed a political coalition with the most dangerous elements inside Iran? Hard to say, but "understanding" anything isn't high on their list of priorities. If there isn't an old saying about crackpots of a feather flocking together, there ought to be.

The other practical effect is ever so slightly subtler. As Peter Baker reports:

A senior American official said the letter probably would not stop an agreement from being reached, but could make it harder to blame Iran if the talks fail. “The problem is if there is not an agreement, the perception of who is at fault is critically important to our ability to maintain pressure, and this type of thing would likely be used by the Iranians in that scenario,” said the official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the negotiations.

This is certainly not likely to be of concern to right-wing crackpots, who live, not in the real world, but in the sordid hell that is their substitute for imaginations, but for those of us who continue to dwell in reality, there is a high price to be paid for making it impossible to negotiate with other countries.

It's worth remembering that seven GOP senators declined to sign the letter, and some have even had unkind things to say about it. One optimistic way of putting this would be that, on this evidence, and at least on this issue, the Senate majority caucus is registering only 89 percent in the crackpot column. So you might say we can choose to view this, taking the most hopeful view, as either a "glass 89 percent empty" or a "glass 11 percent full" situation.

THE BOROWITZ REPORT  (on newyorker.com)





TEHRAN (The Borowitz Report) -- Stating that “their continuing hostilities are a threat to world peace,” Iran has offered to mediate talks between congressional Republicans and President Obama.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, made the offer one day after Iran received what he called a “worrisome letter” from Republican leaders, which suggested to him that “the relationship between Republicans and Obama has deteriorated dangerously.”

“Tensions between these two historic enemies have been high in recent years, but we believe they are now at a boiling point,” Khamenei said. “As a result, Iran feels it must offer itself as a peacemaker.”

He said that his nation was the “logical choice” to jumpstart negotiations between Obama and the Republicans because “it has become clear that both sides currently talk more to Iran than to each other.”

He invited Obama and the Republicans to meet in Tehran to hash out their differences and called on world powers to force the two bitter foes to the bargaining table, adding, “It is time to stop the madness.”

Hours after Iran made its offer, President Obama said that he was willing to meet with his congressional adversaries under the auspices of Tehran, but questioned whether “any deal reached with Republicans is worth the paper it’s written on.”

For their part, the Republicans said they would only agree to talks if there were no preconditions, such as recognizing President Obama’s existence.

After Bibi: Maybe the solution to the Boehner Problem is to consider whether we really, absolutely need a House speaker

Plus some thoughtier thoughts than Bibi's on Iran


Okay, I admit I fell crazy mad in love with this "manufactured" image when our colleague Gaius Publius shared it in his pre-speech post yesterday, and I would likely have taken advantage of any remotely contrivable opportunity to recycle it. But that doesn't mean that, post-speech, it isn't still the defining image of Prime Minister Bibi's Iran policy.

by Ken

So, at last, Prime Minister Bibi has spoken. Sure, it's a national disgrace, but haven't our right-wing brethren been working their chubby butts off to ensure that the U.S. is never anything but a national disgrace? At least we Americans can congratulate ourselves on our civic-mindedness in playing our part in the Israeli election process, even at the price of further muddling the already-difficult question of how to deal with Iran. (Now at least we have an easy first step: Pay no attention to anything Bibi said.)

Technically, this Borowitz Report from yesterday -- and so, of course, in advance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign speech address before a joint session of Congress today -- is "satire."

“Even as the President threatens us with provocative acts, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s support for us has been unwavering,” Boehner said. “He understands what many of us have long known: that peace with this enemy can only be achieved through total victory.”

Netanyahu had equally high praise for Boehner, saying that “no one has been more steadfast and dedicated in the struggle against your President.”

“This foe is not to be trusted or appeased,” Netanyahu said. “Your resolute refusal to find any common ground with him whatsoever has earned my undying respect.”

As the press conference drew to a conclusion, Boehner appeared to fight back tears as he called Netanyahu “a brother in arms” in the ongoing hostilities with Obama.

“A wise man once said that my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” Boehner said, choking up. “You, sir, are my best friend in the world.”

IT'S SATIRE BECAUSE --

It doesn't seem likely that "Sunny John" Boehner actually said publicly of Bibi: "Even as the President threatens us with provocative acts, Prime Minister Netanyahu's support for us has been unwavering. He understands what many of us have long known: that peace with this enemy can only be achieved through total victory." And it doesn't seem likely that Bibi actually said publicly of Sunny John that "no one has been more steadfast and dedicated in the struggle against your President."

But does anyone disbelieve that Boehner 'n' Bibi were thinking it?

It's hard to know how Sunny John thought this stunt he cooked up with right-wing political operative Ron Dermer would play out. It could be that Dermer (who, you'll recall, was a GOP player before he decamped to Israel and worked his way up to become "Bibi's brain" and his new country's ambassador to the U.S.) was merely playing him for a hapless schmuck, which certainly would have been an apt call on Dermer's part. But if Sunny John thought this political stroke was going to solidify his shaky leadership, well, that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

The other day, in a WaPo op-ed pondering the effective breakdown of House Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner's, er, leadership as reflected in his inability to get House Republicans to support his 20-day extension of DHS funding on Friday, followed by his resort to accepting Democratic support to pass the 7-day extension ("Boehner's defeat was actually really unusual. Here's why"), University of Virginia Prof. Jeffery Jenkins noted that calls for Sunny John to step down are increasing, obviously from his increasingly out-of-control far-rightward flank.

"His only saving grace," Professor Jenkins wrote, "is that there is no obvious alternative."

No one from his leadership team enjoys any more support or presumably wants the position, and no one on the conservative flank of the GOP can win widespread support in the caucus.

But if conservative GOP anger is great enough, could another path emerge? Could an ends-against-the-middle coalition form to declare the Speaker’s chair vacant? Would conservative Republicans join with Democrats on someone – anyone – other than Boehner? Stay tuned.

I don't know if it's the triumph of irony or of something still nuttier, but where Professor Jenkins sees th unmaking of Sunny John's speakership in his failure to uphold the "Hastert rule," to a lot us it has seemed that the defining characteristic of Sunny John's disastrous run as House speaker has been precisely his near-inviolate adherence to that "rule." (Which we have to continue to put in quotes because the "Hastert rule" was never actually a rule. And for cripes' sake, doesn't anyone tremble -- either that or laugh hysterically -- at the irony, or the whatever, of engraving in political stone any teaching from that sleazy crook "Planet Denny" Hastert?)

IRONICALLY (OR SOMETHING), TODAY SUNNY JOHN
ALLOWED PASSAGE OF FULL-YEAR DHS FUNDING

It's a clean bill, no mention of President Obama's executive orders on immigration, something members of his caucus had been swearing they'd never accept. And they didn't. Sunny John accomplished this legislative feat by totally disgregarding the "Hastert rule." In fact, he brought only 75 GOP ayes to the 257-167 vote.

D.C. pols appear stunned. Howie will have more to say about this tomorrow.

In case it isn't clear, given the realities of what the House Republican caucus has degenerated too, it's not at all obvious that anyone could have managed that pack of lamebrains and thugs more successfully than Sunny John has. Then again, it's not at all obvious that anyone could have done a worse job of it.

Which has me thinking about that scenario sketched for us by Professor Jenkins, of "an ends-against-the-middle coalition" coalescing "to declare the Speaker's chair vacant." Of course he's thinking of this as a step toward some coalition of R's and D's electing some mutually acceptable replacement. Whereas I'm just thinking of having the speaker's chair vacant. The way it is, more or less, at present.

I know we really should have a speaker of the House. The Constitution says so. But do we really need one? After all, it's not as if the current House majority has any stake in, you know, getting stuff done. And if they don't care, why should we?

Maybe the House R's could persuade one of their number to reinvent himself (or herself, in the event that there actually are any female House R's) as Sippy the Clown and install him in the chair. Would anyone know the difference?


ANOTHER VIEW OF BIBI'S VIEW OF IRAN,
AND AN ALTERNATE VISION OF BIBI'S VIEW

This morning, in anticipation of Bibi's campaign speech to Congress, Bernard Avishai, an adjunct professor of business at the Hebrew University who's now a visiting professor of government at Dartmouth College, engaged in some informated speculation on newyorker.com ("Netanyahu's Speech") as to what the Beebster would have to say. I've highlighted a paragraph I find especially useful on the subject of Iran -- in the unlikely event that anyone is interested in having a serious, as opposed to kneejerkish, discussion of the subject. I need hardly add that this view is not that of Bibi, or of Ron Dermer, or of Sunny John (if he actually has a view on Iran), or of AIPAC or "Holy Joe" Lieberman or "Chucky the Hammer" Krauthammer.

[B]ecause both American political parties are so deeply concerned about the security of [Israel], Netanyahu has a permanent incentive—as does AIPAC, for that matter—to present Israel’s policies as necessary to fend off urgent existential threats. Netanyahu will claim that any Iranian nuclear capacity is proof of genocidal intentions toward Israel—we have heard the same argument about the Palestinian claim to “a right of return”—so why would supporters of Israel accept the reciprocal approach that may emerge from negotiations? This gambit should not work this time. Clearly, Netanyahu is representing one side of a policy debate, with supporters and detractors in both the United States and Israel, where American lives and regional interests are also at stake, and where the Obama Administration has taken a very different position.

The big threat that Netanyahu will raise is that of Islamist extremism. The Middle East is rife with armed insurgent groups that have proven themselves capable of horrific acts of violence. Sunni groups have been backed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States allied with the U.S.; Shiite groups have been backed by Iran, and tacitly by Russia, the chief military sponsor of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. These extremists are united in their hatred for Israel and the West, not necessarily in that order. More immediately, however, they are waging war against each another, more or less along sectarian lines. These rifts may create openings for American diplomacy; it is hard to see, for example, how the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) could ever be defeated without Iran’s coöperation. Netanyahu, unlike Obama, refuses to admit this, presenting these groups as a single military front that the West must beat back.

For Netanyahu, in other words, Iran should be seen as the most powerful example of this extremism. He speaks, reasonably enough, of Iran’s past sponsorship of terrorist acts, its bloody suppression of the popular uprising that followed the election of 2009, and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map.” But Netanyahu also wants his audiences to understand a point that his own former chief of staff denies: that Iran’s ruling clerics are fundamentally irrational and share a self-sacrificial mindset with terrorists.

It is more reasonable to see Iran’s clerics, like the Saudis, as a brutal, pragmatic, authoritarian theocracy with a tenuous hold on power. The regime is likely to go through serious upheavals in the coming years. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is seventy-six years old. The Guardian Council, which elected him, is filled with both reformers and reactionaries. The powerful and rich Revolutionary Guard could conceivably carry out a coup. A rising generation, which was shaped by the protests and repressions after the elections of 2009, could once again take to the streets. Iran, in other words, is less a terrorist state than a turbulent one, and its continued isolation poses far greater dangers to the international community than a process that draws it closer to the rest of the world—with monitors on the ground, regular diplomatic exchanges, and greater economic integration.

Most vexing in this context is Netanyahu’s conception of how economic pressures might influence the regime. In his view, stiffening sanctions would put stress on the Iranian middle and educated classes; notionally, these groups would, in turn, force embattled and xenophobic clerics to change their priorities. Yet Netanyahu derides this logic—that economic forces matter—when it is used to envision the moderating influence of a deal. Obama has reason to believe, but cannot say, that relaxing sanctions will bring the middle class into the global economy—exposing élites to foreign travel, and to scientifically trained entrepreneurs and scholars. This opening to the international community might well create new national interests for the regime to protect, and perhaps ultimately transform it.

The countries currently engaged in negotiations with Iran—not only the U.S. but also China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, even Russia—are a formidable diplomatic bloc, which has reason to deny Iran the capacity to make nuclear weapons, if only to prevent a regional nuclear-arms race. This group has proven its ability to maintain Iran’s economic isolation and force its comparative impoverishment. Netanyahu has been speaking about the negotiations as if they were being conducted by people who, lacking the Jewish people’s sense of dread, engage in wishful thinking—and who are entertaining the relaxation of sanctions before Iran’s nuclear capacity is taken down more or less completely.

Netanyahu is appalled, he says, that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are willing to formally approve Iran as a threshold state, with the scientific and infrastructural capacity to assemble a nuclear weapon. In fact, Iran has been a threshold state for some time, and when Netanyahu focusses on this issue he elides the achievement that appears likely to come out of the ongoing negotiations; reportedly, to increase to at least a year the time that Iran would need to assemble a bomb. A year, as President Obama told Reuters last night, would be enough time for the U.S. and its allies to react, first by imposing economic sanctions and finally by taking military action.

This, for Netanyahu, amounts to appeasement. To be clear, what he really seems to want is war. Netanyahu speaks of “dismantling” Iran’s nuclear infrastructure: demolishing all its nuclear installations and disbanding its scientific groups and programs. He has come to Congress to ask that it increase sanctions until, presumably, Iran accedes to this. But he cannot really think that Iran would completely abandon its nuclear program. Instead, sanctions would not only preëmpt continued negotiations with the great powers, and the humiliation of Iranian reformers, but guarantee a “break-out,” with Iran going for a bomb.

If this happened, the international community (read, the U.S.) presumably would abandon diplomatic efforts and attack Iran, with the very high risk that this would entrench the regime and create an escalating war with Iran and its proxies in the Persian Gulf. American and perhaps NATO forces would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict. The great powers are entertaining military action as a last resort, and, unlike Israel, they have the military means to intervene at the eleventh hour. Why would they even consider making the last resort the first?

Ultimately, Netanyahu wants Americans to believe that Iranian leaders are so fanatical in their hatred for Israel that, once armed with a nuclear weapon, they would use it unexpectedly against Tel Aviv. Even if the threat is merely hypothetical—incinerating Tel Aviv would, after all, irradiate the Palestinians for whose sake a bomb would be dropped—no Israeli government can ignore it. That’s why the Israelis have been working for years on a “second-strike capacity,” with the means to retaliate against all Iranian cities. It is an open secret that Israel is in possession of at least a hundred nuclear warheads of its own, and has deployed submarines (acquired from Germany), bombers, and missiles. To believe Netanyahu, you must believe that Iranian leaders are out to secure a nuclear-suicide vest. It is easier to believe that they are trying to secure what Israel has, a hedge against invasion.

Note that The New Yorker's own John Cassidy yesterday offered, in a post called "What Netanyahu Won't Say to Congress," what John explains in a later-added explanatory introduction is "my own version of a speech [Bibi] could theoretically deliver, but most certainly won't," which he suggests "would be a more effective, and, ultimately, a more productive, address than the one Netanyahu is expected to deliver." Of course it includes wacko stuff like:

The government of Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbors. It recognizes the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians living in territories occupied by our military forces to have a land of their own, and it is eager to reach a permanent settlement on the basis of the 1967 borders, but taking into account the enormous demographic and physical changes that Israel has experienced in the past fifty years.

And:

To prevent the emergence of a nuclear-armed Middle East, bold initiatives are needed, so let me suggest one. If other countries in the region agree to give up their nuclear ambitions in a manner that is complete, persuasive, and verifiable; if, in addition, they publicly accept Israel’s right to exist and denounce their prior ambitions to destroy it; then Israel, which is currently one of just four U.N. member countries that has never signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, will be prepared to do its part.

Sure, John, sure! You didn't by chance write this in Washington, did you? You know, where pot is legal now?


ALSO WORTH A LOOK: BIBI AND HILLARY

The Washington Post's Anne Gearan has account, in "For Hillary and Bibi, a long and sometimes fraught relationship," of a 45-minute phone conversation between the two, in which Bib Hillary [UPDATE: thanks, John P!] is said (by whom? it's hard to see how the inside information could have come from anywhere except Hillary's camp) to have talked for 43 of those minutes, leaving Bibi in the highly unfamiliar and highly unpleasant position of listening. She didn't go into the protocol of The Speech, but apparently somebody wants us to know that she delivered tough love unto him.

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Just for the record, we all know that the Ooh That Damn Obama Party was never going to play nice with the president, don't we?

Yeah, theze guyz wuz really gonna do a heapa cooperatin' with Ooh That Damn Obama.

"[Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell's conciliatory statements are encouraging, but he's about to discover that he cannot persuade Republican Senators and Congressmen to cooperate on anything constructive. We're about to get two years of intense, horrifying stupidity. If you thought Benghazi was a legitimate scandal that reveals Obama's real plans for America then you're an idiot, but these next two years will be a (briefly) happy period for you."

-- "GOPlifer" blogger Chris Ladd, in a November 10
post, "The missing story of the 2014 election"

"We have constitutional authority to do a string of things. [Impeachment] would be the very last option, but I would not rule it out.”

-- Rep. Steve "The Stupe" King (R-IA), on CNN yesterday

"The fact that there were no rape gaffes from Republican candidates this year doesn’t mean that the Party has moved toward the center. Instead, it has learned how to muffle its extremism. . . . But building a Republican Party that can entertain ideas and pass laws with far-reaching answers to the country's problems is harder than winning an election."

-- George Packer, in his November 24 New Yorker
"Comment" piece, "The Harder Part"

by Ken

If the story of the GOP response to the president's immigration initiative were accounted for honestly, it would go something like this: Republicans who felt obliged to pretend that they hoped to cooperate with President Obama have been gifted with an excuse why they don't hafta.

When I had my brief say Wednesday night about the announcement of last night's address ("As the president prepares to make his big announcement, we ponder what it means to be an American"), I made fun -- or at least tried to -- of the anti-immigration zealotry of a natio of immigrants. I intentionally avoided wading into what would obviously be the No. 1 story, which was not immigration but That Damn Obama.

I didn't go into it because it was both preordained and obvious. You don't get a lot of surprises these days from people (and I use the term in the most inclusive sense possible, covering all life forms that can be shown to be genetically human) whose political agenda begins and almost ends with Ooh That Damn Obama. Well, there's also the business of freeing the predatory oligarchs to rape and pillage the economy and re-creating the social agenda of the Inquisition. But that's all wrapped up in Ooh That Damn Obama.

Naturally it has all played as we could have written it up Wednesday, or the week before, or the week before that. The only (mild) surprise is that, as the Washington Post's Robert Costa reports today: "GOP hopes backlash doesn't backfire." Of course we can tell easily enough that our Robert has apparently spent too much time hobnobbing with Village types:

Just two weeks ago, Republicans handed President Obama a humiliating defeat at the polls, winning full control of Congress. But already, party leaders fear that the conservative uproar over the president’s immigration actions will doom any hopes for a stable period of GOP governance.

The moves announced Thursday night by Obama — which will protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation — have sparked an immediate and widening rebellion among tea party lawmakers that top Republicans are struggling to contain.

Despite expanded powers and some new titles, soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) remain sharply limited in their ability to persuade their most conservative members. The duo has been thrust back into the same cycle of intraparty warfare that has largely defined the GOP during the Obama years and that has hurt the party’s brand among the broader electorate.

Chief among these mysterious people who are reputed to have been fantasizing about "a stable period of GOP governance," presumably, is the soon-to-be Senate majority leader, the lovely "Miss Mitch" McConnell. Why is why I've plunked the quote from "GOPlifer" blogger Chris Ladd atop this post, with the note that it dates from November 10, and thus really isn't connected to the current immigration follies. Already Chris was pointing out that our Miss Mitch is "about to discover that he cannot persuade Republican Senators and Congressmen to cooperate on anything constructive."

(I should note that Chris's post on "GOPlifer" -- which appears on the Houston Chronicle's website -- is called "This missing story of the 2014 election," and insists that "this was a dark week for Republicans," arguing at some length and in considerable detail that his party, far from broadening its appeal, merely deepened it, winning in places that seem already well served by the Republican congressional clowns who have provided a steady diet of "Climate denial, theocracy, thinly veiled racism, paranoia, and Benghazi hearings. Lots and lots of hearings on Benghazi" -- definitely worth a look. Daily Kos's murphthesurf3 has written a swell piece about Chris's post.)

Have we already forgotten how much time (which is to say every minute of every working day) those glorious "leaders" Miss Mitch and "Sunny John" Boehner have devoted to destroying the Obama presidency? And gotten away scotfree? Did nobody notice that Sunny John already had no effective control over the House majority caucus in the last session of Congress? And that his new Class of '14 warriors are going to be even more wildly out of control?

Just for laughs, and perhaps a touch of nostalgia, I've put that new humdinger of a Steve "The Stupe" King quote at the top of this post. We've got incoming freshman Republican congresscreeps who may make The Stupe look like a statesman. Okay, maybe not like a statesman, but you get the idea.

Ditto the new crop of GOP senators -- you know, the life forms who are putting Miss Mitch at the helm of the Senate majority.

Now how long do you think it would have taken these people to find a reason to rise in righteous dudgeon against the source of all evil, Ooh That Damn Obama.

At this point I'm going to turn the floor over to The New Yorker's George Packer. In his "Comment" piece, "The Hard Part," in the November 24 issue, the tizzy Republicans were thrown into in 2012 by President Obama's reelection. Much as the Democrats did after their midterm congressional whupping in 2010, George writes, Republicans in 2010 "ask[ed] themselves what went wrong."

They wrote earnest opinion pieces, organized soul-searching retreats, formed high-minded study groups, and launched reformist efforts such as the Growth and Opportunity Project, which published a scathing report about the dire state of the Party.

On November 4th, it all seemed to pay off. Political offices around the country, from governorships and state legislatures to Congress, are now decisively red. Even given the Republicans’ advantages in electoral geography and turnout, their sweep should be more chilling to Democrats than the Tea Party triumphs of 2010, because it came in a period of partial economic sunshine, with Republicans statistically less popular than Democrats. The Party that has spent the past six years doing everything in its power to prevent the President from stimulating growth, boosting wages, improving infrastructure, controlling health-care costs, and regulating Wall Street was rewarded with clear majorities in both houses. The only prize left is the big one in 2016.

Republican leaders, determined to prove that they can build as well as destroy, have made a mighty effort not to seem high on victory. “There will be no government shutdowns,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader-elect, promised. Cory Gardner, the Senator-elect from Colorado, warned, “If Republicans don’t prove that we can govern with maturity, that we can govern with competence, we’ll see the same kind of results two years from now, except it will be a wave going back a different direction.” Senator Rand Paul, a potential candidate for the Presidency, said, “You know, I think the gridlock is going to end.” He sounded like a patient trying to talk his way out of rehab.

There are reasons to be skeptical that the Party has really turned a corner on its chronic obstructionism. Within ten days of the election, McConnell was sounding like himself again. After China and the United States announced common goals for reducing greenhouse gases, he accused Obama of sending “a signal that he has no intention of moving toward the middle”—a place, apparently, where the two parties agree on limitless carbon emissions from coal plants, like the ones in McConnell’s home state, Kentucky. The House Speaker, John Boehner, concurred: “The President intends to double down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact.”

The recent, utterly alarming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got through to the Chinese leadership, but not to the G.O.P.’s. The probable next chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, who has called global warming a “hoax.” He’s joined in ignorance by Senator Ted Cruz, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Science and Space, and Senator Jeff Sessions, who will likely chair the Budget Committee. The Republican leadership is determined to prevent or undo any executive action by Obama on greenhouse gases, as well as on immigration reform.

When the Republicans talk about proving that they can govern, they don’t mean that they intend to solve the country’s core problems. The bills that the leadership has vowed to bring to the floor include corporate tax reform, fast-track trade agreements, construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and a repeal of the tax on medical devices. Most of these proposals are marginal enough to betray a tactical mind-set: the purpose is not to address important issues but to corner the President with bipartisan votes and improve the G.O.P.’s image ahead of 2016.

In a post-election editorial, the conservative National Review dismissed the whole idea that congressional Republicans need to mature, arguing that the “desire to prove Republicans can govern” will only divide the Party between its establishment and its extremists, play into the hands of opponents in the Democratic Party and the media, and perhaps even persuade voters to keep government divided by electing a Democratic President in 2016. The editorial urged the Republican leadership to dedicate itself to one goal: winning the White House—an extension of McConnell’s stated determination in 2010 to make Obama a one-term President. In both cases, the main objective is power. You can hear the voice of the Party’s enablers: why sober up now that the bad behavior is paying off?

A party that dedicated itself to extreme policy positions and a strategy of legislative intransigence won’t find reform easy. Some moderate Republicans studied the résumés of the midterm candidates and decided that the Party was returning to its respectable self of the Eisenhower years—the party of Rotarians, prudent business owners, patriotic veterans. This is wishful thinking. That party no longer exists, and neither does the political consensus of the postwar years. It was based on a wide distribution of economic rewards, a high degree of civic participation, and respected national institutions, including the federal government, which the modern Republican Party has done everything it can to discredit (with help from feckless Democratic ideas and actions, not least the rollout of Obamacare).

The fact that there were no rape gaffes from Republican candidates this year doesn’t mean that the Party has moved toward the center. Instead, it has learned how to muffle its extremism. The Growth and Opportunity Project’s withering assessment had no new policies to propose—it seemed wary of the very notion of ideological debate. The report was a strategy plan—a guide to using messaging, polling, technology, fund-raising, and other “campaign mechanics,” in order to reverse the Party’s growing isolation as a bastion of the older, rural, white electorate.

By the standard of the midterms, the report was a success. But building a Republican Party that can entertain ideas and pass laws with far-reaching answers to the country’s problems is harder than winning an election. It might even take losing another one.

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So, freeloading House GOP junketeers really do have some sense of . . . well, not shame exactly, but something sort of related

House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Conaway (R-TX) -- a fine ethicist who grasps the evil of "duplicative paperwork"

"These kinds of backroom deals and changing of the rules in the middle of the night is exactly why Congress has a lower approval rating than cockroaches and traffic jams."

-- Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-IA)

by Ken

We've gotten so used to thinking of the rampaging hordes of right-wing political scumbagger as "shameless," as truly beyond any sense of human decency, that it's almost comforting to find the need to pull back just a tad. It seems the boys—and they are still overwhelmingly boys—may actually have some tiny, primitive-brain sense of, well, not shame exactly, but some level awareness of their reprehensibleness.

Again, even in the cases I'm about to cite, there's no evidence that the dolts involved actually feel bad about what they've done. It's more like, having done things they know are going to cause people to yammer at them, they just don't like being yammered at for their misbehavior.

One example I already mentioned on Monday, in connection with the Supreme Court's careful end-of-term scheduling, which left to the very last morning the dropping of this term's big ideological dirty bombs. Now there are many considerations in arranging the High Court's schedule, all of them of course under the tight control of the High Court itself. But was there any doubt that the Cro-Magnon Five knew that these exhibitions of thuggery were going to produce firestorms? Possibly the atmosphere around the place is getting testier as the four Court moderates understand just what contempt they're held in, and some of the venom that's creeping into their dissenting opinions is also being vented in chambers, and some of the more tender-eared C-Ms are actually noticing. In any case, it seems pretty clear that the release of the Hobby Lobby and Harris rulings was a dirty dump-and-run job.

There may have been an additional consideration here in that both decisions were announced by that fumbling fool Sammy "The Hammer" Alito, and when The Hammer drops an opinion, the ignorance and stupidity start flaking off before the thing hits the ground. You'd like to think that some at least of the C-M justices are capable of some level of embarrassment.

I loved this description from Dana Milbank's Washington Post column yesterday, "In Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court uses a 'fiction,' " which had the virtue, as so many of Dana's columns do, of his shoe-leather approach to the job, whereby he actually goes out to observe firsthand the craziness he's reporting on.

There was a certain risk in having Alito deliver the 5-to-4 opinion defending corporate personhood, because his mannerisms are strikingly robotic for a human. Assigned both of Monday’s opinions, Alito delivered a 33-minute monologue — his only departure from the text before him was to raise his head mechanically at intervals and glance at a table to his right — that seemed to have a soporific effect on his colleagues. Clarence Thomas rubbed his head, Anthony Kennedy rested his head in his right palm, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who was to read her dissent in the Hobby Lobby case) drank a large quantity from her coffee mug, and the others stared ahead with unfocused gazes.

Alito, seated between Ginsburg and Justice Elena Kagan, and his colleagues in the majority also may not have considered how flesh-and-blood humans might perceive the ruling — the five men of the conservative bloc allowing restrictions on birth control over the objections of the three women on the court.

I can't tell you how much I love this image of Justice Clarence driven to rubbing his head and "Slow Anthony" to resting his head in his palm by their droning colleague. Do I need to add that it's only in Justice Sammy's muddled head that he's a hammer of virtue (or something)? Well, in his head and in real life, considering that he has one of nine votes on the U.S. Supreme Court -- or, more to the point, one of five votes in the Court's ruling Cro-Magnon majority.



MEANWHILE BACK IN THE VILLAGE

For our other working example of Republican not-quite-shame, kudos to DailyKos's Jed Lewison for latching onto Shane Goldmacher's Monday National Journal scoop, "Congress Quietly Deletes a Key Disclosure of Free Trips Lawmakers Take." As we'll see, the feat accomplished here required some still-unexplained House Democratic collusion, but there doesn't seem to be much doubt who the movers and shakers here were.

Actually, here I think we need to include the deck written for Shane G's report: "House Ethics reverses decades of precedent as lobbyist-sponsored lawmaker travel expands." Shane begins:

It's going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms.

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

"This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "There's no legitimate reason. There's no good reason for it."

Oh, Melanie, Melanie, Melanie! Expecting "legitimate" reasons for the behavior of House Republicans!

Let's go a paragraph deeper into Shane's report:

Free trips paid for by private groups must still be reported separately to the House's Office of the Clerk and disclosed there. But they will now be absent from the chief document that reporters, watchdogs, and members of the public have used for decades to scrutinize lawmakers' finances.

Ding ding ding ding!

Melanie Sloan obviously understands what's going on.

"The more you can hide, the less accountable you can be," Sloan said of lawmakers. "It's clear these forms are useful for reporters and watchdogs, and obviously a little too useful."

Ding ding ding ding!

The good news, at least for would-be House junketeers, is that, however secretly, the clamps are coming off some of the fun behavior that's been made so inconvenient since that rat bastard Jack Abramoff got caught doing all those naughty things -- or rather got them caught doing all those naughty things. Ah yes, Jack Abramoff. There's a name we haven't heard in a while.

The change occurs as free travel, which critics have criticized as thinly veiled junkets, has come back into vogue. Last year, members of Congress and their aides took more free trips than in any year since the influence-peddling scandal that sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison. There were nearly 1,900 trips at a cost of more than $6 million last year, according to Legistorm, which compiles travel records.

Now none of those trips must be included on the annual disclosures of lawmakers or their aides.

The tabs for these international excursions can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. One trip to Australia earlier this year cost nearly $50,000. Lawmakers are often invited to bring along their husbands or wives, fly in business class, and stay in plush four-star hotels. In the wake of the Abramoff scandal, lobbyists were banned from organizing or paying for these travels. But some of the nonprofits underwriting them today have extremely close ties to lobbying groups, including sharing staff, money, and offices.

You see why I say there's no indication on the part of the House Republicans of shame. It's not that they have any compunctions about taking these trips. They'd just rather not have inappropriate people, like us, knowing about it.

Which is what's so hilariously right about the House GOP's furious antics aimed at keeping this little technical adjustment under wraps. National Journal, you'll recall, "uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings." Which still put them ahead of a lot of folks on Capitol Hill -- including, apparently, House Democrats.

The only indication that these trips no longer need to be disclosed on annual reports came in the instructions booklet issued to lawmakers in 2014. The guidelines for the new electronic filing system tell lawmakers and staff they "are no longer required to report privately sponsored travel" on the form.

Perhaps because the ethics committee's edict was issued so quietly, disclosure remained uneven.

For instance, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who led a GOP delegation of lawmakers to Israel last summer paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, which is closely tied to the pro-Israel lobby, did not include the trip on his annual form. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who led a similar trip for Democrats, did include it on his form. But some of the rank-and-file members who went on the trip with Hoyer did not.

In case you still don't grasp why it seemed like such a nifty idea to keep this change as quiet as possible, just look what happens when people start finding out.

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer group Public Citizen who closely tracks the international travels of lawmakers and the actions of the Ethics Committee, said he was "completely unaware" of the change until contacted by National Journal.

"There's seems to be no reason I could imagine why the Ethics Committee would minimize the amount of information that gets reported," Holman said.

Holman took solace in the fact that the post-Abramoff reform law included mandatory disclosure of such trips on the clerk's website. But he said he was still was concerned about their absence from the annual reports, which he called "a critical element for understanding the finances of our elected representatives."

"It's always good to have more disclosure than less," he said. "It just seems a little odd that the Ethics Committee would pass such a rule change."

Oh, Craig, Craig, Craig! You're just being modest. I'm absolutely sure you can imagine perfectly well "why the Ethics Committee would minimize the amount of information that gets reported." You know as well as anybody that if those mooks give up their right to silence, anything they say can be used against them in a court of law, or in the court of public opinion, just as if they were common criminal suspects.

As of Monday, the House Ethics Committee (don't you have to smile just a little when you say "House Ethics Committee"?) was still cocooned in its Cone of Silence. (We'll have further developments to report in a moment.)

House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, did not return a call for comment; ranking member Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., referred questions to committee staff. The committee declined to comment.

ONCE THE YOU-KNOW-WHAT HIT THE FAN --

By Tuesday, however, which is to say after the National Journal report appeared, the House Republican beast roused from its slumber. As Shane G reported in his follow-up yesterday, "Nancy Pelosi Says Decision to Delete Reporting Requirement for Free Trips 'Must Be Reversed,'" a spokesman for House Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner, Michael Steel, commented, "Rep. Pelosi's staff needs to talk to her representative on the Ethics Committee, who signed off on this bipartisan change to reduce duplicative paperwork."

The Ethics Committee, you'll recall, isn't like any other congressional committee, being made up of equal numbers, four each, of Democrats and Republicans -- basically, we might say, to ensure that neither party can do anything that would be, shall we say, awkward for the other party. (Awkwardness is, of course, of far greater concern to members of Congress than ethics.) "That means," Shane G wrote yesterday, "that ranking member Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., and her Democratic colleagues (Reps. Michael Capuano, Yvette Clarke, and Ted Deutch and Del. Pedro Pierluisi) had to have approved the deleted disclosure requirement, along with Republicans led by committee Chairman Michael Conaway of Texas." Ranking Member Sanchez, you'll recall, on Monday "referred questions to committee staff."

Yesterday even the Ethics Committee itself was heard from! In what Shane describes as "a rare public statement,"

Tom Rust, the committee's chief counsel, said that "the committee's nonpartisan staff recommended a number of changes to the financial-disclosure forms, including eliminating the need to report less information about private travel than the traveler had already publicly disclosed."

I'm not sure this actually makes sense ("eliminating the need to report less information about private travel than the traveler had already publicly disclosed"? huh?), but it seems to have been good enough to satisfy the not-very-curious Ethics Committee Dems, while being readily understandable to lots of House Republicans. Minority Leader Pelosi seems to have been genuinely unaware of the change until Monday, and you'll recall that Minority Whip Hoyer in fact did report a trip he didn't have to under the new rules.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that making a rule change you're eager to make for selfish reasons while camouflaging it as reducing "duplicative paperwork" (which after said reduction becomes invisible) is in fact a textbook case of this thing that's not really shame over bad behavior so much as it is a hope of being able to go on doing the bad behavior while keeping it under wraps.

Iowa Dem Dave Loebsack, whom we heard from at the top of this post, said Tuesday that he's going to introduce legislation to undo the rule change following the House's 4th of July recess. Whether the GOP leadership is prepared to allow such tinkering with this "bipartisan change" remains to be seen.

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Ba-a-ad Republcans! Ba-a-ad Republcans!

"Not since my children were 3 or 4 years old," says NY Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, "have I seen such obstinate inability to accept the facts."

by Ken

The Republican shutter-downers think they can hornswoggle American into believing that they're just trying to get a fair hearing from those Kremlin-red Democrats, including the president, for their noble ideas. Of course, they have no noble ideas, and there's a reason why they can't get a fair hearing. They're the ravings of lunatics and thugs. But I think they may do well persuading fact-deprived and reality-challenged Americans, who are likely to take the "plague on both their houses" approach.

Except in this case we know where the plague is.

The right-wing devils love, of course, to play the tune sounded by, for example, the Dunce of Georgia, Rep. Jack Kingston, about how that hyperpartisan President Obama "is proudly negotiating with the Iranians" but "will not negotiate with the Republicans." It never occurs to these buttwipes that they themselves are, quite properly, the butt of their imagined cleverness. Yes, by comparison with the House Republicans, the Iranians whom reasonable people can talk to.

"On the second day of the shutdown," Dana Milbank writes in his Washington Post column today ("Republicans are going to need a bigger lifeboat"), "House Republicans continued what might be called the lifeboat strategy: deciding which government functions are worth saving."

In: veterans, the troops and tourist attractions. Out: poor children, pregnant women and just about every government function that regulates business or requires people to pay taxes.

The lifeboat strategy was the brainchild of Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), the freshman who has become the de facto leader of congressional Republicans in the shutdown. On Tuesday, GOP House members introduced bills that would exempt three entities: the national parks, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the District of Columbia. On Wednesday, they added the National Institutes of Health and pay for National Guard members and military reservists.

And then there's all the stuff ruled ineligible for the lifeboats, which includes:

market regulation, chemical spill investigations, antitrust enforcement, worksite immigration checks, workplace safety inspections, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service's audit capabilities, communications and trade regulation, nutrition for 9 million children and pregnant women, flu monitoring and other functions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and housing rental assistance for the poor.

It's not hard to figure out the "strategy" at work here.

The pattern, it seems, is that House Republicans propose to rescue the most visible casualties of the shutdown, such as the national parks and trash collection in the capital. Efforts to help veterans, active-duty troops and reservists are popular but largely unnecessary because most of them were unaffected by the shutdown. The NIH's work isn't always visible, but the agency has powerful supporters who want research on their pet causes.

Perhaps more revealing were those who haven't earned a place in the conservatives' lifeboat: entities that check the power of industry and entities that protect workers and the poor. They may be the most hurt by a government shutdown, but they don't have a place in the conservative utopia as defined by the lifeboat strategy.

Dana quotes NY Rep. Louise Slaughter, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee: "Not since my children were 3 or 4 years old have I seen such obstinate inability to accept the facts." That sounds about right.

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Who gave the House Republicans the pencil?

One of New York's greatest buildings, Cass Gilbert's U.S. Custom House, is now home to the Museum of the American Indian.

by Ken

It's one of New York's greatest buildings, the Beaux Arts former U.S. Custom House (1902-07) designed by Cass Gilbert, standing proudly below and overlooking historic Bowling Green, near the southern tip of Manhattan -- and now home to the Museum of the American Indian (and also a Citi Bike bike-sharing depot). I was thinking it would be a snap to pick up a copy of the printed schedule for Open House New York, which as I mentioned last night is supposed to be available for pickup at select locations around town. The Custom House, er, museum, is just a short walk from my office.

It actually occurred to me before I had a chance to do that walk that I should probably try to check -- online or somewhere -- to make sure that the museum isn't affected by the shutdown. But I reasoned it through in my head that there wasn't likely to be any federal connection.

As I approached the building, wondering yet again at both its imposing mass and its extraordinary decoration and detailing, I noticed the usual complement of visitors sitting on its welcoming staircase, and threaded my way through them up those stairs. It wasn't till I was near the top that I looked up and noticed that the massive entry door was shut tight. I backed down the stairs a ways and this time looked at the sign: "All Smithsonian museums are closed today due to the government shutdown." Oh, that's right -- isn't it? -- that the Museum of the American Indian is now a Smithsonian outpost.

Not the biggest of deals, of course, but my closest encounter to date with the shutdown. Other Americans are experiencing it more personally, obviously. But I wonder whether enough Americans are experiencing it personally enough to produce the backlash widely predicted against the Republicans. Because I don't think the country is the same country it was at the time of the last U.S. government shutdown, which was before we were officially taken off the reality standard.

Of course in a way it all goes back to Reagan, who introduced to Americans as a national agenda that reality was no longer, you know, real, but whatever made you feel best. His heir-in-confusion George W. "Chimpy the Prez" took this idea the logical step farther and made it national policy. Surely we all remember the Rove-themed sneering at the "reality-based community"?

But the point at which I noticed that we had officially gone off the reality standard was the 2008 presidential campaign of Young Johnny McCranky, who gave us the idea that you could run an entire national campaign without ever once telling the truth about anything. And he still got that 47 or so percent of the vote, not all that much less than his opponent. I wondered at the time whether we should be facing the future with much confidence when that much of the country was endorsing a campaign of utter delusion.

The rise of the Teabaggers was one answer to that question, peddling lies and delusions and general meanness of spirit. This is what America has become.

I'm put in mind of the Mary Tyler Moore Show in which the WJM news producer Lou Grant (Ed Asner) decides to introduce editorials to the evening newscast, and empty-suit anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), as always terrified by the prospect of any turf incursion, tosses the script written by newswriter Murray (Gavin MacLeod) and burbles his own imbecilic gibberish. Lou storms into the newsroom spluttering, and Murray tells him not to look at him, that he didn't write it. Ted wrote it himself.

If anything more berserk, Lou splutters, "Who gave him the pencil?"


Who gave Ted Baxter the pencil? Could it be the same person who has now given one to the House Republicans?

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

The DAmN Party (aka GOP) rampages onward in its take-no-prisoners assault on truth, justice, and the American way

Confirmation yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee was the second step toward the failure of Nina Pillard's nomination to the District Circuit Court of Appeals, which began with the president's announcement of her nomination.

by Ken

I had to really scrutinize a washingtonpost.com "Fix" item the other day, "Ted Cruz vs. House Republicans," to grasp the nature of the reported rupture in the Capitol Hill GOP, occasioned by the exhortation of Texas Sen. Ted "Rock Brain" Cruz to his fellow GOP-ers in the House to stand firm when the Senate strips their latest legislative stratagem in their unrelenting war to Destroy America Now (DAmN), the defunding of the new health-care law, from the stopgap spending bill that would prevent a government shutdown, and sends the continuing-resolution bill back to the House.

Me, I thought it was nothing more than a statement of solidarity among the congressional Princelings of Darkness. Obviously the Senate isn't going to go along with the madness, and so it's going to be left to the two houses of Congress to figure out where to go from there. All Senator Rock Brain was doing, as far as I could tell, was exhorting his House co-partisans to stand fast in waging their fight against America.

This, however, is where you need to be able to think like a DAmN-er and see the world through that dark, twisted filter. Viewing that way, apparently, what you see is Senator Rock Brain thumbing his nose at his psychopathic House colleagues' attempt to dump the ball in their Senate co-partisans' court. It seems that the House DAmN-ers were declaring that they've done their part and now it's time for the Senate DAmN-ers to tote that barge.

What Cruz is essentially saying is right. The Democratic-controlled Senate simply isn't going to sign off on a bill that defunds Obamacare. They'll strip that part out and send a new bill back to the House. Then, GOP leaders in the lower chamber will have to decide their next move.

But it's the subtext of Cruz's statement that irks House Republicans. He's getting the fight he asked for -- the Senate will get a bill that does exactly what he wants. Yet already, he's signaling likely defeat and seeking to shift responsibility in the debate back to House Republicans.

Cruz's push to build support in the upper chamber for defundung Obamacare through a continuing resolution has gone virtually nowhere. Only about a dozen Republican senators are in his corner while others have publicly lambasted the idea.

By agreeing to vote on a CR that defunds Obamacare, House Speaker John Boehner's message was simple: It's your turn, Senate Republicans. You take up this fight, now. Don't blame us for inaction anymore.

Whew! The GOP-ers have subtext! With "thinking" like this, it's no wonder that the DAmN-ers are always in such a state of superhuman stress and rage. Of course "thinking" like this will do that to you.

Fortunately for the Senate DAmN-ers, they have an opportunity to point out to their pipsqueak inferior-house colleagues that even as the minority party in the Senate they've been carrying the heavy load of making it impossible, or as difficult as possible, for the Obama administration to govern, by playing their anti-constitutional game of "Supermajority! Supermajority!," since the House DAmN-ers were still wetting their pants as the minority party. And nowhere have they performed more wreckingly than in their refusal to allow the president to staff the government.

It seems like longer, but it's really not that long ago that President Obama, buoyed by his decisive reelection, started acting like someone determined to actually exercise the authority of the presidency. Among other things, he finally named three candidates to fill the vacancies on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the country's second-highest court, behind the U.S. Supreme Court (for which it has in fact been a frequent feeder).

In those heady days I don't remember hearing a lot of talk about the likelihood of getting those nominees confirmed. Now our Washington Post pal Al "In the Loop" Kamen reminds us that frequently in our nation's capital the real news is the opposite of what it seems.

That's one hurdle . . ..

The Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line 10 to 8 vote Thursday, approved the nomination of Georgetown law professor and former Justice Department lawyer Nina Pillard to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Her chances of confirmation by the full Senate, however, may fall in the slim-to-none range. The vote overcame, for now, strong opposition from Republicans who said Pillard held "extreme" and "activist" views. . . .

Holding "extreme" and "activist" views is just a DAmN way of saying "not screechingly criminally insane." As we'll see in a moment, the DAmN-ers will grasp at any straw to provide cover for their deeply held political ideology, which has evolved from "We Hate That Obama" in the president's first term to "If You Thought We Hated That [racially tinged obscenity deleted] Obama Before, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" in the second term.

Pillard is the second of three Obama nominees approved by the committee for long-standing vacancies on the D.C. Circuit, often called the second most important court in the country.

Another nominee, Patricia Millett, also was a approved on a party-line 10 to 8 vote in committee, on Aug. 1, though Republicans didn’t criticize her qualifications, arguing that the court didn’t need any more judges. The third nominee, U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins, is expected to have a committee vote in the next few weeks.

It appears likely that Senate Republicans will move to block confirmation of all three nominees, preserving the existing 4 to 4 split between Republicans and Democrats on the appeals court.

Did you get that? The District Circuit doesn't need any more judges! How inoffensive must Patricia Millett be if that's the best the DAmN-ers could come up with to justify a unified-party-line vote against her?

And of course if we play another round of our beloved party game "If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot," just imagine a Republican president sending the Senate a judicial nominee in the mold of, say, the Lying Idiot Alito, and Senate Democrats announcing unified opposition (hey, we're just imagining here) on the ground that the court in question has enough judges.

The message I get from the Senate Republicans is: "We hate America so much that we no longer feel the need to make up minimally believable lies to cover our tracks." Ya gotta love 'em.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner needs our help -- he's run out of ideas for his top legislative priorities

If the House GOP can't think of anything better to prioritize, maybe they could do something about the McRib sandwich (by all means click on it to enlarge) -- and do something about the sauce, and maybe the pork too.

by Ken

Earlier today Howie wrote ("Is Boehner Retiring?) about rumors that the only speaker of the House we have is thinking about packing it in: "Boehner's job -- trying to herd the fractious, racist, unpatriotic teabaggers in his own party -- is so thankless and stressful that there are rumors he's contemplating retirement."

Well, that might be the poor sod's solution for the next session of Congress, but for the rest of this one he's still the man who runs the House, and I was shocked to learn from Washington Post Loopmaster Al Kamen that the poor dear is having trouble figuring out what his top two legislative priorities for the remainder of this session might be.

You'll be relieved to learn that Sunny John has nailed his no. 3 priority, having designated a bill that gives a go-ahead to building the Keystone XL pipeline as H.R. 3. As Al explains:

In the annals of bill numbering, H.R. 1 is the slot usually used for a majority party's top legislative priority -- its No. 1 goal. By way of example, the Senate Democrats this Congress made an immigration reform bill their equivalent, S. 1.

Last Congress, House Republicans' priorities were evident: H.R. 1 was a bill repealing the health-care law known as Obamacare (though we noted then that House leaders hadn't come up with their lesser goals, as represented by H.R. 6 through 10).

But in this Congress, which began in January, the House Republicans' No. 1 bill is . . . nothing. Not yet, at least.

Not only that, but H.R. 2 is unclaimed as well. At least for H.R. 1 there is

a notation stating simply that the space is "Reserved for the Speaker." Boehner announced this year that it's being held open for a big tax-reform bill Republicans are crafting.

It's unclear when that package will be ready for unveiling, though Boehner has called it one of House Republicans' "highest priorities."

Personally, I find the idea of allowing the deviants and mutants who comprise the House GOP conference to even touch the tax code terrifying. There should be big, strong monitors armed with yardsticks patrolling the premises to pulverize the knuckles of any of these mugs who tries to get his grubby mitts on the tax code.

Which means that the House majority party is still without a no. 1 or a no. 2 priority. Although, as Al also points out:

Like a meditating Buddhist monk, House Speaker John Boehner doesn't want you to confuse his lack of movement with nothing going on. Here's some evidence that he was serious when explaining this weekend that House Republicans not passing bills was an accomplishment.

Howie too noted the speaker's, er, surprising redefinition of legislative achievement in a chinwag with CBS's Bob Schieffer that aired Sunday on Face the Nation:

We should not be judged by how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.

Frankly, it's a little surprising to find the House Republicans so bereft of ideas, when their number includes such deep thinkers as Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and of course the conference's thinker-in-chief, Paul Ryan, who doesn't stop thinking from the moment he wakes up in the morning to the moment he falls asleep at night.

I'm always willing to help, so I've been thinking of some things the House GOP leadership might want to pop into those empty H.R. 1 and H.R. 2 slots. And I think I've got some winners.

1. Bring back the McRib sandwich and this time once and for all make it permanent.

The last I checked, the McRib was still making only a brief annual reapparance. What, is there really such a thing as "pork season"? The legislation might be expanded to doing something about that kind of icky-sweet barbecue sauce, and frankly about the pork itself. But at least the House GOP could show it stands for something.

2. Pass a House resolution condemning Anthony Weiner for being, you know, a dick.

He's not a member of the House anymore, but since when does that stop members of Congress from voicing their righteous indignation.

3. Institute a system whereby each week a House "council" would meet and vote one member off Capitol Hill.

As a member, anyway. You know the next week he/she will be back as a lobbyist.

3. Update the patriots on our paper currency.

I admit I've got kind of an agenda here. I'm thinking that thinking about money might distract the GOP darlings from thinking too much about the tax code. I haven't thought about it that much, but so far here's what I've come up with:

$1 bill: Replace the Father of Our Country with the Grandfather, Ronald Reagan.
$2 bill: Give us the new Jefferson: Young Johnny McCranky.
$5 bill: Dump that old Abe Lincoln, such an embarrassment to the modern-day Republican Party, in favor of the real freedom fighter of their time, President Jefferson Davis.
$10 bill: replace Alexander Hamliton with a more modern economic theorist, Ayn Rand.
$20 bill: Andrew Jackson? Feh! Let's have a real man of the people: George W. Bush.
$50 bill: Ulysses S. Grant? We need a real general: George S. Patton.
$100 bill: Quaint old Ben Franklin? No, we should have a real patriot: Rush Limbaugh.

Then, bring back the $500, $1000, $5000, and $10,000 bills, to make it easier for the 1% to transact off-the-books cash transactions, replacing William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, James Madison, and Salmon P. Chase, respectively, with -- who else? -- superpatriot Charles Koch.

And if the priorities are to be acts of un-legislating, there's always repeal of:
* Obamacare, of course
* Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, of course
* the Dept of Education, of course
* the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
* the income tax
* laws against corruption, bribery, stealing (maybe murder?)
* laws that discourage voter suppression
* any rules that frown on distributing lobbyists' cash to members on the House floor

It's really not that hard, Sunny John. I know you're feeling kind of blue these days, even if you still look pretty orange. Still, you were voted speaker to do a job. And surely it wasn't the job you're doing?

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."