The Commentariat -- Oct. 5, 2013

"In this week's address, President Obama said that Republicans in the House of Representatives chose to shut down the government over a health care law they don't like. He urged the Congress to pass a budget that funds our government, with no partisan strings attached. The President made clear he will work with anyone of either party on ways to grow this economy, create new jobs, and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul -- but not under the shadow of these threats to our economy." -- White House

Blackmail, extortion, hostage-taking and brinksmanship are the tools of terrorists, not legislators. -- Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution

We Have No Idea What We're Doing. Lori Montgomery, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Republicans on Friday continued to demand changes to President Obama's signature health-care law as a condition for funding government operations.... Privately, a number of GOP lawmakers are pushing for a shift ... to exploration of a broader deal to reduce the nation's debt.... But Boehner seemed anything but conciliatory when he and other senior Republican lawmakers appeared before reporters on Friday, angrily denouncing comments from an anonymous White House official who said the Democrats were 'winning' in the funding impasse. 'This isn't some damn game,' Boehner said loudly.... [See video clip in yesterday's Commentariat.] President Obama sought to correct the official's comment when he spoke to reporters Friday during a visit with Vice President Biden to Taylor Gourmet, a deli near the White House.... 'As long as they're off the job, nobody's winning, and that's the point,' Obama said in response to a question, referring to furloughed federal workers. 'We should get this over with as soon as possible.'"

... We Admit We Have No Idea What We're Doing. Jonathan Weisman & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "The overarching problem for [Boehner]..., say allies and opponents, is that he and his leadership team have no real idea how to resolve the fiscal showdown. They are only trying to survive another day, Republican strategists say, hoping to maintain unity as long as possible so that when the Republican position collapses, they can capitulate on two issues at once -- financing the government and raising the debt ceiling -- and head off any internal party backlash." ...

You really have to call Cruz, I'm not even joking about that. That's really what you have to do, because he's the one that set up the strategy, he's the one that got us into this mess, and so we've got to know what the next move is. -- Dave Nunes (R-Calif.), when asked what the House was doing

... Michael Bender of Bloomberg News: "U.S. Representative Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican, said he would support a broad spending deal that didn't include changes to the health-care law, becoming the first Tea Party-backed House lawmaker to publicly back off the fight that has shut down the government for five days. Ross, ranked among the House's most conservative members..., said he shifted his position because the shutdown hasn't resulted in changes to the Affordable Care Act, which started Oct. 1, the same day government funding ran out. The shutdown also could hurt the party, he said." CW: I guess the old folks in Lakeland & Plant City are letting Ross know how fearful they are that President Obama will personally confiscate their Social Security checks if the shutdown goes on. ...

... Greg Sargent: "Dems have hit on a way to use a 'discharge petition,' which forces a House vote if a majority of Representatives signs it, to try to force the issue. Previously, it was thought this could not work, because a discharge petition takes 30 legislative days to ripen, so if this were tried with the clean CR that passed the Senate, this couldn't bear fruit until some time in November. But now House Democrats say they have found a previously filed bill to use as a discharge petition -- one that would fund the government at sequester levels.... Dems say that if they get enough signatures, they'd be able to force a vote by October 14th." ...

     ... CW: Various political scientists (here & here, ferinstance), are saying that the plan won't work, largely because few Republicans will sign on to a Democratic discharge petition even if they favor the Democrats' position. However, these experts assume the House leadership would be weakened by the defection & would therefore oppose it. I'm not sure they're right. Boehner knows he is going to have to work with Pelosi on this somewhere down the line; this would be an ideal way for him to get the CR through with no visible blood on his hands. It would not surprise me if Boehner was in on the Democratic plan. He retains his creds with the Crazy Caucus & gets the clean CR he wants. Perfecto. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "... a negotiation is not a shakedown. Pretending the two are the same doesn't make it so." ...

... Molly Ball of the Atlantic: "Friday's campaign-style back-and-forth over who said what and who cares more about the suffering American people during the shutdown started with an anonymous senior administration official's declaration, quoted and paraphrased by the Wall Street Journal, that "'We are winning .... It doesn't really matter to us' how long the shutdown lasts "because what matters is the end result.'" [See also the top of the October 3 Commentariat.] ... For all the accusations of gloating hurled at the White House..., I heard something very different from senior administration officials Thursday: an awareness that Obama doesn't have to get elected again, and that that has freed him to take politically risky positions in the service of dragging the American political system out of chaotic and destabilizing patterns. As senior administration officials portrayed it, Obama has been working throughout the course of this year to rightsize the presidency." ...

... ** "The Triumph of the Ratfuckers." Charles Pierce ties the House teabaggers to Nixon plumber Donald Segretti. ...

... ** Colbert King of the Washington Post goes back further in history to locate the ideological foundations of the Tea Party saboteurs: "Today there is a New Confederacy, an insurgent political force that has captured the Republican Party and is taking up where the Old Confederacy left off in its efforts to bring down the federal government.... The New Confederacy, as churlish toward President Obama as the Old Confederacy was to Lincoln, has accomplished what its predecessor could not: It has shut down the federal government, and without even firing a weapon or taking 620,000 lives, as did the Old Confederacy's instigated Civil War. Not stopping there, however, the New Confederacy aims to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States, setting off economic calamity at home and abroad -- all in the name of 'fiscal sanity.'" ...

... MEANWHILE, if you stick with Right Wing News, here's what you're learning. Alex Pappas of the Daily Caller: "Priests threatened with arrest if they minister to military during shutdown." The post is worth a read for the shear audacity of it. And don't think members of Congress -- Eric Cantor, Ted Cruz -- aren't fully exploiting this fabrication. ...

... AND, Speaking of Ted. Igor Bobic of TPM: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), or 'the joint speaker of the House' as Harry Reid calls him, argued Friday that Republicans have already offered Democrats a concession in their stand against reopening the government by demanding not a full repeal of Obamacare, but merely the defunding" ObamaCare.

** Gail Collins: "Over the past few years, Republicans have terrified their most fervent followers about Obamacare in order to disguise the fact that they no longer knew what to say about their old bête noir, entitlements.... Not so very long ago, worrying about entitlements was central to Republican identity. Then, they began to notice that the folks at their rallies looked like the audience for 'Matlock' reruns. The base was aging, and didn't want to change Social Security or Medicare.... It's not easy leading a political movement that believes the federal government is at the core of all our problems while depending heavily on the votes of citizens who get both their retirement money and health care from the federal government." ...

... Ezra Klein & Evan Soltas of the Washington Post: The ObamaCare site sucks, & not just because it can't handle a lot of traffic. ...

... Arit John of the Atlantic: "Web developers, or at least people who know that Unix and OS X share the same lineage, took to Reddit to ridicule the coding errors plaguing the newly-launched Obamacare exchange websites this week."

Serge Kovaleski of the New York Times: "The mother of Aaron Alexis, the military contractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last month, told his bosses one month before the shootings that he had a history of paranoid episodes and most likely needed therapy. But Mr. Alexis' managers at the Experts Inc., an information technology firm, decided to keep him on the job and did not require him to seek treatment, an internal company investigation has found."

News Ledes

Reuters: "A U.S. Navy SEAL team is believed to have killed a senior leader of the al Shabaab militant group in a raid on his seaside villa in Somalia on Saturday in response to a deadly attack on a Nairobi shopping mall last month, the New York Times reported. The unidentified target was believed to have been killed in a predawn firefight after the SEAL team landed in the Somali town of Barawe by sea...."

AFP: "Tunisia's political rivals agreed Saturday on a timetable for the unpopular Islamist-led ruling coalition to quit and be replaced by a government of independents, aiming to end a festering political crisis.... Saturday's deal, signed in the presence of politicians and media, was brokered to end a simmering two-month crisis sparked by the assassination in July of opposition MP Mohamed Brahmi."

Times Picayune: "New Orleans native, former Black Panther and member of the Angola Three Herman Wallace died Thursday night because of complications from liver cancer, friends and counsel confirmed Friday morning."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 4, 2013

Here's a clip of the presser contributer MAG refers to in today's Comments. BTW, if a White House aide really said, "We don't care how long this lasts; we're winning," the aide should find some other employment:

... David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Obama has canceled the rest of his week-long trip to Asia, pulling out of two regional summits to remain in Washington to try to break a budget impasse in Congress that has shut down the federal government, the White House announced late Thursday. Obama 'made this decision based on the difficulty in moving forward with foreign travel in the face of a shutdown,' press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. 'This completely avoidable shutdown is setting back our ability to create jobs through promotion of U.S. exports and advance U.S. leadership and interests in the largest emerging region in the world.'" ...

... Sarah Dutton, et al., of CBS News: "As the partial federal government shutdown continues..., nearly nine in 10 Americans are unhappy with the way things are going in Washington, including 43 percent who are angry - up 13 points since March and the highest since CBS News began asking the question in 2010." ...

... Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Even as President Obama insists that he would be powerless to save the economy from catastrophe should Congress fail to raise the nation's debt ceiling, some law professors say he does have options. They may be politically unattractive, unpalatable to the financial markets and subject to legal challenges, these experts say, but these choices are better than failing to live up to the nation's financial commitments." CW: We've discussed this before, but Liptak's summary is quite good. No mention of the platinum coin -- my favorite! ...

Some recent stories have even suggested the speaker's keeping government shut because I hurt his feelings. If that's true, I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings.... We met the first week we came back in September, and [Boehner] told me what he wanted was a clean CR and a $988 [billion] number. The exact bill that he now refuses to let the House vote on, that was our negotiation. I didn't twist his arm, he twisted mine a little bit to get that number. I said, 'John, I can't do that.' He said, 'You've got to do that.... He couldn't live up to that, so he has been doing gymnastics with himself ever since then. -- Harry Reid, to reporters yesterday

He's a coward. -- Harry Reid, describing John Boehner in a private discussion with other Senators this week

... Zachary Goldfarb, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Speaker John A. Boehner, apparently sharing Obama administration alarm about a possible debt default, has told colleagues he will act to raise the federal debt limit even if he has to rely on the votes of House Democrats, GOP aides said Thursday. It was not immediately clear, however, whether Boehner (R-Ohio) would stand by such a position publicly or whether it would prove to be a trial balloon allowing him to gauge the reactions of the GOP's tea party wing." ...

... Here's the New York Times story, by Ashley Parker & Annie Lowrey. ...

... Greg Sargent: "... this is Boehner's 'big give,' as one Dem aide put it to me sarcastically. Boehner is signaling flexibility in the sense that he just may be willing to give Dems the 'clean' debt ceiling increase they want, but only in a larger context where Dems will be expected to make concessions in exchange for keeping the government open." ...

... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The hard-line stance of Republican House members on the government shutdown is generating increasing anger among senior Republican officials, who say the small bloc of conservatives is undermining the party and helping President Obama just as the American people appeared to be losing confidence in him." ...

... Brian Beutler of Salon: "After struggling for weeks and weeks in stages one through four, Republicans are finally entering the final stage of grief over the death of their belief that President Obama would begin offering concessions in exchange for an increase in the debt limit." ...

      ... CW: as late as Wednesday night, Rand Paul & Mitch McConnell weren't there yet:

I don't think they poll-tested 'We won't negotiate' ... We're gonna win this, I think. -- Rand Paul to Mitch McConnell, Wednesday night ...

     ... One fabulous hot-mic moment, picked up Wednesday night:

... Wherein President Obama Saves Our Constitutional Form of Government. Ezra Klein has a good piece on the "White Houses's view" (stupid term -- yes, buildings can have views, but they can't have opinions) of the crisis created by John Boehner & his Tea Party wing: "It's nothing less than an effort to use the threat of a financial crisis to nullify the results of the last election. And the White House isn't going to let it happen." ...

... BUT the Band Plays On. Digby: "... the White House must make it clear that you cannot hold the world economy hostage over wingnut bullshit every year. And I'd guess the GOP leadership is happy to have them make that point --- the Tea Party faction is too stupid to understand such an abstraction when it's explained to them. But there is no way the Republicans are prepared to just tuck their tails between their legs and run off into the woods.... Sooo, what seems to be happening is that we are doing some kabuki dancing around the shutdown and the debt ceiling while a deal is being quietly made outside the process." And the deal, Digby reckons, is "entitlement reform" -- all on the spending side. CW: I hope she's wrong. This was a deal Obama was willing -- nay, eager -- to cut in 2011, but even with the sequestration hanging over our heads, I'm not sure he is now. After all, the sequestration cuts in every way, & a number of the programs it cuts are GOP favorites. ...

... Elinor Clift of the Daily Beast: "There's been a lot said in recent days about the so-called Hastert Rule. It is cited as the main reason why House Speaker John Boehner won't allow a vote to fund the government with no Obamacare strings attached -- under the rule, no legislation can be brought to the floor without a majority of Republican votes. But the rule's namesake, former House speaker Denny Hastert, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday, 'The Hastert Rule never really existed. It's a non-entity as far as I'm concerned.'" ...

... Tim Egan: "About 30 or so Republicans in the House, bunkered in gerrymandered districts while breathing the oxygen of delusion, are now part of a cast of miscreants who have stood firmly on the wrong side of history." ...

... CW: When a contributor suggested the other day that the administration could end the shutdown by making it closer to a 100 percent shutdown, I noted in a comment that he might be right but that the people who would be most hurt -- Medicare, Social Security, food stamp recipients, etc. -- were the vulnerable "freeloaders" the teabaggers disdain anyway, so holding back their benefits might not much change the dynamic. BUT, as Maya Rhodan of Time points out, the shutdown as it is has a disproportionate impact on poor families. ...

... BTW, if we're looking for seeping tea, here's Pajama Boy Farenthold on September 30, supporting the shutdown & minimizing the impact on federal employees: "First off I don't think there's going to be a government shutdown and second of all, if history is any indication, they will be made whole and they will receive their back pay and it'll basically be a paid vacation." ...

     ... AND here's Farenthold yesterday, after Capitol police -- who got a round of applause from the House but no paychecks -- locked down the Capitol to protect legislators & staff when a deranged driver threatened the building (see yesterday's News Ledes): "I've been advocating to end [the shutdown] as soon as possible anyway. It's unfortunate that this happened, but maybe some good will come out of it."

... Geoffrey Kabaservice, in a New York Times op-ed, blames the current dysfunction of the Republican party on moderate Republicans who opted to move Newt Gingrich into the party leadership in the late 1980s. As time went on, " the moderates ... failed to protest as Mr. Gingrich transformed their party into an ideological faction and set it on its present course of anti-government radicalism." ...

... "Darkness in Washington." George Packer of the New Yorker tries to psych out John Boehner's motivations, which he doesn't think necessarily fall into the rational, practical sphere: "Gingrich was a far more volatile and aggressive individual than Boehner, but the institutional norms of self-restraint, and perhaps even self-interest, have broken down under the pressure of an increasingly abnormal Republican Party. In this atmosphere, a hack can be more dangerous than a revolutionary." ...

... Here's video of the exchanges(s) P. D. Pepe refers to in today's Comments:

Paul Krugman: ObamaCare is here to stay. ...

... ** Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "... the states where the Medicaid expansion [under the ACA] would have done the most good for the most people are precisely those states where Republican governors and legislatures have told their poor citizens that they're out of luck.... You'll be shocked to learn that in those states, the poor are disproportionately black. Could that have anything to do with it? Heavens, no!"

CW: For those of you who are depressed by the current state of national affairs, David Atkins of Hullabaloo assures us that the situation is both extraordinary & temporary; this too shall pass. He points to trends that suggest he's right.

Gubernatorial Race

Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "Exactly 100 days after the legislative filibuster that defied the Republican establishment and turned her into a Democratic star, State Senator Wendy Davis announced Thursday that she would run for governor, opening an underdog campaign to lead a state that last sent a Democrat to the governor's mansion nearly 23 years ago.... Ms. Davis's main opponent is likely to be one of the most popular Republicans in the state: Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general, who has already raised more than $20 million. Republicans have reacted calmly to Ms. Davis's rise to political prominence." ...

... Richard Whittaker of the Austin Chronicle: "Abbott's ... statements on Davis seem mainly to have involved retweeting statements calling her 'Abortion Barbie' and 'too stupid' to run for governor. However, Abbott doesn't need to get his hands dirty this time, when he has right wing corporate sock puppet Texans for Fiscal Responsibility to do the job for him.... Her name at the top of the ballot is considered by Democratic campaign activists to be a boost all the way down, simply because she will raise awareness of other candidates and add a boost to baseline turnout...."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 3, 2013

All Fucked Up

My simple message today is, call a vote ... let every individual member of Congress make up their own minds. -- Barack Obama, in Maryland today

A grammatical catastrophe, but a righteous appeal. -- Constant Weader ...

Also, A Message to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (RTP-Ind.):One House Republican said, 'We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is.' That was a quote.... Think about that. You have already gotten the opportunity to serve the American people. There's no higher honor than that. You've already gotten the opportunity to help businesses like this one, workers like these. So the American people aren't in the mood to give you a goodie bag to go with it. -- Barack Obama, same speech

... President Obama spoke this morning at a small company in Maryland which is affected by the shutdown:

Neville C. Boehner. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "The speaker's closest allies say he cannot afford to defy those on his right flank by ending the shutdown with largely Democratic votes. Doing so would undermine his position among his members going into negotiations with the White House and Democrats over raising the federal debt limit, which Boehner and his leadership team regard as more critical than the impasse on government funding. Coming up empty-handed for conservatives on both would have broader ramifications. Republicans who support the speaker argue that if he is going to antagonize the conservatives in his caucus, it would make more sense to do so on the debt-ceiling debate rather than on the funding of the government." CW: "... going into negotiations ... over raising the federal debt limit"? Yo, Boner, there aren't going to be any negotiations....

We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is. -- Rep. Marlin Stutzman (RTP-Ind.) (via Greg Sargent)

      ... Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "And there you have it. The part that's most important isn't that Stutzman doesn't know what they want, because I think all he's saying is that it could be any number of things. Maybe it could be a delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, or maybe tossing some people off food stamps, or maybe providing Tea Party caucus members with a list of phone numbers of uninsured poor people, so they could call them up, shout 'Get a job, deadbeat!' and hang up -- whatever. But what really matters is the part about being disrespected.... A surrender is humiliating. As far as they're concerned, whatever the resolution of the shutdown is, what matters is that it allows them to feel like they won, or at the very least to save face." ...

'We're more united in the conference now than we've ever been,' said Rep. Blake Farenthold, a second-term lawmaker. Eighteen months ago, the speaker 'couldn't pick me out of a lineup,' Farenthold said. 'He now blows me kisses.'

     ... CW: Yeah, and this picture of you in your jammies with an underaged drinking "companion" (the young lady on the left) should have guaranteed you a spot in a police lineup, Blakey boy:

That attractive fellow on the right is the Hon. Congressman. Yes, my fellow Americans, this is one of a couple of dozen yahoos whom the Speaker of the House so fears that he would bring down the government & international financial markets to appease them.

... Partying Like It's 2011 All Over Again. Robert Costa of the National Review: "House Republicans tell me Speaker John Boehner wants to craft a 'grand bargain' on fiscal issues as part of the debt-limit deliberations, and during a series of meetings on Wednesday, he urged colleagues to stick with him." ...

... ** Steve Benen: "There is no scenario in which House Republicans will accept concessions of any kind to reach a compromise. Indeed, it's the whole point of extortion politics -- GOP lawmakers threaten to harm Americans on purpose to ensure that compromises are never necessary for them. The 'concession,' in Republicans' minds, is letting the hostage go without pulling the trigger." Read the whole post. ...

... Kristina Peterson of the Wall Street Journal: "A coalition of centrist House Republicans is lobbying House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) to find ways to end the partial government shutdown, lawmakers in the group said Wednesday. Some members in the group of GOP lawmakers met with Mr. Boehner twice on Wednesday, looking for ways to ease the budget impasse, including by passing a short-term spending bill stripped of all demands to change the federal health-care law." ...

... Manu Raju of Politico: "Ted Cruz faced a barrage of hostile questions Wednesday from angry GOP senators, who lashed the Texas tea party freshman for helping prompt a government shutdown crisis without a strategy to end it. At a closed-door lunch meeting in the Senate's Mansfield Room, Republican after Republican pressed Cruz to explain how he would propose to end the bitter budget impasse with Democrats, according to senators who attended the meeting. A defensive Cruz had no clear plan to force an end to the shutdown -- or explain how he would defund Obamacare, as he has demanded all along, sources said.... A number of Republican senators privately blame the Texas freshman for contributing to the mess their party finds itself in. And now that they're in it, they say it's up to Cruz to help find a solution." ...

What the speaker has to accept is yes for an answer. He said that he wanted to go to conference. He sent us something from the House, so I thought we would throw him a lifeline. I said, 'Fine, we'll go to conference; all we want you to do is open the government.... We'll talk about anything you want to talk about. And he says no. -- Harry Reid, after meeting with President Obama & other leaders Wednesday evening

... Debbi Wilgoren, et al., of the Washington Post: "The top four leaders of both parties from both houses said no progress had been made after an hour and a half session in the Oval Office without any staff. After the meeting, Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the president 'reiterated tonight he will not negotiate.'" ...

... Jackie Calmes & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "President Obama summoned the Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress to the White House for an afternoon meeting Wednesday, the second day of the government shutdown, to urge the passage of measures financing the government and increasing the nation's borrowing limit -- without add-ons like a limitation on his health-insurance law." ...

... Alan Fram of the AP: "The shutdown stalemate is already rattling investors. Stock markets in the U.S. and overseas faded Wednesday, and Europe's top central banker, Mario Draghi, called the shutdown 'a risk if protracted.' Leading financial executives met with Obama, and one, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, said politicians should not use a potential default 'as a cudgel.'" ...

... Here's a related AP story -- by Pan Pylas -- about the effects of the shutdown & impending debt default. ...

I think it's fair to say, during the course of my presidency, I have bent over backwards to work with the Republican Party and have purposely kept my rhetoric down. Am I exasperated? Absolutely, I'm exasperated. Because this is entirely unnecessary. -- President Obama, in a CNBC interview Wednesday

... Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "President Obama would veto any piecemeal bill funding only parts of the federal government and not resolving the whole government shutdown, the White House said Tuesday. The president and the Senate have been clear that they won't accept this kind of game-playing, and if these bills were to come to the president's desk he would veto them, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement...."

New York Times photo.

Stood with House Dems on Senate-passed CR that honors our responsibilities and ends GOPshutdown. -- Nancy Pelosi, tweet

... Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "In the hours since the government shut down, House Republicans have slowly but steadily been coming forward to say they're ready to pass a bill to fund the government with no strings attached. As of Wednesday afternoon, the number of those Republicans hit 19 -- surpassing the magic 17 votes needed to pass a clean funding bill if all 200 Democrats stick together and team up with them. Of course, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would have to be willing to put that bill on the floor in the first place. But if he did, the votes appear to be there for passage, at which point the bill would sail through the Senate and be signed by President Barack Obama, ending the shutdown." Bendery lists those House Republicans who say they are willing to vote for a clean CR. ...

... Byron York of the Washington Examiner: "... a large majority of the House's 232 Republicans, plus a large majority of its 200 Democrats, would likely support a 'clean' continuing resolution to fund the government but not defund, delay, or limit Obamacare. If House Speaker John Boehner were to bring such a bill to the floor, it would probably pass with a majority of Republican as well as Democratic votes. But Boehner doesn't do it." ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "I saw this movie before during the Impeachment pseudo-crisis. The fabled GOP moderates never appear. But could it really be that the number of representatives driving this train is, on the high side, between 50 and 80 people? If that's true, Boehner's position is dramatically more craven than many of us have imagined. And the dysfunction is greater than at least I had imagined." ...

... Phony Gestures. Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "... dozens of members of the House and Senate who plan to refund or donate their pay during an impasse that congressional leaders are warning could last several weeks. Depending on the lawmaker, the money will go back into U.S. Treasury coffers to help pay down the debt, be placed in escrow or donated to the benefit of military veterans and local food banks.... While they say it's an issue of fairness and an opportunity to demonstrate solidarity with hundreds of thousands of government employees sent home without pay, the speed with which some lawmakers advertised their acts of political penance appeared designed to blunt public outrage over the impasse." ...

... Michael Ruane & Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "At the closed-off World War II Memorial, two days of assaults by aged veterans prompted the National Park Service to announce that they had legal right to be there ... and would not be barred in the future." ...

... Frank Rich, terrific on the shutdown & debt ceiling, informative on the fizzlement of the Hillary movies. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... Gail Collins mocks Congress. ...

... Contributor P. D. Pepe recommends this piece by John Judis of the New Republic. Judis attempts to show the historical thread from the Calhoun nullfiers of the early 19th century to the 1930s wingers to today's radical Tea Party. Judis is writing a blogpost, so his gloss can be forgiven, but it is a gloss in which he ignores some important "buts." He is on stronger footing, I think, in his prescription for how the country could eventually get out of this mess without resorting to civil war.

** Republicans Are Despicable. Sabrina Tavernise & Robert Gebeloff of the New York Times: "A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times. Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help." P.S. You can think the Supreme Court for this. The conservatives on the Court, joined by Elena Kagan & Stephen Breyer, forced the feds to make state participation optional. ...

... This interactive map shows where the poor & uninsured live. "The 26 Republican-dominated states not participating in an expansion of Medicaid are home to a disproportionate share of the nation's poorest uninsured residents. Eight million will be stranded without insurance." ...

... Juliet Williams & Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: "Overloaded websites and jammed phone lines frustrated consumers for a second day as they tried to sign up for health insurance under the nation's historic health care overhaul. That was putting pressure on the federal government and the states that are running their own insurance exchanges to fix the problems amid strong demand for the private insurance plans.... The delays ... offered one good sign for President Barack Obama and supporters of his signature domestic policy achievement, demonstrating what appeared to be exceptionally high interest in the new system. But the problems also could dampen enthusiasm for the law as Republicans use it as a rallying cry to keep most of the federal government closed." ...

... "What do you agree with, ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act?":

Charles Pierce reminds us of who the Republican base is. Yeah, they're pretty base. Pierce concludes, "The reign of morons began with the triumph of bullshit." Pierce does not let the press off the hook.

Kimberly Dozier & Stephen Braun of the AP: "Top U.S. intelligence officials are revealing more about their spying in an effort to defend the National Security Agency from charges that it has invaded the privacy of Americans on a mass scale. Yet the latest disclosure -- the NSA tried to track Americans' cellphone locations -- has only added to the concerns of lawmakers. NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander told Congress on Wednesday that his spy agency ran tests in 2010 and 2011 to see if it was technically possible to gather U.S. cell-site data, which can show where a cellphone user traveled. The information was never used, Alexander said, and the testing was reported to congressional intelligence committees. Alexander also defended his agency, denying reports that it has mined Americans' social media." ...

... Nicole Perlroth & Scott Shane of the New York Times on the demise of Lavabit, an encrypted Internet service. In its efforts to locate Edward Snowden, a Lavabit user, the FBI demanded that Lavabit's owner & creator, Ladar Levison, turn over all of his encryption code. Under a court order, Levison eventually complied, but he shut down Lavabit the same day, an act the FBI claimed "fell just short of a criminal act." CW: If Levison's version of the story is true -- that the FBI demanded "the passwords, encryption keys and computer code that would essentially allow the government untrammeled access to the protected messages of all his customers" -- not just the encryption keys for Snowden -- I think the FBI went way too far. As Perlroth & Shane write, "Mr. Levison's case shows how law enforcement officials can use legal tools to pry open messages, no matter how well protected."

News Ledes

CNN: "A hurricane watch is in effect for parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast after Tropical Storm Karen formed in the southeastern portion of the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said Thursday."

Washington Post: "A woman with a 1-year-old girl in her car was fatally shot by police near the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, after a chase through the heart of Washington.... The car was registered to Miriam Carey, 34, a dental hygienist from Stamford, Conn., law enforcement officials said, adding that they believed Carey was the driver. D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said that the driver tried to breach two Washington landmarks and that the incident was not an accident. But officials also said it did not appear to part of any larger or organized terrorist plot."

New York Times: "The United States and Japan agreed on Thursday to broaden their security alliance, expanding Japan's role while maintaining an American military presence. The deal underscored the two countries' efforts to respond to growing challenges from China and North Korea in a time of budget constraints."

New York Times: "Secretary of State John Kerry, in his first remarks about Iran since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned the United States to be wary of talks with the country, said on Thursday that the United States would negotiate with Tehran only if it provided proof that it would not pursue nuclear defense programs."