The Commentariat -- Oct. 2, 2013

David Jackson of USA Today: "President Obama has shortened a trip to Asia because of the government shutdown, telling the leaders of Malaysia and the Philippines he will not be traveling to those countries. Obama is still scheduled to leave Saturday night for a pair of Asian economic summits in Indonesia and Brunei -- at least for now." ...

... Pete Kasperowicz of the Hill: "The House on Tuesday night rejected three appropriations resolutions that would have funded the District of Columbia, veterans programs and national parks, after House Republicans set them up in a way that required Democratic support for passage.... Republicans brought up the resolutions under a suspension of House rules, which required a two-thirds majority vote." ...

     ... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "To many Senate Republicans, the House conservatives' position has become mystifying. In a meeting of Senate Republicans, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee rose to ask how the party would respond if it controlled the White House and the Senate and a Democratic House insisted it would not finance the government unless Washington rolled back laws hampering unions." ...

... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "House leaders are presenting to their rank and file a plan to bring to the floor spending bills to fund veterans' programs, the National Park Service and federally funded services in Washington.... But that plan, like all the others that House Republicans have sent to the Senate, appears dead-on-arrival. 'Ted Cruz is going to pick his favorite federal agencies to open? Come on,' said Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.... Among the [Congressional] rank and file, more and more Republicans are saying they believe they have no cards left to play." ...

... The Orange Man Has Two Faces. John Bresnahan of Politico: "... House Speaker John Boehner stood on the House floor Monday and called on his colleagues to vote for a bill banning a 'so-called exemption' that lawmakers and staffers receive for their health insurance.... Boehner ... [was] seeking to prohibit members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides from getting thousands of dollars in subsidies for their health insurance as they join Obamacare-mandated insurance exchanges. Yet behind-the-scenes, Boehner and his aides worked for months with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and others, to save these very same, long-standing subsidies, according to documents and e-mails provided to Politico." Boehner & his aides went to extraordinary lengths to cover up the Speaker's involvement in obtaining the subsidies. ...

     ... Ed Kilgore: " This isn't just a embarrassing disclosure for Boehner, though it is that. It's more evidence, if you need any, that the sudden claim of House Republicans that they're just offering some ideas that the two parties should compromise on, and that Democrats have mysteriously decided to shut the government down instead of negotiating, is a complete crock." ...

... CW: AND this should -- but won't -- be the nail in the coffin of claims that Republicans are fiscal conservatives. Jeanna Smialek & Ian Katz of Bloomberg News: "A partial shutdown of the federal government will cost the U.S. at least $300 million a day in lost economic output at the start, according to IHS Inc. While that is a small fraction of the country's $15.7 trillion economy, the daily impact of a shutdown is likely to accelerate if it continues as it depresses confidence and spending by businesses and consumers." The report doesn't touch on the cost to taxpayers of shutting down, then gearing up agencies -- not just a matter of turning off the light switch at the stroke of midnight October 1, then turning it back on whenever Republicans choose to allow the government to function again. ...

... Ezra Klein interviews Robert Costa of the National Review to try to get a perspective of what's going on in the minds of Boehner & the Crazy Caucus. Pretty illuminating (assuming you can use words like "illuminating" in a graf that features the dim bulbs in the House GOP): Costa: "What we're seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power." ...

... Jonathan Bernstein: "If in fact 175 House Republicans were actually eager to end this thing without a shutdown, and Boehner refused to bring it to the floor because he feared that the 30-60 would cost him his job, then the responsibility lies mainly with him.... But I just don't believe it.... The Speaker is elected by Republicans to do what they want -- and as far as I'm concerned he's probably doing just that.... The main responsibility here is the bulk of the Republican conference. Not the guy acting on their behalf." ...

... CW: Bernstein makes a plausible case, but I still think Boehner is callng the shots. According to some reporting, when a group of about 25 of the Less-Crazy Caucus decided to vote against Plan C or D or whatever Monday night, Boehner went back & talked all but two of them out of it. He said he knew what he was doing, & the Less-Crazies went along with him. They're conservatives, you know. They don't like to go out on a limb. This bit of evidence suggests that Boehner is a leader in fact as well as in name. He is leading these malleable guys around by the nose. I could be wrong. ...

... James Downie of the Washington Post: "Ted Cruz and Co. refuse to leave the shop until they've stamped their feet and screamed as much as possible. All this would be bad enough if a shutdown was the biggest harm that these spoiled brats and their far-right enablers could inflict on the country. But it is looking ever more likely that Republicans ... will make ending the shutdown part of the debt-ceiling negotiations, thus threatening what President Obama accurately described as an 'economic shutdown' as well. In other words, having lost at the ballot box and in the courts, Republicans will take our economy hostage to undercut the law of the land." ...

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. -- Abraham Lincoln, to Southerners, February 1860

One faction, of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government, shut down major parts of the government -- all because they didn't like one law.... As long as I am President, I will not give in to reckless demands by some in the Republican Party to deny affordable health insurance to millions of hardworking Americans. -- Barack Obama, October 1, 2013

And I laughed when people compared Obama to Lincoln. In fact, both of them have had to fight a civil war. Actually, the same civil war. As two Reality Chex contributors suggested in yesterday's Comments, the supposed ObamaCare fight-to-the-death is all wrapped up in the same shroud of racism that brought us the War of Northern Aggression. -- Constant Weader

     ... ** Update. Joan Walsh of Salon gets it exactly right: "You'll read lots of explanations for the dysfunction, but the simple truth is this: It's the culmination of 50 years of evolving yet consistent Republican strategy to depict government as the enemy, an oppressor that works primarily as the protector of and provider for African-Americans, to the detriment of everyone else. The fact that everything came apart under our first African-American president wasn't an accident, it was probably inevitable." ...

... Lemmings! Henry Farrell, in the Monkey Cage, on why House Republicans may not back down. ...

... Republicans Own the Shutdown. Steve Benen: "... we will hear many congressional Republicans and many in the political media suggest Democrats bear some or all of the responsibility for this fiasco. For those who care about reality in the slightest, anyone making such an argument deserves to be laughed at. The detail to keep in mind is that most GOP lawmakers aren't bothering with the pretense. They know that Republicans shut down the government -- and they're proud of it." Benen cites some proud remarks from the Crazy Kids. ...

... "Mission Accomplished: The Tea Party Shutdown." E. J. Dionne: "... no one talks more about the Constitution than the tea party. Before the Civil War, John C. Calhoun and a variety of nullifiers and future secessionists spoke incessantly about the Constitution, too. We know where that led." Thanks to Barbarossa for the link. ...

Nero blamed the Christians, the President's blaming the Republicans. -- Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas)

Evidently, comparing Obama to Hitler is now outre even among Republicans. But it is fine to compare him to a despot (often accused of being the Antichrist) who ordered the persecution & killing of Christians in retaliation for supposedly setting a massive fire. (I wrote to Poe & asked him to apologize to President Obama immediately; I'm sure he will.) Also great: compare yourself & your co-conspirators to Christian martyrs. One difference: the Christians were most likely innocent of burning down Rome; Republicans are openly gleeful about burning down Washington. -- Constant Weader

... A Reality Chek from Charles Pierce (this is something Nancy Pelosi alluded to Monday): "... this whole debate begins generally in a context of previous Democratic capitulations. Far from an equal footing, the Democrats find themselves in the ludicrous position of defending previous Republican victories for current Republican attacks." ...

... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "A planned Ku Klux Klan gathering in Gettysburg, Pa. was canceled due to the government shutdown, Philadelphia's WCAU reported Tuesday." ...

     ... As Charles Pierce writes, "The shutdown has had one positive consequence." In the same post, Pierce includes this language, "... the Greatest Generation (tm. Brokaw Treacle Enterprises)." CW: This alone is reason enough to love Pierce. ...

... Here's President Obama speaking yesterday about the shutdown & the rollout of the ACA:

... The White House Website now boasts this statement: "Due to Congress's failure to pass legislation to fund the government, the information on this web site may not be up to date. Some submissions may not be processed, and we may not be able to respond to your inquiries. Information about government operating status and resumption of normal operations is available at USA.GOV." ...

... Since John Boehner became Speaker of the House, "there has not been a single significant piece of legislation enacted into law":

... Rebecca Leber of Think Progress: "The government shut down because a small group of Republicans, led by Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX), insist on linking continued funding to repealing, defunding, or delaying Obamacare. Even many prominent Republicans acknowledge that.... But some in the media still insist on pushing that false equivalence narrative that 'both sides are to blame.'" Leber reproduces "a few of the most egregious examples." ...

     ... Ed Kilgore: "Maybe such headlines reflect laziness and ignorance rather than silent partisanship, but they are more effective instruments for the GOP position than the fieriest Ted Cruz speech." ...

     ... CW: Zeke Miller & Alex Rogers of Time continue the both-sides-do-it tradition today: "On Day One of the shutdown, Republicans and Democrats agreed on one thing: their party was right. Politicians cheered party solidarity Tuesday, while acknowledging the damage they are causing by their inability to reach agreement. 'Democratic unity is as strong as ever,' boasted Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon. 'And that is a great thing, because it means that there's hope. The bad news about today is, of course, that many innocent people were hurt.' 'It's an enormous victory,' said an aide to Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), who was instrumental in crafting the Republican party's plan to tie defunding the Affordable Care Act to the government spending bill. 'It's unfortunate that it has resulted in a temporary government shutdown, but it's an enormous victory in that we have for the first time in more than a year...been talking about Obamacare in a very substantive way.'" ...

     ... CW: Look here, clueless, nonpartisan "journalist" people, the situation is pretty simple if even Tom Friedman can grasp it: "What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President Obama must not give into this hostage taking -- not just because Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves is at stake.... President Obama is not defending health care. He's defending the health of our democracy. Every American who cherishes that should stand with him." ...

... CW: I was sure, what the world falling down around us and her erstwhile O'Bambi having inconveniently mutated into a stand-up guy, that MoDo would write about the swell shoes pacing the runways during Fashion Week. Instead she roused herself to imagine John Boehner's Bad Day.Maybe she shoulda stuck to shoes.

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "As Pope Francis convened a closed meeting on Tuesday with eight cardinals he appointed to overhaul the Vatican, he used his second revealing interview in two weeks to make a barbed indictment of the failings of the Roman Catholic Church, calling it overly clerical and insular, interested in temporal power and often led by 'narcissists.'"

News Lede

New York Times: "Tom Clancy, whose complex, adrenaline-fueled military novels spawned a new genre of thrillers and made him one of the world's best-known and best-selling authors, died on Tuesday in Baltimore. He was 66."

The Commentariat -- October 1, 2013

Via the Washington Post, here's a full transcript of the President's remarks early this afternoon. ...

Thanks to MAG for the lead.

** Joshua Holland, writing in Bill Moyers' Journal, fingers the media as part of the problem: "... with a demographic tide going against them, Republicans have gradually jettisoned the norms that make democratic governance possible. First they filibustered virtually everything. Then they started creating these annual budget showdowns to fight for cuts in taxes and spending. Now they're using the budget battle to advance the entire legislative agenda of the hard right. In essence, they have made crisis governance the new normal -- but they did so incrementally. Like frogs in the proverbial pot, many journalists have slowly acclimated to these extreme, democracy-suffocating circumstances and now seem incapable of describing what's they're seeing." Holland provides examples. An excellent piece. ...

... The Washington Post has links to a bunch of shutdown impact stories here. ...

... The Post is liveblogging developments. ...

... Steve Inskeep of NPR interviewed President Obama on Monday. NPR released the interview this morning. The transcript is here:

     ... CW: Inskeep repeatedly asks stupid questions. He is insistent that President Obama find some way to "negotiate" with House Republicans. ...

... Here's the New York Times story, by Jonathan Weisman & Jeremy Peters, on the debacle. ...

... Tea Party Republicans like Michele Bachmann are boasting they got what they wanted. Really? As most of the government shuts down because attempts to defund Obamacare, ObamaCare goes live. The "health insurance marketplace" is now open at Healthcare.gov.

President Obama releases a message to U.S. troops:

Midnight. The Tea Party got exactly what they have wanted all along -- no government and they continue to be paid. The Senate has recessed till 9:30 am ET. Reid said, in effect, he would just table whatever baloney the House sent over, unless it was a clean bill. Rachel Maddow heard the House was going to have some vote on something. ...

     ... CW: MSNBC is reporting that probably a majority of House Republicans would vote for a clean continuing resolution.* If that is correct, it means that the "Hastert Rule" is out; the House is now operating on the "Boehner Rule" -- a bill will not be brought to the floor unless a minority of the majority approves of it. If Boehner had done what a probable majority of his caucus wanted & brought a clean CR to the floor, it would have passed easily. So this entire fiasco, it is important to realize, is the product of John Boehner's desire to keep his speaker's salary. It certainly isn't about his keeping his power because he has already ceded that to the Crazy Cruz Caucus. ...

     ... * Update: perhaps MSNBC based its speculation on this report by conservative Byron York of the Washington Examiner: "There are 233 Republicans in the House. Insiders estimate that three-quarters of them, or about 175 GOP lawmakers, are willing, and perhaps even eager, to vote for a continuing resolution that funds the government without pressing the Republican goal of defunding or delaying Obamacare. On the other side, insiders estimate about 30 House Republicans believe strongly that Obamacare is such a far-reaching and harmful law that the GOP should do everything it can --- everything --- to stop it or slow it down." CW: Got that? John Boehner let 30 crazed ideologues shut down the government so he could keep his job. ...

... Lori Montgomery & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Hours before a midnight deadline, the Republican House voted 228 to 201 to pass its third proposal in two weeks to fund the government. Like the previous plans, it sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act, this time by delaying enforcement of the 'individual mandate,' a cornerstone of the law that requires all Americans to obtain health insurance. The new measure also sought to strip lawmakers and their aides of long-standing government health benefits. The Democratic Senate quickly rejected that plan on a party-line vote of 54 to 46." ...

... President Obama spoke about the federal government shutdown, which will begin at midnight September 30. He didn't mince words:

 ... The New York Times is liveblogging developments re: the shutdown. ...

... Austin Wright of Politico: "President Barack Obama plans to sign a last-minute bill authorizing paychecks for troops and some Defense Department workers and contractors if the government shuts down, the White House said Monday. The House-passed bill to ensure the military is paid was approved without dissent in the Senate on Monday -- a rare bipartisan agreement as Congress stumbled toward midnight when the fiscal year ends and current appropriations expire." ...

... "Plan C." Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan of Politico: "With just hours to go until the government shuts down, House Republicans will try to pass a bill that would delay the mandate that individuals buy health insurance and would cancel health-insurance subsidies for members of Congress and staff, the president and administration appointees.... Those provisions would be attached to a government-funding bill, which will almost certainly be rejected by the Senate, since Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he wouldn't accept changes to Obamacare in the government funding negotiations." ...

     ... Ezra Klein: "John Boehner's 'Plan C' hurts Congress, hurts taxpayers, fixes nothing." ...

... Ginger Gibson of Politico: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday offered Speaker John Boehner the needed votes from her caucus to passed the continuing resolution that has already cleared the Senate. It is a compromise by Democrats, she argued. It isn't a surprising move by the California Democrat, who has so far refused to officially accept the $986 billion funding levels in the Senate-passed version of the bill. There was little doubt, however, that if called upon Pelosi would have been able to deliver the votes." ...

... Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "On what was shaping up as a Monday to remember at the White House, President Obama was alternately spectator and actor on three different issues that could define his legacy: the budget, health care and Middle East peace." ...

... Stephen Collinson of the AP: "President Barack Obama promised Benjamin Netanyahu Monday he would enter talks with Iran with clear eyes and demand verifiable concessions, following the Israeli leader's warnings about 'sweet talk' from the Islamic Republic." ...

... Peter Steinhauser of CNN: "According to [a CNN/ORC] survey, just 10% of Americans say they approve of the job Congress is doing, an all-time low in a CNN poll. And 87% say they disapprove of the job federal lawmakers are doing, higher than it's ever been in CNN polling.... While Americans' perception of the job Congress is doing has taken a hit, President Barack Obama's approval rating -- well under 50% -- has remained steady since earlier in the month....The unfavorable numbers for the tea party movement are also at an all-time high in CNN surveys." ...

... Looks like the denizens of Right Wing World are trying to minimize the impact of their sabotage. The National Review has one post titled, "Not Really a Shutdown; Most Services Keep Going," and the subhead under another is "The debate over the government shutdown should acknowledge its limited effects." ...

... MEANWHILE, here's the thinking at the right-wing American Spectator. Jed Babbin: "There's only one solution, and Republicans are stumbling toward it: let the government shut down for a few days, weeks or months in order to force Obama to the bargaining table and into a real compromise in which he has to give up something important such as Obamacare funding." And Robert McCain writes, "Liberal 'shutdown' rhetoric ignores the irresponsibility of Democrats." under the headline -- with a picture of President Obama & Harry Reid -- "Extremely Extreme Extremists." ...

     ... Update: Fox "News" is slugging this as a "Partial Government Shutdown."

Thanks to Kate M.

... CW: An example of biased poll reporting. CNN Political Unit: "Less than one in five Americans say their families will be better off under the new health care law, according to a new poll." That's the lede. Yeah, they're the "Political Unit," all right. The Tea Party wing of it. Halfway down the page, the reader learns, "... 36% say they won't benefit from the new law but other families will. If you add to that the 17% who believe Obamacare will help them personally, the survey indicates that most Americans see some good coming from it. Some 37% say no one in the country will benefit from the measure." What this poll means, roughly, is that only 17 percent of Americans believe they may need coverage for a pre-existing condition, or think they will get sick & need health insurance but can't otherwise afford it, or want to keep their college kids on their family policy, or don't already get government-backed health insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, V.A.), or have a vague knowledge of the beneficial provisions of the new healthcare law or even know the law exists (something like 33 percent of Americans, I read elsewhere, think the Supreme Court struck down ObamaCare or Congress repealed it) or never watch Fox "News." None of this takes into account the many indirect benefits the rest of us get when others are able to get health insurance & proper medical care. ...

     ... Update: The Hill reporting on this poll is even worse. The headline: "Less than one in five say ObamaCare will help." The reporter, Rebecca Shabad, doesn't even bother to include the mitigating data cited in the CNN report.

See yesterday's Comments re: the following:

The Commentariat -- Sept. 30, 2013

NEW. Paul Kane, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Senate rejected House amendments to a short-term spending bill Monday, killing a provision that would delay President Obama's health-care law.... The 54 to 46 party-line vote made good on a vow by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to reject a funding bill approved by the House early Sunday because it would delay Obama's signature 2010 health-care law for one year and repeal a tax on medical devices." ...

... NEW. Burgess Everett & Manu Raju of Politico: "Faced with a politically damaging government shutdown at midnight, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is gauging whether there is enough support to pass a measure to keep the government afloat for one more week." ...

... NEW. President Obama, today:

... NEW. Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times: "Stock markets fell worldwide on Monday as political disagreements in Washington made a shutdown on Monday night increasingly likely." ...

... Hey, Mark Halperin said on "Morning Joe" that there's no chance for a clean CR. Since Halperin is wrong on everything, maybe there's hope. ...

... Kidnappers Signal They May Accept Reduced Ransom. Brian Knowlton & Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "House Republican leaders said on Sunday that they still believed a government shutdown beginning on Tuesday could be averted if Democrats would accept at least some of their demands to scale back President Obama's health care law." ...

... Jonathan Strong of the National Review: "House GOP whip Kevin McCarthy said the House will send a third government-funding bill with 'a few other options' if the Democratic-controlled Senate rejects the bill passed in the House last night, as expected."...

... Manu Raju & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been the most ardent proponent of President Barack Obama taking a hard line with House Republicans in the latest fiscal crisis engulfing Washington. And so far, Reid is getting his way. When the president considered sitting down with the four congressional leaders in the White House ahead of the deadline to avert a government shutdown, Reid privately urged Obama to call off the meeting.... Reid believed that it would amount to nothing more than a photo-op that would give the false impression that a serious negotiation was occurring, even warning he wouldn't attend such a session. Obama scrapped it." ...

... Alex Pappas of the Daily Caller: "Speaker of the House John Boehner accused Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats of 'breathtaking arrogance' for intentionally not convening a Sunday session to deal with compromise legislation to stop a government shutdown." ...

... Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan of Politico: "As of late Sunday, there were no negotiations occurring between [House Speaker John] Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Obama. The Senate wasn't even in session, and House GOP leaders weren't holding emergency discussions internally. Both sides seem prepared to let the government shutdown happen and then squabble over who is to blame. The House will reconvene Monday at 10 a.m., but Republicans will just wait. The Senate is scheduled to return Monday afternoon, and Reid says Senate Democrats will move quickly then to reject two House amendments to the government funding bill. That would leave just hours before a government shutdown." ...

... Evidently that seems fair to the Editors of the Washington Post, who win the Both-Sides-Do-It Raspberry: Speaker "Boehner, his counterpart in the Senate, Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), minority leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the president. Both sides are inordinately concerned with making sure that, if catastrophe comes, the other side takes the political hit. In truth, none of their reputations stands to benefit." Congratulations, you yahoos, for effectively endorsing the notion that refusing to fund legally-established social programs is a legitimate "bargaining chip." ...

... CW: The Post editors should read their own blogger Greg Sargent, who explains to the ignorant, "... both sides agree that a government shutdown should be avoided. Asking for only some of the undermining of Obamacare you want in exchange for doing what you agree must happen for the good of the country, rather than all of it, is not a concession and doesn't demonstrate a willingness to compromise. After all, what Republicans want is to fund the government at sequester levels (which is already a win for them; Republicans themselves have described the sequester as a 'victory'), and to delay or block parts of Obamacare on top of that. In the 'compromise' scenario Republicans are insisting on, then, only one side -- Democrats -- would be making concessions, and Republicans wouldn't be giving up anything. Folks inclined to blame 'both sides' for what's happening here need to reckon with this basic imbalance." ...

... Burgess Everett: "About 20 House Republicans gathered on the steps of the United States Senate on Sunday afternoon ... demanding that the Senate come back in session, accusing the Democratic controlled chamber of being 'lazy' and Majority Leader Harry Reid of taking his ball and going home rather than negotiating with GOP leadership over the weekend." ...

... Dylan Stableford of Yahoo News: "With a possible government shutdown looming, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz tried to place the blame on squarely on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for refusing to compromise on the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature health care law." ...

... BUT. I'm prepared to vote for a clean resolution tomorrow. It's time to govern. I don't intend to support a fool's errand at this point. -- Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.)

AND. I disagree with the strategy of linking Obamacare with the continuing functioning of government-a strategy that cannot possibly work. -- Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) ...

... Brigid Schulte & Justin Jouvenal of the Washington Post: "The Washington region ... could lose an estimated $200 million a day and could see more than 700,000 jobs take a financial hit if the federal government shuts down Monday night.... And that's not counting the blow to tourism, one of the region's economic mainstays, if the Smithsonian museums, the National Zoo, Civil War battlefields and other federally funded attractions are shuttered...."

... Paul Krugman: "This may be the way the world ends -- not with a bang but with a temper tantrum.... This all sounds crazy, because it is. But the craziness, ultimately, resides not in the situation but in the minds of our politicians and the people who vote for them. Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves." ...

... Fiscal Conservatives, My Ass. Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress rounds up some of the costs to the economy (& for consumers) that would result from the GOP "compromise" of delaying implementation of the ACA for a year. ...

... Andy Borowitz: "In a special Sunday radio address, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) delivered a health tip to the American people, advising them to delay getting cancer for a year." CW: if I didn't say so last week, I meant to: people will die if House Republicans get their way. ...

... Andrew Cohen of the Atlantic: "If rogue Republicans do not relent over the budget impasse by October 1, whatever pandemonium happens next will largely be governed by a federal statute you likely have never heard of: the Antideficiency Act." Very interesting. Thanks to contributor Barbarossa for the link. ...

** Impeached if He Does, Damned if He Doesn't. Henry Aaron (no, not that Henry Aaron) of the Brookings Institution in the New York Times: "Failure to raise the debt will force the president to break a law -- the only question is which one.... If President Obama spends what the law orders him to spend and collects the taxes Congress has authorized him to collect, then he must borrow more than Congress has authorized him to borrow. If the debt ceiling is not raised, he will have to violate one of these constitutional imperatives.... In 2011..., Professors Neil H. Buchanan and Michael C. Dorf, who parsed the arguments in the Columbia Law Review in 2012, concluded that all options were bad, but that disregarding the debt ceiling was least bad from a legal standpoint. I agree.... If Congress leaves the debt ceiling at a level inconsistent with duly enacted spending and tax laws, the president has no choice but to ignore it." ...

     ... CW: Maybe the Orange Man is cagier than we thought. As Aaron points out, if President Obama takes his (Aaron's) advice -- which I think is excellent advice -- the House could impeach Obama, though the Senate would not convict him. This would give those Tea Party grandstanders exactly what they want; a number of them have already said they wanted to impeach Obama: they just haven't been able to find a law he's broken. Poor things are impeachers in search of an impeachable offense. Obama's ignoring the debt ceiling could be just the ticket. The downside for Republicans: the public has no taste for impeachment. Even though President Clinton's behavior actually was scandalous, impeachment made Clinton more -- not less -- popular. I doubt that impeachment would be better the second time around. ...

     ... Buchanan & Dorf, BTW, read the Constitution exactly as I do (something I mentioned last week) -- that the President has an obligation to pay bills incurred under the aegis of Congressional laws as part of his Constitutional mandate to "take care that the Laws be faithfully executed." ...

... Conservative & former Bushie David Frum in the Daily Beast: "... it's hard to see any positive outcome emerging for Republicans from this confrontation. Yet the party is charging forward anyway. Why? The short answer is a breakdown in the party's ability to govern itself. It can't think strategically. Even when pressed to do something overwhelmingly likely to end in disaster, as this shutdown looks likely to do for Republicans, the party has no way to stop itself. It stumbles into fights it cannot win, gets mad, and then in its anger lurches into yet another fight that ends in yet another loss. "'

... Steve M. of NMMNB: "... even if Republicans get all the blame for what's about to happen, and plummet in the polls, it doesn't matter: the political establishment will desperately cast about for some 'new' GOP, at least until the stench of the shutdown/default moment has lifted. Mainstream journalists will develop a fascination with Chris Christie (he's not a Washington Republican!) or Jeb Bush (he's so reasonable!) or Peter King (he doesn't like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, and he didn't vote for Bill Clinton's impeachment!) They'll do anything not to admit that that the Republican Party is rotten to the core." Steve makes his case with a short history lesson on the Short Life of Major GOP Screw-Ups. ...

... Zeke Miller of Time: "Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the once esteemed Heritage Foundation, has been working day and night for years to bring about just the crisis now gripping DC.... Heritage's willingness to take aim at its own party has irked more mainstream Republicans." ...

... David Rogers of Politico blames it all on -- Paul Ryan. Ryan's so-called balanced budget for FY 2014 was a winger's wet dream that didn't add up. It "held out the promise of repealing Obamacare but got to balance only by keeping hundreds of billions in added revenues and Medicare savings in the Affordable Care Act." There were other problems -- even for fiscal conservatives -- in the fine print: to achive a pretense of balance required drastic cuts to programs that teabaggers favored. Ryan "is too smart not to have seen the holes in his budget plan. And once the Senate followed with its own resolution, he failed to follow up by aggressively pursuing a conference with Democrats." CW: When, or when, will the Village People get over the notion that Paul Ryan is a brilliant numbers guy? Rogers is perhaps the best news analyst Politico has, yet he can't see through the smoke-&-mirror scams of the Vice Presidential Second Runner-Up.

Vice President Joe Biden in the Des Moines Register on the Affordable Care Act & explaining some of its provisions. ...

... Emery Dalesio of the AP: "With new online health insurance exchanges set to launch Tuesday, consumers in many Southern and Plains states will have to look harder for information on how the marketplaces work than their counterparts elsewhere. In Republican-led states that oppose the federal Affordable Care Act, the strategy has ranged from largely ignoring the health overhaul to encouraging residents not to sign up and even making it harder for nonprofit organizations to provide information about the exchanges." ...

... Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Obama administration plans on Monday to announce scores of new health insurance options to be offered to consumers around the country by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and the United States Office of Personnel Management, the agency that arranges health benefits for federal employees.... The options are part of a multistate insurance program that Congress authorized in 2010 to increase options for consumers shopping in the online insurance markets scheduled to open on Tuesday. Congress conceived multistate plans as an alternative to a pure government-run insurance program -- the 'public option.' ..."

Bill Keller joins the ranks of pundits who try to equate Tea Party anarchists with 1960s anti-war radicals. Not exactly original thinking; political scientists often drawn the left-right continuum not as a straight line but as a circle. At least Keller has the sense to note some of the differences: the conservatives' "mobilizing cause is not putting an end to an indecent war that cost three million lives, but defunding a law that promises to save lives by expanding access to insurance."

** Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Justice Department is expected to sue North Carolina on Monday over its restrictive new voting law, further escalating the Obama administration's efforts to restore a stronger federal role in protecting minority voters after the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act, according to a person familiar with the department's plans."

Eric Schmitt & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "As the nation's spy agencies assess the fallout from disclosures about their surveillance programs, some government analysts and senior officials have made a startling finding: the impact of a leaked terrorist plot by Al Qaeda in August, [first reported by McClatchy News,] has caused more immediate damage to American counterterrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden.... American counterterrorism officials say they believe the disclosure about the Qaeda plot has had a significant impact because it was a specific event that signaled to terrorists that a main communication network that the group's leaders were using was being monitored."

Felix Salmon of Reuters: "I don't know which producer at CNBC had the genius idea of asking Alex Pareene on to discuss Jamie Dimon with Dimon's biggest cheerleaders, but the result was truly great television" (read Salmon's commentary, too):

Getting a Jump-Start on Starving the Kiddies. Kevin Murphy of Reuters: "As Congress and the White House debate proposed cuts in the federal food stamps program, Kansas and Oklahoma are going ahead with reductions that could leave thousands of people without subsidies for food if they do not find work, or sign up for job training. The two states will require healthy adults through the age of 49 with no dependents to work at least 20 hours per week, or be in job training, in order to be eligible for food stamps."

Local News

Jeff Spross of Think Progress: Anita Perry, who is married to Gov. Goodhair, twice during a brief interview, referred to abortion as "a woman's right." She said (somewhat inarticulately) that she herself wouldn't choose to have an abortion, but that "If they want to do that, that is their decision. They have to live with that decision.... It is not something that I would say for them." CW: Anita Perry is a nurse & the daughter & granddaughter of doctors.

Lieutenant Governors Race

Washington Post Editors: "... the lieutenant governor [of Virginia] does have one important task: preside over the state Senate and cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie. At the moment, Democrats and Republicans are evenly split in Virginia's Senate; each party holds 20 seats.... E.W. Jackson, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia..., is an embarrassment to the Republican Party, which nominated him in a sparsely attended party convention based on little more than stirring oratory.... The Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor is Democratic state Sen. Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist. In contrast to Mr. Jackson, Mr. Northam, a fiscal conservative who represents a district encompassing parts of Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore, is a calm, collected fellow, well respected by members of both parties."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Two senior Marine Corps generals [-- Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus & Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant --] have been ordered to take early retirement after being found responsible for errors in judgment and failure to provide adequate security at a base in southwestern Afghanistan that was the scene of a deadly -- and humiliating -- insurgent attack last year that killed two Marines and destroyed six Harrier attack jets.

BBC News: "The Pope said in July that he would canonise his two predecessors, after approving a second miracle attributed to John Paul. Polish John Paul, the first non-Italian pope for more than 400 years, led the Catholic Church from 1978-2005. Pope John was pontiff from 1958-1963, calling the Second Vatican Council that transformed the Church. The decision to canonise the two at the same time appears designed to unify Catholics...."