Crackpot cons make their own reality

Apparently they believe their own crackpottery. In the world according to the vandals of the Crackpot Caucus in John Boehner's House of Dysfunction, you can shut down the federal government for the sole purpose of abolishing a duly enacted law of the land outside the normal process of governance and simply pin the blame on President Obama.

They are urging Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to gamble that Obama and Senate Democrats will take the blame if they reject legislation that keeps the government running but stops ObamaCare.

At least 43 conservatives want the GOP leadership to go for broke, asserting that Obama has been damaged by stumbles over Syria and by several delays in implementing the Affordable Care Act.

They're convinced Obama won't let them do it. To which Obama responds, please proceed crazy Congresspersons. Meanwhile, establishment Republicans are freaking out and somewhere in an undisclosed location, John Boehner is quietly weeping into his cocktail.

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Republicans ban Heritage Foundation from Capitol Hill

This is the most amusing story I've seen this week. The crackpots at Heritage are no longer welcome at GOP strategy sessions.

According to a report Wednesday in National Journal, the Republican Study Committee is no longer allowing employees for the Heritage Foundation to attend the meetings. Heritage, currently led by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), had been a fixture at the meetings until last month when the RSC, comprised of 172 conservative GOP House members, made the change.

Apparently the establishment GOPers are not happy with Heritage's role in screwing up the vote on the Farm Bill, which ultimately failed on the House floor after the crackpot agitators at Heritage meddled in the negotiations, leaving John Boehner looking like an idiot.

This of course is a disaster in terms of good governance on behalf of the people, but admit I'm taking untoward pleasure in watching the GOP suffer the consequences of having enraged the crackpots with their medancious propaganda in the first place.

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Tragically jaded journalists

Under the heading, "What's wrong with everything," this was posted by the political editor of Buzzfeed as a "reminder" to his fellow journos.


Click over to read the responses. It's a case study in bored Beltway insiderism. The journos are all yeah, covering the effects of policy is such a loser. Which may well be true, but that's because these too cool to care journos are reporting the politics instead of the policy. The cruel effects of the GOP's massacre of food assistance are going to affect 47 million people, most of whom are likely still blissfully unaware it's happening because these guys can't be bothered to inform the public. Not enough clicks in it.

Meanwhile, Max Fisher posts the best response.

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Calling out the crackpots

Lazy posting today because, real life is exhausting. So, outsourcing to Charlie Pierce for the definitive take on Boehner's House of Dysfunction.

Earlier this week, Boehner pretended he was leading the House when Steve King and the flying-monkey caucus pretty much killed off the possibility of immigration reform for the balance of the president's second term. Republican senators wanted a bill. Republican power brokers wanted a bill. Hell, Boehner wanted a bill. But the House is not being led by John Boehner at the moment. He is no more the actual Speaker Of The House than Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is vice-president of the United States. The House Of Representatives is being led by the vicious and demented Id of one of the two major political parties that we have allowed ourselves to have in this country. The House Of Representatives speaks with the savage vocabulary of ancient and durable prejudice. The House Of Representatives speaks with the twisted syntax of frustrated white supremacy. The House Of Representatives speaks with the cruel and singular voice of unreasoning prejudice and inhumanity. There is no Speaker Of this House. The Id speaks, and it speaks for them all.

More at the link and always worth reading in full.

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GOP's grand plan: Feed the rich, starve the poor

The willingness to call out GOP perfidy continues today with a Dana Millbank column on farm bill finagling in John Boehner's House of Dysfunction. The Republican crackpot conservative caucus identified the unnecessary spending.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), a committee chairman and the man who led House Republicans to their majority in 2010, was explaining why he and his colleagues decided to drop the food stamp program from the farm bill.

“What we have carefully done is exclude some extraneous pieces,” he said.

Got that? The 47 million Americans, about half of which were newly impoverished by the Great Recession, are an extraneous expense to be "carefully excluded." So, sorry you 23 million hungry children. If you want to eat maybe you can get jobs as a janitor at your elementary school. Or something.

Oh and any Democrat who wants to enter a dissent to this inhumane maneuver to the Congressional record, well can't have that because, Louis Gohmert insists you STFU. (Not for nothing did Charlie Pierce dub Gohmert Emperor for Life of the Crazy People.)

So what did the Republicans find worthy of funding, you ask? Well, instead of direct payments which have become too obvious a handout to huge corporate mono-farms and wealthy urbanites who don't even have a farm, they invented a smoke and mirrors revenue based insurance program that saves money on paper but looks likely to balloon spending once it's put into practice. This placates the Northern farmers. And for the southern plantation owners?

Southern commodity farmers, meanwhile, are pleased that target price-based supports are kept and prices are updated in a way that will likely increase payments in the future.

Because, these are real Murkins. It's only a "culture of dependency" that needs to be broken if poor people (of improper pigmentation) get assistance.

Addendum: To add to the GOP hypocrisy, House Republicans are spending more than Obama wants to spend on the farm subsidies.

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The tyranny of light bulbs

Who says Boehner's House of Dysfunction can't get anything done? Why just today Republicans rescued America from freedom robbing energy efficiency.

The House on Wednesday voted to block the enforcement of light bulb standards that many say would effectively force people to buy more expensive compact fluorescent bulbs.

Just like last year, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) proposed the language as an addition to the energy and water spending bill. His language prohibits the use of any funds at the Department of Energy to implement the standards.

Of course, the law doesn't actually force anyone to buy any particular light bulb. There will be incandescent bulbs available that meet the standards. In fact, the industry has spent significant sums of money retooling their manufacturing plants to produce a variety of bulbs that meet the standards.

By abolishing the funding for the enforcement of the standards, Republicans have effectively given Chinese rip-off artists a license to undercut American manufacturers. But the freedom to waste our declining energy resources is a God-given right that can not be abridged. Or something. As long as it pisses off liberals and those gotdam tree huggers, it will please the crackpot base. Nothing else matters. Ever.

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New adventures in GOP hostage taking

Over at John Boehner's House of Dysfunction the Republicans have a problem. They want to use the next debt ceiling reauthorization to extract policy concessions from the Democratic party. The old strategy of issuing an all or nothing demand was a loser. It was a PR disaster.They couldn't find a way to blame the outcome, (or lack thereof), on the White House. Any sort of compromise is impossible. Boehner's crackpot caucus not only won't entertain discussion on the subject, they threaten to take Boehner's gavel for even bringing it up.

So the genius tacticians of the GOP have come up with what I'm certain they think is a brilliant plan. Instead of a single ultimatum, Republicans are offering a menu of hostage demands with various levels of rewards.

Option A: Enact Paul Ryan's voucherizing of Medicare scam. Agree to throw Medicare recipients to the private insurance industry vultures and Republicans will raise the debt limit through the end of Obama's presidency.

Option B: Mercilessly slash SNAP food assistance to the poor, eviscerate Medicaid with block-granting and implement chained CPI to calculate benefits. In return Republicans will raise the debt limit for an unspecified amount of time, one would assume said time frame being dependent on how big the concessions are.

Option C: Agree to means-test Social Security and/or slash some agricultural subsidies, (which I assume still means slashing SNAP and not insurance subsidies for corporate farms) and Republicans will raise the debt limit on pro-rated basis, which criteria appears to be one month of funding increase for every month by which the White House agrees to raise the retirement age for Social Security benefits.

Apparently the Republicans believe by breaking down their hostage demands incrementally and offering false choices, they'll look like the reasonable ones and be able to avoid taking responsibility for acheiving their lifelong dream of destroying the social safety net.

It might even work if Obama is still naive enough to negotiate with them. One can only hope our POTUS has learned his lesson on that score. As Booman said, "If the House wants to spend the rest of the year demanding that Obama privatize Medicare, block-grant Medicaid, raise the Social Security retirement age, and starve poor children, I don't think the Democrats will object. 'Please proceed, congressmen.'"

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John Boehner's House of Dysfunction

Steve Benen catches the latest stats on the current session of Congress. Last year's 112th Congress is in grave danger of losing its status as the most unproductive session in modern history because:

Mark Murray noted yesterday that the current, 113th Congress is on track to be even worse.

When it comes to productivity, only 15 legislative items have become law under the current Congress. That's fewer than the 23 items that became law at this same point in the 112th Congress, which passed a historically low number of bills that were signed into law. These numbers might not be surprising given the legislative stalemates so far this year -- on the sequester, the farm bill, and student loans. Even the biggest legislative triumph so far of the 113th Congress, the Senate passing immigration reform by a 68-32 vote, appears to have hit a brick wall in the House of Representatives for now.

They have a majority. They should be able to pass bills but Republicans can't even agree among themselves anymore. The only thing they can accomplish as a united caucus are "message votes" to soothe the rubes back home. They believe that will be enough to keep them in office so they don't need no stinkin' governance to screw up their reelection campaigns.

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Talking 'bout our immigration

Still pretty much offline for the last few days so I'm late to the immigration bill. Was mildly surprised to see the Senate pull it off with a 68-32 vote. Obama is urging the House to pass it by the August recess.

Good luck with that. The new dynamic on Capitol Hill is Senate passes bills and they now go to Boehner's House of Dysfunction to die. The crackpot caucus isn't going to agree to do pass anything that doesn't piss off liberals and Boehner vows to uphold the Hastert rule for the bill. Last I heard they're going to try to write a new bill that can get the crackpots on board, but then he'll lose the Democratic votes and possibly even some from his own side. Hearing rumors there are a fair number of Republicans who are interested in passing something.

It's possible Boehner is just working the kabuki to buy time and eventually will bring something reasonable to the floor that can pass on a bipartisan vote, but by no means is that a given. The crackpots have been threatening to oust him if he does and for some reason he appears to want to keep his giant gavel.

Only thing that seems clear at the moment is it's going to be a long, hot, stupid summer on Capitol Hill.

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Sequester cuts fester

Don't see much buzz beyond the occasional mention in social streams about how sequestration cuts are still slowly dribbling out into the public sphere is various ways. Certainly the outrage pretty much disappeared once they saved frequent flyers from any inconveniece. But on the bright side, at least it's not being completely ignored either. Via Atrios, I see Jared Bernstein is collecting coverage at one handy link. So there's that. [Tim Eagan cartoon]

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Bye bye Bachmann

By now you've heard Michelle Bachmann is calling it quits. That night she announced we won't have her to kick around in 2014. I have mixed feelings about it. Happy to have her crazy-eyed crackpottery out of our government but it is going to make it harder for the Democrats to win her district if the Republicans come up with any candidate even slightly less crazy who can string two sentences together coherently.

There's boatloads of commentary on Bachmann's departure. My favorite is Amanda Marcotte's delightful fisking of Michelle's goodbye speech. There's much speculation about her motives, but I agree with Steve M. I'm willing to bet the GOP leadership forced her out. Imagine she got word from on high that the party wasn't going to support her in the race, nor defend her against the investigations into her campaign chicanery.

Meanwhile, the bloggers whose stock is trade is wingnut snarkery, weep in sorrow to lose such an reliable source of material. [photo via Esquire]

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Don't want to go to war no more

Second day analysis is coming in on Obama's foreign policy speech and this NYT editorial sees what Obama did there:

President Obama’s speech on Thursday was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America. For the first time, a president stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future.

Our POTUS effectively declared the war on terror over. No more axis of evil. No more existential threat to justify deploying combat assets to fight a ground war that doesn't have a home ground. Obama is calling for a return to law enforcement and intelligence gathering for such preventative measures as are possible in fighting small cell groups and radicalized individuals.

Unsurprisingly, Charlie Pierce has the most astute analysis of Obama's speech. Definitely read it all but here's the punchline:

The process of making the presidency an office with far more power in foreign affairs than the Founders intended took decades. The process of putting a sharp edge on that office took less than one. Give this president some credit. At least he knows what a deadly weapon his office is.

Yes, Obama's speech was only words but I believe this counts as the use of the bully pulpit his critics so often claim he refuses to use. He's calling for an end to the forever war. He's asking America to calm down and restore some of those freedoms we gave up for supposed security. He's asking to have some of the executive war powers rescinded. But he can't make his rhetoric come to fruition alone. Congress needs to do its part, so maybe targeting them for some criticism would help acheive the goals Obama laid out. It's worth a try.

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Scandals unite House GOP

Scandalmania has been very good for GOP unity. All Republicans agree what's bad for Obama is very good for them. And Mr. Boehner has been kind enough to only bring the kind of bills to the floor that give the crazy conservatives opportunites to prove their crackpot cred for the folks back home. The question is, how long can it last?

Aware that the unity is fragile, the conservative group Heritage Action for America sent a warning to Boehner and Cantor, urging them to keep the focus on the scandals and “avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference.”

Good luck with that. Boehner won't be able to avoid real issues like raising the debt limit forever. And just wait until the immigration fight hits the House. GOPers should enjoy their comity while they may.

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Benghazi grandstanding blows up in Issa's face

After months of pounding the podium in outrage, demanding answers, suddenly Darrell Issa needs to think about whether to question the lead Benghazi investigators. It's one thing for Darrell to accuse them of incompetence on the TV. Quite another to allow them to defend their work:

In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa exclusively obtained by CNN, the co-chairmen behind an independent review of September's deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, expressed irritation over the House Oversight Committee chairman's portrayal of their work and requested he call a public hearing at which they can testify.

"The public deserves to hear your questions and our answers," wrote former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, co-chairmen of the Accountability Review Board that was convened to investigate the September 11th attack.

And irony this rich could give you a stomach ache.

Issa also suggested on the program that Pickering and Mullen meet with the committee behind closed doors so as not to create "some sort of stage show."

In other words, these guys might give legitimate answers that could shut the whole clown show down. Not to mention, make Issa look like a bigger idiot than he does already. [graphic via]

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Congressional Cons challenge Issa on Benghazi

This is the funniest thing I read today. Apparently the little people at home are wondering why they never see their guy on the teevee. Thus, the Crackpot caucus demands a piece of Issa's action.

House Republican members are defying Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and five committee chairmen by endorsing a measure that would set up a special panel to investigate the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

A growing number of members on the committees with jurisdiction over the Benghazi matter — Intelligence, Judiciary, Oversight and Government Reform, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs — have signed onto Rep. Frank Wolf’s (R-Va.) resolution. [...]

Wolf told The Hill in an interview, “I think you want to bring together the very best minds, you want to focus like a laser beam ...

[Insert your own snark here]

Actually, it's even bigger than just the crackpots. Last I heard 146 GOPers have signed as co-sponsors. If Boehner won't bring it to the floor they intend to push it as an amendment to appropriations bills. Poor old Johnny really is going to go down in history as the weakest Speaker ever. [graphic via his vorpal sword]

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A consensus of crackpots

There's a leadership crisis on Capitol Hill but it's not Obama who's the problem. According to the crackpot GOP caucus, John Boehner is failing to lead his troops to glory. Apparently the GOP's feckless chief is MIA and forcing Cantor to do the work. Not that he's having any better luck in corralling the crackpots. But this was the funniest critique.

Some of Boehner's chief critics in the House, like Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, said they haven't really seen a difference in style within the House leadership: it's still unsatisfactory to them.

"I would like to see him uphold the Hastert rule about bringing bills to the floor. We don't see that happening this congress, we did not see that happening last congress," Broun said. "They do seek members council and I've counciled our leadership to have, at a minimum, one bill on the floor every month to repeal Obamacare or parts of it. I think we need to do that once a month."

I'm sure he would have demanded they offer a repeal bill once a week except it would cut into their time off. Meanwhile from the world's greatest deliberative body comes this gem.

Mark Knoller: Senate GOP Leader McConnell says Pres Obama should really speak tomorrow about the adverse consequences of ObamaCare.

I read that last night and had the first belly laugh I've enjoyed in two weeks. These guys aren't only cracked, they're lazy. Now they want Obama to push their bogus propaganda for them too.

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Boehner loses control of the House

Well if there was any tiny doubt left, it's clear now that John Boehner is no longer leading the House. The crackpots are ruling the roost. Now that they've lost interest in the battle of the budget, there will be yet another vote on repealing Obamacare.

“We’ve got 17 new members that have not had the opportunity to vote on the President’s health care law,” Boehner said, referring to next week’s ACA repeal vote. “Frankly they’ve been asking for an opportunity to vote on it, and we’re going to give it to them.”

It doesn't look like Boehner is going to be able to corral the crackpots into dealing sensibly with spending either. At this point he's so discombobulated he apparently forgot for a moment which party he belongs to:

“[D]ealing with the long-term structural spending problem we have frankly is at the core of it. But we also know we can’t cut our way to prosperity,” Boehner said, perhaps unintentionally repeating one of Democrats’ most common budget talking points.

But only for a moment. He remembered the rest of the mandatory GOP talking points:

“We need real economic growth. And that’s why you continue to hear a lot of discussion about tax reform, regulatory reform, that would help us produce economic growth here in our country.”

I get the feeling his heart's just not in it anymore. No wonder the man drinks so much.

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Benghazi blowout fizzles

Darrell Issa's folly has been billed for days as the hearing that would blow the top off the alleged Benghazi cover-up. Or something. The leaks of the expected testimony of the very important whistleblowers were breathlessly touted as the bombshell that was going to drive Obama from office. The crackpot con echo chamber could hardly contain its excitement. And then the hearing happened. As you can see the committee was riveted.


[Luke Johnson photo via]

Appears this didn't go exactly as planned. To begin with their star witness with the very important title, Deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya Gregory Hicks, seems to be mostly a glorified office manager with many responsibilities but little authority. Hick's pumped up bio is full of important sounding titles, but if you click through to the interviews his 22 years of experience seem to consist of ceremonial duties and shuttling messages between the actual negotiators.

That aside, the hearing was a bust mainly because it revealed nothing new and more importantly the testimony debunked the GOPers crackpot conspriracy theories. I leave it to Charlie Pierce to explain why this failed witch hunt feels all too familiar to those of us who remember the 1990s. Meanwhile, while it's tragic that these four people died in Benghazi, a little perspective is in order.



As someone on the twitter said, if only there was a way to compel the GOPers to explain to the American people why these four matter and all those others who died in attacks during the Bush administratin were never even mentioned.

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Mark Sanford's win is GOP's loss

Despite the optimistic polling, it's not that shocking South Carolina's own Appalachian Trail hiker won the special election yesterday. What's more surprising is how close the votes were. Sure 54% to 45% ordinarily sounds like a big win but if you look at the actual totals Sanford only won by 12,838 votes. Granted a special election draws a lot fewer voters but compared to the guy he's replacing, who won by 62% to 35% just last year, it doesn't look as impressive.

As satisfying as watching the cons deal with an upset would have been been, on a practical level, this was the best outcome for Democrats. There were already signs that Colbert Busch was going to piss off liberals and progs with her "moderate centrism." Indeed she would have little choice but to Blue Dog it to satisfy her constituents. Meanwhile, all indications point to Sanford's gain becoming Boehner's bane.

This quote from Congressman elect Sanford's good buddy in the state Senate portends trouble in Capitol City:

“Sorry, NRCC. We won anyway,” he tweeted shortly after the election was called.

This outcome is essentially a draw. While it's a horrible outcome for good governance, all we did was trade one GOP clown for another. But Sanford is a much bigger showboating, bumbling, hapless sad sack. Willing to predict he's going to become the gift that keeps on giving for lefty bloggers, liberal pundits and the perpetually bored insider media.

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Obama Derangement Syndrome is destroying us

The only surprise here is Sen. Pat Toomey was so explicit in admitting his fellow GOP Senators suffer from terminal ODS. He explains why the Manchin-Toomey admendment failed.

"In the end it didn't pass because we're so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it," Toomey admitted on Tuesday in an interview with Digital First Media editors in the offices of the Times Herald newspaper in Norristown, Pa.

This is not exactly news. It's been the publicly announced prime directive of the Republican party since the day Obama was sworn into office. And that's just in the Senate. John Boehner's House GOPers are so badly infected they won't even support GOP trickery that would have severely damaged Obamacare because it gave the appearance of helping Obama. Boehner's crackpot caucus are apparently so stupid they couldn't grasp the strategy.

Not sorry that one failed but the greater concern is the crackpots have no interest in governing. They see their job as obstructing governance. Their hero is Andrew Breitbart who told them to never retreat, never surrender. It makes them feel powerful to kill compromise bills. Wolverines baby. They're rebels. Their only nod to actual governance is introducing symbolic bills based on crackpot conspiracy theories passed around among themselves in viral emails.

So the Village punditry mewling about Obama's failure to lead this pack of lunatics to sanity can kindly shut the pie hole about juice. Republican leadership can't even get the crackpots to support their own damn party. If instransgient Republican obstructionism is the definition of lame duck, then Obama has been a lame duck since day one of his presidency. Meanwhile our people have no jobs. They have no money. And our national infrastructure is slowing crumbling while the DC media trades insider jokes on the twitter all day.

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