Airline Service Getting Colder By the Minute

Update: Thank you, Steve in Manhattan, for sharing this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Everyone: Stay safe; Abolish ICE; Stop the Wars; and Defend Your Vote!

File under the "What Could Possibly Go Wrong" category of putting thugs in charge of public transportation (via Luke Garrett at NPR):

President Trump said he is sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports as some air travelers face longer security lines due to the partial government shutdown.

"On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job," Trump posted on social media Sunday.

The Trump administration has blamed Democrats for the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has entered its sixth week and paused paychecks for Transportation Security Administration workers.

"This pointless, reckless shutdown of our homeland security workforce has caused more than 400 TSA officers to quit and thousands to call out from work because they are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent," Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis told NPR in an email.

What trump and his lackeys aren't mentioning is that the Democrats put a hold on DHS funding in order to curtail escalating violence and civil rights abuses by those very ICE agents. Of course, they can never be in the wrong, can they...

DHS did not respond to NPR's question of where ICE agents will be deployed.

But Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said Sunday evening that agents would be at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to help with "line management and crowd control." In a statement, he said federal agents "indicated that this deployment is not intended to conduct immigration enforcement activities."

Which counters trump's own claim that the ICE agents will be there to detain any and all undocumented travelers (with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, because trump is still obsessed with punishing Somali from Minnesota, Ohio, Maine, and elsewhere).

Because of the shutdown, by the by, actual TSA agents aren't getting paid through emergency funding, but ICE agents are, which is going to make things very painful around the water cooler at the workplace this Monday...

The head of the union that represents TSA officers denounced the plan to send ICE to airports.

"ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security," Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement on Sunday.

He said TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats designed to evade detection at checkpoints.

"They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be," he added.

Word is already this weekend that check-in lines at airports are backed up, delayed by hours and getting worse. There's little evidence that bringing in ICE agents - untrained for crowd control, more likely to be abusive towards passengers already under stress - will free up the lines and improve departure times for people. There's also the risk that anyone "suspicious" in ICE's eyes - anyone with darker skin than a Duggar scion - is going to get harassed and attacked for no other reason than just standing there.

All of the bad governance spawning violence in our cities is now going to be working inside our airports.

What can possibly go wrong? (hint: everything)

General Disarray Heading Into October

My paranoia about this next stunt by trump and his lackeys is getting the worst of me this week (via Steve Inskeep and Tom Bowman at NPR):

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called top military officials from around the world to a meeting in Virginia (this Tuesday). The reason for this unusual gathering isn't known.

INSKEEP: How much do you know?

BOWMAN: Well, again, not too much. We're talking hundreds of generals and admirals who will meet on Tuesday at Marine Base Quantico just outside Washington. The Washington Post was the first to report on this meeting. In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, quote, "the secretary of war will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week." And he was using the term secretary of war, which both President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth prefer, instead of defense secretary.

INSKEEP: Have you heard of a meeting like this ever in your decades covering the Pentagon?

BOWMAN: No, absolutely not. This is - on this scale, never. At times, you know, they'll bring in combatant commanders - those who oversee military operations around the world - bring them to the Pentagon for annual meetings. But this is far different in the numbers. Now, Secretary Hegseth has talked about reducing the number of admirals and generals - who stand at more than 800 - reducing that number by 20%. And he talked about that during his confirmation hearing and also put out a video statement back in May once again referring to this...

The rumor mill right after that notification spun in a number of directions, especially at the possibility Hegseth was going to stage a public purge among the flag officers to put the Fear of trump in those remaining. Military analysts believe it's tied into the projected National Defense Strategy where trump's administration will reportedly shift the military focus to "homeland security" meaning "arresting immigrants and civilians - maybe even killing them - on Stephen Miller's whims." 

It later got out that Hegseth plans to give a "motivational speech" about the "warrior ethos" he wants to see in our armed forces: He wants to see more rah-rah blood knight enthusiasm towards committing war crimes "being warriors" wherever the battlefield is set.

Throw into this the last-minute announcement that trump himself is going to attend this "lecture" and a clearer understanding emerges: This is going to be a goddamn staged spectacle of the crassest kind.

As a lot of observers are noting, this whole thing could have been an email. Tom Nichols over at the Atlantic is noticeably vexed:

...I was not, however, a senior officer in charge of a major command, with responsibility for thousands of people and millions of dollars of weaponry. Those folks are busy, which is why the DOD has very advanced—and very expensive—teleconferencing equipment designed to obviate the need to move people around the world for a chat.

But Secretary of Defense/War/Lethality Pete Hegseth isn’t going to use that technology. Instead, he recently decided that some 800 generals and admirals needed to come, in person, from every corner of the planet to a Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, reportedly to listen to their boss, a former TV host, lecture them on the “warrior ethos”—and, for some reason, personal grooming. The Tuesday meeting will feature not only Hegseth but also a last-minute addition: the commander in chief himself.

Hegseth has had a lot of bad ideas, but this one is disruptive and even somewhat dangerous. All of these men and women have real jobs they should be doing. Even if Hegseth is calling this meeting to discuss serious issues of national defense—and so far, the Pentagon has given no such indications—few things are important enough to justify the security risk of putting the entire top U.S. military command, the secretary of defense, and the president all in the same room.

It is possible, of course, that Hegseth is convening this jamboree because something genuinely terrible is afoot. Perhaps he wants all of America’s top officers in the same room when he tells them, for example, that the United States is on the brink of going to war, or that the Pentagon has been deeply compromised by spies and all of our military secrets are now in Moscow or Beijing. But if America is heading into a crisis, then Hegseth’s call for a meeting is even more irresponsible, because in a time of danger all these people should be at their posts, not in an auditorium in Virginia.

The other rumors spinning out there cover some of the fears Nichols points to, especially the part about going to war to serve trump's growing rage towards the rest of the world that won't give him a Peace Prize. There's been a lot of saber-rattling towards Venezuela, especially the unjustified attacks on various boats in international waters that trump's administration keeps claiming were smuggling drugs (but which they also refuse to present evidence to back those claims). trump has been public in his demands to go to literal war against drug cartels, refusing to recognize how that would violate other nations' integrity, and arguably dragging the United States into yet another quagmire that would waste lives and money and end up changing nothing.

No matter what this speech will bring, it's also happening on the eve of yet another Republican-backed government shutdown that's scheduled to implode once October 1st clocks in. Just the logistics of bringing in every general and admiral to one location is a headache: Just imagine what those officers are going to go through if the money isn't there for their transportation back to their command posts? This is another reason why people fear this meeting is going to be a purge, with the shutdown as an excuse to gut the military of its leadership.

Every foreign power aligned against us - not only China and Iran but also Russia (so eager to watch a rival superpower collapse into civil war) - have got to be laughing at the United States tonight, and drawing up a number of plans to cause chaos while our military leaders are stuck in an auditorium listening to maniacs scream at them and demand utter obedience. 

No matter what, this is not going to be a fun week.

It Just Gets Crazy, Repeating the Same Shutdown Madness

Oh, with all the craziness going on this month, totally forgot that the House Republicans were threatening ANOTHER government shutdown. There's supposed to be ANOTHER temporary deal in place, but no guarantee it'll get approved (via Sahil Kapur, Scott Wong, Ryan Nobles, and Rebecca Kaplan at NBC News):

Bipartisan negotiators announced Wednesday they have struck a deal to avert a partial government shutdown this week, securing agreement on half of the dozen must-pass spending bills and extending a pair of fast-approaching funding deadlines deeper into March to buy Congress more time.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement with appropriators, members charged with crafting spending bills, that they have a deal on six bills that fund several federal agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Interior, Justice, Transportation and Veterans Affairs. And they've agreed to vote on a short-term bill to avoid a partial government shutdown this weekend, buying more time to pass the funding deal...

Still, the House and the Senate need to pass the stopgap measure by the end of Friday to avert a partial shutdown. In the Senate, a speedy vote will require consent from all 100 members, which means it's not yet guaranteed they will pass it in time...

So there's the likelihood a Republican Senator - or either Manchin or Sinema, just for shits and giggles to appease their conservative allies - could hold up the votes and send us into shutdown. As long as enough Democrats and Republicans in the House agree to the measure - something the Not-Really-Freedom Caucus can't delay - it ought to get through that half of Congress.

It then becomes a question if the UnFreedom Caucus retaliates by holding another Motion to Vacate to punish Johnson for making this deal, which just repeats the cycle of shutdown mania all over again chasing after yet another Speaker replacement.

I am tired of this staged drama. I am tired of the wingnut hostage-taking that happens every time.

Just stop fucking voting for Republicans, America. Please. For just common decent sanity. Just stop this needless drama. Just stop it.

The Devil We Know Now in the House GOP

Again, I'm not so good with the prediction stuff.

I figured the House Republicans would flail at finding a replacement Speaker for whatever was left of this year - well into 2024 - out of the belief that the Freedom Caucus extremists knew it would force an inevitable shutdown. Apparently, there was an agenda by those extremists to eventually confirm a "consensus" candidate as soon as they found someone the Rational factions could accept without openly vomiting on the floor.

Jim "Scandals Aplenty" Jordan was clearly not the consensus choice: He angered up too many people on a personal level, and he reeked of both incompetency and guilt. The GOP couldn't accept the "moderate" - although that word no longer holds meaning for their ranks - choices of Scalise or Emmert, but they could accept a virtual unknown at the high chair in someone named Mike Johnson out of Lousiana.

Just because nobody ever noticed Johnson before now doesn't mean he's a safe choice. It means he kept himself out of the limelight long enough for people to not notice the extremist world-view he brings with him. Amanda Marcotte over at Salon has taken a closer look and has recoiled:

Ahead of his sudden ascension to House speaker late last week, the media had little time to vet Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., thoroughly. And because he sucks in so many ways, it's been hard for his critics to settle on one of his many evil inclinations to focus on. He's a Christian nationalist. He's an election denier. He wants to destroy Medicare and Social Security. He's a fan of neo-Nazi conspiracy theories. As Brian Beutler of Off Message writes, "typecasting an opposition leader" may be tedious, but it's politically necessary. Democrats have benefited from the fact that the most famous Republican villains have one standout trait that defines their personality: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is a pugnacious bully. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is a loudmouthed Karen. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California is a spineless suck-up.

...What stands out to me about Johnson — and I suspect will be compelling to most people — is what a sinister little creep he is. The man gives off strong incel energy, and his elevation really showcases how much the politics of bitter sexual obsession have come to dominate the Republican Party.

I don't know if I ever covered the term "incel" at this blog, so a refresher is in order. "Incel" means "Involuntary Celibate," referring to heterosexual men who are frustrated that they are either socially unacceptable to women, or unable to find women who are submissive enough to their needs. Rather than blame their own behaviors - their own failures as men to adapt and improve themselves to behave better towards women - incels prefer to blame "feminists and queers" who have "disrupted the natural order of the patriarchy" that would have otherwise gotten these assholes laid by now.

In other words: Incels believe women are trophies, they are possessions, they are chattel meant only to serve the pleasure of men. And if that sounds a lot like how the Far Right religious Republicans sound when it comes to punishing women over abortion rights, divorce rights, the basic human right to think for themselves then you get where Marcotte is getting that vibe from Johnson.

In true incel fashion, Johnson is haunted by all the erotic adventures he imagines the straight ladies of America are having when he's not in the room. When New York's Irin Carmon interviewed him in 2015, he blamed legal abortion for school shootings, saying, "When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.” Nor was that a one-off. In 2016, he gave a speech in which he blamed feminism, liberal divorce laws, and the "sexual revolution" for mass shootings.

In this view, Johnson agrees with mass shooters, who claim they were driven to it because of women's sexual freedom. In the year before Johnson blamed male violence on women's sexuality, the incel-identified killer Elliot Rodger went on a shooting spree in California, claiming he was forced to do it to "punish" the "sluts" who had sex with other men while he remained a virgin. Since then, there's been a rash of violent incidents, some quite deadly, conducted by men who employ the same logic: Female sexual autonomy offends them, and must be punished with pain and death...

It is not exaggeration on Marcotte's part to paint Johnson as a dangerous radical, because he is. Not only with his fervent public stance that America is a "Christian nation," - in opposition to the Constitutional facts of "No Religious Test" and "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" - but also his open disdain towards women as human beings with their own beliefs, their own minds, their own rights.

Johnson has similar views. He wants to lock women down into unhappy marriages with abortion bans. And, in a twist that incels will love, he wants to throw away the key. He's long been outspoken against "no-fault" divorce, which allows someone to leave simply because they no longer want to be married. These laws don't just benefit those in garden-variety unhappy marriages. By lifting the burden to "prove" their suffering in court, abused women have an easier time escaping. That's why liberalized divorce laws led to a 20% decline in female suicides...

We saw it recently in Florida where the GOP-controlled legislature and DeSantis signed off on laws weakening women's ability to get divorces as well as proper alimony that could let them live outside of the control of the men they're trying to flee from. The Religious Right don't like divorce - not that it disrupts society like they claim, but because it guts the controls men would have over "their" women - and would prefer increasing the likelihood of domestic violence that bad marriages compel.

There are still many in the punditry who are confused about why Christian conservatives like Johnson glommed onto Trump, a thrice-married chronic adulterer who touches the Bible like it will burn him. But, of course, it was never really about Jesus. What Trump and the men who worship him share is anger that any woman would have the right to say no: To a date, to a marriage, to having your baby. It's why Trump has a long history of sexual assault. And it's why men like Johnson embrace a "religion" that is hyper-focused on caging women like they're farm animals. And why they resent gay people for their perceived sexual adventures. It's a coalition of men who fear, often for very good reason, that their repulsive personalities exclude them from a world where sexual expression requires consent. Johnson's now the most powerful Republican in Congress. The incel-ization of the GOP is complete...

Where the Republican-controlled House is likely going to get a lot of attention drawn to the inevitable government shutdown that the Freedom Caucus desires, don't be at all surprised that this Johnson-led House decides to go nuclear by passing a federal-level abortion ban - that thankfully won't get past the Democratic Senate or Biden's desk - and stage more assaults on women's rights than ever before (even as the polling experts are screaming at Republicans that strict anti-abortion stances are destroying their numbers).

Johnson is no Man of God. He's just another Republican huckster shilling faith as campaign slogans, hiding his misogyny behind fake platitudes and hypocrisy. And he's the one the House GOP settled on to lead them into the 2024 election cycle.

Gods, truly help us.

House GOP Still One Big NO

So, the Republican House Caucus voting is done, and Steve Scalise may have the nomination. But he doesn't have the Speakership. (via Susan Davis, Deirdre Walsh, and Lexie Schapitl at NPR):

Scalise defeated Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, by a vote of 113-99. That gave Scalise a narrow majority of the Republicans' 221 votes in the chamber, but he has yet to lock up the 217 votes necessary to win on the House floor. A source with direct knowledge of the matter said Jordan plans to vote for Scalise on the floor of the House and is encouraging his colleagues to do the same.

Ha. There's already reports of House Republicans refusing to back Scalise for the necessary votes to clear the full House, as Democrats are in lockstep behind Hakeem Jeffries and it will take 4 votes - depending on who shows up - to deny Scalise similar to how Kevin McCarthy was denied fifteen times this past January.

Haley Talbot with CNN is keeping tally on the NO votes:

If he had the votes, they’d be voting

House adjourns until NOON tomorrow pic.twitter.com/oTFbzgDyvQ

— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) October 11, 2023

Unless Scalise panders to those naysayers - without alienating the people who backed him this far - he's not going to win.

Unless six or more Rational Republicans realize they won't get anywhere with these lunatics and flip to the Democratic caucus - either as independents or full party flip - we as a nation are going to be stuck with this traffic jam for a long time.

Welcome to a new Long October: The Long October Of Party Chaos.

It Begins: The Gaetz Folly to Vacate

Welp, there I was getting onto the underground version of City Of Heroes to try and form a Shardtober task force - I'll explain later - when I get word that the wingnut madness in the GOP House upgraded to Defcon Nutty:

BREAKING: Matt Gaetz has officially introduced a resolution to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 2, 2023

(insert ALL the popcorn GIFs here)

Lemme find a link to a news site for better details. Here we go, AP News has it with Farnoush Amiri and Kevin Freking reporting:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is facing an extraordinary referendum on his leadership of the House of Representatives after a conservative member of his own conference, a longtime critic, moved to trigger a vote on whether he should remain at the helm.

“I have enough Republicans where at this point next week, one of two things will happen: Kevin McCarthy won’t be the speaker of the House or he’ll be the speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats,” GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz told reporters after he filed the motion. “I’m at peace with either result because the American people deserve to know who governs them.”

McCarthy responded minutes later on social media, “Bring it on.”

This is all stemming from the ongoing power struggle - both in public and behind doors - involving Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus faction that never truly respected McCarthy, tried to deny him the office in humiliating fashion in order to squeeze out major concessions, and sought to undercut any authority he has as Speaker in order to ensure a dysfunctional Congress.

The tipping point was the recent fight over yet another looming Shutdown that the Far Right wanted to impose but that McCarthy avoided through deals with the Democratic caucus because McCarthy - for all his slavish devotion to the Far Right ideology already - knew his legacy in the history books as Speaker was at risk. Thing was, Gaetz and his allies were going to pull this Motion to Vacate no matter what McCarthy did because he hadn't given them everything - even things that were out of his power to grant - they desired.

So now we get the circus most observers knew was coming: The power struggle not between Moderates and the Far Right - because there ARE NO MORE Moderates in the GOP, they are all fevered Conservatives - but between the Rational and Irrational factions of the Republican Party.

The Rationalists are likely going to stick with McCarthy because the long-term health of their party requires them to actually do things in office to ensure their constituents - the deep-pocket lobbyists - get their piece of the federal largesse. The Irrationalists are going to stage their coup attempt on McCarthy not to get one of their own into the Speakership but to create enough chaos that the House can't pass anything, and thus force future shutdowns to appease their trumpian voter base.

There's no certainty that Gaetz has the votes to pull off the motion. He can't honestly have every Republican congresscritter aligned to his side (otherwise McCarthy's back-room allies would be signaling alarm) and he can't honestly expect the Democrats to knee-jerk a vote against McCarthy out of partisan spite (there seems to be serious debate among the Democratic congresscritters to not commit either way and let the GOP punch themselves).

What Gaetz does have is the Irrationalist belief that he can stage this coup attempt without punishment or consequence: That he can compel his fellow GOP congresscritters to vacate McCarthy through threat of primary challenges and boycotts from the Far Right financial backers they need to fund their 2024 campaigns. 

He's not entirely wrong: The entire RINO purge of the past 25 years revolved around the removal of more rational party leaders - Cantor, Boehner, Ryan - through successful primary ousters or the threats of them.

But it all depends on how many incumbent Republicans can be threatened by such challenges. If McCarthy can rally enough of the sitting GOP to his side - say, all but the 20 die-hard wingnuts aligned to Gaetz - the threat to primary them all can fall flat. And it could impress the deep-pocket PACs to avoid a party split, and let the Rationalists stay on the ballots to improve the odds of keeping the House after 2024.

Gaetz faces the possibility of expulsion for committing this coup - he is facing a House ethics inquiry that could hurt him where the earlier FBI investigations couldn't - but is gambling on the belief that McCarthy would not dare risk the slim party majority in the House the Republicans control at the moment. Thing is, McCarthy does have some wriggle room with at least a 5-seat lead over the Dems. He can happily afford to kick Gaetz out of Congress - along with a scandal-plagued Matt Santos - and live with the remaining wingnuts who might realize such public stunts can backfire. Given the gerrymandered nature of congressional districts, McCarthy could well get those seats refilled by Republicans anyway during the rest of this congressional session, so the risk for him lessens.

I'm not predicting anything: Last time I tried - the looming Shutdown last week - I whiffed.

We're going to have to see if the House Republicans will stand with their Speaker or fall into infighting and chaos.

In the meantime, the popcorn should be ready and hot.

(Update 10/3): I'm seeing reports on Twitter the Motion to Vacate vote is scheduled this afternoon. Reuters has verified it, noting that McCarthy has not gone to the Democrats to see about making a deal to avoid getting kicked out. That means the Dems may vote as a bloc to vacate, even though they know this could lead to utter chaos. The Democrats are reportedly telling reporters that they won't help McCarthy because he's broken several promises earlier this term (and an unspoken level of anger that McCarthy rolled over for the extremists to start that clown show of an impeachment inquiry).

That means whatever it takes to Vacate, it's all on the Republicans to do. I'm seeing the number needed around 20 Republicans to do so, and it's a question if Gaetz truly has that in his pocket. If he does, hoo boy, this all goes nuclear. And then it becomes a question of which idiot volunteers to be the next GOP Speaker.

(Further Update): Motion to Vacate was tabled and 11 Republicans sided with Democrats to let the vote proceed. Apparently I am STILL wrong on the math: Gaetz doesn't need 20 he needs 6, and if those 11 Republicans carry through on the motion that would mean the end of McCarthy's Speakership.

(Follow-up to the Further Update): As of 4:45 PM EDT, the House voted to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a historic first. McCarthy lost the support of I believe nine Republicans in a 216-210 final (several Democrats and Republicans were absent for various reasons).

Once again, this isn't the fault of Democrats. It was up to the Republicans to stay united, and they couldn't. This chaos is on them. It's been on them the last 30 years.

(Final Update On This): The House is apparently adjourning until next Tuesday, meaning the Republicans are going to stretch this out on the calendar as much as they can.

Without a full Speaker, nothing in the House will get done until that's resolved. So Gaetz and his allies get the shutdown they want for the next few weeks (and if they can extend out past the 45-day CR, the shutdown will turn real).

It now becomes a question of what the various GOP factions will do, if they will rally around one decisive figure or else split into factions between candidates. It will be obvious whoever does replace McCarthy, that person will inherit the same broken model of leadership and face the same fate sooner rather than later during this term.

It's now a matter of history to look at McCarthy's tenure as Speaker - one of the shortest, and the first to suffer at the hands of his own party like this - and judge how badly he did at it.

As Minority Leader during the last days of the trump Presidency, he failed to hold trump accountable for what happened on January 6th. Instead, McCarthy played to trump's ego, posing and preening so that the MAGA voter base would accept him as a dutiful acolyte to trump's hostility and fearmongering. It still didn't save him.

When he tried for the Speakership, McCarthy pandered to the worst factions among the Republicans, trading off every favor he could just so he could claim the high office. And it still didn't save him.

McCarthy played to the fears and rage of the Fox News audiences, offered them every lie, provided every justification, just so he could stay Speaker for a little while longer. He still fell from power in one of the most humiliating events in American history.

It wasn't worth it, Kevin. Selling your soul to the worst people of your party wasn't worth it.

And the Republicans still have far to fall.

So They Can Rule Over Ash

I have said this many a time over the years: There is a sizable faction within the Republican Party ranks that simply do not want the federal government to function in any way. They will force shutdown after shutdown all in the attempt to destroy the existing system so they can rebuild their own twisted Utopia on its ashes.

And now, I'm not the only one. Even the GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy has gone public with the not-so-secret revelation (via Tatyana Tandapolie at Salon) about his own damn caucus:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., appears to have had enough of his hardline Republican colleagues after they defeated a procedural vote on a Pentagon funding bill for the second time this week.

On Thursday, six Republicans — Reps. Dan Bishop, N.C., Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ga., Matt Rosendale, Mont., Andy Biggs, Ariz., Eli Crane, Ariz., and Tom Cole, Okla. — joined Democrats in voting against the rule for the Pentagon appropriations bill 212-216, preventing the legislation from moving forward in the chamber. As The Hill reports, votes on rules, which dictate debate for legislation, are partisan and predictable matters as, usually, the majority votes in its favor and the minority votes against it. The rule's failure to pass in votes on both Tuesday and Thursday of this week is rare, marking an embarrassing jab at the Speaker.

With the Sept. 30 government funding deadline looming, McCarthy voiced his frustrations with his colleagues' blockages after Thursday's failure. The rule's defeat is "frustrating in the sense that I don't understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate," McCarthy told reporters in the hallway outside the House chamber, adding, "This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn't work."

To be fair, the House defense appropriations bill was a big eyesore. It was going to gut "diversity" training in order to play to the anti-Woke crowd, it was going to cut defense spending by 8 percent across the military branches, it was going to waste money on restarting construction on trump's goddamned border wall, and it was going to stop financial and supply aid to Ukraine.

It was a bill that was never going to get past a Democratic-controlled Senate, and definitely not get past President Biden's veto stamp. And yet, the House Republicans are extremist enough - even among their moderate rational factions - to where they should have passed the vote to even bring this to the floor for a regular vote.

That they couldn't underscores the schism among the competing groups looking to impose their own fanaticism upon their own party as much as the federal government. Not so much that there are "moderates" anymore among the Republicans, but that there are congresscritters from districts relying on military funding who don't want to cross that line.

But those aren't the congresscritters who matter, are they? No, the ones who matter among the House Republicans are the arsonists looking to force a shutdown to achieve their goals.

Matt Gaetz in particular is itching to use the removal tools the extremists negotiated out of McCarthy back in January. And it's not really over Gaetz's argument that McCarthy is not pursuing impeachment on Biden the way the hardliners want. It's barely over Gaetz's fantasy that he could take over the Speakership position himself (even he has to know his scandalous background alienates fellow Republicans).

It all has to do with the reality that a No Confidence vote to remove McCarthy would cause the ultimate chaos. There's no other leader among the Republican ranks that could appeal to the entire caucus to take over that top spot. Jim Jordan? There are other Republicans who hate him as a grandstander with scandal baggage. Steve Scalise - the other possibility back in January - is currently getting treatment for a rare blood cancer, and also doesn't have a lot of party support. Every other ambitious wannabe won't get enough votes to clear the 218-vote hurdle because enough congresscritters still favoring McCarthy will vote against the replacement out of spite.

Even with the reality they need to stand united against the Democrats sitting on the sidelines waiting for defections to rally to them, these Republicans would end up knee-capping each other in the rush to become the next Speaker.

Which still fulfills the Freedom Caucus' fantasy of a perpetual government shutdown: Without a functioning House, there will be no spending bills passed. Nothing will get done. Outside of risking defections from House Republicans in Biden-friendly districts, the Republicans could enjoy a broken divided government all the way through to the 2024 general elections.

And thanks to massive gerrymandering and voter suppression back in Red States, the House GOP can well avoid any accountability from the voters for their sabotage.

This could get uglier than usual. A shutdown is pretty much a given at this point. It would have to take 8-12 Republicans to cross the aisle on their own to deal with Democrats, shift the Speakership to the Dems, and avoid the damage the wingnuts want to impose. However, there is no such courage among House Republicans to make that move. It would doom their political careers (unless they flip Democratic outright in a Dem-friendly district).

There are no brave souls among Republicans. They pander to their rabid voting base and they whine to their media allies, but they are cowards hiding in their safe spaces unwilling to commit to the hard work that governing requires.

Get ready for another shutdown brought to you by a broken, reactionary, cowardly Republican Party. They will not rule, so they will straight-up ruin.

Gods help us.

The Crash The Nation Over The Cliff Party Is Back At It

Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio for adding this blog on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Wish me luck on FWA's Royal Palm Literary Awards as one of my previous articles "All Which Wicked Designs" is a finalist this year. Please leave comments: I know it's a headache, but I wanna hear from peeps, thank ye.

Congress is about to get back into session, meaning another round of the Hunger Crazy Games is about to begin. Again. 

The Freedom Crash Everything And Burn Caucus is apparently making more hostage-taking demands while wielding rubber chickens, so Heather Digby Parton over at her Hullabaloo site has the details of what they want and how they want it:

But the outlines of what the MAGA caucus in the House plans to do in Washington are clear. They want to impeach Joe Biden, as we all predicted the moment they took the majority in 2022, and flood the zone with investigations. And they want to hold the government hostage by shutting down the government. If all goes well, they might even wreck the economy in the process...

The problem is that there isn’t a whole lot his loyal House majority can do to help him. They are running investigations as fast as they can think of them. Aside from all the bogus Hunter Biden nonsense and the absurd impending impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, they’re now set upon investigating the Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg and Fulton County prosecutor Fanni Willis with the supposed intention of defunding them for their alleged misconduct. They don’t seem to realize that these are local and state offices and are hardly dependent upon whatever small amounts of money the federal government might provide...

The Far Right Wingnut leadership are so into the performative outrage that - past their ability to pack the courts with anti-abortion pro-business jurists - they can't figure out how to actually do things. Even the threat of bringing DAs Bragg or Willis before a congressional committee hearing to get yelled at won't go the way they think it will. Anywho:

But they do have one card up their sleeves that it looks like they are going to play quite soon. You’ll recall that the House Freedom caucus was quite bent out of shape last spring when Kevin McCarthy made a deal with the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. They even staged a little hissy fit soon afterwards blocking a vote on the floor and putting the House into gridlock for week. They now plan to flex their muscles over the appropriations bills with a renewed threat of a government shutdown. And if the putative leader of their majority, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, doesn’t like it, they are pretty much on record saying that they are ready to pull the plug on his speakership...

During this summer’s recess the rebels, led by former Sen. Ted Cruz chief of staff, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, the battle lines have been drawn. The Freedom Caucus released a statement making it clear that they will oppose any short term funding bill that doesn’t meet their demands...

They are hand-waving about cuts, including Ukraine military funding and “woke” pentagon spending. But the most important ransom demand, which is gaining traction in the whole caucus, is to cut funding for the Department of Justice and the FBI if they don’t succumb to their demands. That’s right, the Republicans are now agitating to defund the police...

As Digby points out, these demands can't go very far because this bill has to go to the Senate, where the Democrats will refuse to vote on it and submit their own funding bill. Even if the Senate Dems relent to avoid a government shutdown, there is no way Biden will sign it: The Freedom Caucus' demands will undercut the relative independence of the Justice Department, as well as kneecap a major foreign policy agenda to keep Ukraine (and NATO) standing against Russian aggression.

What the House wingnuts want to do is simple: Force a shutdown, period. They want the economic chaos it will cause. They want to prove to their anti-government MAGA followers that they can deliver on "draining the swamp" of a bureaucracy that would dare regulate businesses, uphold civil rights for minorities, and enforce the tax code on millionaires. It's the same dream they've had since 2015 2013 2011 1996 and/or whenever there's a Democrat in the White House they can blame. You will notice these Freedom Caucus wingnuts refuse to crash the federal government when there's a Republican like Dubya or trump in the White House.

It's not that the shutdown will stop the federal criminal indictments against trump - the DOJ prioritizes those kind of legal cases and will operate on emergency funds - and indeed the shutdown would cut into the House GOP's efforts to impeach President Biden on whatever fictitious charge they can fantasize (as they have nothing on Hunter Biden tying to his dad). In that regard, the drama is unfocused.

The shutdown will do what the Far Right wants to see happen no matter what the legal system does to trump: the destruction of the American federal system while under a Democratic administration, so that the Republicans won't take the blame.

The Far Right ideology against the federal government - a government which leans towards a liberal ideology of serving the public trust - tells them they have to tear it down so that their ideal nation gets rebuilt on the ashes. They've been given orders - decades ago - by the billionaire lobbyists and think tank demagogues to shrink the federal government down to where Grover can drown it in his bathtub. The trick is to make sure the general voting public doesn't blame them for the tear-down.

And so we're getting the same-old rehash of the shutdown drama we've seen before. Only this time the drama could include the hilarity of watching Speaker McCarthy get tossed overboard in a No Confidence vote even if he caves to The Freedom Crash Everything And Burn Caucus, because of things like the Senate and Biden's veto pen that he can't control.

Part of me hopes that the chaos of undoing McCarthy's reign will convince the 18 or so House Republicans stuck in Biden-happy districts to flip parties to save their own skins from the internal fighting their half of the House is facing. It's unlikely - Republicans would rather resign and take a cushy think tank gig than flip parties - but wouldn't it be pretty to think it.

In the meantime, trump's January 6th trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024. The Manhattan trial on tax evasion and hush-money bribes to Stormy Daniels is set for March 25, 2024. The Mar-A-Lago classified docs trial is set for May 20, 2024. And DA Willis is pushing to get everyone including trump on her election fraud/RICO charges in the courthouse by October of this year (as a number of defendants are pushing for speedy trials of their own).

Tick-tock, Shitgibbon. There's nothing the House wingnuts can do to save you. They're too busy crashing the nation for their own ends.

You Know What? Mint That Coin, Just Do It Already

...In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count.
The Altairian Dollar has recently collapsed,
the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flainian Pobble Beads,
and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems.
Its exchange rate of "eight Ningis to one Pu" is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu.
Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change.
From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.
-- Douglas Adams, from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (to be read in Stephen Fry's voice) 

With the wingnut Republicans regaining control of the House - and again back on their obsession with destroying the federal government and the global economy in one fell swoop, even with all the warnings about what the damage will be - the talk about government shutdowns has returned.

The Democratic response to the Far Right threats of massive spending cuts has been mixed, bouncing between allaying fears to bringing up alternative spending methods to outfox the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus hijackers hoping to crash the whole bus over the cliff. One thing the liberal and left-leaning blogging punditry keeps throwing out there is the "MINT THE COIN" idea.

The Coin refers to a law on the books allowing the U.S. Mint to issue a platinum-based coin with any denomination (face value) assigned to it as needed. For example any one-ounce gold coin has a $50 face value, the half-ounce gold coin is $25, etc. When they passed the law in the 1990s, the intent was to give the US Mint a means to raise money selling to avid coin collectors who buy these things up not for the metal's worth but for the collectible value. 

At the time, the idea was that a collectible platinum coin could go for like $500 or $100 or something above the gold coin (capped at Ye Olde Fiddy). Thing was, when the Republicans became more radical and more desperate to gut the federal government's fiscal capabilities since then, someone got the idea that the U.S. Mint using the backing of the "Full Faith and Credit" clause in the Constitution could issue a platinum coin with a face value more than what the federal debt would be, and using that to pay off said debt so the radicals would lose the "debt ceiling" hostage they've been threatening to kill since the Obama years. Various government officials and economists have looked at the scheme, and announced "it could work."

With the debt ceiling crisis back for 2023, the Mint the Coin talk is back as well. As Mike the Mad Biologist blogged recently: 

This bit of arcana matters because Speaker McCarthy in his desperate attempt to stop getting punched in the nuts on national television over and over again to win the House Speaker position has promised to use the debt ceiling–the process where Congress sets a cap on the amount of debt that can be issued–as economic terrorism to force all sorts of horrible policy, including sweeping Social Security cuts. Admittedly, this is a long-standing Republican strategy, but it’s become increasingly likely they will do this...

This is really stupid and ridiculous, but so is any Congress that contains QAnon conspiracists, outright fraudsters, and pedophile pimps. Meanwhile, Biden won with the majority of the vote. It’s time for him to exert his popular mandate and protect the full faith and credit of these United States...

Minting the Coin may be a ridiculous option, but it has the value of being 100 percent legal compared to some of the other options ahead of us to avoid the GOP shutdown. Dylan Matthews noted at Vox:

The Obama administration found the idea too unserious there to use, but the legal case for minting the coin is as solid as platinum. Just ask debt ceiling hardliner Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who was sufficiently concerned about the option to introduce legislation to close the platinum coin loophole. The plain text of the 1997 law clearly allows the treasury secretary to do this, and Jay Powell, the Fed chair who in a past career was an expert on the debt ceiling and its dangers, is arguably legally required to accept the coin as a deposit.

You can also imagine more serious variations on the concept. Progressive economist Mike Konczal once proposed issuing a $20 billion coin every day to keep the government running until Congress agrees to abolish the debt ceiling for good. And a $20 billion coin is, what, 1 percent as silly as a $2 trillion one?

The other options Matthews explores - Invoke the 14th Amendment's clause that the validity of the Public Debt shall not be questioned, argue that the debt ceiling is unconstitutionally interfering with the mandates Congress already gave to the Executive branch, or issue "quasi-debt securities" like government war bonds to temporarily avoid the debt crisis - all have the problem of getting challenged in the courts. Any of that would risk the possibility this current Supreme Court - controlled by Far Right jurists - using the situation to rewrite the Constitution, and giving the wingnut Republicans the chance to collapse the federal government.

The Platinum Coin can't be challenged, not in a way that could risk nuking our nation's ability to literally print money. Silly idea, yes. Legal idea, still yes.

The whole "Mint the Coin" thing is so silly I love it. It's absurdism brought to a political stage already overwhelmed by Far Right hypocrisy and faux Fox-Not-News outrage. Republicans want to destroy our nation's economy with another government shutdown? Here's a single coin to resolve the whole matter, nyah.

Hell, I want the Mint to print that coin now, just for the thrill of it. Think, A TRILLION DOLLAR COIN, small enough to fit in a pocket. It'll be like Scrooge McDuck's Number One Dime, a tempting target of cat burglars everywhere. The comic book and action movie industries would have a field day coming up with stories about the Coin Heist to End All Coin Heists. And then all you gotta do is go to a country that won't press charges and slap that coin down on a bank counter and demand the bank cash it in for you. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (dude, could that happen?)

You could put the Platinum Coin behind glass and take it on a tour to every Economics college across the nation. It'll be the Mona Lisa, the King Tut Coffin, the unreleased copy of the Batgirl movie of coins. Have students working towards their MBAs lining up $5000 a ticket just to press their noses against the glass and dream of touching that coin.

Get that coin pressed today, US Mint, and President Biden could use it as the coin flip to this year's Super Bowl!!! YES!!!!!

So many possibilities with a Platinum Trillion-Dollar Coin.

Do it, Treasury Secretary Yellen. PRINT THE COIN. BECOME A GOD. BWHAHAHAHAHA.

How the trump Shutdown *Ended*

This ended up being a crazier day than earlier realized. Via Sam Stein, Sam Brodley and Jackie Kucinich at the Daily Beast:

President Donald Trump agreed on Friday to fund the government without money for his much-desired border wall, effectively bringing an end to the longest shutdown in American history.

The deal extends funding for the government at current levels until February 15  and include a “vehicle” for lawmakers to begin discussions between the two congressional chambers over a larger bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security and border security specifically...

trump tried to bluff his way through the speech by bringing up more fearmongering about kidnappers and slave traffickers, and that if he didn't get his wall by the February deadline he would force another Shutdown, I don't think anybody was believing his bluster by that point.

Though Trump spoke defiantly, the consensus view from officials of both parties on Capitol Hill was the Trump’s clock had been cleaned. The president had insisted to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that he would not sign any bill to open the government that did not include $5.7 billion in wall funding. But amid sagging poll numbers and partial closures of critical government functions—including, on Friday morning, flights in and out of LaGuardia Airport in New York—Trump committed on Friday to doing just that...

I noted in earlier essays on the #trumpShutdown how this would end - when the unpaid federal workers would reach the breaking point and force a major confrontation - and I'd like to think I was correct. Earlier this morning, just as the Stone arrest was gathering notice, word quickly got out that LaGuardia Airport in Queens had to ground flights and suspend operations due to not enough Air Traffic Controllers coming in to work.

It cascaded from there. Newark Airport had to ground flights. That left JFK running at whatever reduced (yet swamped) level it could. At that point we are talking about closing off transit to one of the biggest and busiest business centres - NEW YAWK CITY - in the world.

Several East Coast hubs had to delay. DC's national airport was suffering cancelled flights. By lunchtime even the Atlanta airport - a MAJOR hub to the Southeast states - was threatening to close. Faced with a serious crisis - the collapse of the entire airline industry and the stranding of hundreds of thousands of angry travelers, not to mention every other business tied to air travel - trump seemed to cave. Just look at the timing: Nothing else - the destruction of national parks, the suffering of workers' families, the loss of public trust - made trump panic. A serious hit to our financial institutions was a serious wake-up call.

There is honest-to-God irony here. The beginning of the Grand Republican Revolution to dismantle the federal government started with Reagan and when he broke the Air Traffic Controllers' union in 1981. The heir to Reagan - trump - just broke when enough Air Traffic controllers called in the Blue Flu.

There are concerns trump will make another Shutdown attempt (since the current deal is a three-week Continuing Resolution). I doubt it.

trump has lost any political capital he had with this fight. he has access to a lot of weapons as President Loser of the Popular Vote, but every one that he used proved useless. The one nuclear option he has - declaring Emergency Powers - was one he kept threatening to deploy... but never did, possibly warned that such a move was gross overreach that would backfire on him. By ending the Shutdown fight without any concessions won, trump has nothing to trade with except more bluster and threats (which no one will believe).

If trump tries another Shutdown, all that has to happen now is the federal workers call in sick on Day One and make trump answer for the entire nation shutting down as a consequence. They all saw it. Workers may not be able to strike but they are realizing they can all punch back as one, and make that blow hurt.

trump lost ground on his approval numbers directly related to his mishandling of the Shutdown. A lot of independent voters - the ones who respect/vote for competency - will not vote for him again. If there are more Shutdowns more Americans will still believe he and the Republicans are to blame.

The frustrations among the other Republican officials during this Shutdown grew noticeable and got out to the public. While the Republicans still excel at presenting a unified facade - they still have a Fox Not News Narrative to follow - they are starting to show cracks and an unwillingness to charge into any further suicide runs.

And it's not just the politicians biting back. The Far Right punditry are outraged that trump caved (and caved so easily). President-Wannabe Ann Coulter - the one who originally bullied trump (!) into starting the Shutdown in the first place - went into Angry Panda mode. While there may be an attempt later on to pull back on the criticism to get the wingnuts to stay "on message," this is an affront the Right Wing Noise Machine will never forgive.

And the kicker: trump gave a major victory to not only Nancy Pelosi (who needed to demonstrate her authority as Speaker of the House and quash any intraparty resistance) but also Chuck Schumer  (whose earlier reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker made him look vulnerable to his Democratic base) who needed to demonstrate his resolve as Minority Leader in the Senate. By taking trump's punches - and by punching back - Pelosi demonstrated trump was beatable.

Better for Pelosi: She demonstrated the Speaker of the House still has power in the modern era, and has already earned comparisons to some of the greatest Speakers in our nation's history.

Worse for trump: Pelosi proved trump has no skill.

The "Art of the Deal" gave way to the "Power of Resistance".

Welcome to the long weekend, trump. You'll likely fume, you're likely going to tweet like a madman, you'd better check in with your lawyers about the next round of Mueller indictments.

P.S.: to the next likely targets of those indictments - Kushner and donnie junior - don't forget the FBI likes to make arrests between the hours of 11:39 PM and 6:27 AM. You will never get a good night's rest again bwhahahahahaha.

That Bubbly Sensation of Hope

I've commented on polling before. I've especially commented on how polling on trump's approval/popularity should be taken with a grain of salt because of how the Far Right adoration of him creates a false impression. For example, the fact that trump rarely if ever slid below the 40 percent approval threshold because the only number that mattered was the too-high 85-90 percent approval from just Republican voters skewing the averages.

Until now.

Referring to Martin Longman at Washington Monthly:

Until today, Trump’s approval numbers had been declining slowly but still holding at around 40 percent. A handful of recent surveys had him falling into the thirties, but they looked like outliers. But now the new AP/NORC survey has him at 34 percent and he’s fallen below the 40 percent threshold in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of polls. Even Rasmussen and Hill-HarrisX have Trump at his lowest mark despite being consistent outliers in his favor...

It's not so much the decline in Republican support trump has - it's still pretty high - it's from the collapse of the Non-Party/Independent voters no longer viewing trump as either/or "effective" / "harmless". In this month of trump running into the brick wall of Pelosi's Democratic House, people are starting to see how bad of a dealer - how inept of a leader - he is.

Looking at the aggregate polling of the last two years actually shows a lower point in trump's polling numbers in late 2017, but he did crawl back out of that into the low-40s where he's usually treading water.

But the likelihood his numbers went up due to the Midterms - when the voting base was invested in turnout for his Congressional allies - is probably an explanation for that rise. Now that trump is on his own again, his numbers are sliding down due to his own bad moves.

It's interesting to note how this compares to previous Presidents. Obama in particular had an oscillating polling chart of approval. But where Obama bounced between 55 percent to 45 percent approval on average, trump is bouncing between 44 to 34 percent, vastly more unpopular than any other person sitting in the White House (even Dubya had months over 50 percent approval).

That's what happens when you're the President Loser of the Popular Vote.

It's that consistency of low polling that has me feeling a bit better about the numbers. The polling for non-Republican voters have sunk to near-record lows for an incumbent Republican candidate. For all the odds that favor incumbency in re-elections, there are election cycles when incumbency can't overcome bad optics. An incumbent who never breaks over the 50 percent water margin in polling even after years in office to prove his (in)abilities isn't going to find enough voters to win again (and trump never even won a majority in the first place).

And trump can't overcome the political axiom from Machiavelli I keep referring to: Always avoid being Hated rather than Feared or Loved, because when you lose people to Hate they will never look at you otherwise and they will do everything they can to throw you out of power.

It's not the low approval numbers, it's the opposite end of the scale, the DISAPPROVAL numbers, and as long as those are at 60 percent or so, trump ain't winning anything other than the 2020 primaries (if any Republican tries to primary him, that is).

There's one other polling number to keep an eye on. Voter turnout. The reason why Dems did so well winning the U.S. House of Representatives against hard odds - Republicans pushing every voter suppression trick in the book - was because voter turnout was the highest for a Midterms (Non-Presidential) Election cycle in over 100 years:

See that sharp spike on the brown line?

Granted, it's not a guarantee the Presidential election turnout (the gray line) will go up, but there is a trend there, you should notice the charts of the two different election cycles tend to match at peaks and valleys.

If there was that sharp a swing UP in voter turnout for the Midterms, we should expect - we should work towards - a similar spike UP in the Presidential Election in 2020.

And that's not a good sign for Republicans or trump: More voters will tend to come not from the extremist voter blocs that show up no matter what, the expanded voter turnout comes from the moderate/Independent voters who are rarely encouraged to vote on their own.

If THAT moderate, Indy leaning bloc shows up to vote in higher numbers, it's usually because of one thing: THEY'RE PISSED. Let's be honest: People don't vote when they're content, they tend to vote angry. And they vote angry against the SOBs mismanaging everything (hint: name rhymes with DUMP).

The 2016 Election cycle wasn't a good indicator of that, sad to note: there was a split among Indy voters 46-42 favoring trump over Hillary. For all my hope during that election cycle, Hillary was hated enough to lose voters. But Hillary's not running this 2020. For all the Far Right will try to do painting the Democratic candidates in as bad a light as Hillary, none of them share Hillary's unfavorable numbers. trump is going to be the most hated candidate on the ticket in 2020, and as Machiavelli warns, never be that hated...

So looking at several factors - trump's unpopularity gap reaching Dubya-esque levels, trump's losing support among non-partisan voters, higher voter turnout - there is a bit of hope this morning. There is a feeling that the nation as a whole is recognizing the nightmare we're in and doing something to stop it.

I did write before that the only number that mattered was the insanely artificially high approval numbers trump got from his Far Right Republican base. Granted, that's still in effect. But all it's doing now is keeping trump out of the mid-20s approval where he deserves to be. As trump starts to hover in the mid-30s at least for longer periods of time, fellow Republicans facing their own re-election concerns are going to view trump as the millstone he is.

The only thing from that point on will be the Far Right Media's control of the Republican Party to keep everyone in line. But even that is going to break sooner or later when their own Narrative can't support a deeply unpopular bastard like trump. Already unelected overlords Coulter and Rush are looking for the lifeboats.

So, today in 2019, there is a reason to know hope.

Problem is, 2020 is still too far away on the calendar to end this nightmare fast enough.

C'MON MUELLER INDICT EVERYBODY BETWEEN trump AND PUTIN ALREADY.

/sigh

The Not-So-Open Secret Why the Far Right Hates A Working Government (w/ Update)

Update: Hello again everyone visiting from Crooks & Liars and through Mike's Blog Round-Up! I should have a "Roger Stone In Jail" article up later today on my blog if you wanna check back in later... just waiting to see if any further indictments pop up (c'mon Mueller I got good money on Kush!) Thanks, Batocchio!

Update to the Update: Not an article per se but a Schadenfreude-licious song lyric in honor of Roger's arrest: Stone In Jail (sung to the tune of "Stone In Love")

There are times when I come across an article that just needs to be shared and read in full.

Today I came across EJ Dionne's article at The Moderate Voice called "The Shutdown Trap" that is a required read:

Our core problem is a dogmatic anti-government attitude... that arose in the 1970s and ’80s. This makes it impossible for us to have a constructive debate about what government is for, what tasks it should take on, and what good it actually does.

In truth, the whole anti-government thing is fundamentally fraudulent. So is the conservative claim to believe passionately in states’ rights and local authority.

In practice, conservatives regularly vote for lots of government — so long as it serves the interests they represent. Start with farm subsidies, massive defense spending, regulations that disempower unions, and measures that sharply tilt the tax code in favor of corporate interests and the wealthy...

The shutdown reminds us that government is not the problem but the solution, or at least part of it, when it comes to many aspects of our common life.

We can see the damage done to the air transportation system, bureaus that gather useful economic statistics, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Add in the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, the Forest Service and the Weather Service. And this is a very partial list.

The glee with which President Trump has talked about a shutdown for months reflects an old conservative trope: Government is so bad, plodding and, well, useless, that people won’t mind if it disappears for a while. This faith explains why Republicans were equally cheerful when they shut down the government in the mid-1990s during a budget fight with Bill Clinton’s administration...

Unspoken in Dionne's article is the animus/anger behind the anti-government outrage of the Far Right.

The Far Right hates and fears the New Deal/Great Society elements of modern government not because of its bureaucratic burdens but because those government policies fight against racial/gender discrimination and segregation. It's not that Social Security or Medicare or Federal Aid to Schools are expensive - and are they, compared to the corporate welfare and massive tax cuts we give to the rich? -  it's that those things have to be equally applied to everyone, in order to help all the poor - minorities included - break the cycle of poverty that the conservative rich rely on to retain wealth and control.

They won't admit it, but the real reason why the Republican Far Right hates federal social aid is because it's color blind. You will notice from Dionne's article that the conservative animus against government arose in the 1970s, when the post-FDR and LBJ era saw a lot of the civil rights requirements from the 1960s laws kicked in. The more federal aid went to non-White communities and services, the more the Far Right freaked out about it.

It's not about What the federal bureaucracy does (there's still bloated spending and mismanagement in the Dept. of Defense for God's sake but the Republicans don't rail against that), it's Who the federal bureaucracy serves (everyone). If the federal government suddenly dropped all civil rights protections and aid for Blacks/Latinos/Muslims/Asians/Women/Gays/Trans I guarantee you the Republicans would have no problem re-opening government because then all the money and support will go to White Men as their God intends.

Right now, trump's Shutdown is hurting families dependent on food stamps - and while poor whites are in the mix, there's a disproportionate number of Blacks and Latinos - and not through slowdown on payments but from stopping stores from accepting SNAP money. trump's immigration stances - not just the Goddamn Wall but everything else - would punish Latino families, and we're still seeing trump's ICE rounding up honest American citizens (military veterans!) for deportation.

It's something deserving of a separate blog article, but Adam Serwer's Atlantic article is a must-read as well: for modern Republicans, Cruelty is the Point.

And that cruelty - fueled by racism and sexism and sheer hate - is why the trump Shutdown will not end on a happy note. The Far Right is going to keep pushing it until everyone they hate suffers.

And by then everything will be broken.

trump's Offer Is Still Nothing

So trump tried to come up with some proposal to offer the Congressional Democrats to make himself look like a dealmaker, but tried to do it in a way where he wouldn't give up anything while still getting his precious Goddamn Wall.

And as usual, he sucked at it. Just check all of the immediate responses from key Democrats that Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice put together.

Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice has a more detailed response of his own:

The President’s pitch this afternoon was a combination of rehashing his Oval Office address from two weeks ago with some limited sweeteners in exchange for $5.7 billion for his wall in order to try to bring the Democrats to the table and reopen the parts of the government that are in shutdown. This includes a temporary, three year DACA extension; a temporary, three year reinstatement of the Temporary Protected Status Program; and slight adjustments to the President’s hard line attempts to rewrite US law and treaty obligations in regards to those seeking asylum... 

The proposal was dead on arrival with the Democrats because the Democrats, under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, seem to have finally learned that once you pay protection the first time, you never get out from under the thumb of the people running the protection racket...

Just one word there: Danegeld.

Back to Silverman:

The President’s proposal is also dead on arrival because his outside advisors and supporters feel betrayed by what he is proposing... Ann Coulter has already lambasted it... Rush Limbaugh hasn’t weighed in yet, at least not that I’ve seen, nor has Hannity or Tucker. Ingraham sort of has on her twitter feed. My guess is they’re all waiting to see how this plays so they can figure out whether they need to slam the President to get him back into line or support him against the Democrats. Coulter really only wants full on white Christian herrenvolkism, so slamming the President on this right away is easy. Regardless, this isn’t playing well with his base and I’m sure that Stephen Miller, who both channels that base to the President and is in contact with the interest entrepreneurs who manipulate it, will do what he does best behind the scenes and by the time Senator McConnell can bring this to a vote, the President will have changed his mind again and walked away from the sweeteners.

The President cannot be negotiated with because he is not a reliable negotiator, changes his mind constantly, and lies constantly. Senator McConnell cannot be negotiated with because he is not a reliable negotiator and because he recognizes no rule, norm, tradition, and/or law unless it can be manipulated to benefit him. It is easy for the Democrats to reject this proposal. If they agree to anything before Senator McConnell brings the clean appropriations and continuing resolutions to the floor that the Senate under his leadership passed 100-0 during the lame duck session in December 2018 and the President agrees to sign it before negotiations over immigration and border security start, then they have surrendered on every legislative and policy dispute for as long as the President is in office and Senator McConnell is the leader of his caucus...

We are in a sticky situation where the Democrats can't negotiate in good faith because the people running the Republicans refuse to negotiate in good faith. It's not healthy for our nation, but that's the circumstances we're in now.

I said before, this #trumpShutdown is going to end with a third option, one where the federal government itself collapses either with too many agencies and services closing down (hurting millions) or with the federal workforce rising up in ways they normally can't - just found out last week federal employees can't strike, but there are so many public signs of stress that a mass strike is unavoidable at this point - and compels trump to re-open government. But that third option will break the norms of governance as well, and it won't end cleanly...

There is of course a fourth option: Mueller finishes his grand juries into Russia-trump activities and he arrests every key Republican - trump included - on the Putin Payroll (tm). But there's no guarantee of that, and DAMMIT MUELLER WE'RE WAITING WE'VE BEEN WAITING YOU'RE WORSE THAN GEORGE RR MARTIN AT THIS POINT ARRRRRRGGGHHHH.

Ahem.

To make a more relevant cultural reference, we keep harking back to The Godfather movies to highlight the ineptitude, greed, and overall gangster behavior of trump and his Inner Circle of handlers (AKA his kids). There has been the constant references to the lot of them being an Army of Fredos, but here I'm thinking of the scene where corrupt Senator Geary tries to extort Michael:

Except that trump is not Michael here. trump is the corrupt sonofabitch Geary. trump is trying to squeeze the Democrats here, trying to squeeze them to get every penny he can, all out of spite and racist demagoguery even as he ignores his own sinful hypocrisy.

No, the Democrats are playing Michael here, and the offer is this trump: Nothing.

And you're the one who's going to be paying...

How Low Will the trump Shutdown Go Day 25

This just crossed the newswire, regarding how the Republican-backed Shutdown is hurting our American workers (via NBC News):

The nation's 42,000 active-duty Coast Guard members missed their scheduled paycheck Tuesday, as the only military branch to work without pay during the government shutdown.

Because the Coast Guard is under the Department of Homeland Security, it is getting no funding during the shutdown. All other parts of the military are under the still-funded Department of Defense.

Right now I can think of 42,000 families extremely pissed off at trump's obsession to force Congress to pay for his monument to his ego.

And the idea of forming a mess of a Homeland Security Department is starting to bite our own armed forces in the collective ass.

The thing about a partial Shutdown is that the longer it goes the likelier it's going to cut off other parts of the federal government that had been funded but will soon run out of money.

And this Shutdown will NOT end because the Republican leadership - not just trump but also Mitch McConnell may he rot in the deepest pit of Hell with the other traitors - profits from this destruction. This has been the political party obsessed with cutting at the federal system with a fireaxe, whittling it down to where Grover Norquist can drown it in his bathtub, and the Republicans are reveling in watching federal workers struggle to work at jobs that won't pay them and then stumbling out to the streets to beg for food.

This Shutdown won't end until it becomes perfectly clear too many people and too many families are suffering for the nation to ignore, when the workers fight back somehow and in any way they can, and there's nothing left but the tears to count.

And by then, too many will be hurting that didn't deserve any of this.

GODDAMN YOU, REPUBLICANS. Curse your dark empty hearts.

So What Exactly the Hell Happened With trump's Bad Address?

The reviews for last night's brouhaha have been less than exemplary. To quote from Frum at the Atlantic:

Well, that was the shortest, most easily resolved national emergency in U.S. history. Twelve hours ago, the president was preparing to set aside the regular process of law. By 9 p.m. eastern time? Not so much...

...But Trump has never wanted a solution. He has wanted a divisive issue and a personal monument. Futile though that monument may be, he could have gotten it, too, had he been willing to trade something attractive to Democrats. But Trump was never willing to bargain. Senate Republicans would not let him: They saw no point in the border wall, and were unwilling to barter for it.

More fatefully, though, Trump’s vision of leadership allows no room for bartering. He imagines the presidency to operate on the principle, “I command; you obey.” More even than his wall, he wanted to coerce the Democrats into a surrender by the sheer force of his mighty will. Except Trump did not have the clout to achieve that...

That was essentially the whole point of trump's performance. By going up onto the national stage - bullying the media into doing so - and then using the moment spreading his usual anti-immigrant fearmongering to call out the Democrats like Pelosi and Schumer and make them succumb to his mere existence as Loser of the Popular Vote leader of the Free World.

trump had promised a serious Address to the nation about the "humanitarian and border security crisis" as a lead-up to likely assuming emergency powers to do whatever the hell he wanted without Congress having a say. There had been reports Monday about how he'd ordered his staffers and lawyers that weekend to look into trump reaching into the Emergency Powers bad of tricks to see what he could pull out.

They apparently told trump anything he tried would immediately get held up in courts and overridden by both wings of Congress (with an open Republican Senate revolt) to where he'd never get to use a single line of Executive Orders.

Without that particular hammer, trump's entire performance was just for show. It wouldn't have intimidated anyone who wasn't already so.

So what happens now is that the #trumpShutdown continues. What happens now is that trump resumes his bluster and bullying - just this morning he went back to the argument he can "assume emergency powers at any time" - while the Democrats in the House press more levers to get government working again.

I'd argue for everyone to remain vigilant, however. trump isn't done with his power grab. he'll try something else next. he'll get worse, he has no other direction but down to go...

How The trump Shutdown Ends

Right now, the news is not that great (via Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein at The Daily Beast):

During Friday’s meeting at the White House over the ongoing shutdown standoff, President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made little substantive progress as Pelosi and Schumer urged Trump to reopen the government by Tuesday, according to three people familiar with the meeting.

One of these knowledgeable sources told The Daily Beast President Trump kicked off the meeting with a rant lasting roughly 15 minutes that included his $5.6 billion demand for a border wall, and threatened that he was willing to keep the government closed for “years” if that’s what it took to get his wall...

Along with saying the word “fuck” at least three times throughout the meeting, the president bizarrely stated that he did not want to call the partial government shutdown a “shutdown,” according to the source. Instead, he referred to it as a “strike.” (Many of the federal employees affected by the weeks-long shutdown have been working without pay. That is essentially the opposite of a strike.)

...The White House did not respond to a request for comment as of press time. But according to one source familiar with the meeting, Schumer did press the president to reopen the government before continuing negotiations on a border wall. Otherwise, the Senator suggested, the president was effectively using government employees and shuttered government agencies as leverage.

“I’m not going to say it’s for leverage, but I’m not going to get a deal unless I do this," the president replied, according to the source.

The Democrats in the room shook their heads, the source said, as if to say "so, you’re doing it for leverage…"

This is where we are at.

trump - having been bullied by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, which should tell you who really runs Bartertown the Republican Party - has put his entire ego on the line to get his goddamned and unpopular Wall funded. This is where he's threatening to make the Shutdown last for "years" even though simple logic should tell him that's impossible. As this Shutdown continues, it will spread to more agencies, cause more problems for even trump's voters (many of them ironically rely on their Medicare coverage and Social Security checks that are currently held up). Then again, trump doesn't care about that part, which is why it's so easy for him to pull this stunt. The cruelty is policy.

Right now, trump wants the Democrats to fold and to bow to his will, much like how he forced the Republicans to accept him as a primary candidate and then succumb to his bullying. It's his entire business model: humiliate, bully, lie, and take from those who have what he wants, and get them to accept the shit he gives them in return. This is trump's attempt to break the Democratic Party, so he can't end this Shutdown (unless completely on his terms).

However, this is where politics exposes trump for the amateur and failure that he is.

The Democratic Party doesn't have to give trump a damn thing.

The Democratic Party is coming from a different power base than trump, and that they have to answer to a completely separate group of people. A group of people making up the majority of American voters who all just happen to hate the ever-loving hell out of the Shitgibbon.

The Democratic leadership also has to be aware - and have shown it so far - of the old adage of "Once you pay the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane." In modern parlance, and in our terms, we should call it "Once you become trump's bitch you will ALWAYS be trump's bitch." So in that regards, the Democratic party cannot succumb to trump's bullying tactics: If they do, all trump has to do is wield the threat of further Shutdowns to get what he wants (which is everything, including shutting down every investigation into his criminal acts before and during his control of the White House). Even attempts to negotiate a bipartisan deal - where Dems get something of value in exchange for giving in on Wall funding - aren't going to be worth it (to make another quote: A deal with the Devil is no deal at all).

So the Democratic Party can't end this Shutdown.

The thing about this Shutdown, it may have started out as a "partial" one but the longer it goes it will close more and more agencies and services. We're already seeing the effects on our parks, being closed because of the pileup of human waste without staffers to keep them clean.

We're also seeing it affect the federal employees at the public level, especially with the TSA at our airports. Nearly every TSA worker is forced to work without pay, and it's getting bad enough to where hundreds of them are calling in sick with what's known as the Blue Flu (because cops are forced by law to never go on strike, they get around it by enough of them calling in sick to make their absence a clear burden).

There are about 800,000 federal employees who have been forced to work without pay for more than two weeks (and going), and they are getting at the point where their bills are piling up. Despite the twisted beliefs of the Far Right, a lot of employed full-time people DO live paycheck to paycheck because a lot of people's pay really SUCKS. We are not getting paid enough to cover the mortgage/rent, the food, the car and gas, the utilities, clothes, cable/phone/Internet, and Gods help us any medical emergencies (and then MULTIPLY all of that for your kids).

This is an employment crisis about to get worse. One of two things will happen because of this: Many of those 800,000 employees will quit because they will need to find a job that will PAY them, with the side effect of our agencies unable to fill those vacancies because their HR departments are closed; or Many of those 800,00 employees - the ones within travel distance - will march on the White House - because they know damn well who is at fault here - and create the worst possible optics for trump and the Republicans to where enough GOP officials break ranks and end the Shutdown.

It will all depend from that point how trump will respond to either of those events. If there are mass walkouts, trump will simply crow he's cutting back on bloated government and revel despite the damage done with lost employees. If there's mass protests in front of the White House, trump will blame others and maybe even threaten protesters by calling out the National Guard (unless they're on unpaid leave too).

trump may then respond with that threatened "National Emergency" idea he's been throwing out there. Where he's got the idea he can call up the military to do his bidding and do all his dirty work for him, such as filling in as scabs at certain jobs like the TSA... and even worse wasting manpower and defense spending by building that goddamned Wall for him. The dubious legality of such a move is severe enough to be viewed as a Constitutional Crisis all its own.

And that's not even getting into the shock waves of this Shutdown reaching the financial sector. The Wall Street banks aren't too happy about the Shutdown's effects - even with the benefit of losing SEC oversight for the nonce, because the SEC also helps with setting up valuable IPOs - and they can step in at some point to slap the Republican Party - if not trump, definitely the Senators - into ending the Shutdown for them.

Granted, there are a number of variables at play here. Everything is unknown and in chaos.

All we can be certain of is this. Given the damage already done, given how likely trump will want to extend this nightmare for his sadistic pleasure. This is how the Shutdown will end.

In tears.