1. This is a headline from the right-wing outhouse known as Townhall.com. It is like The Daily Caller or The Blaze, but even stupider. To wit:
The idea that it would be a "surprise" to anyone that the public would mostly blame Republicans for a shutdown demonstrates a level of delusional thinking that you ordinarily see in people who talk to lampposts and shit in alleyways. It also shows that there is a dangerous lack of understanding of history: when Newt Gingrich took his great stand against a budget deal and shut down the government twice, Americans blamed the guy who refused to compromise.
If this is what right-wingers believe, that it's shocking that Americans aren't standing in lockstep with them, we are well and truly fucked beyond fucked.
2. As Greg Sargent and Kevin Drum point out, Republicans seem to have forgotten the actual meaning of the word "compromise." Let's explain this with another playlet, a sequel of sorts to last week's:
Crazy Person: Okay, let's compromise. If you want to borrow my car to go to the store, you don't have to punch yourself in the balls until you vomit. You only have to punch yourself in the balls until you double over in pain.
Sane Person: But I still have to punch myself in the balls. I don't see how that's a compromise.
Crazy Person: I gave a little. See? You used to have to punch until you vomited. Now just until you nearly collapse. So we're agreed, right? You can use my car and get us some food.
Sane Person: But all I get out of the deal is a bit less ball-punching.
Crazy Person: That's right. I compromised. Why won't you agree? You also get to buy some food.
Sane Person: But you'll eat the food, too.
Crazy Person: Exactly. So we both win. See? Compromise.
3. As we travel into the depths of Tea Party depravity, even as Senate Republicans keep trying to convince alleged GOP "moderates" that Ted Cruz is leading the House into an electoral pit of angry sodomy with sharp objects, the lowest of the low responses might be from Marc Thiessen, the torture advocate and Lumpy Space Princess of the Washington Post opinions page. In his latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the inane babblings of a faux insider who would still be picked last for the company softball team"), Thiessen chides House Republicans for threatening a shutdown over Obamacare. Why? Because it's wrong? Because it's harmful to everyone? Because it's unprecedented to try to get a law overturned through this method?
Oh, no. It's because this fight fucks up the next one, the one over the debt ceiling. Yeah, Thiessen says that the House should have kept its powder dry and forced Obama and the Senate to capitulate over raising the debt ceiling: "If Republicans had taken their stand on the debt ceiling instead, there would be no weeks of bad news coverage — because the Democrats would be capitulating instead of celebrating."
In other words, this fight isn't bugfuck insane enough for Thiessen. If crashing the economy isn't on the table, it's all a waste of time.
4. Gotta say: we're kind of in uncharted territory here for the next couple of weeks. It's kind of scary. In another age, this would be civil war-igniting shit (although, luckily, Americans are too fat and lazy to bother fighting anywhere but on anonymous comment threads). Barack Obama has been holding the line so far, but, if necessary, he needs to take it further, perhaps to that 14th Amendment solution he has adamantly opposed using. Listen to Bill Clinton, who said he would do it "without hesitation and force the courts to stop me."
Obama needs to push the right-wing radicals over the edge, to get them to completely lose their shit so their flesh dissolves and they can be revealed for the monsters they actually are.
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