More of Prince.
Controversy era, 1999 and breakthrough: 1980–84
In 1980 Prince released the album, Dirty Mind, which he recorded in his own studio. The album was certified gold and the attendant single “Uptown” reached No. 5 on the Billboard Dance chart and No. 5 on the Hot Soul Singles charts. Prince was also the opening act for Rick James’ 1980 Fire it Up tour. Dirty Mind contained sexually explicit material, including the title song, “Head”, and the song “Sister”. In February 1981, Prince made his first appearance on Saturday Night Live, performing “Partyup”.
In October 1981, Prince released the album, Controversy. He played several dates in support of it, at first as one of the opening acts for the Rolling Stones, who were then on tour in the U.S. He began 1982 with a small tour of college towns where he was the headlining act. The songs on Controversy were published by Controversy Music[26] – ASCAP, a practice he continued until the Emancipation album in 1996.
Controversy also marked the introduction of Prince’s use of abbreviated spelling, such as spelling the words you as U, to as 2, and for as 4, as indicated by the inclusion of the track “Jack U Off”. (His earlier song titles had used conventional spelling.[27]) By 2002, MTV.com noted that “[n]ow all of his titles, liner notes and Web postings are written in his own shorthand spelling, as seen on 1999’s Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, which featured ‘Hot Wit U.'”[28]
In 1981, Prince formed a side project band called the Time. The band released four albums between 1981 and 1990, with Prince writing and performing most of the instrumentation and backing vocals, with lead vocals by Morris Day.[citation needed]
In late 1982, Prince released a double album, 1999, which sold over three million copies.[29] The title track was a protest against nuclear proliferation and became his first top ten hit in countries outside the U.S. Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” was one of the first two videos by a black artist played in heavy rotation on MTV, along with Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”.[30]
The song “Delirious” also placed in the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Love you
That’s EXACTLY HOW i dance!! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HMu_gpp8c18
Cracks emerge in House GOP on shutdown strategy
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/325905-cracks-emerge-in-house-gop-on-government-shutdown#ixzz2gVgWie32
Cracks are starting to emerge among House Republicans on their government funding strategy.
A handful of Republicans in the lower chamber on Tuesday embraced a “clean” continuing resolution (CR): Reps. Pat Meehan (Pa.), Jon Runyan (N.J.), Scott Rigell (Va.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Frank Wolf (Va.).
They joined Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and GOP New York Reps. Pete King and Michael Grimm, who endorsed a clean CR earlier this week.
A “clean” bill would not include provisions to delay or defund ObamaCare, and is supported by the White House and Senate Democrats.
In a Tweet, Meehan stated, “I came to DC to fix gov’t, not shut it down. It’s time for House to vote for a clean, short-term funding bill to bring Senate to the table.”
Similarly, Rigell wrote on Twitter, “We fought the good fight. Time for a clean CR.”
Wolf agrees with Rigell, a Wolf aide told The Hill. In a statement on the House floor Tuesday, Wolf said, “This is bad for America. It is bad for America. Enough is enough. It’s time to be leaders. It’s time to govern. Open up the government.”
Speaking of cracks…….every time I come to this page, it lands on that photo of Prince.
LOL!
LOL!
BWA HA HA HA Prince is one sexy mutha—–%$#a!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp6gpska5QE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H848GOudaSQ
Guess how Peter King voted along with other memebers of congress.
NEW YORK
Members of Congress by State
H.R. 3590 Obamacare Vote| H.R. 2 Repeal Vote | H.R.6079 Repeal Vote
3. Peter King (R)
Read more: http://www.atr.org/representative-vote-obamacare-repeal-a7128
HAVE A SEAT, PETER KING. You’re a FRAUD.
We need a graphic for this Jay Carney smackdown of Ed Henry, SG2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLngxhc2eA0
LOL Jay: “Reassertion of GOP talking points.” Ed Henry’s a GOP water-carrying fool.
GOP must give up demand for defunding Obamacare
Published: September 29, 2013
SNIP
For now, the nation is left with a House majority that wants to make trouble, not fix it. And on the funding issue the diehards want Speaker John Boehner to take the most destructive course: a government shutdown and a slide toward the United States’ defaulting on its debts, an event that would upset the global economy and could throw the U.S. economy back into recession.
Rep. Richard Hudson, a Republican from North Carolina’s 8th District, is one of the members urging the House leadership to drive a hard bargain with the Senate.
“I think the question is, do we go with the carrot or the stick strategy?” Hudson said. “Do we try to do something bad enough to force (Democratic Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid to negotiate with us, or do we do something that we think he can’t refuse?”
“Do something bad enough” isn’t the language of real leaders, real patriots or even real adults. How about doing something good enough? How about doing what’s best for the United States and its people?
SNIP
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/09/29/3239189/at-the-brink.html#storylink=cpy
The Shutdown Party: Our view
The Editorial Board, USATODAY 10:54 a.m. EDT October 1, 2013
In this case, however, the “they’re all bums” reaction is off-base. This shutdown is not the result of the two parties acting equally irresponsibly. It is the product of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, controlled by a deeply disaffected base that demands legislative hostage-taking in an effort to get what it has not been able to attain through the electoral process or the judiciary.
Republicans in the House are making demands that are both preposterous and largely unrelated to budgetary matters. In return for keeping government running (and, even more ominously, for paying its bills), they want President Obama to undermine the health care law that he ran on in 2008 and 2012, and now considers his signature domestic accomplishment.
No president of either party could accept that kind of badgering. No president should, as it would set a terrible precedent.
..”Ending the shutdown will probably require House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to stand up to the Tea Party purists and allow the full House to vote on a “clean” bill to fund the government, without any amendments about ObamaCare. Whether and when Boehner will do so remains to be seen. In the meantime, if the shutdown drags on, the inconveniences pile up and the toll on the economy becomes more apparent, it’s clear where the blame is properly laid.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/10/01/republicans-obamacare-shutdown-blame-editorials-debates/2896557/
You Insisted on Ugly
by BooMan
Tue Oct 1st, 2013 at 01:30:13 PM EST
It isn’t necessary to actually leak the email correspondence between Harry Reid and John Boehner’s staffs in order to humiliate Boehner. It is sufficient to merely threaten to do so. I understand the anger Democrats are feeling, and I guess we should expect them to eventually start violating long-standing norms about acceptable behavior when confronted with a Republican Party that has no respect for long-standing norms of acceptable behavior.
A lot of people grew accustomed to the Democrats making accommodations to keep the government functioning, but they appear to have reached their bottom line. We are in the first year of the president’s second term, and we have to break the back of crises governance now or we’ll be stuck with it for the next three and a half years. What this means is that historical norms and niceties are no longer the top Democratic priority. Victory is now the top priority, and that means that Boehner should expect to be ducking 95mph fastballs aimed directly at his head.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/10/1/11853/1232
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSTd1LuiVUs
NOT any more, House Rethugs.
There’s a bipartisan bill that’s been proposed in the House (H.R. 3223), that would provide back pay for all federal employees who were involuntarily put out of work today.
If you could call or drop a line to your Congresscritter and ask them to support H.R. 3223,
Through the rabbit hole
By Liberal Librarian
So, for the second time in 17 years, Republicans—in a fit of pique—have shut down the government.
No, Barack Obama didn’t shut down the government. Funding government operations is the basic function of a Congress. Defunding, then delaying, then delaying the individual mandate of Obamacare has nothing to do with the budget. Obamacare is already fully paid for and brings down the deficit. Demanding that Obamacare be done away with as a price for not shutting down the government is similar to Newt Gingrich shutting down the government in 1995 because he had to ride at the back of Air Force One. One has nothing to do with the other.
At this point we have to ask: what will it take for our fellow citizens to wake up?
This has all come about because too many on the “left” didn’t see change happening fast enough, and decided to sit out in 2010. This has all come about because too many Obama voters from 2008 thought they had done their job, and the 2010 midterms didn’t matter. This has all come about because too many of our fellow citizens don’t take responsibility for their own agency, think that voting once every four years is the sum of their civic duty, and expect others to fight their battles for them while they lift not a finger.
This has all come about because Ed Schultz, a man with a megaphone, and others like him told Democratic voters to stay home in 2010 to teach Democrats a lesson for not loading up the ACA with ponies and candy.
This has all come about because one of the two major political parties has descended into a mania not seen in Western civilization since the Jacobins in revolutionary France stocked up on guillotines. The fact that President Obama has not only stymied their own cherished aspirations, but has continually succeeded in getting his programs enacted in the face of their opposition, has driven them to a dark place.
This has all come about because too many Americans reward ignorance and fear, rather than hope and intelligence. In no sane society should Louis Gohmert and Michelle Bachmann have any positions of responsibility. In no sane society should John Boehner be third in line to the Presidential succession. In no sane society should that viper Eric Cantor dictate what bills get to the House floor. Which makes me question whether we’re in a sane society.
http://theobamadiary.com/2013/10/01/through-the-rabbit-hole/
ALL.OF.THIS. Some of these White folks have lost their minds
As GOP Shuts Down Government, Democrats Gain Needed Edge to Retake House
Tuesday, October 01, 2013 | Posted by Spandan C at 10:55 AM
At 12:01 eastern time today, the Republicans forced the federal government to shut down, causing national parks to close, crippling medical research and the CDC’s ability to respond to disease outbreaks, and shutting down employers’ ability to verify a prospective employee’s work eligibility, among other things. They did this in an insane last ditch, cynical attempt to undo health care reform, which took effect this morning anyway.
But while Republicans have utterly failed in their attempt to deny health care to 30 million people and to repeal already-in-effect protections for those who have insurance despite taking the government’s funding hostage, a different hostage crisis is happening inside the GOP. The Tea Party has taken the Republican party hostage, and the GOP’s continual display of Stockholm Syndrome seems to finally be costing them dearly in the public eye. The self-inflicted wound from the Republicans over a job as simple as keeping the government funded has given Democrats a 9-point advantage in 2014’s generic House ballot, according to a just-released Quinnipiac poll.
The poll showed that voters gave the nod to a generic Democrat over a generic Republican ahead of the 2014 congressional races, 43 percent to 34 percent. According to Quinnipiac, that’s the widest advantage enjoyed by Democrats on that particular question.
That 9-point lead, incidentally, is just a tad above what Democrats will need to take over the House in the aftermath of severe Republican gerrymandering in 2011.
It is clear from the Quinnipiac poll that the wide lead for Democrats and the free-fall of the GOP is largely the result of the Republican government shutdown attempts (and now, the Republican government shutdown reality). Americans oppose shutting down the government over the Affordable Care Act by a stunning 50-point margin (72-22 percent), and oppose defaulting the United States over Obamacare by a near 40-point margin. The gap has only widened as Republicans have brought us closer and closer to a shutdown, pushing us over this morning.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/10/gop-shutdown-gives-democrats-edge-theyd.html
Yepper, flat out broke those brains.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QSLMZ3igO-c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=22AfMqSMNhI
Uploaded on May 31, 2010 – by Sarah Hergert who writes:
from Wikipedia:
“Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (January 2, 1884 – March 25, 1951) was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company produced some films, he is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century and the most prominent producer of race films. He produced both silent films and “talkies” after the industry changed to incorporate speaking actors.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Micheaux
Congressmen Still Boozing As Government Shuts Down
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/congressmen-drinking_n_4020023.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
With just hours to go until a government shutdown, Congressmen couldn’t seem to agree on much except the fact that drinks were in order.
Reporters tweeted Monday night that they could smell booze on the lawmakers working to strike a last-minute spending deal on Capitol Hill:
That is really a shame.
John Boehner’s Shutdown
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/opinion/john-boehners-shutdown.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
By midnight on Tuesday, the leadership failure of Speaker John Boehner was complete. By encouraging the impossible quest of House Republicans to dismantle health care reform, he pushed the country into a government shutdown that will now begin to take a grievous economic toll.
At any point, Mr. Boehner could have stopped it. Had he put on the floor a simple temporary spending resolution to keep the government open, without the outrageous demands to delay or defund the health reform law, it could easily have passed the House with a strong majority, with sizable support from Republican members, many of whom are aware of how badly this collapse will damage their party.
Harry Reid’s communication director telling it all on twitter. LOL, Politico finally published the whole thing.
——————————-
Adam Jentleson @AJentleson9m
“Boehner wondered aloud at 1 pt whether he & [Reid] cld quietly slip some language into a bill to [keep subsidies] w/out..public attention.”
Adam Jentleson @AJentleson11m
“Boehner’s aides vehemently deny that the speaker’s private efforts contradict his public statements on the issue.” http://www.politico.com/story/… …
Adam Jentleson @AJentleson11m
Politico: “Boehner & his aides worked for months w/Reid, Hoyer & others, to save” ACA subsidies for members & staff. http://www.politico.com/story/… …
Adam Jentleson @AJentleson12m
Politico: John Boehner’s private fight for Hill health subsidies http://www.politico.com/story/… …
“Rally to Save Black Studies at Temple University”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YyOi6lfyqls
“Dean Attempts to Diminish Temple Univ.’s Prestigious African-American Studies Dept., Sparks Protests”
April 14, 2013
http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/04/news/dean-attempts-to-diminish-temple-univ-s-prestigious-african-american-studies-dept-sparks-protests/
(I can’t find an article after this date to know how the situation stands today.)
There is a petition here:
https://www.change.org/petitions/supporters-of-black-studies-support-african-american-studies-at-temple-university
Ted Cruz’s Dad Suggests Obama Is A Muslim
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-s-dad-suggests-obama-is-a-muslim-audio
The father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggested Friday that President Barack Obama is a practicing Muslim and slammed “RINOs” for not backing his son’s efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act.
Rafael Cruz made the remarks at a Republican dinner near Denver. A two-minute clip of the speech was posted on the liberal blog ColaradoPols.com, which shared a longer excerpt of the remarks with Politico.
A Cuban immigrant and a pastor, Cruz claimed that Obama has pledged to “side with the Muslims” if “the winds shift,” prompting a reaction from an audience member.
“He is Muslim,” shouted a woman.
“[Sen. John] McCain couldn’t say that because it wasn’t politically correct,” Cruz responed. “It is time we stop being politically correct!”
It never ends. I wish there were a head count of how many really stupid people there are in this country over the age of 18. It would be a good thing to know because then we could quantify the problem. How many of them are out there?
“Black Priests of the Isis Cult”
Excerpt:
http://www.theroot.com/views/black-priests-isis-cult
Also, of interest, is this National Geographic article:
“The Black Pharaohs”
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/02/black-pharaohs/robert-draper-text.html
“The Birth of Cool – How we got from cool temperatures to cool cats”
By Mike Vuolo – October 1, 2013
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/cool_story/2013/10/cool_the_etymology_and_history_of_the_concept_of_coolness.html?wpisrc=burger_bar
Here is the article:
Being cool is hard. Staying cool is harder. It’s an elusive quality, in part because it’s an elusive word with layers of nuanced meaning that peel off as we travel back through the centuries.
At its simplest, cool is neither too hot nor too cold, and it’s with this meaning that the word initially slipped into our language from its cognates in Dutch and German. It appeared originally as col—which can be found as far back as the ninth century, when someone translated the poetry of the Roman philosopher Boethius from Latin into English—and, for a long time, couldn’t quite figure out how it wanted to be spelled. It toyed with coul, flirted with coole, and even went through a koole phase, long before the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company figured out how to brand menthol cigarettes with sophistication. It finally settled on cool, all the while holding on to its sense of climatic moderation, captured very straightforwardly by Daniel Defoe in his novel A Journal of the Plague Year: “The Weather was temperate, variable and cool enough.”
If you think about how thoroughly suffused our language is with temperature metaphors—tempers get hot, blood runs cold, smiles and receptions are warm—it’s not hard to imagine cool making the leap from literal to non. This happened fairly quickly, while English was still Old with a capital O. Whoever wrote Beowulf, sometime in the 10th or 11th century, knew that emotions can come in “waves,” now “boiling” but eventually growing “cooler.” It wasn’t until much later, though, that cool began hinting at its full figurative potential.
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus tells his Amazonian bride-to-be, Hippolyta:
Hamlet, disheveled and ranting at the ghost of his dead father, frightens his mother, Gertrude, who cries out:
By the 16th century, cool had fully evolved from an adjective of the atmosphere around us to one of the attributes within, suggesting deliberation, rationality, and calmness. It wasn’t long before the word began attaching itself to all manner of idiom, cementing its metaphorical turn. A “cool hand” reaches out from more than three centuries ago, a “cool customer” gains purchase, and we’re all kindly asked to “keep cool.”
Exactly when, and where, cool aspired to more than mere composure—to an alluring mix of style, hipness, poise, and who knows what else—is impossible to determine, but there’s a tantalizing piece of evidence from the 19th century. In 1884, a professor at Washington and Lee University named James A. Harrison published an article titled “Negro English” in Anglia, a German journal about the English language. In it, he discusses African-American dialect with the panting excitement, and racist condescension, of a man who has discovered an alien culture in his own backyard. The Negro, he asserts:
Among the many “Negroisms” that Harrison cites is the interjection “Dat’s cool!,” which is given without definition or explanation, and so we’re left to wonder at how closely its meaning mirrors the modern. By the 1920s, though, cool is firmly fixed as an unambiguous term of approval and even reverence. In 1924, the singer Anna Lee Chisholm recorded “Cool Kind Daddy Blues.” In the early 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston, in her short story “The Gilded Six-Bits,” wrote of a male character:
By the 1940s, “cool cat” clawed its way into the jazz scene, and the word has had currency ever since. But for a concept that’s been around for a century, it’s stubbornly resistant to scrutiny. A couple of years ago, a psychologist named Ilan Dar-Nimrod, now at the University of Sydney in Australia, wanted to figure out which adjectives are most closely associated with cool, or, as he put it, “to determine what those in a coolness-valuing culture mean when they say cool.” Two broad sketches emerged, which Dar-Nimrod called cachet cool (think Marilyn Monroe) and contrarian cool (think James Dean).
As Dar-Nimrod points out, other research over the years has linked a number of behavioral traits to coolness, including sexual appetite, risk-taking, masculinity, and muted emotion. Plug all that into an algorithm, add nicotine and booze, and out pops Don Draper, who couldn’t care less whether you think he’s cool, which, according to research and to the never-ending frustration of Pete Campbell, only makes him cooler.
Getting at the nature of cool is further complicated by the fact that it’s become fashionable in recent years to boast about not being cool. Perhaps the word is being pushed into its next stage of evolution by the freaks and the nerds, whose childhood unpopularity is a badge of honor and whose brave new world of geekery is vindication. No matter what you think of it, coolness cannot be claimed for yourself, say, in a job interview, like diligence or punctuality. If you call yourself cool, you most certainly are not. Only other people can render that judgment, and who’s to say their notion of cool is one that you subscribe to?
Coolness is a fleeting shadow, a flickering light. You may have it today but you won’t tomorrow, and, despite their protestations to the contrary, your parents never did.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/09/29/tragic-history-african-slaves-and-indians
The Morning Plum: Republicans enter the danger zone
By Greg Sargent, Updated: October 1, 2013
So House Republicans are allowing the government to shut down, rather than permit a vote on continued funding of the government at sequester levels, which alone would (in a sane universe) have been a real victory for them. This puts Republicans in precisely the same position they were in before they caved to conservative demands and launched a series of anti-Obamacare votes that have proven futile. Remember, Congress will vote to fund the government soon enough. Dems are not going to meaningfully undermine Obamacare, which means John Boehner will have to figure out a way, very soon, of allowing a vote on funding for the government, untethered from the health law, even if it means making the Tea Party very, very angry.
How long Boehner is willing to postpone this will be partly influenced by how much damage the GOP is sustaining, as judged by influential party insiders. And on that score, today’s new Quinnipiac poll should set off alarm bells.
It finds that 58 percent of Americans, including 58 percent of independents, oppose Congress defunding Obamacare. Seventy two percent, and 74 percent of independents, oppose shutting down major activities of the government to stop the health law. On the debt limit, 64 percent oppose not raising it to block the law. All of this is in spite of plurality disapproval of Obamacare. Dems have opened a nine point lead in the generic House matchup, 43-34. Underlying structural factors mean even a wide lead probably won’t dislodge the GOP majority. But as Steven Shepard rightly notes, a shutdown could make things “volatile.”
Beyond this, though, the poll also sheds light on how Americans view the values and intentions of the major actors in this drama — which arguably could have real influence on how they view the situation over time. Here the poll is grim for the GOP.
It finds that despite under-water approval ratings, 54 percent say Obama is “honest and trustworthy”; 54 percent say he cares about people’s needs and problems; and he leads Republicans on handling the middle class by 51-38. While 50 percent say Obama isn’t doing enough to compromise with Republicans, 68 percent say Republicans aren’t doing enough to compromise with Obama. This may be the most important finding:
Fifty one percent of independents, and 63 percent of moderates, place the blame on GOP determination to block “any” Obama initiative. It’s gratifying to see the public rejects Green Lanternism. But beyond this, it’s very plausible that public perceptions of which side is genuinely committed to constructive governance on behalf of the middle class, and which side is actively preventing the system from functioning on behalf of those Americans, will be the prism through which the public views this shutdown. Don’t take my word for it. Even the House GOP leadership’s own pollster has said the same.
These findings were taken before the government shutdown. There’s no telling how much worse public perceptions could get now that it’s under way, let alone how they’d be impacted by default and a resulting economic crash.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/10/01/the-morning-plum-republicans-enter-the-danger-zone/?print=1
Starting in the center
By Steve Benen
Tue Oct 1, 2013 9:14 AM EDT
When it comes to understanding the negotiating postures of the congressional caucuses, the playing field isn’t exactly level. One the one side we see Republican lawmakers who insist on undermining the Affordable Care Act — somehow, some way, for some reason — just for the sake of doing so.
For GOP leaders, recent developments are simply outrageous — why won’t Democrats ignore the election results, the public good, and their own principles, and simply give the party that lost the elections what they want? What’s so unreasonable about that?
On the other side, we see Democratic lawmakers who … aren’t making any demands at all.
A regular Maddow Blog reader emailed overnight to ask for more information on what Democrats have already compromised on in this process. The short answer is, “Everything.”
Dems passed the Affordable Care Act a few years ago, which itself was a compromise — Dems traded away many progressive goals and priorities, embracing a Republican-friendly health care plan in order to get the legislation done. Since then, lawmakers in both parties have approved all kinds of spending bills that included funding for the health care law.
Over the last several weeks, however, with a shutdown deadline looming, it was time for the parties to lay out their demands. Republicans demanded fewer health care benefits for Americans. Democrats could have demanded anything — an end to the damaging sequestration policy, elimination of the debt ceiling, a vote on immigration reform, universal background checks — but instead started in the center. Congressional Dems were even willing to accept painfully low spending levels, as evidenced by this chart Michael Linden and Harry Stein published yesterday, just to ensure the government didn’t shut down.
Democrats, in other words, acted like grown-ups, putting aside their own policy agenda — an agenda the public endorsed in the recent national elections — in the interest of avoiding a crisis. Republicans could have taken this as a win and moved on, but they wouldn’t take “yes” for an answer.
——————————————————————————–
As Greg Sargent explained yesterday, “Only one party is demanding major concessions from the other in exchange for keeping the government open at sequester spending levels — levels leaders of that same party have already declared is a victory for them –while the other party is demanding exactly nothing in exchange for doing that.”
Dan Balz added, “Amid all the maneuvering and hand-wringing ahead of the government shutdown, one thing remained clear: House Republicans are continuing to grapple unsuccessfully with what it means to be a governing party.”
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/01/20771768-starting-in-the-center?lite
Can we make this into a postable video?
Rachel Maddow did an excellent segment outlining how the GOP always wanted a Government shutdown.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/53152723#53151808
Here is tis along with a whole series of Maddow and the GOP pending Government shutdown
Why the GOP can’t avoid responsibility
By Steve Benen
Tue Oct 1, 2013 8:36 AM EDT.
It’s understandable that no one in Washington wants to be blamed for the government shutdown, even those responsible for it, because crises like these are wildly unpopular. The electorate has come to expect sharp partisan differences, but shutdowns are tantrums that the public tends to find repulsive.
And so, we will hear many congressional Republicans and many in the political media suggest Democrats bear some or all of the responsibility for this fiasco. For those who care about reality in the slightest, anyone making such an argument deserves to be laughed at.
The detail to keep in mind is that most GOP lawmakers aren’t bothering with the pretense. They know that Republicans shut down the government — and they’re proud of it.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/01/20771365-why-the-gop-cant-avoid-responsibility?lite
meta @metaquest
.@SpeakerBoehner’s base salary is $223,500. His phone number is (202) 225-0600. Let him know how you feel about his self-serving antics.
7:47 AM – 1 Oct 2013
October 01, 2013 8:59 AM\
The Insanity Is Not Temporary
By Ed Kilgore
A lot of the talk from progressives (and I plead guilty to doing this myself on occasion) about the government shutdown and/or the impending possibility of a debt default suggests House Republicans are suffering from some sort of temporary insanity, or are indulging some sort of temporary temper tantrum by a faction they cannot ignore but can outlast. This habit flows from the broader sense that the Tea Party movement is some sort of temporary phenomenon—a “fever,” as the president famously put it—that will go away to be replaced by good, stolid, “moderate” conservatism sooner rather than later. You see it in the high hosannas raised every time yet another poll shows the percentage of voters identifying with the Tea Party—as opposed to the Republican Party that has largely internalized Tea Party policies and strategies—declining.
This attitude is perfectly understandable, but risks a major misunderstanding of what conservatives are up to at any given moment. Yes, many of them have a remarkably radical vision for America all right, which involves bringing back the idyllic government of the Coolidge administration and patriarchal culture of the Eisenhower administration. But they are pursuing an entirely rational if risky strategy for getting from here to way back there, based on three overlapping perspectives that are reasonably common in the conservative commentariat:
1) Radicalism on spending is the hand voters have dealt the GOP. The “defunding Obamacare” strategy has always been based on the leverage Republicans had after 2012 in maintaining control of just one congressional chamber. They couldn’t repeal Obamacare or enact the Ryan Budget, but they could refuse to fund the Obama Era welfare state, which meant threatening a government shutdown or a debt default. Obamacare was the natural target for this strategic brinkmanship since it polled worse than, say, Medicare or food stamps.
2) Resisting a new entitlement is easier and more effective than rolling back an established entitlement. For all the conservative talk about the hatred Americans feel for Obamacare, there is a widespread fear on the Right that once the law is in place for a few years, it will become part of the landscape, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or the Rx drug prescription before them. And this fear coincides with the “tipping point” argument that the Welfare State is now ensnaring so many Americans that “takers” are outnumbering “makers,” and will defend their theft of “maker” resources fiercely at the polls.
3) In divided government, implacable unity is the winning formula. There is an intense belief among conservatives that Republican back-stabbing—RINOism!—and tactical surrender to liberals explains every defeat for the Right going back for decades. Add in the inevitable “war of nerves” that characterizes politics in an era of divided government, and the conviction that red-state Democrats will side with Republicans if pushed to the wall, and you have an argument against compromise of any sort, at any price.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_10/the_insanity_is_not_temporary047128.php
http://youtu.be/wPmTp9up26w
Don’t forget what the shutdown is really about
By Ezra Klein, Updated: September 30, 2013
Nice job, Congress. By which I mean, not a nice job.
1) This is all about stopping a law that increases taxes on rich people and reduces subsidies to private insurers in Medicare in order to help low-income Americans buy health insurance. That’s it. That’s why the Republican Party might shut down the government and default on the debt.
2) The “continuing resolution” only funds the government for six weeks. So even if all goes well Monday night we’ll be doing this again in November.
3) Republicans are now discussing a “one-week CR,” which would mean we’d be doing this again in seven days — and we’d be that much closer to the debt ceiling.
4) The leadership of the Republican Party agrees that the debt ceiling absolutely must be lifted. “I’m not going to risk the full faith and credit of the federal government,” House Speaker John Boehner said. But they also maintain that they are willing to breach the debt limit, risking the full faith and credit of the federal government. As my colleague Greg Sargent has written in the Plum Line, this is a “glaring contradiction” at the heart of the GOP’s position.
5) A few months ago, the conventional wisdom was that the negotiations over funding the government would hinge on how to replace sequestration, as the cuts are proving too deep for either Democratic or Republican appropriators. Instead, sequestration’s cuts have been mostly left alone, and the argument has been entirely about Obamacare.
6) Boehner isn’t really in control of his House conference, and he has no idea how to get out of this. Remember, Boehner’s initial preference was to simply fund the government. His members forced him to accept Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s defunding plan. After the Senate rejected Cruz’s plan, Boehner again wanted to simply fund the government. He lost again. As the National Review’s Robert Costa reported, “For now, Boehner doesn’t have a plan beyond passing this resolution and waiting to see what happens.”
7) Democrats won more votes than Republicans in the last election. That was true in the presidential campaign. It was true in the Senate campaigns. And it was true in the House campaigns.
That doesn’t mean the Republican Party is under any obligation to stand back and let Democrats do as they please. But imagine if the Republican Party had won the 2012 election and Senate Democrats threatened to breach the debt ceiling and cause a financial crisis unless Republicans added a public option to Obamacare. Does anyone think a President Mitt Romney would find that position reasonable? Does anyone think that position would be reasonable?
Update: A reader writes in:
There might be an even more instructive analogy.
In May 2007, 140 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted to defund the Iraq war. In September of the same year, Congress voted to increase the debt limit. Imagine if Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had threatened to breach the debt ceiling unless Republicans agreed to defund the war. At that time, approval of the Iraq war was polled at 33% in favor and 64% against.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/30/dont-forget-what-the-shutdown-is-really-about/?print=1
Why Republicans shut down the government
By Steve Benen
Tue Oct 1, 2013 8:00 AM EDT
Many Americans are probably waking up this morning to some unsettling news: congressional Republicans shut down the federal government last night, the first time since congressional Republicans did the same thing 17 years ago. And I imagine Americans who don’t follow day-to-day developments in Washington will ask a simple question: “Why?”
The good news is, it’s a surprisingly easy question to answer. The bad news is, the answer is wholly unsatisfying.
Kevin Drum had an item last week that summarized the entire political dynamic in just 92 words
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/01/20771002-why-republicans-shut-down-the-government?lite
Everything I’m Not @No_Cut_Card
This is the GOP punishing America for voting for Obama.
7:19 AM – 1 Oct 2013
Darrell Issa: ‘Not Funding The Government Is Part Of Funding It’
Catherine Thompson – October 1, 2013, 9:01 AM EDT
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and CNN’s “New Day” co-host Chris Cuomo got into a heated exchange Tuesday over the government shutdown, with Issa arguing that Congress has the “right” to not fund the federal government.
Issa told Cuomo that House Republicans are looking to compromise on a temporary spending bill, and said that if the Senate rejects the House’s offer to go to conference Tuesday morning the move would be tantamount to “rejecting the constitutional process.”
“You want to use the phrase constitutional mandate. I applaud you for using it,” Cuomo said. “However, the mandate is for you to fund the government. Not for you to not fund the government. That’s a decision you made here and you made it for the political reasons that you lay out.”
“Chris, bless your heart, but not funding the government is part of funding it,” Issa interjected. “If you have the right to fund the government, you have the right to fund the government to a lesser amount.”
“[Former House Speaker] Tip O’Neill shut down the government seven times because President Reagan wouldn’t agree to his excess spending,” he continued. “If you can shut down because you don’t get enough money spent, you can also have a discussion about spending too much.”
Cuomo then pressed the California Republican to say if he thought the government shutdown was wrong for hurting American families.
“You can’t accuse me of beating my wife and then turn around and tell me, isn’t that true? We did not shut down the government,” Issa responded. “We offered to the Senate, again and again, things to keep the government fully funded. We have said we want to go to conference. We want to have a discussion about the delay of portions of Obamacare for a short period of time in order to get it right.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/darrell-issa-not-funding-the-government-is-part-of-funding-it
Harry Reid Renames The GOP the ‘Banana Republicans’
By: Jason Easley
Sep. 30th, 2013
While speaking to the media today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid coined a new term for the GOP. Sen. Reid called them the banana Republicans.
Majority Leader Reid said, “I’ve heard the idea of a short term extension floated. Let me be very, very clear.The Senate’s bill is a short term extension. That’s what it is. It’s a six week funding bill. That’s all it is, six weeks. If we can’t pass this, we are in a truly banana Republican mindset. This is what we look at other countries doing. The United States funding the government for a week or ten days at a time? Not so good.”
Reid also urged Boehner to let the full House vote on the Senate passed clean CR, He also told the Speaker of the House to stop trying to force a government shutdown. Democrats know that the House is fractured, so the message coming from the Senate Dems is that Boehner needs to bring their bill to the House floor and let it be voted on.
Rep. Boehner knows that the Senate bill would pass, and that is exactly why he won’t allow a vote on it.
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/09/30/harry-reid-renames-gop-banana-republicans.html
Joy Reid @TheReidReport
Ted Cruz has engineered the 1st govt shutdown in 17 years. Jim Demint’s mad vision of fusing the GOP and RW talk radio is complete.
11:17 PM – 30 Sep 2013
OH MY
Oh my,
Pie in meadow
Not sky!
Report: Senate Dems May Leak Emails From Boehner Staff About Health Care Subsidies Share
OCTOBER 1, 2013, 7:21 AM EDT
Senate Democrats debated leaking emails exchanged between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) and House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) chiefs of staff discussing employer contributions to congressional staff’s health care, Roll Call reported Tuesday.
Senate Democratic chiefs of staff discussed email exchanges between Reid’s chief David Krone and Boehner’s chief Mike Sommers at a recent meeting, an anonymous source with knowledge of the meeting told Roll Call. The emails would reveal Boehner’s stance on employer subsidies for his staff’s health care plans, according to Roll Call.
Another anonymous individual who attended a dinner Monday night with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told the publication that the senator revealed to the lobbyists present that the emails would be leaked within a day.
A Boehner spokesman said the emails would reflect the speaker’s anti-Obamacare position.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-senate-dems-may-leak-emails-from-boehner-staff-about-health-care-subsidies
September 30, 2013 9:21 PM
“They Have Lost Their Minds”
By Ed Kilgore
Unsurprisingly, the House passed John Boehner’s Plan B-2 continuing resolution that included a one-year delay in the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate plus the Vitter Amendment killing employer subsidies for health care coverage of Members and staff of Congress and executive branch political appointees.
Rep. Peter King thrilled some bored observers earlier tonight by talking of a “moderate” Republican vote against B-2 that might lead to a clean CR. But in the end, only 12 Republicans (including hard-core wingers Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey, Louis Gohmert, Steve King and Michele Bachmann) voted against B-2; nine Democrats voted for it; and it passed easily. So the closest thing to a “Republican revolt” was among people who refused to back down on a full Obamacare implementation delay or defunding.
“They have lost their minds,” quoth Harry Reid, whose Senate is about to slam-dunk-reject B-2. So barring something very strange, the government will shut down at midnight.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_09/they_have_lost_their_minds047120.php
Ametia, SG2, if you could make this a postable video, I’d appreciate it.
……………..
theGrio’s Joy-Ann Reid explains the impending government shutdown
by Joy-Ann Reid | September 30, 2013 at 7:14 PM
We’ve heard a lot recently about the (increasingly strong) possibility of a federal government shutdown, which technically, would take place tonight at midnight, with the effects rolling out over time.
The shutdown is looming because Republicans in the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate can’t agree on a short-term bill funding the nation’s expenses. But how did we get here? Here’s a bit of federal budgeting 101 from theGrio.
Take a look and let us know what you think!
http://thegrio.com/2013/09/30/thegrios-joy-ann-reid-explains-the-impending-government-shutdown/
SWEET, SUCCINCT, JOY. Thanks, SG2!
RobertJWash · Robert Wash
MT @DCdebbie Today, GOP denies 800,000 workers their paycheck while Democrats give millions of Americans access to health care.
donnabrazile · Donna Brazile
RT @sfpelosi : Remember, the same folks screaming about #Benghazi have just cut embassy security funding around the world.
EndHateRadio · end hate radio
Lol!! And true! RT LiberalMomma: A group of rabid monkeys would govern better than GOP. #GOPshutdown
Good Morning, 3 Chics * Everyone! :-)))
Loving the pics of The PURPLE ONE. LOL
Good Morning!
Great piece of artwork (painting?) of Prince!
I see you don’t call him Symbolina (a la CJ.) Good to know. Now to go read yesterday’s intro piece on Rogers Nelson.
Good Morning, Everyone :)
I cannot watch the media start the blame game with the WH. Where’s the OBAMACARE thread?
the OBAMACARE thread is up!!
Thanks for this. It’s comprehensive.