The Cognitively Dissonant Eleanor Norton / Darrell Issa / Vincent Gray press conference.

I have been doing this gig for over a decade now; and I was engrossed by this press conference. Short version: DC Delegate Norton joined with DC Mayor Gray and House Oversight Chair Issa to rip Senate Democrats a new one over their refusal to pass a special House bill that would release DC’s funds.

Continue reading The Cognitively Dissonant Eleanor Norton / Darrell Issa / Vincent Gray press conference.

Scenes from the #shutdown counter-protests.

The implications of this should trouble the Obama administration:

…because, those people? Those people are not taking Barack Obama seriously. At all.

Poor guy.

Via Twitchy.

Democrats still not quite grokking that #shutdown is a tool for the GOP.

Shh, Byron York.

The rebels ultimately hope to push Democrats to accept some sort of compromise that delays or in some way limits Obamacare. But if they fail — and Democrats have remained rock-solid on Obamacare to this point — they envision a situation in which, for as long as the shutdown goes on, they are able to fund popular government programs while leaving some key Democrat-friendly outposts shuttered. For example, while they want to fund the Pentagon, are the Republican rebels OK with the fact that most of the Environmental Protection Agency is shut down? They are. Are they worried about furloughs at the National Labor Relations Board? Not particularly.

This is much more fun if it’s a surprise.

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously, someone did consider the possibility that the GOP would not exactly be weeping over the idea of demonstrating just how much of the federal government can be sent home in case of an alien invasion or something?  I swear to God, I should be a consultant.

Jack Lew gets called on @BarackObama’s #shutdown nonsense.

Well, this must have been somewhat uncomfortable.  Chris Wallace smacking around Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on his party’s shutdown of the government:

“Despite these stakes, the president is refusing to negotiate,” Wallace said. He noted that previous votes to raise the debt ceiling have included campaign finance reform, school prayer, and a nuclear freeze. “What’s unprecedented is not Congress tying strings; what’s unprecedented is a president refusing to negotiate.”

“Frankly, I think your history is wrong,” Lew said. “If you look at the cases where the debt limit was involved, there were many other things attached to the debt limit, but the question of threatening to cause a default of the United States, not until 2011 did it become a positive agenda—”

“With all due respect, your history is wrong,” Wallace responded.

Continue reading Jack Lew gets called on @BarackObama’s #shutdown nonsense.

The Speaker’s office is keeping score of #HarryReidsShutdown.

Every funding bill that the House has passed and that the Senate has refused to even consider – which is to say all of them, except for the one funding the military.  Basically, Harry Reid thinks that he can let a few kids with cancer die and still not worry about losing his Senate Majority Leader gig… but even his current caucus might balk at playing games with the troops at that level of sadistic indifference.

It will, unfortunately, undoubtedly have to be updated.

Via

 

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Quote AND Tweet of the Day, Nobody @BarackObama Knows Has Troubles edition.

First, the quote, from the Wall Street Journal:

Said a senior administration official: “We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result.”

Ah, those Ascended Beings and hyper-geometric messaging geniuses over at the White House.  But, alas, I cannot beat Jake Tapper’s (apparent) reaction to that line:

Continue reading Quote AND Tweet of the Day, Nobody @BarackObama Knows Has Troubles edition.

LA Times grudgingly publishes op-ed calling for @barackobama to cave.

I admit it, I admit it: there’s a dark joy in seeing an opposition newspaper being almost forced to hand over op-ed space for a piece that they never, ever wanted to publish.  Case in point for today?  The LA Times.  I wonder how much of the bottle of cheap whiskey they chugged before they allowed this op-ed to hit the printers:

Obama is ducking a leader’s duty

Although most Americans oppose the GOP’s shutdown strategy, for the good of the nation President Obama needs to show a leader’s courage and take ideas from his opposition.

Continue reading LA Times grudgingly publishes op-ed calling for @barackobama to cave.

Hey, Day Two of Apocalypse #Shutdown is almost done!

How bad has it been for everybody?

…Well, everybody who isn’t within a ten mile radius of the Washington Monument.

…Well, OK, most of those people don’t give a [expletive deleted], either.

Now, this is not me saying Hurr, hurr, federal employees aren’t getting paid, that’s great.  My family was hit by the sequester, and it wasn’t exactly pleasant.  People need to eat, even government employees* – and, seriously, if you can’t show empathy about that then please don’t embarrass me by publicly displaying your lack of empathy here, either. And eventually we’re going to have to turn the lights back on. Continue reading Hey, Day Two of Apocalypse #Shutdown is almost done!

The Obama administration, summed up in two pictures.

First off, here’s this:

Apparently the White House never read far enough into the First Amendment to get to the bit where people are allowed to peacefully assemble. Which, when you think about it, makes the whole exercise moot; certainly I would point out to the cops that I had every right to be there (and, truth be told, the cops probably think that this whole thing is stupid, too). But the Obama administration is going to secure that area, by gum!

Yeah, about that. Continue reading The Obama administration, summed up in two pictures.