Government Shutdown Open Thread

~ Laura

I wanted to write a  government shutdown blog post before I went to the gym. But I don’t have a hook yet. Waiting to see how it’s all going to play out. And, in the  meantime, I really need to hit the treadmill. Soooooo, open thread.

Published by Laura

76 thoughts on “Government Shutdown Open Thread”

  2. Here’s a nice concrete example of how stupid this is. A friend’s husband is a government scientist whose work is “non-essential.” He was scheduled to go to a conference that is held every 3-4 years; the plane ticket and the registration fees are already paid. But he is not allowed to go. So our tax dollars are paying for an unused plane ticket and expensive registration, just because these idiots have decided to hold the country hostage over something that is already law. (A minor side effect – His wife had also bought a plane ticket to go with him, for a little vacation, so she will have to cancel and pay whatever change fees there are.)

    I called my Republican congressman this morning and told him I would be giving money to and campaigning for his opponent next time – before this morning I didn’t even know his name, though I had voted against him. I haven’t called a congressman since the 1990s.

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  3. I think everybody involved can make a reasonable internal case that s/he is acting in the interest of the desired policy outcome. Ted Cruz has hugely increased the likelihood that he will be the 2016 nominee (though maybe decreased the likelihood that the nomination will be worth something!) Boehner has strengthened his hold on the Speakership. Obama has improved his standing with the Dem primary electorate, and his chance that his endorsement will be worth something in 2016. The Tea Party reps have shown themselves to their primary electorates as ‘not-sellouts’.

    My guess is there has to be some level of public outrage before somebody backs down, either at the Reeps for stopping the whole machinery of nonessential government for their policy agenda, or at the Dems for the same – arguably trying to keep a durably unpopular program in place along with the profoundly stupid medical device tax is the same thing, though you won’t get any national Dem to say so. Obama has the New York Times behind him, and it’s apparently the only paper he regularly reads, so he thinks only fringe wierdos are against him. The Reeps talk with their primary electorate, and those guys are backing them. Tough to see how we get out of this quickly.

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    1. The medical device tax issue is a publicity stunt and nothing more. The tax may or may not be a the best way to pay for Obamacare, but if trying to end that tax were an actual attempt at compromise, the House Reps would propose it with some way to replace the lost money. Instead, they are trying to get the Dems to vote to remove that tax without a replacement, which would leave the president in a worse place than if he totally caved on delaying Obamacare for a year. He’d have to get new legislature through the same House that’s trying blackmail to stop Obamacare to fund Obamacare.

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  4. All of this is now publicity stunts. I think what I don’t understand is why this doesn’t get resolved by just letting people vote. I’m guessing because the stunts were sufficiently successful before and the Republicans were able to get compromises. I think the Dems have finally recognized that this will the game for every action of congress if they don’t balk now. I’m interesting in seeing how firmly they’ll stand. The current rhetoric from the Dems is that they are going to go along with nothing but a “clean” bill. Will they really stand that firm? Or will they cave on something?

    The WashPost is reporting an effort to pass a budget bill for the National Park Service as some form of procedural bill that requires a 2/3 majority. The goal is apparently to get Democrats to vote against it, because they are done with the stunts, and then blame the Dems for not funding the NPS.

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  5. My husband and I are trying to figure out how this ends. I forget how the previous shutdown ended. But it was over Christmas anyway, right?

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  6. Wash Post had a good summary: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/25/here-is-every-previous-government-shutdown-why-they-happened-and-how-they-ended/

    The longer of the 1995-1996 shutdowns were Dec 5 – Jan 6 and were apparently over whether the CBO or OMB would vet the 7 year plan for balancing the budget (OMB’s numbers were more optimistic). The shutdown ended when the House passed a budget. Then Clinton submitted a budget that the CBO said would balance over 7 years (don’t know why those numbers changed).

    How does this end? I say it ends by at least 17 congressional Republicans breaking ranks to vote with the Democrats on a clean continuing resolution budget bill, which passes with Democratic votes. That’s a compromise progressives hate, ’cause it continues the sequestration. But that’s what I see happening. I do not know how long the machinations of the house (special bills that require 2/3 majorities, posturing, prevention of votes that aren’t approved by the Republicans) will go on. And, I can imagine it would be a long time.

    And, the debt ceiling is now going to have to be a part of any bill.

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  7. I would like to know what happened to all of the produce in all the nation’s commissaries which were shuttered today. Are they seriously just going to let all that food go to waste? I have a friend who runs a shelter program for the homeless and I wish there was a way we could get the government to give HER the produce from the seven commissaries in our area which they shuttered today — rather than having to throw it away later. I think I’m going to e-mail my senator! Wish me luck.
    (Also, with convincing my DOD civilian husband with going to visit his mother, since if he actually hangs around the house for a month it’s going to drive me insane!)

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  8. Writing is good, but from everything I hear, calling your representatives and actually talking to one of their staffers is better. If they’re already doing the right thing, call them too, and be supportive!

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  11. I actually e-mailed a congressional staffer who is a friend. She told me that the produce was removed, refrigerators were left on and that it will all be over soon. Hoping she’s right or I may have to start a playgroup or something for my husband — who is REALLY BAD at leisure time!

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  12. Megan McArdle says something very good today about our current political situation:

    The ability to understand that the other side is people, with regular people feelings and their very own thoughts and motivations, seems to have been almost completely erased over the last decade or two.

    Wendy is a perfect example.

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    2. I think Megan’s wrong about this. Plenty of people have within their own families people on “the other side.” They just think they’re stunningly ignorant, or stunningly naive, or have the wrong values, or whatever.

      Also, the inability to recognize that certain other people don’t have “regular people feelings and their very own thoughts and motivations” is hardly new. In fact I would say that most people throughout history have believed this about one group or another.

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      1. I’m not sure how recognizing that people are complex persons means you can’t think they’re wrong or their beliefs and ideas are dangerous to society. Everyone is on some level a “regular person with their own thoughts and motivations,” even people who have made very terrible decisions or done disastrous things.

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  13. So Y81 who is doing the right thing, and how does this end?

    One thing I continue to not understand is why Boehner’s job as speaker seems to be his highest priority. All the discussions about why congress doesn’t get to my endgame (democrats + moderate republicans pass a clean continuing resolution) seem to involve Boehner’s highest priority keeping his job as speaker. Skipping ahead, is a default really worth that to Boehner?

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    1. It’s pretty easy to understand why Boehner’s job as speaker is high highest priority. Look at what Berlusconi is doing in to the Italian government in his various attempt to stay out in power and/or out of prison. Countless other leaders have made similar choices.

      Anyway, I looked it up because I was curious. The House has never removed a speaker midterm. It would only take a simple vote to do so, but a vote of the House not the party caucus. If Boehner let such a vote go through, He’d probably not be bounced for another 15 months. If he let it through, there would be no reason for Democrats to vote to remove him so the Republicans could install somebody more beholden to the Tea Party.

      I don’t think it will happen, mainly because that’s not the way party works in the House. I expect what will happen is a very big swing back toward the Democrats in the 2014 House elections as the moderates who aren’t in safe seats are being sacrificed so that other Republicans can avoid or beat primary challengers.

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  14. There’s a fascinating lack of coverage of the government shutdown on McCardle’s cage. Copper thieves are the top topic of her page as of this moment. I’d been reading the metanalysis on the left/liberarianish pages ignoring that the government has shut down for the first time in 17 years; interesting to stumble on evidence of the sticking fingers in ears and humming on my own.

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    1. The ins and outs of the political process and the personalities are not really MM’s thing. She’s probably more absorbed with the roll-out of Obamacare right now (which is happening at the same time). Being an economics person is very different than being a politics person.

      Also, bear in mind that MM voted for Obama in 2008. She is not, strictly speaking, a Republican critter. She’s a libertarianish type who runs with a bunch of liberal DC baby pundits.

      I realize we all look the same to you. 🙂

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  15. As a laid-off DC Fed I’m not sure I have any special insight, but I am sure interested! in how all this plays out. I’d like to associate myself with y81’s comment (himself it lifted from McMegan) that there’s been a real loss of comity and empathy over the last decade or two. It is NOT SO that Reeps get up in the morning and think, “shall I have baby fricassee this morning? or just heat up some leftovers from the roast baby from last night, the one with the mustard glaze and the wild rice stuffing. And by the way how can I frustrate the popular will and immiserate women and minorities today?”

    I’m going to suggest what I think is probably a constellation of views that a lot of Reeps have, and that working towards a solution should involve at least understanding them: “this crapdoodle piece of legislation was crammed down our throats after prosecutors in Alaska and the Secretary of State in Minnesota stole the Senate. As Nancy Pelosi said, ‘you have to pass it to find out what’s in it’, and as we have found out what’s in it it looks worse and worse. Massachusetts (Massachusetts!!) elected a Republican to the Senate to try and stop this. The Dems lost 65 seats in the House as a direct result of popular revulsion for this law and the process by which it was passed. It is hugely costly, and much of the cost is raised by the very regressive mechanism of raising the price of health insurance for young and healthy people – this dreadfully inefficient mechanism was adopted solely to hide this cost from the CBO’s tax cost estimates. It will ration health care mostly through two mechanisms – establishing death panels of nonelected bureaucrats and the time cost of waiting for care from overused physicians. Rationing by waiting room is enormously inefficient. If this God damned thing gets started it’s going to be hell to stop. The only mechanism we have to force the dilettante in the White House to leave off his golf games and pay attention is a shutdown. And furthermore it forces religious people who are conscientiously opposed to pay for killing babies.”

    So, Wendy, I’ve formed an impression of your views as we have both been guests here at Laura’s Salon, and my guess is that none of the above is something with which you would agree. I suspect that y81 would agree with at least some of them. But I do think your ability to understand the actions of the House majority will be improved if you have in mind the premises on which they are basing their actions, and this is my best guess about what those premises are.

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    1. And yet for all this, not a single, concrete Republican proposal for health care reform in 4 years. There’s nothing left in the Republican party but vague fears, resentment, and obstruction. If Obamacare were that bad, or if wasn’t completely clear that they had nothing to offer on health care for anybody under 65, Obama could have been beaten.

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    2. Yes, except for the “death panels” reference I recognize everything up to the second to last sentence as rational discourse. But this is the law now. The insurance markets are in place. It’s over. There’s a piece in the Huffington Post about how this is like the the 2000 election was for Democrats. Gore isn’t president. The ACA has started. You can get some stuff, but if your only goal is to stop the ACA from being implemented – and this does in fact seem to be the only goal – you can’t.

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      1. “It is the law” seems like a silly argument since we are talking about the legislature. They can change any law they want. if they can’t, then why doesn’t “it is the law” hold apply to the debt ceiling? (This is what I mean by a silly argument)

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      2. It’s not silly at all. There are two laws, one about spending and one about borrowing. You can’t uphold both of them. Also, we aren’t talking about “the legislature” but only one House of the legislature. Unless the Senate votes again, the ACA is the law even if the House voted 435 to 0 against it now.

        Trying to spend on only the parts of government you like while using the debt ceiling to block just one program is hostage taking.

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    3. “Massachusetts (Massachusetts!!) elected a Republican to the Senate to try and stop this. ”

      What the fuck are you talking about? We elected a Republican because we assumed a Democrat, even one as uninspiring as Martha Coakley, couldn’t lose and so we didn’t vote*. And then when we realized our mistake, we voted like gangbusters to make sure Elizabeth Warren became our senator instead and not only would make Obamacare happen but would also kick the asses of overly deregulated banking interests.

      *I did, but I was in the minority of the Democrats in the state.

      You know, I love how you and y81 go on about how I don’t understaaaaaand you and I don’t caaaaare about your feelings. OK, I get you now. You want me to understaaaaaand that you couldn’t possibly be acting from the most selfish of motives because you are Nice Guys.

      OK, you’re Nice Guys. You have feelings, and I’ve hurt them. I am sorry.*

      *No, I’m not. Grow up.

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  16. (forgive me for brevity and for other commenting vices. Very little sleep right now…)

    People voted for Obama. Twice. Healthcare was front in center in his campaign. More voters want this legislation than don’t want it.

    I think there is something to be said about bubbles, but I don’t think that that critique of American politics applies here. This isn’t a Dem v. Rep thing. This is a Dem and Rep v. a small segment of Rep thing. I think everybody understands the fears about the implementation of this law. I think even supporters of this law have major concerns. BUT we want it anyway. It’s a law. Let’s enact it.

    As a former pol sci professor, I have a certain fondness of Washington eccentricities. The filibuster is a JOY to teach in class. But this shutdown is a filibuster gone bad. It’s obstructionist and evil. The son of a good friend is on a respirator in a coma at a Washington hospital. He needs the NIH to do something I don’t understand with his blood. He needs this help RIGHT NOW.

    In the Federalist Papers, Madison talks a lot about the potential for a minority faction to destroy the government. He built in all sorts of safety measures to make sure that wouldn’t happen. But here we are….

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  17. He’s gone. We called in pest control. No sleep because I was busy being neurotic until 2 am. Ian’s school isn’t right.

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  18. “..You know, I love how you and y81 go on about how I don’t understaaaaaand you and I don’t caaaaare about your feelings. OK, I get you now. You want me to understaaaaaand that you couldn’t possibly be acting from the most selfish of motives because you are Nice Guys.

    OK, you’re Nice Guys. You have feelings, and I’ve hurt them. I am sorry.*”

    Wendy, you absolutely failed to understand what I wrote. Please go back and read it again. I said, the following are things I think the Reeps believe, and you will do better dealing with them if you try to understand their views.

    If you actually want to know what I believe, I am happy to talk about that. But what I wrote was not a statement of my position.

    Also, I was a Bay State Dem, years-and-years ago. I was in the Ed King wing of the party, not the Mike Dukakis wing (I actually knew Dukakis slightly and liked him, and I met King only once. But I was in the King Wing.) So based on that long-ago experience, I have had the view that what remains of the King Wing was quite happy to vote for a pleasant and plausible guy like Brown over a stiff like Coakley. I looked at online Herald after the election and I remember seeing that a lot of Dems had crossed over. And yes, you are right that Princess Fauxcahontas is in the Senate today. If I were you, I don’t think I would make that a point of pride.

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    1. What you wrote is mostly wrong or beside the point. If you’re going to call everything passed by 60 members of the Senate “crammed down your throat,” you’re considering nearly every major piece of legislation problematic. That 60-vote filibuster hurdle is the main barrier both parties have been hitting for years. And requiring the young and healthy to buy health insurance isn’t regressive as done in the ACA. Because there are subsidies for those with low income, it is very progressive as far as who pays. The only way in which the ACA is not progressive is in the states who haven’t expanded Medicaid. And that’s Republican governors and legislators, not Obama.

      The death panels is nonsense. The rationing healthcare through non-elected bureaucrats is exactly what we have now and got nothing to do with Obamacare except that more people will have a ratio that isn’t zero. And if Obamacare produces long waits for care, that’s pretty much proof of how horribly needed healthcare reform is. It’s not evidence that Obamacare is a problem. It’s evidence that lots of really sick people are not being treated.

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  19. “Please go back and read it again. I said, the following are things I think the Reeps believe, and you will do better dealing with them if you try to understand their views.”

    But, when I read it I pretty much feel like I feel when I read Mississippi’s “Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.” (Which I read only last week and so remains fresh in my mind about how people can be wrong).

    http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

    “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. ”

    I understand where the Republicans are coming from and think they are wrong. The ACA is not a sufficient reason to break our country. Neither was a commitment to the institution of slavery. Fortunately for the Republicans opponents of the ACA, I don’t see the ACA as a law they can’t change (unlike my — or the abolitionists antagonism to slavery) , so, if at some point, they have a house, senate, and president who wants to repeal the law, they will be able to do it. They just can’t do it now.

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  20. “Neither was a commitment to the institution of slavery”

    To clarify, that means that wanting slavery was an insufficient reason to break our country, because, of course, slavery is wrong. Opposing slavery probably was a sufficient reason to break our country, because, of course, slavery is wrong.

    With the ACA, opposing it is an insufficient reason to break our country. And, if the house, senate, and president voted to repeal it (or the supreme court had declared it unconstitutional), that would be an insufficient reason to break our country.

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    1. That’s all in the past, way in the past. It’s been a least two years since a Republican senator has co-authored a book with somebody who advocated for the secession of the southern states into a white-dominated separate political entity.

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  21. Gee, whenever read complaints from the Sullivans and Drums of the world about how the Republicans are violating established norms, I can hear them saying, “What! They only voted tonnage and poundage for one year? That’s outrageous. It’s always been voted for life.” So I guess each person draws his own analogies, but I think the Long Parliament is at least as apposite to the current situation as the Confederacy.

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    1. A parliament that sat for eight years without an election is a good comparison for a president that was re-inaugurated this very year?

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  22. Yes, the election thing, the one they get in 2014, and, one in which, to my distress, there were (I hope, but know that the hope might be wishful thinking) realistic chances that they could win the Senate. And, no they can’t have the presidency then, but 2016, right? three years from now. They can aim to win it all and repeal the law.

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    1. The argument is that once Obamacare gets going, it won’t be able to be stopped. If you can figure out a way to believe both “Obamacare will destroy America” and “Obamacare will be too popular to stop once it starts” that doesn’t involve massive hostility toward the poor, let me know.

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      1. Would that argument work for Medicare?

        Can’t we say “Medicare will destroy America” and “Medicare will be too popular to stop once it starts” without “massive hostility toward the poor”?

        I think one of the basic problems with Obamacare is that there are going to be too many people being subsidized, and not nearly enough people to subsidize them.

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      2. Stopping Medicare would take massive hostility to the elderly, not the poor. If you mean Medicaid, then I think you could make that argument pretty much exactly. Things like Mississippi’s cuts to Medicaid demonstrate a massive hostility to the poor.

        As for the ratio of subsidized to subsidizing, Obamacare very much an attempt to fix that relative to Medicaid. That’s why it has the individual mandate.

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  23. MH, I can’t reply above. It is silly. Congress does this all the time – pass spending, then decide not to fund it or fund it at a lower level. Whatever the house passes, the senate has to vote on again anyway, so they can still change it if they want. That doesn’t make this any kind of way to run a railroad, but they CAN do ti and DO do it all the time.

    I would prefer that there not be debt ceiling and that passing a bill==authorization, but it just doesn’t.

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    1. blergh – s/b passing==obligation, they can authorize money but never obligate it, in which case you can’t actually spend it, cause you don’t actually have it.

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    2. No. This is completely different. It isn’t done all the time, except for since this Congress was seated. The House Republicans aren’t asking something to be funded at a lower level or trying to modify it, because they could do that and they would fail. It takes two houses of Congress and the president to do that (or enough of Congress or override a veto).

      They are trying to kill on specific program that they are unable to kill using legislative procedure by taking the rest of the government hostage. Quite literally. The proposed “compromise” is that the Democrats give up something they want (Obamacare) in return for something the Democrats and Republicans both want (a functioning government). There is quite literally nothing being offered to the Democrats.

      Obviously, they can do it as a practical matter. But they can’t do it and pretend they are trying to compromise or are playing politics as usual.

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  24. You know what really annoys me? The way liberal reformers destroy everything they touch. Case in point: the New York individual health insurance market. (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/08/correction-community-rating-turns-out-to-be-even-worse-than-i-thought/22899/) Once upon a time, New York had a functioning individual insurance market. I had a policy myself, which was good because it enabled me to be self-employed. But New York enacted community rating, along with a host of other regulations, and the market was basically destroyed.

    If anyone had opposed community rating when New York enacted it, they of course would have been confronted with Wendy’s sanctimonious vituperation (sorry, I mean brilliant rhetoric) about how they must hate poor people, or sick people, or sick poor people. The fact is, self-righteousness and the conviction that you are smarter than everyone else because you have a graduate degree are not good guides to policy-making.

    Since I lost my health insurance policy, I have not believed anything a sanctimonious liberal told me about healthcare policy. That is why Obamacare leaves me cold.

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    1. Blah blah blah, as if I’m saying anything different from anyone else. Your problem with me is my tone. How dare I speak to you in that tone! What a mouthy woman I am.

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    2. Yea. You can’t have community rating without an individual mandate, which is why I’m completely comfortable assuming that attempts to delay the individual mandate for one year were functionally the same as trying to destroy Obamacare.

      Also, is there a state with a functioning individual insurance market currently, excepting Massachusetts?

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      1. So what the Democrats are saying is, we did it wrong before (in New York), and took away y81’s health insurance, but he should trust us this time, because we’re more virtuous than he is and much smarter. And if he doesn’t, he’s a racist and a bigot. I still say no.

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      2. If the Republicans had any plan at all, I’d agree with you. They have less than nothing, blocking alternatives and while proposing not a single positive plan. The Democrats became virtuous on this by a completely default of everybody else. In the long run, I’m horribly worried by what happens without two parties, one providing a check on the other, In the short run, it is entirely the fault of the Republican party that the choice is Obamacare or nothing.

        I’ve been debating this for days with you and Dave S. Nobody has pointed to a single plan alternative plan that might work.

        And the Democrats in New York didn’t take away your health care. They failed to save it. The individual purchase market for health insurance is a classic case of market failure and adverse selection. That’s why Obamacare is needed.

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  25. Instapundit quotes Stephanopoulos saying the last time the Reeps’ problem was not enough spine:

    “Deeply ingrained in the psyche of every congressional Republican is the government shutdown of 1995, for which Republicans were blamed. While many Republicans now believe the shutdown was a mistake, more think the problem was that the party lost its nerve.

    Former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, now host of ABC’s This Week, has validated that view. In his memoir, he wrote that Democrats, until then holding out against the Republicans’ budget-limiting efforts, were close to blinking. “Clinton was grumpy, the rest of us were grim,” until suddenly news came that Senate majority leader Bob Dole and House speaker Newt Gingrich were blinking first. “Whether the cause was hubris, naïveté, or a failure of nerve,” Stephanopoulos explained, “the Republicans had blown their best chance to splinter our party; from that point on, everything started breaking our way.””

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      1. How would you interpret Wendy’s comment, on October 3, 2013 at 10:49 am, in which she emphatically endorsed and associated herself with Andrew Sullivan’s claim that opposition to Obama and Obamacare is motivated by racism, and defended that claim by asserting that the opponents of Obama and Obamacare are “the same groups of people” as those who brought on the Civil War? I can’t read that any other way than as an accusation of racism.

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      2. You want a specific dispensation of “but not you,” which seems unreasonable. It’s blindinly obvious that much of the opposition to Obama is due to racism. Nobody attacked McCain about his birth certificate and he was actually born outside of U.S.

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    2. Dudes, I know I’m not Laura and this is her sandbox, but I suspect (because believe it or not, I do have empathy) that you/we are starting to annoy the crap out of people, so let me lay things out for what is probably acceptable and what is probably not acceptable.

      No one comes here to read your complaints about what you think I think about you. Nothing kills the comments section of a blog faster than the people who go around commenting on everything with an axe to grind against another commenter.

      Don’t like a comment I make? Reply to the comment. Don’t start weaving fantasies about what I’m sitting here thinking about you because you’re probably wrong and I’m really just thinking about my work, my family, or about how the guy on Sleepy Hollow is kind of hot.

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      1. How would one respond to comments like “They just don’t give a fuck about other people”
        (or “Mofo! Suck it!”) except by pointing out that such comments make actual discourse impossible? People who spew that sort of venom don’t want a conversation, they just want to shout down their opponents.

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  27. We got a letter from our insurer saying that we will be rolled over into a new play (a “silver” plan) because of the new healthcare law. The plan will save us $2400/year.

    (we do buy insurance on the individual market

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    1. Obamacare has already made insurance better for me, through the mandatory prescription coverage that went into effect in 2011. It hasn’t saved me a bundle, but a lot of my friends have saved hundreds of dollars through not having to pay extra for better prescription coverage plan. We’re grad students, and this really makes a difference in some people’s budgets.

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  28. Wendy, you show an absolutely stunning lack of self-awareness. But, how about a deal: you stop impugning my motives, I stop calling you on it. Anything you want to say about likely results of something I advocate: absolutely fair. Attributing vile motives to me – leave it alone.

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    1. I don’t see how she impugned your motives. She refused to say she thought your motives are good, which is very different.

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  30. y81, I went and took a look at the blog Wendy referred to. I think the post she is endorsing is http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-brainwashing-of-our-country.html, though her link is only to the blog. That blogger is a remarkable hothouse flower of the progleft – reminds me kind of of the playground bullies with whom my daughter has had to deal. My guess is that our Gracious Hostess will be happiest if we ignore Wendy and Wendy ignores us, going forward. dave.s.

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    1. Yeah, no. Wendy and MH most often make the comments that I would like to have made, if only I had put it as pithily, or didn’t live in a time zone removed from much of the conversation.

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    2. Actually, it was this one: http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/2013/10/sympathy-for-devil-cross-posted-at-no.html

      You *still* don’t understand that it’s not about racism or brainwashing or anything. (The man doth protest too much though.)

      I am *mocking* you for *caring* so much about being called a racist by some random internet commenter. That is what is hilarious to me. (Well, sad and pathetic, but it’s one of those laugh or else you’ll cry situations.) And the more you complain and whine about it and misunderstand what I’m doing, the more you prove my point, which starts me on the giggles again.

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  31. O, if Wendy ignores me, that’s a deal! But she frequently makes insulting personal responses to my comments.

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  32. Actually, the “iron triangle” frequently results in government programs continuing even though they are neither generally popular, nor demonstrably helpful to their purported beneficiaries.

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    1. And the classic example of the iron triangle is defense spending, which with entitlement programs for the elderly is the only thing the people shutting down the government aren’t eager to cut.

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  34. Many people in this comment thread would benefit from a book club on Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind.”

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