I haven’t had much to say about the government shutdown, because, hey, there isn’t a lot to say. But after today, there are a few things. I have to admit to being a bit concerned about how the shutdown is playing in the press. Ed Kilgore provided a number of headlines from this morning that, intentional or not, feed the Republican narrative. The most obvious partisanship came from Fox News, of course: “Partial Shutdown Begins: Can Congress, White House Compromise?” That one’s fun because it pushes the Fox News idea that is everywhere in their coverage that this isn’t a real shutdown but only a “slimdown.” If only Newt had had the help of Fox News in 1995!

What’s more generally worrisome about these headlines is that the Republican position is simply that they want compromise. But the issue here is not one of negotiation. This is extortion. It is wrong to say, “The parents don’t want to pay any money and the kidnappers want two million dollars; why can’t they just compromise?!” That’s what’s going on. None of the other headlines use the word “compromise,” but they are all have similar “both sides now” coverage. For example, the Washington Post headline was: “In Shutdown Blame Game, Democrats and Republicans United: It’s the Other Side’s Fault.” Because each side says that they are right, the good “objective” reports can’t look at the actual facts and determine who is right. Our mainstream press is fully in the grip of postmodern analysis, “Who can say which side is right? It’s just a matter of opinion!”

Meanwhile, in the trenches, we have Ted Cruz pushing the idea that we should just break up the Federal budget and fund the things we really like. You know, it’s really sad that Yosemite is closed on its birthday, so let’s open that. Of course, as Matt Yglesias correctly points out, the whole purpose (on both sides) is that a government shutdown is supposed to be painful. I’ll go further: Curz’s idea is a typical conservative gambit. The idea is to restart programs that might hurt the rich and middle classes (e.g. the national parks) to take off the pressure to ever start back up programs that help the poor. He is an evil little man.

In a separate article, Yglesias has an much better idea, Democrats Should Reject a “Clean” CR. He says it is madness to just restart the government, only to have another crisis two weeks later. So the Democrats should finally start making some demands of their own. Truly, this would have been a good idea a long time ago. As discussed above, there is some pressure from the press to push the Democrats to make some concessions to the Republicans. With a demand for a repeal of the Debt Ceiling, there would be some room to negotiate. In that case, the Republicans might be very lucky to get out of this with a clean continuing resolution (CR).

Speaking of the Debt Ceiling, this morning, Dean Baker answered a question that has been gnawing at me for a couple of weeks, October 17th and a Government Shutdown Don’t Mix. Before the government shutdown, Jack Lew said that the government would run into the Debt Ceiling on 17 October. But doesn’t the government shutdown move that date further out? Indeed it does. As Baker notes, “Depending on how much spending goes out the door, it is possible that the government is not even borrowing at all during the period of shutdown.” Regardless, it means that at most the Debt Ceiling crisis will come a couple of weeks after the government reopens. So Yglesias’ idea still makes a lot of sense.

Finally, a lot of people are reporting that most of the House Republican caucus has long wanted to vote for a clean CR. In fact, the number sits at 175 Republicans who would do so. Now is this credible? Is Boehner’s interpretation of the Hastert Rule that a majority of his caucus must vote for a bill before it goes to the floor, but the majority doesn’t necessarily mean it will go to the floor? In other words, the majority can stop action but it can’t start it? Jonathan Bernstein is having none of it. He sums up the House Republican caucus thusly:

True Believers: 30

Primary Paranoid: 20

Fraidy Cat Conference: 175

The True Believers are those people who are crazy—the ones who think that we go from Obamacare directly to gas chambers. The Primary Paranoid (my name) are those who rightfully worry that they will be primaried from the right and thus might as well be considered part of the True Believers. The Fraidy Cat Conference are those who know that the shutdown is bad and who want to tell reporters off the record that they think so. But they don’t want to do it publicly and don’t even want the others in the caucus to know where they stand lest the information get out and tarnish their reputations.

Maybe it is best to say that the caucus is divided in two: the True Believers and all the other people who are afraid that it might come out that they are not True Believers. Regardless, the fact that the vast majority of the caucus secretly wants to end this government shutdown is a good sign. Jennifer Bendery is keeping a list of the House Republicans who have publicly stated that they will vote for a clean CR. It is up to 12 as I write this. A total of 17 is needed for one to be sure to pass the House. But of course, that isn’t the number that will force Boehner to allow a vote on it. Jonathan Bernstein says, “My guess is the line would be some number greater than 25 and fewer than 60.” Whatever it is, I hope to see the number calling for a clean CR increasing over the next few days.

On this day in 1888, the card magic innovator Charles Jordan was born. I have long known him because of the “Jordan Count,” which is a way of counting four cards while only showing three of them. It is the logical opposite of the “Elmsley Count.” That is to say that performing an Elmsley Count followed by a Jordan Count will return the cards to the original order. The Elmsley Count hides the third card from the top and the Jordan Count hides the bottom card. What I didn’t know until today is that he lived in Penngrove and then later in Vallejo, both towns close by me. It is also interesting that when I was a kid, the local Society of American Magicians meeting was in Penngrove, despite the fact that it is a tiny (population roughly 2,000) town.

Actor James Whitmore was born in 1921. He did a lot of acting work, but I remember him from his one-man shows. I still think such things are about the best kind of theater. Action doesn’t especially work live. But a guy just standing on stage telling stories works remarkably well—at least for me. I love stories as stories. Whitmore was great in Will Rogers’ USA, Give ’em Hell, Harry!, Bully. Unfortunately, none of them are available on DVD. Here he is as Truman:

Jimmy Carter is 89 today. It is easy to look back on his presidency very fondly. He was so much better than everyone who came after him, how can one not? Just the same, he was the leading edge of the New Democratic movement. He was the first Democratic president we got who was much more conservative than we deserved. Look at the men we’ve elected: Carter, Clinton, and Obama. Each one of those elections were going to be won by a Democrat. All the major factors were in the Democrats’ favor. Yet we elected conservative Democrats (moderates in a general sense) and what did we get? Reagan, the end to welfare (as we knew it), and a Republican healthcare plan that is more a giveaway to the insurance industry than anything. Still, Carter is a decent man. Democrats can look back fondly on our recent presidents. Republicans hate the last three of four, and the other they’ve turned into an idol. I’m pleased to call myself a Democrat (even if I am a disgruntled one).

Other birthdays: Golden Age Dutch painter Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem (1620); pianist Vladimir Horowitz (1903); historian Daniel J. Boorstin (1914); actor Walter Matthau (1920); and actor Julie Andrews (78).

The day, however, belongs to the actor and singer Richard Harris who was born on this day in 1930. He was quite a good actor. I enjoyed him in Camelot and he was even better in the later years of his career. But I am featuring him today because he sang the most maligned song in history, “MacArthur Park”:

Happy birthday Richard Harris!

Another great catch from Jonathan Chait, California Democrats Hurting Rob Schneider. The comedian has decided to become a Republican. And the reason is really great, “We need to break this super-majority that isn’t helping with jobs. The last time I made a movie in California was seven years ago, and that’s because we’re not being competitive.” Ah yes, the lack of acting jobs inside the boards of California is an outrage! How could those Democrats have betrayed Rob Schneider like this?! And notice: the Democrats have had a super-majority for only 9 months, yet they are responsible for the lack of films shot (because they are still mostly made here) in California over the last 7 years.

He goes on to explain that he owns a vitamin company. But he is so loyal to the state that made him a multimillionaire that he left because of undisclosed “regulations.” He then goes on to claim that things are really great in Texas because of the lack of regulations, blah, blah, blah. Well, that isn’t true. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out, the reason for the huge growth in Texas is that real estate is cheap. Texas is not seeing increasing productivity. They are only seeing businesses move there because the cost of living is low, which allows them to pay their workers less. But as even Schneider points out: there are reasons that California is a better place to live than Texas and that means it will always be more expensive to live here.

Rob Schneider is typical of a couple of things. First: typical Default Democrat. I see this kind of thing all the time. Most Democrats (Like Republicans!) don’t think much about policy. So they don’t much think about why a strong safety net is important. That allows someone like Scheider to see that there are a couple of bureaucratic obstacles in the way of his making even more money from his vitamin business and so he freaks out and changes parties. Of course, the truth is that the Republican Party isn’t going to do anything for his small business. The Republicans are the party of big business and all they will do is make sure that big companies have big advantages over small companies.

The second typical thing about Schneider is how as a Republican he is only interested in his own welfare. California all by itself is the 12th largest economy in the world. Texas is just over half its size and its per capita income is only three-quarters as high. And why is that? Because only asshole business owners like Schneider move their businesses from California.

The last (and first) good film Rob Schneider was in was Demolition Man, and he didn’t even get screen credit for it. But maybe that has something to do with it. He has been in at least two films with fucktard Sylvester Stallone. Maybe they had a meeting of little minds and figured out that in the last 9 months the Democrats had managed to destroy the film industry for the previous seven years.

I have a notebook right next to my keyboard and in it, I write (among other things) ideas for articles. I get around to writing maybe half of them. One from last Sunday night is, “Plea to vote.” This has to do with something that has been weighing heavily on my mind. It doesn’t seem to matter how badly the Republicans behave, the people seem not to notice. But the truth is that they don’t have to. If the poor voted as much as the rich, this country would be beyond Democratic, it would be liberal. After all, the poor in Mississippi vote Democratic. That’s Mississippi, folks!

Still, the general public’s lack of interest in politics rankles. Will Brown sent me a really interesting thing earlier. It was this morning’s Yahoo! trending list: the top ten searches at that time. Here it is:

1. Bikers attack SUV
2. Rachael Leigh Cook
3. Ivanka Trump
4. Badfinger
5. Woman quits job
6. Miley Cyrus
7. Depression
8. Meredith Kercher
9. UC Berkeley explosion
10. Corvette Stingray

Let me give you the run down of what the people think is important this morning. Some bikers harassed a nice suburban family on a trip to New York. Rachael Leigh Cook (Lingerie model?) just had a baby. Ivanka Trump (famous for be Donald Trump’s daughter) is pregnant and won’t tell us the sex of the baby. Apparently a Bandfinger song was used in the last episode of Breaking Bad. A woman announced her resignation with a fairly lame video. I guess Miley Cyrus has a new album out. As many of us have known for years, depression doesn’t worsen cancer and having a “good attitude” doesn’t help. There was no DNA of Amanda Knox at Meredith Kercher’s murder scene. A bomb exploded in Berkeley that injured 4; it seems it happened when someone tried to steal copper pipes. And apparently the Corvette Stingray is designed to please your inner 9-year-old.

What wasn’t on the list was anything about a government shutdown nor is there any concern about the looming government default. But these things are going to matter more than any of the trending articles. Look: I understand. People are always interested in celebrity babies. I don’t know why, but I understand that it is a real thing. And I understand that most people have really bad taste in music and cars. But even the two actual news stories are weak tea. They are not important, but I will allow that marauding biker gangs are pretty cool.

But as I said, obsess all you like about babies, kittens, and copper thieves. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you vote. It doesn’t even matter how you vote. The more people who vote, the more liberal the outcome. The numbers are on the side of good policy—at least they are as long as the current situation is so bad. So just vote. It matters to the nation. But if that isn’t enough: it matters to me.

Jonathan Chait made an excellent catch this morning, Confused Libertarian Demands Obama Become Strongman. The “confused libertarian” is Nick Gillespie who has been running Reason Magazine basically his whole life. But Chait is a little wrong in saying that Gillespie wants Obama to become a strongman. Instead, Gillespie is being petulant in, Let Us Be Clear: Obama Deserves Chief Responsibility for Gov’t Shutdown.

Basically, Gillespie’s argument is this: “President Obama claims he can unilaterally kill American citizens, so why doesn’t he just ‘kick some asses’? Huh? What do you got to say to that tough guy?!” The question is whether Gillespie is really that ignorant of how our government is supposed to work. Based upon years of reading him, I would have to say that he is. Most libertarians know very little about our form of government. Just like Christians who never read the Bible, libertarians generally show a shocking lack of knowledge of the Constitution, except in the most limited form of quoting, “Congress shall make no law…”

In his article, he is clearly confused about the budget process. He notes (in very confusing prose) that the Senate only this year passed a budget—something they didn’t do for the four previous years. Well, there are reasons for that. One of them is that budgets are settled these days with continuing resolutions, which say that we will continue funding the government as we have been because we can’t agree on anything else. As Chait notes:

But Gillespie’s article is boilerplate. All he is really communicating is that he doesn’t like Obama. He also uses the opportunity to take a swipe at Bush. This is a common libertarian line, “Don’t blame me, I voted libertarian!” These people are making the same mistake that, say, Bill O’Reilly makes when he calls Obama a socialist. Does Gillespie really think that Obama is every bit as bad as Bush? My guess is that he doesn’t, but he pretends that there is no difference and proudly claims that no one he’s ever voted for has won. But all that does is take him outside the political world where he can snipe at the candidates who do win.

And that is all Gillespie is doing in his Reason column: sitting back and yelling at the people who are actually involved in running the government. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an important roll for ideologues in our political process. They do, after all, push and pull the ideological center of gravity in the country. But when they start talking about practical issues like continuing resolutions and government shutdowns, they are just like hecklers at a comedy club or sporting event. And that’s just sad.

Afterword

I just came upon a page where Leonard Peikoff argued for a Romney vote last year. His position was that Obama was more effective at leading us to “tyranny” than Romney would be. He also said that he would vote for whatever Republican was running for the House because it would limit Obama if he were re-elected. This is another ideologue getting into practical politics. If Romney had won, it is certain that the Republicans would have held both houses of Congress. And thus, Romney would have pushed us very very fast toward “tyranny.” But that’s the kind of conclusion you come to when you assume that the two sides are interchangeable.

On this day in 1882, the physicist Hans Geiger was born. He is remembered today as the co-inventor of the Geiger counter. But he is actually important for the Geiger–Marsden experiment which showed that atoms are kind of like planetary systems with a big nucleus and electrons spinning around outside. Ah, it brings me back to high school when I was confused about those wave equation illustrations of electron densities.

The great film director Lewis Milestone was born in 1895. He directed some really fine movies like All Quiet on the Western Front and one of better versions of The Front Page. He also directed the Burgess Meredith Of Mice and Men, the Sinatra Ocean’s 11, and the Marlon Brando Mutiny on the Bounty. He died just 5 days short of his 85th birthday—by that time forgotten by an industry that should have heralded him as a god.

Johnny Mathis is 78 today. He does have a distinction voice, but I only bring him up today so I can present one of my favorite American Music Club songs, “Johnny Mathis’ Feet”:

Other birthdays: French singer Mireille Hartuch (1906); the great jazz drummer Buddy Rich (1917); puppeteer Fran Brill (67); actor Eric Stoltz (52); comedian (who reminds me of my sister) Kathleen Madigan (48); and actor Tony Hale (43).

The day, however, belongs to the great writer Truman Capote who was born on this day in 1924. All the great southern writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor seem to have existed only to allow Capote to be created so that at last we would have a writer of great ability who was not focused on depressing us. Despite everything, Capote’s work is hopeful. In his later years, he allowed his celebrity to harm his work. But going back to his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms through In Cold Blood, he was fabulous.

Here he is on the Dick Cavett Show being his usual charming self:

Happy birthday Truman Capote!

You may remember two weeks ago, I compared John Boehner to General Hummel in The Rock. The point was that Hummel threatened to kill 80,000 people in San Francisco, but when his bluff was called, he was unwilling to do it. In the film, he is killed and his subordinates try to do it anyway. Although Boehner clearly does agree with everything his crazy caucus is pushing for, he’s a seasoned enough politician to know that a government shutdown is at best a dangerous move. Well, all of that got me in the mind to watch the movie.

I saw the film in the theater when it was first out and I was not pleased. It seemed boring in the extreme; I absolutely did not care about the characters, so I spent most of the film noticing how the filmmakers seemed to think that people were only ever burned by flames—a person could survive fine in a 500° oven, as long as the flame wasn’t currently on. But I was willing to give it another try. Maybe I had just been in a bad mood when I saw it before.

It turns out that I was right about the characters. In fact, the characters only seem to exist as glue to hold together Michael Bay’s ridiculous (And long!) action sequences. But there is a much bigger problem with The Rock. The script over-explains everything. Worse still is the absolutely terrible dialog. General Hummel says, “Then you probably have no idea what it means to lead some of the finest men on God’s earth into combat and then watch their memories get betrayed by their own fucking government.” It’s perfect: half Moses on Mount Sinai and half whining high school student.

If I could bear it, I would go through the film and provide you with the quotes. It is hard to know who exactly to blame. The film was originally written by David Weisberg & Douglas Cook, the team who brought us Double Jeopardy—a bad film, but not nearly so bad as The Rock. Then it was “reworked” by a number of writers. And, of course, there was the requisite director’s hissy fit when his friend didn’t get screen credit. (Funny thing that. Most people just do their jobs for money. These screenwriters are extremely well paid even though they have very little talent. Yet such a big deal is made of credits. Most of these guys should be glad they aren’t working at Starbucks.)

There is lots else that is wrong with the movie. There’s lots of Christianity thrown in randomly. There is obsessive praise of the military, even though the film is about a bunch of rough military people involved in a terrorist blackmail scheme. That’s another interesting thing: war and the Prince of Peace go together so well in American mythology. Oh, and there is the quite serious suggestion that everyone’s favorite conspiracy theories are correct. Womack says, “This man knows our most intimate secrets from the last half century! The alien landing at Roswell, the truth behind the JFK assassination.” John Spencer shows he’s a great actor by delivering those lines without laughing.

So just for reference, I’m embedding the important scene from the movie here. You really don’t want to waste your time watching The Rock.

Jonathan Chait has an excellent article about recent Republican history that has brought us to this moment, The House GOP’s Legislative Strike. In it, he talks about the Republican retreat after the Fiscal Cliff fiasco. The result was “The Williamsburg Accord.” It basically said that the Republicans were going to take their ball and go home. At that time they decided that they would no longer negotiate with the president. But it was later expanded to not negotiating with the Senate as well. To sum up, “The way to make sense of it is that Republicans have planned since January to force Obama to accede to large chunks of the Republican agenda, without Republicans having to offer any policy concessions of their own.” And that leads us here.

But now we are left with the usual idiots in the mainstream media completely falling for the Republican gambit. Think of it as follows—and note that I do not think this is an exaggeration. Imagine two guys own a paper towel business. One of them decides that the business should stop making paper towels and instead make paper napkins. So he refuses to pay the employees unless the first owner agrees to change the business. Now, maybe they should change the business. But that has nothing to do with paying the employees who have been and currently are working for them.

Many (Too many!) in the mainstream press would have us believe that both of these owners are being unreasonable. The first guy should give some ground and the second guy should take less (like maybe half their operations changing to paper napkins). But that’s a false choice. By this argument, the first guy could say that he wants to change the business to making toilet paper or the employees don’t get paid. So these “why can’t we all just get along” pseudo-journalists are saying that whoever behaves badly and makes unreasonable demands should be appeased. “Hitler wants Poland so let’s give him Czechoslovakia!” Of course, when it is put that way, these same people would call foul.

The situation could not be any clearer. The Republicans are extorting not just the Democratic Party but the people of the United States. The Republicans did not get what they wanted through the normal democratic processes, so they have resorted to blackmail. And notice: this is nothing nothing nothing to do with the budget. The House Republicans big demand is that the medical device tax be eliminated from Obamacare. This means that the federal deficit will increase! And stupid me: I thought that the Republicans wanted to reduce the deficit. (Just kidding; I never thought that!)

I still don’t think that this is going to end well for the Republicans. But thus far, it is all going according to plan. The Republicans have refused to negotiate with the Democrats and so they’ve created the crises they desired. And now much of the media are cursing both sides as though not giving into extortion is as bad as extortion itself. But I think that the people of the United States are smarter than these so-called journalists. I keep going back to the vice-presidential debate last year. Ryan claimed that Obama cut Medicare. Biden countered with a great line, “Folks: use your common sense! Who do you trust on this?!” The same holds here. When all is said and done, the people will know who to blame for the government shutdown because they know which party hates the government: the Republicans. They are very clear about their hatred—at least when it is helping anyone but the rich.

Afterword

To answer the question in the title: not yielding to extortion is as bad as extortion when you are a reporter who cares only about being even handed and not at all about being objective.

Update (30 September 2013 1:45 pm)

I’m way behind on my Matt Yglesias reading, so I just came upon a great short article of his, If Vladimir Putin Threatens To Nuke Houston, Should Obama Negotiate With Him?

I couldn’t say it better myself. And I didn’t!

I was thinking about Elvis Costello’s “Waiting for the End of the World” this morning. With the government shutdown coming and all, it just seems natural. But I’m especially focused on the lines, “Dear lord, I sincerely hope your coming; ’cause you really started something.”

Christianity is an apocalyptic religion. It is all about the destruction of the world and how God will then reward the good little girls and boys who believed in him. So it isn’t surprising that Republicans, who would be better named the Christian Conservative Party, are interested in other apocalyptic visions. Government shutdown! Debt default!! Nuclear war!!! It all brings us closer to the time when Jesus comes back to kick some unbeliever ass.

On a smaller scale, I do hope that the Republican elites are going to show up to these two (shutdown and default) fights. It is clear that the elites don’t want these fights, but they did start something. Ed Kilgore suggests that the conservative movement reached a critical mass of craziness during the Bush administration and we are still living with the consequences. But this just puts a history on top of the general observation that this is the Republican base getting out of the control of the elite’s power.

The main thing is what I harp on here: that the Republican base believes the exact same things that the elites have claimed to believe for many decades. As Kilgore puts it: “the same old torch of resistance to the New Deal and Great Society and the decline of the patriarchal family, passed on from generation to generation.” The conflict we are seeing in the Republican Party is just one of tactics. The base is tired of waiting and the elites know that the conservatives do not have the power to get their utopia qua hellscape.

But let’s be clear: the elites don’t actually want what they’ve been agitating for all these decades. In fact, the base doesn’t want it either. The same was true of the Democrats when they truly were a liberal party. Extremists push for ultimate solutions, but what they really want is just to push society in their ideological direction. Both the libertarian and socialist extremes would be terrible places to live—even for the “winners.” In general, I think the elites know this. The base voters, unfortunately, have deluded themselves into thinking they would love a world where everyone protects their own property with their own guns and there are no public parks or public roads. But just like the conservatives who only support gay rights once they find out their children are gay, these conservatives would change their minds in the cold light of reality.

So I imagine there are a lot of Republicans sitting around anxiously awaiting the government shutdown just as they await the second coming of Jesus. It appears to be a conservative thing.

Dove is sending mixed messages. One commercial implies that my face may actually be more attractive than I think it is. Talk about a morale booster! Watching the reaction of those women as they saw how attractive a forensic artist would imagine them as he drew their missing person posters gave me real hope. It gave me the courage to look in the bathroom mirror, with its “accurate” reflection and horror lighting, and see myself for the acceptably presentable middle-aged woman I probably am. A marketing victory.

Dove followed that with a big but…

“Your face is okay, but that underarm discoloration is pretty gross”. WTF. (Disclaimer: Being under the age of fifty allows me to use current youth code without hesitation nor embarrassment.)

Now I need beautiful underarms! I NEED them. Loss of skin elasticity and insidious gray hairs I can cope with, but off-putting dark spots in my armpits? There’s only so much I can bear before I give up and buy a burka.

The forensic guy wasn’t available so Dove created a dramatization of the pearly, yet unsightly, dark marks that can become visible after shaving.

Now I’m not stupid. I know that, even though Dove Clear Tone antiperspirant has the effective solution, it isn’t a miracle cure. We need to take personal responsibility for our appearance, not become dependent on an easy fix, so here are a few suggestions:

Solution 1: Don’t shave over the sink with a dry razor.

Solution 2: Wear sleeves.

Solution 3: If you must wear sleeveless tops, keep your arms down. Know the answer? Clear your throat and raise a feminine forefinger. No need to hold up your arm and make ooh-ooh noises. You aren’t five! Unless you are, in that case you should see a doctor about your need to shave.

Solution 4: If you don’t want anyone to see the hideous – and probably visible from space – spots on your nervously perspiring pits, don’t fondle your underarms in front of anyone. Ever. It’s weird.

I have to admit that this is an educational commercial. I learned that I’ve been pronouncing calendula incorrectly in my head every time I’ve read it. It isn’t kal-en-doo-luh, it’s kuh-len-juh-luh. Thanks Dove.