If I could be anywhere later tonight, it would be out drinking with John Boehner after the vote. It’s congenital: I’d always rather hang out with the losers. But in his case, there would be special benefits. First, I would ask him about the tanning. Look: it’s just us. The color is kind of weird. I’m just saying. I admit it: I’m a bit too focused on his tanning habits. Second, I would ask him about what went wrong in the government shutdown battle. I think I would say something like this, “I never wanted the fucking shutdown in the first place!” In my fantasy bar scene, Boehner is foul mouthed. “Even still, I had a lot of good ideas. But those mother fucking Tea Party assholes screwed me at every turn!” And do you know what I would say? “You are absolutely right! But I’d still stop the tanning.”

What all this means is that I feel a hell of a lot more comfortable losing than winning. It just feels weird—even weirder than John Boehner’s tan. So as a result of my discomfort, I turned on Fox News and watched Bill O’Reilly’s show The Factor. It wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped. For one thing, since there was breaking news, it wasn’t a usual show. In particular, it looked like Dennis Miller got bumped. That was very sad. Dennis Miller was almost unwatchable when I agreed with him. Now I can’t watch him without shouting at the television. He is yet another person who brings out my latent Tourette’s.

That doesn’t mean that I was completely let down. The narrative of Fox News tonight was that this wasn’t a loss for the Republican Party. Everyone lost! Bret Baier was there to do the “straight news” and he nailed it. In the tradition of the network’s “fair and balanced” approach to the news, he pointed out that President Obama’s approval rated had plummeted to 37%. For most viewers, this has to have been encouraging. They must have thought, “Obama lost!” Unfortunately for me, I knew this was a poll outlier. It is by far the lowest recent poll according to Real Clear Politics. In fact, if you look at the time series, you will see that Obama’s approval is down over the last six months, but it really hasn’t gotten significantly worse since the government shutdown.

Bill O’Reilly, of course, spent the whole time pushing the idea that this just wasn’t especially bad for the Republicans. Remember, this is the “no spin zone” and yet it seemed to be nothing but spin today. After complaining that everyone was saying the Republicans “got their butt kicked,” he said, “Everyone got their butt kicked!” Well, in a technical sense, I guess that’s true. Obama and the Democrats have seen their approval go down a bit. But it is nothing like the Republicans who now have their approval in multiple polls averaging around the mid-20s.

So once again, I was let down by my intelligence and all that pesky knowledge that I’m always picking up. But over time, I came to enjoy the feeling of winning. I could get used to it. Just like some day I will be used to John Boehner’s orange tan.

I wonder if this puts me within six degrees of Kevin Bacon?

The Houston Chronicle has published an editorial saying that they regret endorsing Ted Cruz for Senate in 2012. And look, I do feel a certain amount of schadenfreude about it. But the article is more a call for what passes for moderation in politics, Why We Miss Kay Bailey Hutchison. Well, the Chronicle could have endorsed Paul Sadler, the Democrat running against Cruz last year. Given his history in the Texas legislature, he is definitely the kind of guy who the paper claims it wants representing Texas. So why didn’t they support Sadler?

If you read their original endorsement (Which they did not link to!) they say they are not endorsing Sadler because he can’t win. Really! Go read it yourself. But they say lots of nice things about him. Most of their endorsement is a love letter to Hutchison, who they quote as saying, “[Ted Cruz is] going to have to choose early between being loyal to Jim DeMint and Mike Lee and the needs of the people of Texas.” Well, he clearly has made his choice, and it isn’t Texas. This should have come as no surprise to anyone at the Houston Chronicle.

But what is it about Kay Bailey Hutchison? Was she really a crossing isles, practical “Let’s get things done!” politician? No, not really. Certainly she was better than Ted Cruz. But consider how she dealt with the financial crisis. While George Bush Jr was president, she voted in favor of TARP—the huge bank bailout. But once Obama was in office, she voted against the Stimulus. She even wrote a Townhall apologia for the vote. Her argument was that some economists believe that government stimulus in 1933 made the Great Depression worse. Thus, stimulus was just going to make things worse in 2009. Well, first, you have to dig pretty deep to find economists who think the stimulus made the Depression worse. Second, like all of her Republican colleagues, she was jut looking for an excuse to thumb her nose at the new Democratic president. Bipartisanship, my ass!

So the Houston Chronicle can regret all they want that Ted Cruz is the junior Texas Senator. But it is institutions just like itself that have allowed the Republican Party to go off the rails. Ted Cruz is the newest model. Kay Bailey Hutchison was the previous model. I’m sure that in 20 years, the Chronicle will be singing the praises of Ted Cruz as though he is the very definition of a Good Senator, but that new guy (Ted Cruz V. 2.0) is a total disappointment.

All of this gets to my constant problem with the press in this country. If they really did appreciate the days when Lloyd Bentsen was a titan in the Senate, then they would be supporting people like Paul Sadler. But instead, they cheer on the ever harder right turn of the nation’s politics (but not people). And they would never do that on the left. If Dennis Kucinich had been running for Senate in Texas, they would have called foul. Liberal extremist, no way! Conservative extremist, hope for the best! And I have no doubt at all that the Houston Chronicle will support Ted Cruz in 2018. And most likely, they will say the same thing about his Democratic candidate. Why? “Because of a simple lack of interest and support from his own party.” Yeah, that’s a reason to support a right wing extremist and narcissist who would destroy the world if it gave him a small advantage.

Endorse in haste; regret in leisure you bastards.

Update (16 October 2013 2:04 pm)

Abby Rapoport has a great article at The American Prospect, What Explains Ted Cruz? Her answer is simple, “Texas, for starters.” She notes that in Texas right now, the Republican Party pretty much is the Tea Party. And in that context, Ted Cruz is a hero. Outside that context, the situation is at best unclear. But here’s the thing. In ten years at most, not even Texas will be a safe place for Ted Cruz. The Tea Party folk are not wrong that this is their last chance to “save” their country. It is slipping out of their grasp very fast.

All indications are now that the the current government shutdown and Debt Ceiling crises will be over shortly. At least they will for three months when the whole thing starts over. The Republicans have been chastened. It seems the Abba Eban’s comment applies especially well to the House Republicans, “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.”

Yesterday was fascinating. Boehner kept trying to find a bill he could pass that might lead to some face saving in this debacle. And you have to give the man credit. His ideas weren’t bad. But he was constrained by his caucus. Unfortunately for him, a large block of the Republican House members were only willing to accept total victory. But they don’t have the power to achieve that and so the only other option was total defeat. And that’s what it looks like we have today.

Of course, this is not how the Republicans will spin the deal. I suspect that Boehner will make a two-pronged (and contradictory) argument. First, he will say that he got Obama to negotiate and as a result they got the very important concession of income verification on the Obamacare exchanges. Second, he will say that Obama played unfair and that if the president cared about democracy, Obama would have given the Republicans all the things they requested—well, most, because Boehner is nothing if not reasonable. And the la-hand of the Freeeeee! And the hoooome, of thhhhhe, braaaave!

But what of the bitter enders? Have they learned their lesson? They haven’t. And they never will. The only way to get rid of this very dangerous element in Congress is to vote them out and replace them with more reasonable people. People who operate based upon faith will not respond to facts. When apocalyptic predictions turn out to be wrong, believers just rationalize them. In the case of the congressional bitter enders, they will likely just blame their leadership for not holding on until, well, the bitter end.

This is, however, a teachable moment. The Republicans did poorly at the polls after the 1995 government shutdown and many came away thinking the two were correlated. In fact, the correlation was fairly weak. But it’s all about perceptions. And if the Republicans do poorly at the polls next year, they too will likely perceive a correlation. Now we already know that shutdown or no, the Democrats are likely to do reasonably well next year. But a false connection in the minds of politicians and reporters could actually push the Republicans to behave more like a normal political party. And it wouldn’t hurt if they had fewer seats in Congress.

Election day is 4 November 2014. Mark your calendars!

Update (16 October 2013 3:24 pm)

Well, we got Boehner’s official statement. It was not the place for the full “Obama was mean to us” but it is implicit in “the legislative coalition the president has relied upon.” Overall, it is very weepy. As usual. I would feel sorry for him but I’m prejudiced against orange skinned people. Here is the statement, annotated by me:

As many of you may know, I have a problem with Whole Foods. I’m all in favor of natural foods sold at exorbitant prices. But I have a real problem paying these prices when the workers who sell me these expensive goods are poorly compensated. At Whole Foods, staff members are paid so badly that recently one of them was fired for “stealing” a tuna sandwich out of the trash. This is in addition to the idiot libertarian CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, and his constant annoying proclamations. Most recently, he corrected an earlier statement that Obamacare was socialism by saying that it was really fascism.

(This is really aggravating to me. Because they are CEOs, people like Mackey get a lot of press when they make statements about economics. But they are almost to a man extremely ignorant. In fact, they are also usually just plain stupid. We are supposed to listen to them because they are successful in business. But anyone paying attention should have noticed by now that it doesn’t work that way. Their success in business is as much a function of luck as anything. They show with their proclamations that they would have been hopeless had they gone into any other field. But as a society, we continue to look up to these fools and there doesn’t seem to be any level of foolishness that will convince us that they aren’t worth listening to.)

As a result of all this, I have made a decision to not shop at Whole Foods. This is very difficult. Because of my lifestyle, shopping at Whole Foods is extremely convenient. It is often very hard not to dash inside to pick something up. But I’ve managed to avoid that. Almost completely. There is just that bagel exception. Occasionally, I have bought bagels there. I rationalized it because unlike everything else in the store, bagels are a decent deal. They are only 99¢ each, for a pretty good bagel. Now, it’s true that I can get a better bagel for only 89¢ at the local health food store. But I’m not near it very often, so Whole Foods has gotten some of my business on this one product.

That all changed today. I wanted a couple of bagels and I was close to Whole Foods, so I ran in. And the price is now $1.50—a full 70% more than the locally owned health food store where the bagels are better. Well, that’s it! There is no longer a bagel exception. The new price is ridiculous but beyond that, what’s with the more than 50% increase in price? Regardless, that’s a high enough price that I will either go without or go to the local health food store.

My recommendation to all of you is to avoid Whole Foods if at all possible. And definitely stay away from the bagels.

Oh but when it rains, it pours. Some days have no one really interesting. Others have too many. Today is the latter kind of day.

On this day in 1844, the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born. I’m not a great fan of his, but it isn’t really his fault. The problem is that young men tend to really like him. Since he wasn’t a terribly careful writer, his work is a hell of a lot easier to read than, say, Kant. Plus, there is something very obnoxious about many of his ideas. The worst of these is the superman. The problem is not the very idea. I actually believe that man creates his own ethics and that this is determined to some extent by the man with the inclination and strength to force his ideas on others. But for most 17 year olds, it is just an excuse to be an asshole.

The great economist John Kenneth Galbraith was born in 1908. The thing about the best economists is that they shatter assumptions of the past. And economics, more than any other science I can think of, is littered with unconsidered assumptions. One of those assumptions was that companies didn’t affect consumer independence. That’s just a silly idea. Galbraith destroyed it. He also argued that the modern economy was fundamentally different than economies of old. I’m not sure how much I accept that, but it is certainly true that most libertarian theories are based on (and could only work in) extremely simple economies that don’t exist anymore.

And the great comedian Larry Miller is 60 today. Let’s be honest, he would be a huge star if he weren’t so ugly. What I especially like about him is that he created an enormous amount of material. Check out this half hour routine about a ski trip. It is brilliant:

Other birthdays (because I really want to go and watch It Happened One Night): the great historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr (1917); actor and Spock’s dad Mark Lenard (1924); philosopher Michel Foucault (1926); film director Penny Marshall (70); and musician Richard Carpenter (57).

The day, however, belongs to the great humorist P. G. Wodehouse. He is best know for his Jeeves short stories and novels, but he wrote a lot more than that. In fact, it is amazing to look back on his output. He is still well worth reading today. But if you don’t have time for that, you can always watch Fry and Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster. Here is the whole episode “Bertie Is in Love”:

Happy birthday P. G. Wodehouse!

One of the few conservatives really worth reading, Ramesh Ponnuru, offers us a look at The New House Plan. And it is ridiculous, as expected. As I noted earlier, the Senate bill is good because it is the result of an actual negotiation: Republicans get something they want in return for something Democrats want. This is what we all learned from Sesame Street. This day is brought to you by the letter “C” as in “compromise”!

The House Republicans are asking for a bunch more goodies. But most tellingly, they want to destroy the Reid-McConnell balance. In that bill, the Republicans got income verification in Obamacare and the Democrats got a delay to the reinsurance tax. Well, the Republicans want to take away the reinsurance tax delay. Why? I assume because they absolutely don’t want to give the Democrats even the smallest of concessions. Or it could be worse. They may think they could offer up this change as a concession later. Regardless, what this all means is that the House Republicans still aren’t seriously negotiating this stuff.

As Ponnuru notes, these are small concessions for the Democrats to make. But that hardly matters. It is not acceptable to reward the Republicans for their hostage taking. And as Ed Kilgore adds, “It’s not entirely clear whether this proposal could command enough Republican votes to pass without Democratic cooperation.” This takes us back to the Fiscal Cliff negotiations from last year. It doesn’t make any sense to deal with Boehner at all since he doesn’t really speak for more than a small hand full of his caucus.

Most concerning about all of this is the idea that Boehner might just pass his own bill and then send the House home. This is what Ponnuru tweeted this morning:

That would depend upon him passing this more reasonable bill. If it were, say, the Ryan budget, everyone would blame him for crashing the economy. If it seems that he is excepting relatively small concessions, he could at least make the argument he wasn’t to blame. Regardless, it would be the most dangerous move he could possibly make. My guess is that it is really like Nixon’s madman theory: Boehner wants to float the idea that he would do something he actually won’t.

Regardless of all this, I’m losing patience with the House Republicans. The crazies are the crazies. And Boehner doesn’t have much power, partly because the House has made it pretty hard to manage itself. (Bring back earmarks!) My anger is directed at the supposedly reasonable Republicans. I’ve never believed they were reasonable, but I had been counting on them to not be crazy, or even worse, nihilistic.