shutting down the government

No one in the Senate is better at articulating relatively complicated ideas in a way that anyone-- or at least anyone who isn't brainwashed by Hate Talk Radio and Fox-- can comprehend. Thursday she was on the Senate floor explaining the shutdown and why the Republicans who are just shrugging it off are wrong when they say government doesn't matter anyway. "For years now," she began with a veiled swipe at Grover Norquist, "we've heard a small minority in this country rail against government.

Friday morning, the political class was chattering about Jonathan Martin's NY Times piece, GOP Elders See Liabilities In Shutdown, but not because Bob Dole, Haley Barber, Ed Gillespie or George H.W. Bush is warning House Republicans away from their lunatic lurch over the cliff.

"Who they hell is Marlin Stutzman?" people were asking Thursday morning. No one had ever heard of him before. Now the whole nation knows who he is-- or at least knows he's the guy who said:

Nunes calls teabaggers "lemmings with suicide vests"-- but he votes with them 100% of the timeNo one ever accused Devin Nunes of being a "moderate." He's a hardcore conservative whose political career has been financed by the insurance industry, corporate agriculture and Big Pharma. Although his San Joaquin Valley district (CA-22) is increasingly Hispanic, the voters are still Republican enough there for him to not have to worry about Democrats seriously challenging him.

Last year Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ) tried appealing to out-of-district progressives while claiming to be a centrist in AZ-09. Obama beat McCain and Romney in the district; it's not a red district. This week Sinema, one of the Democrats who votes most frequently with the Republican on crucial roll calls, has been claiming that both parties are at fault over the government shut down. "Arizonans are angry and I don't blame them," she said Tuesday.

"Will it play in Peoria?" means one thing for the rest of the country, but something a lot more personal for Republican Congressman Aaron Schock. Although Schock was born in Minnesota, his family moved to Peoria when he was in the 4th grade. He graduated from Richwoods in 2000 and from Peoria's Bradley University in 2002 and was serving on the Peoria School Board by the age of 19.

Let's take a look at the 3 bills Boehner and Cantor put together as part of their strategy of just funding the parts of government they agree with (while cutting off the governmental functions-- like Social Security and Medicare-- they hate). Tuesday they offered 3 with no hearings or debate and they needed 2/3 to pass. All three failed.

This week Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes had a typically gratuitous and nasty diatribe against President Obama in the Wall Street Journal featuring a bizarro-world right-wing reinterpretation of history; nothing new there.

Sunday evening there was an itsy-bitsy rumor of a teensy-weensy Revolt of the Moderates. It fizzled into Peter King, Mario Diaz-Balart and Charlie Dent, 3 very electorally vulnerable Obama-district Republicans, joining 8 crackpot wing nuts to oppose Boehner's latest shut-down-the-government move. They needed 17 votes; King bragged he had 30.

The reactionary clown on the right hasn't been sentenced to prisonI spent most of the summer holed up in an old house (built in the 1600s) outside of Montespertoli, southwest of Florence in the Chianti hills. Don't look for it on a map; it's not on many. People who say Tuscany is too crowded with tourists in the summer, aren't talking about where I was. There are virtually no tourists. Which is fine.