The operating principle of the conservative movement seems to be to cause the most people the most amount of stress. We can never relax around these folks because they are always issuing crazy threats, making impossible demands, and creating one crisis after another. They’ve been trapped for weeks, with no dignified way out, but they keep clawing at us maniacally in an effort to get a pound of our flesh. They remind me of a badger trapped in a burlap bag. They can’t get out, but they can wound anyone who gets near them.
Eventually, they will wear themselves out. In the meantime, my advice is to keep your distance from all their thrashing about. It’s not good for your mental health to pay too close attention to their internal struggle.
Can I at least point and laugh derisively?
Still think we’re measuring the size of the rout?
Or should we all be shorting our portfolios and stocking up on canned goods?
I put all my stocks into money markets 2 weeks ago. And I am far from calm about this mess. Assigning rational self-interest to loons seems a risky business, if one can even discern what they see as self interest. Suicide bombers feel it is in their interest to blow themselves up.
Money markets might be the worst place. They are generally very dependent on short-term treasuries and highly leveraged, which means in a crisis they face a form of bank run but at hyperdrive speed due to electronic transactions. The precipitative factor for the 2008 collapse was the failure of a money market fund, and the salvage job required (inter alia) blanket guarantees from the Feds for all money market accounts. We won’t get that this time.
there really is no safe haven. We’re all in the same boat this time. I put some of my money market cash into CDs, but the rest of my retirement is staying right where it is.
Turnips.
…runs outside and starts planting…
Maybe gold for reals this time, and not futures, actual gold objects.
There is no good place. Other than buried in a box in the back yard. My guess was that the Fed would again provide guarantees for MM accounts if it came to that.
I’m amazed the tea baggers haven’t noticed the gun they had pointed at Obama’s head is not pointed at their own head.
“not” or “now”?
Or, as Thomas Jefferson said, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.”
Of course he was talking about slavery, but of course xenophobic white assholes were the real source of the problem even then. Why the fuck were we so determined to hold onto the South? If it wasn’t for the damn 3/5 clause, slavery and racism wouldn’t have grown to such monstrous proportions that we’re still dealing with the fallout.
I’m guessing that the Tea Party caucus meeting in that Mexican restaurant was to fill up tubs with champagne and ice in anticipation of their “victory celebration” for the American people that is likely coming up here in the next 48 hours.
The irony of xenophobes meeting at a Mexican restaurant is lost upon them.
TEX-mex. Emphasis on the TEX.
The ones running the show love immigrants as long as they’re underpaid and ununionized, and preferably dependent on tips.
Ted Cruz led the meeting. Mr. Immigrant-for-President himself Cuba-Calgary-Cruz — Senator from Texas.
Irony? Rebranding! Rebranding! Another sign of their virtuous tolerance! (of food…)
They’ll bring tacos out on stage at their next national convention!
I’d like to rebrand them with a red hot iron.
With any luck at all maybe some Nicaraguan tacos.
How about if we shoot the bag or hit it with a drone strike?
How about drowning it in a bathtub?
No, that is reserved for Grover Norquist his own self. It would be high justice indeed if he met his end in that manner.
So you think Dave Weigel is kidding re: his advice?
Not kidding. I sidelined much of my portfolio a few weeks ago. The question is when does Boehner throw up his hands and just go with Dem votes. Before or after the market notices the inmates have taken over?
According to the business media, the market is noticing the inmates have taken over the asylum but safe havens are in short supply. China really blew its opportunity here by manipulating its currency so tightly over the past two decades. No one trusts them as a reserve currency.
Well, this is not going to be resolved via a clean CR or debt ceiling bill. The Gub’mint-hatin’ Hitlerite Repubs appear to have gotten something, indeed something related to further hampering Obamacare. Apparently Dems will get “something” as well, unless gains for Dems have been stripped so as not to “humiliate” McConnell. Or perhaps flushing the medical device tax now counts as a Dem gain?
So the horse trading incentive to use these votes for illegitimate concessions hasn’t really been broken, even if Tea Turds are up in arms over what little they get. Nor has the (phony) “Moderate Middle” arrived on display in the House. The question is whether today’s Hitlerite Repubs conclude that they stuck their head in a PR meat grinder to get not very much. They are boneheads, after all, so the meat grinder can’t do much damage, ha-ha.
And it sounds like they will get to decide to engage in another of these debt dramas before the 2014 elections. Will they resist that temptation and thus lull the braindead electorate into thinking they “learned” and are now “reasonable”, thus meriting re-election? (Only to pull the same shutdown shit again during 2014-16.) Or will they start munchin’ on the turds in the cat’s litter box again in 2014, cuz what’s a “conservative” dogbrain to do?
These clowns have been so pwned for so many days now, and they still keep coming with their hallucinations of self importance. A new House bill? Lol. It’s gonna be just like you said, Boo (love you, man): the Senate will give the House no time, and it will all come down to The Creature from the Orange Lagoon. Everyone else in the House will be pretty much irrelevant. Reid and O turned all those jokers into their gimps.
So the House GOP is gonna cut tail and run…
Brilliant plan, that’ll certainly get the public to switch blame for the mess to the Dems! Please proceed.
End of Republican Party: good! Second Great Depression: really, really bad!
On the whole, I’d rather struggle through the next few years until demographics and Obamacare puts the Republicans into permanent minority status. Not that anybody can stop the insanity other than House Republicans at this point.
Usually I’d say yes, but I have 117,000 in student loans I can’t really pay back.
Treasury has enough cash for a week or two after exhausting its borrowing capacity. Sit tight. They’ll be back in time to avert a crash.
Oh, and remember that the brilliant “pass a pile of crap and blow town” plan requires them to, well, actually pass something. They seem to be having a wee bit of difficulty getting that part done.
If they actually try to blow town, they’re going to get a little lesson from a certain Constitutional scholar re: Article II, Section 3.
Bet they’re not going to go home to their districts.
Oh and someone get on Twitter and yell at Ari Shapiro for this little bit of idiocy.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/white-house-press-corps-reaches-for-peak-derp
Yeah, really. The republicans were perfectly happy to say they were taking a hostage. How do you get a hostage freed – ransom or a bullet.
I already did but the clown doesn’t answer his critics on Twitter
From me to Ari: http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2013/10/never-metaphor-i-didnt-like.html
So what becomes the next currency of choice? I’m guessing the Euro. The Germans are willing to smother half of Europe in the Mediterranean to keep it strong.
So the Tea Partiers are again allied with their German fascist friends. And the bankers make out like bandits again.
Chaos resumes.
When does the break occur? Where are the magic 16, condemned for Tea Party history to be called Benedict Arnolds? Is there anybody there?
This just in:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/10/15/dems-to-house-gop-the-answer-is-no/
Is this negotiating in “good faith” —> House Republicans Trying to Run Out the Clock http://tinyurl.com/knlmzuu
@pamspaulding 31m
RT @meredithshiner: John McCain says Ted Cruz and Mike Lee were not at GOP lunch today.
Were they sleeping after their late night tacos, or were they jamming The Tan Man again?
@tackettdc 19m
BREAKING Sen. Coons of Delaware says Reid tells Dems McConnell stepped away from the deal
He didn’t say McConnell stepped away from the deal. He said McConnell removed himself from active negotiations for the time being to give Boehner some space. That’s quite a bit more neutral.
http://www.wbir.com/story/news/politics/2013/10/15/gop-debt-effort-puts-senate-talks-on-hold/2988627
/
But they’re badgers with guns and dynamite.
Crazy badgers with guns and dynamite.
Crazy, delusional badgers with guns and dynamite, and what appears to be little compunction not to use them.
They wanted the hostage dead all along.
They’ll have no problem shooting it, and if we don’t commit suicide with them, by acceding to any of their demands, they’ll force us to relive this nightmare again and again and again.
Democracy at gunpoint.
“Moderate” Republicans cannot oppose them because then the free-range CBWGD in their districts will eat them alive.
(Their great gerrymander has them, in the immortal words of Rorschach: “I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me”)
Oh plz Lindsey…
@sahilkapur 7m
Lindsey Graham says Rs overplayed their hand and now Dems should “for the good of the country, kinda give a little.”
@samsteinhp
House GOP will screw over congressional staff rather than give medical device makers a tax break http://bit.ly/1bUB45F
https://twitter.com/samsteinhp/status/390194966531936256
FYI
Bruce Bartlett, New York Times Economix: For many hard-liners, debt default is the goal
There’s 10-20 points of that crazy constant 27% right there.
What odds the people hot for default have already put in place strategies to profit from it?