Haunted House

This week's New Yorker cover, by Mark Ulriksen:

Click to enlarge.

The $200 Million Conspiracy to Shut Down the U.S. Government

Lucidly explained by Rachel and well worth your time, if you can stand the sheer horror of it:

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Update, 2:20 p.m.: Andrew Sullivan, via Joe.My.God.:

There is effectively no Republican party any more. There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past. This crisis is proving that more powerfully than even watching Fox. We need to see what is in front of our nose: a cold civil war has broken out between those properly called conservatives, defending the credit of the government, empirical reality, and adjustments to modern life and those properly called radical reactionaries declaring our current elected president and Senate as illegitimate actors, bent on the destruction of America, and therefore necessitating total political warfare, even to the point of threatening to destroy the global economy.

Update, 8:30 p.m.: Obama says he's "not paying a ransom" to Republicans who are "out of touch with reality":

Obama Rips Republicans for Attitude Problem

"I don't get no respect!"

Republicans are playing the Rodney Dangerfield card, and acting just like a bunch of whiny, sullen teenagers while holding the nation hostage to their demented anti-everybody agenda. Here's the quote that the President refers to, and here's the video of Obama speaking in Maryland yesterday:




And here's House Speaker John Boehner, getting a mite testy over a quote in the Wall Street Journal:



So which one seems like the grown-up in the room?  I ask you.

And as Rachel reminds us vividly (isn't videotape wonderful?), this is not the first time that Boehner and others of his tribe have tried to subvert the government and ruin millions of people's lives in a goddamned cry-baby tantrum fit.

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Screw the Feds, Let the Locals Deal with Irene?

That's the message libertarian fucktard Ron Paul put out yesterday, saying "We should be like 1900; we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960."

Dude has his head so far up his doctrinaire ass, he doesn't even have the facts of history right.  Here's a video I found over at David Mixner's site, detailing the much-needed federal response to the horrific 1938 hurricane that slammed the Northeast, later jocularly called the "Long Island Express."  Judge for yourselves, boys, whether the federal involvement was worth it for the survivors or not:




Hope you fellas up there in the target zone have plenty of cold beer and candles on hand.  Don't forget to fill the bathtub - for flushing - and all the ice chests too.  God bless.


Bonus: This headline from Americablog requires no comment from your Head Trucker --

Boehner and Cantor unsure about emergency aid for hurricane without budget cuts