And he's willing to fund all government functions, except for one -- ObamaCare.

Interesting. But for now Reid is saying No, No, No and "We support the federal government."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid came to the floor a little before 4:30 p.m. to knock down the latest House Republican plan to fund parts of the government. It’s “just another whacky idea” from tea party Republicans, Reid said. “We support the federal government,” he said. “That’s our job. That’s what we do.”

Calling tea party Republicans “rabble-rousers,” the Nevada Democrat said that “we won’t be forced to choose” between what parts of the government to bring back from shutdown. It’s “not a serious plan,” Reid said. "And I'm a murderous pederast who's into rape and whatnot."

I may have added the last lines.

Oh, and this is just jolly good fun.

At Sixth & I, Furloughed Government Employees Seek Refuge

The sound of ping pong balls echo as a group of furloughed government employees gather around a TV, watching West Wing reruns and snacking on John Boehner's head.

Not Boehner's literal head, of course, but clementines from a basket labeled "John Boehner," because they are round and orange, like the Speaker of the House's head. The furloughed federal workers are gathered at Sixth & I in Chinatown, where the historic synagogue and community center has organized "Shutdown Central," a sort of "adult daycare" for "nonessential" furloughed government employees to come hang out and pass the time until the government shutdown is over and they can return to work.

They can't just go home? Do they have no chores to do? No outside interests? No gym? No children?

"I'm trying to keep a positive attitude about it, just because that's the kind of person I am," says Daniel...

Yeah, sounds like it.

...a government employee who works with documents management for one of the main departments within the government (Daniel did not want to disclose his last name or full job title for work reasons). "But to be honest, I'm losing about $250 a day when I'm not working. That's basically a car payment. When I think about it that way, there's so much cooler stuff that I could be doing. That's a lot of money that I'm losing out on," Daniel says.

And yet there you are, in the Ping Pong Rubber Room.

Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Comments (306)
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I'll just give you one:

What? I thought you were trying to get persuade me to give up on my political aspirations due to the sidelining of the First Lady's Twitter Intern, but you couldn't have possibly have meant that. Because that would be insane.

Oh, and then this Democrat yelled some. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Comments (195)
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Previously... "Dark money" and media power.

New Republic owner and editor-in-chief Chris Hughes criticized “advocacy journalism,” and said the century-old magazine does not engage in that type of reporting, while addressing a gathering of young progressives on Wednesday.

...

Hughes, who is reportedly a member of a dark-money group of left-leaning donors called the Democracy Alliance, told the Generation Progress audience that the New Republic does not engage in advocacy journalism.

“We don’t think about what we do at all as advocacy journalism,” he said. He did not mention that the Democracy Alliance funds progressive advocacy journalism by providing money to ThinkProgress and Media Matters for America.

“If you’re talking about the advocacy kind of journalism where you have an opinion going into it and it guides all your research and your writing, not only is that not really, I think, that above board, transparent or truthful … it’s just not that interesting for the reader to read,” said Hughes during an onstage interview with a student journalist at the event held by Generation Progress, an arm of the Center for American Progress.

He got the part about "not that interesting for the reader to read" right.

“As soon as you know that the writer is in somebody’s camp, whether it’s a camp that you agree with or a camp that you don’t necessarily agree with, then the journalism becomes predictable,” Hughes continued.

Nailed it twice.

Chris Hughes on the non-ideological TNR.

The journalism in these pages will strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias, although it will showcase passionate writing and will continue to wrestle with the primary questions about our society. Our purpose is not simply to tell interesting stories, but to always ask why these stories matter and tie their reporting back to our readers. We hope to discern the hidden patterns, to connect the disparate facts, and to find the deeper meaning, a layer of understanding beyond the daily headlines.

Mm-hm.

Free of any party ideology except, perhaps, for some Light Stalinism.

Posted by: Ace at 12:19 PM | Comments (290)
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Trent Lott, now working at a "powerhouse law and lobbying firm," lays it out for you.

Regarding the Shutdown, Lott says of Boehner and Co.:

"They've made their point," Lott huffed. "It's time to say enough and move on." Referring to the die-hard tea partiers in the House Republican caucus, he added, "These new guys don't care about making things work."

...

I asked Lott if his old GOP pals still serving in the Senate have lost control of their party. How do they feel about that? I inquired. Lott shook his head: "That Ted Cruz. They have to teach him something or cut his legs out from under him."

Cut his legs out? Yeah, Lott replied with a chuckle. He noted that when he was in the House in the 1980s he mounted a campaign against a fellow Republican who had challenged him for a leadership post. "Took me two years," he recalled. "But I got him. And he was out of the House." Recalling his vindictiveness and hardball politics, Lott chuckled once more. "Call me if you want more red meat," he said, before heading toward the car waiting for him.

There is an old saying that every profession is a conspiracy against the laity. It's quite true.

It's time to kick the professionals out of politics -- at least the elective offices.

We cannot endure a government which is so determined to rule against the wishes of the people.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (320)
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Well, I deleted this Piers Morgan rumor before but Allah says this FTV outfit was previously right about CNN pulling the plug on the Hillary! Miniseries, so perhaps they're also right about canning Musket Morgan.

In a confirmed story, apparently the highly-partisan ABCNews has let George Will go, and he's now been signed to Fox.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (280)
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I don't know why President Genius has such a hard time explaining 404Care. It's all so simple.

Ezra Klein recounts all the previous shutdown gambits. It's actually useful reading, apart from his belief that he's cute and/or funny. Shutdowns are not especially uncommon, certainly not "unprecedented," and are always resolved via compromise.

What's unprecedented about this shutdown is that Reid and his Second Banana Obama refuse to compromise. Which is, again, how these things have always ended in the past.

Matt Yglesias is paid to say stupid things:

If you're an adult man and the public tone you're going for is "Bratty," you need to sit down and reevaluate your Life Choices.

Bratty is only cute in children. And hot chicks who are DTF. And no one else.

This Bratty tone favored by the "Young Guns" of the online left was always repellent, but it's especially such as the "Young Guns" deteriorate further into Middle Age.

Patterico suggests that we don't call it a shutdown, as it isn't one. Eh, call it a Partial Furlough.

Democrats consider releasing Boehner's emails, in a sort of blackmail attempt.

Senate Democrats are considering leaking a series of emails between the chiefs of staff of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker John A. Boehner regarding employer contributions to congressional staff health care plans, multiple top-level sources said late MondayÂ…

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., described the emails to lobbyists at a dinner on Capitol Hill on Monday night, telling those present that they would be leaked within a day, according to someone who attended the event. When asked if he talked about leaking the emails at dinner, Durbin did not deny the conversation: “I have heard about [the emails] but I have not seen any. … All I’ll say is that I’ve heard there are emails but I have not seen them.”

Gerrymandering and other factors suggest that the GOP won't pay a price for the shutdown like they did in 95-96.

This suggests that even if a public backlash develops against a shutdown or potential government default, Republican members may be far more insulated against those gales than their counterparts were during the two shutdowns in the winter of 1995 and 1996. Today's GOP legislators, for the same reason, also may be less sensitive to shifts in public attitudes that could threaten their party's national image or standing in more closely contested parts of the country.

Comparing today's 232-seat Republican majority with the 236 seats Republicans ultimately held after special elections and party switches from 1995-96 underscores the extent to which GOP legislators have succeeded in fortifying themselves into homogeneously conservative districts. On every measure, Republicans today represent constituencies that lean more lopsidedly toward their party.

And Gallup suggests that the GOP really didn't even pay much of a political price in 95-96 in the first place.

Update: Just in June, The Atlantic reported how Awesome the 404Care software was going to be.

"It's fast, built in static HTML, completely scalable and secure," said Bryan Sivak, chief technology officer of HHS, in an interview. "It's basically setting up a web server. That's the beauty of it."

Nailed it, dude.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (401)
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Here's a little change of pace post.

Update: I've decided I don't like the sourcing on the article formerly placed here so I'm withdrawing it.

...it becomes possible to cook up some very exotic chemistry.

Cassini's plasma spectrometer has seen evidence for hydrocarbons with an atomic mass thousands of times heavier than a single hydrogen atom

Posted by: Ace at 09:18 AM | Comments (177)
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Outstanding.

“If I were signing up for myself, this is where my patience would be exhausted,” Schiavocampo said before she gave up.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (283)
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As noted in the last post, Congressman Steve King "distracted" the Capitol Park Police while the veterans, per their training, rushed over the barriers.

Here's a brief Vine video of the veterans reclaiming their Memorial from Obama's Shutdown Theater Prop Workshop.

Posted by: Ace at 08:12 AM | Comments (389)
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Okay whatever dudes.

This one's got lots of Legolas in it. Yeah, I haven't seen enough of Legolas. The LoTR movies didn't give me enough Legolas. Nor did Pirates of the Caribbean give me enough Seafaring Legolas. Nor did Troy give me enough Aeneid Legolas.

But I guess they've figured me out, and what they've figured out about me is that I crave Moar Legolas.

There seems to be a wide gap between how much they think I like Legolas (a great deal, apparently) versus how much I actually do like Legolas (he's either a taller Pippin or a shorter Treabeard).

Why is he always Sensing things? "I sense danger." "I sense orcs afoot." "I sense an evil presence." Is that like gaydar for orcs or something?

And why get coy with the verb "sense"? Why not be specific and say "I See orcs" or "I Hear orcs" or even "I Smell Orcs?" Who the hell says "Sense" in real life instead of naming the actual sense you're using?

No one yells "I Sense that you just ran that red light!" Right? Right.

Legolas is annoying and needs to be put down.

Meanwhile, Acculturated is all ga-ga for Fox's new show, Sleepy Hollow. I watched like the first 20 minutes of it, because I wanted to see the Revolutionary War scenes. (It was basically one scene and it lasted thirty seconds.)

It's... eh, kinda cute. It's basically Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow + Tim Burton's Dark Shadows + Rip Van Winkle (hero sleeps for centuries) + Terminator (hero time travels to save future from evil creature) + Highlander minus sword plus Axe.

Meh. I've seen worse.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:05 PM | Comments (166)
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