Get the viscous fluids, pullies, levers, and gin ready

Because it's time to try to make "Jism Bob":

After suffering a devastating miscarriage in December 2011, Michelle Duggar is trying to get pregnant again with her 20th child. The 19 Kids and Counting reality TV mom says she and husband Jim Bob Duggar are hoping to be "blessed" with another pregnancy.

For a pair who thinks they hear God telling them what to do, you'd think they might have thought the Almighty was giving one a hint...

Getting to do something Goebbels couldn't do

Because I'm sure that roast would be one of the few to top the appalling sight of this:

Conservatives gathered at the Plaza hotel in Manhattan Monday night to roast the former Vice President at an event where many of the biggest laugh lines touched on the most controversial policies of a key architect of his administration’s War on Terror. At the gathering, hosted by Commentary, figures including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey drew a mix of chuckles and winces with jokes that left few lines uncrossed, according to three guests.

Senator Joe Lieberman “said something to the effect that it’s nice that we’re all here at the Plaza instead of in cages after some war crimes trial,” recalled one person who was there.

No, it isn't.

“There were some waterboarding jokes that were really tasteless,” the guest said. “I can see the case for enhanced interrogation techniques after Sept. 11 but I can’t really endorse sitting there drinking wine and fancy dinner at the Plaza laughing uproariously about it.”

Cheney himself told one waterboarding joke, the attendees said, which he attributed to Jay Leno. It centered on a one-shot antelope hunting contest in Wyoming in which the loser had to dance with an Indian squaw. Cheney’s shot got caught in the barrel, producing a dispute over whether it counted as a hit or a miss — and Leno, according to Cheney, joked that Cheney wanted to go catch the animal with his bare hands and waterboard it.

"Games"manship

Projection has always been a strength of the modern GOP:

Speaker John Boehner rallied his troops this morning at a closed-door conference meeting at the Capitol. Democrats are trying to “annihilate us,” he told his members. “We can get through this if we stick together.”

Yeah, amazing how that 12th dimensional chess works...secret is for Obama not to play it apparently.

And remember, let's see four days ago, when Boehner tearfully proclaimed "THIS IS NOT A GAME!"?

About that:

The Ohio Republican added that a “grand bargain” is off the table. What he wants is something that “builds on the gains we’ve made over the past three years, puts points on the board, and doesn’t raise taxes.”

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Good optics

While engaged in the consumption of great amounts of gin, John Boehner has his other priorities in predictable order during the shutdown.

Head Start programs have been shuttered, small businesses can’t get loans and hundreds of thousands of federal government employees are furloughed. But the exclusive gyms available only to members of Congress have remained open throughout the shutdown.

A House aide confirmed to ThinkProgress that the House member’s gym is open. The House gym features a swimming pool, basketball courts, paddleball courts, a sauna, a steam room and flat screen TVs. While towel service is unavailable, taxpayers remain on the hook for cleaning and maintenance, which has been performed daily throughout the shutdown. There are also costs associated with the power required to heat the pools and keep the lights on.

According to the aide, the decision to keep the gym open — even while other critical government services were shelved — came directly from Speaker Boehner’s office. Meanwhile, the staff gym available to Congressional staff has been closed.

Good choice

If you want to hire a guy to defend your patently racist team nickname as being sacrosanct then you need to hire an asshole with no moral scruples...the kind of guy who will advocate for any third-rate dictator for a six-figure retainer.

Oh, good choice.

Lanny Davis, once a Bill Clinton strategist, a pal of Joe Lieberman and now attorney for the Washington, D.C., NFL football franchise, chastised President Obama Monday for commenting unfavorably on the name of that team.

Whistling past the graveyard...while on the run

How do you know the conservative editorial stooges of the Washington Post don't like the optics?

They write columns like this:

Once again, good job 'the South'

This guy wants to ride the bomb down:

The Post has a profile in motion of freshman House Republican Ted Yoho (FL). The focus is how he's part of the faction who forced John Boehner to trigger the government shutdown and now wants to move along to default on the national debt. How bad will default be? "I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets," Yoho told the Post.

Absorb that for a moment. He's on the team that's driving this bus. What would at best be a huge jolt to the global economy and more likely trigger a global financial crisis and do irreparable harm to the country, he thinks will actually improve things.

Somebody in his family, unsurprisingly, did not know how to spell "Yahoo".

I believed they'd file dissenting opinions

The ol' "some of my best friends are..." gambit.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said he has friends who are "homosexual."

"I have friends that I know, or very much suspect, are homosexual. Everybody does," Scalia said.

"Very much suspect" ---  surely always the gateway to prevent any sort of understanding or tolerance.

South Carolina, 1832:

The Ordinance of Nullification declared the Tariff of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the state borders of South Carolina. It began the Nullification Crisis. Passed by a state convention on November 24, 1832, it led, on December 10, to President Andrew Jackson's proclamation against South Carolina, the Nullification Proclamation of 1832, which sent a naval flotilla and a threat of sending government ground troops to enforce the tariffs. In the face of the military threat, and following a Congressional revision of the tariff, South Carolina repealed the ordinance.

So lost that one. Lesson learned, right? South Carolina, 1860:

We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the twenty-third day of May in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eight eight, whereby the Constitution of the United State of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendment of the said Constitution, are here by repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of “The United States of America,” is hereby dissolved

That worked out well, huh? Still, lesson surely learned now right? South Carolina, 2013:

The South Carolina state House passed a bill Wednesday that declares President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to be “null and void,” and criminalizes its implementation.

So, hard to believe that South Carolina's "intellectual" legacies would pass up a chance to kill the American government once and for all.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Brainiacs

Geniuses all:

“So what are the tips you need to know, to do it correctly -- you grew up on tacos, correct?” Fox News commentator Brian Kilmeade asked Latina meteorologist Maria Molina during Friday’s broadcast of Fox and Friends. “She Colombian,” Steve Doocy chimed in, also missing the mark. “No, I did not grow up on tacos,” Molina says, laughing. “I’m Nicaraguan, and it’s not a native food.”

Smaller tent, bigger fits

Republican "outreach" continues apace:

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has compared the marriage of same-sex couples to the marriage of a brother and sister during an appearance on a morning TV news show.

Although you have to admit, you would think most Republicans nowadays would at least be more familiar with incest than others.

Consider the Source

This is from the American Conservative...wha????

They are a barking-mad pack of ideologues, is what they are. I haven’t written much about the Obamacare thing because I don’t follow policy closely. As far as I know, Obamacare is a bad idea. But here’s the thing: it’s the law. It was passed, signed by the president, and upheld in the Supreme Court. There is no way the House Republicans, or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, is going to overturn it. The best they can do is to delay it. And then what? Guess what: the 2012 elections were their last, best chance to overturn Obamacare, and the country didn’t go for it. There are other battles to fight. These guys are taking the government and the economy to the brink of crisis, and for what? For the sake of rebel yells and the Lost Cause?

...and I bet he'll still end up voting Republican.

He may lobby for hobbies, but God Bothering is his passion

I have no idea why anyone would go to Hobby Lobby to get their cheap crap but here you go:

The Hobby Lobby Hanukkah controversy began when Berwitz learned that on a recent shopping trip his wife’s friends could not find anything related to Hanukkah at their local Hobby Lobby store in Marlboro, N.J., though it was stocked with Christmas items. According to Berwitz, one of the women asked about bar mitzvah cards, and a Hobby Lobby salesperson replied: “We don’t cater to you people.” That story prompted Berwitz, who own a market research company and writes the “Hopelessly Partisan” blog, to call the Marlboro store and ask why it seemed to be ignoring Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights, which begins on Nov. 27 this year. He wrote that he received the following response: “Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.”

They Learned from the Master

Newt Gingrich last seen in a variety of locations from keeping his priorities straight while visiting Auschwitz to violating unenforced CNN ethics rules has ridden to the rescue of all slightly inconvenienced victims of the government shutdown. Meanwhile. [Cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Modern Republicans

Death Panels...for real

On your conscience, if you had one, John Boehner:

As long as the government is shut down, the National Institutes of Health will turn away roughly 200 patients each week from its clinical research center, including children with cancer.

 

That's according to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. He laid out the situation for the Wall Street Journal:

At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.

Trying a bit too hard

The ever relinquishing grip on reality of not only the far-right, but establishment conservative media continues to pick up speed. FoxNews reliably chump-enabling.

What the Obama administration is portraying as a "shutdown" of the federal government -- complete with signs posted at the entrances to government buildings, parks and monuments -- is turning out to be more of a "slimdown," as all but non-essential workers reported to their jobs Tuesday.

I suppose the next thing to state is that hundreds of thousands of governmental employees rudely took an indefinite vacation -- just not to a national park. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Neither does oxygen or operating synapses, apparently

Hannity Dismisses Shutdown: "This Doesn't Impact Me Mentally"

Congrats on electing raging alcoholics with gun fetishes!

Thanks again teabaggers.

Rest Easy America

In case America's drunkest legislature insists on shutting down the Federal Government the most important of its agencies will remain as vigilant as ever.

(Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission will remain open for business even if Congress fails to strike a budget deal to keep the government operating, SEC spokesman John Nester said Monday.

So don't you worry Banksters and Hedge-Fund Managers the SEC will be their "open FOR business" as usual, so you'll be able to get away with all manner of crimes as usual. The rest of you 99 percenters can suck it.

 [cross-posted at Firedoglake]