Okay. It appears the hostages are about to be released. The kidnappers didn’t quite have the nerve to shoot the hostages in the head, although they did rough them up pretty good.
No one knows exactly how much the Republican-engineered crisis will ultimately cost the country, although Bloomberg has estimated that the 16-day government shutdown has been “draining an average of $160 million each workday,” and that’s not counting the costs associated with investors dumping short-term Treasury bills, the safest investment in the world—at least they used to be.
And how do you figure in the cost of disintegrating morale among federal employees, many of whom were labeled as “non-essential,” many of whom have worked without a raise for three years and have had to take sequestration-related furloughs even before the latest shutdown?
And how do you figure in the cost of the damage inflicted on our national prestige? How do you calculate the damage done to our sense of stability? How do you account for the damage done to our confidence in self-governance, in democracy?
And what was it all for? What was accomplished by Tea Party Republicans and the non-Tea Party Republicans who aided and abetted them? Nothing. Not a damn thing. And to make things worse, we will quite likely be back here again at the beginning of next year. Yippee.
Warren Buffett said this morning about flirting with not raising the debt ceiling:
There are certain weapons that are just improper to use against humanity, and to use this against the American public, it is a political weapon of mass destruction and both sides should say we’re not going to touch it, just like poison gas…
Perhaps, after they are finished in Syria, we could get the recent Nobel Peace Prize winners, those amazing inspectors who make up the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, to come to America and dismantle the crazy law that prevents the Treasury Department from paying the country’s bills unless Congress raises the debt ceiling.
Yes, that’s it. Once the inspectors are done in Syria, where a desperate leader used poison gas on his own citizens, maybe they can come here and do their humanitarian work.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Treeske
/ October 16, 2013Duane, have you seen this (The GOP little rule change, hoping not to be noticed)
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R. Duane Graham
/ October 16, 2013I have seen it several times, but never, I repeat: never, on the nightly news, where many Americans learn what is going on. If it weren’t for MSNBC, this would have been a well-kept secret.
It is one reason why John Boehner should never, never, never, ever, get one bit of credit for finally opening up the government and ending, for now, the crisis over the debt ceiling.
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Herb Van Fleet
/ October 16, 2013Duane,
Couple of points. In addition to the weapons inspectors doing their thing, I would suggest that a psychiatric ward be installed in the Capitol building. It would be staffed by professionals who know how to deal with people who present with delusions of grandeur, who replace logic with magical thinking, whose behavior turns decision-making into a game, who have Neapolitan complexes, and who demonstrate the inability to recognize or understand reality, among others.
Those receiving treatment for such mental illnesses would be denied access to the House or Senate chambers for debate or voting. They would remain under psychiatric care until at least three psychiatrists agree unanimously that they are ready to resume their duties.
Secondly, it may be worth an investigation by the FBI into those in Congress who appear willing to throw the U.S. economy under the bus as secret agents of China. After all, China has said that it would like to see a “de-Americanized world” and has called for the replacement of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, “so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States.”
Who better to carry out these objectives than the lawmakers in Washington? Clearly, the behavior of those in the Tea Party Caucuses of the House and Senate and a few others seem to have an agenda for bringing down this country. Being on the take from China seems like a reasonable explanation to me.
In short, the self-absorbed, destructive, anti-democracy naysayers in Congress are either crazy or communist agents.
Herb
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R. Duane Graham
/ October 16, 2013Herb,
I see one major problem with your otherwise dandy idea:
The problem here is there would be a government shutdown and debt default over just who would get to appoint those three psychiatrists. Thus, I think the idea is doomed to fail.
I do think, though, you are onto something with your theory about the Tea Party Caucus not being crazy but clever communist agents who are handing the world over to the Chinese, who are very eager to take it. Unfortunately, with a secret anti-colonial communist in the White’s House who is also bent on destroying the country, nothing much can be done about it.
Drink up.
Duane
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Herb Van Fleet
/ October 16, 2013Well. there is one other possibility. The Tea Partiers/American Taliban are actually aliens from outer space who have been “humanized” in Area 51 and sent to infiltrate Congress. This method of conquest is preferred to bombings and death rays, etc., because the aliens want to use the real humans as slaves. There is a strong possibility that these galactic visitors hail from the planet Kolob.
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King Beauregard
/ October 16, 2013The Republicans’ mistake is that they didn’t take this man’s advice:
C’mon guys, it’s a white man in black face, how couldn’t you take him seriously?
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R. Duane Graham
/ October 21, 2013Yikes!
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thgeneralist
/ October 16, 2013Herb. I think you are right on the money. We might also consider expelling any members of the legislative branch who were party to the Confederate flag waving incident last week. I think several faced this fate in the early 1860’s. Itseems that in our monetized society a plot to destroy the full faith and credit of the US is tantamount to treason. Probabaly need to round up Ron Paul as well.
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Treeske
/ October 16, 2013Herb, But what to do with the nuts who voted them in?
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