Boehner Is Angry At Conservative Groups

Gov. Kasich (R): There Seems to Be a War on the Poor

From the New York Times:

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.”

Ever since Republicans in Congress shut down the federal government in an attempt to remove funding for President Obama’s health care law, Republican governors have been trying to distance themselves from Washington.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin schooled lawmakers in a Washington Post opinion column midway through the 16-day shutdown on “What Wisconsin Can Teach Washington.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, with a record of bipartisan support at home, remarked after a visit to the nation’s capital, “If I was in the Senate right now, I’d kill myself.”

But few have gone further than Mr. Kasich in critiquing his party’s views on poverty programs, and last week he circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Partywing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama’s health care law...

No More Shutdowns?

Ted Cruz's Ultimate Goal

Sen. Warner (D-VA) Asks What This Was All For

The Religious Wrong: Embracing Economic Collapse

John McCain: Republicans Shut the Government Down

Why the Tea Party Welcomed the Shutdown

FRC President Tony Perkins

From Salon.com: 

...The press often talks about the Tea Party like they’re secularist movement that is interested mainly in promoting “fiscal conservatism”, a vague notion that never actually seems to make good on the promise to save taxpayer money. The reality is much different: The Tea Party is actually driven primarily by fundamentalist Christians whose penchant for magical thinking and belief that they’re being guided by divine forces makes it tough for them to see the real world as it is.

It’s not just that the rogue’s gallery of congress people who are pushing the hardest for hostage-taking as a negotiation tactic also happens to be a bench full of Bible thumpers. Pew Research shows that people who align with the Tea Party are more likely to not only agree with the views of religious conservatives, but are likely to cite religious belief as their prime motivation for their political views.  White evangelicals are the religious group most likely to approve of the Tea Party. Looking over the data, it becomes evident that the “Tea Party” is just a new name for the same old white fundamentalists who would rather burn this country to the ground than share it with everyone else, and this latest power play from the Republicans is, in essence, a move from that demographic to assert their “right” to control the country, even if their politicians aren’t in power.

It’s no surprise, under the circumstances, that a movement controlled by fundamentalist Christians would be oblivious to the very real dangers that their actions present. Fundamentalist religion is extremely good at convincing its followers to be more afraid of imaginary threats than real ones, and to engage in downright magical thinking about the possibility that their own choices could work out very badly. When you believe that forcing the government into default in an attempt to derail Obamacare is the Lord’s work, it’s very difficult for you to see that it could have very real, negative effects.

Rep. Bachmann (R-MN)

It’s hard for the Christian fundamentalists who run the Republican Party now to worry about the serious economic danger they’re putting the world in, because they are swept up in worrying that President Obama is an agent of the devil and that the world is on the verge of mayhem and apocalypse if they don’t “stop” him somehow, presumably be derailing the Affordable Care Act. Christian conservatives such as Ellis Washington are running around telling each other that the ACA  will lead to “the systematic genocide of the weak, minorities, enfeebled, the elderly and political enemies of the God-state.” Twenty percent of Republicans believe Obama is the Antichrist.Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner argued that Obama is using his signature health care legislation to promote “the destruction of the family, Christian culture”, and demanded that Christians “need to engage in peaceful civil disobedience against President Obama’s signature health care law...”

It just gets worse from there.

McCain: Defunding Obamacare is a Fool's Errand

The Anti-Obamacare Plot a Year in the Making

Elizabeth Warren's Message to the Tea Party

Sen. Ayotte (R-NH): Defunding Obamacare Didn't Work

It's Not JUST Americans Blaming Republicans...

From Think Progress:  

Republicans may be working hard to turn domestic public opinion to their side, but foreign media places the blame squarely on GOP extremists. Below is a sample of how the world is struggling to make sense of the ongoing shutdown:

“Paralysis” A Le Monde article on Friday wondered if American democracy even works, calling out the Tea Party for blackmail and urging the government to hold firm. “In a democracy, people abolish laws by winning the election, not with the threat of a government shutdown or even a default. It is impossible to govern seriously undergoing this type of blackmail,” writes Martin Wolf.

“Suicidal madness” Spain’s El Pais seems astounded that Republicans are still not responding to pressure, calling the shutdown “suicidal madness.” “Deaf to the warnings about the looming economic catastrophe and indifferent to the polls that blame for this crisis, the GOP insists it will not let Congress give the government a dollar more if Barack Obama does not back down on health care reform,” Antonio Cana writes. Even with the Treasury Department’s warning that the dollar could collapse and interest rates could skyrocket if the shutdown fight rolls into the debt ceiling fight, Cana reports, “None of this has created a huge impact among Republicans, whose calculation are political, not economic.”

There are more articles where these came from...

President Obama's GOP Takedown

Right on Mr President!!!

(Some) Republicans Are Happy About the Shutdown

From Talking Points Memo:  

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Wednesday said she wasn't worried about Republicans caving to pressure to end the government shutdown because "this is about the happiest" she's seen her conservative colleagues in a long time.

Appearing with colleague Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), Bachmann told Fox News host Sean Hannity that she believes there has been "strong unity" between conservatives on almost every budget vote.

"This is about the happiest I've seen members in a long time, because we see we are starting to win this dialogue on a national level," she said. 

As the House debated a short-term government funding bill over the weekend, Bachmann told the Washington Examiner that she and other conservatives didn't fear a government shutdown because they viewed it as a chance to block Obamacare.

The "Non-Essential" Programs Currently Inactive

Sen. Warren Calls the GOP Hostage Takers

Paying Congress Through the Shutdown?

The Troops Will Go Unpaid

From Yahoo News:  

Washington (AFP) - The US military's nearly 1.4 million troops will stay on the job in the case of a government shutdown but they will not get paid, the Pentagon said Friday.

And if Congress fails to agree on a new budget measure by the close of the fiscal year on Monday, September 30, "roughly half" the Defense Department's nearly 800,000 strong civilian work force would be placed on unpaid leave, top officials said.

The war effort in Afghanistan and other high-priority missions would not be affected but most training and a range of maintenance work would be cancelled if Congress remains deadlocked, according to the Pentagon's top financial officer Robert Hale.

"We wouldn't be able to do most training, we couldn't enter into most new contracts, routine maintenance would have to stop," he told reporters.

Holding America Hostage