I’ve been sitting around watching MSNBC this morning (in the company of my brother, an IRS employee who can’t go to work today), and it’s obvious the shutdown will last for a while, or at least until congressional Republicans see if their “we just want to negotiate” messaging is gaining traction amongst a public being told by many news outlets that this is some sort of partisan wrangle over nothing.
Here are some midday offerings on this and other subjects:
* The President just spoke from the Rose Garden and labeled this as a “Republican shutdown” that only Republicans can end.
* Meanwhile, Eric Cantor resorted to grade-school statecraft, tweeting out photo of House Republican leaders sitting at a conference table with the other side empty. Lotta white men in white shirts, wasting time.
* Are centrist Democrats wavering? PPI’s Will Marshall pens op-ed blasting Boehner as having “acquiesced in conservatives’ obsessive and undemocratic crusade to eviscerate Obamacare.”
* Bernie Sanders mildly hails beginning of Obamacare exchanges as good first step towards single payer.
* Bibi Netanyahu spoke at the UN, and worked pretty hard to undermine any direct negotiations between Obama and “wolf in sheep’s clothing”
And in sorta non-political news:
* Pope Francis tells interviewer the two most serious evils in world today are “young unemployment and the loneliness of the old.”
As I take a brief break, here’s Apocalyptica with “Harmageddon.”
