Your note of sourness of a longtime Republican Congressional figure who has announced retirement.

He also discussed their hold on Speaker John A. Boehner. “He withstood the pressure for a long time,” he told the Tampa Bay Times last week. “He finally has agreed to the outspoken minority of his conference. And they’re pretty much in charge right now.”

And then there’s the inevitable “tea leaves partisan angling messaging”:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement that Young’s departure “should serve as a wake-up call to Speaker Boehner and House Republicans: If they continue to cave to the tea party’s radical demands and threaten the country’s financial stability, they will see even their own members jump off their sinking ship.”

Sure.  Sure.  But mostly… HE’S BEEN IN THE HOUSE FOR 22 TERMS.  Or… 44 Years.  Since 1970.  Back in the the Richard goddamned Milhous Nixon Administration.

So, your notes from the “Congressional Shutdown“.  On the supposed “Republican Hopefuls of 2016” front:  Marco Rubio is “repairing the damage” to his grassroots conservative base caused by pushing through Immigration Reform by standing next to Ted Cruz a lot.  Bobby Jindal is “repairing the damage” to his grassroots conservative base caused by penning editorials challenging the party not to be “the stupid party” (which I thought might have already been accomplished by penning more editorials that were flat out stupid) by not joining other governors calling this shutdown insane.  And Chris Christie is trying to capitalize on how the act is dragging down the poll numbers of Washington Politicians in general even as it plummets Republicans in specific by using a new anti-Washington hash-tag in his daily tweets.  Jeb Bush is doing the same tut tutting as Christie is, just not on twitter.

As for Congressional actions.  Interesting to note the name of the 18 Republicans Boehner allowed out of the “all 232” who Obama invited to meet with.  But more interesting to see who the twenty-six Democrats who are set to attend a bipartisan event with the group “No Labels”.

Looking over to the website, and with these 26 Democrats joining 24 Republicans, this appears to be the spearhead  of the brilliant “keep the shutdown going for another six days* but don’t default” idea.

I’m curious to see a list of these politicians, but a google search isn’t bringing up anything.

So.  We are at that point where the Daily Show with Jon Stewart does the “meta” thing, where the correspondent just breaks off the talk with the Republican Representative and explains why he can’t go through this highly predictable bit.  (The rest of the piece is pretty much null.  Best to leave it at the point of exhaustion.)

The game marches forth.

“Finally, the White House has invited congressional leaders to talk,” Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said in a statement. “I am hopeful the president is serious about finding a deal that results in meaningful spending and entitlement reforms, judiciously extends U.S. government borrowing authority, reopens all federal agencies, and paves the way for the enactment of future appropriations bills so that this lurching from crisis to crisis can be put to an end.”

Ye know.  Long term problems and this issue… are only made crisis by this initiative.   Or, cue Tom Coburn who calls for the “Managed Catastrophe“.

And the beat goes on.

* Yeah, I know. 6 weeks.  Same difference, and it’ll be lost in the meantime.

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