Month: October 2015

It looks like someone needs a kick in the dick.

EU president Tusk accepts Turkey going after PKK terrorists (argument was joining IS coalition) and forces EU to forego this year’s report on accession and situation of human rights and press freedom in Turkey. What a bunch of cowards in Brussels! No leadership anywhere.

○ An unholy Turkish barter: Keep the migrants, forget democracy
○ EU concerned over terrorism, migrants, media freedom in Turkey: CHP
○ Interview: West misread AKP and Erdoğan, legitimized crude power grab

NATO Secretary General expresses solidarity with Turkey following Russian air space violation

I just met with the Foreign Minister of Turkey Feridun Sinirlioğlu to discuss the recent military actions of the Russian Federation in and around Syria. Including the unacceptable violations of Turkish airspace by Russian combat aircraft.

I made clear that NATO remains strongly committed to Turkey’s security. I will convene a meeting of the North Atlantic Council later today to discuss the situation.

Russia’s actions are not contributing to the security and stability of the region.  

I call on Russia to fully respect NATO airspace and to avoid escalating tensions with the Alliance.  I urge Russia to take the necessary steps to align its efforts with those of the international community in the fight against ISIL.

Turkish PM: Military to react if Russia violates Turkish border again

NATO says Russia’s intrusion into Turkey’s air space deliberate

NATO’s top official accused Russia of a deliberate incursion into alliance airspace, dismissing Moscow’s assertion that the recent crossing of jets into Turkish territory was a mistake.

“The information and intelligence we have received provides me with reason to say it is not an accident,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a news conference at his headquarters in Brussels.

As defense ministers from the 28-nation alliance prepare to meet on Thursday, NATO faces a series of challenges on its eastern and southern flanks. In Afghanistan, the deadly U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz promises to complicate NATO planning for its future role in the country.

Stoltenberg said a full investigation had been launched into the bombing, which has sparked allegations of war crimes from the medical nonprofit. All facts must be presented in an “open and transparent way,” he said.

Allies are expected to examine the size and duration of the mission in Afghanistan, though Stoltenberg offered no timeline for a NATO decision on future troop levels there. He said the implications of the recent Afghan fighting season still need to be assessed.

To the south, Russia’s military buildup in Syria and recent incursion into Turkish airspace is a source of rising concern, Stoltenberg said.

“Russia must de-conflict its military activities in Syria,” Stoltenberg said. “I’m also concerned that Russia is not targeting (the Islamic State) but instead attacking the Syrian opposition and civilians.” Moscow says its jets have been bombing Islamic State targets throughout the past week, including command centers, communications hubs, ammunition depots, as well as tanks and other vehicles.

Stoltenberg cited two cases in which Russian combat aircraft crossed into Turkish airspace over the weekend, something Russia said was an error. While crediting intelligence reports to support the view that the crossing was intentional, Stoltenberg offered no specifics and declined to comment on whether Russian radar has locked on Turkish fighters that scrambled to respond.

“This doesn’t look as an accident. This is a serious violation of the airspace. So far, NATO has not accessed military lines of communication to get a full a explanation from Russia, but such a step is being considered,” Stoltenberg said.

Syria: Thoughts On The Russian Air Support | MoA |  

○ US soldiers arrive at İncirlik Airbase with weapons for train-equip program
○ Obama’s special envoy Gen. John Allen quits post as ‘ISIS Czar’

Turkish warplanes harassed by unidentified MIG-29 aircraft | Hürriyet Daily News |  

Eight Turkish F-16 fighters jets were harassed by unidentified MIG-29 aircraft for four minutes and 30 seconds during a patrol flight on the border with Syria on Oct. 5, the Turkish General Staff has said.

In a written statement on Oct. 6, the military also said Syrian anti-aircraft batteries put Turkish jets conducting a border patrol under a radar lock for four minutes and 15 seconds on Oct. 5.

Turkey, a NATO member with its second biggest army, scrambled two F-16 jets on Oct. 3 after a Russian aircraft crossed into its airspace over its southern province of Hatay.

Russian war planes again violated Turkish airspace on Oct. 4, according to Foreign Ministry officials.

Russian fighter jets attacked 10 ISIL targets in Syria including provincial capital Raqqa gateway to Anbar province, Iraq.

○ Jabhat Al Nusra terror group ousted by more fanatic Wahhabist Islamic State of al-Sham in Al Raqqa, Syria by Oui @BooMan on May 26, 2013
○ Prince Bandar: Est. 600 Saudis are fighting on the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the al-Nusra Front by Oui @BooMan on Nov. 19, 2013
○ Turkey In Alliance with ISIS – Undermining Obama’s Policy In Iraq by Oui @BooMan on Sept. 22, 2014

There are some things that the “Free Market” simply will not do. One of those things is funding basic scientific research. Why? It simply isn’t likely to lead to anything profitable.

Corporations may (and I say may here) fund research into applied science if they see that the risk of doing so is small compared to the potential reward in terms of developing a product they can bring to the market and obtain substantial profits (think pharmaceutical companies who spent money of drugs to “cure” erectile dysfunction, for example).

Basic research, however, is rarely done by any corporation unless they can forego the expense, and for one simple reason: the managers of the firms in question must be able to justify that such investments will lead to a likelihood of profits, and one cannot know in advance if that will be the case with basic scientific research, much of which, while fascinating, may never lead to anything a company can use to make products that generate a large revenue stream.

However, basic, fundamental scientific research research, while “risky” from the standpoint of corporations and big business, may lead to discoveries that provide real benefits to not only our country, not only the human species, but the planet as a whole. A good example of such research is this recent announcement by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, who have discovered a means to potentially lower the energy cost of converting carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas contributing to global warming and climate change) into other molecules, such carbon monoxide and a precursor for methanol, molecules which do have industrial applications.

New research by chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and their collaborators offers clues that could help scientists design more effective catalysts for transforming carbon dioxide (CO2) to useful products. The study, published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, reveals how a simple rearrangement of molecular attachments on an iridium hydride catalyst can greatly improve its ability to coax notoriously stable CO2 molecules to react.

The research, which combined laboratory experiments with theoretical analysis, shows that, in the dark, only one of the two molecular arrangements can effectively transform CO2 to formate (HCOO-), a precursor of methanol. In the presence of light, however, both species form a common intermediate that can transform CO2 to carbon monoxide (CO), a useful raw material for making fuels and industrial chemicals.

More importantly, this research may help with further discoveries into ways to lower CO2 emissions, or possibly remove CO2 from the atmosphere. In the words of one of the main researchers who produced this research (based on the theoretical work of Mehmed Zahid) Ertem):

“There is strong interest in finding ways to reuse CO2 to create a carbon-neutral society,” said Brookhaven chemist Etsuko Fujita, who led the experimental portion of this work.

Let me just say, that in light of the present situation in which we find ourselves, a world rapidly descending into climate chaos primarily due to global warming from greenhouse gas emissions, that is an understatement. Finding ways to convert harmful CO2 into other chemicals that do not share its propensity for causing the atmosphere to retain heat is critical, considering how much carbon dioxide we are emitting into the atmosphere each day. Obviously, it won’t be easy, as Dr. Fujita recognizes.

“Reactions to produce products such as methanol or hydrocarbons from CO2 would be very useful. But if you think about the energy input and output of these reactions, it’s really very difficult,” she said.

Finding more efficient catalysts is the key to lowering the energy required to jump-start these reactions. Because various researchers had suggested that the iridium hydride catalyst might be an improvement over other well-known catalysts for producing CO from CO2, Fujita’s group undertook this research to investigate its mechanism of action.

“If you understand how a catalyst works, you can often devise ways to modify its function to make it work even better,” said Zahid Ertem, whose theoretical analyses provided the framework for understanding the experimental results. […]

“In fact, no matter which isomer we started with, the theoretical calculations show that this species with the carbon positioned opposite the vacant hydride position forms as an intermediate, which then catalyzes the conversion of CO2 to CO,” Ertem said.

“Because that intermediate is so reactive,” Fujita added, “it is extremely hard to isolate experimentally-which is one reason the theoretical analysis was so important to this study. The theoretical analysis corroborated all the measurements we could make and predicted the existence of this one key intermediate,” she said.

The theoretical calculations also offered insight into why the positioning of the carbon atom is so essential to the reactivity of this species-and may suggest strategies for the rational design of more effective catalysts.

This work is important. Yet, can anyone imagine a large corporation investing the money into basic research that is necessary to discovering if we can limit CO2 emissions through the use of technologies employing such catalytic processes? For-profit corporations, by their very nature, are not designed to make such long term investments in research that may never pan out.

In our present, late stage form of “Disaster Capitalism”, corporations see no value in conducting such research. Their goals are all short term – raise the stock price, increase profits, increase executive compensation. Long term investments in scientific research by former corporate behemoths, such as AT&T’s investment in its Bell Labs division, conducted in the last century are no longer the model followed by our current “I must get mine before you can get yours” corporate culture.

Let me clear. The research described above is not a revolutionary breakthrough that will inevitably lead the way to a carbon neutral society. However, it may be a big step in the direction of one. It points the way to further research that may find further reductions in the energy cost required to convert CO2 into other, less environmentally damaging compounds. The only actors who can fund such research and absorb the risk are national governments.

Unfortunately, we have a large number of extremist, conservative, Republican politicians opposed to funding basic scientific research. We have an even a larger number of our fellow citizens (mostly Republicans or leaning Republican in their political affiliation) who have been convinced – through propaganda from outlets such as Fox News – that Government investment in science is a waste of money, at best, and a plot to destroy our economy and way of life, at worst.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. We need more government investment in scientific research in many fields, including climate science, not less. The research done by the folks at the Brookhaven National Laboratory is just one example of that.

Is it supposed to be meaningful that Joe Biden spoke to Maureen Dowd back in August about his dying son’s wish that he run for the presidency? Is this really a genuine knock on Biden?

Why?

Because it was Dowd he chose to talk to?

The president sits down with Tom Friedman in the West Wing despite every stupid thing that man has written. And Dowd has a record of Anti-Clinton Derangement that is just as severe as her Anti-Obama Derangement. She even dogged Biden during his 1988 plagiarism scandal. People in the administration talk to columnists at the New York Times even when they think they won’t get a fair shake and even when they think those columnists are morons.

Is is a knock because it was politically motivated, a way of exploiting his son’s death?

Isn’t the story that his son, his face half-paralyzed and his speech badly impaired, sat his father down to implore him to run for the presidency?

Assuming this really happened, and I have no reason to believe that it didn’t, that places Joe in a bit of quandary. What father wouldn’t want to honor his son’s dying wish?

What was he supposed to do with that request?

And if he is taking the request seriously, is it strict opportunism to be honest about why he’s taking a long look at whether a run for the presidency is feasible?

I’ll admit that Biden created an invitation for people to invade his zone of privacy here, where ordinarily simple respect for the grieving would preclude us from even discussing these things, let alone passing judgment on them.

But I don’t see how it’s a knock on Biden that he wants it to be known that Beau asked him to run. Unless you don’t believe the story, this is so central to his thought process that we ought to know about it.

I’m not sure what’s up with this Milo Yiannopoulos catfish, but he brings up a point that may be completely deranged in his presentation but that still deserves to be discussed.

I might be a raging homo, but I still innately understand the male need to conquer, crush and win. Men need to express that dark, powerful part of themselves, or it can abruptly overflow. If it is suppressed, derided and ridiculed, it can show up without warning and with horrible consequences.

That’s why I’m so distressed that heterosexual men are being told, constantly, by the media and even in schools, that what they are is bad. This, I submit, is at least in part what’s driving the recent spate of shootings.

I think one thing that’s important to keep in mind when we think about these mass killers is that we can come up with various explanations that might tie them together, but unless they’re as true about other advanced industrialized nations as they are about our own, I don’t think the explanations will be convincing. There is no doubt in my mind that it’s hard to be a boy in this country right now and that our schools are so intent on getting them to behave that they’ve diagnosed being a boy as a mental disorder that requires multiple prescriptions.

I also don’t doubt that sexual frustration can become a lethal motivating force for both young males in our country and in Muslim countries where they often become the best recruits for martyrdom operations.

I also see a possible connection between autism, or the autism spectrum of mental disorders, and several of our recent shootings.

We can find some common motivations and medical conditions, but we still need to understand why these things result in mass shootings here and not everywhere.

What distinguishes our country is the prevalence of guns. A gun is what makes it possible for someone to translate their anger or frustration or hopelessness or simple psychosis into a huge bodycount.

Now, it isn’t just the guns, because as difficult as it can be to get a gun in Europe, it’s not by any means impossible. I’d argue that it’s both the guns and the attitude we have towards guns. In Europe, going out and getting a gun is a bit of an exotic idea. Here, guns are lying around everywhere for two year olds to pick and kill their parents and siblings.

It’s the latter condition that is more problematic than the former, because you can’t legislate about attitudes. At best, you can try to do this slowly over time through public health announcements, in the same kind of way that the government tries to get us to eat healthier and quit smoking.

Congress won’t let the federal government even research ways to reduce gun violence, so we also have a huge political problem.

If we seriously want to reduce gun violence, whether of the routine variety or the mass killing variety, we need to do some research. I don’t have any easy answers, but I know that the simple fact that we have guns lying around everywhere is the basic root of the problem. People are largely the same in every country and every culture, and they have the same mental health issues. So, if you’re serious about fixing the problem, you have to look at what’s unique about our country. I don’t think we’re unique in how we treat boys. I do think we’re unique in how we feel about guns.

There’s clearly something wrong with how we feel about guns and changing that has to be a part of the solution.

But if we want to work a little on getting back to letting boys be boys, that’s not a bad idea for completely unrelated reasons.

Hurrah! Individual data privacy wins battle from U.S. corporate money, economic power and credit to Snowden’s revelation of NSA surveillance. The EU-US agreement is thrown out by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Initial response by Max Schrems to the CJEU decision today:

“I very much welcome the judgement of the Court, which will hopefully be a milestone when it comes to online privacy. This judgement draws a clear line. It clarifies that mass surveillance violates our fundamental rights. Reasonable legal redress must be possible.

The decision also highlights that governments and businesses cannot simply ignore our fundamental right to privacy, but must abide by the law and enforce it.

This decision is a major blow for US global surveillance that heavily relies on private partners. The judgement makes it clear that US businesses cannot simply aid US espionage efforts in violation of European fundamental rights.

At the same time this case law will be a milestone for constitutional challenges against similar surveillance conducted by EU member states.

ECJ Advocate General’s Safe Harbor Opinion Points Towards Imminent End of Safe Harbor As We Know It | National Law Review – Sept. 25, 2015 |

Does your company rely on Safe Harbor to transfer personal data from Europe to the US?  If so, it’s time to think about alternatives to Safe Harbor – and fast.

The European Union’s Data Protection Directive (1998) prohibits the transfer of personal information outside of the European Economic Area unless the receiving country ensures an adequate level of privacy protection.  Soon after the Directive was passed, the European Commission determined that the US doesn’t offer adequate levels of protection.  The EU and the US negotiated the Safe Harbor agreement in 2000 to allow US companies to self-certify that they provide protections that are equivalent to the requirements of the Data Protection Directive.

Currently, over 4,000 US companies rely on the EU-US Safe Harbor program to make their transfer of personal data from the EU to the US legal under European privacy laws.  But in light of the opinion issued today by ECJ Advocate General Yves Bot in the Schrem case, there’s a very high risk that the Safe Harbor program will be invalidated by the European Court of Justice, which is the EU’s highest court.  The AG found that the Commission’s decision (made 15 years ago) that the US-EU Safe Harbor program offers an adequate level of protection to personal data of EU residents was invalid in light of what is now known (largely through Edward Snowden’s disclosures) about the transfer of personal information from companies such as Facebook Ireland to the NSA under the PRISM intelligence program.

The ECJ will issue its ruling on the Maximillian Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner case before the end of 2015, and possibly sooner.  The ECJ does not have to adopt the Advocate General’s opinion, but it usually does (with the Google Spain case being a notable exception).  All of this is against the backdrop of negotiations between the European Commission and the US government for reforms to the Safe Harbor program and its enforcement by the US.

CJEU decision on ‘Safe Harbor’ / Facebook

How NSA Surveillance May Result In Fragmenting The Internet: EU Court Leaning Towards Ending ‘Privacy Safe Harbor’ | TechCirt |

There have been plenty of (potentially reasonable) complaints out of the EU that the safe harbor process doesn’t actually do much to protect Europeans’ data. That may be true, but the flipside of it isn’t great either. Without the safe harbor framework, it’s possible that it would be much more difficult for American internet companies to operate in Europe — or for Europeans to use American internet companies. Some in Europe may think that’s a good idea, until they suddenly can’t use large parts of the internet.

Either way, the whole safe harbor system has come under attack on a variety of fronts, and it looks close to breaking… all because of the NSA. Max Schrems, who made news back in 2011 by asking Facebook for a copy of all the data it had on him, argued that the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program violated EU data protection rules. The European Court of Justice’s Advocate General, Yves Bot, has now sided with Schrems and basically said that the NSA surveillance has made the safe harbor process invalid.

You know, maybe Jeb Bush is going to the Republican nominee. Maybe he’ll be our next president. Could be. I can’t count it out.

But I’m almost surprised when I see him seriously discussed one way or the other. He’s just such a massive irrelevancy. It’s like a chore to even check what he’s up to or what he might have said today. It doesn’t feel like it matters. It doesn’t feel like he matters.

“Oh, he’s still running? He’s still in the race? He has a billion bucks to throw around?”

Jeb Bush is a political wallflower.

Will he campaign with his idiot brother?

Does anyone care?

If I were ambitious enough and well-connected enough to run for president and I was worried about getting into the debates, I’d have to consider bribing a reputable pollster to juice my numbers as just part of the price I’d have to pay. I mean, that doesn’t mean I’d find any takers, but don’t think people aren’t asking.

I really respect the honesty in Rebecca Traister’s Elle piece on Hillary. I admire how she was willing to just “put it all out there” and take whatever criticism comes as a result. It’s a generous thing to do, really, to sacrifice yourself that way to make an important point. I mean, she’s not pretending that we can’t come along and poke holes in her arguments and point out where she’s being very emotional and a bit irrational. She’s okay with that as long as we have to listen to how she feels and maybe learn a little bit what it’s like to be really invested in the idea of a woman president for its own sake.

It’s a feeling and a sentiment that ought to be respected. And part of me just wants to say, “Okay, I hear you, I respect that” and be silent.

But, look, the thing is that part what’s going on is that white liberals like myself are being put on the defensive in a way that really isn’t fair. And we have feelings, too, which deserve the same kind of respect. So, when I read something like the following, I do feel like I need to respond:

There will be sexism, veiled and direct, from the right and the left. Democratic women will feel screwed by their friends all over again, as I did in August when I saw a poll showing Clinton ahead of her Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders by a mere 6 points with the party’s men and 44 points with its women: a 38-percentage-point gender gap that seemed to speak volumes about how much men on the left care about women’s leadership.

And oh, those guys—my friends, my colleagues, my professional sparring partners—make me mad. Not just because they’d never in a million years admit that their preference for a white guy has anything to do with gender, or because they suggest that I’m the regressive one for caring that Hillary’s a woman. I mean, obviously those things make me mad too. But the real bitch is when I hear her attacked by men who claim to be feminists but actually despise her with inexplicable intensity, when I hear her supporters belittled for their cute investment in a non-male presidential power. It makes me spittingly angry. It transforms me into a knee-jerk defender of a candidate about whom I actually feel very torn. I’m allowed to criticize Hillary all I want, but damn if another round of sniping from liberal white boys isn’t going to radicalize me in her defense all over again.

Again, when someone comes right out and tells you that they’re being “a knee-jerk defender” of someone or something, they aren’t actually trying to convince you of the intellectual merits of their argument. They’re telling you how they feel and asking you to respect the legitimacy of their feelings.

And I’m willing to do that, so long as we’re clear that knee-jerk reactions are not ideal. That’s the way you react instinctively before you’ve had a moment to process what you’ve just seen or heard. I’m in favor of processing stuff.

As for how I feel, all things being equal, I’d prefer a woman president to a male president and I’d prefer a Senate with 80 women instead of 80 men. But I also know that there’s something about Hillary Clinton that I can’t warm up to, and I’m not just talking about her politics. I examine those feelings all the time because I’m suspicious about those feelings. They are, in some sense, inexplicable, even if I would never describe them as terribly intense or anything like “despising” her. So, no, I’m not a “hot mess” about Hillary, but I am conflicted and I do wonder how my feelings about gender enter into the intellectual, conscious part of my political analysis.

What I don’t like is having these feelings, which I freely admit that I don’t fully understand myself, reduced to me being a “liberal white boy” who doesn’t give a damn about “women’s leadership” and is willing to “screw over” my fellow liberal female friends.

To Traister’s credit, she acknowledges that she’s loading Hillary’s candidacy up with a bunch of values that have little to nothing to do with anything specific to Hillary, but people are reacting to a real human being, not a gender. How I feel about Hillary is completely different from how I feel about Amy Klobuchar or Claire McCaskill or Barbara Mikulski. Maybe Klobuchar presents herself more like how I subconsciously want a woman to present herself, and maybe I like Mikulski’s form of combativeness better than I like McCaskill’s or Hillary’s. How I feel about their positions on issues also colors how I feel about them as people. I like Barbara Boxer’s politics but don’t have much respect for her as a politician, while I dislike Diane Feinstein’s politics but think she’s very effective and influential. You know, I can trust Elizabeth Warren and revere Paul Wellstone while not trusting Alan Grayson and not revering Dennis Kucinich. I make judgments about politicians based on everything I can bring to the table, and some politicians I just don’t quite feel comfortable with even if I can’t precisely describe my reasons.

In any case, it matters much less to me how I feel about Hillary as a person than it does how I feel about her position on Syria, and I’m not ready for the quagmire candidate. I feel like I should be able to make that point without getting lumped in with a bunch of jerks who are genuinely uncomfortable with female leadership. I should be able to say that having a woman president is important to me, but not as important as the distinctions between Hillary and Bernie, and probably Joe, on what to do (or not do) about the Middle East.

And I think I ought to be able to say that maybe gender does enter into it for me, a bit, even if I’m not really aware of quite how it does, but that this isn’t what’s driving my skepticism about and reluctance to see a Clinton restoration. You know, there’s also this guy Bill who is part of the package here, and perhaps how I feel about him is nearly as important as how I feel about her.

To be honest, I’ve been reconciled to a Clinton restoration for several years now, as readers here can attest. What I always say, though, is that the foreign policy piece is the hump I can’t quite surmount. I can’t just say, “well, look, if she doesn’t win the nomination all these people I care about are going to feel really disappointed and betrayed” and let that be the end of my decision making.

In closing, let me make a point about Jackie Robinson. When he came up to the Brooklyn Dodgers, some of the players threatened to sit out rather than suit up with a black guy. Here’s what their manager Leo Durocher had to say about that, “I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra. I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded.”

The Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey carefully chose Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier because he had the right temperament, in his estimation, to put up with all the hatred and hostility that he knew would accompany the move. Maybe that’s the best argument for Clinton being the first female president.

On the other hand, maybe it’s wrong to treat her like Jackie Robinson. After all, who’s Leo Durocher in this scenario? Who’s the one with the clear moral authority to tell us that we have to get on board or we’re going on the trading block?

The presidency isn’t a baseball game, and it’s not whether or not Hillary can hit a curveball or has zebra stripes that we’re worried about. I know some good people will feel terribly if she isn’t our nominee, but we can’t let that be decisive. There’s a bigger picture to consider.

And that’s just how I feel.

I’m so tired of the lunatics. Okay, you knew that an unhealthy percentage of Republicans and Republican lawmakers think it’s a good idea to fuck around with our nation’s credit rating by threatening to default on our debts every time we need to raise the debt ceiling. Remember the Trillion Dollar Coin idea? Remember how it eventually made enough sense that the president had to comment on it and the administration began hinting that it might be an option? The Treasury Department put the kibosh on it, but still, it was embarrassing and not a little scary. And it got our credit rating downgraded.

The idea, back then at least, was that that they could use the threat of a default, which would undoubtedly cause a global recession, to force the president to accede to their every loony demand. John Boehner quite rightly thought they were nuts but he evidently had misplaced his own nuts so the plan went ahead until it caused billions in damage and cost a lot of people their jobs. These are facts, as even eleven Republican members of Congress acknowledged in a recent petition they circulated against shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood funding.

“The 16-day government shutdown in 2013 cost our economy an estimated $24 billion and stalled the creation of over 100,000 private sector jobs,” [Rep. Martha McSally] and the other 10 lawmakers wrote in a letter to their colleagues.

But, wait, it gets worse, because now the Republicans are using the credit default anvil on each other as they compete for the Speaker’s gavel and other leadership positions.

Take the certifiable maniac Jason Chaffetz who currently heads up the House Committee on Oversight. He’s the loser who just presided over a hearing this weak in which he and his male Republican show-trialists had to learn the hard way that a mammogram is a radiological procedure carried out not by Planned Parenthood but by actual radiologists. Somehow, they thought this was both a surprise and some kind of gotcha admission on Planned Parenthood’s part.

Well, Chaffetz is going to run for the Speaker’s gavel for the reason I explained at soon as Boehner announced his resignation: replacing Boehner with McCarthy makes absolutely no sense.

The problem is, that McCarthy has a lot of support, mainly because he was in charge of recruiting the batshit crazy Class of ’10 that started all this nonsense in earnest. But Chaffetz has a plan:

“You don’t just give an automatic promotion to the existing leadership team,” [Chaffetz] said. “That doesn’t signal change. I think [House Republicans] want a fresh face and fresh new person who is actually there at the leadership table in the speaker’s role.”

…No Democrats are expected to back McCarthy or any other Republican, so the nominee cannot afford to lose the support of more than 28 GOP members.

Chaffetz suggested that McCarthy does not have that level of support: “There are nearly 50 people and a growing number that will not and cannot vote for Kevin McCarthy as the speaker on the floor. He’s going to fall short of the 218 votes on the floor of House.”

…The stakes of the speaker’s race were heightened in recent days after the Treasury Department announced that Congress must act to raise the federal debt ceiling on or about Nov. 5 — less than a week after Boehner leaves office.

An effort by Boehner to pass a debt-limit increase in his final days with mainly Democratic votes — as happened last week on a 10-week government funding extension — could further weaken McCarthy, who as majority leader is considered to be in control of the floor agenda.

Chaffetz said Sunday that “we’re just not going to unilaterally raise the debt limit” and suggested that he would take cues from members who overwhelmingly support using the deadline as leverage in spending negotiations with Obama.

“As the speaker, you’ve got to take the will of our body, appreciate and respect the process, and then go fight for that,” he said.

So, there it is.

Now it’s McCarthy’s ascension to the Speakership that will be held hostage.

Either he agrees to default on our debts, cause another credit downgrade, light another $24 billion on fire, and cost another 100,000 people their jobs, or he doesn’t get to be in charge.

Do you see why I take the tone I take with these assholes?