On his show The Daily Show, Jon Stewart continued his nightly hammering of the Republican shutdown and on the video below, he includes commentary about President Obama and his role or lack thereof in the shutdown. And in his ever clever way, Stewart stumbled upon some truths about the Republicans in Congress – that they are functioning “at kindergarten level!”
Truth!
The Daily Show
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Sarah Connor wrote this letter. It was sent to every member of The House and Senate. A copy of this letter was also sent to the President.
Dear Members of Congress, Senators, President Obama, and whoever else reads this;
My name is Sarah Connor. I’m fourteen and I’m extremely disappointed in all of you, Democrats and Republicans alike. Not about your political views, but about how you run this country of 314 million people who all rely on you, a mere five hundred people, to make sure we keep living in a safe and functioning country.
I don’t think you are paying attention to what your petty squabbles for power and party grudges have done. You are so blinded by your politics that you can’t see past your noses to the real United States, the one that doesn’t run on politics, but on the decisions that you have been postponing and pushing aside.
The really sad thing is that you do this so much that it isn’t even that big a deal anymore. You wait until the last minute, fighting tooth and nail (figuratively, of course) to stop or pass a bill. Then you simply pass legislature that will delay it and any nasty consequences it was set up to have if it wasn’t passed.
You have no sense of time management, and that’s a huge problem.
If I managed my schoolwork like you all manage our country, I would fail miserably. I would wait until last minute for every project and every homework assignment. Then when it wasn’t finished on the due date, I would simply ask the teacher for more time; and then just keep repeating the cycle all over again. I would end up never doing my homework; and if I even did, I would only do it halfway so that I could get it in before the end of the school year. And somehow I’d still expect to pass my classes.
That, reader, is how you are currently running our country. With expectations of extra time and getting a grade of 100 on partial work.
I’m pretty sure my friends and I could manage this country better than you. We know when one person should triumph over another; and we respect each other’s opinions, even when they may not agree with our own. From the first day of kindergarten children are taught to work together, whether or not they like each other, and to get projects done.
You don’t do that.
You squabble like little children fighting over who gets the remote or who gets to choose a game. You refuse to cooperate with someone just because they want something different than you. And you throw tantrums if you don’t get your way.
It’s like you forgot everything you learned in elementary school about how to be a good partner.
I’m only 14 and I’m ashamed to see you behaving this way. You are supposed to be the great leaders of our country. You are children’s role models and teachers. They look up to you as the ones who keep our country running. If you behave in the ways you do now, you’re not teaching the leaders of tomorrow how to lead. You’re teaching them how to fight, how to squabble, and how to wage political wars that separate the two parties that were created to keep this country together.
So stop fighting, sit down at your desks, and do your work. Or I’ll send my mom down there to give you all a good whipping into shape. If she teaches you the way she taught me and my brothers, she’ll get you guys running this country properly in a week.
Sincerely, Sarah Connor
If you don’t know who Alan Grayson is, then you must have had your head under a rock! Please allow me to me to remind you.
On the House floor on Wednesday, Grayson educated his fellow House colleagues on just how popular the American people think they are, especially after the Republican Government Shutdown. Explaining the meaning of the word “dignity,” Grayson educates;
If dignity means what the dictionary says it means—the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect—then surely the honor and worthy of honor or respect of this house has been called into question.
When only 7 out of 100 Americans approve of what we do – the lowest approval rating ever – then surely our dignity has been diminished and is actively being called into question. If we are to be called obstructionists, practicers of partisan petulance, if we are called an establishment that is rotten to the core, if we are leaving Americans wondering why there is so much poison in the system, then surely our dignity as a body has been diminished.
If we’re accused of willingly provoking crises that suspend public services and decrease economic growth, then surely our dignity as a body has been diminished. If we cause international media outlets to refer to us as politically bankrupt and responsible for breaking America’s dignity, as a body, as a House, is being called into question.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blamed tea party Republicans for the government shutdown during a CNN interview on Wednesday, saying Congress never had a shot at defunding Obamacare.
“We started this on a fool’s errand, convincing so many millions of Americans and our supporters that we could defund Obamacare,” McCain said.
While McCain didn’t name names, he faulted members of Congress — “tea partiers specifically” — for wrongly telling “millions of Americans” that Obamacare can be defunded.
That “obviously wouldn’t happen until we had 67 Republican senators to override a presidential veto,” McCain said.
McCain denounced the fight to defund Obamacare at the cost of a fiscal impasse even before the govenrment shut down last week. McCain called out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his anti-Obamacare speech, and said “the people spoke” when they reelected President Barack Obama in 2012
I know things are bad right now, the economy is slowly reviving despite the constant Republican attacks. But can things get so bad that a weatherman feels the need to pick up food off the floor and shove it in his mouth… on camera?
And to make this unbelievable story even worse… the Connecticut weatherman thought he was shoving food in his mouth, but it turned out to be cat vomit.
Scot Haney was running through Wednesday morning’s show with fellow stars at Hartford CBS affiliate WFSB when he spotted what he thought was food on the floor.
Believing it to be Grape-Nuts, he broke the three-second rule to scoop it up and shovel it into his mouth.
It was only as he began chewing the droplets that he started to gag — telling viewers across Connecticut it “tastes like shoes” and “smells like feet.”
With his face pulling all sorts of strange expressions, he then said: “Oh. I don’t think those are Grape-Nuts. I think that might be dog doody.”
The repulsive truth, however, was finally revealed minutes later as Haney presented his “What’s Trending Now” segment of the show.
“Ladies and gentlemen, those were not Grape-Nuts that I ate. I kept finding more and more of it on the floor, and I thought it was grape nuts because it looked just like it,” he said.
“My cat threw up, and I must have stepped in it and that’s what I ate,” he confessed to camera.
Really? This must be a common routine fir the guy. Who picks up food off the floor?
We all know that the Koch brothers are financially responsible for the Teaparty and all they stand for. And we all know based on reporting from the New York Times that this government shutdown was planned months ago by the Republican leadership and their Teaparty brethren.
Their government shutdown to defund Obamacare plan however, has not panned out the way they expected, as more and more Americans continue to blame and abandon the GOP’s crazy antics. New Polling data shows that Republicans are paying a huge price for shutting down the government and now the financial foundation of the Teaparty wants nothing to do with the shutdown.
In a letter from the Kochs, the brothers are saying that that a government shutdown was never their idea, and that Republicans and the Teaparty were on their own.
“Koch believes that Obamacare will increase deficits, lead to an overall lowering of the standard of health care in America, and raise taxes,” the letter said. “However, Koch has not taken a position on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defunding Obamacare nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding Obamacare.”
A lot of the market indicators of how much the financial world is worrying about a debt default have been quite calm over the last week. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, for example, is only about 1 percent below its close eight days ago, when the government shutdown began.
But in the less widely followed — but in many ways more important — market for Treasury bills, things are starting to get scary. These are short-term IOU’s of the U.S. government, bills issued for 30, 60 or 90 days. They enable Uncle Sam to manage cash flow much the way a homeowner might use a credit card. They also form the backbone of trillions of dollars in transactions: Major corporations and banks use them as a place to park short-term cash; they are held by money market mutual funds; and they serve as collateral for millions of transactions in markets around the world.
Normally, the interest rate the government pays on bills is around the same as the short-term interest rates in other money markets (for example, the interest rates banks charge each other for overnight cash, or the interest rate that the Federal Reserve targets). Both of those are near zero right now, which is why on Sept. 30, eight days ago, the interest rate on Treasury bills maturing Oct. 17 was a mere 0.03 percent. Nothing, in other words.
But since then, the possibility that the Treasury might have trouble paying or might not be able to pay its bills over the next few weeks has grown — and the interest rate has skyrocketed. It was at 0.16 percent at Monday’s close. On Tuesday the rate so far has been almost double that, as high as 0.297 percent.
There are reports, including this one from Reuters, indicating that some of the biggest money managers in the world are starting to avoid U.S. government debt that matures in the near future out of fear they will not be repaid promptly.
