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The United States has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become the world's biggest oil producer as the jump in output from shale plays has led to the second biggest oil boom in history, according to leading U.S. energy consultancy PIRA. U.S. output, which includes natural gas liquids and biofuels, has swelled 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2009, the fastest expansion in production over a four-year period since a surge in Saudi Arabia's output from 1970-1974, PIRA said in a release on Tuesday. It was the latest milestone for the U.S. oil sector caused by the shale revolution, which has...

Why are intellectuals, sometimes the most intelligent among us, so dumb? This is the question that confounds everyone; some intellectuals most of all. The late William F. Buckley Jr., a certified egghead, once said he would rather be governed by the first 50 names in the Boston telephone book than by the professors at Harvard. Another wit observes that an intellectual is someone who so prefers theory over experience that he would sit down on a red-hot stove, twice. You can be too smart for your own good, and have the blisters on your bottom to prove it. The intellectual...

HONG KONG - Perhaps the only people who have managed to find a silver lining in the ongoing US government shutdown are Chinese intellectuals. Of course, Americans view the impasse as a sign of political dysfunction. But to many Chinese commentators, it also reveals certain strengths. Since the shutdown began nine days ago, Chinese social media have been full of wistful, almost admiring remarks about how the shutdown could only happen in a democratic country with a resilient economy and responsive political representation. "The government's closed - is this bad?" wrote Chen Zhiwu, a user on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo....

Survey: More Americans Trust GOP to Manage Economy BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff October 15, 2013 3:25 pm Approval ratings for Republican leadership in Congress may be at an all-time low, but a new survey shows that more Americans trust the GOP with handling the economy. A Pew Research survey said that 44 percent of Americans trusted Republicans more with managing the economy while 37 percent said they favored Democratic control of the economy. GOP Runs Even on Economy, Managing Government: More people continue to blame Republicans than the Obama administration for the government shutdown, and the GOP is widely...

After two weeks of a partial government shutdown, ask voters which party they want in charge of Congress, and - it’s a draw. Right now, Democrats control the U.S. Senate, and Republicans have the majority in the House of Representatives. Forty-six percent (46%) of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Democratic Party to be in charge of the entire Congress if their vote in next year’s elections was the determining factor. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just as many (45%) would vote for the Republican Party to be totally in control.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blasted House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday after leaks circulated of a plan that House Republicans might offer to end the spending and debt stalemate.“We felt blindsided by the news from the House,” Reid said on the Senate floor in a scathing attack on Boehner and his House GOP members. The Nevada Democrat said “extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo" the negotiations which he and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have been conducting in the past few days. Reid’s torrent of criticism came hours after he and McConnell both said...

My sources tell me House Republicans have postponed tonight’s vote on their plan to end the fiscal impasse. “The votes aren’t there,” says a leadership aide. “We’ve been amending the bill all day, but we’ve been unable to get people around this strategy.” This development leaves Speaker John Boehner with few options as Thursday’s debt-ceiling deadline nears, and it throws the action back toward the Senate, which has been working on a bipartisan package.

The House bill is a blatant attack on bipartisanship.” “Extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo the Senate’s bipartisan progress with a bill that cannot pass the Senate.” Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid spoke on the Senate floor today regarding House Republicans’ extreme proposal, which is dead on arrival in the Senate. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:The House Republican leadership’s plan to advance an extreme bill is nothing more than a blatant attack on bipartisanship.For the past several days, we have been engaged in productive, bipartisan negotiations here in the Senate. We have been working...

Apparently, it’s become fashionable to wonder whether fissures in the GOP might eventually grow into a schism, with tea party candidates mounting independent challenges to the GOP in the 2014 elections. Last night, David Frum went a step farther, writing that a tea party exodus might actually help Republicans by freeing them of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, allowing the GOP to slide back to the political center. It's a centrist fantasy. If Republicans think they have a pathway to victory without the tea party, they’re sorely mistaken. The tea party is not some small, fringe element of the Republican...

The Washington Monument syndrome is describe the tendency of government agencies in the United States to cut the most visible or appreciated services provided by the government when faced with budget cuts. And protect massive waste (since no one would miss the massive waste if it was cut). Such as closing National Parks and Monuments. What are government agencies hiding? The fact that agencies have large concentrations of non-essential personnel. Even Time.com recognizes that most of Federal government in non-essential. The interest payments on Federal debt is a small percentage of Federal current expenditures (11.5% at the end of Q2)....

While it sounds harsh, Harry Reid should never have allowed himself to be turned into an unreasonable senior who is stamping his feet like a child and saying I won't negotiate, etc, etc, He should have retired before the fight and left without all the soil this fight has brought... He has done his job for years, why not become the elder statesman....there is great satisfaction in such a roll.... He will be remembered as the guy who turned down deals good for the country, time and again...... And this is the way he has allowed himself to be seen.........

Heritage Action For America, an influential conservative group, on Tuesday urged House Republicans to vote against their leaders' latest bill to fund the government and raise U.S. borrowing authority. The private group said that the legislation, which was scheduled to be voted on late on Tuesday, fails to "stop Obamacare's massive new entitlements from taking root." The group is warning lawmakers that it will look at their positions on this legislation in considering whether to encourage candidates to run against them in Republican primary campaigns next year.

A day of political disarray Tuesday thrust the United States to within hours of a debt default deadline, sparking fears of deep damage to a fragile US recovery and the global economy. Just 29 hours before the US government begins to run short of money to pay its bills, there was no clear way out of a stalemate that has called the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency into question.If Congress fails to raise US borrowing authority before midnight Wednesday (0400 GMT Thursday) the US Treasury would begin to run out of money to meet all US obligations and...

----"Plan B" and fiscal cliff vote, redux. Having hammered out a deal to shoot back to the Senate tonight -- with most Republicans reportedly on board -- House GOP leadership has been forced to delay or cancel those votes after support among conservatives collapsed in the early evening hours. The rules committee meeting, which would have formally drawn up the bill and advanced it to the full house, has been postponed indefinitely. The reason is simple. They don't have the votes: What happened? The counter-offer's broad outline, which I've been following all day, seemed to be on track. Then the...

House Republicans are in trouble. GOP leadership pulled their bill to open the government and lift the debt ceiling because they didn’t have the votes to squeeze it through the chamber. There will be no vote Tuesday, which means Washington will have one day to lift the debt ceiling before the U.S. government reaches its borrowing limit. It’s unclear what Speaker John Boehner’s team will do next. This could, once again, sideline the House and kick action over to negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The U.S. government reaches its debt limit...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House GOP leaders unveiled their own plan Tuesday to counter an emerging Senate plan to reopen the government and forestall an economy-rattling default on U.S. obligations. The bill would repeal a new tax on medical devices and take away lawmakers' federal health care subsidies in addition to funding the government through Jan. 15 and giving Treasury the ability to borrow normally through Feb. 7. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Republicans plan to pass the measure later Tuesday. It could prove tricky because Democrats probably won't support it. The House move comes after conservative lawmakers rebelled at the...

We’ve written extensively of late regarding the widening divide between fiscally conservative Republicans and the “neoconservative” fiscally liberal wing of the party – led by U.S. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn. In fact according to the website Mississippi PEP, they’ve censured him. For those of you unfamiliar with this aging RINO, Cochran is one of several Southern “Republicans” who habitually caves to U.S. President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats (along with Graham, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander and Georgia’s Johnny Isakson). “When any official continues to engage repeatedly in a course of conduct that violates...

According to multiple reports, Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are close to a deal to reopen the federal government and lift the debt ceiling. The deal would fund the federal government through January 15, and lift the debt ceiling until February 15. Attached to that would be a pair of minor provisions. Republicans would get some kind of assurance that people can't lie about their income to get Obamacare, and Democrats would get the delay of a small "reinsurance tax" that was intended to expire after three years anyway (and which unions hated). This is a huge win for...

Labor unions are poised to score the delay of an ObamaCare tax in the bipartisan budget deal emerging in the Senate. The bargain under negotiation would make small adjustments to the healthcare law, including delaying the law's reinsurance fee for one year. The three-year tax is meant to generate revenue that will stabilize premiums on the individual market as sick patients enter the risk pool. The tax applies to all group health plans, but unions argue it will raise their healthcare costs while providing them no benefit.  The reinsurance tax figured prominently in discussions at a recent AFL-CIO convention, where...

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Video: What is the Tea Party really trying to get out of slimdown?

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) laughed at State of the Union host Candy Crowley Sunday when she asked if he would consider becoming a Democrat. While discussing a poll released this week showing more Americans blaming Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats, Crowley took the opportunity to see if Paul had any inklings of switching sides. Paul had been critical of both Democrats and Republicans in the interview and said both should receive blame for the shutdown, adding to the strangeness of the question. Paul said he was proud of the Republican Party’s history, particularly for its fight against Jim...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Boehner offered Obama a clean debt ceiling bill. I mean everything Obama has asked for and he turned it down and said, "Nope, now you've got to do away with the sequester." And Boehner, poor Boehner, Boehner is -- by the way, I'm sorry. This is purely habitual. The table out here is not nearly as solidly attached to the wall, or the ceiling actually, as it is in Florida. Well, it's a broadcast quality table. It's just not anchored broadcast quality. Not a complaint, look, I do this by habit. I'm going to try to rein...

Operating through an “emergency and health services” protocol, congressional representatives, senators, their staff, credentialed journalists, other credentialed media personnel, and U.S. Capitol Police are still receiving free flu shots at health units in the Capitol and at locations in office buildings. … According to a “Contingency Staffing Plan for Operations” for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, page 3, the partial government shutdown will, however, prevent the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from performing its role to protect the citizenry from influenza. …

Americans who want to honor and reflect upon the memory of the crew and passengers who perished aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 will find that the federal government has blocked the road four miles down from the open-air memorial near Shanksville, Pa. CNSNews.com photographed the spot of the road closure this past weekend. The steel barrier blocking vehicles from passing says: “Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service facility is closed.” …

Secession is not just for unreconstructed Confederates anymore. On both the right and the left, Americans increasingly see Washington as the problem and local autonomy as the solution. Despite all the talk, the federal government shutdown hasn’t greatly affected daily life for most Americans so far. Some have been hit hard, especially federal employees, those receiving certain benefit payments, and tourists planning to visit the Smithsonian or a national park. But as apocalypses go, a couple weeks without “non-essential” federal services has been underwhelming for most American families. Things could get worse if the closure were to extend from weeks...

As I mentioned yesterday, the medical device tax that went into effect last January is just one of the many insidious job-killing measures contained within ObamaCare, but it is an especially terrible one. The 2.3 percent excise tax is meant to raise a handsome $30 billion to pay for ObamaCare over the next decade, except that, added bonus: It’s going to stifle innovation and competition in an industry that provides all manner of life-saving medical devices, from MRIs to pacemakers to blood tubes. And this hasn’t just been a Republican refrain, by the way. Thursday night, the Senate voted overwhelmingly...

NBC News Chief White House Correspondent and MSNBC host Chuck Todd reported on Monday that tea party figures like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin helped scuttle a potential deal to raise the debt ceiling over the weekend when they led World War II veterans to march on the White House. Todd reported that the tea party Republicans are “doing everything they can” to keep the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff “alive.” “While the non-tea party Republicans are desperately trying to end this standoff, the tea party Republicans are doing everything they can to keep it...

President Barack Obama is demanding a $1.1 trillion "ransom"--or else he will not allow the debt ceiling to be raised. That's the effective offer on the table from the president and Senate Democrats. They have now refused to pass a "clean" short-term debt ceiling hike unless Republicans agree to reverse the "sequester" spending cuts in the 2011 Budget Control Act that were enacted--at Obama's suggestion--to end the last debt ceiling crisis. The president, who has invited congressional leaders to conduct talks at the White House Monday afternoon, still continues to insist that he "will not pay a ransom for Congress...

WASHINGTON — Several Republican senators said Sunday a Democratic request to increase government spending is hurting chances of a deal to end the 13-day-old shutdown. Leaders of the Democratic-led Senate were dismissive of a proposal Saturday, in part, because it kept in place for too long the automatic spending cuts that went into effect earlier this year. Another round of those decade-long cuts -- dubbed the sequester and approved by Congress and the White House in 2011 -- is expected in January. The Republican complaints came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spoke...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says he's disappointed that a plan negotiated by six Republicans and six Democrats was "squashed" by Democrat leaders on Saturday, just as the 12 were ready to announce it.He said Democrats "moved the goalpost in light of the polling data."Speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday, McCain said, "We were ready to go to the press gallery, OK? The Democrat leadership said no. He joked that "maybe we need to get Joe Biden out of the witness protection program because he has good relationships with (the Democratic leadership)."Biden has not taken part in negotiations to fund...

Will the initiative remain with aggressive Southern reactionaries, as their fellow Americans try to appease them or react on a case-by-case basis against a feint here or a diversion there? Or will an aroused national majority, tired of being pushed around by a selfish Southern minority of the shrinking American white majority, finally fight back?When I have described the well-considered, coherent political and economic strategies of the conservative white South, as I have done here, here and here, I am sometimes been accused of being a “conspiracy theorist.” But one need not believe that white-hooded Dragons and Wizards are secretly...

Idaho GOP Rep. Raul Labrador was back in front of the TV cameras this morning, this time appearing on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos. "We're four days away from reaching the debt ceiling. We gave the president an offer where we would extend the debt ceiling without any requirements ... and I don't see why the president is not accepting that or working with us," said Labrador. "I think it's been very difficult to work with [Obama]. He wouldn't even come to the table to negotiate." And Labrador wasted no time to bring the debate surrounding the federal government...

Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer interrogated Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KA) on the House Republicans’ tactics to shutdown the government and test the breaching of the debt ceiling, challenging Huelskamp to name what, if anything, such measures had accomplished or were intended to accomplish. “At the end of the day, what we have accomplished?” Huelskamp said. “Not much yet. But we have to focus on Obamacare, and we have to focus on the underlying problem that’s been ignored for years, and that’s too much spending.” “But congressman, don’t you have to focus on keeping the government running?” Schieffer asked. When...

ST. PAUL, Minn. — With just a few days left before the federal government's supply of cash runs dangerously low, Minnesota's U.S. Senators remained in Washington for the weekend. In a speech on the Senate floor, DFL Sen. Al Franken said the government shutdown and debt ceiling showdown have distracted lawmakers from vital issues such as education and job training. "Every day that government stays shut down, every day we wake up under the threat of default, every day we spend focused on something that isn't spent working together to create jobs and rebuild the middle class is, in my...

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has called President Obama a “pathetic leader” for his lack of involvement in negotiations to end the government shutdown. He slammed the president’s unwillingness to compromise with Republicans as “immature.” Today on America’s News HQ, Graham told anchor Doug McKelway, “For [Republicans] to suggest to the American people that we could defund ObamaCare or delay it for a year by shutting down the government, I think was unrealistic.” With the debt limit just four days away, Sen. Graham said, “I’m not going to vote for any deal coming out of the Senate that doesn’t have a...

Rolling back the automatic budget cuts known as the "sequester" has emerged as a critical sticking point in the negotiations to reopen the government and avoid default. Democrats don't want to lock in 2014 government funding at the reduced level required by the sequester, but Republicans refuse to increase spending and say Democrats are overplaying their hand. “The dispute has been how to undo the sequester,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on "Face the Nation" on CBS on Sunday, explaining that Democrats want a mix of entitlement reforms and revenue increases. But Republican lawmakers on the Sunday talk shows vowed...

Journalism icon Bob Woodward wrote in a new Washington Post op-ed first that the sequester was the "brain child" of the White House...

With the federal government shut down, air traffic controllers learned Friday that they'll be working without a paycheck until lawmakers start paying the bills again. “We have a stressful job, this just adds to it,” said 26 year veteran air traffic controller Greg Colyer. Colyer says after working an 80 hour pay period was stunned to see on his statement Friday that he had only been paid for 56 hours; right up until midnight October 1st. He's worried what will happen if the shutdown stretches through the next pay period. “In 2 weeks if congress doesn't pass a budget we're...

Bob Woodward said that sequestration was Obama's & Lew's idea. Why now is Obama againt it? Why was he for it before he was against it? Why does he flip-flop on his CORE beliefs (raising the debt ceiling, the individual mandate, sequestration, etc)? Not secondary or tertiary beliefs...core beliefs. And why is Lew fearmongering over the debt ceiling? What he has said about it recently has been debunked by Moody's.

Inspired by Chris Cox, a South Carolina native who has been cleaning up the National Mall amid the partial government shutdown — mowing the lawns, taking out the trash, and keeping it from falling into a disgraceful state — Beck told his listeners on Friday: “This is not a political rally, this is a workday … Grab your garbage bags and let’s go. And we’ll just help this guy keep the Mall clean.” Beck is scheduled to speak at the event at 10:45, directly following Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). But Beck explained on radio Friday that the speeches will be...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan lashed out at Senate Republicans for interfering with the House GOP’s talks with the White House to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling, suggesting his colleagues on the other side of the Capitol were betraying Speaker John Boehner. “They’re trying to cut the House out, and trying to jam us with the Senate. We’re not going to roll over and take that,” Ryan told reporters. When asked if he felt “double crossed,” Ryan said “you look at the facts and draw your own conclusions.” Senate Republicans, led by Senator Susan Collins of...

Senate Democrats hosted Deadliest Catch Captain Keith Colburn on the Hill today to say that he can’t go fishing because of the government shutdown. Colburn was testifying at this afternoon’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the economic impacts of the government shutdown. “This is the first time in my 28 years of fishing that I haven’t been in the Bering Sea in October getting ready to go fish,” Colburn said “Many fishermen and coastal communities are already facing tough times. This unnecessary shutdown may be the tipping point if the situation isn’t resolved soon… I’m a small businessman in a...

NRO on Shutdown:Jonathan Strong �@j_strong 25m Cantor spokesman says Rep Joe Crowley engaged in physical altercation w GOP staffer Joseph Crowley NY-D-14th - Vice Chair of the Democrat Caucus

"...................But perhaps the most extraordinary story to emerge from the NPS is that of the tour group of foreign seniors whose bus was trapped in Yellowstone Park on the day the shutdown began. They were pulled over photographing a herd of bison when an armed ranger informed them, with the insouciant ad-hoc unilateral lawmaking to which the armed bureaucrat is distressingly prone, that taking photographs counts as illegal “recreation.” “Sir, you are recreating,” the ranger informed the tour guide. And we can’t have that, can we? They were ordered back to the Old Faithful Inn, next to the geyser of...

A group of truckers left Doswell, Virginia Friday morning to take part in the ‘Ride for the Constitution’ in Washington, D.C. They planned to join truckers from across the country slowing down traffic around the nation’s capital. Virginia State Police, who beefed up patrols ahead of the planned demonstration, pulled over at least one group of truckers, according to WTOP.com. “Four commercial vehicles began driving side-by-side across all four northbound lanes of I-495 on the Inner Loop slowing traffic to 15 mph. Virginia State Police stopped the four tractor-trailers at the 53 mile marker (Fairfax County) and warned them not...

Jonathan Bernstein considers what the pointless shutdown fight has done to Ted Cruz’s political prospects: It’s one thing to have a reputation as a loudmouth; it’s quite another to have a reputation as a loser. That’s what the shutdown fight has done to Cruz. Among true believers he’ll be the one who was a leader in a fight that surely would have won if the squishes hadn’t sold them out. But for most party actors, including many sympathetic to Tea Partyism, he’s going to be the guy who ran up the wrong hill. It would have been different if Cruz’s...

7 hours ago Obama: “This is not normal” Posted by CNN's Gabe LaMonica Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama on Saturday said House Republican agreement over the need to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government, without agreement over how long, was a “positive development.” Both Houses of the United States Congress are in session this weekend, and in his weekly address, Obama told members of the House and Senate to “pass a budget, put people back to work, and end this shutdown.” The President, who updated a group of nearly 150 top U.S. business leaders on Friday on...

It may not mark a tectonic shift in the political landscape, but it seems significant that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer expressed support for Republican proposals to delay ObamaCare for a year: Blitzer was then set upon by other CNN hosts while leaving the studio, resulting in a melee that escalated quickly, ending when Piers Morgan killed a guy with a trident. CALL TO ACTION: Should Congress be exempt from Obamacare? Sign the petition to deny Congressional exemption here! This particular conversation revolved around the epic “glitches” that have plagued the ObamaCare website. ”Glitchy” is a debatable term for a website that...

President Barack Obama on Friday rejected a critical part of the House Republicans’ latest proposal to extend the federal debt ceiling, which linked a short-term increase to further negotiations on the budget, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “It is our view that we cannot have a situation where the debt ceiling is extended as part of a budget negotiation process for only six weeks, which would put us right back in the same position that we’re in now,” Carney told reporters in a briefing at the White House. “A proposal that puts a debt-ceiling increase at only six weeks,...