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Rush Limbaugh: GOP ‘so irrelevant’ By: Mackenzie Weinger October 16, 2013 02:25 PM EDT Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday blasted the Republican Party as “irrelevant” and responsible for “creating one of the greatest political disasters” he’s ever seen. “I was trying to think earlier today, if ever in my life I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant,” the conservative radio host said on his show, according to a transcript. “I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican Party is doing.” Limbaugh slammed the Republican Party for consistently...

Damn those extreme Republicans. President Obama and White House press secretary Jay Carney have found Republicans guilty of extortion and blackmail. Joe Biden, per a report in Politico, once christened Republicans as terrorists. Liberals have led a media assault, calling the GOP anarchists, jihadists, "gun to head" hostage takers, and the political equivalent of the Taliban. White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer has likened Republicans to suicide bombers "with a bomb strapped to their chest." What could be more extreme? The Democratic Party. True, the Ted Cruz wing in the House of Representatives is relentless, uncompromising and unmoved by practicality. As...

Republican Senator John McCain ripped conservative Senator Ted Cruz tonight before the final senate vote to approve a budget plan. McCain was on with Greta Van Susteren. McCain has a long history of bashing his fellow Republican. [video]

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) didn’t defund Obamacare. He drove a government shutdown. His party is tanking in the polls. But he couldn’t be happier. At a press conference on Wednesday, Cruz called the House’s actions a “remarkable victory” and a “profile in courage.” Cruz has emerged as the latest celebrity politician who doesn’t need big policy achievements to build his cred, but a following on the far right of his party.

WHAT AN ASS!!!!!!!!!!!

Buried inside the budget deal brokered by Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid: a payout to the millionaire widow of the late Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg. There is appropriated for payment to Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, widow of Frank R. Lautenberg, late a Senator from New Jersey, $174,000.” Agreed to by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate. Lautenberg’s networth $56.8 million last year

Buried inside the new stopgap spending bill are several pork project goodies, including nearly quadrupling the maximum price of a dam project on the Ohio River that is turning into a boondoggle — up to nearly $3 billion. The bill also includes $174,000 of taxpayer money being sent to the widow of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. The death gratuity, which has been paid to widows of other lawmakers in the past, raised hackles since Mr. Lautenberg was a multimillionaire, while the government is $16.7 trillion in debt. But lawmakers did nix one provision that was in an early draft...

Senate Republicans huddled Tuesday to discuss the latest on the fiscal crisis engulfing the Capitol, but two key members of their conference were missing from the lunch: Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah. Multiple senators confirmed the absence of the two senators, who have led the crusade in the Senate to shred the president’s health care law. “I don’t account for their schedules,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) quipped when asked about Cruz and Lee’s absence. Cruz and Lee could become an obstacle to moving quickly on a fiscal deal in the Senate, where consent from all 100...

The US Senate has passed a bill to reopen the government and raise the federal debt limit, with hours to spare before the nation risks default. The Democratic-controlled Senate's bipartisan compromise won swift approval by 81 votes to 18. It will now be sent to the House of Representatives, whose Republican leadership has begrudgingly said it will support the measure. It comes hours before the deadline to raise the $16.7tn (£10.5tn) limit. President Barack Obama is set to speak shortly at the White House. The deal would extend the federal borrowing limit until 7 February and fund the government to...

Capitol Hill talk regarding the Senate deal apparently includes a provision that would take away the Congress’ power to increase the debt ceiling. According to Politico, it looks like the buzz appears to be true.: The plan includes a proposal offered by McConnell in the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that allows Congress to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase, which means lawmakers will formally vote on whether to reject a debt ceiling increase until Feb. 7. Obama can veto that legislation if it passes. If Congress fails as expected to gather a two-thirds majority to override the veto, the debt...

A proposal to end the government shutdown and avoid default orchestrated by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Leader Harry Reid includes a $2 billion earmark for a Kentucky project. Language in a draft of the McConnell-Reid deal (see page 13, section 123) provided to WFPL News shows a provision that increases funding for the massive Olmsted Dam Lock in Louisville from $775 million to nearly $2. 9 billion.

Senate leaders reached agreement Wednesday to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown, according to a Republican senator who also said the House might vote first on the plan to speed its approval. The New York Stock Exchange soared on the news that the threat of default was easing in, rising nearly 200 points by late morning. "I understand they've come to an agreement but I'm going to let the leader announce that," Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H........

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are finalizing a deal to avert a debt default and reopen the government, capping a frantic day that had Washington bracing for an economic crisis of its own making. The deal is essentially done, sources say, as aides for the two leaders finish drafting the legislative language Tuesday night.

I thought that all revenue bills had to start first in the House of Reps... Is Reid's move unconstitutional?

I don't seem to ever recall Democrats turning on their own like several "Republicans" have recently. I wonder how things would have turned out in the fight to defund, delay, alter ObamaCare if so-called Republicans would have listened to Reagan, when he underwent so many personal attacks during his 1966 campaign for governor, which led to the Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shatlt not speak ill of any Republican. Reagan said "It's a rule that I followed in that campaign and have ever since." McCain and others seem to like to evoke Reagan, but don't appear to follow what he said. In...

RUSH: I want to go back to the lady on the phone who says this doesn’t feel right. What’s happening here to the country just doesn’t feel right. You know what’s happened here? You know what this feels like, folks? I’ll tell you exactly what it feels like to me. You tell me if this isn’t close. It feels like we’ve lost a war to a communist country. It’s almost like there’s been a coup. There’s been a peaceful coup. The media has led this coup, and the Democrats have taken over with popular support. We’re getting policies and implementations...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Wednesday morning said members of Congress are like the parents of everyone in the country and said these "parents" need to act quickly to protect their toddlers from the possible fallout of a debt default. "We, as custodians of this great nation, members of the United States Congress, are like parents," she said on the House floor. "And therefore I ask any parent that is listening: How long do they wait before they see a toddler fall, or do they leap toward that toddler so that they know the strength of that parent is...

In a 2003 speech, then Speaker Denny Hastert (R-Ill.) discussed his House management guidelines that became known as “The Hastert Rule.” The rule calls for a leader not to send legislation to the House floor for a vote unless it has the support of the majority of the majority. On Wednesday, with just hours left to raise the debt ceiling or risk default, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)–who has been holding fast to the Hastert Rule–has to decide whether to break it.

Sens. Cruz, Lee say they won't block deal By Mike Lillis - 10/16/13 12:38 PM ET Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee said Wednesday that they won't try to block the bipartisan deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. "The timing of the vote will make no difference to the outcome," Cruz (R-Texas) said. "I have no intention of delaying the vote." Cruz and Lee (R-Utah) had spearheaded the campaign to attach ObamaCare language to any new budget bills, and had pushed their colleagues to take a hard-line stance. But the pair emerged from a meeting of...

Despite no evidence in financial markets of a default, House Speaker John Boehner (RINO-OH) will bring the Senate clean Continuing Resolution (CR) to The House floor for a vote. The endless spending and debt growth in Washington DC will continue now that the Senate has turned over the power of pursestrings to The President (once House Republicans agree). Obamacare was already a tremendous transfer of power and control to the Executive Branch, and now capitulating to President Obama gives the Executive Branch overwhelming power and control. In order to honor our career politicians in Congress and the Administration, the Washington...

Referring to his plan to preemptively send the Senate a House-passed bill, Speaker John Boehner told his conference this morning that he’d “rather throw a grenade than catch a grenade.” But with his right-wing troops abandoning him again, it was the speaker who was left holding the bomb. After a day of furious negotiating with fellow Republicans over how to tweak a bill he had unveiled in the morning, it was left to stunned members of his leadership team to confirm to reporters that the vote had been canceled. “They’re trying to work it out,” said Representative Greg Walden, the...

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...