Isn't this a noteworthy development as the Most Equal Comrade embarks on his China visit?

How is this not an act of war?

Chinese government operatives reportedly are suspected of hacking the U.S. Postal Service, in a security breach that may have compromised personal information for more than 800,000 workers. 

The breach was announced Monday, as President Obama arrived in Beijing. 

The Postal Service confirmed the incident in a written statement, saying personal information that may have been obtained in the attack includes employees' names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, emergency contacts and other information. 

The agency said customers at local post offices or those using its website, usps.com, were not affected. However, people who used its call center may have had telephone numbers, email addresses and other information compromised. 

The FBI and other federal agencies are investigating. 

"It's an unfortunate fact of life these days that every organization connected to the Internet is a constant target for cyber intrusion activity," Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe said. 

The Washington Post reported that Chinese government hackers are suspected of being behind the breach, and that it compromised information from more than 800,000 postal workers. This comes as Obama begins his Asia-Pacific tour in Beijing, starting with meetings with President Xi Jinping and an economic summit. 

Smelling weakness, all over the world.

The death of Europe

The continent that spawned Western civilization has become a sewer of radical Islam.

Here's the latest from France:

A gang of Muslims hurled a Molotov cocktail at a Kosher restaurant in Paris.
The Muslims first entered the restaurant and threatened the diners calling them “dirty Jews.”
Israel National News reported, via Religion of Peace:

A firebomb was thrown at a kosher Jewish restaurant in the 17th district of Paris at week’s end.

Several minutes earlier, some young Muslims who walked by the restaurant threatened the diners inside and called them “dirty Jews.” The diners did not react.

A few minutes passed, and a loud smash was heard when a firebomb hit the restaurant’s door. The diners managed to see a group of Muslims running away as the firebomb ignited, starting a fire, which the restaurant’s employees succeeded in putting out. None of the restaurant-goers was hurt.

And at PJ Media, Robert Spencer lists the ten latest signs that the conquest of the UK continues apace.  It includes such examples as yet more young Britons joining ISIS, Prince Charles imploring Muslim leaders to get their faithful to "respect other religions," and this little bit of totalitarianism employed in the service of surrender to jihad:

 Home Secretary Theresa May has announced new “Extremism Disruption Orders,” which would empower the British government to prevent people from broadcasting, holding public rallies, or even posting on Facebook and Twitter if they promoted “extremism.” Chancellor George Osborne emphasized that the new orders were designed to “eliminate extremism in all its forms” – including the justification of “hatred” against a particular religion.

Critics of the proposal have pointed out that this would criminalize criticism of Sharia, even in its most oppressive aspects – the stonings, amputations, and denial of equal rights to women and non-Muslims.

and this bit of patty-cake:

William Hague, the Conservative leader of the House of Commons, announced that his government was ready to aid British jihadis returning from the Islamic State if they had “good intentions.” Some of the returning jihadis, Hague said compassionately, will “just need help because they will have been through an extremely traumatic period.”

Can you say "tipping point"?

Still appeasing North Korea as well

Claudia Rosett at PJ Media on how the Kim dynasty wins yet another round agains post-America:

America has just welcomed home two of its own, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller, both of whom had been thrown in the slammer while visiting North Korea, and sentenced there to years of hard labor for acts that Pyongyang’s regime deemed “hostile.” We can celebrate their safe return.

But it would be folly to celebrate the manner in which it was accomplished. To bring them home, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper flew to North Korea, carrying what was reportedly a message from President Obama to North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un. State Department officials have been telling the press that Clapper’s mission involved no quid pro quo. A news story in the Wall Street Journal carries the  subhead: “U.S. Didn’t Give Anything to Secure Release.”

That’s absurd. The visit to North Korea by America’s intelligence chief was, in itself, a form of tribute, in which the U.S. superpower stooped to beg a favor from Pyongyang. It was a ransom. A payola for North Korea’s  hostage politics.

And, once again, the world takes notice:

That’s an in-your-face power play by Pyongyang that the rest of the world will understand, even if Washington does not. It’s unclear whether it was the U.S. that chose Clapper as the emissary, or North Korea that made the choice, and Washington said yes, he can. But the effect is the same. Clapper’s job is supposed to be collecting intelligence on such malign hellholes as North Korea, not serving as errand boy to satisfy the requirements of Kim Jong Un. If there is any notion in Washington that this might be the prelude to some sort of fruitful exchange with North Korea — more nuclear talks, perhaps — it is time to sober up. This was not a case of a penitent regime reaching out to James Clapper and his colleagues. This was extortion.

Surely an aspect of the post-American weakness the Chinese correctly perceived, as discussed in the post below.

 

 

The contempt with which your overlords regard you

Check out this bit of candor from Freedom-Hater-care architect Jonathan Gruber:

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that.  In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

Purposely written to be as complex as possible to bamboozle the CBO as well as the cattle-masses.  And them rammed through without a single Pub vote.

That's what passes for morality among FHers: Thinking a policy is so good in the collective sense that it's okay to craft it and sell it in a way that keeps actual human beings from seeing what it does.

Is there any doubt that repeal is right and necessary?

Of course

The Most Equal Comrade ain't gonna get his stature enhanced by going to China:

Second-term US presidents traditionally seek solace on the global stage. Barack Obama is no exception. Following last week’s drubbing in the US midterm elections, he lands in China on Monday for a summit with Xi Jinping. He is unlikely to find Beijing more pliable than Washington DC. As time goes on, it becomes ever harder to separate his domestic weakness from his global standing. Even the tone is spreading. “US society has grown tired of [Obama’s] banality,” China’s semi-official Global Times said last week. 

Mr Xi is too polite to put it like that. Yet there is no mistaking which of the two is on the way up. In his first year in office, Mr Obama offered Beijing a “G2” partnership to tackle the world’s big problems. China spurned him. Mr Obama then unveiled his “pivot to Asia”. China saw it as US containment and reacted accordingly. Its defence spending today is almost double in real terms what it was when Mr Obama first visited China in 2009. Over the same period, the US military budget has barely kept pace with inflation.

This exposes the inherent madness of the Most Equal Comrade's view of being US president, though.   He doesn't care, since the diminished stature was on purpose, since he sees his whole mission as taking America down a peg on the world stage.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

If you ever needed conclusive proof that the kumbaya / fairness-and-clean-water movement was nothing but cover for totalitarianism of the most jackbooted kind, this column provides it.  The authors are, respectively, a food writer, a journalism professor, and a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

They propose a "national food policy."  They say that the way individuals freely choose to eat now is wrecking our health and fouling up the air and water.

They envision a policy that would "invest resources to guarantee that":

● All Americans have access to healthful food;

● Farm policies are designed to support our public health and environmental objectives;

● Our food supply is free of toxic bacteria, chemicals and drugs;

● Production and marketing of our food are done transparently;

● The food industry pays a fair wage to those it employs;

● Food marketing sets children up for healthful lives by instilling in them a habit of eating real food;

● Animals are treated with compassion and attention to their well-being;

● The food system’s carbon footprint is reduced, and the amount of carbon sequestered on farmland is increased;

● The food system is sufficiently resilient to withstand the effects of climate change.

They bemoan the fact that current "government policy" is "piecemeal."

Then they get to the crux of what they're after: They want the Most Equal Comrade to announce an "executive order establishing a national policy for food, health and well-being," so as to "make it much more difficult for Congress to pass bills that fly in its face."

Of course, on one level this is silly and worthy of dismissal and derision, particularly since the nation expressed its current leanings last Tuesday, and also in light of the focus being put on the unconstitutionality of most of the Most Equal Comrade's executive orders.

On another level, however, this shows how advanced the rot is, how entrenched in sectors such as education, physical-sciences research, and journalism, this totalitarian impulse is.  That these three authors could have risen in their respective fields to the levels of status they now have demonstrates how great our task is going to be.

I hope this gets the discussion it needs to have.  This is some hard-core stuff.

The Most Equal Comrade tries his damnedest to avoid calling it US combat troops in Iraq

We're going back into Iraq in a boots-on-the-ground way, as many generals have insisted would be necessary.  But the MEC doesn't order the doubling of the number of troops there until three days after the election, and then tries to assure the post-American public that there's no mission creep.

No wonder, given how many times he has insisted that our role was limited to airstrikes and advising the Iraq military:

Jun 19: We're prepared to send a small number of additional American advisors, up to 300, to assess how we can best train, advise and support Iraqis security force forces going forward I think we always have to guard against mission creep, so let me repeat what I've said in the past -- American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq again. 

Sep 7: The notion that the U.S. should be putting boots on the ground is a profound mistake. 

Sep 10: These American forces will not have a combat mission. We will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq. 

Sep 12: My fellow Americans, tonight I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL. 

Sep 12: But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years. And it is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges to international order. 

Sep 18: The the American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission. 

But these guys are going to be out in Anbar province, where ISIS has made things very hairy.  What do you call it when you have armed troops in an area where the enemy is actively engaging in hostile actions?

And how are non-jihadist Sunnis in the area supposed to view this, given the secret letter to Khameini asking for Iran's coordination in the anti-ISIS effort?  Are they going to be inclined to support our presence?

Because the MEC finds foreign policy a giant bore, he has not thought this through - at least beyond thinking so-called rapprochement with Iran is going to seal his place in history as a great peacemaker.

Another one of those Freedom-Hater sound bites that's going to have legs

Check out this exchange between White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and a reporter:

“Is there one thing you can say to American voters they’re going to see that’s different, given the message they sent on Tuesday?” MSNBC’s Chris Jansing asked McDonough.

“They’re going to see Washington working better if this president has his way,” McDonough said. “And that’s what he’s going to do.”

“How?” Jansing asked.

“Well, we’re going to do it any number of ways,” McDonough said.

You could call it delusional, but bear in mind that this regime's disregard for the Constitution is so complete that there is no slick move or totalitarian maneuver we should put past it.

Freedom-Hater-care heads back to SCOTUS

This time, it's over the full DC Circuit Court's intention to have a hearing on Halbig v. Burwell, the case that contends that, because the FHer-care law is written such that only people signed up through state exchanges are eligible for subsidies, folks signed up on the federal exchange (which is most FHer-care enrollees) are liable for their full premiums.  A three-judge panel within the DC court had weighed in previously:

 Follow the links here if it’s new to you. It was a Category Five ObamaCare tornado in July when a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit agreed with conservatives and ruled that the text of the O-Care statute does not allow subsidies for people who bought their policies on the federal exchange, i.e. Healthcare.gov. Only if you bought your policy through an exchange created by a state are you eligible for help from Uncle Sam. That ruling is a nuclear bomb for the White House, obviously, because it would mean that the vast majority of new enrollees in O-Care would suddenly be on the hook for the full cost of their premiums. That would prove too expensive for many of those people, which would mean lots of dropped coverage and total chaos in the insurance industry. The D.C. Circuit ruling was huge, especially since the Fourth Circuit ruled the opposite way in a similar case decided the very same day as Halbig. That meant a circuit split. And the Supremes almost always take appeals where there’s a circuit split in order to resolve the dispute and set one uniform interpretation for all federal courts.

But then, six weeks later, the Halbig ruling went out the window. The full D.C. Circuit decided to rehear the case en banc . . . 

The possibility of the SCOTUS ruling the same way the three-judge panel did does present a bit of peril for state-level Pubs:

The silver lining here for ObamaCare supporters, of course, is that this could end up being a giant sh*t sandwich for the new GOP Congress and, more importantly, America’s new Republican governors and state legislatures. If Roberts sides with conservatives and finds that the law, as written, says federal consumers aren’t eligible for subsidies then the pressure on Congress to re-write that part of that law so that they are eligible will be intense. Boehner and McConnell will dry-heave over the electoral implications of it in 2016, but they’ll resist because they know their base would revolt if they rescued O-Care by rewriting that law. So the pressure will shift to the states to quickly build their own exchanges, whose consumers are eligible for subsidies. If you’re a Republican legislator or governor facing voters angry that they lost their subsidies because of the Supreme Court, what do you do then?

Now, if the whole damn thing could be repealed by, say, mid-February, all this would be moot.

 

This is going on even as the Most Equal Comrade, Secretary Global-test and Wendy Sherman rush to ink a nuke deal with Iran and work with it on addressing ISIS

This adds a new layer of contemptibility to the MEC junta's headlong rush to culminate its patty-cake with the mullahs:

Iran continues to provide “calibrated lethal aide to the Taliban” in Afghanistan to help the group conduct attacks on U.S. and Western security forces operating in the country, according to a new report published by the Pentagon.

Iran’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been supplying various arms to the Taliban as part of Tehran’s mission of eradicating Western forces and preventing the United States from safely establishing permanent bases in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon’s 2014 “Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” report, which was published in October.

The arms are being provided by Iran as a supplement to a $1 billion aid program aimed at keeping the Afghan government firmly in Tehran’s corner, according to the report.

Details of Iran’s clandestine support for the Taliban come as the Obama administration quietly continues its efforts to enlist Iran in the fight against the Islamic State (IS).

Our overlords see themselves as visionaries ushering in an age of global unicorns and rainbows.  The mullahs properly assess them to be utter fools.

SCOTUS will have to take it up now

Not every appeals court in the land is interested in a distorted interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal-protection clause:

A month ago, the Supreme Court ducked an opportunity to take on the issue of whether states could decide how to define marriage, apparently on the basis of a lack of a split in the appeals circuits. The Sixth Circuit stole that excuse from the high court yesterday, upholding traditional-marriage definitions in four states:

A federal appeals court panel upheld bans on same-sex marriage in four states Thursday, a break with other federal courts that makes it almost certain the Supreme Court must take up the issue of whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati ruled 2 to 1 that although same-sex marriage across the nation is practically inevitable, in the words of U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, it should be settled through the democratic process and not the judicial one.

The decision overturned lower-court rulings in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky and makes the 6th Circuit the first appeals court to uphold state bans since the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.

The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes notes a remark from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after the demurral last month that the court didn’t see the need to take up cases that didn’t spark disagreement in lower circuits. Now Ginsburg and her colleagues have the disagreement, and will have to take up the case. The ruling itself challenges whether the judiciary itself should even be involved in the question, and the Supreme Court will have to be the final arbiter of that question as well.

Get ready for another round of howling and pomposity.

Ed Whelan at NRO provides a summary of the Sixth Circuit Court's reasoning:

1. The Supreme Court’s summary ruling in Baker v. Nelson (1972) binds federal courts of appeals to hold that state laws that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman are constitutional. The Court’s ruling last year in Windsor v. United States doesn’t overrule Baker, nor does it clash with it. Neither of the two preconditions for ignoring Supreme Court precedent applies. Nor do the Court’s recent denials of certiorari in other marriage cases have any bearing. (Slip op. at 13-17.)2. Under the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, state marriage laws are clearly constitutional. (17-18.)3. State marriage laws easily survive rational-basis review. It is rational to define marriage as a male-female union because (a) governmental recognition of marriage operates to regulate the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse (19-21), and (b) it’s reasonable for the people of a state to assess how the benefits and burdens of redefining marriage are playing out in other states before they decide whether to take that step (21-22). “Any other approach would create line-drawing problems of its own.” (See 22-23.)4. State marriage laws do not reflect animus. (24-28.)5. There is no “fundamental right” to SSM. (28-31.)

6. Under Sixth Circuit precedent, rational-basis review applies to sexual-orientation classifications. Windsor says nothing to the contrary. (31-35.) 

7. Under an “evolving meaning” approach to the Constitution, the relevant measure is society’s values, not judges’ values. “Freed of federal-court intervention, thirty-one States would continue to define marriage the old-fashioned way.” (35-38.) 

Seems elegantly logical to moi.  We can be pretty sure how Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomeyer see that matter, and  Thomas, Scalia and Roberts as well (although Roberts has a weird deviation or two in his track record).  Once again, all eyes will be on Kennedy.

Out-and-out invasion

Here's what happens in a world without a unified and resolute West, led by the United States of America:

The Russians moved deployed tanks, howitzer artillary systems and trucks into Eastern Ukraine.
Yahoo reported:

A column of 32 tanks, 16 howitzer artillery systems and trucks carrying ammunition and fighters has crossed into eastern Ukraine from Russia, the Kiev military said on Friday.

“The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the front lines,” spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a televised briefing referring to Thursday’s cross-border incursion.

The report of a new Russian movement of armor across the border follows a charge on Thursday by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine that Kiev government forces had launched a new offensive – which Kiev immediately denied.

Filling the vacuum.

Early opportunity to show some spine: filling the Attorney General spot

A couple of names being tossed about at this point. Fox News says that Loretta Lynch would be a low-profie pick:

Lynch, who grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, began her career as a federal prosecutor in 1990. While a chief assistant U.S. attorney, she was on the trial team in one of the most sensational police brutality cases in city history, the broomstick torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in a precinct bathroom.

She originally served as U.S. attorney in Brooklyn from 1999 to 2001 before entering private practice. She returned to the position in 2010 and was appointed to the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, a position that required her to spend more time in Washington and drew her closer to Holder.

During her second tenure at one of the country's busiest federal districts, Lynch's office has won convictions in a thwarted, al-Qaida sanctioned plot to attack New York City subways, and charged the head of a Mexican drug cartel with 12 murders. More recently, her office brought tax evasion charges against Republican Congressman Michael Grimm that's scheduled to go to trial next year.

Still, Lynch often has been overshadowed by the media-savvy Bharara, whose office has prosecuted numerous headline-grabbing cases against terrorists, corrupt politicians and Wall Street swindlers. But behind the scenes, she has won respect for dedicating much of her career to law enforcement without seeking publicity.

"I don't think that's why she's in government and that's a real admirable quality," said Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Lynch and now teaches law at New York University.

And then there's current Labor Secretary Tom Perez, whose career trajectory is a bit more controversial:

California Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez gushed to Politico: "Being around him makes me a little bit giddy. ...

He cares about the stuff that I care about, and he's so articulate about it." The "stuff" Perez cares about is the bread and butter of radical leftwing identity politics. It's "social justice"-crusading on steroids.

Just this week, a federal judge rebuked Perez's ambitious campaign to pervert housing discrimination laws and exploit racially disparate outcomes in order to prove manufactured bias.

"Disparate-impact" studies serve as high-octane fuel for a greedy fleet of civil-rights lawsuits. Once the numbers are cooked and disparate impact is shown, the heavy legal burden of disproving racial discrimination falls on the defendant. Lenders and insurers have forked over tens of millions of dollars in these social engineering shakedowns.

Neither Congress nor the federal Fair Housing Act embraces disparate impact theory or practice. But Perez plowed ahead anyway. Judge Richard Leon on Monday blasted Perez's legal overreach as "hutzpah (bordering on desperation)" and described Perez's backroom maneuvering to prevent the Supreme Court from weighing in on the scheme as "troubling."

A congressional investigation last year found that Perez -- then serving as an assistant attorney general in the Obama Justice Department -- cut a deal with the city of St. Paul, Minn., to withdraw a SCOTUS appeal that could have limited Perez's use of disparate impact tools. In exchange, the DOJ declined to intervene in two unrelated legal complaints against the city.

The quid pro quo wasn't just full of hutzpah. It reeked of the very kind of justice-sabotaging corruption that Holder trademarked at DOJ.

Leon isn't the only one who smells a rat. Last year, the DOJ Inspector General's office spotlighted racialist foul play at Perez's bureau, where "polarization and mistrust" reigned. Perez was explicitly hostile to race-neutral law enforcement and as Virginia GOP Rep. Frank Wolf summed up: The "report makes clear that the division has become a rat's nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions, and even outright threats against career attorneys and systemic mismanagement."

Perez has used his power to conduct vengeful witch-hunts against police departments and advocates of strict immigration enforcement. The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and former special counsel for the late illegal alien amnesty champion Sen. Ted Kennedy made a career putting illegal aliens above law-abiding citizens. He is a selective enforcer of the nation's laws.  A leader of the George Soros-funded Casa de Maryland illegal alien advocacy group, Perez lobbied for in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students, driver's licenses and tax-subsidized day labor centers.

As I've reported previously, Casa de Maryland pushed for Obama's 800,000 illegal alien deportation waivers through administrative fiat. The group opposes enforcement of deportation orders, protested post-9/11 coordination of local, state and national criminal databases, and produced a "know your rights" propaganda pamphlet for illegal aliens that depicted federal immigration agents as armed bullies making babies cry.

Pretty much Holder Redux, maybe even Holder on steroids.

Will other possibilities emerge?

Within the universe of these two, it's obvious Pubs would have to give an instant thumbs-down to Perez and learn a lot more about Lynch.

No to any Iran nuke deal that doesn't pass muster with Congress

Glad to see John Boehner say this about the secret is-there-room-for-cooperation-in-the-fight-against-ISIS-and-by-the-way-can-we-get-a-nuke-deal-inked-by-the-24th? letter that the Most Equal Comrade sent to the Ayatollah Khameini:

“I don’t trust the Iranians, I don’t think we need to bring them into this,” Mr. Boehner said.

Foreign policy is another area, along with immigration, health care and the environment, where the new bunch on the Hill is going to be much less inclined to let the MEC get away with playing fast and loose.

Now, this sounds like Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome to me

Another Pub who has shown way too many symptoms of RGS over the last couple of years does no favors to the mandate handed to his party Tuesday night:

According to the Associated Press, "Ryan said that as long as Obama doesn't try an executive order in November or December and works with Congress," immigration legislation can be enacted.

“I believe there are enough constructive voices in both parties that can lead to constructive immigration reform," he told the outlet. 

Just shut your stinking mouth about "constructive voices in both parties."  The Freedom-Haters are the enemy.  The only way to ever relate to them is defeat them.  The only "immigration reform" we need is strict enforcement of current laws.

Get a clue.

He'd better walk this back or clarify it, or let somebody else be Majority Leader

I don't know that I go as far as Mark Levin or Red State's Leon Wolf and call it outright surrender, but I am not pleased with a certain utterance of Mitch McConnell's at his first presser as Majority Leader-elect.   Maybe it's because of his ACU rating or other pundits' willingness to defend him, or maybe a hope that it's still too early to draw irreversible conclusions that I don't go that far, but he hasn't helped dispel the image he has among a great many as suffering from Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome.

Did he not think out these implications of his proclamation?

McConnell’s pre-emptive capitulation on this issue is baffling for a number of reasons. First, contrary to the predictions of the naysayers in the Republican caucus, the GOP paid no apparent political price at all for shutting down the government in 2013, even though then they were in much weaker bargaining position.

Second, it makes zero tactical sense, especially during a confrontation with a defiant and delusional enemy, to declare that you are pre-emptively removing a weapon from your arsenal. I think that I, like a lot of people, think that shutdown/default should probably not be used over the next two years. I think that there are some potentially disastrous consequences that could occur if either is utilized. It is much the same as being a country that is armed with nuclear weapons: probably, you are never ever going to use one, almost no matter what. But you dare not announce this to your enemy beforehand because 99% of the reason for having them in the first place is keeping the thought in the back of his mind that if he pushes you far enough, or launches a nuke at you first, you will return fire.

What will Mitch McConnell do if Obama declares that he will veto literally any budget that is not his own? What if both chambers pass 5 or 6 consecutive budgets only to have them vetoed by Obama? What if he vetoes literally any debt limit extension that is not 100% clean? What will McConnell do? Will he turn over the mandate the American people gave the GOP to Obama and let him dictate policy because he is too cowardly to risk another shutdown or a default? Or will he have to come back to the American people in March and explain why he lied just 4 months ago about never doing this?

President Obama clearly signaled to the GOP yesterday that he intends to spend the last two years of his presidency trolling them. He will intentionally overstep his authority at every turn and dare them to either impeach him or force a shutdown. And if Republicans have any intention of not allowing Obama to run the Senate for the next two years, they have to at least keep the possibility of shutdown or default on the table.

The American people elected Republicans so they would actually do something to stop the Obama agenda, not just so a different class of people could be the beneficiaries of crony capitalism. And sooner or later it is probably going to be incumbent on Mitch McConnell to take a drastic measure or two to fulfill that mandate. In light of this, it is madness for him to take two of those options off the table before the fight has even begun.

Maybe he can clear this all up.  It's imperative that he lets us know that he understands that we will not tolerate even a hint of squishiness.