My-Wayan Apocalypse

Cry it out, bitch.

In a stinging setback for Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a lack of support from inside his own party for his “fiscal cliff” fall-back plan forced him late Thursday to cancel a much-trumpeted vote on the measure.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Boehner said in a written statement released after an emergency meeting of House Republicans.

The measure, dubbed “Plan B,” would have let Bush-era tax cuts expire on income above $1 million annually, while extending them for everyone else. It appeared that Boehner faced a rebellion from conservatives opposed to any tax hike, while House Democrats starved the bill of their support, making passage impossible.

Dude's probably up to four packs a day. Fiscal Slip-n-Slide, here we come!

Boehner’s dramatic defeat cast fresh doubt on efforts to avert the “fiscal cliff” and spare Americans across-the-board income tax hikes come Jan. 1. Those increases, coupled with deep automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect the same day, could plunge the fragile economy into a new recession. Talks between the speaker and President Barack Obama were at a stalemate, according to aides on both sides.

After the cancellation of the vote, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced on Twitter the House "has concluded legislative business for the week. The House will return after the Christmas holiday when needed."

Merry Christmas Happy Holidays, Republicans. Hope Santa drops a lump of coal in your stocking.

Update: Upon further review, this might be the rending asunder of the GOTP we've all been waiting for...

Plan B fiasco leaves GOP lost, divided, and weak

As a simple matter of arithmetic, if House Republicans aren't prepared to follow their own leadership and support a list of right-wing goodies, Boehner and the rest of the GOP leadership must realize that the road to 218 votes runs through the Democratic caucus -- if the Speaker can't pass a bill with his own side's support, he's going to need Nancy Pelosi's help.

Since Boehner has already deliberately blown up his talks with the White House, it will be very tough for the Speaker to give Obama a sheepish call, saying, "Maybe we can give this another shot?" The more likely scenario is that the president will have to quickly begin a very different set of discussions: finding a bill that can generate bipartisan support in the Senate, satisfies Pelosi and House Dems, and can generate the support of a couple dozen House Republicans.

All of this will have to happen, of course, over the course of about 10 days -- two of which are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Last night, House GOP leaders also announced they're leaving town, possibly to return next week. After last night, there was no real point in them sticking around, anyway.

Scarborough chides fellow GOPers: ‘Extreme’ stances led to worst ‘disarray’ since Nixon resignation

“I want my Republican brothers and sisters who have taken exception to some of the things I’ve said over the past year about us going in the wrong direction as a party — offending swing voters, offending the middle class — I want you to look at those numbers and just breathe them in,” Scarborough said. The party is in a “sorry state,” he added.

He then went on to hit Republican leaders for their “complete, utter silence” on key issues following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He asked: Is this the party of assault weapons or lower taxes? Contraception wars or balanced budgets?

“This party has painted itself into an extreme corner by going down all these various rabbit trails that have nothing to do with our core of who we are as a party of small government,” Scarborough argued. “I can’t think of any time the Republican Party, my Republican Party, has been in such disarray — since 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned.”

Can't decide what to be most mad about this week.

I'm not only referring to Obama's capitulation on Social Security, either. Socratic Gadfly has that topic well-managed. No, this...

We've covered how President Obama needs the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to justify detention powers he has used for the past four years, but there's another reason he needs it: drones.

At the heart of both issues is the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which gives the president authority "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those ... [who] aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or harbored such organizations or persons."

Just go read it. But this development is equally pathetic.

Congress stripped a provision Tuesday from a defense bill that aimed to shield Americans from the possibility of being imprisoned indefinitely without trial by the military. The provision was replaced with a passage that appears to give citizens little protection from indefinite detention.

The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 was added by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), but there was no similar language in the version of the bill that passed the House, and it was dumped from the final bill released Tuesday after a conference committee from both chambers worked out a unified measure.

Maybe you got that email this morning from Feinstein asking for your help on the assault weapons ban? If you needed a coup de grace, here it is:

According to the new HuffPost/YouGov survey, only 25 percent of Americans said that torture of suspected terrorists who may know details about future attacks is never justified. Nineteen percent said it is always justified, 28 percent said it is sometimes justified, and 16 percent said it is rarely justified. The 41 percent of respondents who said torture is rarely or never justified are outnumbered by the 47 percent who said it is always or sometimes justified.

That "sometimes justified" number will go up after the public gets a few views of Zero Dark Thirty under its belt. Note how Feinstein gets mentioned again there.

So, to recap, my options for outrage are: a) Obama -- and Pelosi -- raising the eligibility age reducing benefits for Social Security; b) Obama signing off on NDAA so that he has legal justification for using drones on Americans; and c) Obama signing NDAA in order to have legal justification to indefinitely detain American citizens.

It would be simple to lament living in a state that already arms teachers at elementary schools, has a populace that chooses to fault Hollywood, video games, and/or the lack of prayer in public schools for shooting massacres -- instead of the obvious proliferation of assault weapons combined with the lowest expenditures in mental health treatment --, finds an easy rationalization for torture at the movies (Hollywood redeemed!), and has a state police force with no qualms about performing body cavity searches of women on the side of the road. But that would be a little too comfortable.

Maybe I'll just wait until the NRA holds its press conference tomorrow and see what fresh bullshit falls out of Wayne LaPierre's mouth. That might very well be the Conservative Douchbaggery of the Week.

Yeah, that's the ticket. I'll just watch Republicans play "Top THIS" for outrageous ignorance. You know that nobody is going to just let Louie Gohmert win for last Sunday.