Joshua Holland — The Right’s Closed Information Loop May Set Up the Next Shut Down (via Moyers & Company)

The Right’s Closed Information Loop May Set Up the Next Shut Down (via Moyers & Company)

It’s impossible to say whether we’ll face another crisis of governance in three months, when the stopgap budget resolution passed on Wednesday expires, but it’s clear that the 40 or 50 hardcore, tea party-backed members of Congress who precipitated…

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Matthew Schofield — Europeans agog at Americans’ inability to compromise, aghast at likely long-term impact

American soft power crumbling?

McClatchyDC
Europeans agog at Americans’ inability to compromise, aghast at likely long-term impact
Matthew Schofield — McClatchy Foreign Staff

Joshua Holland — The Radicalization of the GOP is the Most Important Political Story Today (via Moyers & Company)

The Radicalization of the GOP is the Most Important Political Story Today (via Moyers & Company)

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) once claimed that “80 to 85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists” and called those who worship in them “an enemy living amongst us.” He held McCarthyesque hearings into the supposed…

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AFP —IMF predicts U.S. economic growth to slow due to political havoc

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday cut its growth forecast for the US economy, and warned that Washington’s political paralysis could drag growth down further.

The Fund, in its new World Economic Outlook, said the US economy would grow 1.6 percent this year and accelerate to 2.6 percent in 2014, down respectively 0.1 and 0.2 percentage points from its July forecast.

It said the reduction was due to the impact of the sharp sequester spending cuts instituted by the government earlier this year aimed at trimming the federal deficit....

But it warned that continued political havoc over the federal budget and borrowing cap, which has forced the shutdown of parts of the US government, and more tightening of financing conditions could begin to hurt growth.

The Raw Story
IMF predicts U.S. economic growth to slow due to political havoc
Agence France-Presse

Ezra Klein — The 13 reasons Washington is failing

Interesting analysis. Some obvious, but a few things you may not have thought of.

The Washington Post
The 13 reasons Washington is failing
Ezra Klein

David Espo — Republicans Get Opposite In Stated Goals In Shutdown

Republicans insisted they wanted to shut down the nation's 3-year-old health care overhaul, not the government. They got the opposite, and now struggle to convince the public that responsibility for partial closure of the federal establishment lies with President Barack Obama and the Democrats.

There's ample evidence otherwise, beginning with Speaker John Boehner's refusal to permit the House to vote on Senate-passed legislation devoted solely to reopening the government.

The Huffington Post
Republicans Get Opposite In Stated Goals In Shutdown
David Espo | Chief Congressional Correspondent, The Associated Press

Caught between a rock and hard place. Without bring a clean bill to to the floor for an up or down vote, the GOP can get traction, and if they do permit a vote, the clean bill would pass and their bargaining chip on this issue would disappear. The longer they sit between the rock and hard place, the more the vice closes on them. Democrats order in more popcorn, as Harry Reid calls john Boehner a coward for not allowing an up or down vote on the clear bill that the Senate returned to the House and the GOP internal civil war intensifies with the extremists calling the shots.