Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 918

How the Government Spent Eight of the Last 240 Hours Before Default

With the clock ticking down to the "chaos" that would ensue if the nation's debt limit isn't lifted, here is how House Republicans and President Obama spent Tuesday.

Where the day started

House Republicans adamantly oppose unilaterally extending the debt ceiling, proposing bilateral negotiations. Obama won't meet with Republicans until a debt ceiling extension is passed and the government is reopened with full sequestration-level funding.

How the day unfolded

9 a.m.
Speaker of the House John Boehner meets with the House Republican Caucus in private. While there, he floats a new idea for addressing the debt crisis: not a short-term extension, as had been reported, but a "bicameral commission" that would work with Democrats to come up with a big-picture budget plan. That proposal would be linked to a bill that would ensure federal workers who weren't excepted from the shutdown get paid this week.

Around 10 a.m.
At a press conference with House Republican leaders, Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy make the case for negotiations.

Boehner calls for negotiations, arguing that debt ceiling increases have often been accompanied with such debate. (See The Wall Street Journal's analysis of this claim.)

Cantor calls for a delay of Obamacare's individual mandate — and then for negotiations.

McCarthy begins, "You're going to hear a similar tone from everyone up here" — and then calls for negotiations. 

Around 11 a.m.
President Obama calls Boehner. According to the White House:

[T]he President telephoned Speaker John Boehner from the Oval Office and repeated what he told him when they met at the White House last week: the President is willing to negotiate with Republicans — after the threat of government shutdown and default have been removed — over policies that Republicans think would strengthen the country.

Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck offered a slightly different take. "The president called the speaker again today to reiterate that he won't negotiate on a government funding bill or debt limit increase."

2:40 p.m.
Obama holds an extensive press conference. Among other things, he again rejects the Republicans' call for negotiations prior to raising the debt ceiling.

What has changed, or what seems to be motivating the idea that we have to have a new process, is Speaker Boehner — or at least some faction of the Republicans in the House and maybe some in the Senate — are holding out for a negotiation in theory, but in fact basically Democrats give a lot of concessions to Republicans, the Republicans don't give anything, and then that's dubbed as compromise.

He again demanded that negotiations happen absent the threat of debt default: "That's not how negotiations work. That's not how it happens in business. That's not how it happens in private life."

4:30 p.m.
Boehner hosts his own press conference to rebut the president's:

The long and short of it is there is going to be a negotiation here. … This isn't about me — and frankly, it's not about Republicans. This is about saving the future for our kids and our grandkids, and the only way this is going to happen is to in fact have a conversation. So it's time to have that conversation. Not next week, not next month. The conversation ought to start today.

4:50 p.m.
The White House issues formal notice that it will veto the "bicameral commission"/employee pay bill. "[T]he House should pass a clean debt ceiling bill without drama or delay," the notice read, "so that the United States can continue to pay its bills and fulfill the Nation's obligations."

Where the day ended

House Republicans adamantly oppose unilaterally extending the debt ceiling, proposing bilateral negotiations. Obama won't meet with Republicans until a debt ceiling extension is passed and the government is reopened with full sequestration-level funding.

Stay tuned for another exciting day of politics tomorrow. Two hundred sixteen hours to go.

Photo: The president and Boehner at their respective late-afternoon press conferences. (AP)

       

The Pentagon Finally Has A Guantánamo Closer

The Pentagon is expected to name congressional lawyer Paul Lewis as its special envoy to close the Guantánamo detention facility, The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg reports. The position, which reports to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, has been empty since President Obama created it four months ago during the height of the Guantánamo hunger strike. There are currently 17 prisoners still on strike, down from 106 in July.

News of this hire came just hours after several civil, human and religious rights groups wrote to Obama, reminding him of his stated commitment to closing the prison by hiring a Defense Department envoy and transferring detainees cleared for release. After making those comments in April and May, this June Obama hired Washington lawyer Clifford Sloan to be the envoy for Secretary of State John Kerry and the State Department to close the prison. Obama was expected to announce Sloan's counterpart in the Defense Department soon after, but no one has been named to the position until now.

Defense Department spokesman Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale confirmed Lewis' hire, and said Hagel would announce officially later today. Lewis will start on November 1. "This announcement reflects the Department's commitment to implementing the President's directive to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay," Breasseale said in a statement. Lewis previously served as minority counsel at the House Armed Services Committee and, before that, as counsel to the chairman of the House Ethics Committee.

This news may not be enough to convince those who feel Obama has lost interest in closing the detention center. Despite this year's massive hunger strike, which grew from six strikers in March to 106 in July, the Pentagon has yet to fill the recently vacated head of Detainee Affairs position. And while there are 86 prisoners who have been cleared for release, some for years, they're still at the prison. Since taking office in June, Sloan, the State Department's envoy, has only managed to transfer two prisoners. But while Obama has failed to close the prison, it's not for lack of trying. In June the Republican-led House of Representatives voted down a bill to close the detention center by December 2014. So Guantánamo is still open, and will be for the foreseeable future, but the government's still closed.

       

Nobody Understands the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 'Suggested' Fees

Entrance to the beloved The Metropolitan Museum of Art costs a "suggested" price of $25 for adults. But nobody's quite sure what that suggestion means, or whether it's even legal.

The Met asks its adult visitors to pay the recommended fee for entry, but the $25 price is just that — a recommendation. However, international travelers often fail to understand the difference, and can feel duped once they realize that the asking price was not required. Those internationals could soon be getting their day in court, as a lawsuit in the State Supreme Court accuses the Met of fraud for burying the fee's "suggested" status to a mere unbolded footnote on signs.

Another lawsuit, too, accuses the Met of reneging on its lease from the late 19th century with New York City, which agreed that the museum would be free most days of the week. Technically, there is a minimum fee, but it needn't be restrictive, as art lovers can in fact pay as little as a penny for entrance. But there's certainly a "murkiness" around the pricing, The New York Times explains, as visitors have to balance their own budget with feelings of guilt or being seen as cheap. The plaintiffs behind this case commissioned their own study that unsurprisingly supported its argument, and found that 85% of nonmembers believed they had to pay some fee to see the Van Goghs and Picassos.

“I know lifetime New Yorkers who don’t quite know what it all means,” Andrew Celli, Jr., another of the lawyers suing the Met, told The Times. “And it’s much harder if you’re not a New Yorker.”

[image error]The Met hopes to dismiss the case as "frivolous," but the consequences could be anything but. The museum makes $40 million of its $250 million budget from admissions, a significant chunk of change.

The Met's confusing price structure came under fire most recently with a "deal" on Groupon selling tickets for the low, low price of $18 per person. The tickets' "recommended" status came below the headline price in an asterisked note. Meanwhile, that same group of people could have all spent $18 on their own at the museum as part of the recommended fee. The only difference, as far as we can tell, is that buying the Groupon deal makes people feel like the Met approves of that price and absolves them of feeling any guilt about shorting the museum. Oh, and they'll be able to skip the admissions lines.

The recommended cost is even trickier to understand online. Ticket buyers on the Met's website don't have the luxury of choosing to spend however much they want, and can either choose to pay $12 as a student, $17 as a senior, or the full $25 for adults. In smaller print at the bottom of the screen, the Met gives a full explanation: "If you would like to pay less than full recommended admission, please go directly to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to pay as you wish."

It would be easy to skim over that detail, though. But does a readable footnote count as fraud? And what about the bolded headline blaring "Recommended" on other parts of the site — shouldn't buyers notice that?

       

Lady Gaga Is the Latest Episode in Jerry Saltz's Bad Romance with Jeff Koons

[image error]New York magazine's art critic Jerry Saltz enjoys thinking up vicious insults for Jeff Koons, even when he ultimately finds reason to praise the pop artist—but Koons' latest work, a sculpture of Lady Gaga for her new album cover, simply fills Saltz with vitriol. Here's a brief history of the complicated relationship between Saltz's words and Koon's work.

The Name-Calling

Saltz has taken to coming up with nasty epithets for Koons. For instance: 

"Idiot savant." — July 2013 "a happy hotshot in a suit, serving as crystal meth to big-game-­buying megacollectors and auction ­houses" — May 2013 "a self-styled weird Mitt Romney–like family man, a hollowed-out Howdy Doody" — May 2013 "the art- world's own private Teletubby" — October 2013 The Praise

Saltz doesn't always go negative on Koons, though his name-calling seems to have gotten creative in recent months, he has also had good words for Koons work. 

"Whether you like his work or not, Koons allows you to toggle between abstraction and reality like few other contemporary artists." — July 2008 "his work retains the essential ingredient that, to my mind, is necessary to all great art: strangeness" — December 2009 "The paradoxes and inversions I saw at Zwirner, coupled with Koons’s ability to make art that can seemingly be dismissed as an easy one-liner but then fool the mind, suggests that he still has real phenomenological magic up his sculptural sleeve." — May 2013 The Gaga

In addition to doling out that "Teletubby" insult mentioned above, Saltz found Gaga as a reason to excoriate Koons: 

"The image looks like a crappy version of a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture or a cheesecake blow-up doll from an old 42nd Street porno shop, or a misogynist Barbara Kruger poster." "Whatever all this neo-Cicciolina bs is all about, graphically it looks like the rinky-dink work of some bottoming-out artist. The thing might have been better if Koons had cast the art world's Lady Gaga — that'd be Larry Gagosian — and placed a ball between his legs. Either way, as Mr. T said, 'I pity the fool.'"
       

Can Boehner Hold the GOP Together Even for a Small Debt Ceiling Deal?

After weeks of tumult over fiscal issues, we may actually be close to a minor deal on the debt ceiling, perhaps offering enough to keep the country from defaulting on its obligations. Whether or not any semblance of a united Republican caucus could survive even that vote remains to be seen.

The National Journal reported Tuesday morning that House Republican leadership could propose a short-term extension of the debt limit in order to push out the October 17 deadline set by the Treasury Department. The National Review's Robert Costa, based on reports from a caucus meeting, suggested a different pitch: a bill that would establish a group to negotiate on the debt ceiling, tied to a measure to pay the "essential" federal employees currently working. And there are reports that the Senate is considering a much more extensive measure, but may have trouble overcoming a Republican filibuster. 

At this point, any progress (particularly on the debt ceiling) is good news. The Republican position isn't far from its existing one, to be sure, but it's at least a proposal. But even that could put at risk House Speaker John Boehner's fragile Republican alliance. It's clear that his strategy at this point, as it has been for weeks, is simply to hold his the caucus together, the pilot of a badly damaged plane praying to make it back to base safely.

Boehner's problem, in part, is that both of his wings are trying their best to fall off. Costa, who continues to document the fractures among House Republicans, reports that the right wing is skeptical of any solution to the shutdown and debt ceiling that doesn't include a rollback of the Affordable Care Act — the anti-Obamacare push that started this whole thing in the first place. "If it doesn’t have a full delay or defund of Obamacare," New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett told Costa, "I know I and many others will not be able to support whatever the leadership proposes." Garrett's colleague Ted Yoho of Florida, now famous for his deeply incorrect assessment of the debt ceiling, offers his own rationale: "Stay the course, don’t give in on it, that’s what the people in my district are saying. …We did a town hall the other day, and 74 percent of people said, 'don’t raise the debt ceiling.'"

That's the first wing Boehner's dealing with. (Or, more accurately, not really dealing with.) Costa also spoke with California Rep. Devin Nunes, who refers to his conservative colleagues as "lemmings": "They don’t want to follow the leadership, so they just kind of follow each other and go off the cliff." Nunes explains how this impedes the party's ability to resolve the current dispute.

"We’ve essentially been at 200 to 205 votes for the whole year since you have this secret cadre of members that has been continually meeting, not to plot about how to get rid of Obamacare, not to plot about how to save this country from the leftists, but they’ve been plotting on how they themselves can get power. But they simply don’t have the votes."

Nunes's frustration might as well be with the constituents of his conservative colleagues, including the media that bolsters their arguments and the activists that flood members of Congress with emails and tweets. There's a reason Boehner won't hold a vote to fund the government that would almost certainly pass with votes from nearly every Democrat and two dozen Republicans: Those Republicans would be battered. One of the most obvious signs of where the nexus of power within the Republican caucus came on Monday. Nunes, once a supporter of passing a funding bill without any amendments, publicly and embarrassingly backtracked on that position. Nunes does want to follow the leadership — his switch on that vote was obviously inspired by some conversation with some party honcho — but it's not clear that plan will help him avoid going off the cliff.

To this point, Boehner's opposition has been far better at maintaining both the appearance and practice of unity. The biggest split that's emerged has been over an increase to the debt ceiling. On Monday, Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling expressed support for a short-term increase to the limit — which, again, could prompt an economic apocalypse if it doesn't happen. The response from Democrats was strongly negative, in part because it was seen as a step toward compromise that President Obama has been adamant about rejecting in any form. ("What does short-term buy us? That buys us Thanksgiving in Washington," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told Politico. But the size of a debt ceiling increase, which dictates the length it lasts, was probably always something that was up for consideration, however.)

That response is a sign that Democrats are ready for a vigorous fight. The administration is clearly anxious to resolve the two outstanding issues, but Senate Democrats — specifically, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — appears to have a firm hold on the party's reins. Reid initially kiboshed a meeting between the White House and congressional leaders and has, according to Politico, ensured that Vice President Joe Biden is excluded from any compromise discussions, a role he's played in the past. Those deals "rubbed Democrats raw. He gave up too much, they said. And for that, they have frozen him out — at least for now." Reid's level of confidence that Obama will stand strong in this fight isn't hard to discern.

Which brings us back to a possible debt ceiling deal. In addition to the threat of a Republican filibuster, Democrats face opposition from Senators Joe Manchin and Mark Pryor, who represent heavily Republican states. A short-term solution may be easier for Manchin and Pryor as well, particularly if responding to something from the House.

Assuming the House can pass anything without a full revolt from conservatives. Several have publicly rejected the idea that not increasing the debt ceiling would be bad; Rep. Steve King suggested that the country "redefine 'default'," as though that would somehow make the predicted effects of the default softer. Slate's Dave Weigel notes that this line of thinking isn't uncommon among Tea Party members and activists. We've said bad things would happen in the past if action wasn't taken, the argument goes, and they were never that bad.

This may be the time that things get that bad. For Republicans, they're already close: A majority of Americans blame the party for the shutdown. Consumer confidence is plummeting. The House GOP is being pilloried by even normally sympathetic editorial boards. The plane is going down. But Boehner holds out hope that the Democrats will crash first.

       

Five Best Tuesday Columns

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post on whether moderate Republicans really want to end the shutdown. Sargent explains that although Speaker John Boehner is claiming there aren't enough votes to pass a clean funding bill in the House, "Boehner won’t allow such a vote, precisely because it probably would reveal the votes are there to reopen the government." So it is up to moderate Republicans who would vote for a clean CR to speak up. Sargent concedes, "The smart Beltway money will snicker that the discharge petition has no chance of succeeding. ... But that doesn’t mean it can’t provide a focal point that will help clarify exactly where these moderate Republicans actually stand on funding the government, in the sense of whether they are prepared to actually buck their leadership in order to do it." Ezra Klein, Sargent's colleague at the Post who runs Wonkblog, tweets, "It's pretty clear that if Boehner wanted R's to support a clean CR, then with Dems, the votes are there." 

Sean Wilentz at The New York Times on why Obama should invoke the 14th amendment. Wilentz, a professor of American political history at Princeton, writes that despite Republicans' threat to default, "the Obama administration has repeatedly suppressed any talk of invoking the Constitution in this emergency." Despite the Obama administration's conclusion that the President can't invoke the 14th amendment to end the debt crisis, Wilentz argues, "In fact, that record clearly shows that Congress intended the amendment to prevent precisely the abuses that the current House Republicans blithely condone." But if Obama does this, "the House might lash out and try to impeach [him]. Recent history shows that an unreasonable party controlling the House can impeach presidents virtually as it pleases, even without claiming a constitutional fig leaf." Mike Sachs, the former SCOTUS writer for The Huffington Post, tweets, "Sean Wilentz pens most powerful plea yet for Obama to invoke 14th amendment option for debt ceiling."

Jonathan Chait at the Daily Intelligencer on Republican rationalizations of bargaining with the debt ceiling. Chait explains, "Conservatives have endlessly repeated John Boehner’s absurd talking point that debt-ceiling extortion happens all the time, or pretended that old-fashioned posturing over the debt ceiling like Obama did as a senator is the same thing as holding it hostage for policy concessions ..." Chait specifically calls out Ross Douthat's argument in The New York Times "that the debt ceiling 'hasn’t been' a threat to the Constitutional order, though of course the premise of Obama’s argument is that if it becomes a regular feature of negotiations, it will be one." Noam Scheiber tweets, "saying 'we've always negotiated around debt lim' like saying pointing gun at cabbie [is the] same as debating directions w/him — both happen on cab ride."

Charlie Cook at National Journal on the future for Republicans. Cook contends, "you would be quite believable if you were to suggest that the GOP has been making an active, masochistic effort to isolate itself from moderate, independent, and swing voters, further exacerbating all the problems with target constituencies that cost Mitt Romney the presidency and the GOP a national popular House vote victory." House Republicans would need to "self-destruct" to lose their majority, but that appears to be what they're doing. The GOP won't "crumble immediately," but "Republicans should worry about what is happening to their brand." Justin Baransky, a former press secretary for Harry Reid, recommends the piece. 

David Weigel at Slate says Cory Booker's slump is real, but overrated. "The political conventional wisdom machine has put Cory Booker through the Stations of the Gaffe," Weigel writes. The New Jersey Senate hopeful has fallen a little in the polls, yes, but he's still leading his Republican competitor by low double-digits. Weigel quips, "At this rate, Republican candidate Steve Lonegan will overtake Booker at some point in 2015. The election is next Wednesday." He concludes, Booker's campaign is "suffering very minor setbacks from 1) the candidate talking himself into two-day 'scandals,' like the ridiculous nonsexual DM with a Portland stripper, and 2) the press acting unexpectedly like the press. It's giving Booker his first-ever tough scrutiny." Eliana Johnson, a media reporter at National Review, points out The Washington Post's Chris Cilliza's suggestion that Booker call his office, and notes that Weigel and Cilliza are "both correct." 

       

Obamacare Politics Are Set to Go Local

The political debate over the Affordable Care Act was the same everywhere. House candidates in California were discussing the individual mandate and coverage for preexisting conditions just like Senate candidates in Kentucky were. Voters viewed the law through a national lens.

Until now.

Next year all Obamacare politics will be local. The law's implementation has already been dramatically different from state to state—reading local coverage, it's sometimes hard to believe the same law is taking effect everywhere. That means its politics will also be different from Senate race to Senate race, House race to House race.

The shift will cut both ways: In some instances it will help Democrats; in others, Republicans. But it presents a challenge most pressing for Republicans, who have touted the law as central to retaking the Senate and expanding their already deep majority in the House. If the law's politics are different in every campaign, can the GOP ensure it's a winning issue everywhere?

Nowhere is the emergence of local Obamacare politics more apparent than in an Arizona congressional race. Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, who represents a sprawling, conservative-leaning district, had heard plenty about the health care law. Nearly every TV ad Republicans ran against her in 2012 featured Obamacare. Already, the National Republican Congressional Committee is running radio ads tying Kirkpatrick—again—to the law.

But this time around, Kirkpatrick has a new rebuttal. Earlier this year, the Arizona GOP ruptured in civil war as one group, led by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, teamed with Democratic legislators to expand the state's Medicaid program using federal funds from Obamacare. Both state legislators running against Kirkpatrick voted and lobbied against the Medicaid expansion in the Arizona House.

That's given Kirkpatrick an opening. Her district is rural, poorer than average, and has a large Native American population—all elements that Kirkpatrick says will make Obamacare especially positive in her region.

"Anyone who campaigns on repealing the law or opposing Medicaid expansion is really out of step with this district," Kirkpatrick said in June after the state Legislature agreed to expand the state's Medicaid program. "They just don't know the district."

Arizona state Rep. Adam Kwasman, one of the Republicans who voted against expanding Medicaid and is considering a campaign against Kirkpatrick, isn't shying away from a fight. "If she wants to defend a program like that, whoever she runs against: Bring it on," he said.

In some states, even Republican-run governments are expressing some level of buy-in on Obamacare that complicates GOP efforts to brand the law a failure and waste of funds. Take Iowa, for instance, which features a competitive, open-seat Senate race next year. Despite Republican control of the governorship, the state has compromised with the federal government to help set up its own state-based exchange. "While we have varying opinions regarding the Affordable Care Act, we have not let our differences prevent us from meeting our responsibilities and moving Iowa forward," Republican Gov. Terry Branstad wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

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The friendliness of some GOP officials toward Obamacare further weakens the GOP's rhetoric. Rep. David Joyce, R-Ohio, is a top target of Democrats, and an avowed opponent of Obamacare. But his home-state governor, Republican John Kasich, endorsed expanding Medicaid there. And because Kasich is also seeking reelection in 2014, he'll likely tout his own decision to cooperate with the federal health care program even as Joyce takes aim at it.

"Will his criticism put him in the cross-hairs of Kasich, who will be also on the ballot?" said Brock McCleary, a Republican pollster. "That's a fascinating dynamic."

Republicans are convinced Obamacare will ultimately be a net positive for them in every race, even as they acknowledge its politics will vary from one to another.

Take New York, for example, where the iconic grocery chain Wegmans is an upstate staple. The company announced earlier this year it was cutting benefits for part-time workers. The news, similar examples of which can be found in most areas, is the perfect opportunity to show voters how the law is hurting their community, according to Andrea Bozek, spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "Anytime you can take a national issue that is increasingly unpopular and localize it for folks and show voters how it can directly impact about the pocketbook and health care, two things they care passionately about, it's a very effective tool to have," she said.

That emphasis on local stories is doubly important because of the effect it has on local news. In most Senate and House races, voters' attitudes will be shaped by local TV stations and newspapers more than their national counterparts.

Of late, local coverage has been determined by release of the average premium rates for the state-based health care exchanges. And just as with local official reaction and Mediciad expansion, states will offer significantly different premium rates on their health care exchanges (those rates also vary from city to city within a state).

In Utah, a family of four that doesn't qualify for government subsidies would pay $656 for the average insurance plan, according to data released by the Obama Administration; in Alaska, the same family would pay nearly double that, at $1,131. Utah features one of the race's most competitive House races, where Rep. Jim Matheson is poised for a rematch against the woman he narrowly defeated last year, Republican Mia Love. In Alaska, Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is one of the GOP's top targets.

The effect on coverage can be dramatic. At the end of September, readers of Arizona's largest newspaper awoke to a front-page, above-the-fold story—in print and online—touting low prices available on the state's new insurance exchanges: "Arizonans' costs low under new health law."

A few days later, when the exchanges actually opened, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and local TV had more unwelcome, if early, news for Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat who has staunchly defended the law. A state insurance spokesperson said that Web issues had, to her knowledge, prevented anyone from signing up for health insurance in the first two days of the exchange, a problem plaguing other states with federally run exchanges. A few days earlier, Obamacare's expensive premium rates in the state made the Democrat-Gazette's front page—right next to an adjacent story featuring an enormous photograph of a train wreck, Republicans' favorite metaphor for the law.

Republicans insist the health care law's national unpopularity makes it a political winner. They have a point: Obamacare's popularity is at an all-time low in many surveys. And a problem-filled rollout of the state-based exchanges, a glitch-fest that has left no state unscathed, has renewed GOP hopes that implementation will be the kind of the kind of disaster that will sink Democratic candidates everywhere.

Perhaps, but such confidence belies the significant changes to the law's politics already afoot. A national strategy worked in 2010 and 2012. In 2014, it likely won't be enough.

       

It's Nihilism vs. Incompetence in Washington

We've been living in the post-apocalyptic America of Obamacare for a week now, and America's main concern with government healthcare is the slow, glitchy site. Because Americans only like to wait sometimes. "Let's get one thing straight about this country. We will camp out all night to be the first people to buy a phone or see a movie about shirtless werewolves," Jon Stewart said. "But you've got ten minutes to get me this fucking healthcare."

Of course the President and his team had three years to perfect the technical end of the site, the portal to his signature piece of legislation. Otherwise, as Stewart put it, "that would be like if Lincoln didn't bother proofreading the Emancipation Proclamation and ended up freeing the Daves."

Well, the web side of Obamacare is a mess. Meanwhile the Republican party is willing to put the nation in default by not raising the debt ceiling. To represent those two side, Stewart pitted Obamacare's "Team Incompetence" (represented by Samantha Bee) against the Republicans' "Team Nihilism" (represented by Jason Jones). Team Incompetence's healthcare solution consisted of asking you to hold, because of an "unusually heavy volume of questions at this time." Essentially, this:

[image error]

Team Nihilism's plan was "Fuck it." And yes, that is a two-step plan, Jones explained: "Step one: fuck. Step two: it." Jones said.

 

 

       

The First Adult Has Been Arrested in the Steubenville Rape Case

Travis Mays and Ma'Lik Richmond were convicted this past March for raping a drunk and at times unconscious 16-year-old Jane Doe, but the story isn't over for the town of Steubenville, Ohio. Since the end of April, more evidence has been collected and a grand jury has been investigating whether or not there were more people involved in this case, including possibly covering for the two boys. 

On Monday, authorities announced the first arrest and indictment of an adult who is believed to be connected to the case. William Rhinamen, 53, the director of technology at Steubenville High School, faces charges of tampering with evidence, obstructing justice, obstructing official business, and perjury, CNN reports. Back in April, police searched the school and school board offices. It is was believed they were looking for evidence of some kind of "digital trail" related to the crime, being left on school computers. 

"This is the first indictment in an ongoing grand jury investigation. Our goal remains to uncover the truth, and our investigation continues," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said. Other than that, authorities are being mostly silent. If convicted, Rhinamen could face four years in prison. He is being held without bail.

       

There's a Major Salmonella Outbreak During a Government Shutdown

There's a salmonella outbreak affecting hundreds of people in multiple states right now, all while food safety inspection crews and disease-tracking scientists sit at home, furloughed because of the government shutdown. This is one shutdown nightmare scenario that people were worried about even before the government pulled the plug on itself.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service has announced that an estimated 278 people across 18 states, mostly in California, have been reported ill because of a salmonella outbreak linked to chicken from three plants owned by the California-based Forster Farms. "The outbreak is continuing," FSIS said yesterday, surely in a calm, soothing tone. Foster Farms was quick to note there's no recall in place and that their chicken should be fine if cooked properly. The outbreak was caused by traces of Salmonella Heidelberg, "the third most common strain of the Salmonella pathogen," according to Reuters, found in the chicken. If you do undercook your bird, you're looking at potentially spending the next seven days with diarrhea, abdominal cramps and a fever, with some chills, headaches and nausea thrown in for good measure. Always take your chicken well done, kids. 

FSIS is working with the Centers for Disease Control, along with state and local officials, to track the outbreak as best they can. But the whole effort would be so much easier if the CDC wasn't also crippled by the government shutdown: 

The