Men never do evil so completely or cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. – Blaise Pascal¹

Congresscritter Devin Nunes (R-CA 22) called his follow House Republicans who shut down the government over Obamacare: “Lemmings with suicide vests”. Tonight on All In with Chris Hayes there was a segment called GOP acting like ‘lemmings with suicide vests’ with two Republicans who were insiders in government for many years that is quite informative.

Via Steve Bates, Paul Krugman wonders:

Coming back to the class warfare issue: my working theory is that wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing — correctly — that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people.

And nobody knows how it ends.

I see two possible solutions. In the first the townspeople trap the creature and its creator in the castle and burn it down. The second solution goes back a 150 years when it was rooted out with blood and gunpowder.

This isn’t going to end quickly, we are too close to the debt ceiling, so they are just going to stonewall until they gain that leverage to the shutdown. This is a crusade for the ‘lemmings’ against those they perceive are agents of evil, so there will be no compromise.

1. Via Kryten in comments.

Position: 28.1N 43.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 1 mph [ 2 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 45 miles [ 75 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb ↑.

Currently about 1290 miles [2075 km] East of Bermuda.

It is just spinning in place.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]