Beginning of a new week.

Government Shutdown, Days 5 and 6

– Treasury states government is “playing with fire” and Republicans play damage control on Sunday talk shows. In other words, nothing important happened today.

– On Saturday, both parties passed a measure in the House that “retroactively” paid furloughed employees when the government reopens. Now, about that reopening…

– Barack Obama: “Take that vote. Stop this farce. End this shutdown now.”

– John Boehner: The US is heading for default “if Obama doesn’t negotiate”

– Commerce Department secretary Penny Pritzker: The shutdown is already hurting businesses

– There is a growing danger that Tropical Storm Karen can be upgraded to a Hurricane and hit Louisiana at a time where the National Weather Service is down because of the shutdown. However, Karen has “dissipated”, which is good news.

– Pentagon states that most furloughed Defense employees will be going back to work.

– What would a US default look like it?

– The A-to-Z dictionary on all things shutdown.

– “While the country remains shut down because of irresponsible House Republican hostage-taking, progressive members of Congress and working families are looking ahead to fight against any proposed grand “bargain” that would include benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) spoke Thursday before working families and allies, specifically rejecting any such cuts.”

International Developments

– Navy SEALs have launched operations in both Somalia and Libya that were a bit successful, they captured one top al-Qaeda leader in Libya. It might backfire on the US since the consequences haven’t been in their favor. For instance, the Libyan PM demands why they were in his country, even though it’s a key stronghold for militants (remember that capitalist coup we did? Sure did the trick!)

– “Under tight deadlines, the experts, who arrived in Damascus Tuesday, will first have to destroy the Syrian regime’s ability to manufacture chemical weapons by Nov. 1”

– To paraphrase Naomi Klein, the fast food “brand extension” has its sights on Africa.

– A recent analysis over the German elections.

– “Two suicide bombers targeted Shi’ite Muslims in Iraq on Saturday, killing at least 32 people on the eve of the anniversary of one of their imams’ deaths, police and medics said on Saturday.” [cont’d.]

Photo by Slack12 Creative Commons license