Rep. Labrador says it’s “absolutely false” that GOP sought Obamacare repeal. ” We have never asked for a full repeal of Obamacare…”
— @mpoindc

Imagine someone ostensibly in a position of knowledge said something utterly incomprehensible. Say for example someone on the board of the American Medical Association quipped that decapitation not only isn’t fatal, it can actually be good for the patient. Nowadays we’d attribute that to some clown seeking page views and Youtube hits. But those kind of crackpots have been with us since the beginning of time. They found a loving home in the modern GOP, most notably in the lucrative fields of anti-science histrionics, which is now bleeding over into pseudo-economics. Thankfully, we may have a reprieve:

Slate — Welcome to Day 16 of the government shutdown. Washington awoke Wednesday morning with only hours to go before the Treasury Department says the government will run out of money to pay its bills. But thanks to a bipartisan deal in the Senate—coupled with John Boehner’s newfound willingness to bring such a proposal up for a vote in the House—Congress appears on pace to end the shutdown and lift the debt ceiling either late tonight or early tomorrow morning.

John Dickerson, Dave Weigel, Matt Yglesias, and the rest of Slate will continue to bring you in-depth analysis from the nation’s capital. But below you’ll find a running list of today’s incremental action, rumors, links, and theories floating around inside the Beltway and out of it.

I remember the hard feelings from the 2000 Florida recounts. There are few similarities there to Obamacare, but the depth of anger over the results is at least comparable. At the time I actually leaned toward the GOP. But even so, I don’t recall a single dem politician coming out and threatening to destroy the nation over that outcome. Much less actually trying to orchestrate it.

And time has proven those concerns accurate: Obamacare is unlikely to cause another Great Recession or an unfunded two trillion dollar war overseas with thousands of dead and maimed Americans in the balance. Bush and his conservative apologists did both. But we dealt with that through the democratic process. Our opponents appear unwilling to follow suit. I don’t say this lightly, their tactics are right up there with some of the worst genocidal sociopaths in history. They’re also appallingly stupid.