They feel there is no limit as to how you can wreck the system

My Sunday movie was Sunset Boulevard, the famous one from 1950 starring William Holden and Gloria Swanson. There have been lots of references and parodies of the has-been and aging film star Norma Desmond, the one ready for her close-up. Holden plays Joe Gillis, a screen writer (yeah, a movie about making movies) who seems to be turning out only trash and with creditors demanding payment. While being chased by those creditors a flat tire sends his car into Desmond’s estate. She convinces him to get her massive screenplay ready for the cameras and her wealth pays for a great deal. He agrees to the deal because he thinks he can get something out of it. Though she is manipulative she also falls in love with him. He tries to deal with her madness. Yes, it’s a classic, but I hadn’t seen it before. And it really is quite good. The shutdown watch continues. There’s about 3 days left in the federal fiscal year and without funding most parts of the government must shut down. The Republican Freedom Caucus in the House seems to be doing all it can to make sure the shutdown happens. And McCarthy is still inept. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote about one of the consequences of a shutdown. Because of the Maui fire, fires in Louisiana, flooding in Vermont, damage from hurricane Idalia and all those other weather disasters causing more than $1 billion in damage this year FEMA is quite low in money. FEMA requested extra funding, but that’s caught up in the budget battles. That’s got some Republicans worried. In the meantime they had better hope for no disasters during the shutdown. At the rate of disasters there likely will be one. Merlin196360 of the Kos community reported that House Democrats float helping McCarthy out of his jam by supporting a reasonable funding bill. But their price is more than what McCarthy can pay – end the sham impeachment of Biden. But ending the impeachment inquiry – even just working with Democrats – will prompt the Freedom Caucus to call a vote for McCarthy’s removal. And with that sham inquiry still active he can’t depend of Democrats to keep his seat. McCarter reported:

House Republican extremists holding the government hostage want you to believe that they just want to “rein in” government spending and “get our fiscal house in order.” One former legislative counsel for Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul even advises, “A good old government shutdown is exactly what we need right now,” arguing that it will “push the budget closer to balance.” Then there’s reality: Shutting down the government costs taxpayers billions of dollars in lost fees, revenue, administrative costs to both shut down and start government agencies back up, and back pay for furloughed federal employees. ... According to a 2019 investigation by a Senate subcommittee, “the last three government shutdowns cost taxpayers nearly $4 billion—at least $3.7 billion in back pay to furloughed federal workers, and at least $338 million in other costs associated with the shutdowns, including extra administrative work, lost revenue, and late fees on interest payments.”

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a New York Times article:

Defying the G.O.P.’s longstanding reputation as the party of law and order, they have pledged to handcuff the F.B.I. and throttle the Justice Department. Members of the party of Ronald Reagan refused to meet with a wartime ally, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, this week when he visited the Capitol and want to eliminate assistance to his country, a democratic nation under siege from an autocratic aggressor. And they are unbowed by guardrails that in past decades forced consensus even in the most extreme of conflicts; this is the same bloc that balked at raising the debt ceiling in the spring to avert a federal debt default. “There is a group of Republican members who seem to feel there is no limit at all as to how you can wreck the system,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “There are no boundaries, no forbidden zones. They go where relatively junior members have feared to tread in the past.”

McCarter reported the Senate is preparing to throw McCarthy a lifeline. Funding bills must originate in the House, so the Senate will repurpose a bill the House did manage to pass. Both Schumer and Moscow Mitch are negotiating a continuing resolution bill to last just a few weeks. It will include the additional money for FEMA (thanks to Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida hit by Idalia). It may also include funding for programs that are about to expire. It won’t include more funding for Ukraine because that’s too touchy right now. McCarthy is likely to get it by Friday. Then we’ll see if McCarthy can get it passed without a challenge to his job. I had written about the big case of California suing the big oil companies for knowing how harmful their products were to the environment, then lying about it. In an Earth Matters post for Kos Meteor Blades explains the case in more detail. He also includes a quote on how this case built on cases before it. Blades also talks about the United Auto Workers strike against Ford, GM, and Stellantis. One of the side issues is electric vehicles. The companies say they need to keep a lot of money on hand – meaning not give it to the workers – because the shift to EVs is expensive. And while their profits remain huge, they lose money on each electric car. New cars, especially EVs, tend to take a few years to start turning a profit. And non-union Tesla is out there. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was in a Republican committee hearing explaining why his department needed funding to deal with climate change. Buttigieg ended up facing off against Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a longtime climate change denier. Buttigieg got to the core of his message. “What I can tell you is that climate change is real, and we gotta do something about it.” LaMalfa retorted, “Yeah, this one’s called autumn, sir.” Buttigieg asked him to repeat it a couple times, then smiled.

Yeah, that's the seasons changing, which, respectively, is not the same thing as the climate changing. And as somebody who is hoping to retire in the 2050s and who has kids who will be old enough to ask me as they're getting to their thirties, whether we did enough to deal with climate change or whether we just did what was convenient, I take that really seriously.