Update: A turning point?

I've felt a little better about prospects the Republicans would stop their de-fund/default-the-government policy since the Kochs came out and renounced the tactic. It seems on the surface the brothers don't have a war chest ready to see that Democrats get blamed. 

This means this entire thing was just one huge, one-shot fuck up by Conservatives and a more costly one than choosing Romney as the winner in 2012. Considering how long they had planned to do this, and how prominent the people behind it were (Ed Meese, for one), the incompetence of this stunt is stunning. The GOP is truly the party of the stupid, where Fundamentalists, Creationists and Global Warming deniers don't feel intellectually threatened.

Continued beneath the divide.

Another Vacation?

My productivity on my novel has fallen to the low hundreds per day.

When I take stock of other things, here's what I see: my apartment is a wreck, the little that's in my refrigerator is going rotten, my cupboard is bare, my desk is cluttered, essential paperwork for my medical is lying in there undone for weeks. Also, I've been accumulating books I'm not reading, movies I'm not watching (fiction is part of my job). I haven't exercised in a month. Usually, when I think of something that I need or want to do I put it on a list. Now I just put it out of my mind. 

My life is falling apart and it's going to keep going unless I do something different.  Some might be due to the pressure from the government shutdown.
 
It's embarrassing to say that I can be stressed out when I don't have a job, but that's why I'm disabled. I have a hard time directing my attention. And I get tired very easily. If I were working for anyone else, it's about this time I'd have a meltdown on the job.

Last time I had all these signs was in early July. At the time, the novel had gone the wrong way. I took two weeks off from writing and came back more productive with my life back in order. This time I'll stay away from it for a week. I'll get everything else in order and come back under less stress, so I hope.

Of course, I might be more stressed due to what's happening politically now.

Experts terrified of US default

The seriousness of the Republican refusal to raise the debt ceiling is beginning to sink in, and the experts are starting to get uncomfortable. Bloomberg this morning calmly calls it "an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen." No, no signs of fear there.

Lehman almost sent the world into a depression. Only the Federal Reserve prevented that from happening. As it is, we just had "the Great Recession." The US debt is twenty-three times the size of Lehman's. 

Update: Outside groups hold sway to keep government defunded.

I blogged on Monday that Conservative political advocacy groups, all fronts for billionaires and corporations, were behind the shutdown and coming default. They are going to be the driving force on keeping it going. A New York Times article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire confirms that:

Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.