WSJ:
Democrat Bill de Blasio leads Republican Joe Lhota among likely voters by 43 percentage points in the general-election race for New York City mayor, an enormous starting advantage for Democrats who are seeking to recapture City Hall for the first time in 20 years, a Wall Street Journal-NBC 4 New York-Marist poll released Tuesday showed.
Greg Sargent:
Simply amazing. As some of us on the left have been arguing for awhile now, the refusal of GOP leaders to level with the base, and admit that this fall’s confrontations don’t give Republicans leverage to block Obaamcare, has only made things worse by feeding the sense that a defund-Obamacare stand is possible, thus allowing defund mania to gain ground among conservatives. It’s good to have this confirmed by a reporter who’s well sourced among Republicans.
Jonathan Bernstein:
I’m pretty sure that John Boehner doesn’t want a government shutdown. I doubt if Barack Obama wants one. In fact, I suspect that only a minority of the GOP, and practically no Democrats, want to see a shutdown or believe that the threat of it will lead to meaningful policy gains.
That’s why I think there may be no shutdown. And yet . . . well, here are the five biggest reasons that we could get a shutdown debacle, or a damaging debt-limit breach, anyway.
Since I have no faith in GOP competence, analytic ability or intentions, I expect a shutdown.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Matthew Cooper:
After the shooting in Newtown that left 20 elementary school students dead, the National Rifle Association responded with a proposal for what it called National School Shield program. The idea, said the organization's leader, Wayne LaPierre, was that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." The shield program aimed to put an armed guard in every elementary school in the country to protect children from the next deranged killer.
The Navy Yard shooting exposes a fallacy in that argument. A military facility, the Navy Yard had plenty of good guys with weapons who were nonetheless were unable to stop Aaron Alexis, the alleged shooter, from killing a dozen innocent persons. In the coming weeks, we'll learn more about Navy Yard security and how Alexis was able to thwart it. (We'll also learn more about how he obtained his arms, but let's leave that aside for now.)
It is a right wing talking point to insist that except for Fort Bragg, all mass shootings happen in gun free zones. It's of course, demonstrably false, but that doesn't stop them.
Wonkblog:
More Census news! The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities did some additional number-crunching on population growth, and found that the income from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program--commonly known as food stamps--pushed 4 million people above the official poverty line in 2012.
The #disabled deserve more. Communities should throw em in the river. If they drown we know they need gov assistance.
http://t.co/...
— @ColbertReport
ACHJ:
Who will still be uninsured a decade from now?
We know millions of people are going to get covered under the Affordable Care Act. But who won’t be?
In 2023 there will still be 31 million uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Who are they?
Andrew Rosenthal:
Three days, two very different shootings. The first is an example of why the answer to gun violence isn’t more guns; the second illustrates the out-of-control nature of our firearm culture.