12 Days To Avert Another Federal Shutdown - Can It Be Done Or Will GOOPs Punk Out At Last MInute?

                                                                      

 

The NBC  News last night led off noting that a last-minute deal is in the works to avert a federal shutdown before the deadline of January 19. 

Congressional leaders reached a $1.66 trillion agreement Sunday to finance the federal government over 2024, preserving funding for key domestic and social safety net programs despite GOP demands to cut the budget. However, lawmakers are up against a hard deadline to pass legislation to codify the deal and avert a partial government shutdown in 12 days.

The deal allows for $886.3 billion in defense spending and $772.7 billion in domestic discretionary spending. It also rescinds $6.1 billion in coronavirus emergency spending authority and accelerates cuts from $80 billion in new funding that the Internal Revenue Service was supposed to get under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, stripping $20 billion of that total this year. 

Another budget flashpoint involves the Social Security Administration (SSA) given the agency's fixed costs typically rise from $600m to $700m annually.  This is also why the Biden Administration has requested a $1.3 billion increase in the SSA's customer service budget for 2024.  This is to address one of the SSA's main choke points: the agency's 1-800 toll free phone line for which lack of workers means delays in processing disability applications.  However, the House GOP demands a cut of $250m in that spending.  Clearly they want potential beneficiaries to go and pound sand.

Funding for roughly 20 percent of the federal government — including for essential programs such as some veterans assistance and food and drug safety services — expires on Jan. 19, and money for the rest of the government runs out shortly after that, on Feb. 2. But lawmakers have not yet agreed on how to pass full-year spending bills or more temporary funding. Without action by the first deadline, a partial government shutdown would begin. Congress returns next week with little time to work out the details.

The White House’s top budget official told reporters Friday that the GOP tactic significantly increased the risk of a shutdown.  Let's get clear these reprobates already reneged on a deficit - debt deal which was to have extended  funding - and no further costly antics  - until January 2025. That deal was finalized by then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy but then upended when the Reep Chaos Caucus got rid of him.

Much of the blame for the current fiscal drama can be blamed on the Dems for being way too cavalier about how they handled things as their House terms came to conclusion after the 2022 mid terms. Democrats largely lost leverage with the debt ceiling battle once they assumed - back in the lame duck session of 2022 - that they could roll over Kevin McCarthy and his extremist 'Freedom Caucus' in any debt ceiling battle. So they even seemed to relish the coming battle in 2023  confrontation, apparently believing they could be “won". They were wrong.

First, they assumed McCarthy might never get the votes needed to become Speaker and he'd need their help.  WRONG! McCarthy willingly became the forever 'bitch' of the MAGA extremists - from Lauren Boebert to Marjorie Taylor Greene -  promising them anything if they'd support his bid for Speaker - even plum committee memberships.  It worked, and after 15 voting rounds he was elected. But not until he had given away the 'store'.

Boebert, for her part,  announced in a tweet  back in January 2023 she had been appointed to the influential House Oversight and Accountability Committee.  The appointment gave the firebrand Trumper bimbo-  and Glock 9mm toter - an outsized influence on looming investigations, including: Fauci and the vaccines, Hunter Biden's taxes and his laptop, and investigations into "weaponization of government" by the CIA and FBI .

Meanwhile, Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the WaPo on Friday:

“I wouldn’t say pessimistic, but I’m not optimistic [about the odds to avert a shutdown]. Earlier this week, their border trip left me with more concerns about where they’re headed."

Well, it's still unclear whether they will continue to head for chaos, and plan to drag the rest of the country with them.   But at least even the hard right editors of the WSJ have their eyes on these misfits, writing:

"House Freedom Caucus members are denouncing the deal as a sellout, but they always do. Could they do better with a three-seat margin in the House and Democrats in charge of the Senate and White House? There’s no evidence they have a plan beyond the futile gesture of shutting down the government."

 The drama, of course, is the cost of putting renegade right wing loons in positions of governance. Especially in the House. Because basically the Freedom Caucus doesn't really want to govern, it wants to do performance art.  In the clown genre.

Lastly, let me also remind those still reading my blog, that during the last debt-ceiling standoff in 2011 investor confidence was shaken to the core. Analyses after that near-default showed that the plunging stock market vaporized $2.4 trillion in household wealth, which took years to rebuild, and cost taxpayers billions in higher interest payments.  

The lesson in all of this should be absolutely clear by now: casting ballots to get "divided government" as an optimal choice is a fool's errand. It is such because there is only one serious party interested in doing the people's business. The other, Reeptards, are a seditionist supporting cult. A gaggle of pretenders good only for obstruction and chaos.  It's a cult for Trump and determined to let him in again. This much we know: voting GOP in the next election is a vote to dismember this nation. You could as well turf your vote into a dumpster or porto-potty.

See Also:

House of Representatives | Republicans

GOP House Seems Hell-Bent on Forcing a Government Shutdown

by Joan McCarter | January 6, 2024 - 6:34am | permalink

— from Daily Kos

Congress has a few immediate jobs when it returns to work next week: meeting two funding deadlines in less than a month and averting government shutdowns; coming up with a budget for both 2024 and 2025; and passing a supplemental funding package with aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. All of these are intertwined, and all of them are endangered by a Republican House that seems to be hell-bent on forcing a government shutdown over the completely unrelated issue of immigration.

The government is a third of the way into the 2024 fiscal year, and none of the 12 appropriations bills that fund all the various agencies and departments have been passed and signed into law. Since the beginning of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, the government has been running on two successive continuing resolutions, the second of which has set the Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 funding deadlines. Funding for military construction and veterans programs, Agriculture and food agencies, and the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development expires first, then the State, Defense, Commerce, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments, among others, last until Feb. 2.

And:

• Congress has a deal to fund the government and not much time to pass it

Stellar Line Formation and Transitions (3): Complex Atoms

  L-S coupling - which we had seen in a 2014 post, e.g.

An Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (2)

plays a major role in quantum processes and spectral line formation. Here we consider more on formation of spectral lines based on electronic configurations in complex atoms. To fix ideas, all the configurations to be considered obey L-S coupling with energies ordered by the LS –value. However, each is split according to the quantum number J = L + S.

The energy of a complex atom can be expressed:

 E  =  

å^N _{i = 1} {p _i ²/ 2m  -  Ze² / r _i   +  e _i (r _i ) L _i S _i  }+

å^N _{i>j = 1}  e² / r _ij  

     Where the large bracketed quantity is the hydrogenic energy, composed of the kinetic energy (first term), the nuclear attraction (second term) and the spin-orbit interaction. The second term (unbracketed) is the electrostatic repulsion from the other electrons

     Note in what follows that we typically use the uppercase letters (L, S, J) for the momenta of the whole atom and reference lower case letters (ℓ, s, j) to individual electrons. In general the quantum numbers, e.g. LS, denote the term which has a given multiplicity, 2S + 1.

Thus the terms in less than half-filled shells are ordered according to J. (Recall a collection of orbitals under the same value of n is called a "shell". Thus, for n = 4, we have ℓ =0, ℓ = 1, ℓ =2, ℓ = 3 so comprising the collection of orbitals: s, p, d and f.)

 Thus for the case:  L = 3  and  S = 1/2

J = 5/2    

     Recall that a spin-orbit interaction results with a total angular momentum J’ = L’ + S’, where L’ denotes total angular momentum = L1 + L2 etc.

L’ = Ö{l’ (l’ + 1)} h,

and S’ the total spin angular momentum = S1 + S2 etc.

S’= Ö{s’ (s’ + 1)} h,

Then: J’ = Ö{j’ (j’ + 1)} h.

 One applies these to a particular atomic configuration, say: 2p 3d then goes through a procedure of taking differences, assigning values etc. based on selection rules. 

 For the configuration given, one particular energy level occurs for:  

s’ = 1 (s’ = ½  + ½)  and:  l’ = 1  (l’ = ï1-2ï)

for which j’ = 2, 1 and 0.

Meanwhile, the term S = ½, L = 2 is written ²D and is referred to a “doublet D”. The total angular momentum J specifies a level and the multiplicity indicates how many level are possible. For example, ²D_5/2  is the level of doublet D with J = 5/2.

 A ‘triplet’ spectral line can also appear – which might be depicted in a diagram with energy states ³P₂, ³P₁, and ³P₀. The capital letter (P) denotes one of several energy levels given by S, P, D and F, etc., corresponding to values of the quantum number  l = (0, 1, 2, 3 etc.) in an ascending alphabetical order from F. 

 Hence, l’ = 1 implies P-level, and the subscripts denote J’ =  0, 1, 2 values. The superscript ‘3’ is the multiplicity, derived from the relation: 2s’ + 1 = 2(1) + 1 = 3, employing the spin quantum number.  Note carefully the j’ values seen for the differing energy levels in the diagram below:

 For more than half-filled shells the levels of highest J lie lowest. But if there is no configuration interaction, the spacing between the adjacent levels is proportional to the greater J-value.  The number of electrons in each n ℓ shell is given by raising the ℓ to that power.

Thus, 2p⁵   as shown in the Table below for atomic configurations, means 5 electrons in the 2p shell. 

                                                                       

Recall that because of the Pauli Exclusion Principle no two electrons may have the same quantum number, so the values ℓ, s, m _ℓ,  m _s  must be different for each electron.)   Since  m _ℓ  has 2 ℓ + 1 values and m _s  has two, then electrons can occupy each shell.

Let’s now consider a more complex LS –coupling configuration for nd n’p. For which we may ascertain: n = n’, ℓ = 3, s’ = 0, 1 and ℓ’ = 1, 2, 3. 

                                                                

The splitting of this single degenerate energy level – with two optically active electrons – is due to the residual Coulomb repulsive force and the spin –orbit perturbation. While it’s not possible to write explicit equations for which the energies of all levels can be computed, we can write and equation that gives the j’ dependence of the spin –orbit interaction energy.

 DE _S.L =  

 h²/ 4 π  m_e c²   1/r( dV(r)/dr)[j(j+1) - ℓ(ℓ+1) – s(s+1)]

Bearing in mind the procedure for how we obtain the S, L, J values from the spectroscopic notation, say ³ D ₃ where the superscript is given by 2S +1, and the subscript by J with the L –value corresponding to the letter value from the table:

Value  of L	0	1	2	3	4	5
Symbol	S	P	D	F	G	H

Then: 2S + 1 = 3 so that: 2S = 2 and S = 1

While: J = 3 and L = 2.  Hence:

L·S    =  ½  [3(3+1) - 2(2+1) – 1(1+1)] ħ ²

L·S    =  ½  [3(4) - 2(3) – 1(2)] ħ ²

L·S    =  ½  [12 - 6 – 2] ħ ²  =  ½  [4] ħ ²

=  2 ħ ²

While the preceding was written for an atom with one optically active electron, it can be recast using primes to give the interaction energy for the total spin and angular momentum vectors S’ and L’, of any atom for which LS coupling is valid. Thus, we may write for greater generality:

DE _S.L =  K [j(j+1) - ℓ(ℓ+1) – s(s+1)]

Where: K = h²/ 4 π  m_e c²   1/r ( dV(r)/dr)

And K has the same value for all energy levels with the same values of s’ and ℓ’.

More typically, K is found from the difference in LS values between levels, such that:

DE _S.L =  K (L·S )_upper - K (L·S )_lower 

Suggested Problems:

1) Enumerate the possible values of j and m _J for the states in which ℓ = 1 and s = 1/2 and draw the associated vector diagrams.

2) Consider an electron for which n = 4, ℓ = 3, and m _ℓ = 3. Calculate:

a) the numerical value of L, the total orbital angular momentum

b) the z-component of the orbital angular momentum.

3) A two-electron atom for which the orbital angular momentum quantum numbers are ℓ1 =3 and ℓ2 = 2 can have what values for the total orbital angular momentum number L?  Determine the possible values of the total angular momentum quantum number of single f  electron.

Yeah, Jimmy Kimmel Ought To Take Aaron Rodgers To The Cleaners In A Lawsuit For Babbling Epstein-List Bollocks

                                                                   

   "Broken down former Pack QB" and AntiVaxxer Aaron Rodgers 

“I’ve seen guys like him before. He genuinely thinks that because God gave him the ability to throw a ball, he’s smarter than everybody else. The idea that his brain is just average is unfathomable to him. We learned during covid somehow he knows more about science than scientists.

 A guy who went to community college, then got into Cal on a football scholarship, and didn’t graduate. Someone who never spent a minute studying the human body is an expert in the field of immunology. He just put on a magic [Green Bay Packers] helmet and that ‘G’ made him a genius. …”

Jimmy Kimmel, on Jimmy Kimmel Live, responding to Aaron Rodgers wackjob claims of Kimmel being on a Jeffrey Epstein list

Turns out the "broken down former Packer quarterback" (Chris Hayes' words last night in his Epstein segment on ALL In) is on the ayahuasca herbs and shrooms again.   This time blabbering a few days ago on the Pat McCaffee show how he's sure Jimmy Kimmel is on one of lowlife Jeffrey Epstein's  lists - newly released.   See e.g.

Absence of Jimmy Kimmel from Jeffrey Epstein list raises stakes for Aaron Rodgers, ESPN - NBC Sports

As usual Rodgers has lied through his teeth, and if he doesn't make it right - by whatever means- ought to be permanently kicked off his ESPN TV platform too.  As well as having a multi-million $ lawsuit laid on his sorry ass for defamation.

As Chris Hayes put it:  

"So there's this guy Rodgers who's steeped in conspiracy theories and vaccine denialism  and  who's caused untold damage, now spouting off about how he believes Jimmy Kimmel is on Epstein's secret list".  

Which of course, elicited Kimmel's threat to hurl a lawsuit at the imp, which I hope he does.  Rodgers, whose season with the NY Jests was rapidly terminated after 4 snaps, still fantasizes he can return to the game and be another Joe Flacco - now leading the Cleveland Browns into the playoffs.  Ain' gonna happen.  Rodgers is a legend in his own snarled brain and not much else.   

Recall after the January 2022, game in which the Niners took down the Pack ( which had attained NFC top seed then lost in the Divisional round)  Mike Florio noted Rodgers as "way too caught up in himself, his head and his personal dramas."

The degraded imp was also called out a year earlier by Jaime O'Neill:

"Here's the deal on Aaron Rodgers, and why I'm no longer likely to take pleasure in seeing him make a 35- yard touchdown pass. Since he revealed what a jerk he is, refusing to get vaccinated, taking the horse medicine, and considering himself to be a "critical thinker" for choosing to believe a guy like Joe Rogan over Dr. Fauci, he's just kinda forfeited his "golden boy" shine. He played cute when he told reporters he'd been "immunized," a lie based on a whole bunch of homeopathic crap he'd taken, along with drugs available only to very rich people." 

The year before a USAToday sport writer took this gasbag down after losing at Lambeau 13-10 to the Niners, writing:

"Aaron Rodgers seemed tired and uninterested, almost as if working overtime to spread fake science and conspiracy theories was more important to him than getting the Green Bay Packers to the Super Bowl ....Rodgers is as self-centered and arrogant as star athletes come, convinced perhaps by his stint hosting “Jeopardy!” that he knows answers others can only guess. He had no compulsion during the season pretending he was vaccinated, disrespecting his teammates and putting them and everyone else at Packers headquarters at risk of catching COVID-19."

Around that same time Rodgers was blowing out hot air, not only on the vaccines, e.g.

"This idea that it’s the pandemic of the unvaccinated, it’s just a total lie.”

Despite the unvaccinated being 29 times more likely to get it.  But about his "right" to spread the virus:

"What about ‘My body, my choice? What about making the best decision for my circumstance? "

Not conscious of the fact that in the case of a virus like Covid "your body, your choice" doesn't factor in.  The reason is that you can be an unknowing agent of the disease and infect others.

 Rodgers went on to rant in one Joe Rogan appearance:

“Why do people hate ivermectin? Not just because Trump championed it, but because it’s a cheap generic, and you can’t make any money off it!"

Because, you dumbass, it's a frickin' HORSE de-wormer!  Get it?  Maybe not.  Which was why, at the time, I noted this link:

• Ivermectin -Horse De-Wormer Tabs For Covid Prevent...

I pointed out in that post that all the horse de-wormer patients - or rather most- have had to carry around extra pairs of diapers because of loose bowels.  Why?  Because that's the way a de-wormer works! By aggressively flushing out the parasites with bowel contents. But ivermectin was intended for horses, not humans.  

But this is the way Rodgers rolls. He fancies himself such a football legend that he's entitled to blab away any of his daft opinions. And the worst thing that's happened since has been Pat McCaffee giving him his own blabber spot on his show - and paying him to appear. That show, this past Wednesday, is when he let loose with his Kimmel comments.

In fact, as a recent WaPo piece as noted, Rodgers has become nothing more than a blithering right wing troll, e.g.

Aaron Rodgers was a provocateur with a purpose. Now he’s just a troll.

Noting:

"These days, when Rodgers wakes up in the morning with that weaselly smirk on his face, he seems intent on fanning more chaos into the world. His message no longer connects with the general population — or at least the demographic of sports fans who will tune in to “The Pat McAfee Show” for some low-consequence entertainment. Instead, Rodgers has chosen the side that would rather criminalize the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert and casually accuse a late-night talk show host of being linked to sex trafficking.

During his weekly paid appearance with McAfee on Tuesday, a show sidekick teed up Rodgers to say something inflammatory regarding a list of associates tied to Jeffrey Epstein, and Rodgers obliged.

“There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rodgers said, dropping Kimmel’s name from out of nowhere."

And for doing that, Kimmel ought to nail his sorry ass.  Take him to the proverbial cleaners in a lawsuit. This is a guy who once fancied himself a "critical thinker" but in reality has been exposed as a big mouth tool (and fool)  for brainless conspiracy mongers and anti-vaxxers like RFK Jr. Not to mention the nitwits who somehow snuck into Intertel such as the likes of one David Simmons who wrote in the Nov.-Dec. issue, attacking a previous takedown of another tool - Alana Simmons:

"Mr. Stahl further damages his case (defending global warming) by presenting as a credible information source the NYTimes which is, of course, the Left's flag rag of record. He also gives us Fauci, the government's smirking, highest paid confirmed liar we currently have on record....And Hopkins? To suggest that Johns Hopkins cleanly and truthfully reported COVID statistics is just silly, noting that in receiving $2.5 billion federal dollars annually it must tacitly toe the party line (C'mon, man!)."

That response was written after I had shot down the nonsense spouted by Alana Sullivan (in an earlier Integra response) as I also had in this blog post:

Can A Former Hopkins Immunologist (& Intertel Member) Also Be A Climate Expert & Climate Change Denier? Not Really!

But Simmons, like Aaron Rodgers, couldn't resist conflating his wacky climate pseudo-skepticism with his anti-vax stance. Condemning not only the esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci, but Johns Hopkins University as well - of which Ms. Sullivan earlier claimed to be an immunologist.  (So she worked for an "untruthful" organization related to Covid stats?) All of which prompted Janice to ask (on reading the Integra rejoinder): 

"Wait. These people are really a members of a high IQ society?"  

Alas, yes, because to get in all you need is a certain qualifying score or aptitude level. Common sense or functional intellect need not be applicable. 

As for Rodgers, he now needs to be held accountable for his reckless gaslighting and bloviating on a prime sports network. In my opinion, Disney - the owners of ESPN - need to tell Pat McCaffee to cut this miserable troll loose, or lose his own show.

See Also:

The Triumph of the Chuckleheads

by Jaime O’Neill | January 12, 2024 - 7:44am | permalink

Excerpt:

There are several ways to explain the dramatic collapse of intelligence in the United States. We seem to be failing a national intelligence test nearly every damn day. The quotient produced by dividing our intelligence by all the truly ignorant stuff so many of us routinely buy into makes our national IQ a low number across a wide range of subject matter. We don’t know history, and it seems we’d rather not. Our kids don’t write well, nor do their parents. Vocabularies shrink as reading recedes. We don’t read much, and it seems we'd rather not. What a majority of people would rather do, adults and kids alike, is stare into their “smart” phones which seems to be having just the opposite effect on intellectual growth.

You all know who Aaron Rodgers is, right? He’s the quarterback who had to sit out his entire new season with the NY Jets. He hurt himself in a way that made tossing air wrapped in pigskin to other millionaires who would run with what they’d caught until some opposing millionaires knocked them down. People like to watch that sort of thing. In fact, they’re crazy about it, with crazy the operative word in the relationship between athletes and those who go apeshit in their fealty to the teams those jocks play for and the cities that those teams represent.

And:

Aaron Rodgers reaches new low after taking Jimmy Kimmel grudge too far (usatoday.com)

And:

Pat McAfee Apologizes Over Role in Aaron Rodgers-Jimmy Kimmel Feud - The New York Times 

Excerpt:

"Pat McAfee on Wednesday apologized for airing comments that Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made toward Jimmy Kimmel on McAfee’s ESPN television show a day earlier suggesting the late-night talk show host had a connection to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein."

And:

Pat McAfee reacts to NY Post story on paying Aaron Rodgers $1 million (jsonline.com)

And:

Aaron Rodgers wants RFK Jr to debate vaccine with him vs Travis Kelce (jsonline.com)

Solution to Line Formation Problem

 We have:

W_u »  N L a _o    ò ^¥₀  f _u  du

But: f _u du= 1/ Öp   [exp (u - u_o)/D u_D ]²  du/D u_D 

if:  (u) »   (u_o)  

Then, effectively:

exp (u -   u_o) =  exp (0) = 1  

Then:

f _u du= 1/ Öp   [1] = 1/ Öp  [D u_D ]²  du/D u_D

= 1/ Öp  [D u_D ] du

W_u »  N L a _o    ò ^¥₀  f _u  du

»  N L a _o    ò ^¥₀  1/ Öp  [D u_D ] du

The curve of growth will then lack the exponential (i.e. increasing slope) characteristic