He's looking for lead writers on his new FiveThirtyEight website.  I can think of at least two Daggers who would fit in nicely.  Ahem--Maiello, Wolraich--but it could be there are others, too.

THIS IS A BIG DEAL!

I get an SS check next month!

I have food and rent and protection from the cold.

THIS IS A BIG DEAL!

AND THE GOV WILL OPEN!

Something close to a million workers will get back to work.

Now it is up to the HOUSE!

the end

My favorite part is he doesn't believe the polls showing Republicans in the toilet as far as responsibility for this shut down and soon to be economic debacle. 

By Cora Currier, Pro Publica, Oct. 14, 2013

The United States is loosening controls over military exports, in a shift that former U.S. officials and human rights advocates say could increase the flow of American-made military parts to the world’s conflicts and make it harder to enforce arms sanctions.

Come tomorrow, thousands of parts of military aircraft, such as propeller blades, brake pads and tires, will be able to be sent to almost any country in the world, with minimal oversight – even to some countries subject to U.N. arms embargoes [.....]

By Gabriela Baczynska and Igor Belyatski in Moscow, Reuters, Oct 14, 2013

Russian police rounded up more than 1,600 migrants on Monday in Moscow after rioting swept through a southern neighborhood over a fatal stabbing of a Russian that many residents blame on a man from the Caucasus region. [....]

Migrant labor has played a significant role in Russia's transformation during an oil-fuelled economic boom that took off around the time President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

But many in Moscow are uneasy at the influx of migrants from Russia's heavily Muslim North Caucasus and ex-Soviet states of the Caucasus and Central Asia, although many do low-paying jobs, such as in construction, that few local residents want. "They come here and act as if it were their home," local Biryulyovo resident Tatiana said.

In an apparent attempt to appease residents, police said they rounded up some 1,200 people detained at a wholesale vegetable market that had been stormed on Sunday night.

Another 450 were detained in northeastern Moscow, also near a vegetable market employing migrant workers.

Police said they were all detained to check whether they were involved in any wrongdoing, but they have not been accused of any specific crime. Footage showed detainees standing against walls or lined up in front of camouflage-clad police [....]

NYT: WASHINGTON — Global leaders at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings here on Sunday pleaded, warned and cajoled: the United States must raise its debt ceiling and reopen its government or risk “massive disruption the world over...”  Speaking Republicans I say: We didn't need a permission slip to start a war in Iraq, and we sure as heck don't need one to crash the world economy. Again.

The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of possible manipulation of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, a person familiar with the matter said.

[Details at link]

By Golnaz Esfandiari, Asia Times Online, Oct 11, 2013

Synopsis: Iran's new culture minister has condemned the censorship policy of former prime minister Mahmud Ahmadinejad as arbitrary and ill-informed, following calls from some 200 writers, poets, and translators for him to the lift "draconian" rules. However, Ali Jannati, has said book censorship will continue because "problematic books can poison society".

By Don Thompson, Associated Press, Oct.11, 2013

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill Friday that would have imposed the nation's toughest restrictions on gun ownership, saying it was too far-reaching.

The legislation would have banned future sales of most semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable magazines, part of a firearms package approved by state lawmakers in response to mass shootings in other states.

It was lawmakers' latest attempt to close loopholes that have allowed manufacturers to work around previous assault weapon bans. Gun rights groups had threatened to sue if the semi-automatic weapons ban became law.

"I don't believe that this bill's blanket ban on semi-automatic rifles would reduce criminal activity or enhance public safety enough to warrant this infringement on gun owners' rights," the Democratic governor wrote in his veto message.

He also noted that California already has some of the nation's strictest gun and ammunition laws [....]

Exclusive: Bipartisan bill pulls together existing efforts to dramatically reform the NSA in the wake of Snowden disclosures

By Dan Roberts in Washington, theguardian.com, 10 Oct., 2013

The conservative Republican who co-authored America's Patriot Act is preparing to unveil bipartisan legislation that would dramatically curtail the domestic surveillance powers it gives to intelligence agencies.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who worked with president George W Bush to give more power to US intelligence agencies after the September 11 terrorist attacks, said the intelligence community had misused those powers by collecting telephone records on all Americans, and claimed it was time "to put their metadata program out of business".

His imminent bill in the House of Representatives is expected to be matched by a similar proposal from Senate judiciary committee chair Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. It pulls together existing congressional efforts to reform the National Security Agency in the wake of disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Sensenbrenner has called his bill the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act – or USA Freedom Act, and a draft seen by the Guardian has four broad aims [.....]

Like Carroll’s characters, political theorists are people whose intellectual power has the potential to change the world. But their preference for their own academic problems, rather than those which really face society, means that the world in which their narratives exist could never survive outside the rabbit-hole. That is the brilliant and surreal tragedy of academic political theory. Like the inhabitants of Wonderland, the interests, personalities and habits of academics make them incapable of understanding resource management, marketing, the lives of normal people, or the nuances of public relations. But the rest of the workforce might do well to remember that, as for Carroll’s characters, the really weird stuff for academics is what happens outside the rabbit-hole. In the strange world we call “real” there are people who shy from “deep” conversations, do unpaid internships, and communicate in a language of fatuous job titles and corporate jargon that even the Mad Hatter couldn’t have made up. All things considered, Wonderland is probably the safest place for us.