USA Today used the silly headline Physics Nobel Prize goes to ‘God particle’ scientists for this article.

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has gone to Britain’s Peter W. Higgs and Belgium’s Francois Englert, the Nobel Committee announced in Stockholm on Tuesday.

They were jointly awarded the prize for their work on a theory that offers an explanation for how the fundamental particles of the Universe acquire mass.

Next year the Nobel Prize in Physics will be awarded for the astrophysical notion discovered by USA Today that the Universe does not revolve around the US Government shutdown.

USA Today has the brief article Obama calls Boehner, will speak at 2 p.m.

President Obama called House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday, again telling the Ohio Republican he will not negotiate on budget items until the GOP-run House ends the shutdown and raises the debt ceiling.

Gee, you’d almost think that the White House read my blog post White House open to short-term increase in debt ceiling.  This is where I suggested the wording:

“Congress, just do your job.  Keep the government running.  Call me after you have done your job, and we can talk about other issues.  There will be no further communications to you from the White House.”

Between the President and Elizabeth Warren, we might get this resolved.

If you only have 5 minutes or so, here is the edited version of Elizabeth Warren’s speech before Congress.

If you have 12 minutes or so of time, it is highly worth while to listen to the full speech below.

Elizabeth Warren for President!!!

Thanks to DonF for bringing these videos to my attention.

Aljazeera has the article Smart people, stupid people, and budget politics by Dean Baker.

Blame the media

When a typical person hears that the government spends $445m a year on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, they are likely to think that this is a lot of money, since it is way more than most people will ever see in their lifetime. Almost no one has their nose in the budget books, so they are not able to recognise that this sum is just a bit more than one-hundredth of one percent of the budget.

The same is true for other categories of government spending. People hear huge numbers and think that programs involve lots of money, because to them these sums would be lots of money. They are not in a position to assess the importance of a program to the federal budget

This article is a beautiful attempt to put some meaning behind Greenberg’s Law of The Media – “If a news item has a number in it, then it is probably misleading.”

Quoting large dollar figures with no context to be able to judge significance is just one of the ways that news story seem to imply something for which there is no basis in the article.

McClatchy DC has the article White House open to short-term increase in debt ceiling.  I knew this was trouble as soon as I saw the headline.

The White House indicated Monday for the first time that it would be open to a short-term increase to the nation’s borrowing limit, allowing the federal government to avoid a possible default on its obligations that could plunge the nation into another recession.

Senate Democrats expect to bring a longer-term fix to the floor for a vote later this week. It would raise the debt ceiling for months, perhaps until after the November 2014 elections. House Republicans said they could consider a stopgap measure if it were part of a larger deal.

“If the White House is open to a short-term debt limit increase with accompanying spending cuts and reforms, that is a positive sign,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

It is pointless to even talk to the Republicans.  As soon as you open your mouth they think you are now negotiating non-negotiable positions.

The point of having stop gaps and continuing resolutions is to keep the government running while the two sides work out the issues on which they cannot agree.  Every time Obama makes the slightest concession, the Republicans demand everything else.  The President would just stop talking completely.

The President should just say,

“Congress, just do your job.  Keep the government running.  Call me after you have done your job, and we can talk about other issues.  There will be no further communications to you from the White House.”