Crystal clear once again this way-too-early Tuesday here on California’s north coast as we shrink into day eight of the infamous, batshit crazy US government shutdown.

And the feedback on the GOP has been what one would expect from stupid — last night, Megyn Kelly at Fox opened her new primetime show with guest Ted Cruz, asking him right off the bat (via Mediaite): “What’s it like to be the most hated man in America?”
Cruz mostly just shrugged and tried some President Obama finger-pointing — Cruz really don’t get a shit.

None of them do, and they’re full of dangerous shit. Current  top GOP moron, Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida on the horror of the debt ceiling: “I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets.”

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Mosqueteros‘ found here).

This debt ceiling thingy, however, appears to be a humongous bomb just waiting to explode. And it’s not what we think — the US crossed the debt ceiling last May, and the deadline next week is just the end of what’s called the period of “extraordinary measures,” which have been used since the spring to keep the US a little loose.
US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Sunday: “We’re going to a place we’ve never gone and it’s very dangerous. We’ve never crossed this line so we’re just speculating over what happens if the unthinkable happens.”

And it sounds like a huge disaster, beyond even what we simple-minded folks can comprehend:

To summarize, Bove asserts that a default is unthinkable because it would trigger a huge reduction in the value of U.S. debt, which would go beyond disrupting social security payments.
A default would upend money markets, destroy bond funds, slam the brakes on lending, cause interest rates to spiral, make our banks insolvent, and deal a blow to our foreign trading partners and creditors around the globe; all of which would throw the U.S. and the world into economic disarray.

Or in other words, “the mother of all financial crisis” and maybe even worse.
From NPR and an interview with New York Times writer, Annie Lowrey:

So even just getting close to the limit would probably send a little waves of panic through the market.
Actually getting up to the limit, to the point that Treasury couldn’t pay bills, would be really bad.
And the prospect that Treasury wouldn’t pay bondholders is just absolutely terrifying.
There’s some idea that Treasury, if forced to, would put bondholders first in order to try and keep the financial markets calm, but it’s not even clear that they have the technical ability to do that.
Part of the issue here is that the United States has never actually really gone down this road.
Nobody exactly knows how this all would play all,
but the worst-case scenarios are really, really frightening, and even just getting close is going to send a little bit fear through the market.

So the big problem is still coming, but Republicans despite the negative feedback,appear to be hunkering down.
They are taking a  bad-ass beating — the key-note off  a new poll: Republicans in Congress are worse off still: A Post-ABC poll last week found 63 percent disapproving of Republicans, a number that has grown to 70 percent in the past week. Strong disapproval has grown from 42 to 51 percent over the same period.

In just a side calamitous coupling, some banks are stuffing ATMs with cash — via Think Progress:

The Financial Times reports that one major U.S. bank has started stuffing its automatic teller machines with extra cash in preparation for a possible bank run from panicked depositors.
The New York Times reports that another bank is weighing a plan to advance funds to customers who rely on Social Security and other government payments that could stop in the event of a default.
The FT said the moves are part of “a ‘playbook’ used in August 2011 when the government last came close to breaching the debt ceiling.”

So there we have it, as we stand, sinking deeper into crazy.