Politics: Dueling Hymns in Congress, Paul Ryan and Contraception, Pat Buchanan on Shutdown, MSM and Centrist Myths, Anonymous and Maryville Rape Story, Malala's Meeting with Obama

1. As Peter Montgomery notes, yesterday appears to have been dueling hymn day in the U.S. Congress: House Republicans sang "Amazing Grace" as their latest plan to solve the government-shutdown crisis went up in flames, while a group of interfaith leaders gathered by Faith in Public Life sang the same hymn as the group walked through the halls of the House.

2. Even now, even at this late date, even after the law has been enacted and is up and running (albeit with glitches in its federal website), Paul Ryan continues to try to force changes in the Affordable Care Act to prevent women's access to contraceptive coverage. 

3. Pat Buchanan thinks it's better for the GOP to destroy the nation than to accept Obamacare (and see here).

4. Though the extremism and refusal to negotiate of one party is glaringly obvious, the mainstream media continue to pump out silly narratives about the false equivalency of the two political sides, and about a mushy center that purportedly transcends the ideology of either right or left. As Alex Pareene notes, 

[I]t is clearly very psychically important to the elite political media that a reasonable center exist. A common-sense, centrist middle is an essential, foundational myth of the nonpartisan press.

5.  Anonymous is now targeting the town of Maryville, Missouri, after a 13- and 14-year old girl were raped there earlier this year, and the town vilified the raped girls and rallied around the accused rapists.

6. Finally, Humna Bhojani wonders what President Obama's recent meeting with Malala Yousafzai will actually fix, vis-a-vis her broken nation and its young people. She asks the president,

When you come from a world where you’re caught between the Taliban and the US military, where do you turn? A world where the impact of drone strikes and the retaliation it breeds hits close to home, its reverberations spreading like a toxin, poisoning the region. A world where the story of a girl who is shot at by the Taliban is heard by you in person, but the story of drone strike survivors remains ignored.

And I'd love to hear the president answer that question. 

The Clay Bennett cartoon is from Truthdig.