Kabuki performance art, indeed, with House Speaker John Boehner playing Siskel AND Ebert:
House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday blamed President Barack Obama for the first partial shutdown of the federal government in 17 years, blaming his "scorched-Earth policy of refusing to negotiate in [a] bipartisan way on his health care law, current government funding or the debt limit."Why would Democrats voluntarily engage in "bipartisan" talks for the purpose of undermining their domestic policy Ark of the Covenant which they rammed down our throats in entirely partisan fashion? Ain't gonna happen. Ever.
"The president isn't telling the whole story when it comes to the government shutdown," the Ohio Republican said in an op-ed piece in USA Today. "The fact is that Washington Democrats have slammed the door on reopening the government by refusing to engage in bipartisan talks.
Which presents the Republicans with...opportunities:
Democrats in Congress have made it clear they do not plan to negotiate with Republicans in any fashion until the U.S. House passes a “clean” continuing resolution to fully fund the government and Obamacare.
That was evident late Tuesday when House Democrats killed a GOP bill aimed at reopening small slices of the federal establishment, including the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Park Service and a portion of the Washington, D.C., government funded with local tax revenue.After a Tuesday strategy session, Representative Mick Mulvaney (R-SC5) said if Democrats are “really concerned about funding the VA, let’s fund it.”However, Democrats generally opposed all three, saying Republicans shouldn’t be permitted to choose which agencies remain open and which stay shut. As a result, all fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage.
The White House also issued veto threats against the bills, drawing a jab from Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner. Obama “can’t continue to complain about the impact of the government shutdown on veterans, visitors at National Parks, and D.C. while vetoing bills to help them,” he said.
Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX36) blasted House Democrats for killing a bill to “allow elderly, disabled WW2 vets to visit the WW2 Memorial.”Representative Diane Black (R-TN6) said in a statement that it is “reckless and shameful that President Obama and House Democrats are putting Obamacare ahead of the interests’ of our nation’s brave veterans, and of school children and families across the country who wish to visit our rich National Parks and museums.”“House Republicans will continue to work in the interest of the American people, and the President and Democrats should stop holding our nation hostage to their demands for their own special exemption from Obamacare, and their shameful desire to impose health care mandates on American citizens but not big businesses,” she added.
And President Stompy Feet's retort?:
Oh - you mean, like this?:
Or this?:
By way of this?:
Lotsa luck with that, Majesty.
You all know that I wasn't a fan of the government shutdown strategy. My reasoning was historic, substantive, and sound: (1) The Dems will never, under any circumstances, give up what they chased for seventy-plus years and moved hell and Earth to ram down our throats; (2) the media will flash-crucify Republicans for their heroic trouble and vaporize the House majority that is the only bulwark against a resumption of the Obamunist blitzkrieg of 2009-2010; and (3) The Tea Party will gleefully help them do it after the GOP inevitably and unconditionally caves.
Well, #1 isn't going to change, but as for #2, that may not be so sure a bet:
I've thought long and hard about what could possibly be worth more to Barack Obama and the Collective than ObamaCare. After all, that is the crown jewel in their demonic tiara, the domestic policy Lombardi trophy, the kind of thing about which people exclaim, "They can't take THAT away from me!" And I could only come up with one thing: the illusion of the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY of Big Government.
That illusion is the lifeblood of socialism. It fuels every Donk lie, every epithet, every self-righteous paen to the compassionate glory of all the "good" of which government is supposedly capable, if We, The People will only let our betters ACT! on our behalf, for our own good, with all of our money, whether we want to our not, or else. Without the Big Government stage coach, with all of us yoked and O, Crazy Nancy, and Dirty Harry yanking on the reins, we'll just keep brainlessly galloping straight off the nearest cliff. We'll be like sheep without a three-headed shepherd, drowning in all that wool of which we have more than our "fair share". The country will immediately collapse into ruin like Walter Donovan's face.
That is the underlying leftwing assumption with which Donks have subliminally brainwashed the American people for over eighty years. But what if there was a way of enabling the public to quit their Big Government addiction "cold turkey"?
THAT is the opportunity a government shutdown presents. Last year's Sequestergeddon was the trial run for this "intervention". O and his minions all said the self same things about the Sequester that they're saying about the shutdown now - all the "pain" it would cause, how everything would "grind to a halt," how medical research would "cease," yata, yata, yata. But, astonishingly, the GOP didn't budge, the Sequester went into effect, and life....went on. The public that had been led to believe that The End Of Everything was imminent yawned and went back to clipping their gruel coupons. And we have now had the first consecutive years of actual, honest-to-goodness, in-actual-dollar-terms, not-a-reduction-in-the-rate-of-growth LOWER SPENDING since the end of the Korean War.
Now picture this shutdown going on for weeks and months, with life...going on, more or less unchanged, and maybe even better. The Great Bubble would burst. The Big Government illusion would be shattered. For the first time in almost a century, the American people would begin to realize that they don't need the Democrat Party, and would be better off without them.
Not all would accept it, as the tribal/cultural factors would keep a significant portion dociley on the reservation. But a majority would joyfully cast off their chains and taste true freedom for the first time in their lives - intellectual freedom, the kind of freedom that affords and encourages a man to wonder what's possible, and then chase it down like a cheetah does a gazelle. Or, in other words, what America once was, all those decades ago: the land of opportunity, where life, liberty, and happiness could be pursued without an electrified thrall collar around our necks.
ObamaCare is as dear to Democrats as their own gonads; but their hypnotic hold on the American people is their lifeblood. Slit that wrist and their "Great Work" is deader than poor Kelsey's nuts.
Which brings us to reason #3, and why I've never considered the above anything more than a pipedream. Still don't, actually. But perhaps there is....hope:
I don't know 'bout y'all, but I'm getting a bit of a "boehner" right now. I just hope and pray that it lasts to that "happy ending".
“They’ve shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans,” Obama said of Republicans in the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday.
Oh - you mean, like this?:
My colleague Michelle Malkin revealed this week that her family has now joined the massed ranks of Obamacare victims: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield sent her a “Dear John” letter explaining why they’d be seeing less of each other. “To meet the requirements of the new laws, your current plan can no longer be continued beyond your 2014 renewal date.”
Beyond the president’s characteristically breezy lie that “if you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan” is the sheer nuttiness of what’s happening. For years, Europeans and “progressive” Americans have raged at the immorality of the U.S. medical system: All those millions with no health coverage! But Michelle Malkin had coverage and suddenly, under what Obama calls “universal health care,” she doesn’t.
Or this?:
Heck, I received a letter from my insurance company this week telling me they're closing my plan at the end of 2014, but I completely forgot because REPUBLIKKKAN SHUTDOWN!!!1!1! Sure, according to this chart it looks like I'm going to have to pay 100% more per month for a health insurance plan with less coverage than the one I already have, but what does that matter because SHUTDOWN!
By way of this?:
Lotsa luck with that, Majesty.
You all know that I wasn't a fan of the government shutdown strategy. My reasoning was historic, substantive, and sound: (1) The Dems will never, under any circumstances, give up what they chased for seventy-plus years and moved hell and Earth to ram down our throats; (2) the media will flash-crucify Republicans for their heroic trouble and vaporize the House majority that is the only bulwark against a resumption of the Obamunist blitzkrieg of 2009-2010; and (3) The Tea Party will gleefully help them do it after the GOP inevitably and unconditionally caves.
Well, #1 isn't going to change, but as for #2, that may not be so sure a bet:
Resolving the serial showdowns over the federal budget and debt ceiling may be more difficult now than during the last shutdown under Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich because so many more House Republicans today represent safely GOP districts, a National Journal analysis has found.So I have always said of government shutdowns, so I reiterate today: If you're going to play chicken, play to win. Don't threaten a shutdown and then puss out; don't fold like a K-Mart deck chair after just a few days; stick with it for the long haul. Weeks, months, however long it takes. Especially when the stakes are as high as they are now. Here's why.
This suggests that even if a public backlash develops against a shutdown or potential government default, Republican members may be far more insulated against those gales than their counterparts were during the two shutdowns in the winter of 1995 and 1996. Today's GOP legislators, for the same reason, also may be less sensitive to shifts in public attitudes that could threaten their party's national image or standing in more closely contested parts of the country.
I've thought long and hard about what could possibly be worth more to Barack Obama and the Collective than ObamaCare. After all, that is the crown jewel in their demonic tiara, the domestic policy Lombardi trophy, the kind of thing about which people exclaim, "They can't take THAT away from me!" And I could only come up with one thing: the illusion of the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY of Big Government.
That illusion is the lifeblood of socialism. It fuels every Donk lie, every epithet, every self-righteous paen to the compassionate glory of all the "good" of which government is supposedly capable, if We, The People will only let our betters ACT! on our behalf, for our own good, with all of our money, whether we want to our not, or else. Without the Big Government stage coach, with all of us yoked and O, Crazy Nancy, and Dirty Harry yanking on the reins, we'll just keep brainlessly galloping straight off the nearest cliff. We'll be like sheep without a three-headed shepherd, drowning in all that wool of which we have more than our "fair share". The country will immediately collapse into ruin like Walter Donovan's face.
That is the underlying leftwing assumption with which Donks have subliminally brainwashed the American people for over eighty years. But what if there was a way of enabling the public to quit their Big Government addiction "cold turkey"?
THAT is the opportunity a government shutdown presents. Last year's Sequestergeddon was the trial run for this "intervention". O and his minions all said the self same things about the Sequester that they're saying about the shutdown now - all the "pain" it would cause, how everything would "grind to a halt," how medical research would "cease," yata, yata, yata. But, astonishingly, the GOP didn't budge, the Sequester went into effect, and life....went on. The public that had been led to believe that The End Of Everything was imminent yawned and went back to clipping their gruel coupons. And we have now had the first consecutive years of actual, honest-to-goodness, in-actual-dollar-terms, not-a-reduction-in-the-rate-of-growth LOWER SPENDING since the end of the Korean War.
Now picture this shutdown going on for weeks and months, with life...going on, more or less unchanged, and maybe even better. The Great Bubble would burst. The Big Government illusion would be shattered. For the first time in almost a century, the American people would begin to realize that they don't need the Democrat Party, and would be better off without them.
Not all would accept it, as the tribal/cultural factors would keep a significant portion dociley on the reservation. But a majority would joyfully cast off their chains and taste true freedom for the first time in their lives - intellectual freedom, the kind of freedom that affords and encourages a man to wonder what's possible, and then chase it down like a cheetah does a gazelle. Or, in other words, what America once was, all those decades ago: the land of opportunity, where life, liberty, and happiness could be pursued without an electrified thrall collar around our necks.
ObamaCare is as dear to Democrats as their own gonads; but their hypnotic hold on the American people is their lifeblood. Slit that wrist and their "Great Work" is deader than poor Kelsey's nuts.
Which brings us to reason #3, and why I've never considered the above anything more than a pipedream. Still don't, actually. But perhaps there is....hope:
Senior House Republicans are increasingly persuaded the government shutdown could last weeks and will only be resolved in a major bipartisan accord involving a funding bill and a debt-ceiling increase.
On the first day of the shutdown, President Obama and Senate majority leader Harry Reid only hardened their unwillingness to negotiate with the GOP. For example, Obama threatening to veto rifle-shot funding bills, to keep specific branches of government funded, backed by dozens of Democrats on the House floor.
In the meantime, despite a small bloc of moderates indicating they would happily vote for a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government without any preconditions, the House GOP conference is remaining steadfast.
At a closed-door conference meeting earlier today, Speaker John Boehner gave a pep-rally-style speech signaling he isn’t about to fold his hand.
“We’re in this fight. This is the moment. We all talk about doing something for our kids and our grandkids. If you want to do something for them, now is the time. We have to work together and win this fight,” Boehner told members, according to a Republican in the room.
I don't know 'bout y'all, but I'm getting a bit of a "boehner" right now. I just hope and pray that it lasts to that "happy ending".
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