Government Shutdown and the End of the World

This began as a re-blog of an article by Sundance at
The Conservative Tree House titled
The Media and The “One Winged Penguin Principle” Begins Today…..
The re-blog got too long, so here are my comments

It’s an excellent satire and much reality lurks in it. I particularly like this paragraph:

When the sun rises today it will only be because President Obama spent the night on his knees knitting sweaters for homeless kittens while making phone calls to all the newly destitute AFSCME workers, Candy Crowley has all the details… – meanwhile the cackling voice of Michele Bachman was screaming at him from just outside his bedroom window Jessica Yellen caught up with her to ask why.

A preliminary attempt to analyze media treatment is offered by that rightist leftist publication Time-Swampland here.

Here’s another excellent piece of satire by Daniel Greenfield. It begins,

In Massey Hills, Virginia, a gang of politically incorrect sports mascots entered a workplace and implicitly hurt the feelings of several minorities. Their calls to the Justice Department were forwarded to Eric Holder’s private voicemail along with frequent messages from his coke dealer demanding to be paid, like right now, and requests for weapons manuals from several Mexican cartel bosses.

. . . .

In Madison, Wisconsin, the entire United Organized Educators and Librarians Union attempted to commit mass suicide on the front lawn of the Madison Center of Union History to protest budget cuts and school closings. Their efforts proved in vain when the gasoline they poured on themselves in a failed attempt at self-immolation turned out to be apple juice.

It ends,

As the nation descends into chaos, one thing is clear. The government shutdown has once again doomed us all. Just like the last 17 times.

The problem is that our dearly beloved low information voters will lap up whatever doses of sweet cream the ObamaMedia and Orgasms for Obama Organizing for Action spoon feed them and agree that the horrors as presented are the sole fault of President Obama’s dastardly opponents, racist terrorists all. Here’s an e-mail that came to my spam box today:

Friend —

They actually did it.

Because an extreme group of House Republicans refused to pass a real budget, the federal government has shut down.

These aren’t just games. Speaker Boehner is letting one faction of one party in one chamber of Congress sabotage our economy. They shut down the government, and now some of them are ready to push us past the brink by refusing to do something every American does — pay their bills.

If this makes you angry, that’s because it should. This behavior from some Republicans in Congress is as irresponsible as it gets.

This fight just got a whole lot more real and a whole lot more urgent — right now, we need to know who’s going to help hold these Republicans accountable. Say you will:

http://my.barackobama.com/Hold-John-Boehner-Responsible

Thanks — more as we know it,

Jon

Jon Carson
Executive Director
Organizing for Action

P.S. — If you’re looking for somewhere to direct your frustration online, there’s only one man who can stand up to this irresponsible behavior — that’s John Boehner. Tweet at him right now, and let him know you’re holding him responsible.

—————-
The other side will spend millions to maintain the status quo. We’re fighting for change — chip in $5 or more to support OFA today.

Perhaps OFAL will use some of the donated funds to hire more White House staff to assist poor President and Mrs. Obama in their times of sorrow and privation.

Now I have to root around in the dirt for our food.

Of perhaps slight interest, the OFAL spam did not even mention President Obama’s signature debacle achievement, ObamaCare.

Nor did the OFAL spam mention that the “shutdown” was precipitated by the Obama Administration’s refusals (a) to postpone the advent of ObamaCare and to eliminate a tax on medical devices — a tax which has earned bipartisan opposition — and (b) even to negotiate concerning those matters. Today, the Senate

rejected a House motion to form a conference committee to negotiate differences between the two chambers, as the political standoff continued with no end in sight.

The vote was 54-46, split on party lines. It was the third time in the last two days that the Senate voted to reject House measures tying government funding to delaying or defunding the health care reform law. President Barack Obama and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have called Republicans’ demands “extortion.”

“We will not go to conference with a gun to our head,” Reid said on the Senate floor late Monday. “We will not go to conference until we get a clean [continuing resolution].”

Oh well. At least the implementation of ObamaCare is going as well as should have been expected.

The best clue that the initial open enrollment period for Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges is destined to be a bureaucratic nightmare which will fail virtually every benchmark came on Saturday morning. Hadas Gold and Kyle Cheney at Politico, two advocates posing as reporters, all but begged the press to avoid “any rush judgments (which) could have a big impact on public opinion of the law” during its critical first few days. They described administration officials as “pleading with reporters to avoid being seduced into treating every technical snafu as a catastrophic failure.”

I don’t see why the Politico pair or the Obama administration should be all that worried. A small number of local and regional reporters may balk at drinking the “all is well” Kool-Aid if the foul-ups are sufficiently blatant and visible, but the nation’s establishment press has already shown its bonafides. (Though in 2006 under George W. Bush, they didn’t hesitate to dwell for months on problems in the rollout of Medicare Part D, which were in retrospect relatively minor.) The national press is vested in the current venture’s success, and perhaps even less likely to acknowledge serious complications and failure than certain Obama administration officials will be in unguarded moments.

. . . .

Sebelius and the administration unilaterally, and illegally, delayed imposing the employer mandate requiring companies to cover “full-time” employees — defined as any employee who works an average of 30 hours per week — for one year. The political motivation behind this cop-out is so transparent, one wonders if the delay wasn’t hard-coded in the plan. There has been no change in the individual mandate, which requires individuals and families to have health insurance coverage beginning next year or face a fine. So the employer mandate delay combined with the still-present individual mandate will force more Americans into the state health insurance exchanges. The administration is likely intent on making the process of undoing the exchanges as difficult as possible.

A responsible steward of taxpayer dollars would never have considered opening the exchanges in their current state of disarray. [Emphasis added.]

There is no “responsible steward of taxpayer dollars” in the Obama Administration and it would be foolish even to hope that there might be one. It strikes me that postponement of ObamaCare and repeal of the medical devices tax would benefit President Obama’s signature legislation by perhaps even helping to render it viable while simultaneously helping our distressed national economy. But, since He won’t negotiate with “irresponsible” terrorists and won’t allow Senator Reid to do so, neither is likely to happen.

ObamaCare’s euthanasia via repeal would be the humane and most economically useful way to proceed but seems highly unlikely. With a bit of luck, pushing forward, and thereby stressing the terminally ill law by subjecting it to reality, may kill it.  With hope for a bit of good “change” for a change, and all due apologies to T.S. Elliot,

This is the way ObamaCare ends
This is the way ObamaCare ends
This is the way ObamaCare ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Damn, he was good! Grand Pa Jones for President, even though he has long been dead.

Critical update:

The horrors of the Government shutdown just got worse, far worse. Our beloved First Lady has been grossly humiliated by being forced to limit her(?) messages on Twitter! It is certainly to be hoped that OFAL will come immediately to her assistance and do whatever may be necessary to ensure that she continues to tell us how much of what to eat and when.

Another critical update:

According to an article at PJ Tatler, this has not been a great day for ObamaCare or for ObamaCare sign-ups.

A quick check of all the state Web sites where exchanges have been set up — plus the HealthCare.gov site that will service three-fourths of the country — shows that it was virtually impossible to sign up on the first day.

. . . .

Obama would never have accepted such buffoonish performance from his campaign web sites.

Obamacare is not FEMA dealing with life-threatening storms and unforeseen natural disasters. Today’s Obamacare intro was a predictable event seen years ahead of time. Barack Obama has positioned himself as the champion of “smart government.” Under his watch, we have a shutdown government, because he has failed to take budgeting seriously for five years running, and we have a clown government that can’t even get a website right after having three years to prep the rollout. [Emphasis added.]

Just wait until people get past the enrollment — supposing they ever do — and actually need health care from this monstrosity.

President Obama should get smart. However, Orgasms for Obama, I mean Organizing for Action, seems not to have noticed the problems or to have any idea what smart actions should be taken.