Government Closed, Sun Still Expected To Rise

[Townsend]

No Quick Deal, but Offer by G.O.P. on Debt Shifts the Tone

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/us/politics/debt-limit-debate.html?_r=0#!

WASHINGTON — President Obama and House Republicans failed to reach agreement on a six-week extension of the nation's borrowing authority during a meeting Thursday at the White House, but the two sides kept talking, and the offer from politically besieged Republicans was seen as an initial step toward ending the budget standoff.

[heironymouspasparagus]

That's what is so infuriating to me. We get nothing but benefit from our current arrangement, and you're right, it will have to end someday. I'm not really sure why some seem so hell bent on ending it this month. And in a sudden and destructive manner rather than a calm and orderly manner, no less.

I have been talking about that particular thing the whole time I have been here....  R  W  R  E  !!


The whole package of apocalyptic doomsday promotion...bring on the Armageddon!!

[nathanm]

I am so tired of these "what would you cut" posts. It has been talked to death in here.

Ok, what would you keep?

[heironymouspasparagus]

WTH you talking about? I SUPPORTED Obama on Syria. I am just fed up over the damned fear mongering/crisis-driven government. Let the bad happen.

Kind of goes to the whole question - WHY would you have support that?  Are you one of those truly crazed extremists in this country that somehow believes that literally supporting the SAME people in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and now Syria - who have been killing our kids in Iraq and Afghanistan - versus just leaving the previous clowns alone is a good thing??

The story of Iraq, too.

I have never known a Catholic that was trying to "push" God into a corner to force His hand at bringing on Armageddon.  I guess they gotta exist...just never knew one....

Yep...let the bad happen...it's always the bottom half that takes the brunt - takes the biggest hit... "let them eat cake" !!

[AquaMan]

This blunt instrument of using the debt and the ACA to selfishly hold up the government needs to end. One way of doing that is to give them plenty of rope.
Once the crazies realize this tactic is too expensive to utilize they will move on. They have some masochistic delusions that they are helping us all by punishing most of us.

[guido911]

Once the crazies realize this tactic is too expensive to utilize they will move on. They have some masochistic delusions that they are helping us all by punishing most of us.

Who knew aquaman was against Obamacare...

[AquaMan]

Comprehension problems still nagging at you eh? Or are you using the Texas/Palin/TP reality conversion kit. Free wherever you find good propaganda. 

[guido911]

Comprehension problems still nagging at you eh? Or are you using the Texas/Palin/TP reality conversion kit. Free wherever you find good propaganda. 

My comprehension problems? Or your failure to see the irony. And a positive note, folks in here are no longer hanging Oklahoma out to dry and instead blaming Texas.

[Gaspar]

Defying authority is required when authority becomes corrupted.

Veterans (or as John Kerry calls them, "war criminals") tearing down the barrycades at the war memorials this weekend.  Makes you proud to be an American!

[Townsend]

This blunt instrument of using the debt and the ACA to selfishly hold up the government needs to end. One way of doing that is to give them plenty of rope.
Once the crazies realize this tactic is too expensive to utilize they will move on. They have some masochistic delusions that they are helping us all by punishing most of us.

Government shutdown backfires? GOP says Democrats now guilty of extortion

http://news.yahoo.com/government-shutdown-backfires-gop-says-democrats-now-guilty-133154607.html

For the past few weeks, Democrats from the president on down decried Republican tactics on a potential government shutdown as political hostage-taking on a par with "extortion." So, of course, now that the Republicans are on the run, the Democrats are doing the exact same thing in reverse.

They're saying they want to undo major part of the sequester budget cuts as part of a deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit. It's as though Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada has finally sensed his moment to destroy that product of tea party Republicanism once and for all. One might not even be surprised if "Ride of the Valkyries" was booming from his Senate office this morning.

That is how dramatically the story in Washington has flipped during the two weeks since the government shutdown.
On Oct. 1, the Republicans were on the offensive – or at least thought they were. Sen. Ted Cruz (R) of Texas was at the front of the column, and the cry coming from his ranks was that they would stop at nothing to gut President Obama's signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act.
A government shutdown? A hit to the credit rating of the United States if Congress refused to raise the debt ceiling? Either was preferable to a new government entitlement that they said would erode American liberties and drive the country further into a potentially fatal debt crisis.

Inevitably, they failed, because they had nowhere near the numbers in Congress to win, and – despite their rhetoric – only a minority of Americans wanted to repeal Obamacare. Americans had already decided that question in the 2012 elections, and Republicans' failure to accept that rebuke meant they would receive it again this month. The Democrats, who knew all this, had not the slightest intention of yielding.

But now, members of the Republican establishment have abandoned their tea party insurgents for a more moderate position: They've offered to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling – both only temporarily – so that Congress can discuss reforming Social Security and Medicare.

Democrats, surely would wish for more. A temporary reprieve still holds a hint of "extortion" and still keeps Washington bumping from one fiscal crisis to the next. But, these days, such is the stuff of which compromises are made.

But Senator Reid is having none of it. He knows that polls show most Americans blaming Republicans for the current gridlock. And he knows that the Republican establishment absolutely, positively does not want the government to default on its debt. The tea party, with its grass-roots outrage, might be willing to stay firm on its debt-limit resolve, but establishment Republicans are much more likely to listen to Wall Street, and a failure to raise the debt limit could mean global financial chaos. Not good for 401(k)s.

So Reid is trying his hand at the "extortion" game. The Republicans can only save themselves if they get out of this mess, and he's the only Democrat in Congress who has the power to let that happen. So far, he's letting them dangle.

He now wants the Republicans to roll back parts of the sequester budget cuts agreed to during the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis. The sequester, however, happens to be the only tangible success of Congress's tea party era. Asking the Republicans to go back on the sequester cuts would be like asking the Democrats to go back on, say ... Obamacare.

Sound familiar?

"There's no question that House Republicans overreached in trying to use this negotiation to repeal a [health care] bill that was very central to the president's agenda,'' said Sen. Bob Corker (R) of Tennessee, according to The Wall Street Journal. "The same thing is happening on the Democratic side among Senate leadership as pushed by the White House. They're trying to now undo a law put in place in 2011, the Budget Control Act.''

Just like the Republicans didn't have the numbers in Congress to defund Obamacare, the Democrats don't have the numbers to eviscerate the sequester. Not if the Republicans hold firm as the Democrats have. And it's hard to imagine the Republican-controlled House surrendering so meekly, even in its current beaten and battered state.

In all likelihood, Reid is merely pressing his advantage to gain as much leverage as he can. An agreement before Oct. 17, the day Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling or risk default, now seems inevitable.

The real lesson here, it seems, is one of political perspective. In D.C., "extortion" is just politics by another name.

[Conan71]

That's funny, the author of that screed seems to think the POTUS election in 2012 was a referendum on Obamacare.  Not even close.  He won because Obama's campaign resorted to portraying Romney as an out-of-touch elitist, tax cheat, and someone who had destroyed thousands and maybe even millions of jobs in his days as a vulture kapitalist.

Never mind that description could apply to Obama just as easily. 

[heironymouspasparagus]

Defying authority is required when authority becomes corrupted.

Veterans (or as John Kerry calls them, "war criminals") tearing down the barrycades at the war memorials this weekend.  Makes you proud to be an American!

I certainly do like that....  All rules are meant to be gotten around!!

Does that sound a little bit anarchistic?  Or just plain ole' Libertarian-ish?

[heironymouspasparagus]

That's funny, the author of that screed seems to think the POTUS election in 2012 was a referendum on Obamacare.  Not even close.  He won because Obama's campaign resorted to portraying Romney as an out-of-touch elitist, tax cheat, and someone who had destroyed thousands and maybe even millions of jobs in his days as a vulture kapitalist.

You mean by telling the truth... and most of the American people understood and voted accordingly... what a unique circumstance!!

[Gaspar]

That's funny, the author of that screed seems to think the POTUS election in 2012 was a referendum on Obamacare.  Not even close.  He won because Obama's campaign resorted to portraying Romney as an out-of-touch elitist, tax cheat, and someone who had destroyed thousands and maybe even millions of jobs in his days as a vulture kapitalist.

v.s. The Never-ending Jobstopper.

[Townsend]

That's funny, the author of that screed seems to think the POTUS election in 2012 was a referendum on Obamacare.  Not even close.  He won because Obama's campaign resorted to portraying Romney as an out-of-touch elitist, tax cheat, and someone who had destroyed thousands and maybe even millions of jobs in his days as a vulture kapitalist.

Never mind that description could apply to Obama just as easily. 

Perception.  It's who you decide to favor or to whom you listen.

Romney had too many cra-cra's stumping for him only when they decided they had to.  It was horribly fake.  They hated him until he was the candidate.

Not enough people fell for the banana in the tailpipe to get him elected.

I had no dog.  My choice was made by voting against the people I saw as worse.  I knew we'd have a horrible outcome here in Oklahoma.