FSogol
FSogol's Journal"There's Nothing "Partisan" About Trashing the Selfish Extremists Who Just Shut Down Our Government"
From By Henry Blodget originally in Business Insider, reprinted in Slate.
Some excerpts:
"This shutdown, importantly, is not just symbolic. It is forcing hundreds of thousands of Americans to stop working, inconveniencing millions of Americans who depend on government services, hurting the already fragile economic recovery, and disgracing the country in the eyes of the world."
"It is not "partisan" to point out how outrageous and anti-American this behavior is. If a group of extremist Democrats shut down the government over one of their pet issues—gun control, for example, or a non-poverty minimum wage, or universal health care—the country would be justifiably outraged. And what the "Tea Party" Republicans are doing is no different."
"To be clear: The "Tea Party" Republicans are no longer even creating a pretense that their anti-American behavior is about debt or government spending—the issues they staked their last hijacking campaign on. Now, the "Tea Party" hijacking is based solely on their dislike of one law that many other Americans think doesn't go far enough."
Whole article here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/10/01/government_shutdown_tea_party_republicans_are_to_blame.html
"Most media coverage focused on Cuccinelli's tongue-tied difficulty to distance himsef from Cruz."
From a Slate article by By David Weigel, titled, "In Virginia, A Quick Round of Blaming the Other Guy for the Shutdown"
"The moment at last week's Virginia gubernatorial debate that really sent eyebrows raising came when Ken Cuccinelli was asked about Ted Cruz's filibuster (of sorts) of the continuing resolution to fund the government. He was baited by his Democratic rival, Terry McAuliffe, who bellowed that "gridlock, driven by the Tea Party, is once again risking a government shutdown that would be devastating to the Virginia economy." (Democrats are pretty confident that the Tea Party is now a loser for Republicans. Cuccinelli may have been the movement's first winning candidate -- his victory at the 2009 Virginia GOP convention was celebrated by activists waving Gadsden flags.) Most media coverage focused on Cuccinelli's tongue-tied difficulty to distance himsef from Cruz."
Whole article here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/10/01/in_virginia_a_quick_round_of_blaming_the_other_guy_for_the_shutdown.html
He ends it with "It's my favorite example of the transmogrification of shutdown politics, and of how Republicans now work so hard to promise that they would never force a shutdown for ideological reasons because hey don't look over there at Congress!"
Government shutdown threatens romantic wedding by the Jefferson Memorial
"They wanted to marry in the place where they first began to fall in love. So Mike Cassesso and MaiLien Le, classic young Washington strivers who have worked on Capitol Hill and on major political campaigns, scheduled their nuptials for the site of their first date on July 19, 2009: the west lawn of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.
Their 130 guests were already starting to fly in from all over the country for the ceremony this Saturday when they received an ominous e-mail from the National Mall and Memorial Parks permit management office on Monday morning. If the federal government shut down and remained shuttered by the wedding’s 5:30 p.m. start time on Oct. 5, Cassesso and Le and their family and friends would be barred from stepping foot on the property."
Whole WAPO article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/government-shutdown-threatens-romantic-wedding-by-the-jefferson-memorial/2013/10/01/1310011c-2a15-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html?wpisrc=nl_buzz
This is the type of thing that Gingrich didn't expect in 1995 and the type of thing that Cruz, Boehner and company are ignoring now. Americans like their government and parks and want them to operate correctly. This is the type of drip, drip that will kill the tea party in the next few weeks during their grandstanding shutdown.
The GOP's shutdown sham
From a Los Angeles Times Editorial:
"Republicans are holding the government hostage in their battle against healthcare reform.
House Republicans' irresponsible brinkmanship may finally lead to the government shutdown that some of its members have been coveting since they took control of that chamber in 2011. This time, though, the fight hasn't been a battle over spending on federal agencies. It's been a symbolic one over the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. And it's been a sham.
The inconvenient truth for the GOP is that "defunding Obamacare," as the House tried to do, wouldn't stop most of the major provisions of the healthcare law, some of which have already gone into effect. That's because the new insurance rules, premium subsidies and many other features of the law don't rely on discretionary dollars; they're on fiscal autopilot."
Rest of the editorial here:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-shutdown-government-obamacare-20131001,0,1480890.story
Warning: Link contains a picture of a petulant Eric Cantor. Beware!
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