This article from David Weigel of Slate pretty much captures where the Republicans are on Day 5 of their disastrous shut down:
Some Republicans think they turned the tide, or started to, with the mini-CRs. Democrats think that’s short sighted. It’s easy for the GOP to pass a small bill that “funds our veterans.” What happens if the shutdown drags, and voters start hearing about poor families missing out on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families payments or Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency inspectors going off the clock? Is the GOP going to pass a mini-CR for the EPA? For food stamps?
“We’ve gone from ‘defund Obamacare or else’ to ‘oh, you know, we’ve got some favorite agencies we want to fund,’ ” said Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, who represents Washington suburbs and exurbs that used to be competitive for Republicans. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to frame that with voters. How do they do it? So—for a cheap political ad a year from now, they held the government hostage?”
Democrats don’t worry about that. They worry about a “grand bargain” that would ask them to bail out the GOP again and vote for Social Security cuts. But in 2011, conservatives blew up a deal and spared the Democrats that vote. In 2013, conservatives turned the focus to Obamacare, which the party’s never going to undo.
“Dealing with terrorists has taught us some things,” said Washington Rep. Jim McDermott after voting no on one of Thursday’s GOP bills. “You can’t deal with ’em. This mess was created by the Republicans for one purpose, and they lost. People in my district are calling in for Obamacare—affordable health care—in large numbers. These guys have lost, and they can’t figure out how to admit it.” Why would House Democrats give away what the Supreme Court and the 2012 electorate didn’t? “You can’t say, OK, you get half of Obamacare—this isn’t a Solomonic decision,” McDermott said. “So we sit here until they figure out they fuckin’ lost.”
And before some anti-government, anti-A.C.A. GOPer comes here and tells us that a majority of Americans don't like Obamacare, here, for the eleventeenth hundredth time is something they refuse to let sink into their FAUX NOOZ bedeviled brains:
Opinion about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tilts negative in almost all recent polls, although the margin of the negative tilt varies widely.
In Gallup's last poll, 41% approved and 49% disapproved.
The Kaiser Family Foundation's September poll finds a 43% to 39% unfavorable over favorable opinion of the Affordable Care Act.
Of those who have a negative reaction in the Kaiser poll, about 17% (7% of the total sample) said it is because the ACA doesn't go far enough.
Here's more from Gallup on how Americans view the Republican government shut down.
16 comments:
An offshore observer from downunder
offers a concise précis of our
US mess.
Yes, BB-Idaho, a pithy explanation of GOP madness.
And then there's this from Gail Collins of the NYTimes:
"Tea Party politicians have been telling their most fervid constituents that Obamacare will bring the federal government into the nation’s health system, thus wrecking the wonderful coverage they now enjoy with Medicare. Which comes into their homes through the chimney, where it is dropped by free-enterprise storks.
Representative John Culberson of Texas called Obamacare “a violation of our most sacred right as Americans to be left alone.” This was during an interview with Salon, in which Culberson waxed wroth about the whole idea of any government intervention into health care.
The interviewer, Josh Eidelson, asked, “What does that mean for Medicare, then?”
“What does that mean for Medicare? What does that have to do with anything?” Culberson demanded.
So there you are. It’s not easy leading a political movement that believes the federal government is at the core of all our problems while depending heavily on the votes of citizens who get both their retirement money and health care from the federal government."
And the reason Boehnhead won't allow it is that he's afraid of the teabaggers.
The Republicans created this Tea Party monster out of bits and pieces dredged from the sludge at the bottom of the political gene pool, they cultivated it through all the rallies full of misspelled signs depicting Obama as Hitler or as a savage or animal, and now it's completely out of control and they're stuck with it. Unfortunately, so are the rest of us.
Is there anything as exciting as a government shutdown? Not for Tea Party Republicans. As the hours ticked away prior to the first government shutdown in 17 years last night, the nation’s most extreme right-wing legislators were already congratulating themselves on expressing the so-called will of the people by grinding the federal government to a halt. “We’re very excited,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) told the Washington Post. “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.”
Is there anyone as slimey and stupid as Bachmann in the Teabaging Party?
the mini 'CR' offered up by the Re;ublican house are a joke. Just further testimony that they did not think through the full impact of their actions.
Obama is correct. There is, at this stage, nothing further to negotiate. Pass the budget and then follow correct protocol to amendmend, or try to, that which the house feels erroneous.
I am waiting for Boenher to have a Jimmy Stewart moment...and get some principles. There is a man behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain. Maybe two....Karl Rove and Grover Norquist. That is what i THINK.
okjimm, more likely the Koch brothers.
The GOP protects its rich contributors, from Mike Lofgren (a former GOP Congressional staffer who blows the lid off GOP hypocrisy and economic terrorism):
“The party has built a whole catechism on protection and further enrichment of America’s plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obama has accomplished … his $4 trillion deficit reduction package did perform a useful service of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused because, because it could not abide by so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund traders to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops and nurses.”
The situation is far worse than Lofgren states. There’s an estimated $1 trillion in annual tax credits, loopholes, and concessions granted to big business that would close the Federal budget deficit in a minute! The plutocracy has stashed an estimated $20 trillion in overseas bank accounts – assets often illegally hidden from the IRS.
In contrast, the middle class has no special perks or privileges, and wages have remained stuck in stasis for decades. This massive income inequality system has been built into the tax code over time; and any attempt to correct it brings out predictable GOP sloganeering and sneering, such as: “Class warfare,” “Income redistribution,” and “Commie-socialism.”
Enough is enough!!! As Americans are finally waking up to the bullshit, the GOP secretly knows: They have lost (which explains why they are so aggressively doubling down in desperation).
Conservatives have a serious case of the Waaaaaz!
During a debate on CNN about the government shutdown, Amy Kremer of the Tea Party Express exclaimed “I’m tired of hearing that Oh, he [President Barack Obama] was re-elected!”
In other words, quit with the facts and the reality, people! Leave the Tea Party alone! Let them destroy this country because WAAAAA, they hate ObamaCare!
Complete horseshit from the Washington Times:
October 4, 2013
A federal Park Service Ranger admitted being ordered to make life as difficult as possible in order to make Americans feel the most pain as a result of the partial government shutdown brought about by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's refusal to work with Republicans on a plan to fund the government while not funding or delaying parts of Obamacare, the Washington Times reported Thursday.
“We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can," an angry Park Ranger told the Times. "It’s disgusting.”
According to the Times, the Park Service has been shutting down streets "on mere whim and caprice."
The WaTimes doesn't name the park ranger but at the same time doesn't say they need to protect him. We just have to take their word for it.
n a 2008 essay published in Harper's Magazine, historian Thomas Frank linked the Times to the modern American conservative movement, saying:
There is even a daily newspaper—the Washington Times—published strictly for the movement’s benefit, a propaganda sheet whose distortions are so obvious and so alien that it puts one in mind of those official party organs one encounters when traveling in authoritarian countries.
In 2009 the New York Times reported:
With its conservative editorial bent, the paper also became a crucial training ground for many rising conservative journalists and a must-read for those in the movement. A veritable who’s who of conservatives — Tony Blankley, Frank J. Gaffney Jr., Larry Kudlow, John Podhoretz and Tony Snow — has churned out copy for its pages.
Naturally, the Teabaggers eat up every word of anything it publishes.
spot on from Octo //The plutocracy has stashed an estimated $20 trillion in overseas bank accounts – assets often illegally hidden from the IRS. //
Very notably.... Mit 'I-buy-my-sjorts-at-Costco' Romney
Congressman Steve Cohen:
"Republicans are like arsonist who didn't realize there were children & veterans in building they set on fire."
Shaw you can tell your friend who keep spamming your blog that since him and his friends don't care who steals what from other people's IDs and avatars that they condone it. It's fair game, since his kind see theft as a joke. No Big Deal, eh?
G.W., I love your new avatar!
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