Let’s see; no one died in the traffic jam. People had to wait in their air-conditioned and heated vehicles. How terribly heinous.
On the other hand, there is apparently no pettiness in “what difference does it make,” the lies of Mr Obama or the governmental closure of monuments, parks, and pull-off areas for photographs on state property of federal points of interest.
It’s Christie, so it must be bad. Obama = good, no matter what he does.
BZ
From the DailyCaller.com:
by Alex Pappas
There’s no actual debt ceiling right now.
The fiscal deal
passed by Congress on Wednesday evening to re-open the government and get around the $16.4 trillion limit on borrowing doesn’t actually increase the debt limit. It just temporarily suspends enforcement of it.
That means Americans have no idea how much debt their government is going to rack up between now and Feb. 7, when the limits are supposed to go back into place and will have to be raised.
There is no dollar amount set for how much debt the government can accumulate between now and then. The suspension strategy was employed first earlier this year during previous fiscal battles in Congress.
The nasty little truth that no one will tell you. Plus: what’s actually in the bill?
Looks like the “stopgap bill” is packed with pork.
From the WashingtonTimes.com:
Buried inside the new stopgap spending bill are several goodies, including nearly quadrupling the maximum price of a dam project on the Ohio River that is turning into a boondoggle — up to nearly $3 billion.
The bill also includes $174,000 of taxpayer money for the widow of the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg. The death gratuity, which has been paid to widows of other lawmakers in the past, raised hackles since Lautenberg was a multimillionaire, while the government is $16.7 trillion in debt.
Are you serious? Are the Demorats and the Republicans pressing porkish fluff into what is perceived as an Emergency Bill to “keep America solvent”?
In one word: yes.
Thank God there’s a semblance of sanity within:
But lawmakers did nix one provision that was in an early draft posted online — they canceled authority to build another Coast Guard cutter, as a cost of nearly $600 million.
Wow. I was sweating that one. Far be it from us to approve the construction of something as trite and unneeded as another stupid and unnecessary USCG ship.
Included in the measure is money to pay back all of the states that signed agreements funding national parks within their borders during the shutdown — with interest.
Payback with interest. How generous. With YOUR hard-earned money.
The measure also repays all federal employees for the days the government was shutdown, including the hundreds of thousands who were furloughed and didn’t work.
Hello? Government Welfare? Getting paid to not work? What kind of a wonderful deal is that?
It also:
-Lets the Defense Department continue assisting African forces pursue Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group accused of atrocities.
Right. In a “last ditch moment” bill designed to keep the government running.
My Congressman, Tom McClintock, wrote:
The debt limit exists for a simple reason: to assure that public debt isn’t recklessly piled up without Congress periodically acknowledging it and addressing the spending patterns that are causing it. If a debt limit increase is supposed to be automatic, as the President suggests, there really is no purpose to it.
A new dimension has now appeared in this discussion. Unlike every one of his predecessors, this President has vowed that unless Congress unconditionally raises the debt limit, the United States will default on its sovereign debt.
The President has been ruthless and vindictive in the way he has handled the shutdown, refusing House leadership’s offers along the way. I now believe that this President would willfully act to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless the Congress acquiesces to all of his demands. His every statement and action is consistent with this conclusion.
If the Republicans acquiesce, the immediate crisis will quickly vanish, credit markets will calm and public life will return to other matters. But a fundamental element of our Constitution will have been destroyed and a perilous era will have begun.
And that did occur. In the hindsight of this article, the Republicans did in fact “cave.”
The power of the purse will have shifted from the representatives of the people to the executive, in which the President sets spending levels and vetoes any bill falling short of his demands. Whenever a deadline approaches, one house can simply refuse to negotiate with the other until Congress is faced with the Hobson’s choice of a shut-down or a default.
But here’s the point:
The nation’s spending will again dangerously accelerate, the deficit will again rapidly widen, and the economic prosperity of the nation will continue to slowly bleed away.
This impasse may have started as a dispute over a collapsing health program but it has now taken on the dimensions of a constitutional crisis.
You and I both know this is true.
BZ
P.S.
McClintock and Sean Hannity audio here.
McClintock and Mark Levin audio here.
From USAToday.com:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial’s closing under the government shutdown.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were among those who gathered Sunday morning, along with former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, according to WTOP radio. Cruz said President Obama is using veterans as pawns in the shutdown.
“Tear down these walls,” the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang God Bless America and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza.
[Video deleted due to BZ‘s Abrasion Factor: “I couldn’t shut off auto-play.”]
Jeff Thompkins of New York told WRC-TV he was there because people fight and died for the freedom to visit public spaces and to protest.
“Our constitutional rights are being taken away,” Thompkins said. “People made the ultimate sacrifice, and they should be open to the public, open to everyone to come down here and see this. This is ridiculous. This is not just and not fair. It’s just not fair.”
Further, from Breitbart.com:
To me, it’s not the White House any more; it’s the Spite House.
From TheBlaze.com:
And, courtesy of the NPS: they brought their finest armored vehicle for the horribly unctuous and rioting Conservative crowds tearing apart memorials and defecating on cop cars and overturning parked vehicles and lighting trash on fire and burning buildings.
Oh. Wait. Sorry. That was Occupy Wall Street. My apologies. Got the two crowds confused for a moment.
But in any event, had the government wanted to plow into crowds of non-violent protesters, it certainly could have. That’s the point. They were ready, by God.
Want to see what’s really happening? How about this:
Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin dare to pay homage to the American flag.
“Trail closed.” Yeah. I bet it was a piece of cake to drag that sign up there.
NPS guard spreads his arms not in embracement, but in a “get the hell out, yes, all of you” type of gesture seen recently in DC. Sorry, not a real cop.
Yes, those heinous and riotous Conservative coneheads, daring to raise a voice up and generally spoiling things for Leftists and the Obama Administration.
Damn them.
BZ
From Forbes.com:
By Paul Kengor
The behavior of the National Park Service during President Obama’s shutdown campaign has been shocking. As has been widely reported, Park Service employees have been told to make life as uncomfortable as possible for people, and have flourished in that endeavor. They have acted unprofessionally as a partisan and ideological arm of the White House and its campaign.
Quite correct, as I wrote here and here and here.
If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, then just click Google GOOG +0.55% and start searching. There are unfortunate first-person accounts everywhere. Among the worst examples was a case innocently covered by a small Massachusetts newspaper that reported on a group of tourists traveling to Yellowstone National Park. The tourists, by no means a bunch of Tea Partiers, described the Park Service as “Gestapo”-like in its tactics.
Some people disagree with that term. I, myself, as a cop, do not. When you behave like a police thug, you will be perceived as a police thug. Let me be blunt: Park Rangers are not cops. They do not handle 40 calls for service in a shift. They do not have to be beholden to the CAD, to the surrounding units, to people who are fighting every day, every shift, every hour, and you are expected to solve it all.
To continue:
That, of course, is an exaggeration. But the mere fact that a group of apolitical citizens would invoke such hyperbole to describe how they were treated really says something.
And that is a heart-slicing point. But accurate. When you lock people up in a hotel, when that occurs, you’re a thug.
As the Weekly Standard wrote:
“People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”
And that is the point precisely.
The Obama Administration went clearly and overtly OUT of its way in order to frustrate and anger and inconvenience American Taxpayers who have a right to see and visit the venues their dollars BOUGHT.
And a great point of the article:
The beauty of privatizing management rather than ownership is that ownership is permanent but management is not. This means that if one management group doesn’t perform up to expectations, a new one can be hired. The hiring process should always be regularly competitively contracted. This “competitive bidding” process keeps the current management group on its toes and accountable. If it performs badly, it can be fired and replaced—unlike the current group of government employees running the National Park Service, which is a protected class with a monopoly on its service.
But the final paragraph is the most proper and poignant:
This thought will anger NPS employees. Well, for that, they can thank White House schemers for overplaying their heavy hand and unwittingly shedding ominous light on the abusive possibilities of this agency. That’s not a sentiment that the president and allies intended to foster when they began agitating and orchestrating their shutdown campaign. Rather than convincing us of the alleged evils of congressional Republicans, they’ve unveiled the roguish tendencies of some federal employees who blindly follow orders. Let’s respond by taking power away from those employees, so this cannot happen again. Easily maneuvered into providing propaganda for a president or party, these NPS workers have proven themselves unworthy of the mission entrusted to them. They are the embodiment of the dangers of unaccountable, big government.
Consequences, ladies and gentlemen. Consequences.
BZ
From Breitbart.com:
11 Oct 2013, 8:52 AM PDT 4158 post a comment
No more words need be related from the article. That says it all.
Just now, from AP.org:
WASHINGTON (AP) — With time running short, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner accelerated efforts Friday to prevent the U.S. Treasury from default and end a partial government shutdown that stretched into an 11th day. The latest impacts: New aircraft grounded, military chaplains silenced and a crab harvest jeopardized in the Bering Sea.
After four years of trillion-dollar deficits, the 2013 federal budget shortfall is expected to register below $700 billion, but Republicans say more cuts are essential. At the same time, the nation’s debt is rising inexorably — the reason for the effort to raise borrowing limit to cover it. The debt was $10.6 trillion when Obama took office during the worst recession in decades, and has grown by $6.1 trillion in the years since.
What is it that I’ve said many times? The best predictor of future performance is past behavior?
BZ
P.S.
Quote for the week: “Liberals want the government to be your mommy. Conservatives want government to be your daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult.”