Tuesday, April 25, 2017

A Looming Government Shutdown? It's Like Old Times

Ah, gee.  It's like old times, gang.  We haven't had a pending fake shutdown in forever!  Gosh, it must have been back when the Administration Party and "Party of No" wore different tags.  So long ago... It was September of 2016.  I can barely remember that.  Do you recall where you were?  Do you even remember how old you were?  Someday, we'll all talk about the great government shutdown of 2017, too.  At this rate, it'll be around a year from now. 

As always, this is a bunch of melodramatic theater; made-up crap so that they can avoid doing their real job (creating and passing actual budgets) and instead pass their Continuing Resolutions, which (IMO) is done for that great DC buzzword Plausible Deniability.   
 
At least this time, they're not invoking the mythical debt ceiling.  As I've said more times than I can recall, we don't have a debt ceiling.  It has never, once in history, been lowered.  It has never, once in history, not been raised.  Once or twice, it was held steady for a few extra weeks, but it has always been raised.

If I recall correctly, the last time they actually went though the silly government shutdown ritual was 2013. 
Back in October 2013, Democrats and Republicans fought over the implementation of parts of the Affordable Car Act and the debt ceiling. The sides couldn’t agree on a continuing resolution to fund federal government operations, and the federal government saw a 16-day shutdown as a result.
Obama - vindictive, obnoxious little prick that he is - made a point of shutting down things that were popular, such as public lands, memorials and parks which cost more to put roadblocks and barricades on than to leave open.  WWII veterans were blocked from visiting their memorial.   Classy things like that.

Sorry if I seem jaded, I just think it's kabuki theater; brinksmanship so that the Evil party can show they're doing something to stop the Stupid party, and the Stupid party misreading the public's contempt for the situation that causes these arguments. 
The very last line in this cartoon from VirtualShackles.com (which I've used multiple times) sums it up perfectly.  Paraphrasing to fit the situation  "Just sit on the agreement a bit longer so we look like heroes." 


2 comments:

  1. unknown to most, during that 2013 shutdown, 600k veterans showed up to insure ww2 vets got to see their monument before they died and in doing so very nearly staged a coup. they tore down the barriers and marched them down to the white house, where apon the ss spirited obammy out the back door via marine1. a hundred more yards and we'd have restored the republic....round two?

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    1. ...marched them down to the white house, where apon the ss spirited obammy out the back door via marine1.

      That's the only part of that story I'd never heard. Very interesting!

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