The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Yikes!

A CNN report last night on the upcoming debt ceiling "crisis" accurately presented the following facts: (1) the House of Representatives passed legislation that would raise the debt ceiling, temporarily maintain spending at current levels, and defund Obamacare; (2) with the legislation the U.S. government would be in NO danger of default on its enormous debt and there would be NO government shutdown; (3) the House of Representative's bill has been passed along to the Senate who are expected to reject it, and (4) the Senate democrats were acting in support of Barack Obama, who has indicated the he would (a) not negotiate with the GOP and (b) veto any GOP legislation that crossed his desk.

Immediately after the report, CNN's Anderson Cooper and other Obama trained media hamsters parroted Obama's mendacious talking points by discussing how the GOP was putting the federal government at risk, that the GOP were "anarchists" who didn't care that seniors wouldn't get the social security checks and that soldiers wouldn't get paid. There was only one problem. The report that preceded their biased and inaccurate discussion indicated that none of their claims were true.

Fact: The current GOP legislation funds the government and raises the debt ceiling. It would appear that it is the Democrats who seem anxious to shut the government down and ruin our credit rating. Their lock-step support of the "Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) has forced them to put the operations of government at risk. They also have an option to meet in conference committee and negotiate an equitable solution to the significant disagreements between the Democrats and the GOP. But equitable and negotiate are two words that are verboten in the Obama era.

Rather than sitting down and negotiating with the Speaker of the House, Barack Obama seems anxious to blow things up. He's confident that his charisma will enable him and his media acolytes to spin a shut down as the GOP's fault—even though the GOP has a bill on the table to keep the government open. He might be right, but it's a sad commentary on the man who was re-elected president.


Glen Reynolds comments:
So the Republican-controlled House of Representatives -- with the help of a couple of Democrats -- has voted to defund ObamaCare. In response, President Obama, declaring that the Republicans are "trying to mess with me," has accused the House of trying to shut down the government …

It's also sadly typical that Obama sees this debate as being all about him. The Republicans aren't trying to overturn a deeply unpopular bill that was crammed through on a party-line vote despite widespread opposition by Republicans and Democrats. They're "trying to mess with" Obama. It's not about policies or governance, it's about personalities …

ObamaCare has become, if anything, even more unpopular now as costs have risen way beyond projections even as the number of people covered has shrunk to less than half of what was advertised. People are losing their insurance -- or their jobs -- as policies are canceled and employers shift to part-time hiring in order to escape ObamaCare's onerous restrictions. It's no wonder that an NBC poll a week ago found that 45% of U.S. adults say that the Affordable Care Act will make the health care situation in the U.S. worse, while only 23% say the law will make it better. And as ABC notes, currently 52% oppose the law, and, even more striking: "In 16 ABC-Post polls since August 2009, it has never received majority support."
So, Barack Obama and his supporters will shut down the government in an effort to support their fantasy that Obamacare will soon be loved. Loved? Not by the people whose insurance is rising, not by the young people who are being coerced into participating, not by the major unions who are now against the ACA, not by the full-time workers who have been demoted to part time so that their employer can avoid high insurance premiums, not by the legions of unemployed who can't find jobs at small companies that simply don’t want to expand their payroll and in the process incur significant overhead costs. But the President's ego must be served, and fantasy must prevail—even when doing so will create havoc.

We have three more years of this. Yikes!