SHUTDOWN: Snakes In The House

The snake has always been deemed the reptile most associated with evil. I don’t want to sound too biblical but we remember the story of Adam and Eve! So from the very beginning of this Republican ideological conflict within their “Klan” things have intensified since the so-called “Young Guns” arrived. It is obvious they want to destroy America or at least want America to fail, which reminds me of what it must have been like in the years leading to the American Civil War.

This move to shut down the US Government over Obamacare is like “putting pins in a voodoo doll” that looks like President of Obama. By the way, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land and the law takes effect today. This insanity of consequences be damn is just another attempt to damage the legacy of President Obama – if not destroy it. In other words these so-call patriots are nothing more than “terrorists”.

The Tea-party populism has moved quickly to do everything they can to attack and destroy American. Hence, we will see a revolt against the Republican “establishment” or a revolt against anyone who accepts the constraints of a political reality. Conservatives are excommunicated not for holding the wrong convictions but for rational calculations of their convictions.

The U.S. government began a shutdown today for the first time in 17 years after a Congress bitterly divided over President Obama’s signature health-care initiative failed to reach agreement to fund federal agencies. So the so-called “job creators” allowed millions of Americans to be out of work confirms that this is the worst Congress in history. These so-called patriots have declared war on us all.

I don’t like to name names but the generals of the this confederacy have names like Cruz, Boehner, McConnell, Ryan, Cantor, and about twenty crazies hell bent on political disaster have all the virtue of an un-intellectual clown circus.

The impasse means 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed, national parks, monuments and museums, as well as most federal offices, will close. Tens of thousands of air-traffic controllers, prison guards and Border Patrol agents will be required to serve without pay.

In a last-minute ray of hope for active-duty troops, Congress approved and sent to the White House an agreement to keep issuing military paychecks. But Obama warned that the broader economy, which is finally starting to recover from the shocks of the Bush years, would take a substantial hit if congressional gridlock shutters “America’s largest employer.”

“Keeping the people’s government open is not a concession to me. Keeping vital services running and hundreds of thousands of Americans on the job is not something you ‘give’ to the other side. It’s our basic responsibility,” Obama said in a statement Monday evening at the White House.

Privately, senior Republicans predicted that the closure would last at least a week. A fraction of today’s House Republicans were on Capitol Hill in 1995 and 1996 when a Republican-led Congress last shut down the government in a dispute over the budget with a Democratic president. Younger lawmakers don’t remember the pain the shutdown caused constituents, senior and the poor and many of them now question the conventional wisdom that the closures weakened the GOP presidential candidate in 1996 and nearly cost the party control of the House.

So for all of the folks who support those so-called patriots, who wear the funny hats, pointed or otherwise, will now feel the pain of their insanity. So yes, I’ll say these terrorists or teajadists are snakes in the house. And that’s my thought provoking perspective…

THE IMPACT

A War of Their Own

IT HAS COME TO THIS!!! With what most reasonable people perceive as financial Armageddon upon us. The Grand Ol’ Party is really showing the world who the “Real Americans” are and it looks bad. Yesterday, Mr. McCain, the would have been president, called out his conservatives party on their approach to dealing with the great debt ceiling debate. He called their argument “foolish” and “bizarro,” adding that to portray the balanced-budget amendment as a possibility amounts to “deceiving many of our constituents.” He quoted extensively from a Wall Street Journal op-ed that compared tea partyers to “hobbits.”

As children do, the tea party members responded in kind. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) deadpanned that he would “rather be a hobbit than a troll,” while 2010 Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada said “it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land.” Ok, I’m laughing as I wonder if these folks truly understand that this situation is neither a joke nor a Hollywood screenplay. Do they have a clue? Regardless, not only are they mean-spirited – they are childish and immature.

Then there are the pundits who are supposed to have a clue, referred to as the smartest and most astute, are saying that we’re in an epic struggle for the soul of the nation. Charles Krauthammer, for example, argues today that the debt-ceiling debate is but part of a protracted death-match between irreconcilable visions of American political life. He writes:

“We’re in the midst of a great four-year national debate on the size and reach of government, the future of the welfare state, indeed, the nature of the social contract between citizen and state. The distinctive visions of the two parties — social-democratic vs. limited-government — have underlain every debate on every issue since Barack Obama’s inauguration: the stimulus, the auto bailouts, health-care reform, financial regulation, deficit spending. Everything. The debt ceiling is but the latest focus of this fundamental divide.”

Their leader, the Tan Man, complained that Obama moved the goal posts in his negotiations on the debt, but it is the Republicans who are marching these days with goal posts in hand. They want to shrink the size of government dramatically and give the rich more or at least not take anything from them. Then there’s Grover Norquist who has said he would like to see federal spending cut in half to just 10 percent of GDP, and then cut in half again. This is the America they want to see while the meek, poor, and elderly suffer in the name of the Constitution.

Let’s be real, this argument is really about entitlement spending and specifically about how to treat the elderly. That’s where the growth in spending is. “Government” as traditionally construed is something more than a Treasury check going to a retiree. Discretionary spending hasn’t been growing in recent decades. I would bet that, as a percentage of GDP, non-military discretionary spending has been going down in recent decades. This is the war the conservatives already won, circa 1980.

In a recent column, George Will wrote:

“Beneath the tattered, fading banner of reactionary liberalism, Obama struggles to sustain a doomed system. Democrats’ dependency agenda — swelling the ranks of government employees, multiplying government-subsidized industries, enveloping ever-more individuals in the entitlement culture — is buckling under an intractable contradiction: It is incompatible with economic growth sufficient to create enough wealth to feed the multiplying tax eaters.”

Before I continue, lest not forget that God himself told the Tea Party Republicans to lead the country straight into hell. The picture does not get any clearer than that. The influence by their love for the slave owning founding fathers and religion as their Party platform is so very bizarre. With these people every issue be it gun control, abortion, economics or the right to live, their response is the same. "God gives me my rights, and I'm only accountable to Him." Their twisted quasi-religious adherence to a belief that government is bad and all decisions flow from that unalterable belief is a concept that should scare us all.

Then when you factor in the Bachmann’s, DeMint, Palin, Cantor, and the rest of the wing nuts, who all believe the Tea Party has the only thought in this debate that is ruining the country and our democracy. Maybe their leader was right to say to them "Gets your asses in line" but for the reasons of sanity not his wacked out plan. Frankly, this circus atmosphere on display is being viewed by the entire world and is in fact shameful but let’s be very clear as to why this is happening. There are about 30 of these guys and gals in this bucket of crazies out of 433 in the House. The truth is, in this environment, you only need a thimbleful of crazy’s to wreck the whole thing.

Even if the GOP gets their act together and works out a debt ceiling compromise with the president and catastrophe is averted, the world has seen the cracks in America's social fabric and things won't be the same. To be honest, you know you're in trouble when McCain is the voice of sanity. God Bless America.

And that’s my THOUGHT PROVOKING PERSPECTIVE!!!

This is a powerful Video – what do you think?

A War For Your Soul-regular version from Erisai Films on Vimeo.