Shutdown Hangover

With just nine days until we default on our debt for the very first time in our history, the media is trying to be the first to inform us as to the reason.  

The New York Times,Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s New York Times article also reports that the" David and Charles Koch, and their affiliated groups, threw some pretty big bucks around. Freedom Partners distributed $200 million to various “grassroots” anti-Obamacare groups. Meanwhile, the Americans for Prosperity plunked down $5.5 million for anti-Obamacare television ads. Freedom Partners also paid an additional $115 million to the egregiously misnamed Center to Protect Patient Rights. Meanwhile, the youthful and comparatively thrifty Generation Opportunity spent a scant $740 thousand on their creepy Uncle Sam ad. in hopes of scaring us away from Obamacare’s state health insurance exchanges.”

Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell had another theory.  He said that the GOP was not that dumb, and this is an effort to destroy the imperial presidency, which they started with Richard Nixon.  Senator Ted Cruz is being described as a Sarah Palin with a brain, so he used his talent and went around the country pledging to destroy Obamacare to the delight of the base.  Now, you have Republicans wanting to vote for a clean CR, but they are afraid of being exposed as being a RHINO and getting a challenger from the right.  The GOP does not see a clear path to the presidency anytime in the future, so the only thing they have left is to destroy President Obama and his agenda.  The reason their initial plan failed was that President Obama stood his ground, and did not negotiate with the hostage takers.  This left the tea party dumbfounded, so they came up with this “the president won’t negotiate” ploy to get sympathy for their effort.  According to latest polls, the GOP is getting a majority of the blame for the shutdown.

That was fairly heated but informative discussion about the shutdown on this morning’s episode of “Morning Joe.” The cast of characters included Carl Bernstein, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Nicole Wallace, Matt Lewis,Eugene Washington and Bill Kristol.  It became pretty evident that Bill Kristol does not like President Obama one bit, saying that he was the exact opposite of FDR.  Eugene Washington reminded Mr. Kristol, that the same GOP demonized FDR while he was trying to implement Social Security.  Bill Kristol shot back “ FDR was not at 45% during this time of his presidency.” Well, that’s because a lot more people were democrats back then. 

 Matt Lewis said that young evangelicals were no longer following the GOP because of their views on the social issues.  He also said that President Obama Hillary Clinton followed the philosophy of Noam Chomsky, who wrote a book (game palm) which preached hate and promoted ideas on how to demonize your opponent.  No one on the panel, mentioned that the GOP had Lee Atwater doing the same for them.

Carl Bernstein kept Nicole Wallace in check throughout the segment by refusing to let her say that Obamacare was a government-run health care system.  Joe Scarborough tried to make the best use of Mika running into some Democrats who did not like Obamacare.  She had to explain that the people she talked with were angry with Congress, the shutdown, and Obamacare was just thrown in with it.

We will be the losers if our country defaults or even appears to be defaulting.  My IRA will lose value and our Social Security checks might be delayed but that’s minor compared to people who would lose their jobs.  This country will lose any recovery gains that we have been making..  A default is a lot more than 535 winners and losers.