Shutdown Supporters, Now That It's All Over But The Crying....

What's mind boggling/telling about this whole clusterfuck is that the ACA didn't have verification before. I'm sure if Nancy Pelosi hadn't f advocated passing the bill to know whats in it, that provision would have been placed in there from the beginning. The fact that someone had to tell the Dems that it would make sense to have verification proves to me that they simply don't care who gets health care, they just want another tax and another government program with massive bureaucracy running wild.

But the Dems agreed to verification, and likely would have without the gun to the head. Verification is a good thing. I'm sure there are other useful modifications, and it would be helpful indeed if Republicans decided on a strategy of fixing rather than destroying. The path is right there, I wonder if they'll take it.

No, what's mind boggling is how little you understand what just happened.

Verification is in there. Verification is happening. It is just that this summer when it became apparent that not all the systems were in place to perform all the checks, parts of the process were postponed by Obama for a year. All this did was tell Obama that he had to make implementing all parts of the verification process a top priority.

Yes, that is correct. I realize that for those living in a far right echo chamber it is hard to accept, but the one Republican concession on Obamacare is to make it more Obamacare.

While this whole debacle does appear to be coming to a close, we should reflect on one very important lesson. Namely: There is no serious argument for Republican governance right now, even if you prefer conservative policies over liberal ones. These people are just too dangerously incompetent to be trusted with power.

A party that is this bad at tactics can't be expected to be any good at policy-making.

Their entire temper tantrum was for NOTHING. Standard and Poors estimated that the government shutdown has taken $24 billion out of the United States economy and shaved at least 0.6 percent off fourth-quarter growth, the ratings agency said in a news release Wednesday.

They gained NOTHING. They made us the laughing stock of the civilized world in that our government is so DISGUSTINGLY INCOMPETENT we can't even keep it open, nor can we guarantee that we will pay our bills when they come due.

Oh, and what changed with the Affordable Care Act? NOTHING. Still going strong. Individual mandate? Still law. Medical device tax? Yep, still there. This whole thing was ostensibly to defund or delay the ACA. Neither was accomplished. They got NOTHING.

The Republican Party destroyed their standing with the American people as a whole. Their approval rating hit historic lows in the past week.

And for WHAT?

Nothing.

That's what.



You. get. nothing.

You get nothing when you try these kinds of tactics. Under the rules of our political system, Republicans are free to go about winning back the support of the people in whatever way they choose, and if they are successful, then they get the right to govern. Until then, they must accept the will of the people, they must respect our system of government (lol, I know), and they need to do their fucking jobs.

I like what he's saying, but he fails to understand that the President is bought as well.

It's funny that you are under the impression that Republicans were responsible for the shutdown. The reason they got nothing is because there are two elitist, gutless leaders that either don't know how to negotiate or don't care to negotiate.

@Drew J, your post assumes Republicans are even interested in policy making. I wouldn't bet on that.

Because they where....

Yup!! Conservatives here never do that. Just look at all the threads liberals here started after the Trayvon Martin verdict!


... Oh wait...

I honestly think that's the biggest problem. They're all bought and it has gotten an order of magnitude worse since the Citizens United case got rid of all campaign finance limits.

Gub'mint lapdogs: did it arouse you when your share of the debt rose to 123k?

Your boys added $24 billion to the debt. You must be so proud.

Not only that, but the past several years of crisis after crisis after crisis may be hindering our economic growth.

I wrote this on another forum a couple of months ago, but it's still pretty relevant:

A lot of debt-phobes like to talk about the national debt as though it's a credit card. Imagine a credit card debt at 78% of your annual income. That would indeed be much too high. But what if the debt is more like a mortgage? As in backed by tangible assets with enduring value? Then 78% isn't bad at all. Lots of people have mortgage debt balances that are several multiples of a year's worth of earnings. The debt is not a problem, especially not right at this time.

Unless you suck your mortgage should be ever decreasing...not ever increasing.

I've always felt that the time for debt reduction is during economic boom. The time you need to run in deficit is during economic downturns. But what baffles me the most is that no one seemed to get serious about the deficit until Obama was elected. We got ourselves involved in 2 wars and cut taxes in the previous decade, and apparently that was fine, but the time we actually needed to stimulate the economy, it became time to get serious about the deficit. It baffles me.

Sure. Because my time is limited, I need to pay down my debt. But national governments have a perpetual time line, so there is no such stricture. There are two questions to consider: 1) can we afford the service; 2) does our ability to afford the service improve or decline? If we can afford it, things are fine for the short term. If it is likely to become more affordable over time, things are really good for the long term.

The United States isn't Greece, we have strong underlying resources to back our debt, an ability to service it in the present, and a long term likelihood for growth that will make it even more affordable in the future. We do not have a debt crisis.

True, but the .gov isn't planning on retiring and moving to Florida any time soon.

The goal of the TEA Party and right wing radicals generally has nothing to do with the debt. It's to eliminate the social safetey net. "Starve the beast" is what it's called.

Other things are just a means to that end.

What most of us "right wing radicals" want is major reforms to those programs so that they are actually a "social safety net" and not a lifestyle. Also, they they are not handed out to people who have no business getting them...ie illegal aliens.

They probably brought her outside and sent her to her shrink who gave her some Xanax. Had she been saying "Praise To Allah!" or something similar, she'd have been charged with terrorism, strip-searched and questioned for 8 hours.

Not in this PC climate.

PC is only extended to Christians.

For their soft, luxurious fur?

Then how is it that we keep hitting debt "ceilings"? Granted, if they keep getting raised indefinitely, they're not actually debt ceilings in any meaningful way -- so what's the point of setting them in the first place? Why bother? If we don't have a debt problem, and if the debt limit is just going to go up every single time it's met, what's the point?

Yup. Because there's a difference between increasing your debt to invade and then rebuild other countries, and increasing your debt to pay for things in your own country. It's also foolish to cut taxes at the same time you're increasing spending.

Were the Democrats against the bailouts and stimulus when Bush was running things?

This reminds me of something I've been thinking of during this whole thing.

I gotta be honest, I don't think the Republicans give a shit about fixing healthcare. Had this system been proposed by Mitt Romney, I doubt we'd have seen half the backlash. I say this because the ACA was passed 3 years ago, and most people can agree that it has issues. Yet there haven't really been any counter proposals from the Republicans on how to fix it, and it's not like it would be hard to come up with some better proposals.

How do you fix an epidemic? By making the disease more effective, or by getting rid of the disease? Obamacare is a disease. You don't fix it -- you eradicate it.