Harry Reid and Barack Obama want a government shutdown.

[mercury14]

Did you read through the code? We used to have a term for really fucked up coding techniques, 'spaghetti code'.

ObamaCode

The closest I can come in describing that shit is 'stream of consciousness' coding. $650 million for that crap?

Ishmael

And you know what? If the Republican Party wasn't such a pack of fucked up ideologues intent on kicking their own asses right now, America might actually focus on stories like this.

 

[mercury14]

Ted Cruz Not Wrong About Shutdown Strategy, Says Ted Cruz

by Gary Legum

HA HA. Right off a cliff.One of the most hilarious sideshows of the great SHUTDOWNGHAZI!!!11!! has been the sight of Republicans tripping over their own dicks to spin some very unfavorable poll numbers in favorable ways. Yesterday it was pre-ferment sourdough starter Erick Erickson dropping some phat derp about how poll numbers showing the GOP was not getting stomped like an ant hill in the path of a four-year-old geeking out on Adderall meant the party was actually “winning” the public opinion war over the shutdown. It is unknown if Erick had yet seen the Gallup poll that gave the Republicans the lowest approval rating that either party had ever received since Gallup started polling party favorability in 1992. No doubt he would find a way to spin that positively: “Hey, we’re still more popular than Roger Goodell and scabies put together!”

Also giving poll spinning the old college try on Wednesday was Ted Cruz. Last week Ted had walked into the weekly Senate Republican lunch unaware that the menu consisted of his own ass, skinned, filleted and laid out on a platter for the rest of the caucus.

Read more at http://wonkette.com/531183/ted-cruz...wn-strategy-says-ted-cruz#jLC8dGUSGqSHcF53.99

 

[phrodeau]

At least we have proof positive that Republicans can actually accomplish something. They can surf the internet and overload a government website.

 

[mercury14]

Kentucky's exchange is signing up 1,000 people per day....

http://medcitynews.com/2013/10/kentucky-enrolled-7000-people-health-insurance-via-kynect/

 

[RobDownSouth]

And you know what? If the Republican Party wasn't such a pack of fucked up ideologues intent on kicking their own asses right now, America might actually focus on stories like this.

The irony is delicious.

Had Republicans not opted for their scorched-earth shutdown, I'm sure we'd be seeing a steady stream of Ishmael-esque hand-wringing about how the government can't make a stoopid website work right.

 

[mercury14]

Not bad for seven days, Kentucky.

Governor Steve Beshear's Communications Office
3.1 Million Page Views; 155,000 prescreenings on kynect
Press Release Date: Monday, October 07, 2013
Contact Information: Kerri Richardson
Terry Sebastian
502-564-2611


209 small businesses started applications for employee coverage during first week of operation

FRANKFORT, Ky. – During the first week of open enrollment, almost 175,000 people clicked on Kentucky’s Health Benefit Exchange, kynect.ky.gov, to get accurate information about affordable health insurance.

Visitors have viewed more than 3.1 million webpages on kynect since the state’s online health benefit exchange launched Oct. 1.

Nearly 7,000 Kentuckians and families now have new affordable health insurance that will begin Jan. 1, 2014, thanks to kynect.

Below statistics reflect activity on kynect as of 2 p.m. Eastern time today:

174,442 unique visitors to kynect.ky.gov; viewing 3,138,758 webpages.
155,016 people conducted prescreenings to determine qualifications for subsidies, discounts or programs like Medicaid.
22,053 applications for health care coverage have been started; 14,755 are completed.
6,946 individuals and/or families are enrolled in new affordable health care coverage.
209 small businesses have started applications for health insurance for employees.
28,462 calls managed by kynect contact center at 1-855-4kynect (1-855-459-6328).

 

[landslider2000]

Depending on sources, about 83 percent of the fed govt may be open.

Hardly scorched earth; more like a slice of burned toast.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Depending on sources, about 83 percent of the fed govt may be open.

Hardly scorched earth; more like a slice of burned toast.

What sources would those be?

Don't worry, I don't expect you to actually produce them.

 

[RobDownSouth]

What sources would those be?

Don't worry, I don't expect you to actually produce them.

It's Byron York's talking point of the day over at NRO: "nanner, nanner, only 17% anyway...we win! we win, dammit!"

Personally, I'm quite enjoying the increasing stench of desperation from the usual suspects here. The "flop sweat" from Landslider alone makes me think this has all been worth it.

 

[mercury14]

Local radio here in Boehner's district is running ads to collect money and signatures to fire Boehner....

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

At his news conference where he again vowed, no negotiations until I win, Barry lamented the canceling of his trip to Asia (Hawaii?) because of the importance of eye-to-eye contact in negotiations...


Maybe he should demand they surrender first?

Meanwhile, back in the reality-based world...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BWWNEN1CAAAeTHF.png

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Did you read through the code? We used to have a term for really fucked up coding techniques, 'spaghetti code'.

ObamaCode

The closest I can come in describing that shit is 'stream of consciousness' coding. $650 million for that crap?

Ishmael

No. I know the crap I'll get after my experience with perg and the glowball warning code.

We deal with True Believers. They want more government and they want it now.

They are going to get it.

:shrug:

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

That conference wouldn't be the same without Barack offering his lips to the nearest pair of needy butt cheeks.

They need to see the top of his head so that they will know how exceptional they are.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

At least we have proof positive that Republicans can actually accomplish something. They can surf the internet and overload a government website.

They could not have done that if the website were ready for the 30 million Obama predicted.

It got nowhere near that.

 

[RobDownSouth]

They could not have done that if the website were ready for the 30 million Obama predicted.

It got nowhere near that.

That website turned out to be a helluva lot more popular than you thought, didn't it, Chief?

OBAMABAD! CLINTONBAD! FIREBAD!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Park Service Paramilitaries
The government has King John’s idea of public lands.
Mark Steyn, NRO
OCTOBER 11, 2013

If a government shuts down in the forest and nobody hears it, that’s the sound of liberty dying. The so-called shutdown is, as noted last week, mostly baloney: Eighty-three percent of the supposedly defunded government is carrying on as usual, impervious to whatever restraints the people’s representatives might wish to impose, and the 800,000 soi-disant “non-essential” workers have been assured that, as soon as the government is once again lawfully funded, they will be paid in full for all the days they’ve had at home.

But the one place where a full-scale shutdown is being enforced is in America’s alleged “National Park Service,” a term of art that covers everything from canyons and glaciers to war memorials and historic taverns. The NPS has spent the last two weeks behaving as the paramilitary wing of the DNC, expending more resources in trying to close down open-air, unfenced areas than it would normally do in keeping them open. It began with the war memorials on the National Mall — that’s to say, stone monuments on pieces of grass under blue sky. It’s the equivalent of my New Hampshire town government shutting down and deciding therefore to ring the Civil War statue on the village common with yellow police tape and barricades.

Still, the NPS could at least argue that these monuments were within their jurisdiction — although they shouldn’t be. Not content with that, the NPS shock troops then moved on to insisting that privately run sites such as the Claude Moore Colonial Farm and privately owned sites such as Mount Vernon were also required to shut. When the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway declined to comply with the government’s order to close (an entirely illegal order, by the way), the “shut down” Park Service sent armed agents and vehicles to blockade the hotel’s driveway.

Even then, the problem with a lot of America’s scenic wonders is that, although they sit on National Park Service land, they’re visible from some distance. So, in South Dakota, having closed Mount Rushmore the NPS storm troopers additionally attempted to close the view of Mount Rushmore — that’s to say a stretch of the highway, where the shoulder widens and you can pull over and admire the stony visages of America’s presidents. Maybe it’s time to blow up Washington, Jefferson & Co. and replace them with a giant, granite sign rising into the heavens bearing the chiseled inscription “DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING DOWN THERE.”

But perhaps the most extraordinary story to emerge from the NPS is that of the tour group of foreign seniors whose bus was trapped in Yellowstone Park on the day the shutdown began. They were pulled over photographing a herd of bison when an armed ranger informed them, with the insouciant ad-hoc unilateral lawmaking to which the armed bureaucrat is distressingly prone, that taking photographs counts as illegal “recreation.” “Sir, you are recreating,” the ranger informed the tour guide. And we can’t have that, can we? They were ordered back to the Old Faithful Inn, next to the geyser of the same name, but forbidden to leave said inn to look at said geyser. Armed rangers were posted at the doors, and, just in case one of the wily Japanese or Aussies managed to outwit his captors by escaping through one of the inn’s air ducts and down to the geyser, a fleet of NPS SUVs showed up every hour and a half throughout the day, ten minutes before Old Faithful was due to blow, to surround the geyser and additionally ensure that any of America’s foreign visitors trying to photograph the impressive natural phenomenon from a second-floor hotel window would still wind up with a picture full of government officials. The following morning the bus made the two-and-a-half-hour journey to the park boundary but was prevented from using any of the bathrooms en route, including at a private dude ranch whose owner was threatened with the loss of his license if he allowed any tourist to use the facilities.

At the same time as the National Park Service was holding legal foreign visitors under house arrest, it was also allowing illegal immigrants to hold a rally on the supposedly closed National Mall. At this bipartisan amnesty bash, the Democrat House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said she wanted to “thank the president for enabling us to gather here” and Republican congressman Mario Diaz-Balart also expressed his gratitude to the administration for “allowing us to be here.”

Is this for real? It’s not King Barack’s land; it’s supposed to be the people’s land, and his most groveling and unworthy subjects shouldn’t require a dispensation by His Benign Majesty to set foot on it. It is disturbing how easily large numbers of Americans lapse into a neo-monarchical prostration that few subjects of actual monarchies would be comfortable with these days. But then in actual monarchies the king takes a more generous view of “public lands.” Two years after Magna Carta, in 1217, King Henry III signed the Charter of the Forest, which despite various amendments and replacement statutes remained in force in Britain for some three-quarters of a millennium, until the early Seventies. If Magna Carta is a landmark in its concept of individual rights, the Forest Charter played an equivalent role in advancing the concept of the commons, the public space. Repealing various restrictions by his predecessors, Henry III opened the royal forests to the freemen of England, granted extensive grazing and hunting rights, and eliminated the somewhat severe penalty of death for taking the king’s venison. The NPS have not yet fried anyone for taking King Barack’s deer, but it is somewhat sobering to reflect that an English peasant enjoyed more freedom on the sovereign’s land in the 13th century than a freeborn American does on “the people’s land” in the 21st century.

And we’re talking about a lot more acreage: Forty percent of the state of California is supposedly federal land, and thus officially closed to the people of the state. The geyser stasi of the National Park Service have in effect repealed the Charter of the Forest. President Obama and his enforcers have the same concept of the royal forest that King John did. The government does not own this land; the Park Service are merely the janitorial staff of “we the people” (to revive an obsolescent concept). No harm will befall the rocks and rivers by posting a sign at the entrance saying “No park ranger on duty during government shutdown. Proceed beyond this point at your own risk.” And, at the urban monuments, you don’t even need that: It is disturbing that minor state officials even presume to have the right to prevent the citizenry walking past the Vietnam Wall.

I wonder what those Japanese and Australian tourists prevented from photographing bison or admiring a geyser make of U.S. claims to be “the land of the free.” When a government shutdown falls in the forest, Americans should listen very carefully. The government is telling you something profound and important about how it understands the power relationship between them and you.

The National Park Service should be out of the business of urban landmarks, and the vast majority of our “national” parks should be returned to the states. After the usurpation of the people’s sovereignty this month, the next president might usefully propose a new Charter of the Forest.

Right now, the Democrats are in full celebratory mode because all that they see is victory; they are winning the debate and by any means necessary. Let us hope Dr. Frankenstein can actually control his monster...

 

[tactful]

Aah, to be an investor when these tense situations come up, especially if you know somebody in politics, wonder if they had their Hot Line to their broker on hold.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Chief, you gotta admit that cut-n-pasting an article that breathlessly declares the National Park Service to be the quote paramilitary wing of the DNC unquote is one of your more whackadoodle positions.

Oh well, you use the smears that the NRO gives you, not the ones that you wish the NRO would give you. Don't worry, friend, you still have "Plausible Deniability".

OBAMABAD! CLINTONBAD! NATIONALPARKSERVICEBAD! FIREBAD!

 

[Adre]

Chief, you gotta admit that cut-n-pasting an article that breathlessly declares the National Park Service to be the quote paramilitary wing of the DNC unquote is one of your more whackadoodle positions.

Oh well, you use the smears that the NRO gives you, not the ones that you wish the NRO would give you. Don't worry, friend, you still have "Plausible Deniability".

OBAMABAD! CLINTONBAD! NATIONALPARKSERVICEBAD! FIREBAD!

I have always suspected those rangers were up to no good. Maybe it's those hats.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Here is where we’re at: The Republican establishment — the guys who told us that for a trillion dollars and several thousand American casualties, we could build “Islamic democracies” that would be reliable U.S. allies in the War on Terror — say it is Ted Cruz who is “delusional” and the effort to stave off Obamacare that is “unattainable.”

These self-appointed sages are, of course, the same guys who told us the way to “stabilize” and “democratize” Libya was to help jihadists topple and kill the resident dictator — who, at the time, was a U.S. ally, providing intelligence about the jihadists using his eastern badlands as a springboard for the anti-American terror insurgency in Iraq. That’s probably worth remembering this week, during which some of our new “allies” abducted Libya’s president while others car-bombed Sweden’s consulate in Benghazi — site of the still unavenged terrorist massacre of American ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials 13 months ago.

Not to worry, though. So successful do they figure the Libyan escapade was, GOP leaders are backing a reprise in Syria. It is there, we learn from a Human Rights Watch report issued this week, that our new “allies,” the al-Qaeda-rife “rebels,” executed a savage atrocity just two months ago. Sweeping into the coastal village of Latakia, the jihadists slaughtered 190 minority Alawites. As the New York Times details, “at least 67 of the dead appeared to have been shot or stabbed while unarmed or fleeing, including 48 women and 11 children.” More that 200 other civilians were captured and are still being held hostage.

So that’s going well.

And, you’ll be pleased to know, supporting the Syrian “rebels” is a high enough priority that it’s not part of the 17 percent of the federal government affected by the “shutdown.” America’s enemies are still receiving taxpayer-funded weapons, so that they can fight America’s other enemies, the Assad regime, to what Washington hopes will be a resounding victory. Er . . . check that — to what the administration hopes will be . . . a tie. The administration also let slip this week that it is arming our preferred jihadists so they can grind to a stalemate with Russia’s preferred jihadists — after all, we wouldn’t want to upset Iran’s ruling jihadists after they’ve just finally deigned to take, yes, a phone call from our pleading president after blowing him off in New York.

Andrew McCarthy, NRO

 

[Ishmael]

Park Service Paramilitaries
The government has King John’s idea of public lands.
Mark Steyn, NRO
OCTOBER 11, 2013




Right now, the Democrats are in full celebratory mode because all that they see is victory; they are winning the debate and by any means necessary. Let us hope Dr. Frankenstein can actually control his monster...

Meanwhile, out here in the west, civil disobedience is going on unchecked and unreported. The National Forest Service (NFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have closed access where they can and issued dire warnings as to the consequences of trespass. None of which are being paid slightest attention to by the residents of the region. I keep waiting for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to road block the reservations and the casinos thereon in order to inflict some real pain. (Most people aren't aware that the Indian reservations are actually federal lands.)

They don't have the manpower to enforce their petty little edicts out of DC and what manpower that does exist within the NFS, BLM, etc. are furloughed and even if brought back to 'on duty' status don't have the willpower to enforce the bullshit. So the King is openly mocked right along with his edicts.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You know, I had that same thought days ago...


When do they block access to the res?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Meanwhile, out here in the west, civil disobedience is going on unchecked and unreported. The National Forest Service (NFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have closed access where they can and issued dire warnings as to the consequences of trespass. None of which are being paid slightest attention to by the residents of the region. I keep waiting for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to road block the reservations and the casinos thereon in order to inflict some real pain. (Most people aren't aware that the Indian reservations are actually federal lands.)

They don't have the manpower to enforce their petty little edicts out of DC and what manpower that does exist within the NFS, BLM, etc. are furloughed and even if brought back to 'on duty' status don't have the willpower to enforce the bullshit. So the King is openly mocked right along with his edicts.

Ishmael

Yes, that's about the limit of conservative civil disobedience...sneakin' into a closed park.

No danger of firehoses being turned on you by a latter-day Bull Connor, nossir.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

See, in order to demonstrate beyond cavil that they were being reasonable, notwithstanding huge objections to the current unsustainable $3.6 trillion trough of federal spending, conservatives volunteered to fund everything the government does except Obamacare. The administration and its scribes shrieked, of course, but there is nothing illegal or unusual about withholding appropriations for federal programs. The government does it every year. Obama himself does it, not just in refusing to enforce the federal immigration laws (to take just one example) but in refusing to execute aspects of Obamacare that harm preferred corporations, union cronies, and Congress.

As expected, our petulant president refused the deal, directing his minions to forge ahead full-speed on his signature socialization of health care — never mind its unpopularity, unconstitutionality, and unreadiness for implementation. Meantime, he schemed to make the shutdown he was forcing as painful as possible. The mainstream-media division of the White House press operation would then, he figured, dutifully blame Republicans for the inevitable public outcry, and the GOP would instantly unfurl its ever-ready white flag.

But instead of waving the flag, House conservatives decided to wave a series of appropriations bills: bite-size portions of the mega-funding the president had already refused — a page out of the Left’s book, offering heartstring-tugging dollars for Head Start, disadvantaged women and children, cancer patients, emergency responders, national-parks operation, city services for Washington residents, etc. Obama thumbed his nose at these House overtures, banked on the press’s refusal to cover them, and went merrily about the business of scalding Republicans over a government shutdown that he was actually causing.

Except Obama let one bill get by: the House’s Pay Our Military Act (POMA). Why? Because Obama needs to hold Senate Democrats in lockstep “no” mode, but even they would not sign on to refusing to pay our troops in wartime. So the bill was passed — proving that, as the delusional Ted Cruz maintains, Democrats can be moved if unified Republicans make the pressure intense enough.

Obama signed POMA even though it cut sharply against his Maximum Pain strategy, but that was because he had his usual Plan B: ignore federal law. As Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky explained on the Corner, administration lawyers issued tortuous guidance, twisting a statute that directs the payment of death benefits into a prohibition against the payment of death benefits. The idea was to add POMA to the community organizer’s propaganda campaign: to show that the Republicans would betray even our fallen heroes if that’s what it took to deny health care to millions of Americans.

Andrew McCarthy, NRO