Just as we were venturing out from the spider holes we were hiding in to escape the Sequester, we’re now confronted with the specter of a full-blown Shutdown Apocalypse. But before you write your “goodbye cruel world” letter, realize that the list of what will still be funded in a shutdown is much longer than the list of what won’t be.
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Nevertheless, inside the beltway you never let a good crisis go to waste. Even a phony one. And the effort to take advantage of such a “crisis” proves over and over again that unintended humor is often the best.
Some examples:
- If the White House claims we need to shut down unattended war memorials to visiting veterans because of the shutdown, then who’s paying for the park rangers and security to put up the barricades and make sure no one gets in?
- Democrats want to exempt big business from Obamacare, but make sure the little guy still faces Obamacare’s dreaded individual mandate. Meanwhile, Republicans are now calling for “fairness” and for the little guy to get the same Obamacare exemption given to Corporate America.
- One of Obummer’s new chief economic advisors is a former executive at Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Yes, I know that has nothing to do with the current contrived crisis, but I just wanted to be able to insert that delicious irony into a column somewhere.
- Ron Paul fought for years to shut the government down. Now Rand Paul is in front of every microphone and camera fighting to keep it open.
- A bunch of Republicans in the U.S. Senate boasting they voted to defund Obamacare right after they voted to fund it.
- A MSNBC anchor attempts to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges live on the air—zany hijinks ensue.
- Speaking of Obamacare, the president says he doesn’t want to delay it (after already delaying it numerous times), but Obamacare went ahead and delayed itself with a plethora of snafus on opening day.
- Is it just me, or did Saturday Night Live do a better job messaging the perils of Obamacare than the Romney-Ryan campaign did last year? There’s no excuse for that. After all, it was originally Romney’s idea, so who better understands what a disaster this will be for the American people?
- Dick Durbin tells Ted Cruz during #MakeDCListen that Republicans should help Democrats fix Obamacare. Um, if Obamacare needed fixing, Dick, why did you vote for it in the first place?
- My beloved mother, a lifelong Democrat opposed to Obamacare, asked me after watching some of Cruz and Mike Lee during #MakeDCListen why our elected officials didn’t know “all that stuff” was in Obamacare? “Didn’t they read the bill before they passed it” she asks. Moving on…
- The government is supposedly shut down, but the IRS can still bend you over and the TSA can still, well, bend you over.
- Before the shutdown began, Democrats said Republicans would be blamed. Rather than changing the subject back to what started this contrived crisis, defunding Obamacare, Republican know-it-alls went on television and preemptively agreed with the Democrats.
- Ruling class hacks masquerading as “analysts” in allegedly “conservative media” were paranoid a shutdown would recreate the “failure” of the 1995 showdown between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. By the way, that shutdown resulted in Republicans retaining control of the House of Representatives for the first time in a generation, gaining seats in the Senate, and moving Bill Clinton so far to the right he gave us substantive welfare reform, balanced budgets, unemployment at only 5.5%. and the best economic growth we’ve seen since the height of the Reagan Revolution. What a disaster that was!
- I’m totally shocked the party that demands we spend more pretend money we don’t have is almost broke, said no one ever.
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And now after being subjected to the phoniness of Washington, D.C. the past several days I demand something sincere—something with integrity, and real character.
That’s why it’s time for some reality TV!
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