Posts Tagged ‘shutdown’

Democrats Fold Like a Cheap Folding Table at a Buffalo Bills Playoff Game*

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2018

Well, that shutdown didn’t last long:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer waved the white flag Monday, paving the way for an end to the three-day government shutdown many have named after the New York Democrat — and prompting liberal fury and conservatives’ mockery.

Democratic lawmakers initially refused Friday to support a continuing resolution to fund the government — unless the measure included amnesty for an estimated 800,000 individuals who qualified under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to remain in the U.S. with the parents who brought them here illegally.

But that changed on Monday as Schumer conceded, saying he would allow a vote without the DACA amnesty provision included. Republican leaders agreed, in return, to hold a Senate vote on an amnesty bill in February.

What did they get for abandoning their “deeply held principles” that illegal alien amnesty was more important than keeping the federal government running?

A few more reactions from Twitter:

For Democrats to cave so fast the internal polling most be even worse than we think. Did no one on the Democratic Party’s leadership team think to themselves “Hey, maybe caring more about the fate of some illegal aliens over those of the American people may not be a winning electoral strategy”?

Let’s let Willy explain just what Sen. Schumer earned from his little shutdown stunt:

(*Seriously, I have no idea how that whole Bills Mafia Folding Table thing came about and would like some Bills fan to explain it to me. SooperMexican, perhaps?)

LinkSwarm for November 14, 2014

Friday, November 14th, 2014

There’s been so many people offering up so much information on “GruberGate” that I assume anyone reading this blog has seen coverage of it already. The fact that Jonathan Gruber not only lied to the American voters he called “stupid” about ObamaCare, but also got paid $400,000 to do it certainly adds insult to injury. As does the fact that both Nancy Pelosi and members of Obama’s MSM praetorian guard like Vox’s Sarah Kliff are now lying about Gruber’s central involvement in ObamaCare despite having cited him in that capacity earlier.

In other news:

  • Some really interesting nuggets of midterm statistical analysis from Sabato’s Crystal Ball. (Hat tip: SooperMexican’s Twitter feed.)
  • Republicans did very well picking up governorships, including some in deep-blue states.
  • Scott Walker just keeps winning.
  • More on the theme: “Does Walker sizzle? Not exactly. Is he a particularly charismatic speaker? No, he isn’t. But does he sit upon a throne made of the skulls of his enemies? Yes, yes he does.” (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
  • Britain is poised to silence “extremist” speech. And who gets to determine what’s “extremist”? Why, the government, of course!

    Last month, May unveiled her ambition to “eliminate extremism in all its forms.” Whether you’re a neo-Nazi or an Islamist, or just someone who says things which betray, in May’s words, a lack of “respect for the rule of law” and “respect for minorities”, then you could be served with an extremism disruption order (EDO).

    Why do I get the impression that people pointing out Pakistani Muslim involvement in the Rotherham child rape scandals will be among the first targeted by this new law?

  • It’s not just the British who fail to investigate sex crimes: New Orleans police only investigated 14% of sex crimes.
  • Professional feminists have spent more time and energy denouncing video games than the sale and rape of girls in Nigeria and Iraq.”
  • “Honest, decent and intelligent people rightly perceive feminism as a limitless doctrine of fanatical hatred….Feminism isn’t about equality. Feminism is about hate.”
  • “Twitter has empowered leftist feminists to have a censorship field day.”
  • Just when the authoritarian left thought they had finally won the culture wars along came #GamerGate.
  • Time has a poll on which word should be “banned” in 2015. “Feminist” not only gets the most votes, it pretty much gets as many votes as all the rest combined.
  • Ted Cruz was right about the shutdown. It turns out that showing Republicans are opposed to horribly unpopular Democratic programs is popular with voters. Who knew?
  • Fake Maine hate crime ends up with accuser charged with “reckless conduct with dangerous weapon and driving to endanger.”
  • Democratic state Rep. Ron Reynolds’ barratry case has been declared a mistrial.
  • Islamist suicide bomber kills 50 at a high school in Nigeria.
  • Via Dwight of Whipped Cream Difficulties comes this Jim Schutze piece on how The Texas Tribune’s vaunted independence meant bupkis when it came to the Wallace Hall case.
  • China Vows To Begin Aggressively Falsifying Air Pollution Numbers.”
  • Price manipulation in the gold market?
  • Correction: Last week I gave the impression that Republican Carl DiMaio had won his California U.S. congressional race. That is what the early returns indicated, but he ended up losing a close race.
  • Here’s a dog story that will make your blood boil.
  • ObamaCare/Shutdown MiniRoundup

    Tuesday, October 15th, 2013

    In the tiny time left before the Senate Republican leadership decides just how far they want to sink their knives into backs of conservative hopes, here’s a tiny roundup of ObamaCare- and shutdown-related news.

    Also, for the record: Any deal that involves abandoning sequester cuts is cringing, abject surrender and deliberate betrayal of Republican voters.

  • The ObamaCare website is still an unmitigated nightmare.
  • Megan McArdle: And it’s only going to get more screwed.
  • “The electorate is like a diamond, waiting to be cut at exactly the right spot. Ted Cruz pointed the chisel correctly. There is no way to get from here to there except by making a stand against Obamacare. There is no downside, for the Republican Party as presently configured already is a guaranteed loser.”
  • “Turns out Progressives really liked the idea of other people paying for the health insurance of the poor and sick. When it turned out that many of them were those Other People, suddenly it becomes a problem.”
  • A fox is living on the White House grounds, and ‘no one can catch it because of the shutdown.” Or keep squirrels out of the White House kitchen garden. Yeah, right. Because 436 “essential” employees just aren’t enough… (Via Ann Althouse.)
  • LinkSwarm for October 11, 2013

    Friday, October 11th, 2013

    A LinkSwarm heavy on shutdown-related news:

  • For epitomizing what Democrats have done to Detroit, Kwame Kirkpatrick gets 28 years.
  • Hey Venezuela, how’s that Socialism working out for you? Inflation hits 49.4%. (Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)
  • Victor Davis Hanson thinks Republicans are winning.
  • ObamaCare, or food?
  • Steyn on the shutdown. “The conventional wisdom of the U.S. media is that Republicans are being grossly irresponsible not just to wave through another couple trillion or so on Washington’s overdraft facility.”
  • Catholic priests prohibited from giving Mass.
  • The revolving door between the Democratic Party and the IRS.
  • How the GOP establishment tried to seize control of Freedomworks.
  • The Magic of Obama: White House gift shop goes bankrupt.
  • Department of Fish & Wildlife lift ban minutes before North Dakota files lawsuit.
  • Le Pen poised to win European Parliament elections? That’s Marine Le Pen, or Le Pen: The Next Generation.
  • Five years after the meltdown, families still hoarding cash.
  • Kent Hance to retire as Texas Tech Chancellor. Hance’s political career is in many ways emblematic of the evolution of Texas politics, starting out as a conservative Democrat, elected to the state Senate in 1974, defeating George W. Bush for a U.S. congressional seat in 1978, played key roll in backing the Kemp-Roth tax cuts in 1981, narrowly losing the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate to Lloyd Doggett (who would then get stomped by Phil Gramm in the general election) in 1984, followed Gramm by switching to the Republican Party in 1985, losing the GOP Gubernatorial nomination to an un-retired Bill Clements in 1986, getting appointed to the Railroad Commission in 1987, winning re-election to it in 1988, and losing to Clayton Williams in the 1990 Republican Gubernatorial primary. He had a long, long career as a bridesmaid…
  • Raising the debt limit means bankrupting your children.
  • “This 20 year old has discovered Sex Is Awesome!!! and just wants us all to know that. Yeah Sugar-Tits we sort of know. We’ve been enjoying it for years, but without quite as much Noob Squeeing about it.”
  • LinkSwarm for October 4, 2013

    Friday, October 4th, 2013
  • Harry Reid and Obama declare war on World War II Vets and cancer patients. Next up: Reid explaining why the shutdown requires them to euthanize kittens.
  • Obama deserves the blame for the shutdown.
  • Thomas Sowell: “There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going — except for Obamacare…You cannot blame other people for not giving you everything you want. And it is a fraud to blame them when you refuse to use the money they did vote for, even when it is ample to pay for everything else in the government…When Barack Obama keeps claiming that it is some new outrage for those who control the money to try to change government policy by granting or withholding money, that is simply a bald-faced lie.”
  • The “only man to enroll in Obamacare” is an OFA shill. Also a liar. “Bill Henderson told me that both he and his son were interested in getting coverage, but that he had not enrolled in any plan yet, and to his knowledge, neither had his son.” Ace has the blow-by-blow dissection of Henderson’s story coming part.
  • The White House has 436 essential employees and 1,265 non-essential? Where do they fit???
  • You can probably tell what the Obama Administration thinks of you when you realize the number for ObamaCare information is 1-800-FUCKYO.
  • The people composing California’s elementary school math questions are evidently illiterate.
  • Pedophile pleads guilty, receives prison sentence.
  • Obama tried to have Wisconsin state parks shut down. Response: Get stuffed!
  • Park Rangers are actually being told to make life difficult for visitors.
  • Five reasons Ted Cruz deserves our respect.
  • British lefty: We have to talk about Islamic barbarism. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
  • What’s so special about John Moses Browning? (Ditto)
  • Obituary watch: Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, Army of North Vietnam. Like Erwin Rommel or Heinz Guderian, Giap was a brilliant general who fought for an evil government.
  • Islamists kicked out in Tunisia.
  • TV reporter asks undercover cop to step up to the microphone.
  • Via James Lileks, this is pretty funny:

  • Constitutional Democracy At Work

    Thursday, October 3rd, 2013

    Liberals have staged another one of their regular hissy fits over the government shutdown. What they don’t seem to realize is that this is exactly how divided government is supposed to work. The Founding Fathers were tremendously suspicious of investing too much power in any one person, which is exactly why they set up the executive legislative and Judicial branches in opposition to each other. This is why the executive and legislative have to work together to pass laws, and why the House and Senate must agree with each other. If everyone gets a veto on the process, then no one portion of the federal government can seize power over another. By refusing to go to conference, Harry Reid is shirking the legislative branches constitutional duty to pass a budget.

    Forcing the White House and the Senate to come together and negotiate is part of the constitutional design. This is why Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill had to negotiate compromises during several shutdowns in the 1980s.

    But Obama, as he’s proven time and time again, is no Reagan.

    Obama to Troops: Drop Dead

    Friday, April 8th, 2011

    When I first read on Ace of Spades that Obama intended to let our soldiers go without paychecks during the shutdown, I was somewhat incredulous. After all, even Obama should be able to see how lousy the “optics” are with withholding paychecks from troops involved in no less than three wars kinetic military actions overseas. Surely not even Obama could be that stupid?

    Evidently I was wrong. Obama would rather let our troops go without pay than stop taxpayer funding of abortions.

    To dramatize the issue, I’ve actually created a small film about the topic. I’ve taken the details of who all will still be getting checks in a shutdown from this piece up on Reason (which was, in turn, taken from The New York Times, saving you the 15 seconds it would have taken you to defeat the paywall…) Keep in mind that I’m putting it up in advance of the actual shutdown, so the details may vary…

    I did this quick and dirty, and I didn’t see any actually U.S. soldiers as part of any character sets…

    (Hat tips: Dwight, Ace, and Insta.)