Government Shutdown – Obama Making It Painful: Part I

10 responses to “Government Shutdown – Obama Making It Painful: Part I”

1. Sean Patrick Hazlett | October 6, 2013 at 11:27 pm | Reply

   Yet the government moved Heaven and Earth to make sure a football game wasn’t cancelled.

   • Pino | October 6, 2013 at 11:36 pm | Reply

     Sean Patrick Hazlett | October 6, 2013 at 11:27 pm

     Old friend.

     Please come back to the discussion and reopen RRR.

   • Pino | October 6, 2013 at 11:37 pm | Reply

     Yet the government moved Heaven and Earth to make sure a football game wasn’t cancelled.

     I was gonna comment on that; hysterical.

     • Sean Patrick Hazlett | October 7, 2013 at 1:20 am | Reply

       Actually, I was wrong. The only reason the game happened was because of private funding.

       Though there is actually a lesson in that: perhaps the academies ought to self-fund their sporting events. Why should taxpayers?

       • nickgb | October 7, 2013 at 3:07 am | Reply

         Where did you ever get the idea that they weren’t privately funded?

         Pino, same question.

         It seems odd that you both zeroed in on a story that, as far as I saw, prominently featured the private financing angle. Was there a Newsmax email blast about Obama “moving heaven and earth”?

         • Pino | October 7, 2013 at 11:23 am |

           Where did you ever get the idea that they weren’t privately funded?

           The Academies are government institutions. It makes sense that they are funded through government funds. However, as mentioned, the *athletics* are not funded by the government, but by private funds.

           However, that didn’t stop the DoD from cancelling the games initially:

           The Department of Defense announced Tuesday that it has suspended all intercollegiate athletic competitions at the service academies, meaning no practices for the football teams at Army, Navy and Air Force. The shutdown also has an impact on the sports information department, and all media availability scheduled for Tuesday has been canceled.

           I’m actually surprised, pleasantly, that they let the games be played.

2. nickgb | October 7, 2013 at 3:12 am | Reply

   Pino, did you even try to look anything up before posting this? The Amber Alert program is largely state-run, the FBI and DOJ simply work with local officials to coordinate efforts and publicize information. Do a google search for Amber Alert and you’ll see, for example, that there are sadly Amber Alerts that were posted locally this week. Look it up on wikipedia, and you’ll learn that Obama CAN’T shut down the Amber Alert System.

   If Boehner brings up a clean CR, it gets passed and that web site is running again. I get that you disagree with that plan and think he should just hold out until the government is just as big as you want it to be. But that doesn’t mean this is Obama’s fault. At the very least, Boehner is being just as uncooperative as Obama, and you can’t lay the blame on the President alone.

   Meanwhile, you’ve been crowing about how great this is, how Americans will realize that they can get by without government excess. Amber Alerts are pretty recent in our history, and we all got by just fine before them. Why is that program so essential while, for example, the NIH isn’t?

   • Pino | October 7, 2013 at 12:03 pm | Reply

     The Amber Alert program is largely state-run, the FBI and DOJ simply work with local officials to coordinate efforts and publicize information.

     Whatever the involvement of the federal government, why would they take the website offline? If the program is continuing to operate through the channels listed, and it is, why give the false impression?

     But I do admit that the post, my post, falsely accuses Obama of shutting down the program.

     I get that you disagree with that plan and think he should just hold out until the government is just as big as you want it to be.

     Actually state run programs are the preferred method. My point is that when me DO have federal programs, the ones delivering the most pain to the public are being shutdown.

     Amber Alerts are pretty recent in our history, and we all got by just fine before them. Why is that program so essential while, for example, the NIH isn’t?

     There’s debate even surrounding the success of the Amber Alert program. Again, the larger point is that the administration is targeting shutdowns to deliver the most pain for the public.

     Now that I’ve really been looking into this, the government had this to say:

     “All the sites that had to go offline were put behind a firewall so that they couldn’t be hacked while the IT people were on furlough.”

     Clearly pure BS, however, to be fair, asking a manager to speak intelligently about technical issues can be a challenge.

     Now, thanks to all the reading I’ve done, I’ve actually been forced to go over to theblaze.com [i blame you] and now see the update that the page is back on line!

     And through it all, Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” never was taken down.

3. Thales | October 7, 2013 at 2:16 pm | Reply

   What’s amazing is that the GOP has actually won. The government has, without quite realizing it, accepted piecemeal funding of everything except Obamacare. There is no shutdown. There is just the government doing occasional bits of petty spitefulness and nastiness to express its hatred of its subjects.

   Since no shutdown, no reason for the Republicans to pass a bill funding Obamacare. The “shutdown” can continue forever. It will be interesting to see how they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this time…

   • Pino | October 7, 2013 at 3:01 pm | Reply

     It will be interesting to see how they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this time…

     I think that they will overplay their hand on the debt limit.