U.S. Government shuts down.

[kandrathe]

What am I looking at here? Am I supposed to be focusing on the guys in berets and saggy jackets, the pregnant lady drinking a milkshake, or the "Guild House West" sign?

Those were the Black Panthers who allegedly intimidated certain voters outside a polling place. They represent a different extreme form of thuggery. I just despise the generalized bigotry of saying the Democrats are X, or the GOP are Y, or the Tea Party is Z. Its the precursor to targeting them as a group for prejudicial treatment. I've heard the media spend the last week labeling Republicans as “anarchists,” “fanatics,” “radicals,” and “terrorists” who are wholly to blame for the government shutdown.

No one addresses the fact that the budgeting process has completely broken down for the past few years, and the two people most responsible for that breakdown are President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

For three years now, 2010-2012 — the Democrat-controlled Senate did not pass a budget bill as Reid knew that it would be a political liability to do so. Passing a budget that detailed the Democrats’ plans for spending and revenue as official policy would have exposed the “something for nothing” swindle that Reid and his colleagues are perpetrating on the American people. The Republican challengers campaigning against Democrat senators could then cite their votes for the budget bill, saying that the incumbent voted for this, that, or other unpopular components of the budget.

They also knew very well that the federal deficit was spiraling out of control, that there is not enough tax revenue to pay the ballooning cost of entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, et cetera), and certainly there isn’t enough revenue to pay for all the boondoggles and giveaways the Democrats voted for in the name of “stimulus.” Adding to this, there is not enough revenue to pay the cost of Obamacare, which Democrats rammed through Congress in March 2010 on a party-line vote. Passing an actual budget would have made clear the unsustainable fiscal nightmare into which Democrat policies have plunged the nation during the Obama Age, and so Harry Reid simply didn’t pass a budget for three years.

The Republican's, in order to get on board to endorse yet another continuing resolution to keep paying as we go (rather than do the right thing a create a budget), set the bar at rolling back some spending, namely they began with the one thing that seems very unpopular, that is Obamacare. Yeah, I know, it's crazy.