President Obama delivered more remarks on the shutdown/spending/crisis governance war today. His remarks were, as usual, full of hyperbole and spin. Just to cherry pick a couple of passages:
All of this is entirely preventable if the House chooses to do what the Senate has already done, and that’s the simple act of funding our government without making extraneous and controversial demands in the process, the same way other Congresses have for more than 200 years.
The Senate could also pass the House version and Obama could find a pen and sign it. He could agree to delay the parts of his law that haven’t already been delayed. But that’s not gonna happen.
Other congresses have also fought over spending and attached conditions to debt ceiling hikes, going all the way back to the time of Eisenhower. Democrat congresses shut the government down under Reagan, about a dozen times. You’re not supposed to know any of that, though. Obama caters exclusively to low-information voters (and dishonest hacks in the media) with such remarks.
Unfortunately, right now House Republicans continue to tie funding of the government to ideological demands like limiting a woman’s access to contraception or delaying the Affordable Care Act, all to save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right wing of their party.
No one anywhere is talking about “limiting a woman’s access to contraception” via the spending fight or even tearing down Obamacare. No one. Anywhere. Whether Obamacare stays or gets scrapped, contraception will be available at Walgreens and wherever else it was available before 2010. Obama’s law forces millions of Americans to fund things that violate their religious consciences, for the sake of making already cheap contraception “free” so that young female voters will think they’re getting goodies from Daddy O and young male voters will be able to care even less about the possible consequences of casual sex. Some people have a problem with the government’s new role in all this. Some people also have a problem with Obamacare funding about 115,000 abortions per year.
Some of the people who have a problem with all this include these nuns in Little Sisters of the Poor. Because the Obamacare mandate forces them to pay for contraception and abortion, they’re now enemies of the state. They’re having to waste time and money to go to court just to preserve the rights they enjoyed unfettered before the community organizer decided to make the federal government an instrument of shakedown and oppression.
Obama is perfectly aware of the nuances of all this. He knows all the angles. He is perfectly aware of the offenses he is fostering and the challenge he is presenting to the freedom of religion. He chooses to lie about it and make people on the other side angry. That’s his schtick.
What can you do with such a dishonest man occupying the Oval Office?
Not much. He will not negotiate at all, much less in good faith. He wants a shutdown. He’ll probably get a shutdown, unless the Republicans cave. If he gets the shutdown he’ll dance around blaming Republicans while the media trot out Shutdown Sob Stories as long as the shutdown lasts. If the Republicans cave, it’s game, set and match on Obamacare.
Republicans never threatened a shutdown during this entire debate. They made a point to fund the rest of the government while defunding or now delaying Obamacare. It has been Obama and the Democrats who have threatened a shutdown. The media, like Obama, will not only depend on the ignorance of the average American, they will actively foster that ignorance with deception and misdirection. That’s their schtick.
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