I stole the title of this post from a song that I and everyone who grew up in the 1990s with me likely heard on a daily, if not hourly basis for the majority of that decade. We are now in Day Four of the infamous government shutdown that was threatened when Ted Cruz took the floor of the Senate to (sort of) filibuster amendments to a bill that would have funded the government at the cost of funding Obamacare. I would have reported on the first three days of the shutdown, but honestly, NOTHING HAPPENED that was worth reporting. At least not until a crazy woman decided to run the barricades that have been set up in Washington because she thought the President was stalking her (no joke). That, incidentally had nothing to do with the shutdown, and the story was over almost before it began, since the woman was shot dead after leading the capitol police on a merry high speed chase. The only other events of interest are the media's expected and not surprising-at-all attempts to link the woman to Tea Party politicians and blame her behavior on the aforementioned shutdown.
People from all over the country are either complaining or elating that the government has shutdown, even partially. Here's the kicker, though: The government isn't the be all and end all of our lives, and this proves it. Just a look at what is being shut down should tell you that this is only a game to the suits on the Hill. The Grand Canyon has been shut down, national parks, the freaking WORLD WAR II VETERAN'S MEMORIAL has been barricaded off and cordoned, only to be broken through by what one of my fellow bloggers in the sphere called "The Charge of the Walker and Wheelchair Brigade" or some such thing like that. Unlike the referenced Charge of the Light Brigade, however, their efforts were not futile, and they succeeded in visiting said memorial with the help of the Fifth Column agents within the D.C. federal security that were supposed to keep them out. So there's that.
The reason, in my opinion, why the government shutdown is at the forefront of the news is not for the sake of reporting on the shutdown itself, but rather it is being used as a smokescreen NOT to report on the disastrous roll out of Obamacare, which was supposed to go without a hitch on October 1 of this week, and instead was met with all manner of glitches and bugs almost from the moment of its unveiling. By the time I went to Healthcare.gov it was at least partially working, but I didn't actually try to go through the enrollment process.
Chicks on the Right had a post with video that explains the glitches, changing the tone of a story that was originally intended to be a glowing report on the efficiency and effectiveness of the new system. I watched the video the day of that post and had to resist the urge to laugh out loud at the irony.
Also in Obamacare/shutdown news:
Reports initially came in from my home state of California that over five million people had attempted to sign up for Obamacare, which they said was what resulted in the shutdown of the site, as well as myriad other bugs and glitches. This was later revised DOWNWARD to
just over 600,000. Even here in the People's Republic of Mexifornia no one is signing up for this thing. Add that to the fact that no one is signing up in Her Highness Queen Kathleen Sebelius I's home state of Kansas, and you get a sense of just what kind of steaming pile Obamacare really is.
More to come on Day 5
