On the brouhaha of government shutdown and looming debt ceiling, and the fight of them all...

I have not wanted to write about the now three-day-old federal government shutdown, the debate (or lack thereof) about it in Washington, and the looming debt ceiling (again!) that could throw many fish out of the economic water, but such is historic times and I feel certain compulsion to at least write down a few things to mark the time.

So, everyone right now knows about the federal government shutdown. Why? Because a small but very vocal minority in GOP - in the form of Tea Party a la Ted Cruz, Eric Cantor, and some such - has decided that they need to take the last stand against humanity (!!!). In order to force the defunding of Obamacare (which finally came into effect this Tuesday on 10/01/2013), they are willing to withhold passing the federal budget unless the line item of the defunding is attached. The Obama White House and Democrats would not budge. Afterall, Obamacare (more formally known as Affordable Care Act, or ACA) is a regulation that has passed both the House and Senate of the Congress, signed into law by Obama the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court.

Problem is, the more the rest of the country is coming to accept Obamacare, the more Tea Party hates it. (Actually, they hate everything that is remotely related to Obama anyways, so never mind much of the reason why.) The more validation ACA gets, the higher the poll numbers ACA gets, the deeper Tea Party digs in.

So, how do you stop a legislation from taking effect? Pulling the purse string, of course, which is exactly what Tea Party is trying to do now. Never mind that the government and the whole country are held hostage by it, Tea Party wants no part of the government anyways. To them, the government might as well shut down and go to hell. Instead, they prefer to deal with line items (like funding the continual opening of national monuments, while not caring about other vital functions like food safety, childhood programs, and research). Such is the irrational and unreasonable behavior of a two-year-old; apparently, Tea Party has topped that.

Perhaps the saddest part of it all, is that, the leadership in the House (with GOP majority) is unable to control these petulant Tea Party children. Those moderate and reasonable voices in GOP are being crowded out by the vocal histrionic and vitriol, who worries that if they don't pander with the Tea Party, they won't survive their next primary election. John Boehner, being speaker of the House, no doubt has the added worry about losing his speakership, should he fail to placard to these small minority group.

Personally, I cannot stand all the blatant lies on ACA that the GOP spread, and how a lot of average joes in America are stupid enough to believe all the lies they're told without even just cursory check. ACA is in no way perfect, and to me, it's not the kind of universal care I would love it to be (the same as, say, Australia), but people should at least give it a chance, the same way everyone is required to get car insurance if they want to drive a car.

I'd also be willing to bet, that the other main reason why Tea Party wants to stop ACA before it can take effect, is that, they fear that the public would come to love ACA the same way Medicare and Social Security had been. This will surely kill a key element of their platform of Tea Party and GOP, if they still have one, apart from being The Party of No. Apparently, the killing of the public option from ACA is not sufficient for them.

Thanks to Tea Party and the inept House leadership, we have a government shutdown that has no end in sight. Anything short of a market revolt from Wall St will not be enough to force their hands. And why not. With an increasingly self-sorting electorate in which these Tea Partyers got elected by their petulant (and oftentimes ignorant and very arrogant) electorate who wants no part of government, except to keep their medicare and social security and any other federal assistance (eg. underwriting of their flood insurance) alone, there's no political ramifications for them to behave in a more reasonable manner. In fact, the more hissy fit they throw, the more their electorate seems to love it. It's become their electorate's blood sport. In short, there's no adult left in the room, all that is left is a bunch of very petulant children.

That's why I was laughing out loud when I read this parenting tip to dealing with GOP tantrum which is timely and most pertinent. And that's exactly the response that any parenting experts would have advised Obama to do, which is to not negotiate (since there's nothing left to be negotiated) and to not get upset. If Tea Partyers think that they can get a rise out of this angry black man, they fail most miserably. For that, I applaud Obama, even though I'm not really a fan of his.

This is particularly true when the debt ceiling is looming in just a couple of weeks. If Obama or Democrats are to yield to Tea Party, what would become of the debt ceiling debate? I don't dare contemplate that prospect, of pandering to the tantrum of a child. It's simply wrong on all counts, morally, legally, politically.

I feel for those folks ("non-essential" federal workers being the first hits) who have to pay the price for the Tea Party's tantrum. I'm getting so sick and tired of hearing all these in the news that I'm starting to tune out.

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Why should I care about all these white noises? The ACA actually doesn't impact me, at least not at this point anyways, and I hope not in the future either. Being covered in an employer's plan, ACA has no impact to me personally at all.

What I do not want to see, is the way in which this government is being run, and how easily it can be hijacked by such small minority, and how spineless the GOP House speaker is in reining in these remnants.

All the hypocrisy and grandiosity that GOP and Tea Party claim, that they're speaking "for the American people" really makes me sick in the stomach. How dare they speak in such general terms. How dare they claim to represent all "american people" because certainly they do not speak for me on this issue. They can rightly say, yes, they're representing a few hundred idiots back home who are on unemployment benefits and medicare disability and food stamps, and who also do not want to have anything to do with federal government; but no, they do not speak for the american people.

What I most want to say, is to tell these people to just shut the feck up, and go back to their own rabbit hole. They can drink beers all day till their liver gives. They can shoot live human targets (of themselves), as Dick Cheney did to his pal, until they all die out as a mutant species. That would do humanity a great service, and Darwin will no doubt smile warmly to that. Oh wait, but they would want Medicare or Medicaid to cover for their hospital bills, wouldn't they.