Finally, our long national nightmare is over! With 8 Senate Democrats bravely crossing the aisle, the Senate approved the Continuing Resolution to end the longest government shutdown in history! Now, things can get back to normal.
Yeah…about that…
Although President Trump has been at the helm of the two longest government shutdowns in our history, this one feels a little different because of how people reacted to it and undercut the idea Leftists have been spinning for years about SNAP and the Affordable Care Act.
Let’s start with a shallow deep-dive into governance philosophy. Many people, including your humble correspondent, believe government is there to do the things we can’t do ourselves. You know, like having a standing army to fight off threats to the country or build/maintain roads. (Although, on that last one, I’m starting to think the people couldn’t do any worse of a job. My street has a pothole so big you would travel to the Land of the Lost if you fell in. #oldmanreference) The Left’s approach to governance is the government can and should do whatever you can handle yourself because you’re not as hip and enlightened as they are.
This coming from the people who said President Brick Tamland was fine and Queen Kamala the Appointed ran a flawless campaign, I might add.
To the Left, anything that prevents the wheels of bureaucracy from running is dangerous. And it is…to them. Leftists are so self-centered in the halls of power that they feel nothing can get done without them, and their drones who stagger through said walls like Hunter Biden looking for crack follow along. Even the non-essential workers feel a sense of entitlement.
You know what they call non-essential employees in the corporate world? Dead weight.
So, when Senate Republicans refused to budge, Leftists started creating horror stories about children and old people starving, people dying without healthcare, planes falling out of the sky, and just about anything else their PR department could come up with to scare us into submission.
But then something happened, something so ironically out of left field that Leftists couldn’t have seen it coming. Entities other than the federal government stepped up and helped with food donations. Restaurants, grocery stores, churches, local charities, and regular people saw a need and fulfilled it. Sure, to the more cynical among us, it makes for good press and temporary feel-good moments, but it tells me there is still a section of our population who are willing to help their neighbors when the opportunity arises.
And that was something the compassionate Left didn’t think about, mainly because of their approach to governance. They can’t conceive of anything good coming from a source outside of Big Brother…I mean government, let alone having those good deeds actually working. Even when states started offering SNAP funds (which is only one step down from Leftist governance), it made the federal government being shut down less of a major issue to most of the country. No rioting, no looting (save for the dumbasses who told the world their “secret life hack” of stealing from WalMart via TikTok), not a lot of civil unrest. Just people going about their days and helping out where they could.
If that isn’t a sign we may need to rethink SNAP, I don’t know what is.
As far as the ACA is concerned, I’ve already delved into it in greater detail, so I’ll give you the Readers Digest condensed version. The ACA didn’t make health care affordable in the least for most Americans, and lead to more money going to insurance companies than to actually helping Americans. To be fair, the ACA did help Americans, just the really wealthy ones who already had great healthcare. Anybody with an even cursory understanding of economics could tell you getting the government involved in anything will cause prices to skyrocket because the government will always be able to print more money to fund whatever it is they want.
Naturally, that’s why Leftists were shocked by the actual numbers.
Instead of putting up their hands and saying “we were wrong about the ACA,” they continued to throw money at it and laid a trap for Republicans by voting in a deadline to keep the ACA subsidies flowing. That is, of course, assuming they thought Republicans would take back the House and Senate at some point, but that’s a hard sell for me because Leftists suck at long-term strategy. Even a party picnic for Leftists requires at least 6 months of negotiations, planning, and cultural sensitivity training just to have 3 people show up just to say they’re vegan and they only eat free range cage free vegetables.
At this point, I honestly think Congressional Democrats planned on being in power when the ACA subsidies ran out, so they could force them into any budget they wanted. Yeah, how’d that work out for ya?
As far as all of the other disasters Leftists predicted would happen with a government shutdown, few if any of them came to pass. Planes didn’t fall out of the sky, TSA agents were still doing their jobs, the military was still at the ready, national park personnel weren’t as necessary as advertised, and generally not much changed. That’s the lesson we should all take here: the federal government isn’t as necessary as the Left makes it out to be. When you let yourself become a ward of the state by ideological means, you owe everything to the state, which means whenever the state wants to take something away from you for one reason or another, they can do it, and you won’t have a say in the matter.
In other words, when you get “free stuff,” you lose some of your freedom.
Just the way the Left likes it.
But not everyone who gets “free stuff” is as enamored with the idea of being a government drone. SNAP, for example, is used to help low income families, including members of our military and the elderly. It’s hard to be so completely cold-hearted to think they deserve to be without food or at the very least assistance.
Then, there are those who use SNAP so they don’t have to spend their own money to get food. I know that’s technically the idea behind it, but it’s not the way it’s being practiced by many people in this country. The way I know this is by watching people post TikTok videos complaining about having to spend their own money on food or complaining about the food they’re getting from non-governmental sources. I have a pretty good troll detector built in from being on the Internet almost since it became a thing, so I don’t think they’re making shit up; they’re legit upset at what they’re getting or not getting as the case may be.
The Left would have you believe the latter group is just as entitled to SNAP as the former. They’re not on the same level, in my opinion. Those who need SNAP the most are the ones who are making an effort to contribute to society in some way. I have no problem with them. It’s when you choose to get SNAP and you can work, but choose not to, that it crosses the line for me. SNAP isn’t meant to be a side hustle. It’s there to help you buy food so you can live, and given how well some of you SNAP scammers live, you can afford to shell out a little for your own sustenance.
That may be the best part of the government shutdown. People exposing how much they scam the government (i.e. us) so they can live better than us. You know, just like Congress. But unlike Congress, we might be able to do something about SNAP fraud, and we have you TikTokers to thank for it.
So, with the government starting back up again in the near future, they can finally get past partisan squabbling and get back to doing their real jobs: ignoring the will of the people and passing shitty legislation.
Tag: government shutdown
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
Remember the movie “Groundhog Day”? If not, it’s a great comedy worth a watch. The general idea is a TV weatherman repeats the same day over and over again until he figures out how to get things right.
Well, Bill Murray may have to take a back seat to…the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. In the midst of the government shutdown (which I am blissfully enjoying for the most part for the sheer comedy of Leftists trying to blame Republicans for not funding ACA subsidies for millions of Americans. Leftists tell us unless these subsidies are funded as part of the Continuing Resolution in the Senate, prices will skyrocket, making healthcare unaffordable.
We’ll get back to that in a bit.
Anyway, with the ACA/Obamacare coming back into the news, I figured we’d be good to reminisce about the days when men were men and women were men and everybody was really confused.
Affordable Care Act/Obamacare
What the Left thinks it means – a vital piece of legislation that made healthcare affordable for millions
What it really means – an unsustainable piece of legislation that Leftists sabotaged from the jump
The year was 2010 and President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Although it was greeted by fanfare and the efforts of Democrats (since zero Republicans voted for it). In fact, Leftists were quick to point out how former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had a similar, if not exact duplicate, of the ACA in his state. Given what we know now about Romneycare and the mush of a man behind it, that’s not exactly something to brag about.
Regardless, Leftists were aglow with pride at getting it passed. Finally, the federal government, the purveyor of all that is good and right in the world, would be able to ensure people got health insurance by…let me read my notes…taking away options they didn’t like. That’s right, kids, Big Brother was watching you make health insurance decisions and removed your ability to choose what you wanted in favor of policies they demanded…I mean recommended through their new portal.
On a side note, why didn’t the Mafia sue the Obama Administration for copyright infringement over the Obamacare shakedown? Not that I would impugn the good name of the members of our waste management communities across this great land of ours, mind you.
Meanwhile as I attempt to avoid having my legs broken, the results of Obamacare weren’t exactly that great. In fact, it lead to spikes in costs, worse deductibles, and overall worse care. They couldn’t even get the Obamacare website to work right at launch! They made the demands to get people to use the website to sign up for their mandatory health insurance plans, but the website couldn’t meet the demand.
If that’s not the perfect metaphor for how fucked up Obamacare is, I don’t know what would be…except for the current situation where Leftists are demanding the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies be funded…so the policies through the Affordable Care Act could be…affordable?
The thing about the Affordable Care Act is that it was never meant to be affordable, per se, but rather it was an attempt to fuck things up to the point people would start demanding single-payer healthcare. And as we’ve seen with VA hospitals, it tends to wind up with worse care. Oh, and the misappropriation of funds! Oh, and the sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations! Oh, and the absurd wait times on their suicide hotline.
You know, I seem to remember a lot of Democrats getting their collectivist panties in a bunch over this…but I’m sure these little issues won’t dissuade anyone from jumping on the single-payer bandwagon!
And, really, that was the point of the Affordable Care Act. Well, that, and forcing the federal government into a business it knew less about than the Car Czar did with automobiles. Not that insurance companies minded, mind you. Thanks to the ACA, they made out like bandits. Or would have if they raised their ethical standards by a factor of, oh, five gazillion.
And as we’ve seen with military spending, whenever the federal government subsidize anything, costs are no object because the government can just print more money. Or pretend to for the purposes of tricking people into thinking we’re operating under a budget. But that’s a blog post for another time…
Meanwhile back at the main point, we’ve dumped money into Obamacare for the better part of 15 years, and I’ll be the first to admit it’s helped some people. The larger issue is it didn’t help enough people to make it worthwhile. The very fact they had to keep funding it through the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act should make even Stevie Wonder see it wasn’t economically feasible to keep the printing presses rolling.
Guess who controlled both houses of Congress after these two pieces of dog shit legislation got to the Auto Pen of President Brick Tamland? The Democrats.
And they were the ones who put the impending deadline into play.
Yeah, but it’s the Republicans who are the assholes.
Much more concerning to your humble correspondent than the ever-expanding fiscal sinkhole that is Obamacare is the fact it was coerced capitalism. As a free market and libertarian kinda guy, I don’t want to be forced to buy a product or service from anyone. Car and house insurance I get, but it’s not like the federal government is going to penalize me for not having either. That comes with the next bill after Logan or Kayleigh runs into the back of a school bus at 20 miles per hour because they just had to post something on TikTok, or after they cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage because they wanted to see if they could turn their last Taco Bell meal into an ass flamethrower.
The Affordable Care Act, on the other hand, forced you to have health insurance. On the surface, it’s not that bad an idea, until you realize you would get penalized for not carrying any health insurance. And that’s even on top of the fact you may not even be able to afford the policies the federal government offered you. For many Americans, the choice came down to either paying the fine or paying for insurance.
Yeah, that’s not gonna work for me, brother.
The beauty of the free market system is you get to choose your path. If you decide to insure your car with Uncle Swifty’s Fly-By-Night Insurance Company and Used Tire Lot, it was your choice. A fucking stupid choice, but a choice nonetheless. Through the Affordable Care Act, your choices were limited by what they allowed you to have and what they believed you should pay for the coverage offered. Sure, you might have to go without luxuries like food and shelter, but at least you have health insurance, right?
Yeah, about that. As much shit as insurance companies get for denying claims, there’s one entity that is the absolute worst at it. I’m talking definite double digit denials here, kids. That entity, the lowest of the low, the scummiest of the scummy, the heartlessest of the heartless?
The federal government.
The same group of assholes who brought you Obamacare.
But don’t worry! The insurance companies who worked with the ACA had a plan! The Obama Administration had these things called Risk Corridors built into the Affordable Care Act to cover losses incurred due to the Affordable Care Act. Thank God they were spared, right?
Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the ACA is how the Left managed to conflate healthcare with health insurance, like they’re doing right now. The two aren’t the same and shouldn’t be considered to be so under any rational conditions.
Let me explain the difference this way. You cut your finger making dinner. Healthcare involves putting a bandage on the cut. Health insurance involves who is paying for the bandage and the care. You can get the former without involving the latter, as last time I checked, doctors like money. In fact, if you can pay for your treatment directly, many doctors appreciate that because it saves them the headache of dealing with insurance providers and determining what is covered and what isn’t.
That’s not to say Obamacare isn’t complete dog shit. Mostly, yes, but not completely. I’m referring to the concept of preexisting conditions. Prior to the ACA, insurance providers could deny coverage for any reason if they could link it back to something you already head. Obamacare put the kibosh on that practice, but it’s still being done. If I could make one suggestion to anyone trying to build the better health insurance mousetrap, it would be to keep a tighter lid on preexisting conditions, or at least make it eligible for appeal from a non-governmental and non-insurance company entity.
Failing that, go on social media and tell your stories about how your health insurance provider fucked you over over preexisting condition bullshit unrelated to the malady in question. Their CEOs will pay attention to that shit because it affects their bottom lines. And by bottom lines, I mean their salaries. Enough bad press and they might not be able to afford to spend the holidays in Aruba.
As far as the subsidies are concerned, the very fact they exist to make the Affordable Care Act affordable is a sign of its utter failure. If I had my druthers (and people knew what druthers were in the first place), I would reset the board to the way things were prior to the ACA being signed into law. It may be too late for some health insurance providers who were able to provide low cost policies to people, but at the very least we could try to revitalize that market and make health insurance affordable again.
Say, that could be a slogan of some kind…nahhhhh. No one would ever take up the Make Anything Great Again idea with any degree of success.
Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time!
As of the time of this blithering…I mean blogging, the federal government is on the verge of another government shutdown. Before, the Leftists complained the Republicans weren’t willing to negotiate to prevent the shutdown, but this time…it’s Leftists complaining the Republicans aren’t willing to negotiate to prevent the shutdown.
If only that were an echo, it wouldn’t sound so stupid and hypocritical.
Regardless, the Left has gone all doom and gloom on the prospect of a government shutdown. People will die! Health care will be lost for millions! There might yet another Medea movie! Holy shit on a shingle, Batman! It must be a super-cereal problem for the Left to go all Red Alert like this!
Nope. It’s literally just Tuesday. (Please check local listings for the day of the week in your area.)
Much like a case of the clap, this seems to come around every so often, only a lot more irritating and a lot less fun to get. The federal government runs out of money more than Hunter Biden at an all-you-can-do crack den, so it becomes this ordeal to right the fiscal ship. Only, we never do.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Our government keeps funding itself through Continuing Resolutions, which are promises we’ll pay our bills this time and never let this happen again. And then it keeps happening. The federal government hasn’t passed an actual budget since 2017, so we’re getting close to a decade of these budgetary tricks that would get the rest of us thrown in jail.
Which is why Arthur Andersen should have gone into politics instead of dealing with Enron.
The thing about government shutdowns is essential functions are still being paid out, so it’s not like we’re not going to fund the military for a few days because our elected officials can’t decide whether to spend a few billion on studies about transexual llama mating habits during a full moon occurring on Tuesdays. It’s only the shit that we decide to spend that gets impacted.
Which brings us to the latest sticking point for the Left. Democrats want to extend tax credits for health insurance and reverse Medicare cuts President Trump supported. And those mean ole Republicans don’t want that.
Funny thing. Leftists tend to hate tax credits and the Right love them.
Regardless, there is some question as to the veracity of the Left’s demands, namely that these nozzleheads think we should pay for health care for illegal immigrants because Murka. (Which I think they believe to be a foreign country that keeps sending us immigrants, but that’s neither here nor there.) And contrary to Leftist squawking points to the contrary, that shit is happening. So, maybe a little scrutiny is in order to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Or, yanno, don’t send in a Continuing Resolution with that shit in there. Just saying.
Apparently that’s a bridge too far for Leftists, so here we are. And I am so good with it.
What the Left fails to understand is people really don’t pay that much attention to government most of the time. Sure, there are times when we do, but the rest of the time we want them to get out of our ways. There are so many laws on the books, people break at least 3 of them every day, and that’s at least 4 too many in my book.
Maybe it’s my small government brain working overtime again, but it’s my belief that the federal government needs a DOGE-style enema. We need to know not only how our money is spent, but get an explanation of why. Given the USAID and NGO scandals from earlier this year, the government needs that enema, like, 10 years ago.
And I don’t mean just looking into Democrat-approved expenditures, either. Let’s go whole hog on eliminating pork! If there’s a line item that is unusual, unnecessary, or at the very least questionable, call it out and make the assholes responsible for it explain themselves. If they can’t, off goes the funding, along with their jobs.
Which brings me to a point I’ve made before, but it bears repeating. Why in the wide world of fuck are we paying non-essential employees? If they’re not needed for the day-to-day operations, they shouldn’t be on the books. Unless you can make one hell of an argument in favor of having a Regional Sub-Assistant Manager in Charge of Fetching Some Bureaucrat Starbucks Every Morning, have that bureaucrat pick it up himself or herself. If they make the big (or even the medium) bucks, they can afford to get their own ‘Bucks.
Of course, there are several thousand federal workers resigning October 1 due to budget cuts. Those are rookie numbers! You know what would really piss off the Orange Man? If more workers up and quit! Really stick it to him! Have a mass walkout that would make the Million Man March look like a Kindergarten class lining up for recess!
Of course, with the caveat being you decline getting your final paychecks and pension. After all, you don’t want to get any money Donald Trump has access to, right?
But I’m afraid that’s not going to happen any time soon, so we’re stuck with watching Democrats and Republicans fight over how to spend more of our money on shit we didn’t ask for and really don’t need. I guess the only thing left to do is pop some popcorn, get a cold drink or 50, and watch.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
You may not have known this, but we were on the brink of disaster on October 1st. While most people’s minds are focused on Halloween, which is a holiday where scary fun can be had by all. But Leftists focused on this recent scary date where the government could have shut down. To a Leftist, that concept is scarier than every “Saw” movie combined.
When there’s even a hint of a government shutdown, Leftists lose their minds and start coming up with all sorts of doomsday scenarios. Our military will be scaled back, leaving us defenseless. Old people won’t get their monthly checks, causing them to starve and die. Worst of all, though…”The View” might get renewed for another season!
But if it weren’t for the actions of some plucky political officials, we would be running around with pollution everywhere, cities on fire, and utter chaos. In other words, San Francisco on any given day.
Since the can got kicked down the road until mid-November, we have some time to relax and think more about what a government shutdown actually means.
government shutdown
What the Left thinks it means – holding the country hostage fiscally so a group of right wing extremists get what they want
What it really means – an exercise showing how bloated the federal government has gotten and what can/should be cut without affecting our everyday lives
In the interests of transparency, I am a small government advocate. I know! Shocking, isn’t it? The reason for my position is pretty simple: a smaller government is an accountable government. Right now, Congresscritters can pass whatever bills they want so full of pork both the B’nai B’rith and Muslim organizations reject it on religious grounds. Try pulling that shit when the only thing between you and an angry mob is a receptionist’s desk.
Since I seem to be in the minority on this, I’ve come to understand why some people want a larger government. I don’t like it, but I understand it. And it really comes down to one thing: people today want to be ruled rather than governed. It’s easier to let someone else tackle the big stuff so we can go back to obsessing about pumpkin spice this and TikTok that and celebrity gossip the other thing. Keeping informed is just too hard, guys! And it’s boring! So, why not just let the government run everything so we can focus on the really important stuff?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, we’re being run by powerful idiots who make bad decisions on the regular. Like not having an actual budget for, oh, decades now. That’s right! Our federal government has not passed a budget since 1996. The way we’ve kept the lights on in Washington, DC, has been through either Continuing Resolutions (basically a legislative method to kick the can down the road in the hopes someone else will pass a budget) or through omnibus spending bills (basically a legislative method to kick the can down the road in the hopes someone else will pick up the tab for their expenditures).
In short, we’re fucked. And neither the Left nor the Right have any plans to unfuck us. But only one side really goes out of its way to turn their collective fiscal irresponsibility into a horror show where everyone is a victim. I’ll give you three guesses, and all three are “Leftists.”
See, Leftists have this unshakable faith in the government as the source of all good in the world. If the government doesn’t do a particular task, Leftists will find a way to wedge the government in there, which creates layer upon layer of bureaucracy. And over time, that bureaucracy grows and becomes more essential to the task until the two are permanently stuck together like my fingers when I try to use Crazy Glue.
And with that Amazing Colossal Bureaucracy comes job opportunities for Leftists, as well as money from said government drones and power over the rest of us. So, when there’s the threat of the government shutting down, it starves the bureaucracy and curtails the power it wields. To the Left, that’s the worst possible thing that could happen. To me, it’s threatening me with a good time.
It should be pointed out government shutdowns have become a political football for the Left and the Right for the past several years. Of these, 13 occurred under a Republican President, while the remaining 8 happened with a Democrat in the White House. Although both major parties shared the blame early on, Republicans took the majority of the blame for the more recent shutdowns because, well, the Left told us they were to blame and enough people believed them.
And because they were right, even if only half so. Both parties are to blame for not being able to pay the country’s bills, mainly because they’re the ones running up the budget to pay for things like non-existent aircraft, wrenches and toilet seats that cost more than the GDP of most of Africa, and really stupid expenditures.
Like more money going to Ukraine.
Yes, kids, the House Democrats weren’t willing to bend much on sending more money to a country we’re supporting in a war between two countries where their leaders are corrupt, dishonest men. Meanwhile, House Republicans wanted money to go towards disaster relief because, as the residents of East Palestine and Maui will tell you, the Puddin’ Head Joe Administration hasn’t done jack shit to help them.
Whenever government shutdowns loom larger than Michael Moore’s shadow, both sides always call for “clean bills,” which is a euphemism for “a bill that pays for everything we want while fucking over the other side.” Between that and the complaints about how many pages the proposed spending bill is, it’s amazing anything gets done at all because both sides would rather play chicken with our tax dollars than come up with an actual budget to constrain costs as much as any federal budget can.
But in the end, both sides know a government shutdown is more theatrical than fiscal. The Left will run sob story after sob story about some lower level drone who won’t get paid and, thus, will go hungry. The Right will complain about how little was cut, but how they had to surrender like the French when there was a minute amount of pushback from the Left.
And the rest of us go on living life as normal for the most part. I’ve been alive for each of the government shutdowns I mentioned above, and not once have the doomsday scenarios painted by the Left ever happened. Even the longer ones didn’t affect most people.
That’s one of the dirty secrets of government shutdowns: the programs the Left always paint as being on the verge of collapse due to the shutdown are usually scheduled to be paid without interruption. And the government employees who lose their jobs when there’s a shutdown? They still get paid after the fact.
Which means…it’s all a show that we’re paying for, but not really enjoying. So, like “Two and a Half Men” on demand, only without the demand part.
The thing to remember whenever a government shutdown is threatened is most people know how to get by even better without the government than they do with it. This may be my small government bias talking (or just common sense), but the fact we don’t need much government should tell both sides maybe we don’t need to spend so much on their services. But that would mean they would have to willingly give up the money and power they get by having the government’s tentacles in every aspect of our lives, sometimes several times over.
Anything short of a full scale fire-and-rehire movement on Capitol Hill won’t prevent a government shutdown going forward. However, I do have a way for us to save some money doing something both sides like to do, but don’t like to admit.
That’s right. Outsourcing Congress to India.
At this point, anything’s worth a shot.