Great job, guys, high fives all around.
attribution: Original image by Gage Skidmore
Great job, guys, high fives all around.
We continue our year-end roundup of the year in ridiculousness. September was most notable for House Republicans reaching the apex of all possible efforts to
not work, resulting in a government shutdown that left 800,000 government workers furloughed, national parks and museums shuttered, and "essential" government being obliged to continue working without paychecks. By the end the costs to the nations would be in the billions.
It should be noted that the House undertook this plan apparently based on the say-so of a certain Sen. Ted Cruz that if they shut down the government, they would win things. What those things were was never clear—demands revolved primarily around delaying or defunding Obamacare—and in the dismal end the House got approximately none of those things, as was readily predicted by, well, everyone who was not Ted Cruz.
- Inspired by Rand Paul and/or a neighbor's leafblower, Ted Cruz gave a very important pre-shutdown not-filibuster. I challenge even the most stalwart political observer to remember what the hell it was actually about, save the Dr. Seuss references. Time's up: The answer was Obamacare. Did you guess Obamacare? Well then, good job! I believe the general premise was that the medical device tax was like Hitler, but don't quote me on that.
- Most pre-shutdown planning by Republicans—in fact, the only pre-shutdown planning done, or at least so it seems—was an extended effort to assert that if Republicans shut down the government in a quest to repeal Obamacare, it wouldn't be their fault. Like Donald Trump's hair helmet, this too did not work.
- "Sequestration," the previous plan concocted to ensure that House Republicans would get their sorry act together rather then subject the nation to a clearly ridiculous and damaging set of arbitrary federal budget cuts, continued to do damage.
- In non-shutdown news, September also saw John McCain continue his push to arm Syrian rebels. This led to the predictable difficulty in explaining to anti-Muslim conservatives that all Muslims are not inherently evil, a message complicated by John McCain himself being unclear on who the good guys were.
- Sen. Lindsey Graham declared that not bombing Syria would lead to an Iran-Israel war "within six months."
- Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, a tough-on-crime conservative, was forced to apologize after asking Gov. Rick Scott (successfully) to reschedule a Florida death row inmate's execution because it conflicted with her re-election fundraiser.
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