LOOK OVER THERE!!

Revolting.

The buck doesn't stop with Obama, so it must be someone else's fault.

this

I wish to god this crowd would beat that man to death.

How is it that we elect mentally handicapped people to office?

The biggerer your flag is, the more America you are.

Dude should have just kept his mouth shut, knocked down the fn' barricades and let the Veterans have their day. I feel sorry for the Park Ranger, but worse for the Vets on the Honor Flight.

Actually, @silvercord, it was Congress members who moved the barricades so the vets could enter. It wasn't the vets themselves -- they had more respect for the rule of "law."

This shutdown corresponds with thousands of middle schoolers going to Washington DC. Kids, some of the low income, who worked for a year to get the funds to go. They are certainly getting an education about how Congress works.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/10/01/hey-teabaggers-thanks-for-teaching-a-very-important-civics-lesson-to-8th-grade-students-at-st-mar
y-magdalen-in-everett

Well, I guess I'm a bit of a rebel then as well I'm with Mr. Hanks.

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

She should be.

All Americans should be.

I'm not sure what's going on here, is this right?

Access to the war memorial was shut down because of the government shut-down. There was a war memorial service taking place that was supposed to visit the memorial. Park Rangers would not let them in because it was shut down. A national Congressman who is partly responsible for blocking the budget is there and is telling off the Park Ranger for doing what his actions have caused.

The US is literally being held hostage by a fringe group of ignorant, stupid, little shits called the Tea Party. The time to be civil and rational is long gone. These morons don't understand logic or history.

I see @lantern53 has no idea how gov't works. You see bobknight33, err I mean lantern53, There are three branches of government. Only one of them can create laws.

After much compromise, congress passed a law called the ACA. The President agreed and signed it into Law. It was ALSO upheld by the Supreme Court. So you see, ALL THREE branches of gov't are OK with this law.

Now this faction in the House of Representatives are trying to pass a law that says "sure, we'll fund gov't...but only if you de-fund or repeal the ACA. That's not governing, that's called taking a hostage. The senate isn't going to agree, so there's deadlock. See, the president isn't even involved.

He would ONLY get involved if both housed agreed with this, but guess what, even if congress agreed with the Tea Party, The President has this pesky little thing called a veto, which sends it back to Congress and they need a whopping 2/3rds majority vote to override him.

sorry, ain't going to happen. But hey, I'm happy that I could give you some remedial education since you refused to pay attention in class.

So in actuality, The Tea Party can keep having their little temper tantrum, They're all but digging their graves in the next election.

What seems particularly fucked up is that a simple majority of one of the two houses of the legislative branch can shut down the government. Failure to pass a budget and relying on continuing resolutions just shouldn't be an option. Whichever proposed budget gets the most votes, just go with that one. Or have runoff votes if there are several proposed budgets and it's a close vote.

Help me understand how the President has the authority/power to delay implementing the corporate mandate of the law.

Easy.

It's called the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946.

Thank you. From a cursory read this is the same Act that is being used to bring lawsuits; that this was violated. But that may be beside the point. If the President has the power to do this, doesn't he have the power to delay the individual mandate as well?

In the interest of full disclosure is this observation from the Washington Times. Notice the quote from one of the Park Rangers.

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.
“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”


Yep. Kinder and gentler.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/3/pruden-the-cheap-tricks-of-the-game/

As an alternative to civility and reason what do you suggest?

sigh..... I don't. Not really.

It's just frustrating and infuriating, but violence is never the answer.

But it sure feels like it is. The whole democratic process is corrupted and warped into a cesspool of personal interests, lobbies, and moronic pandering.

I agree. It is frustrating. I agree with your assessment, "the whole democratic process is corrupted and warped . . . " Money changes everything. On both sides.

I despise the two party system, but one side, (or to be more specific, one subfaction of one side) is demonstrably more harmful than the other.

I'm all in favor of abolishing parties in this nation, this "but they're equally bad" argument is bull.

Government was actually designed that way though, sure we don't like shutdowns (but then again, here's the problem, some people DO want the gov't to be shut down so that corporations can run everything) but government WAS designed to be slow and not easy to change laws. It has the side benefit of being very resistant to tyranny since it requires so many people and multiple branches to agree

It's one thing to not like how government works, but its quite another to be willing to shutdown gov't over ONE piece of legislation that has the support of the people and the branches of gov't. It's quite another to have a faction completely and utterly oppose the president purely on the basis of the color of his skin.

The big tent GOP is being left behind and that tent is getting smaller and smaller. Gerrymandered districts are pretty much the only reason they are still retaining control. And typically when a company isn't doing so hot, they tend to not actually change tactics, but they do change their name so people with short memories get fooled, so then they called themselves the Tea Party, well that's not working out so well since again, they haven't really changed at all, so now they're rebranding themselves again and calling themselves Libertarians, but it's the same bullshit, just a different name.

No one ever said the ACA is perfect...no one. It was a compromise, What the public WANTED was single payer, but this was the compromise. You want to tweak it? change it? improve it? I'd agree with getting rid of all the exceptions people of talked about,

but you don't threaten to shutdown the gov't over it. especially when you've already failed to repeal it 40+ times in the past. Shutting down the gov't and waging message warfare trying to blame it on the president when it's 100% a congress issue is deranged behavior and basically counts on people being stupid enough to not know how the gov't works (like @lantern53) to believe the message.

People are dumb, but they're not quite THAT stupid, most people do know that it's the Tea Party holding the gov't hostage and not the President. This little stunt is really not helping their chances in the next election so in a weird way, I'm glad they're doing this because it just hastens them getting kicked out in 2014

Anecdotally speaking, a lot of my coworkers are conservatives and every single one of them is saying "fuck the Tea Party"

Yes, he does. As long as he faithfully executes the law.

But that is moot. There is absolutely no reason why POTUS/admin thinks the individual mandate should be delayed for a year. There is no reason.

Yes, there is a reason why republicans want it delayed, because they not only win this fight, they also remove a major revenue stream for ACA and then put the mandate back in play during the election.

Why would republicans want this to happen during an election?

Because bad-faith wedge issues is all they have. They are purposefully denying people, including kids and low-income citizens, access to affordable health care. They are 10000000% willing to let millions suffer for them to score political points in 2014.

This is why the GOP needs to cripple the baggers, and then the entire republican party should jump off a fucking cliff. This country has moved decades beyond their nonsense. The corporate Democrats are as far of a right-wing group as any modern country needs.

The fact that you had to add that caveat shows that you are smart enough to know better than to quote that rag as a reputable source.

What I didn't write was, "In the interest of full disclosure, this observation is from the Washington Times." Thanks for responding to what I didn't write.

I can think of several scenarios why our President may decide to delay the individual mandate. One: The employer mandate won't be in effect this year. Some of those dollars will be lost. Two: The sign-ups from the youngest eligible group is suspect. While the program may have been successfully sold to them, the outcome is in doubt. If that group decides for a bit of civil disobedience - trouble. Three: There is this real possibility: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2013/10/04/president-obama-will-delay-his-health-insurance-mandate/

While I wish this were running more smoothly, there are other reasons outside of the Tea Party, to think that more trouble is coming.

I remember when the government tried to get this country to go on the metric system. I see something similar in play here right now. Hopefully it will get straightened out. It needs to.

EDIT: Reuters had an article on this as well:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/05/us-usa-healthcare-technology-analysis-idUSBRE99407T20131005

I've worked as a professional counselor long enough to know that it always takes two to tango. Money changes everything on both sides. I would more likely agree with a statement that said, "both sides are evil, one is just more evil than the other." I won't go as far as to say that one side is evil and the other all lightness and puppy dog toes. From where I stand, both parties serve the status quo and that status quo hurts all of us.

I entered this thread in order to say that I think the veterans should have their day at the monument. I couldn't care less that a Tea Partier led them in. Who cares? The fact that it was someone from the Tea Party who did the right thing and not a Democrat seems to gall people to no end. Who cares? I don't. I would have cheered any Democrat pushing back against this stupidity as well. Let the heroes in.

The reasons you listed have nothing to do with how the administration sees things. Rather, how the republicans see things.

And you cannot honestly tell me the republicans have any other reason, other than putting this as an issue for 2014 mid-terms, to want to delay the mandate.

The Forbes article you posted is an opinion article from a right-wing thinktank hack. AEI wants nothing other than destruction of any social safety net this country has. You may as well link to a breitbart or Glenn Beck diatribe.

It's fine if you feel so bad about the veterans not getting to have their gathering. But what about all the head start kids who're locked out of school because of the bagger hostage-taking?

The Democrats have already given two enourmous gifts to republicans.

1- CR at sequestration levels
2- The Paul Ryan Budget

There is absolutely no way in hell that our economy needs to suffer more.

The baggers need to be destroyed. Period.

Disagree:

One party - the Democrats - want to preserve the status quo, but tweak it just a little.

The other party - the Republicans - want to privatize all levels of government, and service the rentiers.

30 years of money moving into the hands of fewer and fewer people is not because of "both sides". It is because of the overwhelming force of one side, and the weak capitulation of the other.

I guess I must be out of the loop as far as how the Republicans see things. This is just me talking. I am bi-vocational. I work as a substance abuse and marital counselor and I also own my own business, These are just things I have thought through, not been told about.

I am wondering if there will be enough money to fund the ACA without the employer mandate.

I am wondering if there isn't going to be civil disobedience on a massive scale with our young people who don't yet have insurance but now must buy it.

I read the article from Forbes and also the one from Reuters on a Google search because I was having so much trouble trying to navigate the healthcare.gov website. After repeated unsuccessful attempts and some strange pages popping up I began to think it was more than just overloaded servers causing the problem.

Until you mentioned the Republicans wanting to delay the mandate for a political advantage in 2014 I hadn't really given it much thought. Honestly, I really don't care why the Republicans want to delay the mandate. You wrote that there is absolutely no reason that the current admin may want to delay. I thought of a few scenarios that might end up being good reasons to delay it.

And just an FYI, I need to sign up for this. So the delay is hurting me. I'm not for delaying it. But the delay for me isn't coming from the the Tea Party. It's coming from the freaking website.

Ohmmade:

This is the status quo -



Anyone wanting to preserve this, even if they 'tweak it just a little,' is evil in my book.

The website delay is not a big deal at all. I've worked in major social media for the last five years and believe me, when you launch a new product that attracts 3-10 million users on its first day, there are going to be problems.

Also, I tested it out at launch and I had to wait about 30 minutes to be able to use the system. Then it worked fine for me.

You say you need the ACA coverage, and that's great. I'm quite happy about that. But remember, even if the .gov worked absolutely flawlessly, it doesn't matter because the policies are open until March 14th 2014, and don't even take effect for two more months.

You've got time. And so does the ACA and the rest of us.

I never argued that one side was "good" but then again, I despise moral abstracts such as good and evil because they simply are not accurate, quantifiable descriptions, and are often used to manipulate emotions.

One side is harmful...the other side is less harmful.

If you can come up with a better system, more power to you, but when you have a situation like this, you don't throw out the whole system, you get rid of the part of it that is causing the most harm and re-evaluate

Even though I think parties should be abolished, you can't stop people from peaceably assembling and picking people that they support. All you can do is stop officially recognizing them and disband any organization like the DNC/RNC or any lobbying group as lobbying needs to be abolished as well. with the advent of the internet and email, ANYONE can communicate with their congressperson easily and get their point across. Lobbying is obsolete as well as corrupt.

We've got to get rid of the private money in our political system

And one small faction of the Republicans promised even before the 2010 elections that they were going to shut the government down. They've continued to make exactly that claim for 3+ years now...why would anyone be surprised they have done exactly that. It's not even an issue with the ACA, they're out to destroy the government.

And if it wasn't for a ball-less, spineless Speaker of the House, they couldn't have done it. All he had to do was offer a vote on the compromise "clean" funding resolution the Senate sent back to the House, which would very likely pass. But he appears to be more concerned about losing his position than he is about working to make things better for the citizens of this country.