Countdown to Shutdown: One more day to go and the fur is flying T minus 1

Over the weekend the standoff over the continuing funding of the government remained unresolved. If there is no agreement in the next few hours, there will be a partial shutdown of segments of the government starting technically at midnight. The country will survive, but this is no way to run a country. Wonder if this is what James Madison had in mind when he was writing drafts of the Constitution?

It is not all the interesting to go over the back and forth of the House and Senate. Suffice it to point out, The Senate under the uber-leader Senator Harry Reid for its part did not even try to make it look like there was any interest by remaining closed on Sunday.

Each side has drawn lines in the sand of the unpopular new health care law. This is a vexing situation. If it is that crappy why are the Republicans trying to save the country from what it clearly deserves as a results of the election? On the other hand, maybe the conservatives feel compelled to save the economy and health care from the evils of the Affordable Care Act, even if they have to destroy their party as a result. Strange.

The Republican position is now not to defund the implementation of the law (the Administration has chosen to implement whatever part it wants), it is to delay the individual mandate for one year and repeal the medical device tax, some $30 billion in revenue over the next ten years.

Democrats do not care if the government is shut down. Preserve the ACA at all cost. Run the hooligans out of town. Tar and feather the conservatives. Even if saddled with its unpopularity, Democrats have no intention of losing this one; it is too precious, too important to President Obama. Is is really the only thing he has accomplished in office, if you want to call it an accomplishment, other than presiding over massive deficits and a down grading of the U.S. credit rating. 

Tomorrow, a person can sign up for insurance at one of the state health exchanges, most of which are being run by the federal government.  One of more interesting aspects is of the whole mess, is that the exchanges really do not add anything. A person if they wanted health insurance can find it now and buy it in the marketplace. The difference is that is now mandatory a person have health insurance, Thanks to the rubber stamping of the Supreme Court, individual citizens no longer have any choice, a further erosion of liberty and individual rights. Now a person has limited choice, as there is only 4-cookie cutter, one size fits all plans. I know, it is mind-boggling.

The other interesting part is for those that cannot afford the mandatory insurance; the government will pay you to get it without verifying your income. So, it is an uncontrolled subsidized mandate.

In any event, this is not about health care; this is about the control of government. Not sure how this will all go in the short term. It is unpredictable, but I would not be surprised if traffic is lighter tomorrow.