the Non-Definitive Guide to the Government Shutdown

(Train wreck or in for the long haul - you decide...)

As you may have intuited from either my introduction or just reading a few of my post, I live and work in the environs of DC. When I saw that the House had held strong and the government was truly shut down, I decided to see how it effects stuff around here. This all the stuff I gathered on the subject.

1. National Parks: It appears that it is too much a burden to allow people to wonder around the national parks all by themselves. They will just have to go other places and wonder around. Oddly enough, this will mean that places like the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Jefferson Memorial - all outside venues - will be blocked off. That does not mean the police will not be patrolling the the areas like they usually do. They just will be ticketing anyone who walks on the federal grass. Unless you are a homeless guy taking a whiz in the bushes. No one wants to get anywhere near those guys. This unfortunately will include two of my favorite parks - Shenandoah National Park (SNP) and Prince William Forest (where I occasionally go mountain biking). Interestingly, SNP was going to do a controlled burn on the 15th at Big Meadows, which I guess will be rescheduled. An honest administration would just allow people to wonder around on their own - but an honest administration wouldn't make up law on their own and precipitate this whole thing. This is all true unless you are a WWII veteran - then you can storm your memorial like the real men and women you are! Go Vets! (feel good story of the shutdown!). UPDATE: The House is going to pass a CR to just fund parks & VA hospital. If Senate rejects it then they hate crippled veterans, vacationers, park rangers, and bears - the black and brown ones. Racist Bastards! UPDATE: Senate rejected it - Racist! 
2. Government Web Sites: In another churlish move, the administration has decided to take down the government web sites that people care about. Like the Library of Congress, and the Damn Panda Cam! The national zoo will be patrolled by the cops and the animals will be fed, but no one will be able to walk around there on their own. Have no fear though - the Obamacare web site is up and running - sort of - apparently it and the various state exchanges are crashing badly. In an amazing oversight, background checks for gun purchases will still be functional. How did they miss that?
3. Government Checks: So social security checks will go out to the vulnerables, and food stamps will be unaffected. Apparently a shut down federal government does not mean stopping free government cheese.
4. Government Employees:  There are apparently massive furloughs going on all over the beltway. One plus for those of us in the area is the traffic should be better as all the feds will be off the road. This was not the case this morning. Apparently they all had to come in to work to turn in their blackberries and wait for an email from OPM notifying them if they were 'essential'. Oh - they are not to do any real work or check their e-mail. How they resolve that conumdrum is one of those mysteries of the federal service - a kind of 'don't ask, don't tell thing. According to the OPM guidance memo, they will eventually get paid for coming in and not doing anything. There is also the very real possibility they will get paid for staying at home during the shutdown too, depending on how congress resolves the impasse. Have no fear though, the political appointees of the administration are somehow not subject to a shutdown furlough, according to a 'special' (read unaccountable) ruling by the justice department. Congress critters and their staff(?) fall into the same category.
5. Travel and Trips: Apparently the government shutdown is not going to stop Obama from doing his planned junket to Asia to suck up to the Chinese, or stop Kerry from going Toyko to relive his Vietnam R&R memories. On the other hand, travel for regular state department diplomats is suspended.  Does that means they are going to go stag? I am guessing that at least the teleprompter will be allowed to travel as it has to be a political appointee. UPDATE: The Bamster canceled his far east junket, and instead is sending Kerry. Brothels all over the far east put on alert for the confluence of Secret Service agents and Kerry's frat party staff.
6. White House Chefs: Apparently there is some question as to whether or not the White House chefs are 'essential'. Beany Weniees for all remaining staff.

I'll continue to update this as I see more stuff. This should be fun! For the record, here's where we are in my flow diagram for the shutdown:

What if you had a government shutdown and nobody came?

So Boner and the boys & girls of the house found their spine and revised and passed the CR to

1. Fund the government until December - changed from November 1st end of funding
2. Delay Obamacare for one year (whatever that means) - changed from defunding Obamacare (whatever that meant)
3. Remove medical device tax from Obamacare
4. Separate funding CR for military

This would of course change the timing of the beginning of the Obamacare implementation from hitting in an off year to going into action just before the 2014 election. When the low information voters realize that they have gotten screwed out of real money with the huge tax increase that is Obamacare just before the election, even the dead people voting block won't be enough to overcome their indignation.

Predictably, Sub-President Reid has said the Senate will reject anything other than a 'clean' CR. It really is amazing how he can read and control the minds of all the duly elected US Senators:

Reid: "You don't need to see what's in the bill"

Senators: "we don't need to read the bill"

Reid: "This in not the CR you are looking for"

Senators: "This isn't the CR we are looking for"

Reid: "you can go about our business"

Senators: "We will go about our business"

Reid: "Move along"

Senators: "move along, move along"

Kinda like this:

(heh - did you notice that Obi-Wan has a Trevon hoodie?)

What is more entertaining is what will happen when the government is shut down. A good example is how the DC government has already reacted. They have a conceptual 'emergency fund' that will guarantee that everyone on the DC payroll will continue to get paid, and have declared that all city services are 'essential', from the police to DC's notorious meter maids.

I wonder what congress would do if Obama pulled a similar move and refused to shut anything down, continuing to spend money without congressional authorization? Would congress have the will to impeach him? I suspect not - especially as long as Reid controls the minds of the Senate. Obama has already exceeded his legal authority on other numerous occasions, and gotten away with it. Why would it be different now? It reminds me of the story about the dinner at the White House... go read it if you haven't already. Lately it is echoing eerily in my head...

Data Flow Diagram Update

(Disco never dies - neither will Obamacare i'm afraid)

So yesterday while I was out hiking and doing stuff, Reid did the predictable thing and pushed through the stripping of the 'Obamacare de-funding' from the continuing resolution to fund the government. Then everyone, democrat and republican, lined up and did the kabuki theater vote, thus passing the bill back to the house for 'reconciliation'. That leaves us here with the data flow diagram I started a few days ago:

In the interest of full disclosure, while reviewing this I realized that there was a small error in the top right where processing should flow from "Obama lays off park rangers" to "House Caves" and corrected that. My apologies.

The absurd thing about this whole process is that the real outcome is nominal should the Republican succeed. The 'de-funding' would not stop the Obamacare roll out, as a great deal of the machinery necessary for that roll out is already funded or dependent on regulatory changes that don't have anything to do with direct funding. De-funding the IRS and HHS would probably be the only way to stop the Obamacare roll out, and even then the administration would simply ignore it. 

Ironically, a government shutdown will probably do more to hurt that roll out then this symbolic gesture. With a shutdown, the regulators who are responsible for the roll out have the possibility of being furloughed. Naturally, the administration will merely furlough other federal workers that are visible and doing real work, like park rangers, sailors, and soldiers. 

I fear the dominoes are being lined up for a very unpleasant future. This reminds me of an episode of the Bear Grylls survival show. I don't remember which one, but it made an impression on me as it reinforced what I have been taught in real survival courses. He diverged into a discussion about choices that you make in a survival situation. He noted that people that get in trouble in the wild rarely make just one bad choice. It is usually one wrong decision after another, each one reinforcing the next, until reaching the dire reality of a life or death situation. The trick in a survival situation is quite simply to never let it reach that point or if that is unavoidable, make choices that limit the harm.

What concerns me is that is where this administration has taken us. We are at a tipping point that has nothing to do with anthropomorphic global warming. It has to do with real decision made by real people. Pretending to control the actions of the Syrian dictator made us look weak. That has emboldened Iran to pretend to negotiate with John 'Chamberlain' Kerry's state department on their almost completed nuclear weapons. This sets the stage  for the very real possibility of a nuclear conflagration in the gulf. The monumental loss of freedom that Obamacare represents, along with the numerous congressional investigations into this administration's utter corruptness, will fade into the background in the horrible light of such drama. That is a flow diagram I am loath to draw.

Barack Gets An Emu

I had just got home from a hard day’s work and I noticed an angry look on my wife’s face. Now I know that most of you are thinking how could you tell? I mean that lady looks perpetually unhappy. Well let’s just say that after ducking around her, and the whole smoking cessation thing we did 16 years ago, fear is a great motivator for learning such things.

So she says to me “Karrab”, she calls me ‘Karrab’ when she is upset with me, “What is that large box doing in the back of the van?"

I smile at her, partly because I know she will just love the surprise, partly because I fear she will tear my head off. “Elle May” I say (that’s one of my pet names for her, at least one of the ones I use when she can hear me). “That's my surprise for the neighborhood and for you!”

Her face lightens a bit. It is only the raising one of her formidable eyebrows a millimeter, but it is a hopeful sign. She replies, “I hope this is not like the last time when you and your little honky friend Kerry started drawing red lines all over the neighborhood, daring mean old man Assad to step over them. That did not turn out well.”

“No”, I say. “It’s nothing like that. It’s an Emu! Aunt Pelosi bought it sight unseen a while back, but we can’t take it out of the box until October 1st.” I can tell I have surprised her. I can tell because her eyebrows go up by three millimeters. 

“What in Sheba’s name are we going to do with an Emu?” she asks me. 

“They are fabulous!” I gush. I am so glad I can get my sales pitch out before she gives me that love tap in the sternum that leaves me curled up on the front lawn. “They make these giant eggs. Each one can feed a family for a whole day! And they have magic properties that will keep you in tip top shape or cure you even if you weren't sick before!”

She frowns, but somehow maintains the friendly lifted eyebrow. “Doesn't the money you are taking from all rich kids at the bus stop feed the neighbors and take care of their visits to the abortion and breast exam clinics? Besides, big birds like that require a really big fence. You don’t think the imaginary fence you made to keep all the Mexicans out will stop it from wondering off?”

I plunge ahead. “I have thought this through. I talked to crazy Uncle Lew and Aunt Sillybus who live in the basement. They assure me that they will get all the neighbors together to set up the Emu egg distribution. You know how Lew is. They will help or he will break their fingers. Eric the cop says he will go along with it, since we have the same haircut. My best buddy Dier says it can’t fail!”

While the angry expression on her face doesn't change (it never does), her eyebrows rejoin together for a neutral uni-brow, indicating she is thinking it through. “What about that pesky white boy, Boner, who is always trying to tell us what we can or can’t do. Have you thought about what he is going say about this?”

I smile. I am proud of this part. “Well he did tell Dier that he wasn't going to let the bus stop rich people give us any more money, starting October 1st unless I take the Emu back. But that is not a problem. You see Dier and I have a plan for that. Come October 1st we plan to slash the tires on a couple of buses. When the rich people see there are no buses running for a couple of days, they will get really mad.”

“Won’t they be mad at you for slashing the tires?” she asks.

“No. That’s the beauty of the plan. We’ll just say we slashed them because we had to or there would be no Emu eggs for the neighborhood”. I reply.

Both eyebrows go down. This. Is. Not. A. Good. Sign. “Why would they care? Those eggs will only feed or cure two families at most. There are millions of families in this neighborhood. It’s not just the rich people that ride buses, some of the people in this neighborhood have jobs too.”

She smiles. This just got serious. Speaking in an icy tone, she says “This is what you are going to do. Tell the neighbors that the rich people at the bus stop called them all egg eaters and are laughing at them. This will make them mad at the bus stop people with their fancy buses and jobs. Then, because they are mad, Boner, being the weak-assed white boy he is, will ‘accidentally’ give Deir permission to let the Emu out. Everybody wins.”

Chastised, I begin to head down to the basement to tell Uncle Lew and Aunt Sillybus to take care of the Emu. As I walking away, she yells at me, “Hey! Stop by the hall closet and let your cracker brother Joe out of the closet, but this time make sure his shotgun is unloaded”.

UPDATE:  Once again I welcome the readership of the IMAO faithful. Thanks for following the link, and thanks again to Harvey. If you haven't already, take a look around, sample the free ice cream, and bookmark me for when you are really bored. That is my key demographic - really, really, really bored people.

Actually so far all the ice cream is free here as this is a non-revenue blog - I don't want to figure out the paperwork for the IRS.  Cheers!

The Roll, Not the Rock

I know there's stuff going on with Obamacare and the CR to continue to fund the government, but frankly, I need a break writing about that right now

So a there's this study that basically indicates that sea sickness may be all about posture and sway (H/T NY Times Blog via Instapundit). I found this interesting as I am one of those that are mildly effected by sea sickness.  I recall the first time I got sea sick, which was coincidentally my very first 'sea journey'. Upon my completion of advanced training in the Army, but before my deployment overseas to Alaska - yes Alaska was considered an overseas assignment - I took a vacation with my brother to Hawaii. While there, we decided to give deep sea fishing a try. Now you have to understand that we had both been fishing all our lives. In fact we were cohorts in the 'fish shooting incident' which I will wait to write about until I am sure that the statute of limitations has expired. Deep sea fishing was an area we had not tried. The lure of catching a really big fish was just too big a temptation for us.

In any case, we thought that it would be a great idea the go out on one of the charters from Honolulu. Those things started early, so on the way to the boat, we walked by Burger King and got a couple of (greasy) breakfast croissants. At first it was cool being out on a small boat in the 'real' ocean. The fun of course ended as soon as the shore disappeared. It was a solid hurl fest for both of us. After a bit my stomach settled down and I was able to fish. I caught a nicely sized dauphin (not the mammal dolphin) which we gave the crew upon our return. Sadly my brother remained out of it for the whole adventure. I will admit, even to this day I will not eat Burger King croissant breakfast sandwiches.

My next memorable encounter came when I was working on a navigation system for the Osprey class Navy mine hunters. I had learned my lesson from subsequent fishing forays and knew enough to take the Dramamine early and often. It was a fine balance to keep enough meds in me to avoid getting sick, but not so much that it made me too woozy to do my job. That all worked fine until on one trip we met up with a fairly stiff storm. Those ships had a tendency to roll even in the mildest of seas, and in a good blow, they were quite frankly awful. It was so bad that I think less than 25% of the crew were able to stand at their post. I somehow managed to be one of the barely walking non-hurlers, but until things calmed down, it was a miserable experience. What made it even worse was the night of the storm was scheduled to be one of the quarterly meals where the ship served lobster. With the weather, they turned out to be disgusting overcooked rubbery messes that no one could eat anyway. That was a real tragedy.

Having said all that, the above study's assertion about 'learning' and 'stance' does make a bit of sense. I suspect that there might be some strategy to countering the roll of the ship so the inner ear matches the visual in such a way as to get a close enough match. Once this pattern is established, no more seasickness. Such a skill is probably pretty hard to 'teach', and in the thousands of years, there has been apparently no new ideas about how to do it. Thus, any progress the researchers might come up with to overcome it would be spectacular. I will note that at the time of the Osprey work, I was just starting to get interested in pressure points. There are a couple of points on the wrist and ear that seem to do some people some good. This was fairly new information back then, but now days I believe that it is well known.

One man's million words...

UPDATE: This ended at noon - no point in leaving Reid to spout more lies - Instead, now a few words of wisdom from Bluto to take to heart...

I have to work today, so I didn't stay up and watch Ted Cruz's noble 'stand in the breach' action last night. I was gratified to come into work this morning and find him still there, banging away. Go Ted! If only the Republicans in the house will stiffen their spines and continue to stand against this. As noted in my flow diagram, I just don't see that happening. But never the less, he is standing in the breach. This is exactly what I expect every elected Republican to do. Now more of the same tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that... If there is anything we have learned from the current administration, you have to keep telling the low information voters stuff over and over if you expect for it to sink in...

To help you follow along, here is the state of the flow diagram so far (green is complete, red are steps that I got wrong - see notes in the bottom left corner...

(click on to make larger - no you pervert - it doesn't mean that)

Bias? What Bias?

Bias not Baez you idiot!

Just clicking around a bit this morning noted Drudge had featured a WSJ article about Cruz's Quixote-like attempt to get the house Obamacare defunding bill to a vote. I was taken just a little aback by the abject media bias on that one. The indication there was a problem starts with the Title:

Cruz Sets Confrontational Tone as Senate Debate Begins

I would argue that Reid is the one with the argumentative tone. Rather than allow a vote and let the democratic process proceed, he is blocking a vote on the actual bill sent by the house. What is he afraid of? Surely he has the votes to defeat it. Why is he reluctant to lay his cards on the table? Just perhaps because he is afraid of exposing his minions the the ire of actually voting the shut down the government? My theory on the broken state of the representation system of our government is demonstrated in spades here. Here's what sub-president Reid said:

President Obama has been clear. I have been clear. Any bill that defunds Obamacare is dead on arrival in the Senate.

The piece rambles on, then, out of the blue, comes this bit of 'fair' analysis:

 Mr. Cruz was in danger of being seen as a pot calling the kettle black when he said, “There is a tendency in this town toward brinksmanship, towards pointing to events that can cause instability and uncertainty and using them to try to get your way."

 I would say that Reid and Obama are the very embodiment of brinksmanship. They are the ones that refuse, year after year to negotiate a real budget. Bet I suspect that to use the same analogy on Obama would probably be considered racist, and my momma taught me better than that.

I suspect we will hear more of this kind of nonsense as the debate moves forward. I also suspect the low information voters will buy it hook, line, and sinker. For the record, here is how far we have gotten in my flow chart:

UPDATE 3:57pm (ET):
It appears that Reid has not tabled, and Cruz has started a filibuster - a real one 'until he can no longer stand'. But apparently it's not an actual 'filibuster', but a really long speech. You can watch it here..

"Townhalls are not an inconvenience"

It's like he read my blog!!!