Category Archives: Systemtic Failure

It couldn’t happen here, could it?

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I read. By that, I mean I read a lot. If you see me away from home, you may notice I have my tablet with me. I have a couple of thousand books on it. I finished a book last night, Joe Steel by Harry Turtledove. http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406509652l/22544038.jpgI’m not going to give it a review. I rarely, if ever, review books. I’ve read a lot of Turtledove’s books and his favorite theme is Alternate History. I would suggest you read this one. It has some critical insights within it.

The alternate history in this book is simple…what if Joe Stalin’s parents had emigrated to the US well before Joe Stalin was born? Leon Trotsky, a darling of some current leftists, would have succeeded V. I. Lenin to lead communist Russia. Joe Stalin, who is called Joe Steel in the book, becomes a California congressmen running against FDR in 1932…and FDR and Eleanor mysteriously die in a fire in the New York Governor’s mansion.

I remember my father saying, he was an FDR democrat, that the country came to within a hair’s breadth of a revolution in 1932. Progressive propaganda blamed Wall Street for the nation’s woes. Some of that blame is valid; much was not.

The book uses that concept to show how the US could be changed into a dictatorship by an unprincipled strongman. I don’t know Turtledove’s politics but some of the tactics used by Joe Steel are eerily similar to some being used by Barak Obama.

How could the US be suborned into a dictatorship? The answer is in the book if you look: complacency, ignorance, and bigotry against the fundamental principles of this nation with a well-planned attack by democrats against free enterprise and capitalism. Take a look at our current politics and you’ll see the parallels in the book.

When FDR’s tactics were blocked by the Supreme Court, FDR attempted to pack the court with his cronies. In Joe Steel, Stalin has them charged with trumped up violations and shoots them for treason. The aims of FDR and Joe Steel were the same, only the tactics were different.

The book disturbed me. Not by its theme nor of its plot; it disturbed me because it could easily happen here. We don’t have someone knocking on our door in the middle of the night. They use battering rams instead.

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If you’re a student of military history, you may have noticed something that is no longer allowed in the US military. Not all that long ago, a soldier’s weapons were stored, not in the armory, but with him in his barracks. In the 1990’s, during Clinton’s administration, that changed and those weapons were removed, taken from the troops. If the question was asked, “Why?” no real answer was given. There is one very reasonable motivation—the military leadership feared their troops.

The disarming of the military had consequences. One direct consequence was the massacre at Ft. Hood. There have been other, less well-known incidents as well.

Ted Cruz has an answer. Allow troops to carry personal weapons on base. It won’t alleviate the fears of mutiny by the leadership. It will, however, allow troops to have the means to be able to defend themselves and their families.

Ted Cruz takes on the military, says ‘Second Amendment rights are removed’ from troops on base

Base commanders fear accidents, escalation of personal disputes

By Jacqueline Klimas – The Washington Times – Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz is asking lawmakers to consider allowing troops to carry personal firearms on base for protection, reviving a fight that has previously been a nonstarter with Congress after military leaders said they didn’t support the change.

While many lawmakers said Tuesday they were open to having a discussion on changing the rules in a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing, most said that they would defer issues of base security to military leaders — who have historically been against allowing concealed carry on their posts.

Mr. Cruz formally sent a letter to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and chairman of the committee, on Tuesday afternoon asking for a hearing on the subject, saying that current restrictions impede Second Amendment rights and weaken the safety and security of troops.

“The men and women in our military have been at war for over a decade; they understand the responsibilities that go along with carrying a firearm,” Mr. Cruz wrote in the letter. “Yet their Second Amendment rights are removed at the front gate.”

I suggest you read the entire column at the Washington Times website. It’s worth a read.

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The Judge Speaks

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Judge Andrew Napolitano of FOX News wrote an editorial that appeared on the FOX News website. It was relatively short. Its reasoning is specific. It is an indictment of the Patriot Act and the abuses that have occurred since its passage.

Is our Constitution just a worthless piece of paper?

By

During his [George W. Bush] presidency, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This legislation permits federal agents to write their own search warrants when those warrants are served on custodians of records — like doctors, lawyers, telecoms, computer servers, banks and even the Post Office.

Such purported statutory authority directly violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy in our “persons, houses, papers and effects.” That includes just about everything held by the custodians of our records. Privacy is not only a constitutional right protected by the document; it is also a natural right. We possess the right to privacy by virtue of our humanity. Our rights come from within us — whether you believe we are the highest progression of biological forces or the intended creations of an Almighty God — they do not come from the government.

If the terms and meaning of the Constitution could be changed by the secret whims of those in the executive branch into whose hands they have been reposed for safekeeping, of what value are they?

This is not an academic argument. If our rights come from within us, the government cannot take them away, whether by executive fiat, popular legislation or judicial ruling, unless we individually have waived them. If our rights come from the government, then they are not rights, but permission slips.

The terms of the Patriot Act were made public, and those of us who follow the government’s misdeeds could report on them. After all, this is America. We are a democracy. The government is supposed to work for us. 

We have the right to know what it is doing in our names as it is doing it, and we have the right to reveal what the government does. Yet, under this law, the feds punished many efforts at revelation. That’s because the Patriot Act prohibits those who receive these agent-written search warrants from telling anyone about them. This violates our constitutionally protected and natural right to free speech. All of this has been publicly known since 2001.

Then, in June 2013, Edward Snowden, the uber-courageous former CIA and NSA official, dropped a still smoldering bombshell of truth upon us when he revealed that the Bush administration had dispatched the NSA to spy on all Americans all the time and the Obama administration had attempted to make the spying appear legal by asking judges to authorize it.

Snowden went on to reveal that the NSA, pursuant to President Obama’s orders and the authorization of these judges meeting in secret (so secret that the judges themselves are not permitted to keep records of their own rulings), was actually capturing and storing the content of all emails, text messages, telephone calls, utility and credit card bills, and bank statements of everyone in America. They did this without a search warrant based on probable cause — a very high level of individualized suspicion — as required by the Constitution.

Snowden revealed that Obama’s lawyers had persuaded these secret judges, without any opposition from lawyers representing the victims of this surveillance, that somehow Congress had authorized this and somehow it was constitutional and somehow it was not un-American to spy on all of us all the time. These judges actually did the unthinkable: They issued what are known as general warrants. General warrants were used against the colonists by the British and are expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. They permit the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. That’s what the NSA does to all of us today.

Last week, we learned how deep the disrespect for the Constitution runs in the government and how tortured is the logic that underlies it. In a little-noted speech at Washington and Lee Law School, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of both the CIA and the NSA, told us. In a remarkable public confession, he revealed that somehow he received from some source he did not name the authority to reinterpret the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy so as to obliterate it. He argued that the line between privacy and unbridled government surveillance is a flexible and movable one, and that he — as the head of the NSA — could move it.

This is an astounding audacity by a former high-ranking government official who swore numerous times to uphold the Constitution. He has claimed powers for himself that are nowhere in the Constitution or federal statues, powers that no president or Congress has claimed, powers that no Supreme Court decision has articulated, powers that are antithetical to the plain meaning and supremacy of the Constitution, powers that any non-secret judge anywhere would deny him.

If the terms and meaning of the Constitution could be changed by the secret whims of those in the executive branch into whose hands they have been reposed for safekeeping, of what value are they? No value. In such a world, our Constitution has become a worthless piece of paper.

At the time of its passage, not much was known about the Patriot Act. It was a hasty response to 9/11 and to the intelligence failures that occurred before and after the attack. The Clinton administration had been diligent in weakening our military and intelligence organizations. The media built one scandal after another regardless of the merit of the incidents. In addition, interservice rivalry prevented sharing of information between agencies purposed for intelligence gathering. The intelligence organs had lost their identity and became politicized…to our detriment.

As with any pendulum, it had swung from one side of effectiveness to the other. The Patriot Act did not maintain the effectiveness of intelligence, it misdirected the aim of intelligence from outward to…inward. And we have all suffered from that change in direction.

A liberal Senator from the North East claims people want high-capacity magazine because, “they are arming against the government.” Apparently, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has never considered why people feel the need to arm themselves against the government. His statement is sufficient reason as it stands. But it is the abuses of government, such as those perpetrated by the Patriot Act, that provides the motivation Senator Murphy fears. Perhaps if he asked that question, “Why?” he would discover another answer and another alternative for his ire.

As we have seen, the senatorial GOP led by Mitch McConnell have no interest opposing the tyrannical acts of government. No, instead of opposing, they support such acts to the detriment of us all.

I have presented Judge Napolitano’s editorial in an attempt to expand its presence across the internet. It’s worth reading and consideration.

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It’s done, verdict announced

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The Ferguson verdict was announced last night. To no one’s great surprise, Darren Wilson was not charged. In fact, the prosecutor released all the evidence collected, much more than normal, to the media. The evidence was overwhelming. Michael Brown attacked Wilson, not once but twice. Wilson defended himself and shot Brown.

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Violence erupts in Ferguson: Fire, looting, arrests

But that doesn’t make any difference to those who are determined to riot regardless of the verdict. Before the night was over, thirty-one people had been arrested, numerous businesses were looted, a dozen buildings, along with at least two police cars, were burned, and shots were fired. None of those shots were fired by police. All were fired by members of the mob.

Missouri Govenor Jay Nixon sent members, upwards of 1,000, of the National Guard to St. Louis. However, he didn’t release them to quiet the rioting until almost midnight, well after much of the damage had been done.

I should not be but I’m continually amazed at Nixon’s incompetence and stupidity. What Nixon should have done was to deploy those Guard troops around the expected hotspots well before the announcement. With them in place, with orders to stop any looting and burning at first sight. And, if they were fired upon by the mob, to return fire.

For those of you too young to remember the LA riots of the ’60s, rioters and snipers fired upon National Guardsmen from the roofs and upper stories of buildings. The Guard returned fire with vehicle-mounted machine guns. In some cases turning the buildings into sieves. The sniping and rioting quickly stopped.

(I tried to find some links for the Guard responding to the Watts riots, but couldn’t find any that reported the events accurately. I remember those 1965 riots quite well. I was in college at the time taking a modern history class. We analyzed the riots closely. Now, some fifty years later, little can be found on the internet about the riots in Los Angles, the Watts Riots, that hasn’t been tainted with liberal viewpoints. The use of National Guardsmen has been painted as a counter-riot when it was not.

I remember watching live TV when a Guard jeep driving slowly down a street on patrol was taken under fire by several snipers on rooftops. The Guardsmen returned fire using their personal arms and the jeep-mounted machine gun. The sniping quickly ended with the snipers dead or having fled. The rioting ended soon after the arrival of the National Guard. Many of the Guardsmen were also combat veterans.

That real story can’t be found today. It’s been censored by the left.)

The bottom line is that the liberal government of St. Louis and Ferguson, abetted by Governor Jay Nixon, allowed the rioting to happen. Most of the damage was to locally-owned residents of Ferguson, minority owners. The liberal politicians of St. Louis and Jeff City, the leaders who were obligated to act and prevent violence, did nothing.

Al Sharpton and other thugs are on the way to Ferguson. They have no intention of quieting the situation. They will do anything and everything to cause the situation to get worse. The greater the disturbance the more their agenda will be enhanced. If Nixon and the St. Louis Police Chief were smart, they’d meet these thugs at the airport gate and put them on the next plane out from St. Louis to any destination.

But, they won’t. The trouble in Ferguson will continue until someone in authority gets fed up and deals with the situation. In the end, Ferguson will be a burned-out hole in St. Louis County. It will be area where no business will come, where insurance companies will not insure existing businesses and without insurance, no business can survive. Jobs will be lost, more than have already been lost, and Ferguson will turn into another blighted area, with no jobs and no hope of jobs.

In the coming months and years, residents will leave. None of them will return. Ferguson and the surrounding area will turn into another Detroit littered with abandoned buildings amid weeds, debris and crumbling infrastructure.

Why did this happen? Because there exists a culture of self-destruction that is dependent on the largess of government, governments, local, state and federal that really does not care what happens to the residents as long as they vote for democrats, a party that keeps them enslaved. Just look at the history of Detroit for the last fifty years and you will see the future of Ferguson and probably St Louis.

The Ferguson situation isn’t whites oppressing blacks. There are more blacks in Ferguson, by a large majority, than whites. No, the residents of Ferguson chose their government, did it to themselves. There is a lesson there in full display. Few in Ferguson and elsewhere, will learn from it. It isn’t politically correct.

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Ah, it’s great to be back

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I hope someone noticed I’ve been off-line for a few days. I had a cascade of problems that effectively cratered by home internet system—my web, blog, and email servers.

Late yesterday, I was able, after replacing my cable-modem, with gaining access to the internet, but it was outbound only. My web, blog and email servers were still be blocked from receiving emails and visitors were blocked from seeing my web server and blog.

I fixed that a few minutes ago. Now I’m rebuilding my library database and have a network printer to get up and running.

I was getting to be a wee bit concerned. My system administrator skills had gotten a bit rusty since I retired.

Whew!

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Cold War II

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The adages goes, “those who fail to understand History are doomed to repeat it.” That is so true for our government. Obama and the dems have emasculated our military while destroying our economy. We are seeing a scenario reminiscent of mid-1980s, when Ronald Reagan’s plan to force the USSR into economic failure succeeded. The US won the Cold War by outspending the USSR—forcing them to compete until their spending ruined them.

This time around, the roles are reversed. The former USSR, the empire Putin wants to restore, is recovering from its economic collapse and it is rebuilding its military and returning to it’s expansionist history to restore the Russian Empire. We need only to look at the Crimea and the Ukraine for proof.

In fact, Putin’s Foreign Minister has announced the beginning of the next Cold War.

Russian Prime Minister: We Are ‘Approaching a Second Cold War’

7:08 AM, May 20, 2014 • By DANIEL HALPER

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev says that “we are slowly but surely approaching a second cold war.” He also said that U.S. President Barack Obama could be “more tactful politically” and that he’s disappointed in some of the decisions Obama has made.

“Yes, I believe that President Obama could be more tactful politically when discussing these issues. Some decisions taken by the US Administration are disappointing. We have indeed done a lot for Russian-US relations. I believe doing so was right. The agreements that we reached with America were useful. And I’m very sorry that everything that has been achieved is now being eliminated by these decisions. Basically, we are slowly but surely approaching a second cold war that nobody needs.

Medvedev continues about the incompetency of Obama. Putin and Medvedev would not be making these statements, pushing, being aggressive in the Crimea, sending ‘agent provocateurs’ into the Ukraine, if the United States had the ability and the determination to counter him.

When Ronald Reagan was president, we had a 600 ship navy, twelve carrier battle-groups, troops in Europe, commitments from our NATO allies requiring a level of competency in their militaries and navies, and an equally strong US Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Now, the democrats and Obama have created an unsustainable welfare state, reduced out military forces, destroying their morale with repeated back-to-back deployments and, when they can no longer meet the physical requirements, the veterans are discarded into a Veterans Administration that ignores their needs.

But Putin isn’t our only enemy. China looms in the west. They’ve made extraordinary territorial claims to vast segments of the western Pacific, imperialistically seizing resource rich areas from a number of neighboring countries—countries who, by treaty, look to the United States for defense.

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China’s Exclusive Economic Zone

Just this week, we watched an approaching confrontation between China and Viet Nam. We don’t have any treaty obligations with Viet Nam, but we do with the Philippine Islands, Taiwan and Japan.

How an oil rig sparked anti-China riots in Vietnam

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN, May 19, 2014 — Updated 1307 GMT

http://thediplomat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/thediplomat_2014-05-08_15-06-31-386x231.pngHong Kong (CNN) — When China’s state-owned oil company dispatched an oil rig to a contested area of the South China Sea it flicked a match on a long-smoldering dispute with its communist neighbor Vietnam.Analysts say Beijing must have known the move would elicit some reaction, but it clearly didn’t predict having to evacuate thousands of Chinese nationals desperate to put some distance between them and violent Vietnamese protests.“The whole episode seems to reek of miscalculation, perhaps by both sides, but it demonstrates how volatile how this region can be,” said Alexander Neill, Shangri-La Dialogue Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Asia (IISS).At issue is the positioning of an oil rig in waters claimed by both China and Vietnam. Vietnam claims the rig’s presence is “illegal” while China says it has every right to drill, and has castigated the Vietnamese government for failing to ensure the safety of its nationals.To understand the issue, it’s vital to look at the exact position of the rig.Where is the rig?In early May, Beijing announced the HD-981 rig would be parked at sea for exploratory work until mid-August. Owned by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the rig is anchored in Lot 143, about 120 nautical miles east of Vietnam’s Ly Son Island and 180 nautical miles from China’s Hainan Island, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).Analysis co-authored by CSIS experts said China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs appears to be basing its right to be there on the assumption that one of the Paracel Islands, which it claims as its own, is 17 miles north, allowing it to claim its own continental shelf in the region.China calls the contested Paracel Islands the Xisha Islands, while in Vietnam they’re known as the Hoang Sa Islands.Vietnam says the rig site is clearly on its continental shelf, and moreover is in its Exclusive Economic Zone. Hanoi has demanded that China remove the offending rig, escort vessels from the region and hold talks to settle the issue.The Chinese rig was escorted to the region by naval vessels and fighter jets, drawing Vietnamese boats to the area and raising tensions at sea. The Vietnamese have accused Chinese vessels of ramming and blasting its boats with water cannon. The Chinese say any conflict was provoked by Vietnamese harassment.

The column was just updated with the following bullet points.
  • China evacuates thousands of nationals from Vietnam amid territorial dispute
  • Protests erupted after China’s state oil company sent a rig to disputed territory
  • Vietnam says the rig site is on its continental shelf and within its Exclusive Economic Zone
  • China says the rig will be there until mid-August, has sent ships to guard the site
Another report tells of Chinese troops massing on the border next to Viet Nam. The report states that “Conflict Between China And Vietnam Is Imminent.“

Conflicts in the east with Putin, conflicts in the west with China and Obama and the dems, as well as our military and naval forces, are completely unprepared. I think we are entering another of those “interesting times” mentioned in the Chinese curse.

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Scooped’em!

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OK, OK, I’m gloating a bit. I scooped the big boys with my post yesterday. I received notices my post yesterday was retweeted and has been shared, linked and reprinted by a number of conservative websites.

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The dems, in particular Harry Reid, see their power waning in Washington. They’ve looked into their crystal balls and foresee a drubbing next year in the mid-term elections. The failure of Obamacare, not just the rollout, but the massive loss of insurance coverage by millions of working Americans will have an impact in the elections next year.

That means it is possible for the dems to lose the Senate. The ‘Pubs can’t pickup enough seat of have a veto-proof majority, there aren’t that many senate seats up for re-election, but Reid may not be Majority Leader much longer. That possibility has created in Reid a sense of desperation, leading him to threaten to invoke the ‘nuclear’ option to block ‘Pub filibusters and pack the federal court bench with liberal sycophants.

Why the threats at is time? Perhaps it is to distract the public’s—and the media’s, attention from the disaster of Obamacare to them and their party. That seems, to me, to be a more likely motive than the dems continuing attempt to pack the federal courts.

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Who is the greatest lawbreaker in the country today? On this question, nearly everyone has an opinion. A growing number of those opinions say: Barack Obama.

Reining in America’s Greatest Lawbreaker, President Obama

By Mark J. Fitzgibbons, November 21, 2013

The Hill reports that Republican members of Congress are contemplating actions to combat President Obama’s lawbreaking methods of ruling from the Oval Office.

“GOP officials have long claimed that the president has violated the law and the Constitution through administrative actions on issues ranging from immigration to nominations to the U.S. military involvement in Libya,” writes The Hill.  Conservative Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah is quoted, “There are a lot of examples of this.”

A lot, indeed, and not just recently.  As reported at American Thinker last year in March, nine GOP state attorneys general issued a report on Obama’s unprecedented officious lawbreaking.

Obama has now reached the tipping point, however, with his illegal “fix” of Obamacare designed to overcome his lie that Americans can keep their health insurance.  The president’s open lawbreaking following his notorious lying puts Democrats’ electoral prospects at risk.  It frustrates the unquestioning goodwill and endless love of some members of the political establishment.

Obama has lied to the American people many times, which is unbecoming of his office.   But his unilateral actions in violation of the Constitution and even statutory law are so brazen that they seem calculated to undermine our very system of government, even to the point that they can be called “un-American” from the perspective of our heritage.

British Member of Parliament Daniel Hannan has a marvelous essay at The Wall Street Journal adapted from his new book, “Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World.”   The topic of his essay helps us understand why Barack Obama is actually the greatest lawbreaker in American history.

If you consider that claim hyperbole, factor this:  No person, corporation, union boss or corporate CEO — no criminal — who has violated the law could count every American as their victims.  President Obama can.

Hannan’s essay describes how Americans and the British share an exceptionalism that has its origins in the law — the common law, to be precise.

We share a view of law that protects individual liberty and property rights through ideals and notions guaranteeing due process of law, jury trials, freedoms of speech and of publication, and so on.  The law punishes and remedies the wrong, of course, but this view of the law is that its purpose is also to protect our liberty and property rights.

That view of the law is contrary to the one held by progressives, which is that the law is to be used to coerce behavior of the people even at the expense of individual liberty and property rights.

As Hannan writes:

Above all, liberty was tied up with something that foreign observers could only marvel at: the miracle of the common law. Laws weren’t written down in the abstract and then applied to particular disputes; they built up, like a coral reef, case by case. They came not from the state but from the people. The common law wasn’t a tool of government but an ally of liberty: It placed itself across the path of the Stuarts and George III; it ruled that the bonds of slavery disappeared the moment a man set foot on English soil.

There was a fashion for florid prose in the 18th century, but the second American president, John Adams, wasn’t exaggerating when he identified the Anglosphere’s beautiful, anomalous legal system . . . as the ultimate guarantor of freedom: “The liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature . . . and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.”

 These ideals are of law emanating from the people to govern government itself — a republican form of government with controls on those who govern.  When the law governs government — when our government is bound down by the law — our liberty is best protected.

No list of the greatest documents of liberty is complete without the Magna Carta, wherein the King was told by the people that he would be ruled by law while he simultaneously ruled his people.  The Magna Carta established these principles, and the common law further evolved. 

The United States Constitution incorporates these common law principles and ideals, and affirms and institutionalizes even more such as checks and balances, and the separation of powers.  It is through these structures, institutions and ideals of law governing government that liberty is best protected.

And that is the purpose of the Constitution.  It is a law that doesn’t merely constitute or form our government; it governs government.  Violators of the Constitution are violators of law.

It is by the law that governs and controls government that we have the greatest liberty and equality under the law.  That is why America is exceptional.  Freedom breeds the most opportunity for the most people.  Opportunity allows for the greatest level of achievement. 

We are exceptional not by national origin, but because our national origin guarantees that we have law that rules the government that rules us. 

That is our English heritage.  President Obama is hostile to this view of the law, believing he can fundamentally transform America by undermining this law. 

Under Obama, we have ‘trickle-down lawbreaking,’ as with former IRS official Lois Lerner who read signals from the White House to violate the very laws she was supposed to enforce.  The signals for government bureaucrats to violate the law are everywhere in the Obama administration.

How, then, will congressional Republicans rein in Obama’s lawbreaking?

For all the criticisms directed at Senator Ted Cruz and other constitutional conservatives purportedly over tactics, establishment GOP leaders have demonstrated that they are not up to the mission.  Real leaders will stand up and call out President Obama as America’s greatest lawbreaker.

In six years, the democrats have changed this country from one of laws, to a country of lawlessness. The White House itself—Obama, his staff and all the agencies that report directly to the White House, engage daily in lawlessness. That was advantageous for them as long as they maintained power. Now, with the Obamacare fiasco affecting nearly everyone in the country, they foresee the possibility of them to losing power, leaving reams of regulations and liberal court decisions that could be used against them if/when the ‘Pubs, or anyone not a liberal, gains the White House and controls Congress.

That is what the dems and liberals fear: What goes around, comes around.

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How did we get here and are we winning?

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The short answer for today’s title is, by bumbling and…maybe, yes. Two articles appeared today in the internet news. One was an interview given by a House ‘Pub leader, name withheld, and the other was an article in Business Week. I have no reason to believe either are incorrect.

To the first question, how did we get her? The ‘Pub House leadership, Boehner, Cantor, et. al., were incredibly stupid over the summer. They had been working deals all through June, July and August with Harry Reid. The fix was in. Boehner would cut funding for Obamacare in the CR and Reid would block it. Boehner would then respond with a gimme—cut the medical device tax and delay implementation of Obamacare and Reid would buy that and all would be well, the rest of Obamacare would be funded like the dems wanted.

Surprise! Surprise! Reid blocked the second offer, too. He said all or nothing. While the back and forth continued, time ran out and the shutdown occurred. Byron York recounts an interview with one of those ‘Pub House leaders. We entered the shutdown like the Union and Confederacy accidentally bumping into one another and starting the Battle of Gettysburg.

GOP congressman: We stumbled into war over Obamacare

By BYRON YORK | OCTOBER 6, 2013 AT 3:02 PM

 On Thursday afternoon, as the government shutdown entered its third day, a Republican member of the House sat down with a group of reporters in an office building not far from the Capitol. He spoke on the condition that he be referred to only as a House lawmaker, but without betraying the agreement it’s fair to say his was a perspective well worth listening to. The congressman walked the group through a set of issues involved in the shutdown — the continuing resolution, House-Senate relations, the coming debt limit talks, and more — but what was perhaps most striking was his frank talk about how the GOP leadership got itself into its current predicament. What became clear after an hour of discussion was that the House Republican leadership’s position at the moment is the result of happenstance, blundering, and a continuing inability to understand the priorities of both GOP and Democratic colleagues.

The congressman began with an anecdote from the Civil War. “I would liken this a little bit to Gettysburg, where a Confederate unit went looking for shoes and stumbled into Union cavalry, and all of a sudden found itself embroiled in battle on a battlefield it didn’t intend to be on, and everybody just kept feeding troops into it,” the congressman said. “That’s basically what’s happening now in a political sense. This isn’t exactly the fight I think Republicans wanted to have, certainly that the leadership wanted to have, but it’s the fight that’s here.”

When the September 30 deadline for funding the government was still weeks away, the lawmaker explained, he never thought Republicans and Democrats would fail to reach agreement on a continuing resolution. “To be honest with you, I did not think we’d be in a government shutdown situation,” he said. “I’m surprised that we’re here.” The congressman frankly admitted that he never saw the intensity of the party base’s opposition to Obamacare that came to the fore in the August recess. “I think that probably the Cruz phenomenon had a lot to do with that,” he said, referring to the campaign by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz to raise support for an effort to defund Obamacare. “I think it disrupted everybody’s plans, both in the administration and certainly the House Republican leadership.”

As the congressman told the story, as August progressed — and Cruz, along with a few Senate colleagues, the Heritage Foundation, and others, ran a high-profile campaign to stir public opinion against Obamacare — the House GOP leadership was mostly unaware of what was going on. “They got surprised a little bit by the Obamacare thing,” the lawmaker said. “This was something that blew up in August. Nobody really saw it coming — probably should have a little bit, I’m not being critical of anybody in that regard, on either side of this — but it just happened.”

Even after the events of August, and the rise of Cruz forced House Republicans to take notice, GOP leaders had little understanding of the course that the conflict, both inside the House Republican conference and with Senate Democrats, would eventually take. “I never thought defund, and honestly, I never thought delay, would work,” the lawmaker said. “I think the Democrats very much need the exchanges to come on and work to finally create a constituency for [Obamacare]…so I never thought they would agree on that.”

At this point Boehner’s carefully engineered plans went awry. Reid continued to insist on no negotiations, following Obama’s orders.

Still, the lawmaker thought Senate Democrats, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, would make some sort of concession on a lesser aspect of Obamacare. “I do think, though, when Boehner sent over delay and [repeal of the] medical device tax, I think he thought he’d probably get back medical device, and that would have probably been enough right there,” the congressman said. But Reid and the Democrats steadfastly refused to consider any change to Obamacare, surprising Republicans again.

…

“Instead, it’s no, we’re not going to negotiate, we’re not going to negotiate, we’re not going to negotiate,” the lawmaker said. “Which means effectively you’re going to try to humiliate the Speaker in front of his conference. And how effective a negotiating partner do you think he’ll be then? You’re putting the guy in a position where he’s got nothing to lose, because you’re not giving him anything to win.”

The result of Reid’s intransigence, coming after multiple Republican miscalculations, was that both sides dug in. Whatever chance there had been of a settlement before — and there really wasn’t much of one, once the events of August began to unfold — there was zero possibility of a deal as September 30 approached. So the shutdown that House leadership never expected came. And it lasted more than the few days some predicted. And it is still going on as the October 17 deadline for raising the nation’s debt ceiling approaches. The crisis that House Republican leaders didn’t see coming is now consuming them, with unpredictable consequences. “We’re not in a situation that has been planned out and war-gamed and plotted, OK?” said the congressman. “We stumbled into a situation like Gettysburg that nobody planned, and all of a sudden each side is feeding more troops into it, and it’s turning into a much bigger deal.” — Washington Examiner.

The ‘Pub leadership also hadn’t factored the massive pressure generated by their rank and file—not only from the conservative Representatives, but from the Tea Party organizations and the masses of conservative voters.

The second question in the title is still unanswered. If you listen to all the State Media organs, the ‘Pubs are losing at every point. If you listen to some recognized business analysts, the ‘Pub may be winning.

Five Reasons Republicans Think They’re Winning the Shutdown

By October 04, 2013

Until minutes before the clock struck midnight on Monday, it looked as if House Republicans might lose their nerve and pass a clean continuing resolution to avert a shutdown. Such was the pressure from such moderate Republican representatives as Pete King of New York and Devin Nunes of California, some not-so-moderate Republicans too afraid to speak out publicly, and Republican pundits who recognized that the party has no strategy for victory. In the end, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his caucus went ahead and jumped. So far, they’ve survived.

It may well be that this is a Wile E. Coyote moment, the kind that ends with a precipitous plunge to the bottom of the canyon. But it’s clear that the swift, severe blowback from voters that might have chastened Republicans and forced a hasty retreat hasn’t materialized. During August, I spent a lot of time with the Republican hardliners who forced the shutdown. I checked back with some of them on Monday and Tuesday to get their take as to how things are going.

They’re in good spirits. Here are five reasons I heard for why they think they’re winning this standoff:

1. Markets have remained calm. As clocks ticked toward shutdown, there was some trepidation that the stock market might plunge on Tuesday morning, as it did after the House rejected the first TARP vote back in 2008. Instead the Dow Jones industrial average rose 62 points.

2. They’re getting “messaging wins” against Democrats. While the shutdown is ostensibly over the GOP’s demand to delay Obamacare, the Republican House has forced a series of votes—such as today’s to restore veterans’ benefits—that are uncomfortable for Democrats because they can’t do the politically popular thing and vote “yes” without undermining their party’s imperative to hold firm.

3. Harry Reid can’t help himself. On Wednesday, the Senate Majority Leader, who is a notoriously clumsy and undisciplined speaker, seemed to callously dismiss the plight of some children who are being denied cancer treatment at the National Institutes for Health while the government is shut down. You can watch the clip here.

4. Obamacare is off to a rocky start. On Tuesday, the health-care exchanges that allow people to sign up for insurance were officially unveiled—and promptly crashed. There still appear to be major technical problems days later. Ironically, news of the shutdown itself overshadowed these snafus, which is probably a break for the White House. But given how this whole mess was driven by Republicans’ insistence that Obamacare would be a disaster, they are encouraged to see this trouble.

5. Obama looks nervous. This one’s a matter of interpretation, as several of the conservatives I spoke with willingly conceded. But they took the president’s interview with the New York Times‘ John Harwood, in which Obama warned that Wall Street should not be complacent about the prospect of default, as an attempt to spook the markets. (I kind of did, too.) Obama would do this, they believe, only if he was getting nervous. On Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 137 points.

So who is correct? The MSM Obama propaganda organs or Bloomberg Business News? I’d like to believe Bloomberg but no one, at this point, really knows. Erick Erickson of Red State is another who thinks we’re winning.

What we do know is that the big battle hasn’t yet arrived. On October 17, 2013, we will have reached the national debt limit (if we haven’t already and Obama hasn’t told anyone.) Boehner has said that any legislation that raises the debt limit will include defunding Obamacare (something I find hard to believe given Boehner’s cowardly record.)

Mark Levin believes Obama will use the 14th Amendment to arbitrarily raise the debt limit and continue funding Obamacare. ABC News echoes that warning. The ‘Pubs are, so far, ignoring his warnings.

Ted Cruz has pressured Boehner to cut Obamacare from the debt limit talks and has become the de facto leader of the House providing leadership to the younger House conservatives that Boehner has not. It’s not surprising the article below gives credit to both. Boehner is grasping at any straw to keep his Speakership, a position that is endangered by his ineptitude.

John Boehner, Ted Cruz: Upcoming debt-ceiling vote will have conditions

By David Eldridge, The Washington Times, Sunday, October 6, 2013

House Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans made it clear Sunday they expect compromises from Democrats on spending in exchange for raising the country’s debt ceiling.

“We’re not going to pass a clean debt-limit increase. I told the president there’s no way we’re going to pass one,” Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit. And the president is risking default by not having a conversation with us.”

Sen. Ted Cruz echoed the speaker’s comments and pushed back at President Obama, who has dismissed demands for concessions as blackmail and insisted repeatedly that he will not negotiate with Republicans over the current government shutdown or the upcoming debt-ceiling vote.

“The debt ceiling historically has been among the best leverage that Congress has to rein in the executive,” Mr. Cruz, Texas Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Since 1978, we’ve raised the debt ceiling 55 times. A majority of those times — 28 times — Congress has attached very specific and stringent requirements,” he said. “Many of the most significant spending restraints — things like Gramm-Rudman, things like sequestration — came through the debt ceiling. So the president’s demand to jack up the nation’s credit card, with no limits, no constraints, it’s not reasonable to me.”

I don’t believe Obama will cave. He can’t and still maintain any credibility. He’s willing to create another Constitutional crises believing the ‘Pubs will, once again, cave to his and Reid’s demands.

However, this time, the country is becoming more and more united in their opposition to the tyrannical acts of a government out of control. If Obama follows through with his threats, I can foresee acts of open rebellion.

Just what would Obama do if several million protesters arrived at Washington, DC, not to gather at the Mall, but to gather at the White House and the Capitol building? Obama, the leadership of both parties and the DC government would all collectively panic. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to know what would happen next.

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