The Shutdown problem

The republican party has a big problem: How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The government has, without quite realizing it, accepted piecemeal funding of everything except Obamacare. There is no shutdown. There is just the government doing occasional bits of petty spitefulness and nastiness to express its hatred of its subjects.

Since no shutdown, no reason for the Republicans to pass a bill funding Obamacare. The “shutdown” can continue forever. How are they going to get themselves out of this problem?

If the Republicans retreat from victory, republican voters are going to become even more disgusted than they are already. If, on the other hand, they stand pat, and the government just goes right ahead with Obamacare, they will have failed in their task of making it look as if voters can influence the government.

Since the Republicans have won, the only way to maintain the illusion of democracy is to postpone Obamacare.

Those parts of the world where health care works have a system that is both more socialist than the US and more capitalist than the US, in particular, and especially, Singapore. Singapore has a fully capitalist health care system with actual prices. The American health care system does not have prices, therefore does not have markets, therefore is not capitalism. But, if someone is stony broke, the Singaporean doctors can kick him from the fully capitalist health care system, to the fully socialist system, where he is taken care of by a doctor on the government payroll, gets government medicines, has a government bed in a government owned building, for a low government set price, or for free if he cannot afford that price.

Somehow, almost everyone in Singapore prefers to go with the capitalist health care system.

Similarly, a major reason the Canadian health care system works is that nearly everyone lives a short distance from the US border.

8 Responses to “The Shutdown problem”

  1. […] The government has, without quite realizing it, accepted piecemeal funding of everything except Obam… […]

  2. […] shutdown challenge for the GOP: “The republican party has a big problem: How to snatch defeat from the jaws of […]

  3. Zach says:

    Similarly, it appears every creature on planet earth, large or small, who is, or shall be, inconvenienced by the shutdown shows up on my local news station.

    Then I break a smile that slowly segues into….

  4. Zach says:

    If memory serves and if sources are correct then about 15% of the government was shut down. Basically nothing.

    (By what criteria, I don’t know)

    • Jack Amok says:

      By what criteria was the 15% to shut down chosen? Apparently it was the 15% the Dems thought people would most likely miss, like the National Parks.

      So I figure there’s our budget solution. Cut the 85% of the federal government that wasn’t shut down and fund the 15% that was.

  5. Thales says:

    The republican party has a big problem: How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Overplaying their hand on the debt-limit.

  6. Melonhead says:

    Republicans are supposed to be the party of government fiscal responsibility. Shutting down all non-essential government activities seems like a very fiscally responsible thing to do, IMO.

    I don’t understand why Republicans are doing anything to end the shutdown. If I were them, I would just be hanging out in the Capitol building doing the daily crossword puzzle.

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