Reign of Pain "This is the End - Good Day Sunshine"

Republicans all but caved in the face of the United Democrat and media onslaught, and granted the Preznit his all but clean continuing resolution, the only caveat being that persons seeking subsidies under Obamacare will be forced to justify them.  This reinforces the original law, parts of which Obama waived by executive order because it plainly wasn't going to work for at least a year.  Will it work any better now or will the administration find some less official way to not enforce this provisio? Given the well documented problems with the Obamacare rollout over the last couple of weeks, a better negotiating strategy for the GOP may well have been to insist on enforcing Obamacare as written, not as "interpreted" by the administration.  This would at least have the salutary effect of forcing both sides to actually sit down and read the damn thing.

Homer Simpson offers this advice (courtesy of the Jawa Report)

Federal workers paid vacation is over for now; workers are expected to be back today if possible.  The new bill provides funds for the government until Jan. 15, and borrowing authority until Feb, setting the stage for new showdowns early next year. It also provided back pay for federal workers (but, of course, not those affected by the shutdown outside the federal workforce), and created a bipartisan committee to work on a real budget for 2014 (We haven't had a real budget since 2009, thanks to Sen. Reid.

Somehow, a provision to fund a $3 billion project ($2 billion above previous funding) for locks on the Ohio River in Kentucky snuck into the bill.  Surprisingly, the Washington Post reports it was not Sen. McConnell getting a little grease for his wheels, but inserted at the behest of the White House.

Currently, the United States owes on the order of $123,000 per worker.  Good thing I'm not a worker any more, right? Alas, I'm still $53,000 in the hole as an inhabitant.

The U.S. debt, which has jumped 55 percent under President Obama, is now so high that if working Americans had to pay their full share, the bill would be over $123,000, according to a new Harvard University Institute of Politics study of the nation’s empty bank accounts.

The school's fiscal 2012 Annual Report of the USA, which examines the federal budget, put the total debt at $16.7 trillion. But that's such a big number that the student authors tried to put it in perspective.

For example, that $16.7 trillion, which would go up under Obama’s debt ceiling plan the House and Senate are considering, is equal to:

• About $53,000 per every inhabitant of the United States, including children and the unemployed
• $123,000 if averaged out to employed Americans
• If converted into pennies and stacked, would be a column that would reach to the moon and back more than 3,350 times

Here's a plan for all the new citizens to be added in the upcoming immigration fight.  A $53,000 buy in.  Maybe we could round it up to an even $100k.

Never forget, President Obama and the democrats were willing to shutdown the government, and threaten the full faith and credit of the United States government to protect a provision of a law that forces the young and hale to buy unneeded, expensive health plans to support the old and infirm, and to keep themselves from having to participate fully in the plan. My view is that if Obamacare is implemented as written, it will result in a total failure of the whole system, as the young fail to see the advantage, and simply don't enroll, and force the plans into the dreaded "death spiral", leading liberals to demand what they wanted in the first place, fully socialized single payer health care.

Now, the last dregs of news from the late lamented shutdown:

Even the reliably communist Chinese cheerleader liberal Tom Friedman admits the kids got screwed:

Sorry, Kids. We Ate It All.

Eventually this shutdown crisis will end. And eventually the two parties will make another stab at a deal on taxes, investments and entitlements. But there’s one outcome from such negotiations that I can absolutely guarantee: Seniors, Wall Street and unions will all have their say and their interests protected. So the most likely result will be more tinkering around the edges, as our politicians run for the hills the minute someone accuses them of “fixing the deficit on the backs of the elderly” or creating “death panels” to sensibly allocate end-of-life health care. Could this time be different? Short of an economic meltdown, there is only one thing that might produce meaningful change: a mass movement for tax, spending and entitlement reform led by the cohort that is the least organized but will be the most affected if we don’t think long term — today’s young people.

But denizens of DC knew who to was to blame for the shutdown.  Bush, of course!



In Nebraska, an high school principal stopped the daily "Pledge of Allegiance" in protest of the shutdown.

Chase Bank closed down certain wire transfers out of the country, and large cash withdrawals.  Maybe the bankers think they need a bank holiday to match the two weeks the feds got of with pay?

South Dakota farmers had to bury their own dead cows, killed by an excess of global cooling.  You might recall, an earlier edition of the Reign of Pain decried how the shutdown was preventing the feds from assisting in this task.

I don't quite know the appropriate song to end this with, so I'll have two, depending on your state of mind regarding the end of the shutdown: