Welcome to Buster's Blog

Irregular commentary on whatever's on my mind -- politics, sports, current events, and life in general. After twenty years of writing business and community newsletters, fifteen years of fantasy baseball newsletters, and two years of email "columns", this is, I suppose, the inevitable result: the awful conceit that someone might actually care to read what I have to say. Posts may be added often, rarely, or never again. As always, my mood and motivation are unpredictable.

Buster Gammons















Wednesday, September 18, 2013

"Banzai!!!!!"


If you want to give yourself indigestion, type "debt ceiling" into the Buster's Blog search window.  You'll be transported back to the summer of 2011, when, for the first time ever, House Tea Bag Republicans refused to OK a routine increase in our so-called debt ceiling unless they got massive spending cuts.  (Of course, one has nothing to do with the other.)  Failure to approve the debt ceiling would result in government default and shut down.  The government would be unable to pay its bills or pay salaries.

 A last-minute deal was struck and default was averted.  But our government credit rating was downgraded and the deal was a Tea Party wish-list of delayed spending cuts we now know as "sequestration".

Another routine debt ceiling increase must be approved by September 30th, and guess who's back?  It's those same Tea Bag kamikaze pilots.  They're once again quite willing to blow up the U.S. government unless they get their way.  What do they want this time?  They want to "de-fund" Obamacare.

That's right, these geniuses will "allow" their own government to function only if the President agrees to destroy his own hallmark legislation.  Today, the Orange Boner caved in to his Tea Bag minority and said he'd let it come to a vote.  The House will probably pass a resolution to remove funding for the ACA.  But it won't pass the Senate, and if it somehow did, Obama would veto it.

(And to illustrate how willfully obtuse these people really are, "de-funding" Obamacare would not prevent its continued implementation and would have very little impact on it.  Most of Obamacare -- 80-85% -- is "mandatory" funding, like Medicare.  The House has the power to block only "discretionary" funding, which wouldn't do much to stop Obamacare from functioning.)

But if the suicide bombers in the GOP keep making their ridiculous demands a condition of continued government operation, a shut-down may be inevitable.


President Obama called it "extortion."  It is just that.  It's also childish, dangerous and destructive.  These simpletons are unfit to govern.

I know Buster has two or three Republican readers.  If you can offer the rest of us any justification for this sort of disturbingly petulant behavior (other than "ends justify the means"), we'd sure like to hear it.  Leave a comment.

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