“government shutdown”?   Oh, it’s only terrorism when the other side does it.
Paul Ryan and Patty Murray have been trying for weeks to come to a budget agreement.  They are talking and working but the sticking points are what they have always been.  Democrats want the sequester caps removed and spending increased.  
If Ryan and Murray can’t come to a deal Boehner has a backup plan to just advance the Continuing Resolution at current fiscal spending levels.  Senate Dems are FREAKING.
WASHINGTON DC – House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer would oppose a continuing resolution to keep government funded beyond Jan. 15 if it doesn’t address the sequestration cuts.
“I believe that hurts our national security, it hurts our economy and it undermines our responsibility of running government at a level that is productive for our people,” Hoyer said. (more…)

DETROIT — The city of Detroit officially became the largest municipality in U.S. history Tuesday to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy after a judge declared it met the specific legal criteria required to receive protection from its creditors.

The landmark ruling ends more than four months of uncertainty over the fate of the case and sets the stage for a fierce clash over how to slash an estimated $18 billion in debt and long-term liabilities that have hampered Detroit from attacking pervasive blight and violent crime. (more…)

HatTip Weaselzippers – Unbelievable pictures starting to come out of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. Hundreds of thousands of people demanding Ukraine join the EU community.

Protests against #Ukraine president and government who don't want to integrate with EU continue, #Kyiv central square pic.twitter.com/FUNb2hNfWS

— UkraineTrek.com (@ukrainetrek) December 1, 2013

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Riot police in Ukraine’s capital have used tear gas, truncheons and flash grenades to push back protesters who tried to storm the presidential administration building. Dozens of people with what appeared to be head injuries were taken away by ambulance. (more…)

[New York City]   Community leaders in East New York say that jobs are the answer to ending the so-called “knockout” game.

Councilman Charles Barron and other local activists spoke publicly for a second time about a rash of assaults involving young people punching unsuspecting victims. Barron says the root of the problem is that young people need jobs to help keep them out of trouble. (more…)

 Washington (CNN) – Only four out of 10 Americans believe President Barack Obama can manage the federal government effectively, according to a new national poll.
And a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning also indicates that 53% of Americans now believe that Obama is not honest and trustworthy, the first time that a clear majority in CNN polling has felt that way.

(more…)

(Via New York Post)  People are puzzled: Why would Barack Obama have lied about how wonderfully everything was going to go with ObamaCare when officials in his administration knew perfectly well that disaster was going to strike?
In one sense, the answer is simple: At the time, just before Oct. 1, Republicans were insisting ObamaCare be delayed or defunded. The president and his team weren’t going to give the enemy the satisfaction of agreeing — or the potent ammunition that would have come from a rueful admission the system wasn’t ready.
Today, a bipartisan agreement to delay ObamaCare seems like it would have been a pretty good deal. It didn’t look that way at all in the last two weeks of September.
But there’s a deeper reason he and his people lied: They did it because they could. They did it because nearly five years in the White House had given Obama and his team confidence they would not face the music and they could finesse the problems until they got fixed. (more…)

Perhaps Rick Santelli is the modern architect of the Fiscal Tea Party.  It was his epic rant on TV, around the stimulus and bailout bills, which visibly gave birth to a righteous awakening of people who realized he was expressing their very concerns.
A year ago, like many others – including us, Santelli smelled something afoot with the strange employment numbers just prior to the election.   He was attacked mercilessly by the left and the right who labeled him an “unemployment truther”.   Yesterday, given the revelation the Census Dept. was actually fudging the figures, Santelli framed his righteous vindication.

Yesterday in the New York Post –  In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.
The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.
And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.
Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.
And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today (link)

On October 6th 2012 we posted the following article and video (copied here to set backdrop): (more…)

True fiscal conservatives are smart folk.  They know how to balance budgets and simultaneously show how the absence of fiscal prudence has consequences.  It is a rare skill that can grasp when to hold the line and when to let progressive ideologues taste the outcomes of their fiscal irresponsibility.
Scott Walker is just such a man.   And no state governor has been so bitterly attacked by progressives because they know and rightly feared him.
To set up the current example here you must go back to the Obamacare fight in 2010.  The federal government structured penalties in the Obamacare law to force States to expand their Medicaid roles.    Medicaid is a state run benefit.  This fight eventually was decided by the Supreme Court in favor of the states who opposed the heavy handed mandate with the court ruling the Feds could not *punish* states for not taking federal money.
Scott Walker was saying:  ‘be careful what you wish/vote for, you just might get it’.   But no-one was really paying attention to the intelligence behind the quiet argument.  (more…)

Really?….  I mean….  R.E.A.L.L.Y. ?
When do the grown-ups get to take charge again?

Check out the book a Republican state senator in TN gave Kathleen Sebelius today in Memphis. Hilarious! pic.twitter.com/GEmr4F26G6
— Bill Hobbs (@billhobbs) November 1, 2013

[…] “There is nobody more frustrated with the website than I am,” she said. “We should have done better.”
She told community leaders the public needs to be reminded that the website does not function like Amazon.com, where customers are used to logging on to buy a product “like a Tickle Me Elmo doll” before someone else gets it. In this case, Sebelius said, the service is constant and doesn’t run out. (more…)