October 17, 2013 Americans Must Suffer By William L. Gensert
Watching Barack Obama and his shutdown shenanigan theatre, I discovered I have something in common with our inchoate president -- we both want Americans to suffer.
As a sociopathic solipsist, Obama is incapable of feeling anyone's pain, and because of this, his goal has been to make this shutdown as agonizing as possible.
Ted Cruz, an honorable man with conviction, thought he could force ObamaCare concessions from the administration using the continuing resolution as a cudgel. Boehner thought the debt ceiling offered better opportunities. They decided on the infamous "defund strategy."
Yet, once you dare to stare down the bully, you must stare down the bully. Republicans picked a fight and in a fight, one must fight. Now, the Republicans feel they cannot walk away from this confrontation with nothing.
Their strategy had a fatal flaw. For the Cruz maneuver to have succeeded, Barack Obama and the Democrats had to fear the shutdown. This was obviously not the case. They, in fact, welcomed it, and have done everything in their power to make it as painful as possible.
Barry, with the press in his pocket, knew he could hang the whole mess around the necks of Republicans. Because of this, conservatives never had a chance of forcing concessions from the administration.
It's the same with the debt ceiling. The "default" threat from the president should serve as a warning. The United States has somewhere around $250 billion coming in each month, while it spends somewhere north of $300 billion.
Since the 14th Amendment guarantees the debt, and there are enough funds coming in to service the debt, there would be no default -- spending would simply have to be prioritized, by cutting monies from all that discretionary spending that is so important to Barry and his minions. In effect, not raising the debt ceiling would serve as a spending cut.
Default would have to be a deliberate choice.
Now normally, with any other president, Republicans would have tremendous leverage, but, as they used to say in my Bronx, Italian neighborhood, "Forget about it."
Barry wants default. He would deliberately choose not to pay the interest due on the debt, triggering default. He is confident he can blame it on Republicans, and if the world's economy ends up trashed, so be it. It's all about Barry.
He believes default wins back the house in 2014 and allows him to finish his transformation of the nation. He has nothing to lose. You see, he doesn't care what happens to the country or its people -- or the world for that matter.