NBC/WSJ poll: Obama approval sinks to new low

President Barack Obama’s approval rating has declined to an all-time low as public frustration with Washington and pessimism about the nation’s direction continue to grow, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Just 42 percent approve of the president’s job performance, which is down five points from earlier this month. By comparison, 51 percent disapprove of his job in office -- tied for his all-time high.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

President Barack Obama speaks about health insurance at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

The NBC/WSJ pollsters argue that no single reason explains Obama’s lower poll standing. Rather, they attribute it to the accumulation of setbacks since the summer -- allegations of spying by the National Security Agency, the debate over Syria’s chemical weapons, the government shutdown and now intense scrutiny over the problems associated with the health care law’s federal website and its overall implementation.

Those events have combined to erase some of the advantage the president gained with polls showing most Americans blame congressional Republicans for the shutdown.Read the full poll here (.pdf)

Via: NBC News

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Govt Shutdown May Have Pulled Plug on Solar-Development Bids

The nation’s first federally run auction for a chance to develop solar power projects on public lands was a bust – no one showed up for the bidding, and one expert speculated the government shutdown could have been to blame.

“We did not have any bidders come to the sale and we did not receive any sealed bids on the sale,” BLM spokeswoman Vanessa Lacavo told the Denver Business Journal Thursday.

She insisted the cold shoulder at the Lakeland, Colo., auction doesn’t spell the end of solar development on the land, however.

The auction offered private companies the first chance to bid on the opportunity to file development plans for solar power plants in Colorado’s “Solar Energy Zones” in Conejos and Saguache counties in San Luis Valley.

The parcels total 3,705 acres. If fully developed, the land could produce 400 megawatts of power, enough to support the needs of an estimated 125,000 homes, the business journal said.

“The BLM had received interest in developing the sites, that’s why we moved forward,” Lacavo said. “It’s hard to say why we didn’t have any bidders."

The agency said it scheduled the auction because, after trying to gauge interest from the private sector in March, it got nine applications and 27 inquiries and expressions of interest, the business journal reported.

"We will evaluate today's auction as we look at future opportunities to offer lands in Solar Energy Zones for development, both in Colorado and other Western states," the BLM said.

Alex Daue, the renewable energy associate in the Denver office of the Wilderness Society, told the business journal the 16-day government shutdown could have created enough uncertainty among companies that they didn’t submit bids for the parcels.

The shutdown began Oct. 1.

Via: Newsmax

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Time Got It Wrong: Women Aren't the Only 'Adults' of the Shutdown

At Yahoo News, former ABC and CBS political producer Marc Ambinder picked apart a Time magazine article by Jay Newton-Small triumphantly headlined “In Shutdown, Women are the Only Adults Left.” It was so pro-“chick” that “Several women rights' groups, like EMILY's List, picked up the story for use in fundraising.” (Newton-Small reported only two of the 20 female senators – Kelly Ayotte and Debbie Fischer -- are pro-life. All 16 Democrats favor abortion.)

Ambinder rejected this article primarily because the Democrats weren’t “equally childish” to the conservative Republicans, and because the “childlike qualities” of the hardest-headed Democrats were “absolutely essential” to winning:

The idea that women were the only adults in the shut-down is attractive. But it ain't so. One, Republicans and Democrats were not equally childish in this debacle, something that Republicans themselves recognize. Two, Democratic leaders and the White House had to be hard-headed and obstinate in order to force the House Republicans to give up and to re-open the government. Those childlike qualities were absolutely essential.

Sadly, women did not play a significant role in the government shutdown. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray's role will be very important going forward, but that's because she's proven herself indispensable on budget matters and not because she is a woman. In the House, Rep. Michelle Bachmann had perhaps the biggest megaphone of any woman in Washington during the shut-down, and she wasn't on the side of the angels here.

The "angel" side is the Obamacare side, in the media minds. Ambinder suggests his female colleague Newton-Small is patronizing to women:

The women in the U.S. Senate are incredible people, but it's patronizing to say that they are even more special than their male counterparts because they are women...Until women become power-brokers in Congress, and I really do want them to become power-brokers in Congress, there is no way to assess whether simply being a woman makes one a better, more effective legislator for our times without resorting to barely-post-Victorian era notions of what women have than men lack.

Via: Newsbusters

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HANG ONE, TO ENCOURAGE THE OTHERS

One of the most effective ways of discouraging people is to make them think there’s absolutely nothing they can do about something, anyway. Thus, liberals have tried to insinuate that Obamacare is impossible to remove, hoping conservatives will despair.

But with only one-half of one branch of government, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and the House Republicans have made it absolutely clear that Republicans are not giving up on repealing Obamacare. Inasmuch as “bubonic plague” is polling higher than “Obamacare,” I’d say this is a brilliant marketing strategy for the GOP.

Unlike every other idiotic government program ever foisted on us by the Democrats, this time Republicans are not rolling over on this illegitimately passed, disastrous legislation. Give Republicans a veto-proof majority in the Senate, America, and they will rid us of this plague. (Without even charging a co-pay!)

Not only that, but Republicans have exposed Democrats as hypocrites who are forcing the rest of the country to live under Obamacare, while shutting down the government rather than live under it themselves.

With any luck, the Obama-Reid government shutdown — as Sean Hannity calls it — has also impressed upon Republicans the importance of winning elections.

Whatever cavils and objections liberals have to the Republicans’ majority in the House, the Democrats’ Senate majority certainly does not reflect the popular will. At least nine sitting Democratic senators have asterisks by their names, indicating seats given away by Republicans through unforced errors

Via: Human Events

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History of a Shutdown

Clashing tactics led to squandered opportunities, but the Right can still unite to defeat O’Care. 

The developing narrative, whether on talk radio or in these pages and other publications, about the shutdown fight — who was on what side, what the options were, and what was gained or not — often starts from incorrect premises, based on incomplete or erroneous assumptions. Since we need to understand how we got here if we want to do better, as a team, next time, it’s important to lay out some of the unpublished history.

The ACA passed Congress without a single Republican vote. After it became law, Republicans were essentially unified in their opposition to the law and in their oft-stated desire for repeal. Nonetheless, Republicans fell essentially into three strategic camps on how to go forward.

1. Fixers: On the center-to-right portion of the spectrum (since there are no longer any Rockefeller Republicans, who might well have approved of the ACA), the most moderate/centrist were the “fixers,” who thought that the law, if not repealed, could be repaired. Many conservatives initially feared that much of the GOP establishment and leadership lay in this camp. But in the wake of the 2010 election, any advocates for this strategy completely disappeared; the post-shutdown conversation, however, might bring them back.

Via: NRO

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From Shutdown to Amnesty

My fear is that having stuck it to the establishment with a defund strategy that, unfortunately, could never work, House Republicans will now turn around and do the establishment’s bidding on so-called comprehensive immigration reform.

1) The Republican leadership is going to feel pressure to do some sort of bi-partisan pivot in a misbegotten attempt to repair the party’s image, which at least for now is uniformly in the toilet in every poll.

2) The political judgment of the groups and members who favored the shutdown strategy and most strongly oppose amnesty is going to be highly suspect after defunding didn’t work. This will give them less influence in the immigration fight than they would have had otherwise.

3) The supporters of defunding in the House could use a few dozen members to drive the rest of the caucus. The dynamic will be different on immigration. Because Democrats all opposed any fiscal measure offered by the Republican leadership, the votes of those few dozen members were essential to passing anything. On immigration, Democrats could well support incremental immigration measures to get to a conference with the Senate, meaning a few dozen Republican votes against don’t mean anything anymore.

If the upshot of all this is that Obamacare is not defunded, the Republican party’s standing is diminished and we get a disastrous immigration bill, it will depressing indeed.

Via: NRO

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James Madison Would Know Who Today's Extremists Are, And They're Not The Tea Party

In the aftermath of the government shutdown, widely regarded as a self-inflicted political disaster for Republicans, two conspicuous themes deserve attention.  The first is the view that the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party is too extreme, and leading the party into the political wilderness.  Much of the Republican establishment—if such a thing can be said still to exist—holds this view.

While there is plenty of room to criticize the strategy and tactics of the Tea Party, one wonders whether it is correct to categorically deplore the fact that Republicans in Washington may finally be shedding their long-time Stockholm Syndrome of collaborating with the expansion of government.  Almost fifty years after Barry Goldwater famously declared that “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” it looks like a critical mass of Republicans are finally catching on.  It is inconceivable, for example, that today’s House Republicans could be goaded into passing an unfunded entitlement like Medicare Part D as they improvidently did in 2003.

Via: Forbes
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Rand Paul Pushes Constitutional Amendment on Congress

Forget the Vitter amendment. Rand Paul wants to make sure that Congress can’t ever again write laws with provisions specific to lawmakers.

The Kentucky freshman Republican has introduced a constitutional amendment that would preclude senators and representatives from passing laws that don’t apply equally to U.S. citizens and Congress, the executive branch and the Supreme Court. The amendment is aimed squarely at Obamacare provisions specific to members of Congress and their staffs that became a central point of contention during the government shutdown.

Under Obamacare, Capitol Hill aides and lawmakers are required to enter the law’s health exchanges and a summertime ruling from the Office of Personnel Management ensured they will continue to receive federal employer contributions to help pay for insurance on the exchanges. A number of lawmakers, specifically Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), have been pushing for the end to those contributions, arguing they amount to a Washington exemption from Obamacare. Vitter has drafted legislative language that would eliminate these subsidies and tried to attach the measure to an energy efficiency bill and pushed for it to be included in the government funding bill last week.

 (WATCH: 7 defining quotes from Rand Paul)

Paul seeks to go a step further and amend the Constitution so that “Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress,” the executive branch including the president and vice president as well as the Supreme Court.

Via: Politico

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What If They Gave a Shutdown and No One Cared?

The shutdown/debt limit imbroglio wasn’t a defeat. Defeats leave the losers feeling defeated. But the designated losers, the conservative base of the GOP – which, more accurately, now is the GOP – is more eager and excited than it has been in a long time.

Why? Someone fought. Finally.

Sure, we didn’t win the repeal of Obamacare. The only people talking about actually repealing Obamacare as a direct result of the tactical moves of recent weeks were the doddering dinosaurs and their media accomplices trying to put out the notion that Ted Cruz and his band of merry marauders had suckered us numbskull conservatives with promises of total victory right here and right now.

Being very familiar with the Constitution, we realize that it’s kind of difficult to pass a law when we only hold the House. We’re clear on that. We were alwaysclear on that. What Ted Cruz did – and what the go-along, get-along gang of Republican stegosauruses hate – is that he fought. He fought. There’s a huge value to drawing a line, to taking a stand, to rallying the troops.

Via: Townhall

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$17,000,000,000,000

President Obama boasted last week that he had signed legislation to lift “the twin threats” to our economy of government shutdown and default. But what was done to fix the problem of growing debt that leads Washington to repeatedly raise the debt ceiling?

Nothing. In fact, by Friday, the U.S. debt had rocketed past $17 trillion.

What does this mean?

• At $17 trillion, this number has passed total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), the measure of all that is produced in the economy.
• Since Obama took office, the national debt has increased from about $10.6 trillion to more than $17 trillion—a 60 percent increase.

How quickly Obama changed his tune when he transitioned from Senator to President. Here’s what he said just a few years ago:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. (Senator Barack Obama, March 16, 2006)

Via: The Foundry

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DNC edges RNC in September fundraising

The Democratic National Committee has narrowly edged its Republican rival in fundraising for the first time all year.

In a Sunday release, the Republican National Committee reported raising $7.1 million in September. Democrats on Friday reported a cash haul of nearly $7.4 million in September, while finishing the month with more than $5 million on hand.

The close of the September fundraising period for both parties coincided with the run-up to the October shutdown — a time where candidates and party committees on both sides used the looming fight over spending to tap their grassroots base.

(Also on POLITICO: House tea partiers snub GOP in 2014)

RNC chairman Reince Priebus said the September cash haul ensures that the party will remain competitive across the country.

“It’s because of the strong support of our donors that we are able to build a permanent ground operation and ensure a year-round presence in communities all across America,” Priebus said in a statement.

The RNC reported a flurry of grassroots donations last month — with 99 percent of its cash haul coming in donations less than $200. The average contribution to the RNC in September was $56.

(PHOTOS: Senators up for election in 2014)

Though the DNC edged out the RNC last month, the GOP’s presidential arm has posted consistently strong fundraising numbers all year while the DNC has lagged behind.

The DNC still has $17.5 million in debt left over from the 2012 cycle — while the RNC is entirely debt-free. That debt is down slightly from the $21 million the DNC had at the end of 2012.

Via: Politico

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Podcast: On Gov't Shutdown Fallout and the Failure of Obamacare

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with James C. Capretta on fallout from the government shutdown and the failure called Obamacare:

This podcast can be downloaded here. Subscribe to THE WEEKLY STANDARD's iTunes podcast feed here.

Via: The Weekly Standard

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[CARTOON] Shutdown No More

Via: California Political Review

How Much Extra Spending Did Lawmakers Sneak Into Bill That Ended Government Shutdown?

The stopgap bill to fund the government was only supposed to end the partial shutdown for a few months, no strings attached -- right?

 

Nope.

Despite the bill being tiny by Washington standards -- just 35 pages -- lawmakers still managed to tuck in billions of dollars in additional spending.

Already, one item has earned some degree of notoriety. Appropriators included a line increasing the budget for an Ohio River dam project from $775 million to $2.9 billion.

Costs for the project, approved in 1998, have soared above the original price tag. Supporters of the Olmsted Locks and Dam funding argue the additional money is necessary to reduce bottlenecking at the crossing of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who along with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., supported the item, told Fox News that all barge traffic would be suspended if the dam wasn't funded.

She said the funding was included in the budget bill because it is the only spending bill moving. The House had earlier approved funding for the dam, though at a lower level.

But there are projects all over the country that could have made a similar case. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., earlier this week called the inclusion "disgraceful," saying many lawmakers didn't realize the bill contained additional spending like this until late in the process.

Government watchdogs argued that if lawmakers wanted to pursue this spending, they should have done so in the long-term appropriations bill or another more appropriate piece of legislation.

The language in the bill itself didn't exactly announce that the dam project was getting extra money, either.

The provision said: "SEC. 123. Section 3(a)(6) of Public Law 100-676 is amended by striking both occurrences of '$775,000,000' and inserting in lieu thereof, '$2,918,000,000'."

Via: Fox News

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Lessons from the Shutdown

Well, the “government shutdown” is finally over.  If you were like me, you were probably wondering how the government can be considered “shut down” if the NSA is still spying on us, the IRS is still auditing us, and the President hadn’t been kicked out of HIS house (which, if you will remember, also sits on federal land).  All in all, the shutdown was not nearly as destructive as we had heard it would be.

The end of the world did not come.  Meteorites did not scour all life from the Earth’s surface.  Our nation did not fragment into a Mad Max-esque wasteland of biker gangs and apocalyptic warlords.  In many ways, you would never have known that there was even a shutdown going on, provided you didn’t try to visit a national park or expect a paycheck for your military service.

Nevertheless, there are a number of observations we can make about the shutdown, and lessons we can learn from it.

First, the Obama administration is not above shutting down the government and creating a huge amount of furor, if it will help distract attention away from the numerous scandals that have plagued this administration.  Let’s face it – the “shutdown” was pure political theater, and nothing more.  Obama actively worked to bring it to pass, pretending to want to “compromise” and “find solutions” while really refusing to negotiate with House Republicans and actively presenting them with “deals” so unpalatable that no reasonable person could have accepted them.  Then, when the “shutdown” actually happened, amazingly all the signs and barricades and other stage props were instantly rolled out, almost as if they’d been prepared and set aside for weeks in anticipation of the moment.  This “shutdown” was all about grandstanding and showmanship, and giving Obama and the news media the opportunity to furl their brows and worry about those evil Republicans who want less spending and more freedom for the individual.

Via: Canada Free Press

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NBC Report: White House Taking Obamacare Website Offline Again For “Repairs,” Spanish Language Site Delayed…

NBC Report: White House Taking Obamacare Website Offline Again For “Repairs,” Spanish Language Site Delayed…

The third time by my count.

Via: Weasel Zippers

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Private Charities Stepped Up While Government Was Shut Down

Over the past two weeks, much media coverage has been devoted to the politicians in Washington, while far less time was spent discussing the ramifications the shutdown had on the lives of furloughed federal workers. The people who work for non-essential segments of the federal government are working to put food on the table and take care of their kids like any other individuals working in the private sector. So while it’s easy to chuckle and point out that life went mostly unchanged in the partial shutdown, there were people immediately affected by it.

In an ideal situation, there would be enough private sector jobs to absorb the number of people employed in the unnecessary parts of federal government. It’s tempting to look at an index of government positions and cross out all of the extraneous agencies and departments. However, while the economy isn’t all bad, it’s pretty plain that there are simply not enough available jobs for this to be feasible.

Furloughed federal workers will receive retroactive pay, but not until the government reopened of course. Until then, there was no paycheck coming in.

This had some Capitol Hill workers fretting over making various payments if the shutdown kept dragging on. It’s likely that many federal workers would have “[fou]nd themselves in a serious financial bind if they miss[ed] two paychecks.” There are those who had retroactive pay coming, but still could not afford to put food on the table, as they were already living paycheck to paycheck.

Via: Pocket Full of Liberty

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Mitch McConnell defends deal, slams Obamacare tactics

McConnell says his ability to cut a deal wasn’t hamstrung by his campaign. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

At the end of the day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he had no good option in the 16-day government shutdown fight.

House Speaker John Boehner’s strategy collapsed. Ted Cruz’s push to use a shutdown to defund Obamacare was “not a smart play” and a “tactical error,” he said. And the country was staring at the threat of a prolonged shutdown and a potentially disastrous default on a nearly $17 trillion national debt.

Using a football analogy, McConnell said he got the ball on his own two-yard-line with a “shaky” offensive line and had to cut a last-ditch deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to end the crisis, no matter how unappealing to many in his party. Despite acting as a chief deal-maker in recent years during government crises, it was unclear the role McConnell would play until the final days of the bitter fight.

(WATCH: Who won the shutdown? Top 5 quotes)

“Given the card I was dealt at that point, what I had hoped to have achieved was to punt the ball to a better place on the field without raising taxes or busting the [spending] caps,” McConnell told POLITICO in a phone interview Thursday.

Via: Politico

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Obama Will Insist on Tax Hikes in Budget Deal

(CNSNews.com) - As part of the deal to end the government shutdown and extend the debt limit, the House and Senate have agreed to begin long-stalled budget negotiations. The conferees planned to meet Thursday morning for breakfast -- to "break the ice," the Associated Press reported.

Once the actual talks get underway, President Obama will insist that tax hikes be part of the solution.

"The president has insisted that in the budget negotiations that he's been calling for all year, everything has to be on the table. And that will be his position going forward," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Wednesday.

Carney said what Obama believes is fair is reflected in the fiscal 2014 budget proposal he's already submitted. At the same time, Carney said Obama knows that neither he nor anyone else will get everything they want in a final deal.

"And that's the nature of compromise," Carney said.

"But he firmly believes that balance, when it comes to further reducing our deficits and building on the work that has been done over these past four years in which we have reduced our deficits...by half, we need to continue to take a balanced approach so that no sector of society unfairly has to bear the brunt of that project. That's always been his position and it will be his position moving forward."

"Balance" to Obama means tax hikes.

Via: CNS News

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House Stenographer Has Meltdown During Vote On Shutdown

The house stenographer tonight had a meltdown and ran to a microphone and began yelling on the floor of the House of Representatives tonight.

Update: This quote from her sums up the rant.

“The Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons. They go against God!”

Via Weasel Zippers