Today marked the end of the partial Government Shutdown, a day Hugh Hewitt has named “Government Re-Opening Day”. Most of the media, NBC, CNN, ABC, the New York Times, and many many more would have you believe this shut down was the fault of the Republicans. It wasn’t, nor was it the fault of the Democrats, nor was it a shut down.
It is widely documented that the so-called shut down only really shut down 17% of the Federal Government. The areas that were most noticed of course were the high visibility areas such as parks, and cancer research, and of course benefits for the military. http://washingtonexaminer.com/wheres-sense-of-crisis-in-a-17-government-shutdown/article/2536862.
The biggest fear with the so called shut down was not that any portion of government wasn’t working but more the fear of a default on the national debt. Even this fear was quite spurious, as many experts believed the government would not default at all. http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/10/15/failure-to-raise-the-debt-ceiling-will-not-bring-about-federal-default/#1c3d9f
Regardless last night Congress voted on a resolution to end the non-crisis shut down and end the debate. For Democrats this marked a victory, for the Republicans it marked a defeat. Both parties have the nation’s best interest at heart, but in this case the media has failed in accurately portraying the story and fully aided the winning party in passing a resolution that will ultimately be paid by our children and grandchildren. Over the past two weeks the big three networks ABC/CBS/NBC ran a combined total of 41 stories blaming the Republicans for the shut down and not a single story blaming the Democrats http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/17/networks-blamed-shutdown-gop-41-stories-0-dems.
Meanwhile today in the aftermath of the shut down, the President gave a speech here is a snippet of his what he had to say along with the message that was played by the main stream media for the past two weeks. 10-17 President Obama-rhetoric While the words were added the full text and the context with which Mr. Hewitt explains it can be found here http://www.hughhewitt.com/mark-steyn-returns-reopening-day/.
The President is right. We do need to rise above the name calling, it is just unfortunate that the side that did the majority of the name calling is the side that is saying the name calling needs to stop. It is astonishing that nobody in the MSM can see it. The news media has become a pathetic joke, with few exceptions they have reported this in the most one sided and uninformed hackery that I have seen in my short 20 years of following politics.
The press willfully went along with the White House’s narrative that the House of Representatives needed to toe the line with the Democrats because the President won the election. The press is seemingly unaware we have a Constitutional Government, a Representative Republic as opposed to a Parliamentary System or France’s Presidency. The press completely ignored the fact that the Republicans did in fact win the House of Representatives and they were by their very actions following the mandate of their own elections. As the President pointed out elections have consequences, one of these consequences is if a group is elected to office they should represent the wishes of the people who elected them.
We will see what goes on in the coming months. As it is with the debt ceiling extended past the sequestor cuts, they come off line in January, the next fight will no doubt result in even more Government spending which in turn means less money in yours and my pocket as taxes are raised again.
