Obama-Backed Solar Plant Could Be Shut Down For Not Producing Enough Energy

California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds.
Read more at the Daily Caller Read More......

Chaos in House as lawmakers reject DHS bill; shutdown nears

A short-term funding measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security open (DHS) was defeated in the House on Friday in a stunning vote that could result in a partial government shutdown at midnight.  The bill failed 203-224, with 51 Republicans voting against legislation that was set to fund the DHS and its associated agencies through March 19. Twelve Democrats voted for it.  The vote is a humiliating defeat for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team, who had scrambled to bring the three-week funding bill to the floor ahead of the looming deadline. The next steps on the funding bill are not clear, with a shutdown of the agency just hours away.

Read more at The Hill Read More......

With Obamacare, It's Now Or Never In Terms Of Fully Shutting It Down

The “I agree with his goals but not his tactics,” crowd has been out in force since Ted Cruz’s made his historic and courageous stand on the U.S. Senate floor against Obamacare’s destruction of the American health care system.  What these Republican quislings fail to mention is what realistic tactics they would recommend.

For now it seems their main tactic is for the GOP in the House and Senate to roll over and fund Obamacare , the President’s signature blunder.  Republicans should do this they advise while making all the requisite meaningless noises about how much they oppose the program.

Read more at Forbes Read More......

One Million Vet March: Veterans standing up for their country once again

American Military News (pictures and videos): UPDATED: Vets March on DC Memorials & White House, Met By Riot Police
Beautiful photo/slideshow of Million Vet March by Katherine Cresto on Flickr (double click on first photo for slideshow) Read More......

Another flawed poll, another reason to expect Republicans to cave in the shutdown battle?

If reports of Republican panic on Capitol Hill are accurate, a big reason is likely the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, which purports to show the public overwhelmingly disapproves of the GOP's role in the government shutdown.

And on the surface, the news does indeed look grim for the GOP, as explained by NBC's political editor, Mark Murray:

"The Republican Party has been badly damaged in the ongoing government shutdown and debt limit standoff, with a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finding that a majority of Americans blame the GOP for the shutdown, and with the party's popularity declining to its lowest level.
  
"By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96."

Read more at the Washington Examiner Read More......

Park Service Paramilitaries

If a government shuts down in the forest and nobody hears it, that’s the sound of liberty dying. The so-called shutdown is, as noted last week, mostly baloney: Eighty-three percent of the supposedly defunded government is carrying on as usual, impervious to whatever restraints the people’s representatives might wish to impose, and the 800,000 soi-disant “non-essential” workers have been assured that, as soon as the government is once again lawfully funded, they will be paid in full for all the days they’ve had at home.

But the one place where a full-scale shutdown is being enforced is in America’s alleged “National Park Service,” a term of art that covers everything from canyons and glaciers to war memorials and historic taverns.

Read more at the National Review Read More......

Federal government to let states pay to open national parks

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Thursday it will allow states to use their own money to reopen some national parks that have been closed because of the government shutdown.

 

Governors in at least four states have asked for authority to reopen national parks within their borders because of the economic impacts caused by the park closures.

 

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the government will consider offers to pay for park operations, but will not surrender control of national parks or monuments to the states.

Read more at Triblive.com Read More......

Idaho County commissioner: Shutdown proves state should manage public lands

Idaho County Commissioner Skip Brandt isn’t pointing fingers at Democrats or Republicans in Washington for the fact that national wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Management campgrounds, boat ramps, visitor centers and other developed recreation sites, national forest developed areas and all national parks are closed. ✧ “Federal employees have decided to make their furloughs as painful as possible for the public,” Brandt wrote in an email. ✧ “So apparently the ‘Federal’ lands/ facilities are not 'true public' lands/ property after all, but rather are the bureaucracy’s property,” Brandt wrote in a email. “Thus if the bureaucrats/ Federal employees do not have a pay check the properties are off limits to the ‘subjects’” ✧ Brandt has a solution: “It is time that the Federal lands become managed/ accountable State lands.” Read more at Idaho Statesman
(Hat tip: Jo Rae Perkins for U.S. Senate) Read More......

Steyn: Shutdown Simulacrum

By Mark Steyn - Just because it’s a phony crisis doesn’t mean it can’t be made even phonier.
Way back in January, when it emerged that Beyoncé had treated us to the first ever lip-synched national anthem at a presidential inauguration, I suggested in this space that this strange pseudo-performance embodied the decay of America’s political institutions from the real thing into mere simulacrum. But that applies to government “crises,” too — such as the Obamacare “rollout,” the debt “ceiling,” and the federal “shutdown,” to name only the three current railroad tracks to which the virtuous damsel of Big Government has been simultaneously tied by evil mustache-twirling Republicans. Read more at NRO... Read More......

House Votes to Delay Obamacare, Repeal Medical Device Tax

Shortly after midnight, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare’s tax on medical devices and delay the unpopular law’s implementation by one year. ✧ The two amendments to the Senate-passed continuing resolution would fund the federal government through December 15. The measure returns to the Senate, with the fate of a government shutdown now resting with President Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). In the event of a shutdown, the House approved a separate bill that would pay the U.S. military. Read more at Heritage/Foundry... Read More......

An Obama-Cruz Shutdown

Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2013
The President is refusing to compromise on anything. ✧ Washington is careening toward a partial government shutdown on Tuesday amid its usual synthetic outrage. As the partisan cries grow in volume, it's worth a few minutes to sort the truth from the nonsense. ✧ The first thing to keep in mind is that this does not mean "anarchy," in Harry Reid's typically subtle formulation, or even a complete government shutdown. Functions deemed "essential" will continue, and it's debatable how many of those really are crucial to daily American life. The military will be paid, Social Security checks will still go out. Many Americans will be inconvenienced, but tens of millions may come to realize how easily they can do without most of the vast federal Leviathan.

A second reality is that both parties are responsible for getting to this point. Americans chose a divided government in 2010 and again in 2012, electing House Republicans as a check on Democrats whose undiluted liberalism alarmed millions of voters when they ran the entire government in 2009-2010. The inability to compromise now is rooted in the wide disagreement about the role of government that now separates the two parties. We've criticized GOP Senator Ted Cruz for his strategy to make defunding ObamaCare a requirement of funding the rest of government. He and his allies know that Mr. Obama can never agree to that, and even millions of Americans who oppose ObamaCare don't agree with his shutdown ultimatum. It risks political damage for the House and Senate GOP in 2014 even as Mr. Cruz builds his email list for 2016.

Yet it takes two to tangle, and Mr. Obama is as much to blame for the partisan pileup as Mr. Cruz. This is a President who is eager to negotiate with dubiously elected Iranian mullahs but can't abide compromise with duly elected leaders of Congress. He refuses to negotiate at all over an increase in the federal debt limit, claiming this has never happened. Like so much that Mr. Obama says, he knows this is false. His own staff suggested the spending sequester during the 2011 debt debate, and Democratic Congresses have used the debt limit to extract concessions from Republican Presidents.

Mr. Obama also refuses to bend on any part of ObamaCare—except when he unilaterally announces bending in his own political interest. He decided on his own, and contrary to the plain text of the law, to delay for a year the business mandate to provide insurance for employees. He also unilaterally delayed verifying the income of Americans seeking subsidies. He did this to pile more people into the ObamaCare exchanges, lest they fail, and to limit the harm to job creation before 2014.

Yet now he'd rather see the government shut down than accept the ObamaCare compromises that House Republicans have put in their latest government funding bill. He refuses to delay the law for a year though his own actions reveal it is not ready for prime time. And he won't even accept repeal of the medical-device tax that 79 Senators, including 33 Democrats, are on record as supporting. The tax is already hurting innovation and sending jobs overseas.

Mr. Obama's refusal to negotiate suggests that he wants a shutdown—either over the budget or debt limit. His agenda is dying on Capitol Hill, because of Senate Democrats as well as House Republicans. With his approval rating down and independents leaning toward the GOP, he figures his only chance to salvage a second-term domestic legacy is to restore Nancy Pelosi as Speaker in his final two years. His best opening to make that happen is a shutdown or debt-limit crisis that he will try to blame on Republicans. A shutdown is as much his strategy as it is Mr. Cruz's.

A version of this article appeared September 30, 2013, on page A16 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: An Obama-Cruz Shutdown. (Hat tip: Elias Sandervaal on Facebook) Read More......

Last-Minute Deal Averts Shutdown

WALL STREET JOURNAL, 4/9/2011 - Last-Minute Deal Averts Shutdown
Reactions:

DICK MORRIS.COM/4/9/2011 - It's No Deal, It's a Sellout!
KARL ROVE: Boehner "Is The Winner" (video at RealClear Politics)

UPDATE: Senate passes short-term funding deal.
COMING UP: The Clash over the national debt ceiling and the 2012 budget.
FREEDOM LINE BLOG Sen. Hutchison: Debt Ceiling Debate ‘Armageddon’ - Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) calls the next fiscal fight – raising the statutory debt limit when it’s reached in May – “Armageddon” and the most important policy decision of most members’ careers. See video at RealClear Politics

Hang tough Republicans! --bc Read More......