Let me preface this post by saying this: I get it.
My Dad, whom I adored, was a WWII vet. I toured European battlefields with him. I read the history and heard the tales. I stood on Omaha Beach and looked up the cliffs that those boys had to scale. I stood on Utah Beach and looked up steeper cliffs and then down them from the top, through the craters left by our bombs. I have been fascinated by the history of WWII, by the battles. By the true contest between good and evil that that war represented in my mind.
I get it. Really. They are, truly, the Greatest Generation
So yesterday when my blood pressure hit the roof, it wasn’t that I wanted to deny veterans, especially WWII vets, anything.
My first impression when I read that vets from a Mississippi Gulf Coast Honor Flight crossed over the barricades erected because of the government shutdown was: Good For YOU!
Until, that is, I learned that it was two GOP Congressmen who were responsible for the “storming.” According to this article, the barricades were moved by a pair of GOP members of Congress, Mississippi Rep. Roger Wicker and Michigan Rep. Bill Huizenga. Congressman Huizenga proclaimed it the “the best civil disobedience we’ve seen in Washington for a long time.”
And THAT is when my blood boiled.
Not because the Vets got in. But because the barricades were opened by the very same folks responsible for them being there in the first place. Once again, GOP members of the House of Representatives were defying the law. Because they don’t believe it applies to them.
The GOP shut down the government over a temper tantrum has voted to shut it down because the Senate and the President won’t defund the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare.
I have said this before:
The Affordable Care Act is a law that went through all three branches of our government as established under the constitution. According to the rules we set up for our Government, adopted in 1791.
Obamacare passed the House of Representatives (Authorized under Article I of the Constitution);
Obamacare passed the Senate. (Also authorized under Article I);
Obamacare was signed into law by the President (Granted that authority under Article II of the very same Constitution); and
Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court (Ditto — Article III).
The GOP lost the 2012 election over this issue (in large part).
The very same folks who do not respect the rule of law by accepting the reality of a duly enacted United States Law also do not accept the consequences of their refusal to govern. THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS THEIR FAULT ENTIRELY.
They have no respect for the rule of law. None. Laws, to them, apparently, should be followed only when they deem it appropriate. Last night, Michelle Bachmann announced that GOP members will be there to open the barricade to all Vets. Because the GOP does not respect the rule of law — but does respect a good PR.
Here, thanks to my blogging buddy, Vickie Lester at Beguiling Hollywood, is a list of a few things that happened on the first day of the government furlough
[Yesterday,] two hundred patients were turned away from the NIH, thirty of them children. Most of whom, because of the severity and difficulty of the disease they faced, had been sent to this research facility as a last resort. [This means, of course, that they will die. And their blood will be on GOP hands.]
Veterans applying for disability benefits could not be helped.
In a week poor women and children will not be fed.
Food safety inspectors have been furloughed.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that fully 16% of ALL workers in the United States work for the Federal Government. Those percentages are highest, actually, in Republican states. How long can a huge percentage of the workforce go without pay because of a GOP tantrum. How long should they?
The list of who is considered “non-essential” goes on and on. Things are only going to get worse. Because many businesses rely on those federal workers to buy their products, to eat in their restaurants.
Call your Congressman/woman
or Any Representative you think should hear from you
Tell them to pass an unencumbered budget
Tell them to open up the Government
The US Capitol Switchboard Number
202 244-3121
I am borrowing again from Vickie:
A thought from Andrew Sullivan:
I want to begin with a simple quote, a letter from Abraham Lincoln, facing a very similar constellation of forces as president Obama does with today’s nullification party, and sounding remarkably like his 2008 successor from Illinois:
What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum.
* * *
Thanks to Carrie of The Write Transition for this information: This Huffington Post link lists the Republicans who are ready to fund the government with no strings attached. Let’s hope it keeps growing. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/house-republicans-clean-cr_n_4024755.html
As I mentioned to Carrie, though, Peter King (R-NY) is on the list. He has been preaching a clean Continuing Resolution for days, but keeps voting with the GOP.
So as always, we’ll see.
FiftyFourandAHalf 