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September 2013

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18 There will be no Continuing Resolution tonight. There will be a partial shutdown of non-essential services. All because Democrats refused to have Congress treated like ordinary citizens as to Obamacare exchange subsidies,...

Current status a/o 10:15 p.m. Eastern -- House passed two amendments, Senate then rejected. Looks like no more House votes tonight. House will simply request a conference with the Senate tomorrow. So Harry Reid gets his "shutdown." https://twitter.com/robertcostaNRO/status/384865087409754112 https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/384863087586603008 https://twitter.com/robertcostaNRO/status/384864630440337408 You can watch House floor here and here (will embed when House comes back in session). UPDATE -- Senate quickly rejected House Amendments, thereby voting to preserve Congressional special privileges and unequal treatment of individuals.  Looks like the likely House response will be limited specific "clean" funding similar to what was done with military pay.  Make Democrats in Senate vote against funding Veterans Department, etc. Senate Final Vote Rejecting House Amendments 9-30-2013

The Syrian Electronic Army breached the Twitter account of GlobalPost on Monday and claims to have hacked the outlet's website, in retaliation for an article the outlet published about the group earlier this month. Posting from GlobalPost's Twitter account, the pro-Assad hacking group tweeted, "Think twice before you publish untrusted informations[sic] about Syrian Electronic Army.  This time we hacked your website and your Twitter account, the next time you will start searching for new job :)" (Note: the unauthorized tweets related to today's incident have since been deleted from the GlobalPost Twitter account. Screen capture below). SEA-globalpost The group also tweeted an image of GlobalPost's website administration panel from its own Twitter account. Kyle Kim, Deputy Social Media and News Desk Editor for GlobalPost, confirmed the hack. https://twitter.com/kyleykim/status/384719304542785536 https://twitter.com/kyleykim/status/384720368830644224 Kim also cited a GlobalPost article as the reason why the outlet was targeted by the SEA.

Coming up at 4:45 p.m. Any guesses? [live feed over now][transcript here] Obama Press Statement Shutdown Basically what was expected.  The 2012 election was about Obamacare, he won, we lost, it's done, move on.  The election was about Obamacare?  Actually, it was about everything except Obamacare: Tweet - Legal Insurrection - Obama speech election about Obamacare Update: This National Review post lists all the things that do not get shut, and it's quite a long list, Not Actually a Shutdown.

Another really busy weekend. Preparing to #BlameHarryReid. “Why you should read College Insurrection” week 12-year old RI student suspended for small keychain “gun” CBS News buries poll result showing Tea Party support rising Dear Hamilton College Bd. of Trustees, maybe your Diversity Industry is making race relations worse Annoying Sitemeter Pop-up...

In his column yesterday, Hassan does Manhattan, Thomas Friedman wrote about Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani:
1) He’s not here by accident. That is, this Iranian charm offensive is not because Rouhani, unlike his predecessor, went to charm school. Powerful domestic pressures have driven him here. 2) We are finally going to see a serious, face-to-face negotiation between top Iranian and American diplomats over Iran’s nuclear program. 3) I have no clue and would not dare predict whether these negotiations will lead to a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis. 4) The fact that we’re now going to see serious negotiations raises the stakes considerably. It means that if talks fail, President Obama will face a real choice between military action and permanent sanctions that could help turn Iran into a giant failed state. 5) Pray that option 2 succeeds.
While there are no doubt domestic considerations that drove Rouhani to appear conciliatory, there's one reason that Friedman left out. A recent skeptical Washington Post editorial put it well:
Mr. Rouhani was in New York on Tuesday not because democracy triumphed in Iran but because Iran’s real leader decided to give the soft-sell strategy a try.
https://twitter.com/dubo1968/status/383804496088150016 In the end of Friedman's column, he writes:

For a government shutdown if it happens. The U.S. Senate is dysfunctional because of Harry Reid. No budget. No votes on most House legislation. No nothing except his way or the highway. We're seeing it again in the Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling battles.  Because Reid has shut down and shut out Republican voices, the only way to raise budget issues is using Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling deadlines -- a necessity in Harry Reid's Senate not the choice Republicans wanted. The poisoning of our politics by Reid did not start with the latest battles, it has been his methodology for years. You will not hear this narrative in the mainstream media. So on this day of all days, Tweet out #BlameHarryReid. (You can tweet this post, or use the Tweet broadcast function at the top of the sidebar which will be active for a few hours.) (added) As of 12:41 a.m., the hashtag #BlameHarryReid was still rising (Twitter feed added to bottom of post): Topsy BlameHarryReid 9-30-2013 1241 pm Twitchy if tracking the action, #BlameHarryReid: Looming shutdown? Citizens to Sen. Reid: Own it. Thanks for making this a Topsy Top 1k post (a/o 5:35 p.m.) Topsy - BlameHarryReid post 9-30-2013 Update: True to form, Politico via Drudge reports that Reid, who had the Senate take all of yesterday and this morning off, will not allow a vote on the House bill funding the government but removing the medical equipment tax: Drudge - Harry Reid to double down on shutdown

Should be interesting. There is such a thing as overplaying your hand. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans who have overplayed theirs. I'm not so sure. https://twitter.com/DavidMDrucker/status/384458323468513282 ...

Two 19-year old men have been charged with robbery, weapons and conspiracy offenses after a San Francisco television reporter was robbed of his equipment Friday.  A security guard accompanying the reporter fired shots upon the men during the confrontation. From Reuters: Two teenagers have been arrested after...

Amidst a campaign to fight Saudi Arabia's de facto rule that bans women from driving, a Saudi cleric said that women who drive risk negative physiological impacts that could damage their ovaries. From Reuters: A conservative Saudi Arabian cleric has said women who drive risk damaging their...

So, a lot of folks are talking about last night's season premiere of Saturday Night Live and its skit on Obama's sell of Obamacare.  Many are commenting that it mocks Obamacare.  I'm not sure I really saw it entirely the same way. Check it out for yourself: To...

No matter how much the elite media and establishment politicos want to kill-off Tea Party, it seems that we citizen activists refuse to roll over and die. If anything, we are pushing back smarter as well as harder. Case-in-point:  Some excellent news about the Tea Party forcing...

From The NY Times, the media world has changed:
Ask conservatives what went wrong for them the last time the government shut down, and many of them will bring up the cover of The Daily News of New York from Nov. 16, 1995. Under the block-lettered headline “Cry Baby,” it showed a cartoon of Newt Gingrich, then speaker of the Republican-led House, in tears, clutching a bottle and wearing nothing but a cloth diaper. Back then, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel was a year from its debut, Andrew Breitbart was a lowly assistant at E! Online, and The Drudge Report was an obscure gossip and news digest sent by e-mail — to the lucky few who had e-mail. But today, a fervent group of conservatives — bloggers, pundits, activists and even members of Congress — is harnessing the power of the Internet, determined to tell the story of the current budget showdown on its terms.

 Newt Gingrich Cry Baby Daily News

That's true, but only to an extent.  The liberal mainstream media is not the only voice, but it's still the dominant voice.  What power it has lost has been filled by liberal non-mainstream internet media. It's why reporters can collude at a press conference just after four Americans were killed in Benghazi to make sure the appropriate "gotcha" question was asked not of the officials responsible for the safety of our personnel, but of ... Mitt Romney.

Twitter - Legal Insurrection - Romney Press Conf

With only a couple of exceptions, no mainstream media reporters were the least bit interested in the utter failure of the Obama administration from Obama on down to address the situation, or to demand an answer as to what Obama was doing that night.  Not the least bit of interest. Instead, we had two days of non-stop all-out Romney bashing from the media.  It was a circus that comes to town whenever an event threatens Obama and the Democrats.