The shutdown train is coming.

"Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan joined editorial board member Mary Kissel on Monday where she advised President Barack Obama to give in to the GOP’s latest demands in order to pass a resolution which continue to fund the government.

She said that it would be “wise” of the president to agree to an 11 month delay of the Affordable Care Act in order to fix its flaws and sell the American people on the law’s benefits. Noonan began by observing that Obama is not quick to appeal to the negotiating table when dealing with the Republicans in Congress.
“I think the president, at least in the early years of his presidency, had this sense that if he talked straight to the American people, he would be doing a [Ronald] Reagan or a [Richard] Nixon,” Noonan said. “This president has often tried to do that, but it doesn’t work. It’s almost as if things are stuck.”

When asked how Obama could resolve this crisis, Noonan said that it would be “wise” to partially capitulate to the GOP’s demand to delay the ACA by nearly one year. "

Here is hoping that Barack Obama is not listening to Peggy Noonan or any other republican right about now.

There is a reason for that. Their political instincts are just not that good.

"Of all people, Obama would know if he is in trouble. When it comes to national presidential races, he is a finely tuned political instrument: He read the field perfectly in 2008. He would know if he’s losing now, and it would explain his joylessness on the stump. He is out there doing what he has to to fight the fight. But he’s still trying to fire up the base when he ought to be wooing the center and speaking their calm centrist talk. His crowds haven’t been big. His people have struggled to fill various venues.

 This must hurt the president after the trememdous, stupendous crowds of ’08. “Voting’s the best revenge”—revenge against who, and for what? This is not a man who feels himself on the verge of a grand victory. His campaign doesn’t seem president-sized. It is small and sad and lost, driven by formidable will and zero joy.
 
I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled.  Romney ends most rallies with his story of the Colorado scout troop that in 1986 had an American flag put in the space shuttle Challenger, saw the Challenger blow up as they watched on TV, and then found, through the persistence of their scoutmaster, that the flag had survived the explosion. It was returned to them by NASA officials. When Romney, afterward, was shown the flag, he touched it, and an electric jolt went up his arm. It’s a nice story. He doesn’t make its meaning fully clear. But maybe he means it as a metaphor for America: It can go through a terrible time, a catastrophe, as it has economically the past five years, and still emerge whole, intact, enduring.  Maybe that’s what the coming Romney moment is about: independents, conservatives, Republicans, even some Democrats, thinking: We can turn it around, we can work together, we can right this thing, and he can help." [Source]

Thank you Peggy, the fact that you have not been banished to an island with no running water just goes to show you how stupid some folks are in this country.

Anyway, I see that shutdown train coming down the tracks, and President Obama should not do anything to stop it. It was the republicans who hijacked it and pushed the engineer from the controls. Now they own every part of this looming disaster from the controls to the caboose.

Besides, his signature domestic legislative achievement will be going through no matter what.

Still, in less than four hours bad things will start to happen. We won't notice it right away, but eventually we will. I feel for the folks who are facing furlough and uncertainty with their jobs. Sadly, thanks to the 27th Amendment, the clowns in Washington who set this shutdown train in motion will not have to worry about getting paid. (Senor Cruz has already said that he will continue to cash his check.) Maybe if they did they would not have been so quick to climb up on this phony moral high ground that they are standing on.

"Speaker of the House John Boehner accused Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats of “breathtaking arrogance” for intentionally not convening a Sunday session to deal with compromise legislation to stop a government shutdown.
“The House worked late into the night Saturday to prevent a government shutdown, and the Senate now must move quickly, today, to do the same,” Boehner said Sunday."

Oh shut up tan man, the bars in D.C. will still be open, so you will be fine.