Let me say again. I will not stop castigating Republicans until they stop betraying their oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution.
I wish I were surprised by what they are doing in shutting down the government, but I’m not. This is not the first time they’ve done it, and it won’t be the last as long as they control the House. Not even so called main stream Republicans are helping.
John Kline, my Representative, is suppose to be one of them. He’s not, at least not in action. He has thrown in with the extremists and has said nothing about the shutdown or its terrible impact on people’s lives. He may as well join the Tea Party. When you don’t have the courage to stand against this kind of calloused extremism, you aren’t much of a leader. John Kline is not much of a leader. Neither are other Republicans who don’t agree with Ted Cruz et. al., but are saying and doing nothing to challenge them.
I’m just trying to figure out how any of these people sleep at night. How do you look your family in the face as you inflict hardship on people who had nothing to do with what is happening? Not to insist in public and in private caucus meetings that a clean CR bill be passed so the government can reopen is morally reprehensible. How hypocritical for the people who are responsible for the shutdown to claim they are pro-family and pro-life.
They are not. Instead they are Machiavellians, people whose ethic is that the ends justify the means. But this is not who most Americans are. So House Republicans should stop claiming they are listening to us. If they really were they would be running scared. Perhaps in November of 2014 they will actually hear what we are saying.
Hope springs eternal.
linnposts.com 
Jan, I have been making daily pilgrimages to the Capital to bear witness to frustrated tourists, angry protesters and shameful white men in suits….elected officials ( I don’t have any b/c I live in DC)
Yesterday, while running by the WWII Memorial , busloads of Vets poured into the only accessible national park and I found myself standing shoulder to shoulder with Michelle Bachman…( looks quite plastic in person) and her team of Tea Party Patriots. They were there for photo ops to show the Vets that this ” Government” shutdown was not their idea. It was incredible. Soon I found myself one on seven with a pack of nut-heads but these blogs from you have embolden me to speak up truth to power. or truth to insanity.
I left the 10 min dialogue highly discouraged that there is simply no common ground in our values…..
I read an article recently whose title says it all: “The White Man’s Last Tantrum”! It detailed some of the old and new Jim Crow strategies of those whites who have always felt superior to other races and also feel entitled to wield power over … well, anyone and anything that isn’t them. The threat that “The Affordable Care Act” presents, and seems to be unfolding as such due to its huge online response so far, is that it will prove there IS a role for government for the “common good” in people’s lives.
It is an unfortunate state of being yet in all our lives that we do not see our commonality as humans, that we concentrate on differences, that we have such profound fears and suspicions of others so as to act inhumanely toward them in word and deed. It has been a back and forth state of being for millennium. It is so spiritually immature! I can not help but think that if Christ were here He would still feel compelled to say: “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
I have to agree with my sweety, having the ability to see each other as human beings, not what color, gender, religion, republic, democratic etc., but pure energy and vibration, the essence of God. It’s time to have a new thought process that includes compassion. I can not help but think, that we do know what we are doing and ignore the energy of God; the essence of Love!
Dixcy, you did all you could do. If enough of us do that it really will be enough eventually to defeat this meanness in our politics.
Bob, you said it well. We are seeing the worst side of spiritual immaturity.
There is one good thing to mention. Michele Bachmann – who gives public service and Christianity a bad name – will be gone from politics in a year. My state and our nation will be the better for it.
The journalist William Shirer, in his work about the fall of the French Third Republic wrote at length about the proceedings held in the French spa town of Vichy, in which the French legislature voted to dissolve the Republic, its democratic institutions and way of life.
Among the 80 Deputies who couldn’t go along with this was Vincent Badie, who commented after the war:
“…Those who had profited most from the Third Republic, who had been most honoured by it, who often had been Ministers, who should have, by their formation, their education and their sentiments, defended the Republic, cowardly let it be assassinated”.
I hope to God that this isn’t the way things are going in your country, but having read William Shirer’s book, it’s all too clear to me that in that fateful year 1940 the French Third Republic had its share of Ted Cruz(es) and John Klines, too.
Nigel, your sobering comment should remind all of us here in America that our founders really did think what they were creating was “an experiment” that could fail. I personally thought we had proven to ourselves that it would indeed endure. Now I am not so sure. Perhaps we are now realizing the founders’ worst fears. I never imagined we would ever have politicians who would want our government to fail because of their hatred of a man who, in spite of his weaknesses, loves this country and is trying to do best by it. Thank you for this excellent word. I hope we heed its warning.