An expert on prison sieges likened the current U.S. government shutdown to prisoners who hold the institution hostage. Those in authority must negotiate with the prisoners in order to return the establishment to normalcy.

So far there’s a lot of dancing around by both sides…the President and his supporters…and Baynor and his motley crew of supporters and challengers.

The Health Care Law is just that…the law. 

Tea Party reps don’t like the law, so they’re holding Americans hostage with the shutdown. Representative Ted Cruz and his followers are trying with all their might to reopen the discussion on Obamacare. They’ll even do so on the backs of millions of citizens who now find themselves furloughed and unable to pay their bills.

In the summer of 2013, Cruz embarked on a nationwide tour sponsored by The Heritage Foundation to promote the congressional effort to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, arguing that a shutdown of the government would not be a disaster for America or the Republican Party.^[77][78]

On September 24, 2013, Cruz began a speech on the floor of the Senate regarding the Affordable Care Act relative to a continuing resolution designed to fund the government and avert a government shutdown.^[79][80] Cruz promised to keep speaking until he was “no longer able to stand.”^[81] The fourth-longest speech in United States Senate history, Cruz yielded the floor at noon the following day for the start of the proceeding legislative session after twenty-one hours nineteen minutes.^[82][83] Following Cruz’s speech, the Senate voted 100–0 regarding a “procedural hurdle toward passing a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown.”^[84] Cruz was joined by 18 Republican senators in his effort to prevent stripping out a clause that would have defunded the Affordable Care by voting against the cloture motion, leaving the effort 21 votes short of the required number to deny cloture.^[85]

It’s unclear which Americans the right-wing extremists in Congress represent. The quick answer seems to be…the wealthy who are at the helm of the Tea Party…and folks who prefer the America of old, perhaps pre-FDR and his New Deal. Since the Depression is a relic of the past, the younger right-wingers might feel our country is exempt from another. Or they might be willing to risk sinking into another Depression as long as they can take care of their own. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the good old days? 

The March 1944 eruption of Vesuvius, by Jack Reinhardt, B24 tailgunner in the USAAF during World War II (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Unfortunately, the world has erupted like Mt. Vesuvius, and there’s no pouring the magma back down into the crater…no matter how hard we try. Like the lava that dries and hardens, mankind and all its virtues and faults, are part and parcel of the landscape. 

I think the Tea Partiers are looking to…

…return to the garden of eden…before eve tempted adam to take a bite…

………hugmamma.