Ted Cruz won

Pajamas Media looks at the media meme on the shutdown and goes - not so fast my friend.
The failures of Obamacare couldn’t be worse. Obamacare has become a punch line, a joke, a catastrophic catastrophe, squared. So have at it. Prove that a shutdown-less environment could lead to killing off the program. Go win the narrative you said you could win.
But we may learn that the Cruz-led fight focused the nation on the failures of Obamacare in a way that no pundit or consultant will be able to match. If the Cruz-less narrative fails to win the field and end Obamacare, then Cruz wins yet again.

What he said

Powerline provides the audio to a speech then Senator Obama never gave - he just inserted it into the Congressional record.
In his 2006 speech then Senator Obama railed against raising the debt limit, an act he condemned as “a failure of leadership.” Then Senator Obama was the kind of guy President Obama and his toadies have condemned over the past week or two as extortionists, arsonists, murderers and terrorists. Have I missed any of the crude opprobrium Obama has flung at Republicans?

Why we fight

Brit Hume explains the Tea Party strategy, for those who doubt they have one.
They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew. And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated bureaucracy. They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they'll try anything to bring that about. 
Ace likes.
But while I do think the Tea Party is sometimes wrongheaded in its theory of negotiation -- that staking out the most maximalist position leads, more or less inevitably, to a better political resolution for the side staking it out -- I do fault the Establishment for not re-calibrating its politics and realizing, The base is serious about these things.

The hole in the argument

James Pethokoukis wonders if by preaching doom and gloom, conservatives are bringing on the disaster they fear.
He brings in Jeremiah, who foretold the troubles Israel would have when it ignored God.
The trouble is Jeremiah was right, and those saying everything would be fine were wrong.
And we don't know their names, but we know Jeremiah and his writings.
God showed Jeremiah that Israel was on the path to doom. There was still time to turn around, but they didn't take advantage of it.
If Cruz and crew were silent, the path of spending more than you have still brings disaster.
If people don't listen, at least they heard the truth before the real trouble started.

Battling the gravy train

DaTech Guy watches the battle between Establishment and Tea Party - and sees nothing he didn't expect.
Power is congress is based on the ability to grant favors. The reasons millions of dollars are spent on lobbyists is because the votes on the house & senate floor, the spending on the White House can make or break a business and pay rewards many times what the cost of their investment is.
It’s one thing for the Establishment to get Tea Party votes in a special election but it’s another thing if they actually manage to change the culture of Washington, suddenly the revolving door from congress to wealth closes and that they can’t abide.

Mandate will be delayed

Eight days since the Obamacare exchanges opened.
How many people do you think have signed up?
A million?
Less?
Half million?
Only 100,000?
Wish we knew the real number.
Remember, there's just 12 weeks until 2014 begins.
They tell us 30 million people don't have insurance, and many more can use the exchanges as they continue individual health insurance policies.
How many people need to be signed up by Thanksgiving for this to be a success?
What happens if we're only at 20 percent potential coverage going into December?
Republicans see the looming problems and seek delay for a year.
In December, President Obama may have no other choice.
And he look much worse in the Christmas holiday than he does now.

Blame the moderates

Conservative Republicans have known for years - you can't depend on moderates to stand with you. Now liberals are blaming the moderates - for not standing up to their conservative brethren.

Let's move, President Obama

President Obama and his crews have decisions to make during the government shutdown.
What websites to keep up and which can keep running.
Let's move is still up.
Will he take the advice?

Find other roads to travel

The shutdown has closed Shenandoah National Park, and some attractions along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
What to do in looking for fall foliage?
Look west.
I-64 from Lexington to the West Virginia border offers great scenery.
Try some new roads.
The colors are waiting for you.

404 is his lucky number

Paco has big plans for this furlough time.
By the by, as a government employee, I made sure to guarantee myself an indefinite unpaid vacation by having the words "Non-Essential Employee" tattooed on my forehead, so there would be no mistake about it (it's true, as JeffS has pointed out, that the correct terminology is now "excepted" and "non-excepted", but the tattoo is so lovely - the text is inscribed within a drawing of a sagging hammock that enfolds a portly bureaucrat, snoozing in the mottled shade of a mimosa tree - that I didn't have the heart to change it).

Tear down the Barry-cades

Legal Insurrection coins a great term for the Battle of the WWII Memorial.
Democratic hubris and Harry Reid’s fisticuff-style of politics were no match for elderly WWII Vets seeking to pay homage to their fallen comrades in what for many of them would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the WWII Memorial.
Everything changed overnight. Even the biased mainstream media is being forced to cover the protests today.

Will shutdown impact my hits?

With the non-essential federal government work shutdown, will there be an impact on the blogosphere?
Will furloughed workers spend more time on Facebook and websites like my blog?
Or since they are out of the office, will internet traffic go down?
Only Sitemeter and friends know for sure.

First shutdown of the internet age

Melt the keyboards.

Blame Harry Reid

Legal Insurrection knows who to blame.
The man who has shut down debate for years.