Democrats shut down government: Today's news for September 28th

Reuters:

Stop-gap bill to avoid government shutdown fails Senate procedural vote

A stop-gap funding bill to avoid a federal government shutdown later this week failed to garner enough votes to move forward in the Senate on Tuesday, with Democrats and Republicans both opposing the measure. 

The must-pass continuing resolution, or CR, which would keep federal agencies operating from Saturday through Dec. 9, received only 45 of the 60 votes needed to limit debate and be considered for passage by the 100-seat Republican-controlled Senate. 

Forty Democrats and two independents opposed the CR because it lacked a $220 million aid package to address the drinking-water crisis in Flint, Michigan. It also drew opposition from 13 Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz, the former presidential candidate.

I guess we can expect to hear hyperbole about how people will suffer if the government shuts down, from the Media and President Obama, right?

Crickets chirping.

Yeah, I thought so. When the Democrats do it, it is ok, because the Flint drinking crisis affects the entire country, right?

Seriously though, I am not insensitive to the Flint situation. But it is simply not a national matter. It is a matter for Michigan voters to hold their state and local politicians accountable.

When your car breaks down, and you need money to fix it, but you don't have enough money saved, what do you do? You re-prioritize. That money you were going to use for a vacation gets spent on the car instead. Or you work some overtime. But whatever you decide to do, you do it within the family structure. You don't get to go to the federal government for it.

Flint's situation is no different.

But there is one bright side to this: If you folks want to shut down the federal government over a simple $220 million giveaway, I am completely in favor of it. Let's keep it shut down. It will save us some money.

And now we return you to your post-debate coverage...

The Charlotte Observer:

Presidential debate surprise: Clinton loses ground among some voters in swing state

Indeed, while polls found that Clinton had won the first general-election debate with Donald Trump on Monday, she may not have won actual votes. And she may even have lost some, at least in the battleground state of North Carolina. 

In a focus group of 21 voters from around Charlotte conducted by McClatchy and The Charlotte Observer, four who had been up for grabs before the debate had moved away from her by the end.

...For the four who emerged less impressed by Clinton, it was the seeming familiarity of her proposals for the economy and national security that was a turnoff.

It is nice to see people recognizing the Democratic party's solutions are nothing new. They have been tried and failed the world over.

But here is something new:

Before the debate, the tally was nine Clinton, three Trump, six undecided and three [for Gary] Johnson. Afterward, it became seven Clinton, three Trump, six undecided and five Johnson.

In other words, as the only candidate to actually gain voters, Gary Johnson was the winner Monday night.

They better get him in the debates soon, or else Clinton might give him the presidency.

Speaking about the debate..

New York Post:

Lester Holt shows he doesn’t know the meaning of ‘impartial’

The New York Post's Kyle Smith nails the problem with moderator Lester Holt's performance during the presidential debate:

So Holt’s questions [to Donald Trump] were fair game, but it’s not the case that Clinton has nothing to be embarrassed about either. Holt might have questioned her about, for instance, the role she played in arranging the sale of American uranium assets to Russia after Clinton and her foundation accepted large checks from shady intermediaries. He might have noted that she was chided by the FBI for her reckless mishandling of classified information, or that she put sensitive national security information on a server, less secure than Gmail, that could easily be hacked by the Russians. He could have asked her whether she could be trusted about her health given that she apparently wasn’t going to tell the public she had pneumonia until she collapsed on 9/11 (and even then stonewalled for hours). 

True, Hillary Clinton has answered a lot of these kinds of questions before, but not in front of a huge national audience. For Holt to allow her to get away with saying, “It was a mistake” on her usage of email doesn’t cut it, not from a guy who was willing to hammer Trump on a remark like “I just don’t think she has a presidential look.”

Personally, as Kyle Smith pointed out earlier in this analysis, a Jim Lehrer-style performance from Holt would have been more appropriate. A debate moderator should be above the back-and-forth, not in it. A journalist I used to know once said the worst thing that ever happened to journalism was Woodward and Bernstein. After they broke Watergate, it became ok for journalists to make the news, instead of just reporting it (although their work was textbook journalism).

Debate moderation is no different: Allow the candidates to shine, as you merely keep them on a level playing field. Smith makes the point that if Holt was going to fact-check Trump, he needed to do the same with Clinton. I would argue the exact opposite: It wasn't Holt's job to fact-check either of them.