"In another bit of grim news for the long-term prosperity of these United States, hospitals, medical practices, and related businesses are shedding jobs: 8,000 of them since April, more than in any other sector. For the year, there have been more than 41,000 layoffs at health-care firms. As Paul Davidson and Barbara Hansen of USA Today report, those are mostly hospital staffing reductions in response to reduced reimbursement rates for Medicare patients under the sequester and cuts for some providers under the Affordable Care Act. Private insurers, who are starting to experience a burning sensation after having gone to bed with the devil on Obamacare, are reducing payments, too."

"For all the hyped indignation over GOP 'anarchism,' there has been remarkable media reticence about the president’s intransigence. He has refused to negotiate anything unless the Republicans fully fund the government and raise the debt ceiling — unconditionally.  

"For all his protestations about protecting the full faith and credit of the United States — jittery markets are showing that his brinkmanship could have precisely the opposite effect — the president’s real intent is to score a humiliating victory over the GOP."

"It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.  

"The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the 'single digits,' according to the Washington Post.   

"The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $634 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock."

"Could this be the end of Monument Syndrome? Across the country, ordinary Americans are rising up in revolt against the old Washington tactic of closing public parks and memorials during selective government 'shutdowns' to score political points. Tax-paying tourists are tossing off the orange traffic cones and 'Barrycades.' Enough is enough. ... 

"Welcome to Occupy America. It's a protest movement for all ages against Washington business as usual. Thanks to social media, citizens outside the Beltway are now able to voice their disgust in an unprecedented way. Through Twitter, Facebook and blogs, they are directly disrupting the well-worn politics of government parks-and-wreck extortion."

"As a candidate for president, Barack Obama sold his signature universal health care plan with the promise that it would 'cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year.' 

"Now that the Affordable Care Act exchanges are open for business, voters are finding that the biggest problem with ObamacCare is not that some websites crashed last week but that the Obama promise of big savings for the average family was too good to be true. 
 
"Now that the exchanges are open for business, people who already have individual coverage have something new not to like: sticker shock. The Affordable Care Act isn't affordable after all. ... 

"Voters never should have believed that Washington could offer more health care benefits to more people and that it would end up saving families thousands of dollars. It was too good to be true, and now the bill is coming due."

"Congressional Republicans ought to memorize, and preface their every statement with, some simple formula. 'One: Make Congress and the White House obey the same ObamaCare rules you do. Two: Obama let business off for a year; we want workers to be let off for a year too. That’s the GOP plan. What part don’t you like?' 

"Only by hitting the nail on the head again and again and again will Republicans be heard. If you’re locked in a closet at the far end of a deep basement, you need to bang on the door and shout, and keep banging and keep shouting until someone hears you. Subtlety and nuance are not required — only simplicity and persistence. The guy locked in the closet has a strong message, and so does the House GOP. But if no one hears, no one cares."

"The hundreds of thousands of government workers who have been laid off are not idle because the House of Representatives did not vote enough money to pay their salaries or the other expenses of their agencies -- unless they are in an agency that would administer ObamaCare. ... 

"The Senate chose not to vote to authorize that money to be spent, because it did not include money for ObamaCare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he wants a 'clean' bill from the House of Representatives, and some in the media keep repeating the word 'clean' like a mantra. But what is unclean about not giving Harry Reid everything he wants?

"If Senator Reid and President Obama refuse to accept the money required to run the government, because it leaves out the money they want to run ObamaCare, that is their right. But that is also their responsibility."

"The real problem with the Republican position isn’t that it is unprecedented or inherently out of bounds but that it is unlikely to achieve much. To put it mildly, the Republican handling of the continuing resolution has lacked the forethought traditionally associated with successful strategy. Republicans are now on their third version of the continuing resolution. Defunding is so last Tuesday. They have bid themselves down to a delay of the individual mandate and imposing ObamaCare on Congress. 

"Every indication is that Reid welcomed a shutdown on the assumption that Republicans could be made to pay the price. It’s not a bad bet, but the risk to Democrats is that they make their eagerness to press their partisan advantage too blatant. If the shutdown is so dire, presumably they should want to talk about how to resolve it. If the temporary suspension of specific government functions — the parks, services to veterans — is so harmful, presumably they should welcome Republican bills to restore them."

"Fear not the shutdown, Republicans in Congress!  

"You are the supposedly conservative alternative in politics and we are currently $16 trillion in the hole. The least you can do is stop spending so much money everyday to keep the vile beast going. Also, as the supposedly conservative alternative, you should be thrilled that all the 'nonessential' bureaucrats have been sent home while our military remains at post.  

"For most of us innocent taxpayers, this suits us just fine. The only people who should be scared are the big-government enthusiasts when the vast majority of Americans realize they didn't even notice the monstrous federal government had shut down and that they really don't need all of this nonsense that hurls us deeper and deeper into an abyss of debt with every passing week."

"Every Republican should be out front, on TV, radio and in print this week with a simple message:   

"'We have twice voted to fund every agency and program of the U.S. government (save ObamaCare) in a single CR. We will proceed now to pass CRs for each department and agency of the U.S. government, separately and individually. 

"And if Harry Reid's Senate refuses to pass a single one of those CRs, who then is shutting down NIH and the FDA?'"