Huffington Post (boy, this musta hurt reporting this):

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency says the agency will “effectively shut down” unless Congress approves stopgap funding by Oct. 1.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says the agency won’t be able to pay employees. She says only a core group of people will remain on duty in case the EPA has to respond to a “significant emergency.” The vast majority of employees will stay home.

That means that most of EPA’s functions, like drafting regulations and enforcing laws to protect the environment, will likely remain stalled until government operations fully resume.

Congress has a week left to reach a deal to avoid the first shutdown since 1996. Lawmakers are at odds over a Republican plan to defund President Barack Obama’s health care law as part of the stopgap measure.

Through environmental regulations that they have put on steroids and issuance of them in certain industries (e.g., electrical generation, coal, shale, storm water runoff, sewer treatment, take over of local zoning codes), they have become an entire unelected and unaccountable government unto itself and has put itself in the enviable Progressive position of regulating almost every area of American life.  All it takes is bureaucrats interested in that power and having fairies thoughts dancing in their heads that we can continue to have a modern society without any modern energy sources to drive them.  And in the case of other areas, they are issuing regulation upon regulation that will strictly constrict where and how we are to live our lives.

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On the heels of Angel Merkel’s center right stomping of their opponents in German Elections, I found this rather intriguing…

BERLIN—The elections set to take place here in Germany Sunday are expected to turn largely on the country’s solid economy, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s handling of the European debt crisis and social issues like women’s role in the work force. But add to that plate one more thing: Germans don’t want the government telling them what to eat.

In what could be a cautionary tale for First Lady Michelle Obama’s efforts to tweak Americans’ diets, Germans look set to punish the Green Party for urging that public cafeterias go meat-free on a designated “Veggie Day” each week in order to help the environment and reduce cruelty to animals. Borrowing colorfully from English,German newspaper Bild described public reaction to the idea as a “sh*tstorm.”

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“We have to reach out to this group in order to win and show that we’re hip!”

“NO!  Now we have to reach out to this other group”.    “Wait!  You’re forgetting this other one – it’s important because it contains a whole 2% of the voter population!”

Yuck.  This coming from Republicans as we are almost two years out from the last Prez election is rather sad.  Translation: we’re slinking into the Democrat model of identity politics.  Well, isn’t this just another version of being Democrat-lite?  If the policies being put out are not that much different, and the way about going about getting LIVs to vote for them, really, who is going to really win – Lite or Authentic?

We had Bill O’Brien on GrokTALK! this morning and I mentioned this after he said he had been down to DC where people were all about “groups” – the Republican Party must reach out to all these little groups in order to be relevant.  Now, I have no problem in micro-targeting but when you start sounding like Democrats in their vote hoovering efforts, shouldn’t that alone be setting off alarm bells?  We must always be cognizant of “what’s the differentiator”?  Remember this – pandering is not differentiation; it is simply pandering.  Dems / Progressives / Socialist offer stuff and the road to victory for the GOP is…the same?  I don’t believe that Republicans can replicate the “set up the victimization identity groups, make them feel special in their victimization status, and promise them to punish those that have victimized them”.

Sad, real sad.  I used to hear that we were the Party of ideas, overarching and universal ideals,  and the last time I looked, those kinds of ideas transcend identity groups.

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David Gregory of the Sunday morning talking head show, Meet The Press, over the most important question concerning our Republic (yes, a Republic – not a democracy):

What is the Proper Role of Government?

and he turned to Leftist Tavis Smiley for his take on it:

Gregory:

There is a big argument over government too, here Tavis. You were concerned, as were others, about the vote on food stamps this week.  This is about the size, scope, the direction of government.  In the Republican Party, this is going to become a big campaign issue.  It’s going to be in 2014 but it also for those who want to run for President in 2016.  The question will be “where were you on Obamacare”?

Smiley:

“I think, not just for Republicans, I think that this country is facing a similar moment that we make a decision about what kind of nation, what kind of people we are going to be.  the President recently, much to my chagrin, spoke of, advanced once again, this notion of “American Exceptionalism”.  He clearly is not the only person in this town who likes to push that notion that we as Americans are exceptional.” 

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