"The extremist in Washington is Barack Obama. He's the guy that wants to fundamentally transform our health care system. He's the guy who has done enormous damage to America's standing in the world. To the extent there is an extremist or radical political view in Washington these days, I believe it is the president of the United States."

"It’s not the GOP that President Barack Obama has to worry about in defending his botched health care rollout, it’s fellow Democrats. 

"They voted for the law, sang its praises for three-plus years and still believe in the promise of health care reform. But now they face a conundrum: stay in lock step with Obama and risk their credibility as advocates for the law’s benefits or publicly criticize the administration for its recent problems — especially a failure to more quickly acknowledge, and rectify, the major malfunction of its Internet marketplace. 

"It’s a particularly vexing question for Democrats worried about their party’s chances in the 2014 midterm elections, and, increasingly, they’re opting for the latter strategy. ... 

"While the administration is urging patience, Democrats who will face voters in a little over a year don’t have the luxury of time. They’re having to make decisions now about how to position themselves if the administration continues to struggle with implementing the central piece of a law they supported."

"There’s no actual debt ceiling right now. 

"The fiscal deal passed by Congress on Wednesday evening to re-open the government and get around the $16.4 trillion limit on borrowing doesn’t actually increase the debt limit. It just temporarily suspends enforcement of it. 

"That means Americans have no idea how much debt their government is going to rack up between now and Feb. 7, when the limits are supposed to go back into place and will have to be raised. 

"There is no dollar amount set for how much debt the government can accumulate between now and then. The suspension strategy was employed first earlier this year during previous fiscal battles in Congress."

"Ted Cruz and Mike Lee may not have been able to strike a death blow to ObamaCare today, but they were able to fight a fight that would have been impossible before them. They have now made it less and less possible for Republicans to collaborate with Democrats to fix or stabilize ObamaCare. ... 

"Grassroots upset about this fight should be encouraged. We’d have never gotten this far with the GOP before 2010. Imagine now the possibilities in 2014 if we make examples of a GOP that refused to fight ObamaCare. 

"2014 must now be about advancing, ever advancing, even through the ranks of the GOP to have the fights that must be had."

"Which party is more extreme? 

"A Republican Party divided between 180 mainstream House members and 40 Ted Cruz mini-me's? Or a Democratic Party united to preserve our fossilized, ineffective public sector? 

"A Republican Party advocating a path to fresh, natural, economic growth? Or a Democratic Party offering young voters the outdated economics of conformity, artificially imposed by Washington's elites? 

"A Republican Party being driven to offer change? Or a Democratic Party united against it? 

"Entrepreneurs, start printing tie-died shirts now. They will be hot sellers at the next Democratic Convention. Both sides are in for an interesting ride, but for Democrats, it's going to be an extreme 2016."

"A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

"'Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,' report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. 'But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.' Why was it delayed? 'An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.' (Emphasis added.)"

"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."