US debt ceiling crisis � Barack Obama has won the shutdown. His prize is a lame duck presidency
UK Telegraph ^ | 10/16/13 | Dr. Tim Stanley
From  U.K.Telegraph
Posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:06:01 PM by SoFloFreeper

The shutdown is basically over and the President has won....

But there are caveats to that narrative. First, the Republicans aren't the only ones who ought to hang their heads in shame. It was the Democrat-controlled Senate that first rejected the House's bill and so sparked the crisis. It was the President who refused to talk to anyone about it (and went campaigning instead). It was the federal government � even when in shutdown � that behaved like a spoiled child...

what has Obama really won? He keeps his precious healthcare reform and he gets government open again � but tomorrow morning he'll still have the same gridlocked political system that he had the night before. The shutdown is a rare example of him winning, but remember that this lame duck president has not only had a very simple (and, frankly, inoffensive) gun control bill killed in the Senate but was so spooked by bad poll numbers that he tried to dump responsibility for military action in Syria onto the Congress � before quietly dropping the idea altogether. Any thought that the shutdown payoff will be that he can sail an immigration reform package comfortably through Congress is pure fantasy. This is a broken presidency living out its last few years either holding off Republican attacks or lazily cruising the country on some pointless, endless, fatuous campaign trail. Obama's administration is politically bankrupt.