O’ for the days of fierce investigative journalism. I commend the Post for revealing a rare moment of clarity in the October 3rd staff editorial: “The government shut down. But it’s not the end of the world.”

Bravo! Well said! There are far too many doomsday prophets predicting the end of life as we know it if the federal government was for one moment left unattended.

 But wait; are they? I must criticize the Post for falling into the same investigative malaise that has gripped many of the major news networks in this nation for the past half-century. 

(There’s also, of course, the issues with the Post making absurd claims that a “handful” of extremist fringe radical right-wing Congressmen is holding the nation hostage during the shutdown or that the vast majority of Americans hate Obamacare.)

There are far more elements to this shutdown that could have and should have been addressed in this latest staff editorial.

Consider, for instance, that according to the Washington Times, the IRS is still collecting taxes, but not giving out refunds, not to mention illegally refusing to turn over documents to Congress.

National WWII monuments were coldly closed, not because they needed to be (the park service in charge of them is not affected by government shutdowns), but because the Obama administration is purposely trying to increase the amount of harm the shutdown inflicts.

Why on earth would they want to do that? To frame the debate in a way that harms Republicans, also called “stinking political pigs”, “legislative arsonists”, or “people who have a bomb strapped to their chest”, if you’re Nancy Pelosi or Dick Durbin.

Ugly, hate-filled speech by prominent liberals? Yes. Am I making it up to make liberals mad? No.

So what on earth is my point? Why slog through the mud of Washington? In essence, I am arguing for a more holistic approach.

To the editors of the Post: you need to look at the whole story. The real story is not that the government is shut down. The real story is that the government is functioning enough, just like the case of the infamously non-lethal sequester last spring (who even remembers that?), to make our lives miserable.

In English: Democrats have an agenda/no morals; they want to hurt Republicans; they do so by lying and blaming Republicans for the shutdown.

I look forward to the day when hard-hitting journalism that exposes scams like this latest Democratic mess appears in the Oakland Post.