The football game between the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy was in jeopardy of being canceled Saturday due to – you guessed it – the government shutdown. Fortunately, however, sanity prevailed late Wednesday night given that the athletics programs of both schools are privately funded and don’t rely on government money. “We could run our entire athletics program and conduct events as we always do without any government funds,” said Naval Academy Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk.

That almost didn’t matter, though, because both schools still take orders from the Pentagon, which is affected by the shutdown. Gladchuk said that, if the game had been canceled, it would be for nothing more than “optics.” He added, “It’s a perception thing.”

This is all part of Obama’s “blame the Republican shutdown” charade. The bottom line for Obama is that in order to beat his Republican enemies – the ones his aide called terrorists “with a bomb strapped to their chest” – his administration is authorizing high profile cuts to create as much public pain as possible.