You had one f-ing job.....

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Uh, red team, wtf? You've allowed these tea party freaks drive to the car into a ditch. That's the plan?

“We’re very excited,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.”

Well, yay for hurting people IRL?

TIM MURPHY: Well, the short answer is about 20 percent of the federal government, 800,000 federal workers, will show up to work today and be sent home, and that includes 400,000 civilian workers from the Department of the Defense. That’s the department that probably gets the most cuts from this. The longer answer is, you know, pretty much various things that you use in your everyday life will no longer be open to you. People applying for mortgages will have trouble getting that from the federal government. People trying to fill out their taxes will no longer be able to call the IRS to ask basic questions. The Coast Guard is cutting back some of its navigation assistance. Auto—new automobile inspections will be curtailed. The EPA is closing 94 percent of its responsibilities for the foreseeable future. You know, there’s kind of this perception that the shutdown mostly just affects Washington, D.C., and it really does affect Washington, D.C., but it goes much broader than that.

Yay, shut down the EPA, bring back acid rain!!!. NRC has slashed planned nuke plant inspections! NOAA is slashing. EPA is really fucked. NASA Voyager, fucked. Mars Rover is fucked Kids being kicked out of cancer treatments:

"At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said."

Awwww hell yeah! Who needs to regulate pesticides, amirite? No more monitoring beef for ecoli, meat eaters. The CDC wont be able to monitor outbreaks or even create a proper flu vaccine - you could have millions of deaths on your hands. Way to stick it to those sciences, red team! Yee haw for hee haw! Gun sale permits are also going to be hampered, opps!!!! Families of American soldiers slain in Afghanistan will be denied death benefits. You shut down the panda cam too dammit:

the deal with the shutdown is it essentially gets worse the longer it goes on. And in 1995 and 1996 it went on for 28 days and ended up costing the U.S., I think, about $2 billion in economic losses, just because people don’t have money and they’re not spending it. So you have the 800,000 workers who will be furloughed, and they’ll be furloughed without pay. And when the shutdown eventually ends, they’ll get that pay. But in the meantime, you know, they’re trying to make ends meet. The government did pass an emergency measure to continue paying members of the armed services last night, so they’ll still work and they’ll still get their pay. But families whose, you know, loved ones die in Afghanistan will not get death benefits in that period. You know, civilian contractors will not, by and large, be showing up to work. The EPA will shut down almost all of its services. The National Zoo will close. Even the panda cam that lets you watch, you know, the pandas on a live stream 24 hours a day will shut down. NASA, I think, is furloughing about 97 percent of its staff. You know, people who depend on the federal government for funding for WIC food assistance will not get that. It’s up to their state whether they’ll get that going forward. Some states have obligations to do that; some states could probably care less. Heating assistance as the weather gets colder is something that is now up in the air. You know, there’s just kind of this wide range of government programs. Head Start, which is a program that has already been kind of really hammered by the sequestration cuts over the last seven months, is going to get further cuts over the next couple of weeks if the shutdown persists, as grants are now put on hold. So, you know, whether you have kids, whether you’re a college student relying on federal student loans or Pell Grants, whether you’re a senior citizen, whether you’re living in a cold region without heat, this shutdown will affect you.

All these self inflicted wounds because they hate a bill that was passed by congress, signed by a president who basically was elected on the issue, and ruled constitutional by the Supreme court. The bastard child of the Heritage foundation, RomneyObamacare aka the Affordable Care Act. Gawd forbid birth control be covered.



This woman is far more eloquent than I could be on the issue, so here:

I have a pre-existing condition and I stand to lower my premium, my deductible, and my prescription costs. I promise to return the money I save to the economy quite promptly, I'm good at that part. Just lower your gun and stop hurting people. Pretty please?

To quote Lincoln: "What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum."

Comments

[paft.livejournal.com]

ch: If those things are of vital importance, then why has Obama and Dems in congress adopted the "all or nothing" approach.

If by "all or nothing" you mean the Obama administration's refusal to back down about a law that has been passed and its constitutionality supported by the Supreme Court, you need a refresher course in how laws work.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

That's not what was meant by "all or nothing', however.

What was meant was if things get shutdown, then everything gets shutdown, maximizing the pain. The dems are playing games with this at people's expense.

[paft.livejournal.com]

It's not the Democrats who are holding everyone hostage and saying "do what we say and nobody gets hurt."

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

No the Dems are refusing to negotiate on the non-negotiable, i.e. a functioning government. Playing games is acting as if holding the budget hostage to your demands is reasonable. No serious person believes this to be the case.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

And this is the level of debate. My uncles were more honest when they made me punch myself and said "stop hitting yourself".

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

They wouldn't negotiate on the budget for the past year, so it finally came to this and they still won't negotiate. That's childish and they're the ones playing games.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

Republicans blocked conference committees all year, bro.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

?... I mean that they went all the budget passed passed, with no compromises on Obamacare, or virtually nothing funded and they want to maximize the pain of the shutdown, not minimize it. If Democrats were truly concerned about those things why not bring up a law that would fund them separately like they did with military pay?

[paft.livejournal.com]

If the Republicans didn't want to shut the government down, why did they do it?

It really is astounding to watch the extent to which you guys will try to duck responsibility for your own actions.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Rachel Maddow had a great feature (http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/53151808/) on the history of this small but vocal body of House Republicans and their itching for a government shut-down, over any set of reasons (although Health Reform bill is the lightening rod for them, or the national debt). One rep came out of a Republican caucus saying "Let's roll! let's roll! let's bring government to its knees, just like on 9/11!" Jesus. These far right tea party Republicans aren't in any risk of a losing in an election, so they won't budge an inch. And it's bad when William Kristol seems reasonable by comparison. And the public knows who's responsible this time, just like they did when Newt tried it in the mid 1990s.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

LOL paft. First off, I'm not part of your idea of "you guys," I'm not a Republican. I'm not Conservative. I'm not a Libertarian. I'm much more liberal than I am conservative. Don't let my refusal to jump in on this LJ group's circle jerks and the occasional pile-on fool you. If I was in a dominantly conservative group, I would be accused of being a left-wing nut.

Secondly, to answer your question, which I will do even though you refused to answer mine: Is it surprising to you that House Republicans, many of which were elected on their promise to attempt to repeal Obamacare, would try to repeal a law that was passed with virtually no Republican support (unlike social security and medicare)? Such a large social program that its possibility for removal, even if found to be a disaster, would be politically intractable. Is it surprising to you that members of the House would attempt to use any leverage they had to stop the law, or even delay it for a year like the Democrats decided to do with the employer mandate? It really isn't to me. Particularly since I think it will help those House Republican's get reelected, and I think they think it too.

Having said that, it really isn't surprising to me as to the extent Democrats will go to maximize the pain brought by this shutdown. Because, as you so finely demonstrated here, people won't hold them accountable for that.

So again Paft, since I was kind enough to answer your question, why don't you answer mine. Why isn't Obama pushing for a separate bill to limit the pain of the shutdown?

[paft.livejournal.com]

You mean like a clean budget bill that would open federal offices but not defund the ACA?

Boehner won't allow a vote on it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-two-basic-facts-that-should-be-in-every-shutdown-story/280179/

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Why isn't Obama pushing for a separate bill to limit the pain of the shutdown?

Because he expects people to do their job and follow rule of law.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

You remind me of the Republican Congressman who got on TV last week, and claimed that a bill they passed was "truly bipartisan". They got exactly one Democrat to vote with them. One.

[ironhawke.livejournal.com]

I'm just gonna jump in here for a moment. Yes, Republicans were voted into office on the premise that they would eliminate Obamacare. They were voted in by people who agreed with their stance and hoped that they could make efforts towards that end.

HOWEVER.

We have a President, voted in by the people, who has said unequivocally that any substantial changes to Obamacare are nonstarters, we also have a Senate, controlled by Democrats who also were voted into by the people, who have said essentially the same thing.

The problem here is that the Tea Party (a minority of the minority in the Senate, and a minority of the majority in the House) has decided that in spite of these stands, continue to pass bills that ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT pass. They know this fact and yet pass them anyway. They don't pass bills that genuinely attempt to work with Democrats, they only pass bills that are Tea Party boilerplate, throw the shit pile onto the Senate's steps, then scream their heads off when the Senate does what anyone else would do....dump the shit in the trash.

All of this aside though, Obama did make a very telling statement the other day. (Paraphrasing) "Allowing the Tea Party to hold the country hostage for their demands, and negotiating with them only gives them an incentive to continue with these catastrophic fights."

This I think is why we're here. Obama knows that if he budges on this, lets say for instance he allows a one year extension of the ACA, that a year from know the SAME people who are driving the country to its knees will simply do it again, and again, and again. They simply do not care about functioning government and only dedicate themselves to the altar of the extreme right.

Personally I'm aghast with the whole thing. But I believe the Obama's got it right this time. The Republicans are gonna take the fall for this, and during next year's midterms they're gonna get their asses kicked for pulling this stunt. Personally I would prefer a divided government (meaning one of the Houses of Congress is controlled by the Dems, and one by the Reps) because it allows for a more sane dialogue, once the Republicans cleans house and gets rid of these psychopaths we can finally start getting the country back on track.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

This would be a less patently dishonest tactic if Ted Cruz hadn't already come out and said that they were just going to use the piecemeal process to defund Obamacare on the back end. You guys get nothing.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you are referring to. I'm talking about why the Democrats aren't trying to minimize the pain caused by the shutdown. I'm not trying to suggest the Republican's proposals before the shutdown were good, or honest, or should have been accepted to avoid a shutdown.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

Ted Cruz has come out as suggesting that the budget be voted piecemeal in the event of shut down. This leaves politically popular programs on safe ground, but politically questionable ones out in the open. The problem of course is that these programs have already been voted into law and shutting down the government to contest them is not proper procedure.

ETA: This of course puts the House bills in an entirely different context. Republicans aren't doing it to the minimize pain of a shutdown. They're attempting to destroy Obamacare.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

The Republicans didn't avoid a shutdown, some of them wanted the shutdown. I honestly don't know why you are trying to deflect blame here. Why couldn't congress do it's stinking job and pass a budget? But but but... no... why couldn't congress do it's stinking job? No, I don't care about minimizing pain, why did Congress allow the shutdown in the first place?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Bravo! GOD DAY, SIR!


but house Democrats would not vote for it (it required 2/3 majority).

Also: the House leadership could have passed the temporary funding bills with a simple majority. But instead used a very clever procedural trick to put Democrats on the spot. Did all House Democrats vote against those bills? Absolutely not. 33 voted for the parks bill. And I don't think all Republicans voted for it either. Wouldn't matter anyway. The President would have vetoed I think.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

Republican plan to govern the US.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

with no compromises on Obamacare

A law, voted by the congress, signed by the president who was basically elected on it, and ruled constitutional by the Supreme court. The petulant holding the budget hostage to avoid rule of law and the constitution is a new low only surpassed by this lame attempt to frame it otherwise.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I mean that they went all the budget passed passed, with no compromises on Obamacare, or virtually nothing funded and they want to maximize the pain of the shutdown, not minimize it. If Democrats were truly concerned about those things why not bring up a law that would fund them separately like they did with military pay?

This is why I say that there is no moral high-ground to be had and any claims to the contrary are farcical.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Look I know I was punching you, but if you had just said your sorry early on, I would have stopped. Why didn't you stop me?

The abusive attitude on display here is as astonishing as the efforts to reframe it.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Cheezyfish has already explained why this is a bullshit analogy.