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]

Because the endgame is generally presumed to be ultimately capturing the terrorists and putting them away.

Except for this case, in which the hostage takers are an entire political party who, it is presumed, is going to continue to act within the halls of our government, and who, if given their way, will be continue to take hostages in the future.

This can't be allowed to become a normal part of the political process.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

I think you should reread that.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Why?

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

Because we don't negotiate with terrorist! What we also don't do is try to maximize the body count from their attacks to make them look as bad as possible and then excuse that with "well they shouldn't have done it in the first place."

[paft.livejournal.com]

So your only response is to just rehash what you already said (and what I already addressed) and repost it?

As I have pointed out, the hostage takers in this case are not run-of-the-mill hostage takers with whom one negotiates while quietly figuring out how to ultimately arrest, kill, and imprison and/or execute them. This is the Republican Party, a force within our government that is likely to remain a force within our government. If they succeed in this particular bit of hostage taking, they will be in a position to do it again. And again. And again. Our political process will be permanently altered in a very bad, very significant way.

Until you address that fundamental difference, your arguments are meaningless.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

I get it Paft, you think its okay to make sure the shutdown hurts the American people in order to make Republicans look bad, and I think they should do everything they can to minimize its impact. You think the ends justify the means, I don't. However, I don't think you should be spouting off about how the shutdown hurts people if you are actively rooting for it to, but that's just me.

[paft.livejournal.com]

ch: I get it Paft, you think its okay to make sure the shutdown hurts the American people in order to make Republicans look bad...

No, you don't get it. This is not about making the Republicans look bad (they've done that to themselves.) This is about not allowing the introduction of a precedent that would enable a political party to paralyze the government every time legislation is passed that they dislike.

You can reframe as furiously as you like, but I think most people in this country know where to put the blame, and it's not on the Obama administration or the Democrats, as much as you would like it to be.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

Were the parks closed last time there was a shutdown?

Were federal workers unpaid last time?

[paft.livejournal.com]

As I recall, yes.

As I recall, no.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

Feel free to explain how exactly not funding the NIH, the NPS, FEMA, DC, the VA, etc. helps make sure it doesn't happen again. Explain the mechanisms Paft. Be detailed.

[paft.livejournal.com]

ch: Feel free to explain how exactly not funding the NIH, the NPS, FEMA, DC, the VA, etc. helps make sure it doesn't happen again.

By not allowing this piecemeal funding approach to become a solid precedent in governance.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

You mean when Clinton did it back in 95? Is that how our government worked for the last 17 years?

[paft.livejournal.com]

Can you explain under what circumstances Clinton did it in '95?

The government has been in Shut-down for 17 year?

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

He allowed the passing of stopgap measures to fund things like the NPS and DC during the shutdown. The very things you are convinced will destroy our way of life as we know it.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Was the government shut down by the Republicans in 1995 to defund a law that had already been passed?

I see no reason to believe the Republicans, if they succeed this time, won't do it again the next time a law is passed that they dislike. And again. And again. That piecemeal approach to funding would quite likely become the norm, as opposed to a more comprehensive approach involving negotiations, debate, and a final product.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

Was the government shut down by the Republicans in 1995 to defund a law that had already been passed?

The government was shutdown in an attempt at reducing entitlement spending. So, yes, pretty similar.

I see no reason to believe the Republicans, if they succeed this time, won't do it again the next time a law is passed that they dislike.

You mean besides that it was already done and the budget process continued as normal after a month?

That piecemeal approach to funding would quite likely become the norm, as opposed to a more comprehensive approach involving negotiations, debate, and a final product.

There is no evidence that Republicans want to fund one agency at a time and continue the shutdown indefinitely. It completely lacks common sense and would be completely intractable, nor would there be any reason to as that would not get them anywhere near getting the ACA defunded.

[paft.livejournal.com]

ch: The government was shutdown in an attempt at reducing entitlement spending. So, yes, pretty similar.

No, not similar at all. The government was shut down in '95 over issues in the 1996 Federal Budget and involved Clinton Vetoing a bill. It was not an attempt to defund a law that had been passed through the legislative process.

ch: You mean besides that it was already done and the budget process continued as normal after a month?

Over a passed law? No. It has not been done before.

ch: There is no evidence that Republicans want to fund one agency at a time and continue the shutdown indefinitely.

They seem perfectly willing, judging from the interview I saw the other day with Boehner, to continue it to the bitter end, but my point is not about the this particular shut down being extended indefinititely. It's about the the Republicans staging shut downs every time a law they don't like is successfully passed.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

So it would only set a precedent if the Republicans wanted to defund a law before it came into effect rather than if they wanted to cut entitlement spending for a law that is already in effect? Aren't they both shutting down the government in order to get what they want? I'm not seeing the major difference that would cause the two situations to be different.

They seem perfectly willing, judging from the interview I saw the other day with Boehner, to continue it to the bitter end
What exactly is the bitter end?

It's about the the Republicans staging shut downs every time a law they don't like is successfully passed.

Okay, the thread below seems to deal with this, so I'll continue this there.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

And also, I should add, that is essentially how our government is suppose to work. We pass a budget Resolution, then we pass several smaller appropriation bills, funding specific chunks of our government. Now, what is completely dysfunctional are these continuing resolutions. That is not how our government is suppose to function.

[paft.livejournal.com]

No, our government is not supposed to work by a major party essentially shutting it down in order to get what it wants.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

Our government isn't suppose to work by passing CRs every year instead of Budgets either, but here we are. In the mean time I think an effort should be made to limit the pain of the shutdown.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Those efforts you describe would end up making the pain of shut-downs pretty much constant in this country.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

You keep saying that, but there is no logical progression that says blocking stopgap measures will ensure shutdowns don't happen in the future, unless if the reason for doing so is to intentionally increase the pain of the shutdown to cause the Republicans so much much political damage they would not only break with no concessions, but they wouldn't dare do it in the future. Essentially, Democrats would be hurting people for the benefit of the anti-Republican propaganda it would provide.

[paft.livejournal.com]

ch: You keep saying that, but there is no logical progression that says blocking stopgap measures will ensure shutdowns don't happen in the future...

If the Republicans do not get what they want as the result of this shut down (the defunding of Obamacare and cuts in other programs they dislike), then yes, I think it's logical to believe they'll be less likely to use it in the future.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

The thing about fighting dirty is it tends to lower your opponents standards in kind, or escalation.