Government shutdown thread

[Stars In Autumn]

I know just enough of what is going on to realize how little I actually know what is going on. The speaker of the house should not be able to hold our government hostage like this, however. So hopefully we get some more laws passed after this that would prevent this kind of abuse.

[ganondox]

I don't get why the government has this idiotic policy instead of, I don't know, just sticking with the previous budget incase of indecision. Makes a lot more sense than going into zero budget.

Anyway, I'm probably one of the few actually directly effected by this, as that's where my income comes from. Now my dad needs to continue going to work without pay. I hate congress so bloody much.

[JSynth]

Well, I know who I'm not voting for next year.
All of them.

I'm so sick of the US government right now. The more and more you look into what they do, the worse and worse it gets. I'm getting to the point now where I'm debating leaving the country. The only thing that is holding me back is school.

[Freewave]

Well, I know who I'm not voting for next year.
All of them.

I'm so sick of the US government right now. The more and more you look into what they do, the worse and worse it gets. I'm getting to the point now where I'm debating leaving the country. The only thing that is holding me back is school.

It's frustrating but ragequitting on a whole country i dont think is not the answer. I mean what other country is going to just take you in as a citizen and is going to be better? Biggest problem is when you have 50 different states with different political and social ideologies. Half the country doesn't share your views and in my case nearly 49% of my state doesn't either. We're all constantly upset at each other because we have little to agree on in how to get anything done. No compromises for the greater good at all.

[Bloo]

I'd slightly like to leave the country, but I have no idea where I'd go and it costs too much at the moment and I'm not exactly inclined to go to Canada. I think I'll just stick to traveling. Often.

[Nine Volt]

If I were to leave the country I would go to Canada. But I don't want to leave the country.

Jsynth, listen to freewave. Just because the government kinda sucks doesn't mean that there aren't many good people too - we're usually just shown the worse. Makes it seem much worse than it actually (probably) is. That said, Congress sucks.

[Conduit]

Ignore Ninevolt and Freewave and move to Canada. I need more producers who live near me.

[FLAOFEI]

Well, I know who I'm not voting for next year.

You should vote for Vermin Supreme instead of not voting. That way you both support ponies for everybody, and you show how much of a joke you think the government is. If I where American I probably would.

[MYCUTIEMARKISAGUN]

me when I watch non-political nerds discuss this:



Yeah, part of the reason I embraced this fandom is it was a breath of fresh air from the joyless, machiavellian "Rains of Castamere" trench warfare that is online political debate. (and I wasn't even bothering with conservatives anymore - I was strictly doing internal left-wing debates and this shit was like Stalingrad sometimes, trust me. And you thought Brony drama on tumblr was bad?!?! hahahaha) So if I *really* wanna get into this, I'll scurry back to DailyKos & Balloon Juice (they actually posted one of Applejinx's Discord songs!) kthnx.

Sigh.

INHALE

EXHALE



I'll try to be brief.....

This is the problem with what is essentially a two-party system: republicans want to cut funding to Obamacare because democrats want the funding, democrats want the funding because republicans want to cut it.

Democrats want the funding because they want to expand access to health care.

Republicans want to cut the funding because OBAMACARE IS A EVIL COMMUNIST NAZI PLOT TO DESTROY AMURKA!!!!! DEATH PANELS!!!!!!!!

lol man yall need to take this false equivalence elsewhere

btw, do you wanna see their last "offer" to the President before the shutdown?

In return for a one-year suspension of the debt ceiling, House Republicans are demanding a yearlong delay of Obamacare, Rep. Paul Ryan’s tax reform plan, the Keystone XL pipeline, more offshore oil drilling, more drilling on federally protected lands, rewriting of ash coal regulations, a suspension of the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate carbon emissions, more power over the regulatory process in general, reform of the federal employee retirement program, an overhaul of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, more power over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s budget, repeal of the Social Services Block Grant, more means-testing in Medicare, repeal of the Public Health trust fund, and more.

To quote Sweetie Belle: OH COME ON. Just ask the guy to blow you while you're at it.

And the best part of this is, some House Republicans didn't think these were enough demands. Christ, lol.

better get their asses in gear and start compromising if they don't want the country to fall to shambles around them.

Blame party polarization. Members of Congress seem to have gotten it into their heads that there's only one way to skin a cat: their way.

Representative Paul Broun (R., Ga.) agrees, and says Boehner risks an internal rebellion if he decides to broker a compromise. “America is going to be destroyed by Obamacare, so whatever deal is put together must at least reschedule the implementation of Obamacare,” he says. “This law is going to destroy America and everything in America, and we need to stop it.”

It'll only take 20+ Republican congressmen turning on Boehner to cost him his job as Speaker. The Tea Party Caucus has about 50 congressmen. Compromise, as a concept, is extremely extremely taboo in Tea Party circles. Do the math.

See, I think some of ya'll are under the impression that "both sides are to blame", as opposed to like.....ya know......the ugly truth............about American Conservatism being in a ideological death spiral that is hermetically sealed in a Fox News/Drudge Report information bubble: You gotta understand, this is the magical fantasy world where love between two people of the same sex is EVIL, expanding health care access will DESTROY AMERICA, The Iraq War was a great idea, bombing Iran is a even BETTER idea, Global Warming is a "hoax", Mosque construction must be stopped, and Barack Hussein Obama is a radical socialist (LMFAO) who cheated to win all his elections and oh yeah he may or may not be a secret Muslim born in Kenya. Etc. And don't get them started on history - in their reality, the Founding Fathers were Fundamentalist Christians and Civil War was a righteous rebellion against government overreach that had nothing to do w/ slavery. Btw, the Confederacy totally had thousands of black troops, bro!

I need a drink.

Myths and misconceptions within any movement (or fandom, lel) is to be expected. But Conservatism has taken this sort of epimestic closure to such an extreme it frankly scares the crap outta me at this point. Confirmation Bias on steroids & gamma radiation. This is why a week before the election, every fucking poll was showing a clear, obvious, comfortable victory for Obama but over in RightWingLand it was taken as gospel that Romney was going to not just win, but win in a *landslide*.

You starting to get it yet? They had hardcore fucking proof, HARD NUMBERS, from multiple non-partisan sources, in front of them screaming that their stupid little Narrative Of The Day was wrong, and they were all willing to collectively ignore this.

And so here we are.

(Reuters) - The Obama administration says a U.S. default would be "catastrophic." Economists say it could plunge the country into recession and prompt a global financial meltdown.

To many Republicans, however, the prospect of the world's lone superpower juggling its bills doesn't seem so bad.

Yeah, no way this can go totally get way worse.

[ClaviSound]

See, I think some of ya'll are under the impression that "both sides are to blame", as opposed to like.....ya know......the ugly truth............about American Conservatism being in a ideological death spiral that is hermetically sealed in a Fox News/Drudge Report information bubble

Heheh, my opinion on the military probably revealed my political leanings anyway, but I'm not disagreeing with you. I have reasons to criticize Democrats, but it simply pales in comparison to the nearly eternal headshaking I do when you talk about the Republicans in power at the moment.

Fact of the matter is, you have a lot of people who are scared right now. Scared of the future, scared of what threats there might be to the country, and most importantly, "Does this affect me in any way, so I know whether or not to give a damn?" It's very easy to take advantage of this fact; hell, if it weren't for their radical political opinions, Tea Party members would probably be in the asylum at this point. Only reason why they were elected was because they weren't "the other guy," and they would "stop the Arab from taking over this country with socialism." (Because as we all know, a government that can't function is still a step up from being socialist.)

Reason why I didn't condemn Republicans in Congress immediately is because this is a thread about government shutdown, not politics, and so I picked the choice least likely to cause an argument along political lines.

But I think it says something when suddenly people care about stuff they didn't at all before Obama became President, and on top of that commit hypocrisy doing so ("Keep big government out of my Medicare!"). It's not so much disagreement of policy so much as it is disagreement of a black Democrat in office.

But, even if you ignore that, the House Speaker is holding our government hostage, has been doing so for nine days now, and is willing to sacrifice the country if it means he wins an argument. "Reasonable" doesn't seem to be in his vocabulary. And now he's throwing a hissy fit because the Democrats have gotten sick of kowtowing to the Tea Party's incessant whining and complaining.

But, I do have one criticism of Democrats in Congress and in general: They're still playing political games about it. This isn't about winning a few seats, this is about dealing with people who will eventually destroy our country. Tea Party members have committed and stated "47%'s" across the board, but no one's called them out on it to any effect.

Best way to get something done? Mobilize voters. But, it seems like everyone wants to pull their punches. Day one, Obama should have been out there giving public speeches left and right, outlining exactly why the government shutdown was wrong, and why the people who think it's the best course of action are not focused on the well-being of the country.

[Applejinx]

What MCMIAG said.

The unfortunate thing about politics or government is that it's a bunch of tedious boring work even to understand what's going on, much less do anything useful.

It would be awkward to have a big political fight among guys who have done the tedious work of understanding shit, but when some of the guys (i.e. tea partiers) are just yelling and jumping to conclusions and making shit up (mcmiag is not exaggerating about some of these guys arguing that the Civil War wasn't about slavery) it becomes really difficult to deal with.

But then I'm another leftwinger political nerd

That doesn't mean my opinion is less valid than some guy just making shit up, by the way. It means that I know that some folks will automatically DECIDE my opinion is exactly as valid as some random tea party type, because hey: two people! Therefore, they should both be heard from, right?

Read up on some of this stuff if you can, mcmiag blog-dropped the name of Balloon Juice. That's a good one, lively and both sincere and cynical

I would almost recommend 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein for the 'we probably need lots of military' guys, though y'all might not be ready for that jelly...

[JSynth]

It's frustrating but ragequitting on a whole country i dont think is not the answer. I mean what other country is going to just take you in as a citizen and is going to be better? Biggest problem is when you have 50 different states with different political and social ideologies. Half the country doesn't share your views and in my case nearly 49% of my state doesn't either. We're all constantly upset at each other because we have little to agree on in how to get anything done. No compromises for the greater good at all.

My issue has less to do people not having the same opinion. That, if anything, should be encouraged. My problem isn't even the government shutdown (though that really doesn't help anything.)

My issue really comes down to:
- The national debt
- The number of wars that we are in
- The educational system (no child left behind specifically)
- Unconstitutional acts that the government has passed (Like the patriot act)
- Corporate power

And a good list of other things as well. Like I said, the more you look into this kind of thing, the worse it gets.

But you do have a point, other countries wont be too much better. But still, I would like my children to be able to get a better education than I did.

You should vote for Vermin Supreme instead of not voting. That way you both support ponies for everybody, and you show how much of a joke you think the government is. If I where American I probably would.

I never said that I wasn't going to vote, I just said that wasn't going to vote for them.
Still, I nearly fell of my chair laughing that that.

[ClaviSound]

Looks like there's a possible breakthrough in the debt ceiling issue. It seems that an agreement is surfacing to raise the debt ceiling up to November 22nd, which is unorthodox because normally it's a dollar amount. All the same, news of something is better than nothing.

One thing to keep in mind though: The Republicans still want negotiations before ending the shutdown. Raising the debt ceiling isn't going to get us out of the woods.

"What we want to do is offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling.... good-faith effort on our part to move halfway to what he’s demanded in order to have these conversations begin."

"The Speaker made clear that House Republicans are not agreeing to Obama’s demand that they pass legislation to fund the government with no partisan strings attached..."

The shutdown must end and the debt ceiling must be raised ahead of negotiations with the Republicans, who keep changing their demands.

The vote on this proposal will most likely happen Friday, or later today.

[ClaviSound]

Oh yeah, by the way, in case people who aren't following the shutdown (either because of disinterest or not being in the U.S.), Government's open again, with the debt ceiling raised and Tea Party Republicans ultimately gaining little. Notable points include furloughed employees being reimbursed for the time they missed during the shutdown, Boehner still being adamant about resisting the Affordable Care Act, and the sequester cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act weren't changed (which basically reduces spending authority by a fixed amount each year to combat deficit, i.e. federal-department-wide budget cuts).

But you know what, shutdown's over, Democrats pretty much carry the day, all that jazz. All in all, the shutdown didn't touch healthcare much at all, which seemed to the the point of the shutdown in the first place. Although what with how the shutdown was handled, election prospects and popular opinions have definitely seen a shift. Boehner ain't exactly ridin' a landslide of support no more.

[Nine Volt]

Although what with how the shutdown was handled, election prospects and popular opinions have definitely seen a shift.

The comment section is a goddamn war zone.

Should be expected though, from a political article.

[caprix snare]

wow that ended way less bloody than expected :) good job america you solved some serious issues in only like a week.

[itroitnyah]

It was closer to a month than a week, I think.

[ClaviSound]

wow that ended way less bloody than expected :) good job america you solved some serious issues in only like a week.

One thing to make very clear is that 1) this never should have been "serious" in the first place;

and 2) the conclusion didn't come from Boehner and Obama, it came from other key players in Congress. the House Speaker and President still maintain the terrible track record they have when it comes to resolving conflicts.

It was closer to a month than a week, I think.

From October 1st to October 17th, barely pushing over half a month.

[JSynth]

Although what with how the shutdown was handled, election prospects and popular opinions have definitely seen a shift.

The comment section is a goddamn war zone.

Should be expected though, from a political article.

That's politics for you.

[Sugarholik]

Government is up again

Ah. Belgium gets to keep his first place :DDD

[caprix snare]

the republicans are about to slaughter the tea parties.

[ganondox]

the republicans are about to slaughter the tea parties.

Yay.

[ph00tbag]

The moral of the story: gerrymandering will eventually bite you in the ass, as you will have empowered the extremists of your own party to shout louder than you can.

I don't get why the government has this idiotic policy instead of, I don't know, just sticking with the previous budget incase of indecision. Makes a lot more sense than going into zero budget.

That could easily be disastrous. A budget is basically an attempt to line up expected income and expected expenses. There are expenses that are expected in FY2014 that weren't there in FY2013. Failing to account for those means they don't get their money. Reusing last years budget is about as poorly thought out as not having a budget at all.

[ganondox]

The moral of the story: gerrymandering will eventually bite you in the ass, as you will have empowered the extremists of your own party to shout louder than you can.

I don't get why the government has this idiotic policy instead of, I don't know, just sticking with the previous budget incase of indecision. Makes a lot more sense than going into zero budget.

That could easily be disastrous. A budget is basically an attempt to line up expected income and expected expenses. There are expenses that are expected in FY2014 that weren't there in FY2013. Failing to account for those means they don't get their money. Reusing last years budget is about as poorly thought out as not having a budget at all.

That's true for a microeconomic budget, but it operates differently for macroeconomic budgets like the government as they can pretty much going infinitely in debt as they sort of control the economy and crap. That was the part of macro I understood the least, but essentially the debt isn't really nearly as much of a problem as it's made out to be. Usually shutting the government down is much, much more disastrous than just doing something.

[Navron]

Still kind of upset that we decided we'd shut down our government before we even thought about cutting a good portion of our military.

They cut the military well before this shut down. The sequester that passed earlier this year has already cut funding and flight hours for multiple carrier air wings, and put many squadrons at the bare minimum flight hour allotments to simply have the proficiency to fly safely.

This shut down happened while I've been deployed. While deployed, we were flying SAR assistance without getting our SAR pay, and flying in a designated hazardous area without getting hazardous duty pay. On top of that, I'm trying to schedule a move for December when I transfer duty stations all the way across the country.

I still have yet to hear a response from the moving company because they're backed up, meaning I might have to move from Virginia to California completely out of pocket, and I also get to find out a month later than I'm supposed to whether or not I advanced in rank.

So yeah, we were effectively still doing our jobs without getting paid, I might have to shell out thousands of dollars to move cross-country on my own dime, and I don't even know if I advanced yet, so for all ya'll talking about cutting the military, please note it's already been cut, and thousands are getting screwed over because of it, including yours truly.