*****Official Government Shutdown Gamethread*****

[boutons_deux]

30 Ways the Shutdown Is Already Screwing People


Kids with cancer: 30 children who were supposed to be admitted for cancer treatment at the National Ins ute of Health's clinical center were put on hold, along with 170 adults.

Head Start kids: When a new grant didn't come in, Bridgeport, Connecticut, closed 13 Head Start facilities serving 1,000 kids. Calhoun County, Alabama, shut down its Head Start program, which serves 800 kids. Some were relocated to a local church.

Pregnant women: Several states had promised to pick up the tab if the US Department of Agriculture stopped funding the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)—but not Arkansas, where 85,000 meals will no longer be provided to low income women and their children.

Babies: 2,000 newborn babies won't receive baby formula in Arkansas, due to those WIC cuts.

People who help pregnant women and babies: The 16 people who administer the WIC program in Utah will be furloughed—in order to free up money to continue funding the program.

Whales: The Marine Mammal Commission, which monitors whale populations, is on hiatus.

63-year-old Jo Elliott-Blakeslee: The shutdown of Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho has complicated the search for a woman who went missing in the park.

Military suicide prevention: Palm Beach, Florida, television station WPTV profiled Rosemarie Spencer, a contractor with the US Army Suicide Prevention Program who was furloughed on Tuesday.

Virginia: 2,000 workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard were sent home on Tuesday, and commissaries in northeast and southeast Virginia, which provide inexpensive groceries to members of the military, closed on Wednesday.

Firefighters: The Bureau of Land Management’s Little Snake Field Office in Colorado says its ability to respond to a fire is "severely limited."

Firefighter widows: Heidi Adams, whose husband, Token, was killed investigating a fire in New Mexico last month, won't receive survivor benefits because there's no one at the National Forest Service to finalize the paperwork.

Fishermen: National Park Service blocked all access to Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina.

Domestic-violence centers: Facilities in Vermont and Montana stopped receiving reimbursement payments.

People who eat food: Eight thousand employees at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention were furloughed, including those tasked with monitoring the outbreak of foodborne illnesses.

People who cook food: The USDA's food safety hotline has stopped fielding calls from people with questions about food storage and safe preparation.

Animal-semen exporters: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, "No one in Louisiana will be able export livestock, embryos, fertilized animal eggs or animal semen." Animal semen? Yup, the USDA monitors that too.

College students: Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and federal work study programs are officially on ice, as of Tuesday.

Bookworms: Arizona's Marine Corps Air Station Yuma closed on-base facilities including a library, day care center, youth activity center, and pool.

Park rangers: 686 of Alaska's 750 National Park Service employees are staying home.

First responders: The Department of Homeland Security's Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama, which trains first responders for states and municipalities, is closed.

Golfers: The Moffet Field Golf Course near Mountain View, California, is closed due to furloughs at the NASA facility where the 18-hole course is located.

Poor Louisianans: The state Commodities Supplemental Food Program, which serves 64,000 people each month, doesn't have the funds to operate.

People with mysterious illnesses: The Undiagnosed Diseases Program at the National Ins utes of Health has stopped accepting new patients, with the exception of children with life-threatening illnesses.

Meningitis researchers: A University of Hawaii research facility shut down.

Newt Gingrich: The former speaker of the House decried the closure of a "tour bus turnaround" at Mt. Vernon:

Antique-car lovers: The Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi, canceled its "Cruisin the Coast" car festival.

Native Americans: The Department of Health and Human Services cut off funding to the Urban Indian Health Programs, which offer dental treatment, primary care access, and substance abuse programs.

Football players: All athletic activities at service academies have been postponed, including Saturday's Navy-Air Force football game.

Goats: 50 Nubian goats, tasked with eating poison ivy at a New Jersey historical site, were furloughed.

Klansmen: A planned march in Gettysburg by the Confederate Knights of the KKK was canceled because the national battlefield park is closed.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...g-people-goats

KKK! goats! Neutered Gingrich! Cajuns! Golfers! Semen! What is the world coming to?

[boutons_deux]

The Tea Party’s Last Stand


If the nation is lucky, this October will mark the beginning of the end of the Tea Party.

It is suffering from extreme miscalculation and a foolish misreading of its opponents’ intentions. This, in turn, has created a moment of enlightenment, an opening to see things that were once missed.

Many Republicans, of course, saw the disaster coming in advance of the shutdown. But they were terrified to take on a movement that is fortified by money, energy and the backing of a bloviating brigade of talk-show hosts. The assumption was that the Tea Party had become invincible inside the GOP.

People who knew better followed Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) down a path of confrontation over Obamacare. Yet even before the shutdown began, Republicans stopped talking about an outright repeal of Obamacare, as House Speaker John Boehner’s ever-changing demands demonstrated.

The extent of the rout was then underscored in the hot microphone incident last week when Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was caught plotting strategy with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Paul’s words, spoken after he had finished a television interview, said more than he realized.

“I just did CNN. I just go over and over again: ‘We’re willing to compromise, we’re willing to negotiate,’” Paul said, adding this about the Democrats: “I don’t think they’ve poll tested, ‘We won’t negotiate.’”

Tellingly, Paul described the new GOP line this way: “We wanted to defund it, we fought for that, but now we’re willing to compromise on this.”

http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-tea-partys-last-stand/

Give 'em , Barry. Kick them in balls, Never Give An Inch.

I hear Obama was really pissed at himself for the 2011 cave in on the debt limit, implementing sequestration. So that really fortifies his will to the Repugs assholes this time. and a The American People are behind him. Repugs still win on the CR at near-Paul-ian austerity. Fix that later.

[pgardn]

The democrats have the republicans in a testicle vice on this.

“This isn’t some damn game. All we want is to sit down and have a discussion,” Boehner angrily told reporters Friday.

“It’s a new dynamic, and we don’t know how far it’s going to go,” said Vin Weber, a former GOP congressman who is close to the House leadership. “All the energy in the Republican Party the last few years has come from the tea party. The notion that there might be some energy from the radical center, the people whose positions in the conservative mainstream are more center-right but who are just furious about the dysfunctionality of government — that’s different.”


The above concerns the money pouring in to defeat tea party republicans in Michigan.


And boutons is pleased with the chaos. Anything that helps democrats, even at the expense of a government that works. And the poor guy sees no parallels with the tea party. An ideologue who pretends he is for the people.


I am them. Say it Boutons.

[boutons_deux]

"The democrats have the republicans in a testicle vice on this."


so true, so wonderful. Dems out crazying the asshole crazy extremist Repugs, for one.

"defeat tea party republicans in Michigan"

aka, a fully owned subsidieary of anti-99% Kock Bros

"And boutons is pleased with the chaos"

if the chaos leads to kicking the Repugs in the head, balls, teeth, etc, I'm pleased. Repugs deserve and they MUST be stopped.

"Anything that helps democrats, even at the expense of a government that works"
You Lie

Anything that hurts the Repugs

The Repugs fabricated this crisis, it's on the Repugs to stop it.

[Wild Cobra]

WC needs a huge dose, hourly, of reality.

I'm sorry if your reality is so ty. However, you will always remain in a hole unless to take proactive measurements to get out of it, instead of relying on others.

[boutons_deux]

STOP MINING PUBLIC LANDS WHILE VISITORS ARE LOCKED OUT

http://www.credomobilize.com/pe io...are-locked-out

[boutons_deux]

http://www.dccc.org/page/-/GOPShutDownSite/main.html

[boutons_deux]

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/d06...the-government

[boutons_deux]

Fox News owns this shutdown




Fox News and the rest of the Republican-aligned press is making Republicans lazy. And that’s a problem.

The outcome of the shutdown fight won’t be determined by spin and cheap public relations tricks. The structure of the situation – which strongly favors the Democratic demand for a clean continuing resolution (CR) at the sequestration levels that Republicans wanted – will do that. That’s why polling indicates that more people are blaming Republicans for the problem.

But what we’ve seen in the first few days of the shutdown are a series of Republican attempts to spin things their way, everything from a 24-hour talking point last Sunday that the Senate wasn’t doing its work, to the battle of the World War II Memorial, to the series of mini-bills to open small, visible bits of the government that the House considered late in the week. With detours to “Harry Reid is in favor of cancer” and “Barack Obama says he wants the shutdown because he’s winning.”

The talking points were whirling around so fast that by midweek a handful of House Republicans wound up entirely unable to articulate what the fight was about, and giving ugly-sounding quotes. Indeed, some of them seemed to be arguing that the government had to be shut down over the principle that if the government was shut down, then select departments should remain open. Huh?

What all these talking points had in common, however, is that they were eagerly snarfed up by the folks at Fox News and other parts of the Republican-aligned press. The truth is that Republicans can pretty much say whatever they want, no matter what the bizarre logic and no matter what connection it has to what they were saying five minutes ago, and Fox News will totally accept it and blast it for hours or days.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/05/fox_...this_shutdown/

[boutons_deux]

The More People Obamacare Helps, The Crazier The GOP Must Become


This is exactly what Republicans were afraid of: people crying over Obamacare.

Bloomberg‘s Karen Weise reports:

When the [Affordable Care Act] exchange opened—17 minutes later than the 8 a.m. scheduled start time—the website and call centers were flooded with inquiries. Walsh said that in the first few hours “it was just raw emotion calling in.” People eager for insurance, at times in tears, wanted to get coverage that they didn’t have before. “They were calling up saying, ‘Can I get my coverage today so I can see my doctor this afternoon?’” he says. “That is in one sense moving but also frustrating because, sure, you can sign up—but the coverage can’t be effective until Jan. 1.”

These tears were falling, of course, because Obamacare cannot get here fast enough for millions of people.

The polls on the president’s signature legislative achievement have always been easy to misread and exploit. Many Americans want the law to go further. Many Americans prefer the Affordable Care Act to Obamacare. For the people who need the law the most, there was always frustration that it wouldn’t be implemented faster. And for many if not most Americans, there were always the lingering questions — fueled by a ridiculous propaganda campaign from the right — about what the law will actually do.

For nearly all the 85 percent of Americans who have health insurance, reform will likely have no noticeable effect on their lives whatsoever, except to make their insurance stronger and their insurers more accountable. But for the 15 percent of the country that is uninsured, it will mean tears… often of joy.

Too many working poor people in red states who should be able to get fully subsidized insurance from Medicaid expansion won’t get any help in the form of subsidies at all, thanks to their state’s Republicans. For them, there will be real sobbing and real misery.

But for the rest of the uninsured — the millions who have been putting off care, the millions who have been living in fear that getting sick will cost them everything, the million with pre-existing conditions craving the freedom to pursue a career without being tied to an employer — there will be happy tears.

That’s why the GOP base hates this law.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-more...p-must-become/

and that's why the broad-based, VRWC has been working to kill ACA. A successful means a huge Dem electoral win in 2014 and 2016.

VRWC/Repugs will also kill immigration reform, handing almost all the Latino vote to the Dems.

[SA210]

[SA210]

[boutons_deux]

right-wingers blaming Obama for the shutdown the Repugs caused.

We finally, officially have 3 party system

Dems

Repugs

tea bagger crazies sitting in Repug seats

[AntiChrist]

lol,

http://twitchy.com/2013/10/05/its-qu...rson-memorial/

[Clipper Nation]

Fox News owns this shutdown




Fox News and the rest of the Republican-aligned press is making Republicans lazy. And that’s a problem.

The outcome of the shutdown fight won’t be determined by spin and cheap public relations tricks. The structure of the situation – which strongly favors the Democratic demand for a clean continuing resolution (CR) at the sequestration levels that Republicans wanted – will do that. That’s why polling indicates that more people are blaming Republicans for the problem.

But what we’ve seen in the first few days of the shutdown are a series of Republican attempts to spin things their way, everything from a 24-hour talking point last Sunday that the Senate wasn’t doing its work, to the battle of the World War II Memorial, to the series of mini-bills to open small, visible bits of the government that the House considered late in the week. With detours to “Harry Reid is in favor of cancer” and “Barack Obama says he wants the shutdown because he’s winning.”

The talking points were whirling around so fast that by midweek a handful of House Republicans wound up entirely unable to articulate what the fight was about, and giving ugly-sounding quotes. Indeed, some of them seemed to be arguing that the government had to be shut down over the principle that if the government was shut down, then select departments should remain open. Huh?

What all these talking points had in common, however, is that they were eagerly snarfed up by the folks at Fox News and other parts of the Republican-aligned press. The truth is that Republicans can pretty much say whatever they want, no matter what the bizarre logic and no matter what connection it has to what they were saying five minutes ago, and Fox News will totally accept it and blast it for hours or days.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/05/fox_...this_shutdown/

Wow, you mean to tell me that a cable news network has a distinct partisan bias? You don't say!

[angrydude]

It's easy to be snarky.

[boutons_deux]

10 Things Republicans Hate and Would Likely Go After Next If Dems Give In

Things Republicans hate:

• #1 of all time: Social Security.
• #2 of all time: Medicare.
• Public schools.
• Environmental Protection.
• The Food and Drug Administration.
• The minimum wage.
• The eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek.
• Unions and the National Labor Relations Board – the right of workers to organize.
• The 47% of Americans who they say are “takers” and “moochers.”
• Anything other than fossil fuels to provide energy.

http://www.alternet.org/print/10-thi...t-if-dems-give

[boutons_deux]

[boutons_deux]

Republicans are breaking.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the bedrock of traditional Republicanism, now says that it will get involved in Republican primaries by providing financial support to in bent Republicans who vote to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. In other words, if some Republicans act responsibly and then have to face tea party challengers accusing them of being RINOs, the Chamber will have the back of those reasonable Republicans. It's a civil war within the GOP, folks.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/1...g?detail=email

[Trainwreck2100]

what's hilarious is that the republicans became unintentional victims of their own gerrymandering

[Jacob1983]

Libs must be ing right now.

[spurraider21]

[morpheus meme] what if i told you, that both parties sucked and were full of [/morpheus meme]

as the parties have polarized, it is FAR less likely than an individual is actually represented by one or the other. by making it so damn black and white, the vast majority of the people, who are somewhere in the grey area, aren't accurately represented. so they just latch on to the party that is closest (even though its not that close) and then conform to that party's platform, even though those weren't their individual beliefs. thats why everybody that calls themselves a democrat sounds exactly the same on every issue, and same with republicans.

[The Reckoning]

so what happens when the feds remained shutdown, the states are meant to pick up the slack, and everything is ran more efficiently?


if one of the politicians isnt such a huge pussy, he/she could significantly advance their career by playing henry clay

[Trainwreck2100]

so what happens when the feds remained shutdown, the states are meant to pick up the slack, and everything is ran more efficiently?


if one of the politicians isnt such a huge pussy, he/she could significantly advance their career by playing henry clay

the south's dependency on the government teet won't allow that to happen

[boutons_deux]

so what happens when the feds remained shutdown, the states are meant to pick up the slack, and everything is ran more efficiently?

we see now many $100Bs flow to the states from DC, and the states are pretty ed when DC stops the flow, even "17%" of the flow. They can't even find the funds to keep their business of STATE parks running. States righters and the neo-secessionists, neo-Confederates don't know that or don't want their local bubbas to know. And red states wouldn't raise state/city taxes to cover the deficit left by absenece of fed funds.

eg, military is worth about 1/3 of SA's business, $25B. And $25B is disease (medical), and $25B for manufacturing. Turn that military spigot off, close all the bases, fire all the civil service, and see how well, and if, SA can fill that $25B hole. That $25B is what keeps SA's economy fairly stable compared to areas that got raped by the Banksters Great Bubble Depression.