What zealots do to win

[David Guyatt]

Americans should just kick their politicians very hard in the ass and be done with them. They're a bunch of selfish, small-minded and self-centred greedy wankers looking out for themselves and their chums. Everybody else can go and fuck themselves, is their guiding principle.

In the UK free healthcare has been at the centre of successive British government since the late 1940's. My grandfather was one of those who helped bring it into being. Not having free healthcare is a social tragedy. The poor suffer and die. The extremely rich get ever wealthier through this sort of suffering. It's plain wrong.

Obama urges Republicans to back down with shutdown set to enter second dayPresident says House Republicans 'holding the entire economy hostage' after a day that saw thousands of workers sent home


Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts in Washington
theguardian.com, Tuesday 1 October 2013 23.47 BST



The political deadlock that forced the closure of large portions of the US government on Tuesday, bringing financial uncertainty to hundreds of thousands of federal workers, appeared likely to enter a second day without a resolution.
As national landmarks were barricaded, museums closed, and an estimated 800,000 federal employees were placed on indefinite leave, Barack Obama called on Republicans to back down over their opposition to his healthcare reforms rather than "hold the entire economy hostage".
Striking a defiant tone in the Rose Garden of the White House one of the many government offices operating on a slimmed-down staff Obama declared that the Affordable Care Act was "here to stay". Flanked by citizens who will benefit from the reforms, whose central provisions came into force on Tuesday, Obama said: "They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans."
The Republican leader of the House, John Boehner, focused on the refusal by Obama and senior Democrats to negotiate.
"The president isn't telling the whole story when it comes to the government shutdown. The fact is that Washington Democrats have slammed the door on reopening the government by refusing to engage in bipartisan talks," he said.
Federal agencies affected by the shutdown began the process of closing their doors on Tuesday, hours after Congress failed to pass a budget resolution that would have ensured their continued funding.
Hardline Republicans in the House of Representatives repeatedly refused to back down from their insistence that a deal over the federal budget should be linked to various measures that would unpick the Affordable Care Act, a law that has passed both houses of Congress, survived a presidential election and that has been upheld as constitutional by a conservative supreme court.
Outside the halls of power, the impact of the shutdown was visible across Washington. Shortly after 11am, thousands of federal employees poured out of government buildings after working the maximum-permitted four hours. Many had spent the morning turning on out-of-office alerts on their emails and closing down their offices.
Meanwhile, bemused-looking tourists were unable to access any of Washington's major museum and turned back from the monuments that stretch across the National Mall, large parts of which were barricaded. The lights were off at the Lincoln memorial, where the huge edifice of the beloved 16th president sat in the shadows.
It was a similar story around the US: in New York, the Statue of Liberty was closed to visitors, as were the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks. Campers and hikers were given two days to pack up and leave.
The tax-collection agency, the Internal Revenue Service, suspended audits. Most of the staff at Nasa were furloughed, save for essential staff at Mission Control in Houston. The National Institutes of Health said that it would have to turn down an estimated 200 patients a week, 30 of them children, who applied to enrol in its clinical trials.
The most politically embarrassing moment for Congress came when a group of veterans in effect forced their way into a Washington war memorial closed by the shutdown.
But on Capitol Hill, there were few signs of a resolution, with the Republican-dominated House insisting on using the budget to impede the healthcare law, and Democrats in the Senate refusing to be strong-armed into negotiations.
Both sides blamed each other for the shutdown, although some fissures were appearing on the Republican side, particularly in the Senate. Polls suggested that the public held Republicans most responsible for a shutdown that could drag on for days or weeks.
Ominously, one senior House Republican hinted at a battle that could last weeks and incorporate a looming crisis over the debt ceiling, which could trigger a US default if it is not raised with congressional approval before 17 October.
"We think the debt limit is the forcing mechanism," Paul Ryan told reporters. "That's what we think will bring the two parties together."
In the latest salvo, House Republicans proposed measures that would involve piecemeal funding bills designed to mitigate a few of the more high-profile aspects of the shutdown that are proving most damaging in terms of public relations.
The bills, which would release national parks and veterans services from the shutdown, and could help fund basic services Washington, DC, was scheduled for a vote on Wednesday night. Serving military personnel have already been exempted from the shutdown after a rare agreement between the House and Senate over the weekend.
The White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed a piecemeal approach on government funding as "not serious." He said: "If we want to open the government, they should open the government."
However, even if the House and Senate agree to find short-term solutions to diminish the more prominent impacts of the shutdown, the consequences for the vast apparatus of the federal government would remain.
Although it had been brewing for some weeks, the first US government shutdown since 1996 appeared to take many in Washington by surprise, with several furloughed federal workers saying they never thought Republicans would actually see through their threat.
The impact of the shutdown on Tuesday were as varied as they were surreal. Children's playgrounds around Capitol Hill were closed, restaurants that serve government workers shuttered, and some government websites and Twitter feeds suddenly became inactive. There were crowds of furloughed federal workers outside nearly every government building; some emerged clutching pot plants, unaware how long they would be locked out.
The scene that unfolded outside the Department of Labor headquarters was repeated across the city, in which the government is by far the largest employer. Inside, two Labor Department chiefs David Michaels, an assistant secretary, and his deputy, Jordan Barab had just finished visiting every single office to speak personally with staff. Barab did so despite being on crutches.
"There was no sense when we might come back," said Lisa Long, 45, a safety engineer. "People were demoralised and maybe even a little shocked that it was actually happening."
Employees in the Labor building include some well-paid senior officials, but others on annual salaries as low as $25,000. "These people need paychecks, they gotta eat," said Monique Tribbett, a 45-year-old IT contractor.
"I'm trying to get people to protest. Not just people in the department but, you know, all these other people who are affected. If we all went, right now, to the steps of the Capitol Building and protested, then they might start listening to us. But people don't wanna stand together. I feel like I'm on my own."

[Magda Hassan]

I hear the drones are still flying and the bombs are still dropping and the politicians are still getting paid. So only the surplus parts (to them) of government are being shut down.

Looking at the photo is odd because they still have to pay people to close these places. Wonder how much the shutdown cost?

[Peter Lemkin]

No food stamps for the hungry and poor....
No checks for the widows of soldiers killed in our aggressive wars.
No Federal help for the elderly, ill, handicapped [as paltry as it was].
Many pensioners live in campgrounds in trailers on Federal Parklands. They have 48 hours to leave.
NASA is shut
NOAA [weather research] is shut

Etc.....the list is very long - a thousand things+, literally.

As you pointed out. The wars and military/intelligence continues unabated...as do their salaries and, remember all members of Congress get SOCIALIZED healthcare paid for entirely by the government via taxes....AND their main income from lobbyists and other special interests with under-the-table payments continue. Cynical to the third power! Shame!

[Magda Hassan]

Don't much like or agree with Libertarianism but JR has some good observations here.

The Perils of ParasitismFake government "shutdown" has defense contractors fuming
by Justin Raimondo, October 02, 2013
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The government "shutdown" isn't really a shutdown: the National Security Agency (NSA) is still functioning at full throttle, spying on Americans and violating the Constitution with impunity. And I doubt those aid packages to the Syrian rebels are being delayed by even a minute: after all, a heart-eating cannibal can't live on human blood alone. The panda cam may be down, but the parasite class, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is still sucking at the teat of the federal Leviathan, as this knee-slapper of a Washington Post article an interview with a military contractor makes all too clear:
"Much of the impact of the shutdown is felt by the 800,000 federal workers who are simply furloughed without pay. But the ripple effects spread far and wide, to all the workers employed indirectly on government contracts. One of them, a software engineer with a large D.C.-area defense contractor who asked to remain anonymous, described Monday night what it's been like to work under the threat of your sole client suddenly going dark."
The reporter, one Lydia DePillis, asks: "So what's the atmosphere in the office?" Mr. Anonymous Parasite shrugs his shoulders, adjusts his fat ass so as to fit more comfortably in his cushioned $1000 office chair, and avers:
"Day to day, you don't notice it in the work we do. I go in tomorrow, and I know I have a bunch of bugs to fix."
Yes, that spying-on-Americans software does indeed have a few bugs, but, hey, who would've ever thought that Snowden guy would give up his idyllic life in Hawaii for the cold of the Russian winter? Aside from that, however:
"There is that nagging sensation of, like, should I be looking for a new job soon? What's going on?"
Is the gravy train about to end? Fat chance of that, but still:
"There's a lot of chatter in the office. We have employees that work on the bases themselves. So they'll work on an Air Force or Navy base. They actually don't go to work tomorrow. They all are being stuffed into our office. So we've got to move chairs and tables around, because they can't go to their normal jobs."
Of course there's a lot of chatter: that's because they're all stuffed together, and theydon't do actual work anyway, even on days when the government isn't shut down. So what're they chattering about?
"There's a lot of frustration, particularly aimed at the Republicans in Congress. People will say, Hey this is bullshit, why can't they just figure this out. We go to work, why can't they go to work?'"
Of course they hate the Republicans: after all, wasn't it those obstructionists who blocked the rush to war in Syria? And just when Mr. Anonymous Parasite's company had devised a new software program to separate out "moderate" jihadists from theBad Guys! At this point, Lydia asked if there was "some sort of company-wide meeting" about the shutdown. Parasite sighed and said:
"We have a lot of meetings."
As you might well imagine. But in the end, the shutdown means bupkus to Parasite & Co., because:
"We can basically keep working, because we're basically already paid. So if we have a year-long contract, it's still going, and I'm sure the government won't be shut down before the contract is over. So that money's already been set aside. So in that sense we're okay. But for example, there's a couple of side projects that we're trying to develop into actual contracts, so those get pushed back, or those get prolonged, someone's going to lose money. And it's probably going to be the government, that's just how it works."
The "company" Parasite works for is going to charge the government for time lost just like those government employees who got back pay for time lost the last time the government shut down. Of course "that money's already been set aside" because it's all about priorities. I mean, who's more important: a government contractor with a half-million dollar mortgage and an energetic team of lobbyists, or some WWII vetwho wants to visit the Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC? The question answers itself.
Not that the "shutdown" hasn't created some real problems for Parasite and his fellow lice:
"So for example there's this one project that we're trying to start up. And it's really deep in the development phase. And we have people flying across the country, and we're meeting, talking, and prototyping stuff. If the people who're meeting, we can't contact them tomorrow because they don't work, do we pull our flights? Does the project get canceled? What do we do now? So projects that aren't in contract form, written down and ready to go, those are the ones that get hurt. That's a week or two of our time, and we're going to charge them for it."
Naturally he's going to charge "them" for it, because, after all, who is "them"? It's you and me and all the Little People out here in the cornfields, the people who really dowork and feed his sense of entitlement. Them.
Lydia breaks in again, and asks: "Do you get the sense that higher ups are irritated or tense?" Well, sure they are, says Parasite:
"We definitely get e-mails of, we're not sure what's happening.' And it does make people nervous. I know a couple of employees who're just tired of constant, of the debt ceiling before, and then sequestration, and another debt ceiling, and debt ceiling, and after a while, you get kind of like, what the hell, who wants to work in this environment.' You're constantly under threat."
So why doesn't Parasite and his fellow bloodsuckers just get up and quit? Lydia is more polite, however, and instead asks: "Is that serious enough for you to think about getting another job?" Lying through his teeth, Parasite answers:
"Oh yeah. It's just annoying. You get frustrated. All day today, we've just been watching different news networks, sitting at our computers thinking oh god, what's going to happen today?' I definitely do have other places I can go to. Funny enough, I got an e-mail today for a position right in my hometown. So I was like, ha, it's almost like an out. It's that nervous laugh of like, things aren't great, uggggh, I'm going to go update my resume.'"
Imagine going to "work" and spending your day "watching different news networks." What a grind! So the poor thing is going to spend the day staring blank-eyed atAnderson Cooper, playing video games, and updating his resume: oh, the agony!
We get real insight into the parasitical psychology, however, with this question from Lydia: "Did you figure coming out of college that government contracting would be a reliable career?" Parasite's illuminating answer:
"Absolutely, that's what I thought! Stupid me. I thought that hey, government will always be here.' I mean, I'm not that naive, but you think it's pretty stable. You take the job because you think it's stable. I'm not worried that tomorrow I'll show up and my computer's gone, but it's just frustrating, and it makes me feel like I should go do something else. Especially because we have so many meetings because of the Snowden incident. So that is irritating."
When I was a teenager on the brink of adulthood my father advised me to go work for the Post Office because, after all, the Post Office will always be there! I don't fault him for that: who knew email was coming? But that's the point: we didn't know and couldn't know because "reliable" is a fantasy: in an economic context, it doesn't andshouldn't exist. Not unless we're ants going through the same age-old routine, day after day and century after century. "Stupid me" is right!
"You take the job because you think it's stable." Not because you enjoy it, or because you think it's contributing something to the sum of human knowledge, or even because of the money just because it's "stable." You know, like mud at the bottom of a pond. This is the breed of Americans our militarized statist society is causing toproliferate like dung beetles on a pile of shit, and that can' be good for the gene pool.
The icing on the cake is the Snowden reference, and what that whistleblower'searthshaking revelations apparently mean to this leech a reason for more boring meetings. Oh, it's all so irritating! Mr. Parasite is so visibly nonplussed by this time that Lydia asks him if "it's been especially fraught to be a security contractor these days." His answer:
"Yeah it sucks! On the way home today, I stupidly turned on the radio, and listened to talk radio, which was a horrible mistake. I turned on Sean Hannity, dear God, and to hear people that are like, yay, the government's shutting down, screw them,' I think he's playing Disco Inferno. What the hell? I know people who aren't going to go to work tomorrow. And to hear people that are celebrating? We're just like, what the hell?"
Yes, turning on the radio these days can be a traumatic experience if you're part of the parasite class because the hosts are getting antsy. These people live in a government-created-and-subsidized bubble, and when they hear that popping sound they're incredulous: "What the hell?" indeed!
After listening to this spoiled jerk complain for a good fifteen minutes, Lydia was no doubt a bit irritated herself, and she very politely let him have it: "Do you understand the antipathy toward the huge amounts of money we spend on defense contractors?" You can hear the defensiveness rising in his voice as he answers:
"I understand people who are not happy with bloat. There are definitely things where I'm like hey, what the hell, this is a lot of money to be spending. I'm aware that there is waste. I'm not stupid. You get big enough, waste starts building up. There's a lot of ways you could cut it down. But to just flat out not have people not show up, break development cycles and push projects back, that's really not the way to go about it. You're just making things more expensive, you're not making things cheaper."
Oh, but we can't "break development cycles"! We can't "push projects back," let alone abolish them! Because "that's really not the way to go about it." What does "it" refer to in this context? What he means is that the National Security State is here to stay, it's the given, an immutable fact of reality like the law of gravity and "you're just making things more expensive" because, don'tcha know, he's going to be charging "them" for overtime!
The US military budget is greater than the defense budgets of the top ten spenders combined. That's not "bloat." That's not "waste." That's just flat out crazy. It's crazy because it has nothing to do with defending the country: it's about dominating the world. And, as Edward Snowden has revealed, a good part of that enormous sum is spent spying on Washington's number one enemy the American people. That's why Mr. Parasite and his fellow leeches are wondering "What the hell?" these days because Americans are waking up to the scam, and calling his perks and privileges into question.
No, Mr. Parasite doesn't understand the antipathy toward the huge amounts of money we spend on defense contractors and he wouldn't care even if he did. After all, he is a perfect specimen of 21st century Boobus Americanus, as inured to reality as he is just plain stupid. When the National Security State comes crashing down around his head, like the old USSR did around the heads of Soviet apparatchiks, he'll wind up in the same place they landed in the dustbin of history.

And the gene pool will be better for it.

[David Guyatt]

Looming US default? Political rhetoric or potential fact?

Obama meets bank chiefs as economists warn of 'deep and dark recession'President talks to finance executives including Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein as business leaders urge action on shutdown

Dominic Rushe in New York

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Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, right, with Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Obama met bank executives including Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein on Wednesday as economists, business leaders and European officials warned that the US government shutdown threatens to plunge the economy into a "deep and dark recession".
The meeting with finance chiefs came as the shutdown entered its second day and Obama prepared to meet with Republican leaders in the hope of ending the impasse. Business leaders expressed concern about the shutdown, and about a looming battle over the nation's $16.7tn debt ceiling.
Treasury secretary Jack Lew has warned that the US could default on its debts if the limit is not raised soon.
"There's precedent for a government shutdown; there is no precedent for a default," Blankfein told reporters after the meeting. He warned that the economic recovery was already "shallow".
Earlier on Wednesday, the European central bank president Mario Draghi warned that a protracted US shutdown could impede economic recoveries around the world. "If it were to be protected, it is certainly a risk to the US and the world recovery, so we need to have it present in our minds," he said.
Business Roundtable president John Engler said the shutdown and deficit row were already harming the economy. "America's business leaders are extremely disappointed by the failure of the nation's political leaders to reach an agreement on funding the basic operations of the federal government," he said.
The lobby group represents the CEOs of many of America's largest companies, including American Express, Boeing and Goldman Sachs. Engler said the group had already warned Congress that even a brief shutdown would have serious economic consequences.
"At a time when both parties should be focused on job creation and policies to accelerate growth, their chronic disagreement and gridlock are actually undermining confidence, putting people out of work and hurting the economy," he said.
The impact of the shutdown, now in its second day, is already being felt beyond government employees and frustrated tourists blocked from entering federal parks. The Internal Revenue Service has stopped issuing the W2 proof-of-income forms for some borrowers who need them to secure a loan.
The Federal Housing Administration, which currently endorses about 15% of the entire single-family mortgage market, is operating with limited staff.
Doug Lebda, the chief executive of mortgage company Lendingtree, said in a blogpost that the impact on the housing market would be minimal as long as a resolution was found soon. But it would worsen as a shutdown continued: "The longest government shutdown lasted 21 days. Let's hope US lawmakers don't try to beat the record," he wrote.
US stock markets fell Wednesday after a brief recovery Tuesday as investors bet that the shutdown was likely to continue. Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, said the shutdown was likely to cause bigger losses for investors if it continued into next week.
But he warned that would be nothing compared to the "Pandora's box" that would be opened if no deal on the debt ceiling was done before 17 October deadline. Congress must agree to raise the US's $16.7tn debt ceiling by that date or risk being unable to meet its obligations.
"That would completely undermine confidence among business people," he said. "The collective psyche will weaken and rapidly."
Zandi, a former economic adviser to Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, said the economy would enter a "very deep recession, very quickly, and a very dark recession." Hiring would drop off immediately and the Federal Reserve would have no power to act, he said.
"We are in a very different place to 1995-96 [the time of the last government shutdown]," he said. "At that time, interest rates were higher, unemployment was lower and we were on the cusp of the tech boom."
With interest rates now at historic lows and the Federal Reserve already pumping $85bn a month into the economy through its stimulus programme, Zandi said this time around there was very little the Fed could do to halt a deep slide into recession. The recession would be "so dark that I can't imagine policymakers going down that route," he said.
A stopgap solution was unlikely to reassure business or investors, he said.
Moody's calculates that political uncertainty has cost the US economy 1m jobs since before the recession as businesses have delayed hiring for fear of changes in fiscal policy.
Last year researchers at the San Francisco federal reserve that heightened policy uncertainty had become an increasing drag on job market since the recession began. The researchers concluded that recruitment wanes as uncertainty rises and that by the end of 2012, the unemployment rate would have been close to 6.5% instead of the reported 7.8% if not for the political infighting.
"For the sake of the US economy, Congress and the administration must sit down together and quickly find a solution to fund the federal government and avoid yet another perilous showdown over raising the debt ceiling," said Engler.