is anyone surprised, its meant to prevent the epstein files from being released by thenewly elected house member.
I miss the Car Talk days of NPR, just on my commute to night class today I get to hear them make the statement “Democrats shut down the government.”
God this shit is disheartening.
click and clack the tap it brothers.
and whatever you do… don’t drive like my brother!
Americans are crazy
Americans need to be introduced to the concept of guillotine
and maybe a revolution
Not all of us, but enough so that this generalization is entirely fair.
Dem’s should amend their demands for congressional reversal of every Trump funding fascism attack. So far that includes $18B in NYC infrastructure funding and $8B in blue state renewable energy funding.
Dems/DNC should tell states to collect federal taxes and fund their states with them, instead of remitting them to US treasury. Or governors should invoke that right in support of ending GOP shutdown.
As much as this feels like a great idea - companies usually collect and allocate taxes on behalf of companies individuals (payroll, income, sales etc.). I don’t think any major company is going to be brave enough to do openly defy the Federal Government and divert taxes away to state coffers instead.
The IRS is reliant on state level agencies cut off communication with the IRS and cut utilities to IRS offices and server buildings. Then strong arm corporations through similar methods, oh Amazon doesn’t want to give the states the federal taxes? Congrats permanent road construction in front of all facilities and no electricity.
The Republicans shut down the government to prevent the release of the Epstein files.
I fucking hate bearing witness of a slow collapse of a world power from where I’m sitting at… It’s been almost ten months since that fucking day.
This shutdown is just one of the steps towards what amounts to a mafia dictatorship by committee.
Slow collapse? 10 months feels extremely fast to manage taking an economy that was at least somewhat stable and possibly on the rise to straight-up dumpster fire along with everything else thats just crazy thrown in for good fun. Felt really fast to lose it all…
The reason that it’s so fast is that the economy never really recovered from Reagan, he took a jackhammer to the base level foundation and empowered the corporations. Fact of the matter is the building was already leaning due to being too top heavy, Trump just kicked out the reinforcement struts that were slowing the inevitable collapse.
Oh the smoke’s been there for a while, the fire has been burning, and now that the flaming debris is falling to the ground you notice, that’s all.
Just a form letter at this point.
Republicans do ________. Republicans blame everyone else for the negative results.I like you made the important parts red. or is that just programming syntax?
Used the “code” parameter which highlighted the words automatically.
Say it with me kids…. “sleepy joe!” Or something. I dunnno. Trump is a pedo btw.
Ok what the hell is going on? I know the American government has “shutdown” before but don’t Trump’s party have a majority in both houses of congress? What’s in the way of them doing…whatever it is they want to do?
This is another method to destroy the government. They are planning to use the shutdown for mass layoffs. Here’s a quick video explaining the topic.
I’m not in a situation where I can watch videos right now, but I’ve heard this argument and I don’t buy it. Are you telling me that this regime, which has been flouting laws and regulations and norms to do mass layoffs already, and shrugging at every judicial slap on the wrist that has come as a result, even to the point of bringing in a private citizen to go around with a chainsaw and destroy workforces and agencies he doesn’t understand— you’re telling me that this regime, the most lawless in recent American history, the one that cares far more about appearances and feelings than facts and is so disorganized as to have trouble organizing a church potluck, this one— they suddenly have their act together enough and value the rule of law enough to engineer an unbelievably unpopular government shutdown, in order to justify an unbelievably unpopular layoffs of government workers, when they could clearly just do it anyway with no repercussions?
Yeah, I don’t buy it. I don’t see any 4D chess here, I just see tic-tac-toe being played in elephant manure.
The courts ordered many of those people fired by DOGE cuts to be returned to their jobs.
This is a way to starve those people out in a way that the courts can’t intervene.
The court order was good, but as far as I can tell (1) most of the people who were fired have already moved on to other jobs (or understandably don’t want it back under this admin); and (2) I haven’t seen much evidence of the administration actually complying with this court order.
You know, the only coherent response to this I can come up with is just incredulity. I’m not trying to be mean about this, but this comment reeks of someone not paying attention or just very naive. Given how Project 2025 laid out plans for dismantling the federal government and we’ve seen them take coordinated and planned out steps to implement this already, why is this so unbelievable to you?
they suddenly have their act together enough and value the rule of law enough to engineer an unbelievably unpopular government shutdown, in order to justify an unbelievably unpopular layoffs of government workers, when they could clearly just do it anyway with no repercussions?
Why do you think they wouldn’t try to do both illegal and quasi-legal methods? What makes you think they wouldn’t engineer a situation that lets them use a different legal strategy to try to make it work when they’ve tried, and arguably failed, to reduce the workforce through other methods?
I mean, pretend that the trump administration is as dumb as trump and not backed by fuckers like the heritage foundation (that has been implementing a plan to effectively destroy America as we know it for decades) at your own peril. They will try any and every way they can to enact their end goals, don’t fall for the doddering old fool who shoots their plans in the foot and not see the people desperately trying to not footgun themselves with the fucking moron as the face of the movement.
Given how Project 2025 laid out plans for dismantling the federal government and we’ve seen them take coordinated and planned out steps to implement this already, why is this so unbelievable to you?
Specifically because I’ve been paying attention, and noticed that they do not care one single iota about doing anything lawfully. They haven’t followed the law so far to do all of their layoffs, why would they start now?
Why do you think they wouldn’t try to do both illegal and quasi-legal methods?
Because the illegal methods work, there are no consequences, they’re faster, and they have the added bonus of “triggering the libs.” Plus, layoffs are unpopular, so the legislative branch doesn’t want its stink on them.
pretend that the trump administration is as dumb as trump and not backed by fuckers like the heritage foundation […] at your own peril.
To be clear: the Trump administration is dumb. But not because of Trump.
Remember, MAGA has inherited a very fragile coalition of two groups from the GOP: the Heritage Foundation crowd (corporate technocrat oligarchs, etc) and the “Moral” Majority crowd. It’s hard to tell the difference because they’ve locked in the unified messaging and pressured all of their members to say and vote for all of the same stuff, but they’re still just two angry cats in the same bag; they want vastly different things, they just both think that they can betray the other to get it. This administration is dumb because it’s an unholy alliance of two diametrically-opposed groups, and the guy currently on top isn’t smart enough to keep them in line.
The technocrats control the Executive and SCOTUS, but the “Moral” Majority crowd control the Legislature, albeit tenuously. And they need two things: to get reelected (I know, “there won’t be another election,” I know, but just go with me here) and to have enough governmental levers to pull in order to advance their White “Christian” Nationalist policies. Cutting more of the governmental apparatus reduces their ability to do both.
So I don’t think Johnson wants to cut much more of the government. He’s probably getting at least some pressure from Trump to not seat Grijalva for as long as possible, and he knows he’s never going to get the votes to break the logjam on the budget, so he probably figures he can just rip off the band-aid now, get started on shifting the blame to the Democrats, and avoid the embarrassment of losing multiple votes in a row before the shutdown inevitably happens anyway.
Constant state of fear and confusion is pretty much the normal now.
Took me too long to understand why my birthday was always so full of strife.
Turns out, it’s the end of the fiscal year.
Happy birthday! I got you a government shutdown.
The party that practically trademarked government shutdowns now want you to believe they aren’t responsible and would never want such a thing.
Even though we ordered our representatives not to negotiate and we ordered them not to show up when the Democrats all did. We really wanted to avoid this. Yeah right.
I kinda would have liked to see what would have happened if the Democrats said yes to all their demands.
probably part of the plan to let programs and agencies they couldn’t legislate away die by attrition.
why didn’t they just try changing senate rules lmao, or just ignore the parliamentarian? are the fascists this incompetent?
Don’t take this as incompetent, they wanted the government to shutdown. They have something going on right now where if the government shut down, they were effectively ending a bunch of administrative positions in a reduction of force.
This shutdown is just one more way they are trying to destroy this country through destroying the mechanisms that run the government.
Welp, blue states can form a new country, republicans will just have to reap what they sow.
If conservatives alone got what they deserved (misery) it wouldn’t be so bad. But they insist on taking everyone else down with them, too.
Of course they’re blaming the Democrats. And MAGA asks, “Well, what were the Democrats wearing?” to validate the victimization.
And I’m sure they’ll blame the Democrats for all the government employees they’re going to fire.
WE DID IT. WE STOPPED THE GOVERNMENT. IT’S A GREAT, GREAT SHUTDOWN. PLAY GOLF. GOOD FOR AMERICA.
So… ICE isn’t getting paid right now?
I’m sure they are, it’s those guys who do unimportant work, like making sure the forests aren’t going up in flames and consuming the nation, or helping out people who are about to die from starvation, exposure etc, those are the useless ones who don’t get paid.
It’s a fucked up system.
I would say something snarky like “just wait til they make more money putting out literal fires than they do deporting brown people”, but then I realize they haven’t gotten any money from deporting people, and, you know, rich assholes would love to buy up cheap land when everything is burnt to the chimneys.
uh yeh, they do make more money putting out fires. because a lot of it is done with prison labor.
inmates who, after comprehensive training on fire suppression, can’t get a job after being released because they have a criminal record
The way it works is some people work regardless, like the military or ATC for example. Idk if ICE falls into a similar category but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Anyone still working won’t get paid right now but when the politicians are done with their games and the government is reactivated they’ll get back pay…eventually.
with interest?
because that’s what all your backed due payments are going to have.
