Originally Posted by djplong

JimJoe - there was a law passed in 1870 (according to an article I read yesterday) that allows for the whole 'essential personnel' situation.

How do you know if you're essential? You look it up on a website. I work for the Air Force and I can see it right in my personnel profle online. Where does the money come from for those who ARE essential? It's already been collected. From what I heard, there's over $50B in various accounts. The soldiers overseas WILL get paid. The question becomes who else will and when.

So now we have the 'extension' that has SIXTY FIVE policy riders on it tacked on by the Republicans including trying to defund Planned Parenthood - I guess poor women can just go without cancer screening and forbidding D.C. from using LOCALLY GENERATED taxes to pay for abortion services for poor women. Yeah - de-funding people who CANNOT VOTE for anyone in Congress (it's been my position that the residents of D.C. should be allowed to vote in national elections as if they were in Maryland as opposed to full statehood but that's another debate)

So let's see.. The GOP, whom I used to vote for, has gone to the mat for banking executives and billionaires while trying to strip chump-change funding for fuel assistance to the elderly and women's health services for the poor.

Today, Ronald Reagan would be considered a left wing radical.

I'm disgusted by all this. The hypocritical governor in Ohio, the fascist governor in Florida (random drug testing for state workers????)

If I was slightly disenchanted with the GOP before, they turn my stomach today.

And it's not like the Democrats are paragons of virtue. I've long had many bones to pick with them. Wishy washy weasels, the lot of them, these days.