View Full Version : Observation about the shutdown/possible default and friends
flowerseverywhere
10-9-13, 9:32pm
We have friends we have known for 30+ years and I knew very little about their political leanings until very recently. This whole mess has made so many people very vocal, expressing very strong opinions. I saw two friends last evening and they were livid. I did have one friend who thought the tea party was the problem with this country solver, but she is in the west on a vacation to see the national parks, a long planned trip. I'll be interested in what she has to say when she comes home. I have heard rants daily about how angry people are at the stupidity they see, almost trying to punish people to make their point. I know I rarely say anything political to friends (probably why I have 30 year friendships) but I am finding it almost impossible not to talk about this mess.
iris lilies
10-10-13, 1:46am
What are you going to say, and why?
I think just muttering a comment about the d*ckheads in D.C. and giving a big ole eye roll is good enough communication. No one needs to know which set of d*ckheads in D.C. you are talking about. You aren't going to change anyone's mind. All of them are d*ckheads most all of the time, anyway.
flowerseverywhere
10-10-13, 6:48am
I know what I am going to say. My point was that people who don't normally utter a word of politics are very verbal
It's very personal for a lot of people. I'm seeing this too.
I'm seeing how thin the veneer of civilization actually is...
ApatheticNoMore
10-11-13, 7:19pm
It's personal if you are furloughed or if you were relying on one of the payments that wasn't sent out (again this does not include Social Security which is by far the biggest - but it does include WIC). I checked if it included Social Security early on, not to take a position on the shutdown nonsense which I view as nonsense but just to determine whether to offer some extra help to my mom (though realistically she doesn't live on SS without a cushion - she has some savings - but she'd certainly complain! :)). Other than that people get verbal on different things.
I'm seeing how thin the veneer of civilization actually is... Dependency breeds contempt for independence, always has, always will.
flowerseverywhere
10-11-13, 9:28pm
Dependency breeds contempt for independence, always has, always will.
I'm sorry my son and his coworkers are abhorrent to you. They are educated professionals who like their jobs and happen to be recognized for the work they do. They would gladly go to work so they could continue to pay their bills.
Also, I know a man who is a veteran and does not know if he will get his check. After several tours he is disabled and he depends on his money, which he deserves after serving his country.
Many sides to the stories, not everyone is an evil dependent low life that is affected.
I'm sorry my son and his coworkers are abhorrent to you.....not everyone is an evil dependent low life that is affected.
Abhorrent? Evil lowlife? Did I say that?
What I am seeing in my local community is the veil removed - nasty frothing "progressives" calling for Congressmen to be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors", tried for treason, beaten, tarred/feathered, deported, and so on. This toxic rhetoric is expanding to include members of our community who aren't sufficiently progressive, or who don't denounce the Congress in sufficiently convincing words.
It's sickening, and I can see how quickly the fall could be on a bad day.
Dependency breeds contempt for independence, always has, always will.
yes, I'm sure that's how Goldman Sachs feels, having been dependent on tax dollars for their bailout .. and expressing nothing but contempt for anyone who tries to get them to admit their actions that led to their "dependency"
After coming out of a major recession where most everyone was affected somehow, it is pretty hard to watch another situation that could be just as threatening and with our supposed leaders unable to come up with an agreeable solution. It is easy to understand why people get pretty emotional, but when it comes down to the individual it is only a tad more controllable than the weather. It's an interesting situation that hopefully will be a wake up call somehow and have a positive outcome. In the meantime I'm avoiding political discussions with certain friends.
Also, I know a man who is a veteran and does not know if he will get his check. After several tours he is disabled and he depends on his money, which he deserves after serving his country.
Many sides to the stories, not everyone is an evil dependent low life that is affected.
The VA is fully funded a year in advance and is up and running. All services and benefits are available. The only thing on hold is processing new disability claims. If your vet friend is in this category he/she will have to wait. But if he /she already has a VA rated service-connected disability he gets a monthly benefit for, he/she will continue to receive that with no delay.
As for my long term friendships - well, we have weathered other, more divergent topics of disagreement by just ignoring the other's rants good naturedly. Hard to do sometimes but usually they - or I - will run out of steam eventually. However it is always shocking sometimes to hear your friends views on things that are so different from your own.
flowerseverywhere
10-13-13, 8:23pm
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/09/20886411-wounded-veterans-benefit-checks-may-stop-nov-1-official-warns-congress?lite
Spartana, articles like this cause panic
Per the veteran affairs compensation checks won't go out Nov 1 if the shutdown lasts much longer
flowerseverywhere
10-13-13, 8:27pm
What I am seeing in my local community is the veil removed - nasty frothing "progressives" calling for Congressmen to be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors", tried for treason, beaten, tarred/feathered, deported, and so on. This toxic rhetoric is expanding to include members of our community who aren't sufficiently progressive, or who don't denounce the Congress in sufficiently convincing words.
It's sickening, and I can see how quickly the fall could be on a bad day.. Funny, living in the south I hear things all the time about how Obama has violated the constitution, the government is buying up all the ammo in prep for a takeover, and there was a column in our paper where Ann Coulter said no american educated physician will take obamacare. Go figure.
ApatheticNoMore
10-13-13, 10:41pm
. Funny, living in the south I hear things all the time about how Obama has violated the constitution
without a doubt true though likely not with Obamacare (that went to the Supreme court already) - just the NDAA, the assassination program, the NSA. But we're post-constitutional now anyway.
the government is buying up all the ammo in prep for a takeover
all the ammo would be a lot of ammo :laff: Are they saying the govt. has bought up all the ammo and they can't get any? What I have heard is about the Social Security Administration buying up hollow point bullets, which I thought was sourced beyond Alex Jones, but I had to check :) (nah I don't listen to Alex Jones but he's sometimes right). People who make this claim are more right than wrong, Snopes said they did put in a request for bullets. Whether these are in preparation for takeover or civil unrest neither Snopes nor anyone could actually say without seeing some smoking gun documentation (no pun intended) since without that motive is almost always impossible to prove. But apparently it is not unusual for the Social Security Dept to be armed, most people probably did not realize that (not that there isn't some enforcement on SS but people probably figured it was delegated). So then the only question is more bullets or less bullets than usual? I.e. deviation from the trend, which I don't know, and information like that is often nearly impossible to find.
snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ssabullets.asp
and there was a column in our paper where Ann Coulter said no american educated physician will take obamacare. Go figure.
No need to lump Ann Coulter in with Alex Jones, a decent amount of what Alex Jones says can actually be documented! :) Seriously though. Whereas this is ridiculous of course. Although if it was true a large part of me just rolls my eyes. So we are deliberately trying to destroy whole swaths of the middle class through outsourcing and insourcing (skilled immigration) but heaven forbid we have doctors trained in other countries. But really if you insource and outsource everyone else jobs almost noone is left who can pay the expected wages of these doctors, so sooner or later you need to insource and outsource medicine too.
. Funny, living in the south I hear things all the time about how Obama has violated the constitution, the government is buying up all the ammo in prep for a takeover, and there was a column in our paper where Ann Coulter said no american educated physician will take obamacare. Go figure.
It's not just the south. I get that from some of my social circle as well, many of whom are well educated. I am slowly learning to ignore it in conversation, but just have to shake my head in disbelief.
ApatheticNoMore
10-14-13, 11:52am
The truth threshold:
1) Obama violates the constitution - not even controversial, utterly true, but controversial if what was implied was by means of say Obamacare. I'd like to hear someone say the NDAA is not unconstitutional. The crazy right-winger these people are probably reading is maybe Glenn Greenwald or Johnathan Turley or the like. Maybe even have heard what those crazy conservatives at the ACLU have said about the Obama admin. But since there is no desire to build a real coalition on civil libs at this point (and the left has given up the fight, and the right seems to primarily want to use it to bash Dems), it's kind of a done deal. You can't win battles whose time has come and gone ... but may, one hopes, someday come again ...
2) Government is buying bullets (all bullets or some bullets?), confusion arises partly over people not realizing Social Security does enforcement with fully armed agents. So it's why most people think: ok cops need bullets but why does the Social Security admin? So any purchase of bullets seems abnormal. So Social Security does enforcement live with it (although if they abused their enforcement as much as say the DEA did, we'd have a problem on our hands).
3) Ann Coulter: spouting nonsense but what is new. Does Ann Coulter represent anyone but herself? Well I guess some people believe her. If I wanted to find some truth in it uh ... finding doctors who take Medicaid in states with low payout is harder as definitely not every doctor does, there are reports of some ACA networks having more narrow networks and some hospitals and doctors are not in them. But overall it's simply not true, doctors won't take Obamacare (which for anyone not falling into Medicaid merely means doctors won't take insurance company policies - and this is of course absurd - does she even understand that that's what Obamacare is - private insurance policies? And she argues doctors will suddenly not take them?).
yes, I'm sure that's how Goldman Sachs feels, having been dependent on tax dollars for their bailout ...
There are many types and levels of dependency. Most of us, as well as most companies, are dependent in some degree. Some are beneficial and come about when people share common goals. Drive on any public roads lately? Others are more obtuse, but generally still provide a benefit to large groups. Social security, the military, etc. Beyond that there are, IMO, way too many programs that provide huge benefits to small sub-sets of citizens to the detriment of others. Crop subsidies, oil drilling leases on Federal land, NFTA, etc. There may or may not be a line that gets crossed in between taking advantage of a situation and becoming dependent on it, but either way I think there are plenty of cords that could be cut if Congress only had the kahunas to do it.
It's sickening, and I can see how quickly the fall could be on a bad day.
Agreed. I lucked into a very lively conversation a few days ago where the topic was tipping points. Specifically, people were offering up different scenarios in which they could see the fabric of our society begin to unravel. There were very few gloom and doom types and no one was talking about Russia nuking us in our sleep. The discussion centered on things like the possible default and how widespread (and painful) the results of that could be. There were several pretty well thought out scenarios discussed and I have to say the most sobering notion was that any of them could potentially cause us to tip over the edge if things go just a little too far. IMO we are in a fairly delicate position as a nation right now, or at least in our position as the global super-power/economy/consumer/policeman/etc. I'm not sure our political leadership agrees.
2) Government is buying bullets (all bullets or some bullets?)...
When this canard came out, I tracked down the source of it.
You all realize, of course, that the Internet is a wonderful rumor-fabricating-and-dispersing machine, and that in a population of any size, there are some number of wingnuts who are just waiting for "facts" that confirm their lunacy.
On ammo - there have recently been some serious ammunition shortages in the USA, caused by a combination of quite predictable events:
- the size of the US ammunition manufacturing industry is rather small, and under-capitalized
- ammunition is expensive to produce, ship, and store
- ammunition is produced from commodities that sometimes skyrocket in price, and that are expensive to produce, ship, and store
- ammunition sales are regulated
- ammunition imports from other countries are highly-regulated, and supply highly-variable
This results in an ammunition supply that doesn't react well, rapidly, to increased demand. Especially peak demands that may not indicate sustained demand increases - nobody is going to lay out the capital required to increase production to deal with a momentary peak, you'd go out of business.
So, when gun sales took off because of threats of increased Federal legislation, there was barely enough ammunition on the shelves to cover *existing* need. When ammunition sales took off because everyone saw that and decided instead of a box of ammunition, they wanted a whole case, ammunition in many popular calibers vanished from the shelves. For a year or more, it was impossible to purchase several important calibers, unless you got very very lucky, or were waiting at Walmart for the daily delivery truck.
Now, along comes the Federal government. They buy a lot of ammo for their various agencies. As ANM points out, most people don't even realize how many innocent-sounding agencies actually have police powers, and armed employees. All those folks need ammunition to carry in their weapons, and perhaps more importantly, ammunition for training purposes. So the government, quite prudently, enters into long-term purchase agreements with producers, to secure supply and pricing. Simple business, every business of any size does this for the supplies they need. No conspiracy.
The *amount* of ammunition asked for in recent contracts is more-or-less the same amount in every previous contract they've issued, adjusted a wee bit either way for current organization sizes. And furthermore, the *amount* of ammunition in those contracts is pretty minimal compared to the size of the total ammunition production in the USA.
So the whole fuss is just silliness, from people trying to sell an agenda, being bought into by people who can't do math and don't understand either basic economics or the specific of the firearms industry.
flowerseverywhere
10-14-13, 9:02pm
Bae, thank you for the explanation. I know people who are seriously trying to stock up on ammo in prep for government agents taking over. Not sure what they think they plan to do after the takeover.
ApatheticNoMore
10-14-13, 11:02pm
Bae, thank you for the explanation.
yea some info I didn't know like how much the latest sales differed from previous ones (not much), but then I'd never even heard the theory about the govt. buying up ALL ammunition, just the theory about the SSA.
I know people who are seriously trying to stock up on ammo in prep for government agents taking over. Not sure what they think they plan to do after the takeover.
Not sure either :) - create a corporate crony state of plutocrats where the rich get richer and everyone else slips into poverty - oh wait already happening.
So we have data points (and the govt buying up all ammo wasn't even on my radar and the SSA thing not something I gave much thought though I was aware of it), so data points like the NDAA that one can not really see the purpose in (the preventing terrorism rationale is absurd at face value when the U.S. govt is currently arming the terrorists). And it's human nature to try to make sense of it, to see a design, whether or not any real design exists. So why all this police state nonsense now? So people who actually sue the government over the NDAA like Chris Hedges argue it's because they are planning for environmental collapse. Ok I'm an environmentalist, the state of the environment isn't exactly great :laff:. Sounds plausible. They're implementing a police state in preparation for environmental collapse and all the problems and chaos that will bring. Ok. But I don't know lately even Hedges sounds increasingly deranged to me. Just as likely is all they really wanted was totalitarianism enough to deal with a movement like OWS, and prevent it from ever arising again. Prevent any possibility of real protests in the future (about the economy first and foremost but other things too). Amazing how chilling the prospect of being locked away forever without trial and without a key is on protest. And the motive for other things like the crackdown on whistleblowers and so on? I don't' know, maybe the same (assassination lists certainly chill protest), permitting no questioning at all. Maybe also just power drunk crazies we have running things at this point, drunk on their own power and lost in their own self-reinforcing bubble.
Yep, the ammo thing is like a bank run. I will laugh if the gun nuts demand ammo be regulated like banks :~) But you can't get .22 ammo anywhere, it seems. DH wanted some for target shooting and rabbit hunting partly b/c it's cheap, but law of economics would suggest the price should go up if demand is through the roof. But maybe it's because it's such a variable thing, I don't know.
As for resisting the government with a few, or even more than a few guns. Yeah, I have a few gun nut friends who would like to cling to their 30-round ammo canisters because somehow that's going to prevent some sort of dreaded government takeover. Like the government doesn't have things like 1) armed soldiers 2) tanks 3) helicopters 4) drones and if TSHTF big time, 5) nukes. But yes, you are going to hold them off with a few 30-round AR-15s, which will catch them off-guard since you bought them at a gun show without a background check. These are people who also think "they" are lying about how much money the govt has, and deny that that we will hit default in a few days if we don't raise the debt ceiling so there you go. Just to be clear, I do think there are some reasons to own a firearm and while I don't particularly revel in dealing with them, I am not going to tell my 65 yo MIL that she shouldn't be able to get a CCL if it means the difference between her feeling OK to walk her dogs or not. But holding off a punk who intends to mug you and holding off some sort of autocratic government are pretty different, and I think the people who think they will be doing the latter are more than a little delusional.
Having not studied up on the default scenarios of other countries I am not as clear as I probably should be over what may happen. OTOH, I'm not sure what, beyond moving a portion of my retirement funds to international holdings, I should do to prepare other than being generally prepared for some type of economic hardship or more acute problem like a power outage.
As for resisting the government with a few, or even more than a few guns.
Look at the trouble the might of the US military had in Afghanistan, a country of 252,000 square miles, with a population of ~30 million people. An area about the size of Texas, which has a population of ~26 million people. I sort of suspect there are more guns in Texas now than there were in Afghanistan at the beginning of the war too.
I do not believe the government could prevail in any sort of widespread war inside the borders of the United States. The numbers are insanely against the organized military and government, and they'd be fighting in their own back yard. It would be a silly disaster for all concerned.
In the unlikely break down of social order, I don't think the armed government is my primary concern and pretty much discount some sort of an armed government take over as fringe conspiracy theory. It is the citizens that are my concern. Too many armed gun nuts with little firearm training, poor common sense, and unpredictable behavior in acts of desperation. And I think even that is remote.
You might want to look at this book before you get too all-fired worried about "gun nuts", or whatnot...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EE8LChIwL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-66,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg
A strong community is not a panacea, but at the same time it could ease a lot of anxiety whether caused by the government or roving bands of zombies from the cities. More so than just a naked pile of ammo, I think.
Gregg - I think you need *both* a strong community, *and* a group of people within that community willing and able to act for the common defense.
A single fellow with a firearm, no matter how much ammo he has, won't last very long against *two* fellows with firearms. Pin-and-flank. There's a reason the armed forces organize themselves into groups, not individuals...
Those bunker-style "preppers" haven't really thought things through, IMNSHO.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/09/20886411-wounded-veterans-benefit-checks-may-stop-nov-1-official-warns-congress?lite
Spartana, articles like this cause panic
Per the veteran affairs compensation checks won't go out Nov 1 if the shutdown lasts much longer Thanks for posting that link as it is the opposite of what I heard from the VA. I think it's likely too that some - if not all - of the VA benefits are stopped if there is a shutdown but they keep saying they are funded thru ext year. Guess we'll see on Nov. 1st :-)
You might want to look at this book before you get too all-fired worried about "gun nuts", or whatnot...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EE8LChIwL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-66,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg
I do seem to recall that Lord of the Flies was just fiction and I was young enough that the L.A. riots are getting a little vague in my recall.
Gregg - I think you need *both* a strong community, *and* a group of people within that community willing and able to act for the common defense.
A single fellow with a firearm, no matter how much ammo he has, won't last very long against *two* fellows with firearms. Pin-and-flank. There's a reason the armed forces organize themselves into groups, not individuals...
Those bunker-style "preppers" haven't really thought things through, IMNSHO.
Oh, I completely agree bae. Defense can and should be a part of any good community organizing plan. From what little of it I've seen there will usually be a few individuals who will take the lead in that part of the planning with the rest simply thinking they are extremists. That may be enough in most cases as long as the plan that gets developed is primarily dependent on those who prepared it and then only augmented by simple to execute instructions using "troops" who have minimal, if any, training.
I also agree that an army can not win against an indigenous population intent on defeating it. On a more individual level, or even community level, the trick to survival is probably in avoiding becoming the target of that army while the others are nipping at its heels.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.5 Copyright © 2025 vBulletin Solutions Inc. All rights reserved.