Step 1: Use women’s health—which, unfortunately, is CONTROVERSIAL in this country!—as a bargaining chip in the federal budget battle, holding the country hostage and threatening a government shut-down if they don’t get their way;
Step 2: Watch as people lash out at reproductive rights advocates and President Obama in response, because how could women be so greedy as to let the government shut down just because they want to be sluts? …and because the President is the President, so he’s to blame for everything;
Step 3: Government shuts down and, with the help of their media machine(s), GOP blames Obama and the Democrats (and sluts of course);
Step 4: Profit! While the rest of the country gets furloughed and gets poorer;
Step 5: Victory in 2012
Everyone in the military community that I’ve talked to (so far) has just been pissed at Congress. The President hasn’t been brought up.
Mostly military people are worried about lower ranking active duty service members. Anyone who is low ranking and has a family qualifies for WIC and/or food stamps… a shutdown means that military commissaries are closed. Within the United States that’s not a huge deal because you can use WIC and food stamps at the local grocery stores but overseas the only place to shop and receive benefits is the Commissary. There’s a real worry that families will go hungry if this isn’t resolved soon. There is also a worry that deployed service members will be distracted with worry and therefor more vulnerable.
The fact that Congress voted to pay itself is what burns most people.
Step 6: PhDork smuggles herself aboard a transoceanic steamer and hires herself out as a tutor to a Bahraini prince. Or god, anything. This fucking country.
I have not seen Step 2 happening (I’m a govt employee, though not military, and everyone in my office is mad at Congress but I def haven’t heard any hostility among my colleagues towards the women’s health side of things). Any links?
@jess
According to my dad, a lot of “charmers” like Rush Limbaugh are playing the whole, “It’s women’s reproductive rights’ fault for the military’s problems.”
I would like to link you to what he said exactly, but then I’d feel pretty dirty as it is having to hear my father playing him out loud on the radio. I really don’t want to actually have to go through his stuff purposely. *sighs*
Google News snookered me into reading a WSJ editorial blaming this completely on Obama and the Dems getting overwrought about “small” things like Planned Parenthood. I was really confused because I thought I was reading something from Reuters and was getting pretty angry about the bias. Anyhow…
So far at our base that hasn’t happened. The only group we are hating on is congress as a whole since right now our paychecks have been slashed. For lower enlisted like myself that means per my LES (leave and earning statement) I am looking at less than 600. That doesn’t even cover my rent. I have received exactly enough for food and gas till next month when I must combine what’s left of this check with the next and hope I don’t loose my home.
These are scary times.
Yeah, we really should have just paid Ben Nelson a million dollars plus his own private bidet in his office to just vote for cloture back in December. We knew we were screwed, so what’s a few principles here and there?
Having Debbie Wasserman Schultz as head of the DNC is a very good thing. She’ll bring it. And she’ll work to get pro-choice candidates nominated and elected.
@AlisonY-
OK, I’m not surprised to hear Rush Limbaugh saying stuff like that, but that’s very different from what was said in the original post. Step 2 in the post was _government employees_ lashing out at reproductive rights activists, which is not at all the same thing as Rush Limbaugh continuing to bloviate as he always does. The point is kind of moot now that there’s been a compromise, but I hate seeing the blame misplaced like this, especially since among my coworkers at a federal agency, I heard people explicitly voicing support for reproductive rights, and I didn’t hear a single person at work saying that Planned Parenthood should be sacrificed so that we could get our paychecks. I don’t doubt that among the hundreds of thousands of civilian and military government workers there were some who thought that reproductive rights should be sacrificed, but SarahMC’s post makes it sound like a large number of us held that position, and that government workers as a group were thereby complicit in the “GOP’s plan to ensure victory in 2012″. As far as I know, that’s just not the case. If you’ve got links contradicting me, please share, and I’ll join you in despairing. Otherwise, please realize that we (or at least a large number of us) are the good guys.
Jess, I know where you’re coming from. I should have said people who are inclined to blame liberals/Democrats/women for everything in the first place, rather than just government employees. But go to any comments section online and you’ll find lots of people who’ve fallen right into the Republicans’ trap–divide and conquer.
Or to be even more specific, people you went to high school with who only pay attention to politics during national elections and/or a potential government shutdown and have no idea what they’re talking about. Lots of people on my Facebook feed are outraged about “Obama cutting Troops’ pay,” which … never happened.
Ok, thanks for the response. I think it’s good to note that government employees’ health insurance plans are strictly forbidden from covering abortion, so we are perhaps more likely than the average American to appreciate the need for Planned Parenthood and other services that make abortion more accessible and affordable.
Yes, there was a lot of nonsense & falsehoods spouted by people who don’t generally pay attention to the budget process and didn’t understand that in the event of a shutdown, the military would actually be excepted, along with civilian employees whose jobs are related to protection of life (e.g. tsunami forecasters). But given that government employees in general actually pay a decent amount of attention to the Congressional budget process (because it directly affects us), I think the criticisms you’re making don’t apply as much to government workers as to the public at large. I guess I would be more surprised and would think that your “Step 2″ had more validity if those people on your facebook feed were government workers. If they’re not, then again, it sounds like you’re misplacing blame.
…so to clarify my previous comments, I’m asking that you edit the post, either to reflect the anecdotes from me, WingStaff, and Ocean_Breeze saying that we didn’t observe military and civilian government employees doing what you said we did (lashing out at “sluts”), or to provide links backing up your accusation. Your last comment was basically “yes, but…”, so I’m not sure whether you’re agreeing with me or not.
I changed it, Jess.
“Or to be even more specific, people you went to high school with who only pay attention to politics during national elections and/or a potential government shutdown and have no idea what they’re talking about.”
This is my entire family and it drives me nuts. Plus, they get all of their news from local TV news stations so they never have the complete story.
Thanks, SarahMC. I appreciate that. It just felt like we were being attacked from all sides- rightwingers blaming us and our bloated paychecks for bankrupting the economy, and then this felt like we were being accused of colluding with the rightwingers.