The nation’s third shutdown in 12 years is once again raising anxiety levels among service members and their families because those in uniform are working without pay. While they would receive back pay once the impasse ends, many military families live paycheck to paycheck.

During previous shutdowns, Congress passed legislation to ensure that troops kept earning their salaries, but time is running out before they miss their first paycheck in less than a week.

    • foggy@lemmy.worldBanned from community
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      12 days ago

      The GOP is truly incapable of doing what they want without punching themselves in the dick.

      “We’re gonna give tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires! And take away the poor’s healthcare to get it! And we’re gonna send ICE to come kidnap your brown people! Balance this tarriff situation in our favor! The military is coming to kill you left wing protestors!”

      “Uh, sir. The first thing caused the govt to shutdown, which means all our ghouls are off payroll… Also the untrained ICE thugs are pissing off police unions. Also the farmers have no more employees. Also they can’t sell their crop because no one’s buying due to those tariffs. Also we have a supermajority and absolutely no one to blame but ourselves for fucking up royally a layup of an economic situation. Also everyone hates us and our own generals don’t respect us and have indicated the military will be there to protect the protestors.”

      Nice.

      • West_of_West@piefed.social
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        12 days ago

        Not American, but what’s this about the military saying they’ll protect protestors? That’s pretty big, thats what toppled Egypt in 2011, the military sided with protestors.

        • foggy@lemmy.worldBanned from community
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          12 days ago

          The general headed to Portland said this in an interview in the last 48 hrs. News cycle is insane right now; tough to find.

          It was a subdued but a clear statement. Said they’ll follow lawful orders, and they’ll protect Oregonians, which he in a word clarified, the protestors.

          I’ll edit this if I find it. I saw it from a content creator who does a good job gathering these clips by being more terminally online than I can manage.

          Content creator was Parkrose Permaculture.

          Found it

          Clip of general’s statement is at 2:58.

          3:40: “[Those deployed] will be protecting any protestors at the ICE facility.”

      • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        You misunderstand them entirely. They think punching themselves in the dick is a good thing, it’s part of the plan. They are far to fucking stupid to realize the damage until after they’ve done it, and then they’re so embarrassed that they punched themselves in their own dick, they double down and start doing it more, telling people that punching themselves in the dick is cool now and they always meant for it to hurt.

        The real fucking crazy part is some people start punching themselves in the dick just to be part of the club.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        fucking up royally a layup of an economic situation.

        That’s the thing, though, we have a whole lot of useful idiots among leftists/liberals and of course “centrists” that keep giving an assist to the Confederate Party by trying to claim the economy last fall was not good and was not heading in the right direction.

        So you have The Annoying Orange and his apparatchiks saying things like “we have to dig out from the economic disaster the Biden administration left us in” - and a whole lot of people, not just Republicans, believe that load of horseshit.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      The divide already exists. It just tends to show up in splits between officers and enlisted men as well as between Army/Navy and Marines/Air Force.

      There are plenty of Wesley Clarks and Joe Sestaks and Richard Ojedas and Jim Webbs and Mikie Sherrills and Elissa Slotkins in the Democratic Party. The problem is that these people generally kinda suck (except Sestak, he was honestly pretty cool). They tend to be foreign policy hawks, economic conservatives, and generally more friendly with big business than labor. They run on platforms that emphasize our need to expand an already bloated national security state, to consolidate more power in the Executive Branch, and to further integrate ourselves with our allies (like Israel and Argentina and The Philippines and South Korea) regardless of how fucked up their governments happen to be.

      These are the Democrats who look at the Halcyon Liberal Era and think America was at its best when it was fighting multi-front global war against Evil Foreigners.

    • HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Active duty and younger vets seem more capable of seeing the bullshit than old vets.

      I see a lot of vets against fascism springing up all over protest posts, and they seem to generally be somewhere between mid-20s to 40s.

      Older ones, however, seem more rare, or generally just super MAGA.

      Just my own anecdotal observations of what algorithms put on my feed

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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      11 days ago

      It won’t. Not long term anyways. Most military members voted for the GOP despite the open disrespect trump showed them in his first term.

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    12 days ago

    In a press conference 3 or 4 days ago, Mike Johnson said they were planning on passing a bill to keep the soldiers paid. John Thune corrected him immediately after to say they wouldn’t consider it, and it’s Democrats fault if soldiers don’t get paid because they held up the CR; Mike Johnson nodded along like the yes-man he is.

    So there’s where the blame goes.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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        12 days ago

        Lol I’ve heard the Charger and Ram memes a bunch throughout the years, but haven’t seen the WRX on the list. But it made me laugh, because I had a roommate in college who signed up for the Navy and used his signing bonus on a new WRX.

        • rainwall@piefed.social
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          11 days ago

          Ha, I added it because a buddy of mine did basically exactly that too, paying over market for it too boot.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    The Republican shutdown. It’s not just some amorphous “government” that shut it down. It’s Republicans.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Do not negotiate.

      Every conflict is merely a prelude to negotiations. The problem is that Democrats genuinely value the institutions of federal government being threatened with defunding, while Republicans only really see these as pain points with which to extort the liberal establishment for more social conservative policy.

      Dems are primed to cave over time, particularly when the heavily privatized corporate media is on the side of the Republicans.

      • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        That’s definitely been the dynamic in the past, but I think things have finally gotten to the point where Dems are realizing their isn’t much left to lose. Their internal polling and party leadership is telling them to hold fast (arc).

        Also, I don’t have the link handy, but there was a KFF poll like last week saying something like 70% of self identified Republicans want the ACA subsidies Dems are fighting for extended. Any way you slice this, it’s a political disaster for the GOP and it’s only going to keep getting worse for them as people’s rent comes due and credit card bills come in and cheap talking points about “extremist terrorist liberal blah blah blah” don’t pay those bills.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          Dems are realizing their isn’t much left to lose

          The thing to lose is their mega-donors and their future careers as pundits/board members/lobbyists at friendly US Government contracting firms.

          70% of self identified Republicans want the ACA subsidies Dems are fighting for extended

          Study: Congress literally doesn’t care what you think

          Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.

          American public opinion exists as a bellweather for advertisers and marketing teams. It does not exist to inform public policy but to inform policymakers of what they need to do to reset public opinion (ie, Ban TikTok, greenlight more media consolidation through the FCC, invoke the Espionage Act against whistleblowers, bomb journalists covering a genocide, etc)

  • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    Not an American but… if you’re a soldier who is part of invading American cities, shame on you. Just following orders wasn’t an excuse then and it isn’t one now. But if you’re doing it and they’re not even paying you… I don’t even know. You might want to have a think about what it is you actually stand for.

  • Mammal@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Am I the only one that sees a major flaw, and a lot of historical precedent, around the idea of not paying the mercenaries on time?

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    11 days ago

    Good. Fuck em. Everyone should suffer. The TSA and air traffic should also be shut down. Give this shithole what it deserves.

    Fuck everyone who has ever voted conservative.

  • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    ICE agents too (arc). We should start organizing mutual aid for federal government employees who haven’t been implementing fascist bullshit, but the ones who have should be left out in the cold until they’re financially forced into finding other work.

  • Cryan24@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    So Trump will deploy the millitary against the no kings protests but not pay them… I can see that going well.

    • Inucune@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      We’d be in big trouble if he ever figured out he could pay them directly… But that would be spending his own money and we all know a Trump never pays their debts.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    12 days ago

    It would be funny if that’s what ended the second american civil war. ICE not getting funded because the government is coming to a halt financially.