Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The Tea Bag Shutdown : An Iraq War Veterans Perspective

     We are week into the first government shutdown of the 21st Century and I figured it would be good to write an article about how this shutdown is being misreported and misrepresented in the American media. The country is at standstill due to the tea party and its members that have been elected to office in the republican party, this is all self inflicted. It is easy to say this all could have been avoided but I'm not exactly sure that's true, the Citizens United case allowed so much money into American politics that these Tea Baggers began to Primary those who were not right enough or weren't vocal enough about how they disliked the sitting President.
     The shutdown is a bad idea and there is very little anyone outside the Republican party can do about it due to their crazy demands about ending the Affordable Care Act (which they called a failure before it was ever implemented, not sure how that works). So pretty much everything is shutdown, federal workers are furloughed but Active Duty military is still being paid because come on Republicans care so much about military members (unless your gay, homeless, unemployed or suffer from PTSD). A stunt some Republicans pulled last week was one where they took photo-ops with WWII vets who stormed some fences to get to their memorial for their honor flight stuff. Of course the media ate this up and acted like it was the Park Guards fault for putting up barricades and not having the monuments open. Then these tea party members or republicans went on to claim that this is all the Presidents fault because, 1. he wont meet their hostage demands and 2. Affordable Health Care is bad unless you are a former Republican Governor from Massachusetts or Bob Dole.
     What I find insane about all of this is that these tea party fools claim that President Obama is disgracing the "greatest generation" from seeing their WWII memorial, but in the same turn are shutting down the Federal Government and dancing in the street about it. While current vets are watching the VA and other administrations shut down, when they are needed most. Current post 9/11 veterans need help, the unemployment rate is higher than the national average and PTSD is a serious condition that can lead to suicides, severe depression and substance addiction. So the party that claims to love freedom and its troops so much decides to shut down the USG because folks will have a chance to buy health insurance from a marketplace.
     I have had enough of these tea baggers, three years is enough for anyone. They have bastardized Revolutionary War History and the history of our founding fathers. Personally I have lost friends and family over these issues, politically I am not ashamed to be a progressive liberal but the harassment that ensued post 2009 has led me to only seek out debates with those who I know can be civil. This shut down isn't civil, its a temper tantrum while claiming the other party wont compromise to the crazy hostage demands of the tea party. So to those tea party people I say we compromised enough, we gave up the single payer plan because Republicans complained so much during the health care debates. The President and the democrats compromised on the debt ceiling and the sequester, now they claim that was never enough; of course like the addict one you give in they are always going to want more.
     The tea party has taken us so far down the rabbit hole that ideas that used to be thought of as insane are now being seriously discussed by Republican members of Congress, like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin claiming that crossing the debt ceiling will have little impact on the markets and may even stabilize the global marketplace. This is INSANE! The data and history all prove otherwise, the tea party likes to parrot the lie that this will stop all new spending out of the Obama Administration, but the debt ceiling has nothing to do with current spending; it all has to deal with our past bills and interest on those bills dating back to 1776!
     I find it utterly irresponsible of the American media to say that this is both parties fault, the tea party which is a minority within the Republican party which is in 1/3 of government does not have the right to hold all of us hostage just because they do not like the President of the U.S. The GOP is running scared, the polls show that Americans are highly against a government shut down over the Affordable Care Act and 2014 is only a few months away, primary or not those Republicans who voted to shut down the government are about to face some stiff resistance regardless of the amount of cash they may be given from Super PACs.
     This shutdown may last sometime due to the stranglehold the tea party has on the Republican party but for me this just shows how much tea baggers actually know about government and how harmful this will be to their constituents. October 17 may rock the global markets or send our country into a deep recession and if that happens I will make it a goal of mine to remind every tea bagger / republican what they did to us post 9/11 vets; they refused to pass the post 9/11 veterans jobs bills that the President wanted, they shut down the government and resources that veterans needed during a time when companies only like to say they hire vets but don't actually do it or they expect you to show up fully trained when most of us had jobs that do not relate to the business world. Above all these people will need to be reminded that these are self inflicted wounds, that the tea party chose to hurt all of us because they couldn't handle the results of the 2012 election.

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