Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite.

bs and not english. that is like saying slaves get the masters they deserve. even saying it is like an abused wife deserves her husband is kind of different because she can at least file for divorce at any time. the people in modern nation states cannot change their governments in any significant way.

yes they can make a political party and run for election.

@SYnapse, how many political parties are there in the US? And how many of them have representation at the federal level?

I don't know.

In democracies it is very difficult for one man to make a significant difference, it's true. But that is really sort of the point of them, isn't it? We've had plenty of non democratic systems where one man has been able to make a huge difference, and generally speaking people end up worse off.

But, if you work hard and are bloody dedicated and have a lot of support, anyone can make a real difference at a small scale. That, frankly, is what is great about democracy.

The House of Representatives is doing its job.

I guess it's job is coming up a new and novel precedent on how to fuck over the nation then…

No matter how bad they are this is always a meaningless gesture. Do they deserve to be paid? No.

Will it make a lick of difference? Probably not although its great to see tea partyers like Bachman and Paul squirm when the subject is broached.

"The House of Representatives is doing its job"........ badly !!

"that is like saying slaves get the masters they deserve"

Blankflag just said something I agree with. Gosh.

I know, I had to do a double take there, Jamiet.

SYnapse, there are two political parties in the United States and occasionally someone from a twisted faction of one of these parties gets some power but nothing really significant. It's a corrupted system and there is not a thing we can do, we just have to trust the politicians to do the right thing. And you know the odds of that are zero to none.

I'm sure there aren't two parties in the U.S. In Britain there are at least 150 registered parties, even though only 4-5 reach the spotlight.

And the reason there are two parties is because you choose to vote for 2 parties! Silly public always blaming the "system"

there could be a 100 parties but surely the important ones are the ones that have a chance to gain some power and political influence.
In the UK that is:-
Labour
Tories
Liberals - Willing to change policies for power
UKIP - Right-Wing anti-Europe
BNP - Right-Wing anti-Immigrant
Greens

Ross Perot created the last US political party that achieved a significant vote count in a presidential election and 4 years later Republican Pat Buchanan took it over because the Republicans weren't far enough to the Right.

There are other parties at lower levels like the Libertarians and Greens, but they rarely win even at the state level. The Republicans in Arizona passed a law that's going to face court challenges making it harder for 3rd parties to get on the ballot.

Some congressmen have asked not to get paid. They know however that by law they are going to get paid anyway, so this is just a public relations gesture.

Not paying politicians doesn't solve the problem. The Illinois legislature went without pay for something like six months this year as a strategy to force them to pass pension reform (Illinois' fiscal situation is the worst in country). Nothing happened, even though the Democrats have a supermajority in Springfield. Keeping back pay may sound like a good, populist solution, but the fact is that if you're able to spend your time serving in a legislature you're probably already independently wealthy. It's not a bad idea, but it's ultimately a waste of time and effort.

SYnapse, if you ever did any research for yourself instead of just thinking you know everything, you'd get somewhere.

Not paying the politicians solves absolutely nothing, but the fact is that the government shut down, so why should the government still get paid? It's backward logic.

Docking some fraction of lawmakers' salaries due to the shutdown is, again, a nice populist move, but not worth much besides symbolism. Very few of them would be hurt by it and the effort expended to accomplish this move (which may or may not even be legal, I don't know) would be better spent addressing the underlying issues CAUSING the shutdown. Punitive measures against officials is theater.

Given that the entire political system in the USA is theater, I'm not sure that that's really a good way to dismiss the idea.

How fucked up is America when wealthy people want to deny poor people decent health care ...... greedy selfish bastards !!
Why don't you just tell these right wing looney tunes they are a complete bunch of c****.
Any nutters here that can give a list of reasons why a sane individual would vote for the 'Mad Hatters' Tea Party. ....... are they all one vote short of an overall majority?

If you were a doctor, and studied your ass off in med school for 8 years, how would you feel if you were told that people have a "right" to your services, and that you must provide it to them at an established price, and not at what price you want. Health care is noting more than a service, if you can't pay for it, too bad.
"wealthy people want to deny poor people decent health care" lmao, among the most stupid things i have ever heard, why would a rich person want to deny a poor person healthcare?

Where have you been lately, you need to catch up Tiger ...... don't you get Fox News in the slammer?

I don't even have Fox news lol, but nice way to immediately label me as watcher of Fox news, its almost always used against people who dare have different opinions than liberals.

Republicans don't oppose Obamacare because they want poor people to not get healthcare. They oppose Obamacare because it's a spectacularly awful piece of legislation. It cannot work as it is currently structured and its collapse will cause a great deal of economic harm.

To solve our healthcare problems you really need to either just put everyone on Medicare and raise taxes to cover it or wildly deregulate the insurance industry so companies can do things like compete across state lines and drive down costs. Obamacare is a non-solution to the problem since it does nothing but pile on wholly incomprehensible new regulations on the existing system.

You may be right, Invictus. You may not be - we don't know yet. Either way, that's no reason to shut the country down.

Wow, Nigs, you put the Greens (socialist lunatics disguised as environmentalists) but not the likes of Plaid Cymru or the SNP in your list of influential UK partie?!? I never had you down as a Little Englander...

You learn something new every day.

Also, when have the BNP ever had any power or influence worth mentioning?

When I read the title of this thread I thought it was going to be about Ireland - they're voting in a referendum on whether to dump the Seanad (Irish Senate) the upper house of their parliament (and the senators of course) and just have the Dail (lower house) generating legislation. Doing this will save them 20 million Euros a year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24395339

Continuing Resolutions (CRs) are a lazy way to run the government. When is the last time Congress passed a "real" budget? When is the last time a real budget was passed and signed by the President before 30 September? Stop paying them? They should all be fired for the inability to perform their Constitutional duties.

Three weeks ago we had enough money to bomb Syria. Now we barely have enough money to deliver the mail.

Please, someone, explain this shit.

You've got enough money, it's just that congress won't allow it to be spent.

There's plenty of borrowed money, you mean. And even that runs out in I think two weeks, which means Congress has to authorize more borrowing.

That's where this is all headed. The shutdown will be solved as the debt ceiling is raised. It's just going to be a matter of who blinks first, Obama or the House Republicans. No way to run a government, but that's the environment we have now.

"There's plenty of borrowed money"

Stole the words right out of my mouth.

"Three weeks ago we had enough money to bomb Syria. Now we barely have enough money to deliver the mail." - best Bo-Sox quip ever +1