[POLL] US Government Shutdown 2013

[nowaysj]

Just in time, too.

[nowaysj]

Jokes

[wub]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24433182

What John Boehner's ambition has to do with the shutdown

On a very simple level, the closing of most of the American federal government can be pinned on the ambitions of one man, Speaker of the House John Boehner.

There is little doubt that Mr Boehner, a Republican, could, whenever he wants, gather enough votes from moderate Republicans and most, if not all, Democrats to reopen the government.

But conventional wisdom says the Republican caucus would swiftly dethrone Mr Boehner. And, interestingly, conventional wisdom and punditry, in Washington at least, don't blame Mr Boehner one bit for holding the government hostage to his career aspirations. Thus is the cynicism of this town today.

Why he is so attached to sticking with such a bruising job is another question. His caucus is balkanised and unruly. This Congress is held in the lowest public esteem since the invention of public opinion polls. And the Republicans are more disliked than the Democrats.

Once seen as a skilled dealmaker, Mr Boehner isn't able to make deals. Never seen as an ideologue, he has now relinquished control of the Republican policy agenda to the party's most ideological faction.

In effect a third party has formed in Congress to the right of the Republican Party.

This has forced Mr Boehner to operate more like the tolerant head of a coalition government than an iron-fisted speaker of a past era, who could make or break a politician's career at will.

[SCope13]

let me get more specific... house republicans are required to submit resolutions to the senate. then the senate votes/requests revisions and sends it back for confirmation. if both sides of the congress agree, its sent to the president for signature into law.

thats what happened with the ACA (affordable care act). it is law..passed by congress..signed by the president..upheld by the supreme court

house republicans who are currently dominated by the tea party faction have tried to use the budget crisis in the US as a forum for gutting the ACA. theyre hiding within the framework of procedures in an attempt to eliminate a law they don't agree with..rather than going through the process that they know they will lose which is (win elections and overturn it with a republican senate and a republican house and a republican in the white house.) this shutdown amounts to extortion. they've fully turned their back on the democratic process here.. and the senate has finally called them out on their bullshit

you don't get to take the moral high ground and blame both parties for subverting the process. its republicans who are hijacking the government

you fundamentally misunderstand the issue at hand

[NickUndercover]

[Genevieve]

I'm glad the Democrat-dominated congress is holding their ground and not compromising with the insane Republican lunatic who's presiding over the country!

Anyway, point me to the guilty party of what's happening here so I can give them a medal. 33% shutdown, 67% to go!

[alphacat]

There’s a Major Foodborne Illness Outbreak and the Government’s Shut Down



Late-breaking news, and I’ll update as I find out more: While the government is shut down, with food-safety personnel and disease detectives sent home and forbidden to work, a major foodborne-illness outbreak has begun. This evening, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture announced that “an estimated 278 illnesses … reported in 18 states” have been caused by chicken contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg and possibly produced by the firm Foster Farms.

“FSIS is unable to link the illnesses to a specific product and a specific production period,” the agency said in an emailed alert. “The outbreak is continuing.”

(Updates to this post are at the bottom.)


This is the exact situation that CDC and other about-to-be-furloughed federal personnel warned about last week. As a reminder, a CDC staffertold me at the time:

I know that we will not be conducting multi-state outbreak investigations. States may continue to find outbreaks, but we won’t be doing the cross-state consultation and laboratory work to link outbreaks that might cross state borders.

That means that the lab work and molecular detection that can link far-apart cases and define the size and seriousness of outbreaks are not happening. At the CDC, which operates the national foodborne-detection services FoodNet and PulseNet, scientists couldn’t work on this if they wanted to; they have been locked out of their offices, lab and emails. (At a conference I attended last week, 10 percent of the speakers did not show up because they were CDC personnel and risked being fired if they traveled even voluntarily.)

In case it seems like this is not a big deal (just 300 illnesses, just some raw chicken): foodborne illness can have lifelong consequences that range from arthritis to kidney trouble to heart disease. And: The number of illnesses that can be identified in any foodborne outbreak are almost always an under-estimate.

In its statement, FSIS said:

Raw products from the facilities in question bear one of the establishment numbers inside a USDA mark of inspection or elsewhere on the package:

• “P6137”
• “P6137A”
• “P7632”

The products were mainly distributed to retail outlets in California, Oregon and Washington State.

It is the second time this year that the firm at the center of this alert, Foster Farms, has been linked to a nationwide Salmonella outbreak. In July, according to the CDC, 134 people in 13 states were made ill by chicken linked to two Foster Farms slaughterhouses.

More to come on this, I am sure.

Updates, Oct. 8:

[url=https:/twitter.com/taylordobbs]Taylor Dobbs[/url], an excellent reporter at [url=https:/twitter.com/vprnet]Vermont Public Radio[/url], has identified the 18 states where cases have been found: Arizona, Arkansas, Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin. Big thanks to him for sharing his results.

There were many other overnight and early-morning stories on this; I liked JoNel Aleccia‘s at NBC News.

Foster Farms, the company named yesterday by the USDA, has issued a press release. An interesting point, which I hope to follow up on: They refer in the first paragraph to the previous outbreak this summer as having affected their “Pacific Northwest operations earlier this year.” The alert yesterday referred to California operations. If that is not a miscommunication and there are in fact different plants involved, it raises the question of whether there is a common source for the various slaughterhouses/packing plants.

Food-safety attorney Bill Marler reminds me that two of the salmonella strains in the earlier outbreak this summer were antibiotic-resistant. The CDC’s original outbreak report describes them as “resistant to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, ampicillin, cefoxitin, ceftiofur, and ceftriaxone. The two patients with resistant isolates both were aged <12 months and required hospitalization… Resistance to third-generation cephalosporins (e.g., ceftriaxone) is clinically important because extended-spectrum cephalosporins are commonly used for treatment of severe salmonellosis in children.”

If you’re curious why the CDC’s absence from this outbreak is so critical, this description of how the CDC works in multi-state outbreaks — by organizing the investigation and deploying lab resources that no other agency possesses — is helpful.

Finally, a number of commenters have asked why this outbreak is even an issue, assuming that people are only at risk if they undercook their chicken. That assumes that people are only becoming sick from their own actions and not, for instance, eating the chicken in someone else’s home or in a restaurant. It also fails to account for salmonella’s nimbleness at spreading off raw meat to other niches in professional or home kitchens — a cutting board, a counter, a towel, a sponge, the cook’s hands — and then from there in an undetected manner to other foods. And, finally, it fails to acknowledge that some members of the population — toddlers, elderly, people with immune systems weakened by various medical treatments — are more vulnerable than others. There’s no question people should behave self-protectively. But in our regulatory system, food safety is a shared responsibility, federal, commercial and individual — and it only works when every party in that chain works to the highest standard they can.

[alphacat]

Soundcloud

[J Skrilla]

Aliens.

[LACE]

let me get more specific... house republicans are required to submit resolutions to the senate. then the senate votes/requests revisions and sends it back for confirmation. if both sides of the congress agree, its sent to the president for signature into law.

thats what happened with the ACA (affordable care act). it is law..passed by congress..signed by the president..upheld by the supreme court

house republicans who are currently dominated by the tea party faction have tried to use the budget crisis in the US as a forum for gutting the ACA. theyre hiding within the framework of procedures in an attempt to eliminate a law they don't agree with..rather than going through the process that they know they will lose which is (win elections and overturn it with a republican senate and a republican house and a republican in the white house.) this shutdown amounts to extortion. they've fully turned their back on the democratic process here.. and the senate has finally called them out on their bullshit

you don't get to take the moral high ground and blame both parties for subverting the process. its republicans who are hijacking the government

you fundamentally misunderstand the issue at hand

there goes scope dickriding on other posts because he cant articulate a response again
shame

[SCope13]

there goes LACE being an uptight bitch again because she can't get over herself
shame

[nowaysj]

If you two are going to fight, like maybe hurry it up, yeah?

[LACE]

there goes LACE being an uptight bitch again because she can't get over herself
shame

uptight bitch

bitch

bitch

yeah so.

[nowaysj]