Republican Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Monday the federal government shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on their health care demands and reopen.
Republicans didn’t negotiate before passing the bill either, which is why we are where we are.
Of course, the dems always need to reach across the aisle, but it doesn’t apply to the gop lol
all they are asking is for a clean bill so that they have more time. you know. like what the dems gave them in spring. /s I mean its true so not exactly /s but the /s is for anyone who does not really understand the background but /s in that yes im making fun of the republicans and their absolute rediculous demands. They expect that they can do nothing and that the other side should bend over backwards to fix the problems they make.
I can’t help but feel like this would already be over if Democrats were better at messaging. The Republicans are so obviously on the wrong side of this, but every time Schumer opens his mouth poll numbers come out instead of rising insurance premiums.
Media isn’t owned by people sympathetic to Democratic talking points.
Doesn’t matter what your message is if no one plays it.
The Democrats aren’t even sympathetic to Democratic talking points. Why would the media be?
Well, the democrats do use the democratic talking points whether the politicians actually believe in them or are more beholden to their rich donors. But the real problem is the media who spin everything against the democrats. As a result, people (like you) are subconsciously programmed to hate on the democrats regardless of what they say.
But the real problem is the media who spin everything against the democrats.
Citation needed on that one. The media is owned by the same people who own the politicians.
As a result, people (like you) are subconsciously programmed to hate on the democrats regardless of what they say.
No the problem is that Democrats are all talk and no action and people like yourself are subconsciously programmed to always invent or repeat excuses for why that is. You think that Democrats are the good guys just by virtue of Republicans being the bad guys. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a Marvel movie with clearly defined heroes and villains battling it out. In the real world, they can all be villians. Some just dress their villainy in flowery language.
I didn’t say they were the good guys. They are better. And that is the salient fact when it’s a two party system. They are beholden to the billionaires but they pull more to the left than the gop. It is because they’re financed by the billionaires that they can’t go too progressive or else they lose their funding (and ability to get elected). And they’re not pedo supporting, full on fascist and bat shit crazy which is also a good thing. But idiots who fall for the right wing propaganda see them as as bad or worse than the gop. Those who get confused and become too unmotivated / lazy to vote are just as bad. You can certainly argue the democrats aren’t progressive enough, and I totally agree with that; but they are monumentally better than the gop right now. Not voting for the dems is cutting off your nose to spite your face; it’s stupid. That we have a Republican government is purely because too many Americans are idiots and fall for the right wing media.
They are better. And that is the salient fact when it’s a two party system.
Which is just a roundabout way of saying they’re the good guys and regardless of how heinous they become they’ll still be the good guys to you because the Republicans will always be worse. They never need to actually accomplish anything because they’ve permanently earned your vote by simply not having an R next to their name. You’ll ensure they stay in power despite actively working against you because they aren’t the GOP. See where this logic falls apart?
That we have a Republican government is purely because too many Americans are idiots and fall for the right wing media.
That we have a Republican government is because the Democrats feel entitled to your vote and are unwilling to actually fight for anything but themselves. They have people like yourself who will blame literally everyone but them for their own poor performance. It turns out “vote for us because we’re not Republican” doesn’t resonate with voters as much these days. They’ve had numerous opportunities to actually earn votes by fighting for us, but they feel they don’t need to adapt or improve themselves because being “less evil” should be good enough for the American public, right? Being diet-Republican is good enough.
You’ll spend your energy fighting for people who you admit are bought and paid for, that you admit won’t defy their rich masters, that you admit “aren’t good,” but refuse to alter your behavior in any way while complaining about how bad things are. You’ll spend your energy arguing that we need to keep things bad or they might get worse (as they continue to get worse) while completely refusing to let others argue for a better way. This is why the country is the way it is. There’s very little difference between you and the Republican base doing the exact same thing for their chosen candidate. You’re all just engaging in diehard team sports despite both teams being absolute garbage and you want to keep it that way.
I’m not arguing for the sake of the democrat politicians, but for the sake of the country. It’s not a matter of supporting a team, but choosing which politician of the viable options is better. ‘Team’ support is when you vote against your own interest because of a historical affiliation. Dems are better so voting for them is logical. I understand you feel the democrats aren’t good enough and you think if they don’t get enough votes, they’ll change to be more progressive, but unfortunately that’s not likely to work. Furthermore it gets us trump and other rightwing assholes in power for another four years - and that’s really bad. It’s on you if you don’t vote for the better option.
It’s not because they’re incompetent. It’s because they don’t give a shit about you or any of us and they don’t see themselves as part of the group of people that have to experience the consequences.
Both. It’s both of those things.
After a while, incompetence and stupidity is no longer a sufficient explanation for this sort of behavior and the most parsimonious explanation is that they do not feel the same pressure that you or I do and are acting accordingly.
It’s not sufficient, no, but it’s still part of the explanation
Have you met the Baileys? The imaginary (conservative) voters that Schumer bases all his policy decisions on? Watch this clip from Last Week Tonight and get a whole new understanding of his incompetence.
I do think republican donors owning all the major media leads people to only see the worst messagers in the party as they censor the better ones’
I’m glad the Democratic lawmakers are not pulling a Fetterman. If the Democratic lawmakers always vote Republican, why even vote for them in the first place?
It’s almost like that was part of the right’s strategy the whole fucking time.
That’s what leftists have been trying to explain to liberals for the past 8 years. All the Democrats in Ohio were running on platforms of securing the border and keeping trans kids out of schools while being dead silent on Republican corruption in the state, Republican attempts to undermine cannabis and abortion referendums that the overwhelming majority of us voted for 2 years ago. Why would anyone vote for them if the best they can offer is watered down Republican plans?
Because it’s better than the non watered down plans?
Like obviously primary for a good candidate but in a 2 party system where you either have to eat a 5lb bag of shit or a 1lb bag of shit I cannot understand the mindset that there is no point voting because both are the same
I voted, because I’m aware that not voting is a fast track for eating a 5 lb bag of shit.
However, what would you say if in the next election, it was a choice between a 2 lb bag of shit and a 7 lb bag of shit? Then the next was the choice between a 5 lb bag of shit and a 10 lb bag of shit? When do you decide that you just don’t want to eat shit anymore?
If I’m always given a choice between two bags of shit and one is always objectively worse I will always vote for the smaller bag it could be a 99lb bag vs a 100lb bag and I will still choose that 99lb bag because at a certain point you will be 99lbs done and at that point I really don’t want to stop and think god damn it I still have another pound of shit to eat just because I didn’t want to vote
That’s at least how I feel now seeing the giant mountain of shit I still have to eat knowing I could have already been done with my pile if my candidate had won but at least now I know I voted for the smaller pile
Unfortunately, the “smaller bag of shit” party, whether or not they win the vote, keeps passing legislation to fund research to pack more shit into these bags, enabling the “bigger bag of shit” party to increase their ability to force shit on us. Then the “smaller bag of shit” party can up their own quantity of shit and still point to the other party and say “Well, you won’t have to eat as much shit if you vote for us.”
I’m hoping to find a way to not eat shit at all. When I vote for the “smaller bag of shit” party I question if this is really the way to do that. The same party fights against those in their party looking for ways to reduce the amount of shit. They are funded primarily by those that are producing all this shit.
This is why I empathize with those who are drowning in shit, thrashing about for a solution to their problems. I also empathize with those who look up and just see shit and don’t bother to make a choice. I even empathize with those who see the “bigger bag of shit” party claiming “No shit this time, we swear” and vote for them out of desperation to get away from all the shit. It doesn’t make me feel better knowing I voted for the “smaller bag of shit” party because it didn’t save any of these people from drowning in shit.
I do struggle to empathize with people who blame those drowning. I really struggle with those who voted for the “big bag of shit” party because of promises that “oh, yes, there will be bigger bags of shit but don’t worry you won’t be the ones that have to eat most of it. If you vote for us, we’ll make sure they drown in shit”.
The person who is drowning in the shit. I.e doesn’t even have the capacity to vote because they live in a fucked up place that requires them to wait 6 hours outside on Election Day and they have kids and work and can’t make it gets my sympathies
The person doomscrolling tiktok who has had propaganda shoveled in their mouth and now thinks both sides are equal doesn’t get my sympathy
Except maybe it’s worse. We are in this situation now in large part because many Democrats for the last 12 years have believed the line that it’s always okay to vote for the second most evil candidate… At some point either you have a bottom line or you don’t have any values.
But it genuinely isn’t. You aren’t sending a message to the dems because they are way too stupid to realize that, they forced Hilary who was unpopular in 2026 Biden who was way too old in 2020 and Harris who had all of the negatives of being a vp with none of the positives
It’s like trying to explain to a dog that the mailman doesn’t need to be barked at you can try all day but they retain nothing
However when you mention the second most evil candidate, we wouldn’t be using the military against our own citizens, funding ICE more than most countries militaries, and attacking universities for allowing free speech
That’s a pretty substantial difference, this country was literally damaged for a generation because some people decided that the 500lb bag was the same as the 5lb bag. I say decided but it was very much the work of complex propaganda movements
I honestly don’t understand how
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Americans are this god damn stupid to realize Republicans are literally saying “fuck you, we won’t back down from you dying in the streets.”
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How bad the Democrats are that they’re failing to capitalize on that message.
The survey results that I’m seeing show that Americans do understand what’s happening and that Republicans are shooting themselves in the face. But there’s not an election happening tomorrow so it takes time.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/whos-blame-shutdown-all-above-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2025-10-09/
63%/67% blame Trump/Republicans respectively.
63% also blamed Democrats for the shutdown.
63% also blamed Democrats… That’s just a failure of America and a indictment of Democratic leadership ineptitude in my opinion.
And they have short attention spans so it won’t even matter when it gets to an election
Ah yes the short attention spans conundrum. They’d almost need the administration in power to do/say absolutely crazy shit every single day…
That’s where the fish gallop comes in. There’s such a firehose of fucked up fuckery that no well-adjusted mind can keep track of it all!
Republicans are shooting themselves in the face
Literally? At least that’d be doing something worthwhile for the American people.
Where’s Dick Cheney when you actually need him?
Well, you see, Republicans are such a terrible party that they make Democrats look like they’re worth voting for.
The Democrats love giving the Republicans rope to hang themselves, but this time they might have given them so much the rope is touching the floor.
because republicans and establishment-dems are still on the same side, that of Big Business (and AIPAC).
these establishment politicians still believe things can “return to normal” (read, unsustainable ratfucking) after trump croaks, which…won’t happen, but as long as they still think it’s possibility they’ll why get in the way of the money printer?
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“I won’t negotiate with you until you give up on all of the things you want.”
This translates to “I won’t negotiate with you.” Because the “until” phrase would be the elimination of anything to be negotiated.
They’re just insolent children stamping their feet.
Well, if he won’t negotiate, why does he expect the democrats to rubberstamp it?
Because that is historically what they have done. Republicans know that can take advantage of Democrats “weakness” of being able to compromise. The illegal firing of furloughed workers is metaphorically the Republican terrorists executing hostages until their demands are met. They don’t care about the damage they are doing, but they know their opponents do. They have also historically used the tactic successfully.
They expect it has worked in the past. They will keep executing their hostages and they will keep blaming their own willful destruction on those who won’t just give them everything they want. What they are too stupid to realize is that many of their hostages are their own people, and the only thing that makes a rightist reconsider their sick ideology is when it comes back to bite them personally.
The dems are happy to concede after making a show of a false struggle since it lets them off the hook from delivering the campaign-only promises their donors don’t want them to follow through on
Because party Democrats are fucking cowards who fold the moment they face a moment of resistance. If I were the Republican party, I would have considered it to be a safe gambit.
It’s good that the Democrats are refusing to give in now, but they really could have started doing that up to a year ago.
Yeah, Chuck Schumer basically gave the Republicans everything they wanted earlier this year on the first CR. He’ll be willing to cave again once he gets fed up with all the calls from his corporate donors
He thinks they can force their hand by saying it’s the Democrats that are preventing the military from getting paid.
So, basically, if Mike Johnson was your dad and (after he spent all day tracking your internet habits) you were abducted, you’d be a goner and he would go around blaming the abductors for refusing to release you for free.
That aside is so distracting, but most excellent.
Ratchet effect has worked out great for them thus far
Seems to me that back in the spring, they said open the government and we’ll talk, and then they didn’t talk. Fool me once …
Don’t get fooled again.
Chuck Schumer “well maybe it’ll work out this time. Let’s take them at their word.”
sry the jif itself won’t upload
That’s the quote! Perfect that it won’t load properly.
The administration has 3 legal options:
- Compromise with dems on not making working class Americans already shitty and expensive healthcare worse
- Get rid of corruption and obstruction by removing the filibuster and force a vote
- Shut down the government
Republicans will choose #3 10/10 because they can’t actually make the government work via compromise it would undermine all their fascist rhetoric, and they won’t let go of their obstructionist tools they and dems use to fuck over the working class.
They already killed the filibuster. They have have suspended the filibuster three times already. Why would they have to remove it this time?
-They bypassed the filibuster to go around CA EV standards
-Then they Reinvented the budget process to set the BBB to $0 which somehow got them around the filibuster to pass the BBB.
-Last month they “Deployed the nuclear option” and changed Senate rules to confirm a block of 48 Trump nominees.
Nothing is stopping them, they have already set precedent you can ignore the filibuster whenever you want.
The filibuster is an antidemocratic crock of shit that should be ended and never revived.
Personally I’m banking on them refusing to negotiate long enough that Americans get desperate enough to drag them into the streets and finally treat them the way fascists should be treated.
I’m not ready for a thousand year shutdown, personally.
Ok.
Don’t.
Your party is in control. Don’t negotiate and watch what happens to your head when enough Americans get real desperate.
Even poor people can build guillotines.
I’m curious how effective the mass propaganda on every website and in all the airports etc are going to be. People are stupid and they’re going to hear that narrative over and over and we all know the Democrats aren’t going to effectively counter it
As a Canadian who has almost limitless free access to healthcare, I’ve never understood America’s decision to withhold the same from millions of people.
Instead the US spends $1 trillion on war machines.
Make it make sense.
It doesn’t make any sense, it’s so fucking stupid. I can’t stand paying a middleman every month who is not a doctor and can just deny me coverage that I need if I go to the wrong hospital or if they don’t agree with something my doctor recommended. All because a significant portion of the populace is too fucking stupid to understand how this is an extremely inefficient system at best and they reduce any argument in favor of changing it to “communism!” which is a word they heard is bad generations ago and never bothered spending two seconds to look up the actual definition ever since.
They’ll also just say “muh waiting lists” like that’s somehow a worse problem than not getting care at all
Yeah, it’s not like we don’t have them too; if I want to make an appointment to see my primary care physician, it’s about a month out; cardiologist is about a month and a half. I’m failing to see the downside to socialized medicine that makes it so much worse than our current system.
It doesn’t make any sense
a significant portion of the populace is too fucking stupid to understand
You just answered your own question. Welcome to America. It isn’t getting smarter anytime soon.
Because the American theocracy is built around their most holy of books, “Atlas Shrugged.” Greed and selfishness are noble pursuits, and whoever is hurt by them deserves it because they weren’t strong enough to fight back and win.
I mean, yes but also extremely no. Rand’s influence ends about three feet away from those books. The Chicago School of Economics, The Cato Institute, and The Heritage Foundation are the real powerhouses here.
That, plus good ol’ racism and the oil crisis of the 70s are why we missed the bus on robust social safety nets. (Boomers were making actual societal change, but then the oil crisis turned a majority of them into conservatives)
The oil crisis will go down in history as the beginning of the end, where the story of the Late American Republic starts.
All that is left to decide is what chapter follows
Because the hierarchy of society that most politicians support demands employees who are terrified of leaving their exploitative jobs. Money is a powerful motivator, but even more powerful is the health of you and your family.
And at the same time, a very sick citizen does not generate economic benefits to them, so there’s no reason to make serious care available and/or not crushingly expensive. Better to drain as much as possible from them before the dead weight succumbs to those pressures than direct any revenue that could given back to “job creators” as tax breaks of subsidies.
It’s also why political and media personalities will brag about how quickly the county recovered from COVID. It wasn’t an economic miracle, it was sacrificing lives at the altar of capitalism. It went hand in hand with our absurdly disproportionate number of deaths.
Why we don’t storm their houses and string them up from lamp posts (or, I suppose, vote them out), I don’t know.
America is a nation filled with vile evil people.
I don’t think I’d say it’s filled with them. Surely there are only a small portion that actually wanted this to happen.
Not so small.
We pay more for healthcare than you do, per capita. It’s not that we don’t have free healthcare - it’s A) that the oligarchs have figured out how to build a money siphoning machine out of our healthcare system and B) that they can use it to enforce social classes.
Also, we pay more tax money per patient than any other country in the world on top of our monthly premiums, deductibles, and co-pays.
It’s not that we don’t have free healthcare
No, it’s exactly that. We do not have free health care. I have what is considered “good” insurance (which I pay a monthly premium for), and I always have to pay some fee or copay whenever I see a doctor for anything other than a well visit. I pay hundreds of dollars a year out of pocket for glasses and contacts, devices I require to safely do things like operate a car, even though that stuff is supposedly “covered” by insurance. Heaven forbid I need any dental work beyond a cleaning, as that would cost me probably hundreds as well. So no. No, we don’t have free healthcare, and it’s honestly baffling that any American that isn’t an oligarch would suggest that we do.
It doesn’t make sense but as long as they are given another person to look down on the Americans seem happy.
Make it make sense.
Propaganda + Human Stupidity
We aren’t as evolved as people would like to think.
it’s worse than that, we spend more federal $ on our non-existent healthcare than than spend on the war machine.
our entire federal government has served to line the pockets of big business for many decades at this point
It’s this attitude that makes it a Republican shutdown.
Elections have consequences, Republicans did NOT get the 60 votes they need. They NEED to offer something to get 9 Democrats to vote with them.
By saying they aren’t willing to negotiate, THEY are shitting down the government.
This is the Trump/Johnson Shutdown of 2025.
Earlier this year, we had the Trump/RFK Measles Outbreak of 2025.
Call them what they are.
The measles outbreak earlier this year? It’s still happening and getting worse.
So glad they fired everyone at the CDC. /s
Keep it closed. The government hasbeen crumbling for 40 years now. The parts that actually helped Americans want fair nor transformative in a grand scheme, by design. America just isn’t hungry enough for change. Keep it closed. Every Nation is just three missed meals away from revolution, and considering the largest employer isn’t paying it’s workers it’ll be about another 60 days before we’re hungry enough.
Yup.
We’re in an abusive relationship with our federal government. Keep it shut down until Americans revolt and deal with the fascists. Then we can reorganize it and try again.
He won’t negotiate because this isn’t a normal government shutdown over budgetary issues. This is the end of the federal government. This is how it dies. It literally just runs out of money while terrorizing people so that even the most liberal libs learn to hate the federal government and accept the new dictatorship of their redstate masters.
Or they run out of money to keep paying their secret police to keep terrorizing people, and even they turn on them.
If anything, it seems like people are finally starting to understand why it’s important to have a federal government (even if it’s an imperfect one) and to have some federal protections (even if they were never full proof). Maybe if we make it through this we can fix what was broken, or at least improve it.
I was listening to an episode of It can happen here about the federalization of Chicago. The guest kept talking about how this felt different than any other time bc of the lawlessness and lack of accountability, especially since the people breaking the law are allowed to conceal their identity.
I can’t help but feel a bit frustrated people didn’t realize this was always going to be the reality of losing federal oversight. All of America is now at risk of turning into the little towns that the federal government had to be deployed to after the civil rights act. Except, the federal government has been taken over by the oligarchs that used to only control small towns and territories.
I wish America would remember our history, and understand this isn’t the first time we have faced this bullshit. If we can stick together and remember what American values were supposed to be (liberty and justice for all), there’s a chance we can make it.
It’s a new battle requiring new strategies, but it’s the same bullshit as always. Lawless gangs crushing dissent and ignoring civil rights while keeping their identity concealed? It’s all so fucking on the nose sometimes.
In 1865, at the conclusion of the Civil War, six Confederate veterans gathered in Pulaski, Tennessee, to create the Ku Klux Klan, a vigilante group mobilizing a campaign of violence and terror against the African American people that benefited from the progress of Reconstruction. As the group gained members from all strata of Southern white society, it used violent intimidation to prevent Black Americans — and any white people who supported Reconstruction — from voting and holding political office.
In 2024, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) underwent notable reconfigurations among its ranks. Two of the larger factions — the Old Glory Knights and the Loyal White Knights — either faded from relevance or ceased operations altogether. In the wake of these dissolutions, newer groups, such as the Maryland White Knights and the Sacred White Knights, emerged, gaining traction from members of the defunct chapters. This year has also seen an increase in collaborative efforts between Klan groups and other white supremacist organizations. The United Klan Nation notably co-hosted events with the Aryan Freedom Network, while antisemitic Christian Identity and Klan-affiliated networks, including the Church of the Keystone Knights and Kingdom Identity Ministries, overlapped through shared leadership.
he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on their health care demands
FIFH: I won’t negotiate until you stop trying to negotiate.
Well Reps control the House, Senate and Executive branches, I read this as he will not negotiate inside his own party
