It's good to be da king

All TSA agents should strike at the same time those days, wearing green hats and fake mustaches
- Nothing would change, the TSA does nothing but harass lawful citizens.
- They aren't allowed to strike.
Have you met them? They're basically otherwise unemployable.
- I have a friend who is a TSA agent and he's a lovely and intelligent person. He took the job because it was the best thing available to him and federal jobs (usually) come with very good benefits and health coverage. He hadn't seen a doctor for about 6 years before he got the job because his insurance and PTO was so terrible at his last job.
So far they've gotten paid every time, just late.
So far...
- If my job ever skips a check I'm not coming back until I get it. Fuck that. Everyone not getting paid because of this should stay home and let chaos happen. Cause some real consequences to Musk and the rest of them.
Go to work and do nothing but look for a new job on your phone. What are they gonna do, not pay you anymore?

And they ripped out funding for pediatric cancer research. $250 million.... or around 0.05% of president Musk's net worth. Why do repubs hate kids with cancer?

Because they're not profitable.
Also 900 million will not be going to North Carolina hurricane relief.
Cold heartless bastards
- Assuming I did my math correctly these two things would have been a combined total of .002% of the federal budget.
- You mean the state that put this asshole in power?
  Leopards getting fat here.
- why can't north carolina use hurricane insurance instead of relying on the feds?
They want to strip away everything that reduces infant mortality, so that people start having more kids again since so many of them will die young.
Then later they give it back, and since they already took away the right to abortion... Boom, population explosion and a bunch of poor kids are born to later be exploited in factories and wars.
Whoa whoa whoa you can't go around funding kids healthcare. Then they are gonna become adult voters who expect more free healthcare.
You want kids who get to adulthood on the skin of their teeth, or kids who don't get to adulthood at all. There's no in-between.

TSA agents are ineffectual on the best of days, but without pay? Between that and the amazing production quality at Boeing I'm quite content to not fly anywhere.

President Musk flexing his muscles even before puppet inauguration.

I don't know, I still think Putin has info on Trump that Trump really doesn't want to be public for whatever reason. So I'm thinking he would defer to Putin.
- I used to think that, but there's nothing Trump could have done that the loony right wing public wouldn't gleefully dismiss as not important. (Well, apart from a lewd orgy with trans Muslim Mexican immigrants, but I don't think any of those exist, and Trump would just call it faked anyway.)
  Now I think that Putin just rings him up to tell him what a great president he is and all the world admires how strong a leader he is, not like those weak Democrats who (insert policy Putin wants dropped), no, Trump is a strong and courageous leader and everyone can tell how strong and virile he is because he supports policies like (insert policy that Putin wants implemented).
  I mean maybe there's a video of Trump shouting "Yes, shove that big beautiful black dildo in me harder!", but I don't think it's necessary at all. See how easy it was for the North Korean president to get Trump to completely change direction. He just sweet talked him for a bit. Trump is an absolute sucker for someone he perceives as strong telling him he's great. American foreign policy is at the whim of any world leader who can make Trump feel proud of himself for a week.
what would happen if Putin and Musk disagree at some point
Nothing significant. Musk is running on a purely American strain of right-wing revanchism. Trying to deflect all our problems onto Evil Foreign Man is a big part of why the country is as fucked as it is today. We simply cannot let ourselves believe that the fascist strain gripping our country by the taint is American born and bred. So every four years, Republicans accuse the Democrats of being Chinese and Democrats accuse the Republicans of being Russian, and then the parties do old fashioned American Protestant Capitalism to the country while we all writhe in torment, looking for someone else to blame.

Out of the loop, what do you mean SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT???

It’s a thing that’s been happening a lot over the past few years where US politicians refuse to sign bills that approve government spending (such as continuing to pay government employees) until their demands about some unrelated thing are met.
- I believe the term for this is “political blackmail”.
  Why it is accepted and legal, I don’t understand.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/congress-has-to-pass-another-stopgap-funding-bill-what-happens-in-a-shutdown/3784733/
Don't worry, the DEA will work for IOUs until the matter is settled.

Musk says Americans will have to face 'hardship' if Trump wins

And if someone is going to hijack a plane to pilot it into a building, i doubt their mission would depend on a large tube of toothpaste and a nail clipper
- "Heh heh heh, finally, I can sneak enough explosive toothpaste into the plane!"
  That's the terrorists right now, how do you feel now, huh? It's not a joke. TSA is extremely serious. 😤

We need to teach him to be scared of us.

Good luck. He can afford a personal army to protect him.
- There are more of us.

Why do they have to work? Doesn’t it make more sense to shutdown US airports?

Because people need to eat.
Also, some air travel is essential.
Or do you want to stop medical couriers from delivering organs for transplant?
- Are you trying to imply...that the medical couriers ...are transporting ...food?
- Lol the idea of a medical courier waiting in line at the TSA rummaging through their organ containers because they flagged it sus in the x-ray machine.
- They are only doing it in the first place because they need to eat
  Or do you want to stop medical couriers from delivering organs for transplant?
  The rich would give in long before this and have the mattered settled in an emergency meeting because they have places they want to go

I hope that US citizens will remember who caused the chaos out of pure spite when the next election comes around.

Why would anyone remember? You clearly don't remember how often this happens.
This happens constantly and 80% of the time it's republicans playing games (not being unable to agree, but agreeing and then doing stupid shit because of the tea party or Trumpers or whatever)
Remember? Mmmmwwwwhahahahaha!
Not a chance, not with the publics goldfish like memory span and media companies pushing their narrative.
The next election will be like the kind they have in Russia.
- Not unlikely, indeed. Sorry for you, chaps. We went through this about 80 years ago, and we mostly learned our lesson.

I get it, but having people feel bad for the TSA of all organizations is a tall order. Why not pick a less controversial gov agency effected like say the National Parks and Museums?

Probably because parks and museums usually just close whenever this happens, so they're not working without pay. They're just on an indefinite suspension
- And yet I can feel for them more, If the TSA was gone tomorrow I could not care.

Ruining the holidays for a bunch of government employees, not just TSA. I am more worried about air traffic controllers, NASA, NOAA, FDA, the VA (yeah they suck, but a lot of people depend on them and making them work unpaid is definitely not going to improve anything), and thousands of other government employees that will go without pay. The longer it lasts, the worse it will be for the economy.

Damn. Imagine just showing up to work knowing you won't be paid, with a bunch of other coworkers who are in the exact same socio-economic hostage crisis.
Gotta wonder if there's some kind of organizational remedy. Like... a collection of workers who could all respond together as a single labor unit to demand a different set of policies on pain of withholding their labor until their demands are met.
- I've heard of these! They're called onions!
- I am old enough to remember when Reagan used military and scabs to bust the air traffic controllers' strike. Hopefully this time people won't cross picket lines.

Not even a government shutdown can stop the TSA from harassing people

Remember when the goverment was first shut down in a long time, if ever before, when Republicans thought it would be a good ratfucker move to harm Obama's presidency, and it blew up in their faces, and our Country went from a AAAA rated borrower to a AAA borrower due to government disfunction? We seriously need a law that prevents this stupid shit from happening again. Maybe if they don't pass funding, we just renew the last passed funding. It pisses me off so much. Imagine getting paid a significant amount of tax payer money, a life long sipend, and better health care than most the county, and not even doing your job and letting the goverment shut down. At some point here the lawlessness is going to convince enough people that it seriously doesn't matter anymore.

We seriously need a law that prevents this stupid shit from happening again. Maybe if they don't pass funding, we just renew the last passed funding
What we do in Australia is of the government can't pass a budget we dissolve the government and go for elections.
Clearly the MP are not doing their jobs so make them run for their jobs again.
- That works in a parliamentary system, because the state and the government are two different things. In the U.S. system, they are functionally the same thing. We can't dissolve the government, or we'd have to rebuild the entire state apparatus from the ground up.
Maybe if they don’t pass funding, we just renew the last passed funding.
This is exactly what happened a few days ago in France. While it's not perfect, it's still a whole lot better than a shutdown.

"let them eat cake" -Elon Musk

two memes in one post?

So is a South African buying his way into the U.S. presidency, but here we are.
- You know, I've heard of a solution to the CEO problem recently thats making the news cycle..
- Can't build a wall tall enough for southafrica. Us Mex people know that.

Theater of security isn't helpful anyway. I say it's even harmful, as it makes cars more attractive over public transport and get more shit in our lungs as result.

Unfortunately it wouldn't come to removal of said theater, it will leed to unpaid employees doing a bad job
- Indeed. Doing other way around is much better.
You're kind of missing the point

I wonder how this will affect unexpected delays during holiday travel.

Badly

i feel sorry for SNL. how will they survive this?

They may not have to.

I'm still seeing that the shutdown is looming. Did anything change?

Nope. Elon Musk is still the president.
- Lol I meant has the shutdown happened, but thank you for the update.

At least half of them voted for that. 🤷

Did we not abolish the TSA yet? Funny how we're always losing ground on everything.

You don't like poorly trained, poorly paid rent-a-cops screaming at you to take of your shoes and empty your pockets and x-ray you while they steal your Nintendo Switch?

Who in their right mind is going to work without being paid?

People who expect to be paid eventually and still need the healthcare? Other than that...
Because if they don't do that pro-bono work demanded of them they would be fired.
They'll get back pay after the government re-opens. They just can't get paid during the shutdown.

But they're going to get paid when the budget is approved again, right?

It's a problem for who lives paycheck to paycheck, though

Most people making 50k are working 4th-next-paycheck to 5th-next-paycheck tho.
- And Christmas accentuates the problem as we collectively decided that we need to spend a paycheck in useless stuff to gift each other

Musk and Trump showed me, that I don't have to think about being a good enough person... Obviously I easily am (it's enough not to kill/rape/extort,.... who would have thought it's so easy?)

Not a meme.

meme
/mēm/
noun
A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
Any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
A self-propagating unit of cultural evolution having a resemblance to the gene (the unit of genetics).
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik
- Don't worry about it. This person has announced that they will be putting this in every post they decide doesn't fit their personal criteria until they're banned.
  And their bio is a lie. They proved that in the same thread.
- The current definition is actually just "thing on internet". But the reason the person you're responding is upset is they are a hyper conservative bootstrapper.