From across the pond, from anonymous .... below the fold:
If you are not in the US, the whole social machinations for money debate which is holding up the US government process has got to seem pretty stupid. If you are in the US, you lives aren't going to change much on a daily basis. Whether or not you tolerate the Tea Party, support it, or want to drop the rock right back on their thick heads - the implications for US personnel overseas are significant.
Personally, I don't like being held hostage to some right wing agenda. I make a very good living as does my husband. And we should have our tax rate drop from 35% to 25% because? Why? So that some one on the poverty line can drop below as they pick up a larger share of the burden? So that we cut health services to the impoverished - driving even more into the ERs where care is even more expensive than the basic pre-natal care, childhood immunizations?
To top it off today - it was a XXXX training holiday. Means that active duty were off work while civilians worried about having a paycheck. About making their own rent, feeding their families. Fretting that they could not get to the commissary today. Which might be shut tomorrow, leaving them without bread, milk and TP.
Never mind you might be able to buy many things cheaper in XXXX than in the PX, it is the principle of anxiety foisted off by those who "are holding the troops hostage."
Last time I looked - that was one of the definitions of terrorists.