A far as I'm concerned, they're just intentionally failing to do their job. And they *all* in congress should be fired for job abandonment. And yes, rerun elections, with those idiots not allowed to run.
After all, when I look at my W2 (yeah, I'm a working stiff), they sure as hell are taking out taxes still. That aint "shut down". It's a scam.
Something about "taxation without representation". I think we went to war over that before.
Indeed. In Australia, a government was once dismissed after failing to pass supply bills in the Senate (Supply bills allocate money to the government). The Governor-General resolved the deadlock by dissolving Parliament and calling an election. The event is known as “The Dismissal”. It remains one of the key examples of the Governor-General’s reserve powers in action.
The system is setup to prevent political opportunism and provide predictability and rigidity of the system at the expense of being slower to respond to constituents.
The incentive is still there, it’s just a few years off in the next election.
(That being said… sighing loudly as he gestures around him at all the political opportunism…)
> There is no serious incentive to avoid this in the US. In fact, you're incentivised to be complicit in the shutdown and then blame the other party.
Which is precisely what's happening.
Im frankly done with the children bickering. But in all seriousness, neither party really cares about us. Republicans are engorged with the tech neofascists, and the democrats are caught up with special interest du jour, with a healthy smattering of surveillance as well.
Ive seen how the governments (local, state, federal) operate. It's fucked, and its going to be a long time to fix it, if possible.
Not sure what my plans are, honestly. Take it as I can, i guess.
The US really needs formalized processes for snap elections and easier ability to recall elected officials. The fact that this is happening and we all just have to sit on our hands and wait for the next election is wild.
This is being done by the people America collectively elected. Moar Elections is not going to help. Enough Americans want this chaos and deliberately voted for it.
Unless your theory is that the median voter is kind of an idiot who doesn't understand how the government works and goes based on vibes.
Such a person would ignore any issue short of, say, their paychecks or SSA benefits not arriving on time. After that, who knows who they would support?
Democrats have a lot less to lose than the GOP right now. The party is unpopular and locked out of power. There's only upside to shutting the government down, if you ignore the very serious impacts on normal people.
Trump is not capable of seeing this because he reflexively has to win every conflict he's involved in.
There was nothing to stop the Republican party from unilaterally averting the shutdown, and there's nothing stopping them from unilaterally ending it. They have the majority in both houses as well as the presidency, so they can pass anything they like.
The only road bump in place is the Senate filibuster rule - but that's a rule that can be (and has been) tossed aside when inconvenient. Recall that Republicans removed the filibuster from judicial appointments when they wanted to ram through multiple Supreme Court justices and hundreds of lower court judges.
The underlying problem is that the current Republican party wants this shutdown because it reinforces their half-century-long message that government is broken and gives them cover to remove federal workers.
It also doesn't help that the House is remaining closed to delay seating an incoming Democrat representative from an Arizona special election.
> Unless your theory is that the median voter is kind of an idiot who doesn't understand how the government works and goes based on vibes.
I think the median voter looks at what a politician says they are going to do, assumes they are going to do it, and votes based on that. Say what you will about the Trump administration, they are doing exactly what they were shouting from the rooftops that they would do. Grief people they don't like, sow chaos and division, start a devastating trade war on multiple fronts, and cause daily chaos and drama. They said it loud and clear for years before the election. They got elected. And, then they did it!
If I had anything good to say about these guys it's that they were 100% transparent about their plans and they followed up on them right out of the gate. Exactly zero people should be surprised at what they delivered. It's actually pretty impressive how faithfully they are delivering on all of their promises of destruction and chaos! In fact, polls of Republicans show consistent, strong and enthusiastic approval of the administrations actions, as they themselves fall deeper into poverty and hopelessness.
>After all, when I look at my W2 (yeah, I'm a working stiff), they sure as hell are taking out taxes still. That aint "shut down". It's a scam.
This is because a significant amount of the government is still running. [1] Around 50% of gov employees are currently working without pay (but with expected backpay). If _everyone_ stopped working major systems would immediately be disrupted: The military would stop all operations. Planes would be grounded. Weather predictions would cease to exist. Food & pharmaceuticals wouldn't be screened. Participants in medical studies would stop getting treatments. etc.
Contractors are also capable covering expenses with overhead. But soon, many will run out. For example, the contractors who perform nuclear weapons research [2]. At which time, they will have to shut down and employees will be furloughed without guarantee of backpay. (The current expectation is unpaid leave) As someone who works in a related civilian field this would severely impact our mission and the folks who work here. Especially the newer ones like postdocs who may not have much savings.
> they're just intentionally failing to do their job
How is this a hot take? The debt ceiling is statute. Electeds are doing what their voters want them to do. Until shutdowns result in a bipartisan anti-incumbency wave, they won’t go away. (The electoral consequences of shutting down the government are mixed at best.)
Just a nit but this isn't a debt ceiling issue. They raised the ceiling by 5trillion with the big bill passed in the spring[0]. Shutdowns occur because no budget has been passed so the government hasn't been authorized to spend any money. The bill they are arguing over now would fund the government through Nov 21st[1].
> so the government hasn't been authorized to spend any money
Thank you for catching. Mixed up my fuckups. I’m sure the administration that’s been illegally impounding mandated spending is absolutely constrained by the law in this case…
> And they all in congress should be fired for job abandonment. And yes, rerun elections, with those idiots not allowed to run.
I find these takes very tiresome. What kind of insight can you draw from this all or nothing thinking? It’s reductive and uninteresting.
Not all elected representatives are refusing to work. Collective punishment creates an opportunity for bad actors to force an election and remove their colleagues from office.
> After all, when I look at my W2 (yeah, I'm a working stiff), they sure as hell are taking out taxes still. That aint "shut down". It's a scam.
Well yeah, of course they are. You still owe taxes. When the government reopens the taxes you pay will still be allocated.
> Something about "taxation without representation". I think we went to war over that before.
This is not what was meant by taxation without representation. We do have elected representation, even in a government shutdown. Congress refusing to work is not a consequence of the government shutdown, it is a political choice made by elected representatives.
People outside the US pay attention and all the mess created/enabled there is actually appealing to some. I'd say it's funny in isolation, until my highschool friend mentioned that we should have our own Trump to stop Muslims coming in. It's a shitty example to the world.
The President typically has a lot of influence over party members in normal times, the Republican sychopants who are in Congress now will do whatever he says. A bipartisan border bill was killed before Trump even got re-elected[0] simply because he didn't want it passed.
And scheduling a call between Indonesia's President and Eric Trump[0].
> In a private exchange picked up by microphones, the Indonesian leader asked to meet Eric Trump, to which the president answered, “I’ll have Eric call you,”
> We’re building a great hotel, and that’s going to start very soon. And I never met the president, and I used to go over there quite a bit. And obviously we manage teams over there, and it’s pretty amazing that he knew who I was. And, you know, it’s obviously — I don’t get involved in politics in Indonesia — but when I heard that, I started laughing. ‘Can I please meet Eric?’ He must know the projects very well.
A far as I'm concerned, they're just intentionally failing to do their job. And they *all* in congress should be fired for job abandonment. And yes, rerun elections, with those idiots not allowed to run.
After all, when I look at my W2 (yeah, I'm a working stiff), they sure as hell are taking out taxes still. That aint "shut down". It's a scam.
Something about "taxation without representation". I think we went to war over that before.
A failure like this would immediately trigger reelections in the UK. It's a strong incentive to not shut down the government.
There is no serious incentive to avoid this in the US. In fact, you're incentivised to be complicit in the shutdown and then blame the other party.
Indeed. In Australia, a government was once dismissed after failing to pass supply bills in the Senate (Supply bills allocate money to the government). The Governor-General resolved the deadlock by dissolving Parliament and calling an election. The event is known as “The Dismissal”. It remains one of the key examples of the Governor-General’s reserve powers in action.
In general, this is by design in The States.
The system is setup to prevent political opportunism and provide predictability and rigidity of the system at the expense of being slower to respond to constituents.
The incentive is still there, it’s just a few years off in the next election.
(That being said… sighing loudly as he gestures around him at all the political opportunism…)
> There is no serious incentive to avoid this in the US. In fact, you're incentivised to be complicit in the shutdown and then blame the other party.
Which is precisely what's happening.
Im frankly done with the children bickering. But in all seriousness, neither party really cares about us. Republicans are engorged with the tech neofascists, and the democrats are caught up with special interest du jour, with a healthy smattering of surveillance as well.
Ive seen how the governments (local, state, federal) operate. It's fucked, and its going to be a long time to fix it, if possible.
Not sure what my plans are, honestly. Take it as I can, i guess.
The US really needs formalized processes for snap elections and easier ability to recall elected officials. The fact that this is happening and we all just have to sit on our hands and wait for the next election is wild.
This is being done by the people America collectively elected. Moar Elections is not going to help. Enough Americans want this chaos and deliberately voted for it.
Unless your theory is that the median voter is kind of an idiot who doesn't understand how the government works and goes based on vibes.
Such a person would ignore any issue short of, say, their paychecks or SSA benefits not arriving on time. After that, who knows who they would support?
Democrats have a lot less to lose than the GOP right now. The party is unpopular and locked out of power. There's only upside to shutting the government down, if you ignore the very serious impacts on normal people.
Trump is not capable of seeing this because he reflexively has to win every conflict he's involved in.
There was nothing to stop the Republican party from unilaterally averting the shutdown, and there's nothing stopping them from unilaterally ending it. They have the majority in both houses as well as the presidency, so they can pass anything they like.
The only road bump in place is the Senate filibuster rule - but that's a rule that can be (and has been) tossed aside when inconvenient. Recall that Republicans removed the filibuster from judicial appointments when they wanted to ram through multiple Supreme Court justices and hundreds of lower court judges.
The underlying problem is that the current Republican party wants this shutdown because it reinforces their half-century-long message that government is broken and gives them cover to remove federal workers.
It also doesn't help that the House is remaining closed to delay seating an incoming Democrat representative from an Arizona special election.
Expect this shutdown to continue for a while.
> Unless your theory is that the median voter is kind of an idiot who doesn't understand how the government works and goes based on vibes.
I think the median voter looks at what a politician says they are going to do, assumes they are going to do it, and votes based on that. Say what you will about the Trump administration, they are doing exactly what they were shouting from the rooftops that they would do. Grief people they don't like, sow chaos and division, start a devastating trade war on multiple fronts, and cause daily chaos and drama. They said it loud and clear for years before the election. They got elected. And, then they did it!
If I had anything good to say about these guys it's that they were 100% transparent about their plans and they followed up on them right out of the gate. Exactly zero people should be surprised at what they delivered. It's actually pretty impressive how faithfully they are delivering on all of their promises of destruction and chaos! In fact, polls of Republicans show consistent, strong and enthusiastic approval of the administrations actions, as they themselves fall deeper into poverty and hopelessness.
>After all, when I look at my W2 (yeah, I'm a working stiff), they sure as hell are taking out taxes still. That aint "shut down". It's a scam.
This is because a significant amount of the government is still running. [1] Around 50% of gov employees are currently working without pay (but with expected backpay). If _everyone_ stopped working major systems would immediately be disrupted: The military would stop all operations. Planes would be grounded. Weather predictions would cease to exist. Food & pharmaceuticals wouldn't be screened. Participants in medical studies would stop getting treatments. etc.
Contractors are also capable covering expenses with overhead. But soon, many will run out. For example, the contractors who perform nuclear weapons research [2]. At which time, they will have to shut down and employees will be furloughed without guarantee of backpay. (The current expectation is unpaid leave) As someone who works in a related civilian field this would severely impact our mission and the folks who work here. Especially the newer ones like postdocs who may not have much savings.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/who-is-still-workin...
[2]: https://sourcenm.com/2025/10/17/doe-secretary-nnsa-to-furlou...
> they're just intentionally failing to do their job
How is this a hot take? The debt ceiling is statute. Electeds are doing what their voters want them to do. Until shutdowns result in a bipartisan anti-incumbency wave, they won’t go away. (The electoral consequences of shutting down the government are mixed at best.)
Just a nit but this isn't a debt ceiling issue. They raised the ceiling by 5trillion with the big bill passed in the spring[0]. Shutdowns occur because no budget has been passed so the government hasn't been authorized to spend any money. The bill they are arguing over now would fund the government through Nov 21st[1].
0: https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finan...
1: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/19/nx-s1-5545929/house-stopgap-f...
> so the government hasn't been authorized to spend any money
Thank you for catching. Mixed up my fuckups. I’m sure the administration that’s been illegally impounding mandated spending is absolutely constrained by the law in this case…
> And they all in congress should be fired for job abandonment. And yes, rerun elections, with those idiots not allowed to run.
I find these takes very tiresome. What kind of insight can you draw from this all or nothing thinking? It’s reductive and uninteresting.
Not all elected representatives are refusing to work. Collective punishment creates an opportunity for bad actors to force an election and remove their colleagues from office.
> After all, when I look at my W2 (yeah, I'm a working stiff), they sure as hell are taking out taxes still. That aint "shut down". It's a scam.
Well yeah, of course they are. You still owe taxes. When the government reopens the taxes you pay will still be allocated.
> Something about "taxation without representation". I think we went to war over that before.
This is not what was meant by taxation without representation. We do have elected representation, even in a government shutdown. Congress refusing to work is not a consequence of the government shutdown, it is a political choice made by elected representatives.
This uptime monitor must be streaming illegal football (soccer) because it's blocked in Spain.
And the funny thing is free football is working as always. I know because a friend is watching a game right now while he comments on HN.cloudflare. Most of the internet behind cloudflare is blocked whenever there are football being played in La Liga (the Spanish League).
This is outrageous. Does Spain have a "Great Firewall" like China?
No, they just make all ISP operating in the country mass block IPs.
Love it. However if this were realistic, it would say Partial outage so as to not trigger the SLAs
Sorry for the inconvenience, we're currently pausing some services to avoid releasing the Epstein files.
Love it! One nit: the % number jiggles around. This can be fixed either by left aligning the number, or by using a monospaced font.
Or using ‘tabular figures’ for the numbers. It keeps just the number widths the same. I believe it’s ‘font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums;’ in CSS.
I often see it on sports broadcasts, or anything with a counter where the number changes and makes the rest of the line ‘jiggle’.
It's too bad the page only goes back 15 years.
It would be a bit cooler if it went all the way back to the first government shutdown under Carter.
I applaud this. "Your tax dollars at rest"
They can come home, all is forgiven.
- if governement is down does that mean citzans do not have to pay any taxes
- All US workers need to go on strike until you get a government that works for the whole population ;)
Yeah but like this isn't funny anymore guys
It's kinda funny if you don't live in the US.
I live in the US, and it's still kinda funny. Mostly not, but is kinda.
People outside the US pay attention and all the mess created/enabled there is actually appealing to some. I'd say it's funny in isolation, until my highschool friend mentioned that we should have our own Trump to stop Muslims coming in. It's a shitty example to the world.
i'd say go tell the felon(s) in the white house, but they're currently busy having a gold-encrusted ball room built
He's also busy shitposting AI slop videos[1] of himself. Man's got to have priorities.
1: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1oaemj3/trump_post...
Trump seems to have no inhibitions about his posts.
To be fair though, this shutdown was brought about by Congress. The Senate has not approved a bill, so the POTUS has nothing to sign.
The President typically has a lot of influence over party members in normal times, the Republican sychopants who are in Congress now will do whatever he says. A bipartisan border bill was killed before Trump even got re-elected[0] simply because he didn't want it passed.
0: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-kill-b...
And scheduling a call between Indonesia's President and Eric Trump[0].
> In a private exchange picked up by microphones, the Indonesian leader asked to meet Eric Trump, to which the president answered, “I’ll have Eric call you,”
> We’re building a great hotel, and that’s going to start very soon. And I never met the president, and I used to go over there quite a bit. And obviously we manage teams over there, and it’s pretty amazing that he knew who I was. And, you know, it’s obviously — I don’t get involved in politics in Indonesia — but when I heard that, I started laughing. ‘Can I please meet Eric?’ He must know the projects very well.
0: https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/eric-trump-indonesi...
Wish there was a simple way to get updates on large swings in the government shut down poly market.
I’d really like to know when things are shifting without having to watch the stupid news every day.
Needs to go back further - there were shutdowns 30 years ago
Where's the up time monitor for this site? It seems to be down.
(Tech) Debt seems to be a frequent cause of (Tech) outages.
This says "USDA operational"
two nines
Should've listened to Herman Cain :)
"Have you tried turning it off and on?"