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MAVEN Mission To Mars Will Proceed, Despite Shutdown
necro81 writes "Due to the ongoing shutdown of the U.S. Government, NASA is largely grounded. This is bad for all kinds of reasons, but one particularly bad outcome would have been missing the launch window for the MAVEN spacecraft, due to launch 18 November. The next launch window would not have been until 2016. MAVEN, thankfully, has been given the go-ahead, in large part because this orbiter will serve as a vital communications link for the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers currently on the surface. Currently, these rovers are served by two aging orbiters: Mars Odyssey (launched 2001) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (launched 2005). Maintaining communications with the rovers is considered essential, hence the preparations and launch will proceed. (NASA's official mission website is currently offline.)"
To quote Scotty: "You cannot change the law of physics!". It would be a sad day we would have to explain to later generations that we missed a launch window because of a childish fight of some politicians.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Ummmm... AFAIK, the federal employees have days off WITHOUT pay...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Just because you don't agree with a democratically elected government doesn't mean that it is corrupt, and it doesn't mean that its policies are unpopular. (By unpopular, I assume you mean that the majority disagree with it.)
I also find it mildly ironic that a person who accuses the government of corruption seems to feel that the current situation is normal, since misappropriating a law that deals with the government's budgetary process in order to combat a law that would otherwise pass through the legislature strikes me as corruption.
Just because you don't agree with a democratically elected government doesn't mean that it is corrupt
You could read his post. As noted, the Obama administration has decided which parts of the law to delay and which not to, even though they weren't given that option (in other words, illegally). Various waivers of Obamacare provisions have been made to Democrat party allies. And there is indeed an exemption for certain government employees (I just know of Congress and its staff having a specific exemption).
When certain people have to follow the law and other, better connected people don't, that's corruption whether you agree with it or not.
and it doesn't mean that its policies are unpopular
There, I would go by public opinion too. Polls indicate most people don't have a clue. So it's not unpopular as I would see it - yet.
I also find it mildly ironic that a person who accuses the government of corruption seems to feel that the current situation is normal, since misappropriating a law that deals with the government's budgetary process in order to combat a law that would otherwise pass through the legislature strikes me as corruption.
Why is that corruption? This is how the law is meant to be used. It's incentive for people to compromise rather than not pass some sort of funding legislation (real budgets or the current continuing resolutions) for years on end.
Yes, but it's generally expected that once congress gets back in order they'll authorised back-pay, as has happened in previous shutdowns. Some of the employees may need to borrow money to get them through the crisis, but they'll get paid. Eventually. Probably.
"to furlough ( that is let federal employees have days off ) with pay"
furlough is UNPAID leave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlough
a furlough (/frlo/; from Dutch: "verlof", leave of absence) is a temporary unpaid leave of some employees due to special needs of a company, which may be due to economic conditions at the specific employer or in the economy as a whole.
the Affordable Care Act was made LAW last year. get it? LAW. So some politicians are ignoring the LAW and holding the REST OF THE GOVERNMENT hostage.
"And there is indeed an exemption for certain government employees (I just know of Congress and its staff having a specific exemption)."
Congress does not have an Obamacare waiver. In fact, Congressmen and their staffs are now *required* to purchase health insurance from the new health care exchanges and have lost their existing government health plans. This is a bizarre misconception I hear all the time from the right, so I'm guessing it's coming from talk radio but I have no idea. Yes, the government is subsizing part of their coverage just as most other employers do, but I will repeat: Congress is REQUIRED to purchase health care provided by the ACA.
-Ted http://www.freemathhelp.com/
Yeah, because a small scientific orbiter in Martian orbit would be a great way to spy on people on Earth.
-Ted http://www.freemathhelp.com/
Who says it's for monitoring folks on EARTH?
NSA is a proactive organization you know.. It may be a few years out, but *somebody* must be planning a trip and the NSA KNOWS about it..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
so what? two-thirds of the federal govenrment serves no good purpose, they're just parasites on our dime.
... according to your own personal definition of "no good purpose". The problem is there are 316 million people in the USA, and every one of them has a different idea of what parts of the government are worth funding, and which are a waste of money. What you see as worthless I may see as an essential service, and vice versa.
Fortunately, we have a mechanism for resolving these disputes, it's called representative democracy. People vote for representatives who then represent their views in the legislature, and those representatives vote on laws and policy. Through this mechanism, the people's will can be (roughly) reflected by the government's policies.
The problem we have currently is that there is a 20% minority (the Tea Party) that is laboring under the delusion that they are a majority, and therefore they think they have the right to coerce the rest of the nation into doing things their way. Procedural shenanigans notwithstanding, that's not how a democracy works, as the Republicans are quickly finding out.
TL;DR: If the Tea Partiers want a nation with a low-tax/low-service government, they need to convince a majority of American voters to elect Tea Party representatives, at which point they'll have control and they can govern as they see fit. Until then, they need to get out of the way; we've a country to run and their narcissistic bullshit is pointless and destructive.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
it is just a show to try to shame or scare the public into doing a unpleasant thing ( continue to bring on board an unpopular law
Unpopular with the right because they think poor people should just die, fuck 'em, and unpopular with the left who want the insurance industry's parasites completely OUT of the health care and want us to have something sane like Europe and Canada has. But Congress passed ACA, Republicans tried unsuccessfully to repeal it, the Republican candidate for President ran on a platform of "kill Obamacare" and lost, so the childish tea party shuts down the government because the majority won't go along with their looneyness.
Yes, I called you a loon. Whether left or right wing, ideologues are loonie tunes and should be ignored.
Free Martian Whores!
Congress is a large employer. Many large employers bought health insurance for their workers already and Obamacare mandates that they all do so in future. Congress was one of those large employers.
BUT THE REPUBLICANS DIDN'T LIKE THAT so they pushed for an amendment requiring Congress workers to get their health insurance from Obamacare's non-employer markets, which doesn't make any sense, but they figured when the Democrats said "No, that's stupid" they could spin it as "See, Democrats don't want Obamacare, they're just forcing others to use it". So, fine, the Democrats accepted the stupid Republican amendment
BUT AGAIN THE REPUBLICANS DIDN'T LIKE THAT so they said you can't subsidise medical care for employees (even though Congress has done that for many years). They tried to push through an amendment that would effectively cut pay to all Congressional staff by thousands of dollars, pretending that this was an "Obamacare subsidy" when in fact it's part of those employees normal pay and conditions.
And this time their own staff rebelled, because it's all very well being in favour of protecting rapists and eliminating welfare, but when it comes to your family going without because your employer wanted to look good on Fox News then it all gets very real. So that plan never happened.
The ONLY reason Congress is special at all in the Obamacare legislation is because REPUBLICANS insisted on it. So when you hear a REPUBLICAN moaning about that, remember they VOTED to make things the way they're complaining about. Hmmm, what's that about eh?
It predates Rush Limbaugh though it came in to usage shortly after the Second World War. My view on this is that it's a cheap rhetorical opportunity for me to say "fuck you" to a deserving group of people.
If this bothers you, then good. You are the kind of person I wish to bother by using this term.