The Military WILL Get Paid During Govt Shutdown, Quit Using Us as Political Pawns

As a military guy, I'd like to weigh in on the impending government shut down. First off, today is a great day to lookup Washington Monument Syndrome, a term used to describe the phenomenon of government agencies in the United States cutting the most visible or appreciated service provided by the government when faced with budget cuts. The military is often flaunted as tear-jerking, heart-wrenching stories of real-life valiant heroes who are victimized by a government shut down. Not so.

There are a couple (8) of points I would like to make:

1. I could not imagine this playing out like in the Galactic Senate. Palpatine would have already used the Galactic option. Of course his nuclear option was to abolish representative government in favor of an autocracy, and kill off the other political party, and the cub scouts...But hey, the star ships would arrive on time! At least we have that.

2. As a member of the military, I have lived through, essentially four government shutdowns now (95, 96, 13, 18). I have never NOT received a paycheck. I repeat, never. As a CENTCOM representative pointed out, as far as day to day operations, are concerned the government shutdown doesn't affect them. The SECDEF, may he live forever, sent a memo out stating that military operations would continue.

3. There is probably a really good reason that they scheduled the Continuing resolutions to end on a Friday in the middle of the month. For all intents and purposes the government is shut down for the most part on weekends (Except for the poor bastards that have duty). generally the legislature has time to strut around like peacocks for a couple of days and point blame before getting down to business.

4. The Veterans Health Administration, has already been funded, through a separate bill, so they will not be closing. Retirement pay is handled through an annuity, so retirees will still get their stipend. Social Security Payments will still get paid, because it is non-discretionary spending.

5. If you are a right wing ideologue you will blame the Democrats in Congress. If you are a liberal snowflake, you will blame the president and the republicans in congress. The truth is, there are 536 people responsible for this (House, Senate, and Presidency). I feel like they all should take some of the responsibility.

6. The founding fathers wrote the constitution, to make passing laws difficult, not easy. Remember, most of them were libertarian land owners, who wanted to not pay taxes to the crown as much as they wanted "liberty." They saw big government as an encroachment on that, so everything was made to be as complicated as possible to pass those laws.

7. Refer back to the last half of my first point. Be thankful we do live in a country where we can complain about a government shutdown. Where we have a legislature that is silly and ignorant, and we can VOTE out of office, if we are so inclined.

8. I personally think the greatest travesty in all of this is that the Armed Forces Network (AFN) is off the air right now. This essentially means that our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen overseas cannot watch the AFC and NFC championship games today.

As an aside, I'd love to see a Minnesota Vikings vs Jacksonville Jaguars SuperBowl Matchup.

• Neither has won a SuperBowl so history would be made either way.
• Minnesota Vikings would be the first team to ever play a SuperBowl in their home stadium.
• I'm a Cowboys fan, therefore, I hate the Eagles.
• Everyone hates the Patriots, even if their "Framing Fathers" mascot happen to be my personal heroes.