The Romans had a saying for this, they called it Bread and Circuses.

But the majority of the ones I see apparently don't care about those affected. As a Disabled American Veteran I am appalled that I gave my time and efforts for people like that.

Yes I'm affected by this, I will survive because I have a good job but I'll be loosing 1/3rd of my monthly income if this continues to the end of the month. Think about all of the disabled Veterans who will be struggling to survive because they rely on that income. The same Veterans that gave of themselves so that you can complain on this forum.

Are you serious? Do you realize that not everyone will receive back pay during this time?

You honestly see this as a vacation? Tell you what... Why don't you take all of your paychecks during this time period and send them to a charity. Because for non-essential personnel that's pretty much what's happened to them in the past and what will probably happen to them when this is over. Oh, and those same people you see as having a vacation were already not being paid for a few days a week before this whole thing started because of the budget issues.

Speaking as a non-American you should respectfully shut your mouth. Since you obviously do not know American politics you are not qualified to run your mouth and since you are not a voter you are especially unqualified to speak about our politics. Just like I am unqualified to speak about yours, so I don't.

Seriously? Considering that the Republicans are the ones holding the budget hostage exactly how are the Democrats withholding anything? The last time this happened (17 years ago) It was also the Republicans that caused the government to shut down. Perhaps you should do some reading on the Fox News site where "Fox contributor and National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg asserted that the GOP is to blame for starting the shutdown."

But I'm sure the liberals are behind that also, aren't they? /sarcasm

The Associated Press writing about a story announced by the Secretary of Defense lists partial troop strength and effective location and announces to the world that we are ready to strike a foreign country. And yet we're in an uproar over memos that did not even come close to doing the same thing?

I agree with you, especially since you can't assign the words yourself and they are too arbitrary to associate with a physical place. As a marketing tool its of extremely limited value. Can you see a business wanting to be known as hot.banana.rug? Seriously, going to the example of "'union.prop.enjoy" and then look over to the London Paddington rail station, there are several dozen names for the station because of the size of the area used to define a location. One location gives you "civic.food.walks" and a short distance from that you get "years.bits.oasis". There are probably dozens of "names" in their database all pointing to London Paddington station. I can't see how this is going to be anything but mass confusion...

I don't think it would have mattered who won the election in 2008, this has been growing since before the 9-11 bombing.

I'm not quite sure why your post is "insightful". I carefully read and re-read the one you replied to an no where did I see a hint of "So all government is evil?" Frankly I think you should reconsider your post.

Smash is entirely correct, "If you don't like it get the law changed." It's the way Government works here in the United States.

I wouldn't make a blanket statement that "it's no longer socially acceptable to pay just what's legal". I think you'll find for the Republican party in general that it's not only socially acceptable, it should be mandated. Warren Buffet has been pretty vocal about how it's not right that he pays less in taxes than his secretary and the response from the Republican controlled Congress has been "you are welcome to pay more", not "Hey you're right, lets fix that".

My thoughts would be Apple isn't contributing enough to the Republicans so they decided to make them a scapegoat.

He is entitled to his opinion, just as everyone here is entitled to their opinion and their opinion is they don't want to support his views. How is that hard to understand? The McCarthy style witch hunt has been an ongoing thing against gay/lesbian/transgendered individuals for a very long time and all in the name of christianity.

Frankly the Department of Homeland Security had no business getting involved nor had they any business going outside of this country to make arrests. What part of Homeland applies to foreign countries? Seriously, this has always been handled by the FBI in the past, what changed and why?

Nice... Now I only have to spend an additional 1 to 2 thousand to buy the computer to run it on... :-)

Maybe I'm confused but isn't OS X simply Apple's version of Linux? I realize this is a simplistic view but I don't see why they wouldn't be able to create a package for Linux.