These are two competing organizations who are telling the same story. But I suppose it's fake news. Blood supplies can't be quantified. Can't count that type of thing. No way to count units of blood in a fridge.

You can't explain that.

I suppose government employees who were giving blood at the office can't continue giving blood on their own just like other people do. It couldn't possibly be in retaliation for the shutdown like calling in sick when your position requires you to work. Can't count on people coming forward to donate in an actual emergency if they won't donate just to replenish expendable reserves. No way blood can be sourced from around the country or donated to us by other countries as the fake news said happened after 9/11. Poor poor pitiful us.

So now it's not the lying Red Cross, and Innova Blood Services, it's those worthless lazy federal employees who can't be bothered to do what regular old honest Americans do. They deserve to be shut down. Lazy fucks.

Your extrapolation, not mine. I know that those services can still send mobile teams to those vicinities if they want to. People can still give blood if they want to. Deserve has nothing to do with it. You're just upset that you're being imposed upon to take up the slack for their nonparticipation and making the shutdown a scapegoat because it adversely affects you in your business. It's called bootstrapping and it's dishonest.

Don't these blood collections set up in federal buildings bleed more than government employees? I thought they did it there because it cost little or nothing.

It helps keep their overhead down. They sell the blood they collect to meet their operating expenses and have something left over for other endeavors. Not being able to use federal buildings will have a negative impact on that. They'll also lose donations because the federal employees aren't being pressured to donate. Many wouldn't otherwise donate and many won't if it simply becomes less convenient.

There are; however, other things that cause donations to drop off, especially at this time of year. For example, a situation from this time last year that occurred without a government shutdown.

There's always something else to blame. It's the blood drawing agencies' responsibility to compensate. Notice no one is yet activating medical elements of the National Guard or Reserves to chip in. Chicken Little Syndrome.

Oh well, I'm just a spectator as they won't take mine anyway.

The weather guys in Anchorage send a message..

Probably* very clever! Though from 2013.

*I have no idea whether the forecast is also accurate, or just gibberish...

I'd assume they could get in trouble is it wasn't reasonably accurate.

If you pay attention to the news, you probably remember hearing of problems at Joshua Tree National Park because of the shutdown. People cutting down Joshua trees, camping all over the place where it is prohibited, driving off road through the fragile desert, filthy bathrooms, overflowing garbage cans, litter everywhere.

Well, my sister was at Joshua Tree National Park last week, and she swung by my house last night on her way to a conference in Baltimore today. I was eager to ask her if the news stories about Joshua were accurate.

She had a good old laugh about that. She said they were almost entirely false. She said the bathrooms were clean, the garbage cans were pretty empty, there was no litter anywhere. She said that she saw one tree that had been cut down, that much was true. And a few cars had pulled off onto the shoulder where they were not technically supposed to. Nobody was off-roading, and nobody was camping illegally.

She said that it was a lot more crowded than she had seen it in the past, and her perception was that locals who don't normally go to the park because it is so expensive to enter a National Park these days were visiting because it was free. So there were people, but she thought they were well behaved. And there were lots of volunteers cleaning.

Is it possible that when the reports first surfaced the place was a mess* and the locals have responded by volunteering - and so when you sister visited it all looked fine again?


*which the media then exaggerated

Apparently the House Republicans forget the procedure when they're not in charge. They let a voice vote pass to fund the government, and then complained when it passed.

Of course, the Democrats want the Republicans on-record voting to keep the government closed, so they'll give them a do-over.

I wonder if the Republicans were hoping the Democrats would refuse to redo the vote, so they could have the vote pass, but have no vote on record, and have a thing to complain about.

This Is Mitch McConnell’s Shutdown.
Evidently McConnell could put an end to it but won't.