I cancel Christmas.

Me and millions of other people cancel Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Not because we are punishing our children or families, but because with this sudden turn of events, we literally have NO money in the DEAD of Winter when fuel bills go up, and food bills go up.

Millions of people who normally wouldn't work (due to age, infirmity, or disability), are suddenly desperate for any kind of income because they have no disability or retirement or SSI coming in. Those that can will lean on their extended families. But we must hope against hope, that the military families are not part of larger extended military families with multigenerational members that are serving or have served. With elderly relatives that might be receiving retirement, SSI and Disability payments--which is entirely possible, along with annuity payments for loved ones that gave the ultimate sacrifice--ALL THAT MONEY JUST DISAPPEARS.

It doesn't just disappear from our hands, it disappears from our local economies. Suddenly money that pays for utilities, groceries, prescription drugs, pet food or service animal food, for school lunches or college books and tuition is just gone.

You see the GOP can't think ahead at all, not in terms of steps nor in terms of time, so that they cannot conceive that when they punish what they consider the mooching poor--which would be the indigent, the military retirees, the disabled veteran, the disabled citizen, the surviving spouse or children, and the elderly--that somehow all these individual punishments (deprivation of money) happens in a vacuum.

The first holiday to suffer will be Halloween. Many people will forgo buying 10 or 20 dollars worth of candy, because they might need that cash simply to get by. 10 or 20 dollars these days is half a gas tank or a lot of ramen noodles. Half a gas tank to drive you to the local food bank, assuming that it's even open given that the USDA isn't.

Thanksgiving comes around. By now the damage has been done. It's permanent. Our stocks have taken a dive, foreign invester confidence is very low, and our huge banking industry gets ready to start a new round of foreclosures on the millions of people who have lost their only income or half of it.

With the increased strain on the economy, the low confidence in it by investors, a new round of lay offs starts up, right around Thanksgiving. Millions of people simply have nothing to fall back on at all. Their retirements are gone, their disability is gone, everything is simply gone. This reduces the need for goods and services because who has money to buy diddley shit during times like that? Not many people. Even those well off or better off will feel insecure and not spend as usual, because they fear that they may be the next jobs on the chopping block.

My hubby and I have lived like that a few times. Always knowing that although it would be tight and it would suck, we could always fall back on his military retirement. We looked ahead to structure our mortgage so that payments were small enough to do that. However--it appears we didn't look far enough ahead. Instead of having babies, we should have been paying the principle down. Silly us.

So Thanksgiving for many people will simply be a meal. Most cannot travel, they don't have money for fuel and it wouldn't matter, because who would have money to cook a feast? Official food banks are closed. I start taking lessons from a friend in dumpster diving, while I teach her the art of wild crafting.

You are going to hunt for your food you say? Well that depends on where you live and who you know. In our area, as in many others, land is posted. You have to either be close to the owner and get permission or pay a huge fee for the privilege of hunting on their land for meat. Shootings over disagreements during hunting season will go up, only now it won't be Buck Fever, it will be genuine desperation.

By the time Christmas gets here, if nothing else happens, no repairs are made, if the banks are not stopped by the government somehow from foreclosing, I predict we will see a lot of newly homeless families in the streets by New Years and Valentines Day. Because their payments were not paid by the government--Government Contractual Obligations--as the economy crumbles they have nothing to draw upon. We truly begin to return to the Gilded Age, only without even the Yeoman Farmers and the like.

The CDC is still down, during the height of flu season, flu shots are unavailable for those who need them, or much of anything. The ERs become clogged with non-emergency issues because no one has money to see a doctor and most people do not have insurance, and Tricare is down for anyone but Active Duty families on military bases. The VA is running on a lot less too, providing very few services--most of it's employees are furloughed still. Even with the ACA--with the government shut down--how will that work?

So what happens to the shopping day, the day after Thanksgiving? Not much. That's when businesses really begin to panic, and seasonal employees are given the ax first. When numbers don't rise during the normal Christmas holiday season, stores start reducing their regular staff.

When New Years comes and goes--many stores start to announce they are closing down permanently. They cannot make enough cash to break even. Who can buy gifts when everyone is so concerned with food and heating their homes, if they still have homes?

Homeless numbers are going to skyrocket in places like Florida, California, Arizona, where ever it's warm in the winter time. Tent cities and shanty towns are going to explode again, bigger even than what we saw in 2007. And with so many people homeless and jobless, law enforcement and local government officials are going to long for the days of Occupy, because those were peaceful protesters and not hungry, desperate, homeless people with a score to settle. Yes,--a score to settle, people who get robbed at this magnitude, tend to carry grudges.

The GOP truly believes that they want to roll in THIS like catnip. This is their dream right here. Remember in 2007 when they tried to make it so that homeless people couldn't vote? That will come up again. Their desire to return to landed gentry being the only people who can vote is a real one. And with all those people in disarray, it could happen.

In a desperate, scary environment like that, it's so very easy for hate and fear to take hold. For groups to be pitted against each other for resources, and for scape goats to be named and targeted. All the progress we have made in the last 100 years, the last 50 years could be undone by and large when the GOP turns America into a writhing cesspool of desperate hungry, homeless citizens.

Here is your coup right here.

And when you try and organize--remember you have to contend with cameras all over the place, facial recognition systems on FB, and in some states, used to troll driver's license data bases, DNA swabs of protesters, and surveillance of every phone call, e-mail, and skype, tracking of your cell phone. If your goal is to some day shake off these plutocratic or theocratic or neo-confederate shackles--good luck with that. You are going to be going uphill in every direction, barefoot in the snow as it were. You don't know it yet, but America has been turned into a haven for Merchant Princes, and the NSA is the royal guard. Welcome to 9th level of poor-people-hell.

At some point there will be riots. That's what hungry, desperate homeless people do to protest being robbed blind and turned out into the streets. And this will be the excuse to beat people for loitering in parks, and to burn tent cities, where what's left of your belongings might reside.

I expect sex trafficking will sky rocket. Collapsed economies and weak centralized governments always wreak hell on women and children. And this is one way to put food on the table for the family--the world's oldest profession. It's a way to have a warm place to sleep and access to a shower. The GOP will love this--more hookers for their conventions, seeing how they "love" women so much.

You will begin to see something that we witnessed during Katrina--dead bodies in the streets. People, especially the elderly and the sick will die of exposure. American's aren't used to seeing dying people in large numbers on the street. The new deal was in part, to address this problem way back in the day. Americans didn't want the elderly and indigent to die in the streets of something like starvation or basic medical care. How we could forget that lesson is beyond me.

Home Invasions, Smash and Grabs, and Armed Robberies will also go up. Desperate people will do terrible things to get the money or goods they need or want. Jobs are iffy, the economy is unreliable, the government is insane, so that getting access to extra resources becomes not about working harder or smarter, but about stealing and robbing.

We have proven in the last decade, that a college degree will not save you from this. If it did, there wouldn't be thousands of new grads living with their parents still. There wouldn't be so many jobless 40-somethings out there desperately trying to retrain or remake their resume` to attract someone--anyone.

So what gets you a job? I don't know. What saves you from starvation and homelessness? Not hard work that's for sure, because the GOP is making it so that anyone with a retirement less than a golden parachute is at risk. Anyone without that money directly in their bank account is at risk of being the victim of corporate looting like Enron--

Millions of Veterans, Retirees, the Disabled, etc., are about to see their money looted by corporate raiders in the government coffers--just like Enron. And then what?

I don't have the answer to that. All I know is that on this current track, America will begin to resemble some of the third world countries one might see while on tour in the military.

Basic services shut off or unreliable, unbelievable poverty, a lack of access to modern medicine, and a complete disregard for human suffering by the people who could stop it, if they had a conscience or a will to do so.

No no--GOP don't get up, you just sit right there and wait for it to all fall apart. And thank you so much for all that you do. I won't forget this. Have a nice day.