re: #38 dog philosopher

this is gonna be the new reality for the foreseeable future: the government will remain shutdown and short term debt limit extensions will be passed every few months

other than that, the only things that will happen will be when the baggers, the senate, and the president occasionally agree on some spot items that they want to fund

welcome to the teabag version of the United States government

I think what will happen WRT the shutdown is what happened back in 95/96. It started out with lots of enthusiastic idiots saying things like, “If they wuz nonessenshul, how come we hired ‘em in thuh first place?”, and the GOP thinking the shutdown would show Americans how little they really wanted government in the first place.

As the shutdown continues, the number of people thinking that dropped, as more and more people realized that government does a lot of things we’d really like it to keep doing, because nobody else does them, and we want them to be done. We’re already seeing that in the House GOP’s attempts to fund the government piecemeal - anytime someone who can get on TV is inconvenienced, they’ll write a little funding bill that funds that tiny part of the government. Everyone else can go pound sand.

So long as the Senate Democrats remain firm, the number of people thinking a shutdown is no big deal will continue to drop, along with the GOP’s popularity.