Shutdown Stymied

Well, our long pseudo national nightmare of a government shutdown is nearly over, just as I predicted, around the elusive date of October 17. Furloughed workers will get their two week vacation paid, just as they desired. The barricades will at long last be removed by the memorials, and Vince Gray will go back to being despised as a corrupt mayor. But what have we gained?

The big joke going around now is that "Just heard the Washington Redskins are relenting & changing their name -- dropping "Washington" b/c it just got too embarrassing." So there's that. Both parties should be ashamed, really. Though some are attempting to absolve "real" Washington of our sins, because it's not our fault that our elected leaders do these things. Yeah, right. Maybe we have taxation without representation, but we work for these individuals. VA and MD voters helped put them into office. We've donated to their campaigns and we've supported their pork to help pad our bank accounts.

And we're going to suffer when the so-called fiscal cliff grows so steep that we can't throw more inflated dollar bills at it. We're all to blame, ultimately, because we created this. And with the possible exception of Paul Ryan, I'm not sure we have any adults who would share that responsibility with us.