Shut Down, Vol. 19

There are no winners here.

The federal government has just shut down, per a failed Senate vote on a continuing resolution passed by the House.  Although five of ten Democratic senators from states Trump won voted for the resolution, four Republicans - including South Carolina's Lindsey Graham - voted against it, Graham in particular fed up with Trump's irrationality.  

The Democrats stood their ground on a permanent solution to the children of undocumented immigrants, but they were probably playing politic at the wrong time on the wrong issue.  Republicans tried to use the Children's Health Insurance Program - unfunded since September - as a bargaining, er, chip to cow the Democrats into submission while refusing to deal with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients.  And neither side seems to have a clue abut how to maintain troop readiness in the military.  No one will budge, and nothing is happening.

This is the nineteenth time the government has shut down.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole damn country can shut down.  Our representative form of government has only been in effect for 229 years, a few moments in the Big Bang scheme of things, is still brief enough to be considered an experiment.  

It just failed.

Congress can still get something worked out by Monday morning, before the shutdown has a noticeable effect on the country.  Don't bet on it.