You have probably heard by now that the US Government is still pretending to be shutdown.  It’s kind of like a three-year-old who pulls a blanket over her head and thus concludes that because she cannot see anyone else, she also cannot be seen.

It turns out that only about 17% of the government is actually shutdown; and if my math is correct, that is really stupid.   That means 83% of the government is still hard at work making sure it looks like they are not working, which they really do anyway.  So it’s not so much of a shutting off of government workflow as much as it is like an enlarged prostate where there is reduced flow that comes out in shorter streams and won’t let you get a good night’s sleep.

There have been a lot of developments since I wasted my time writing about this last week and so I thought I would share a select selection with you—not in bullet form this time though, as I do not want to alienate the anti-gun lobby or get suspended from my local public school.

The big story is that it seems like most of the work going on in the government has to do with rancorous and purposeful disruption in order to make it appear that life without the US Government is worse than life with the US Government.   Ha!  Good luck with that.

Be that as it may, someone somewhere has decided that this shutdown thingy should be as annoying and ridiculous as possible.  For example, in addition to the PandaCam Crisis (formerly) noted at right, the Amber Alert website is seen as non-essential, but the Whitehouse.gov website asking for stories about the pain of being non-essential is seen as essential.  Why waste funds we don’t have to save a life when there is an opportunity to instead exploit sob stories for political gain?

And then there was the permission granted to hold an immigration rally on the National Mall in D.C. this week, even though they have closed the National Mall, which tells me that it’s closed to everyone except those who might want to actually go there.

They have also closed Mount Rushmore and even gone so far as to block the nearby highway scenic turn-offs that allow a view of The Rock Stars from a distance.  And that is just the tip of the proverbial National Park Iceberg.  Little mention has been made of the throwing of a big tarp over the Grand Canyon, the corking of Old Faithful, and the strapping of a giant bra around the Grand Tetons.

Meanwhile, while they are doing all these crazy things, there is no word as of yet as to who ‘they’ are.  The news media can’t seem to figure out who is behind the shenanigans.  Evidently, the hard-hitting Ivy-League trained journalists charged with investigating this corruption are being paralyzed with an impenetrable wall of “Sorry, your search yielded zero (0) results” doublespeak.  Lucky for you I did some checking myself and found that Shenanigans is a cozy little sports pub in south Florida, and behind it is a dumpster, three homeless guys, and a Chinese laundry.

The bottom line is that there seems no end in sight to this most recent manufactured crisis, the point of which is to show China that heck yes we can still manufacture things.  Both sides are sticking to their guns…um…sticky things, though P.BO again has made generous overtures this week, saying he is willing to negotiate as long as the Republicans drop their demands.

What makes this situation even more foreboding is that the Reps and Dems are getting ready to square off again over the imaginary debt ceiling.  The Dems want it raised of course, but the Reps say it should only be indiscriminately and astronomically raised during one of their administrations.  Also, Ted Cruz is advocating the attachment of a “defund Obamacare” mandate to any bill that raises the debt ceiling because this strategy worked so well the first time.

And the Polls offer no help, being way over by Russia.

Polls closer to home however, show that each side has the support of the American public.  The Democrats have polls that show their position is supported by over 88% of Americans they sampled amongst the minority union Sierra Club demographic while the Republican polls show that their position is favored by almost 85% of Americans they questioned who happen to be rural white gun-owners.  How is one to interpret such confusing and conflicting data?

All I know is that more Americans than ever are asking the question: “Dude, have you seen Gravity?”