The House and Senate left town Thursday having come up with with no strategy at all to avoid a partial government shutdown next Friday (Dec 21). This leaves us all on the brink of an intractable conflict that could easily drag out into the new year. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be furloughed while taxpayers would be stuck footing a bill for many million of dollars worth of pointless expenses. Hopefully, none of this will get ugly enough to interrupt the President's scheduled holiday reverie at Mar-a-Lago. Lord knows he needs his rest.

"A shutdown falls on the President’s lack of leadership. He can’t even control his own party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the president is weak."

-- Donald J. Trump, 2013

The man is compulsive and inveterate liar. Nixon was mocked for claiming that his previous statement was 'inoperative'. Everything that Donald Trump has ever said might reasonably be suspected of being inoperative. He's not earned any grade higher than 'F' as President. It's ALL been bad, or even worse than bad.

They could shut the entire thing down for a year and the producers in the country would not notice a damn thing except the lack of new regulations and impediments to their productivity. The only ones who would give a crap would be the leeches and parasites - starting with the gubmint workers themselves.

When they shut down the gov you always hear that it does not apply to "essential" service and workers. If you aren't one of those essential workers, they should fire your a$$ anyway. Problem: solved.

Typical right wing dumbfuck fails to understand meaning of "essential"! What a dope. No wonder he could never qualify for a government job.