The Reign of Pain - "Why Does It Hurt So Bad?"

Progress on the Shutdown?  Nope, lots of noise, not much light.

The Senate, that wise and august body, the saucer of the republic in to which the hot offerings of the House are poured to cool, working on a Saturday, rejected two different plans to end the shutdown.

Senate Rejects Harry Reid’s Latest Debt Ceiling Plan To Extend Limit Through 2014 Elections

Senate Republicans on Saturday blocked a bid by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to extend the nation’s debt limit until after the 2014 midterm elections.

In an 53-45 vote, the Senate failed to win the 60 votes necessary to advance the debt-limit measure to a floor debate. The bill would increase the federal debt by an estimated $1.1 trillion.

Every Democrat supported the measure, though Reid switched his vote at the end to preserve the right to bring the motion up for another vote later.

Only $1,100,000,000,000.00.  Dr. Evil was such a piker.

Why Do the Democrats Hate Moderate Republican Women?

"Despite [Senate Majority Leader] Senator Harry Reid's unfortunate dismissal of the 6-point plan, …. it continues to attract bipartisan support,” Collins said. “Six Senate Republicans and six Senate Democrats met twice today to discuss how we could move forward with the plan or some version of it. These meetings were constructive and give me hope that a bipartisan solution … is within our reach."

Reid rejected the plan -- which calls for funding the government for six months and increasing the federal debt limit through January -- purportedly, in part, because the spending level of $967 billion next year was too low, despite it providing more flexibility in administering the federal budget cuts under sequester.

Collins’ plan also calls for a two-year delay on ObamaCare's medical device tax and requires income verification for Americans seeking subsidies for ObamaCare.

Only $967,000,000,000.00 in spending.  That kind of narrows down the range of how big Sen. Reid intends the over spending of the US government in the next year.  And taxes on heart valves, pacemakers and prostheses. And heaven forfend that people asking for subsidies for a new entitlement need to justify the need.

A chain-saw sculptor from South Carolina has taken on the task of doing the grounds keeping at the Lincoln Memorial:

“The building behind me serves as a moral compass, not only for our country but for the world,” he told reporters that day, describing the Lincoln Memorial. “And over my dead body are we going to find trash pouring out of these trash cans. At the end of the day, we are the stewards of these buildings that are memorials.”

On Saturday, Cox said that his chain-saw sculptures have hardly made him a rich man. But he plans to continue cleaning the Mall grounds until the government shutdown ends. He lives in South Carolina and is staying with friends in Northern Virginia. He spends $25 a day on gas to get to and from the Mall in his truck.

“Not to mention several hundred dollars in parking tickets,” he told other cleaners on Saturday.

There are somethings about Washington D.C. that shutdowns can't stop.  Parking tickets.

Several states have stepped up to pay to open National Parks, and the Federal Government is reluctantly allowing it.

Interior allows a dozen iconic national parks to reopen with state funding

The push by some of the most conservative governors in the nation to get federal workers back on the job comes as President Obama and congressional leaders struggle with how to resolve the budget impasse.

In an interview Friday, Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) said he and Jewell worked out the agreement in the course of three or four conversations in recent days. After initially seeking permission to reopen the park and staff it with volunteers and others provided by the state, he agreed to pay for federal employees to return in order to revive the tourism that sustains several local communities near federal lands.
...
While the Park Service had originally resisted the idea of accepting donations from outside groups or individual states to reopen sites, the Interior Department reversed course as the shutdown dragged on and state and local leaders warned that their economies were in peril. Five Utah counties declared a state of emergency after the parks’ closures.

Of course they resisted accepting donation; it hurt their ability to coerce the nation into refunding them.  It's notable that they insisted that the funding go to federal personnel rather than state or volunteers.  Don't want the Morlocks to get the idea that they can do anything the Eloi can.

Veterans are holding a rally on the Mall today.  I wonder how many parking tickets they'll get.

Jake Tapper noticed that Republicans have not compared Democrats to hostage takers, arsonists or suicide bombers:



The government finally found some way to have the shutdown affect me. 

Shutdown hits 'Deadliest Catch'

That was the message delivered on Capitol Hill Friday by Keith Colburn, an Alaskan crab fisherman and star of the Discovery Channel reality show The Deadliest Catch.

Speaking before the Senate Commerce Committee, Colburn said the furloughs of staff from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mean they won't be around to assign quotas before the start of Alaska's crab fishing season next week. The quota assignments, required for all fishermen in the area, are doled out to prevent overfishing, with each fisherman entitled to a percentage of the total catch.

Niall Ferguson: The Shutdown Is a Sideshow. Debt Is the Threat: An entitlement-driven disaster looms for America, yet Washington persists with its game of Russian roulette.

Yet, entertaining as all this political drama may seem, the theater itself is indeed burning. For the fiscal position of the federal government is in fact much worse today than is commonly realized. As anyone can see who reads the most recent long-term budget outlook—published last month by the Congressional Budget Office, and almost entirely ignored by the media—the question is not if the United States will default but when and on which of its rapidly spiraling liabilities.

And what do drug-addled dead women think about all this?