Okay, here we go again. An Orange Baboon who seems to be walking around at about 100 (or maybe it’s more like 80) has a temper tantrum and causes a[nother] government shutdown. People are furloughed WITHOUT PAY or REQUIRED TO WORK WITHOUT PAY. Once again, a bunch of little people are taking a hit because a bunch of idjits cannot talk to each other. Except. This time, we have the Orange Baboon. I place the blame squarely on the Orange Baboon. I guess if you have never lived from paycheck to paycheck, as I doubt the Orange Baboon ever has, you have no clue.

My family has been through a couple of these stoopid shutdowns. There was the Clintonian Shutdown back in the 90s. I was not gainfully employed during that one. That was by choice and after careful financial discussions. Could we afford for me to quit working? Yes, we could. (We’ll talk about “lean in” some other day.) But we were far from wealthy and going without a couple of the GG’s paychecks was very difficult. Yes, he did eventually get back pay. That was wonderful! I quickly paid off our mortgage and the dad-blasted POC and I don’t think we have ever borrowed money for anything since then. But we were lucky. Congress does not have to require government contractors to pay back pay after shutdowns, so our contractor friends had to suck it up.

I generally believe it when our loverly elected officials say they do not want to shut down the government and maybe that’s why the next time it happened was almost 20 years later in 2013. The GG was still working at that time so he was furloughed. But by then I was gainfully employed (as were our adult children) and we were in a much more viable financial position (albeit still not what you would call wealthy). The GG headed up to play around in the yooperland and I toiled blissfully away at Cubelandia, enjoying the spacification of light-filled September evenings alone at the Landfill.

I do not think Mr. Trump gives a flying f*ck about who he might hurt by shutting down the goverment. I don’t understand all of this crapola about the border wall or steel slats or whatever he wants to call it. I know that a lot of folks are freaked out about “open borders” and “migrant caravans” and yada yada. Call me a librat if you want but I don’t see what threat there is in desperately poor, oppressed people trying to enter our country to try and make a better life (as many of our ancestors did). I know that these issues are complicated but I don’t see that the Orange Baboon’s random edicts on Twitter are making anything better.

We need to find a way to talk RATIONALLY about all of these issues. We need to define vocabulary terms. What exactly are “open borders”? What constitutes a “migrant caravan”? I could go on and on here.

I am sincerely sorry for all of the federal government employees who are, once again, going without pay for however long this ridiculous political stunt of a shutdown takes. These folks are pawns. They may have their own personal political opinions but their jobs are not political and most of them don’t approach them in a political way. They are employed to do a job and they should be held harmless while our elected officials fight it out. Well. ARGUABLY elected, in the case of the Orange Baboon. Okay, yes, he did win the election (but not the popular vote) but his narrow electoral college victory does NOT give him any kind of mandate to do anything. Sorry but #TrumpResign. Of course, I know he won’t. I am not as stupid as people sometimes seem to think.

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