The shutdown starts

A deadline has come and gone without a spending deal, and now the federal government enters partial shutdown more, don't worry, essential services will still be provided for as long as the workers are willing to work without pay at least, and don't worry, our elected representatives will still maintain their salary and all the benefits of their position, so we can rest easy knowing those vulnerable people are protected.

Sarcasm aside, I am actually somewhat happy with the current turn of events. The Democrats mostly stuck to their guns and were joined by a few Republicans as well, the latest vote only got fifty in favor, to say nothing of the sixty they would have needed to override a filibuster.

At the heart of the issue is the DACA, the program protecting somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred thousand "Dreamers", or children of illegal immigrants, from deportation. The Democrats have been demanding a path to citizenship for them, or at least securing the DACA for a time, while the Republicans are pretty much against it at all, with an exception possible if Dems agree to fund the border wall program, which is unacceptable to the Democrats as indeed, it should be unacceptable to anyone with a hint of morals.

The GOP have none.

They are now facing the consequences of that lack, and a plurality of people polled are putting the blame on them for the current crisis, which they should, they control all branches of government, one of the things the president won the election on was his so called "deal-making" ability. Yet despite all that a Democratic minority is able to bring us to this position, the president, it turns out, is really bad at making deals when he can't just bludgeon people with money, and he seems to not show any real interest in the details of the policies he claims to want to support, in the last week or so he said he would support any bipartisan immigration deal, but then when presented with one he bowed to the hardliners in his party and rejected it, the now infamous "shithole" comment was part of that meeting.

He does not know how to govern and refuses to learn, not only that he refuses to learn anything about policymaking in general. He does listen to people, but it is increasingly obvious that he listens to the last person who tells him anything, so when he is in a meeting with Democrats he agrees with them, and then when his own staff talk to him he agrees with their position, or when he meets his own party members in the Senate, he follows what he thinks the majority of people want at the time. It should be frighteningly easy to manipulate him, and in many ways it is, but he also listens to Fox news and other sources like that more than anything, basically setting his ground state to "awful".

It's about a year since he took office, perhaps it is fitting that the government shut down when it did, talk about an anniversary present.