I'm not actually worried the Democrats will cave, but I've been not-worried about that before and they have caved, so I'm not sure my gut's a good indicator.

I do think the Democrats have way more popular support on this than on past stand-offs, and they're talking as if they're not planning on caving, so I hold out hope.

I'm unclear why the Republicans in Congress think that screwing up the country's economy is a great way of ... going about anything, really, and it seems like most polls are showing that most Americans agree with me, so at the very least I hope this comes back to bite them on the ass in the next elections.

Only a little worried. John McCain himself said several days ago there wouldn't be a shutdown and they weren't going to defend the ACA, and I trust him. DON'T LET ME DOWN, JOHN MCCAIN. I trust the President, too, when he says they will not cave, no way, no how.

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I thought as of yesterday they were sure of shut down, which means so much fuckédness I cannot even begin.

I always worry when I notice more and more that the money spent to fight anything seems to become more than the money that the new project would have needed.

All I have to say is that my essential gov't employee stepmom is going to have an epically crap day at work tomorrow.

Yes, I'm worried. Not that the Democrats will cave on Obamacare, though. I think they'll cave by giving in on some of the other concessions now being demanded by the GOP, just to get the government running again. The thing is, no matter who gives, we'll be right back in the middle of this mess in 45 days.

What bothers me is that the only way the tea-partiers come away without some sort of victory to sing about is if we avoid a shutdown without any compromise on any of the GOP's demands whatsoever. The Deomcrats' history with these things tells me that, even if the ACA is left untouched, they'll cave, to one degree or another, on other equally important matters.

And, then, 45 days later, we'll start this whole mess over again.

No, it just pisses me off, big time. Also, I for one am convinced that the Rs have cried wolf too many times now, and the Ds have learned that there is no such thing as compromise with them. In fact, everyone learned that when the sequester went into effect.

So I am furious at this hijacking of the budget to trumpet futile demands.

I also am getting the feeling the Rs are DEAF to reason. Only political pain will stop this from happening again. Meaning, a giant loss in the midyears. I do think that's the price they'll pay if they don't eat crow very soon.

I agree, bearwife. Especially since those fucking jackasses not only still get paid during the bullshit, but they boozed it up while Rome burns.

They're supposed to serve US, not treat their positions like a damn country club membership.

Hope we make it to 2014 and we vote every last one of them OUT. They have fucked us over.

Grrrrrrrrr.

Did Obama really kick that door in?

No, I think it's faked.

It sure is super fun being a contractor for a non-excepted department. I have enough work to keep me going through tomorrow lunchtime or so. The govt employee who assigns my (and all my colleagues') work is furloughed, so...

This is pretty much the stalemate debated in the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers when they weren't arguing about rights, but those who argued that such stalemates are good for the country won out. Various processes for breaking stalemates were discarded as leading to an overly powerful federal government. Such stalemates were engineered into the Constitution to slow overly ambitious agendas, so who are we to argue the wisdom of the Founding Fathers?

Welp, the Library of Congress site, including the catalog, is down. Because LC is the de facto national library, I look at its call numbers to make sure that the ones I assign don't overlap (because we do get a lot of books that are already in their catalog). Won't be doing any of that today. Also, I haven't been able to get to government sites to answer questions at the reference desk.

Unfair attack on the Founders, Ardiril. The Federalist Papers writers cautioned against EXACTLY this sort of control of government by factions. See Federalist 9 and 10, for example. Until idiot innovations like the Hastert rule (majority of the majority party has to sign on for legislation to move) and the filibuster, the constitutional scheme worked pretty well to stop this kind of destructive party politics.

The Republicans just gutted WIC. Yet they seem sanguine to spend $300,000 a day to shut down the government. Sure i worry about it. They are blackmailing our country to defund a healthcare system that is the law of the land. All I can hope to see from this is that Ted Cruz and his scumbag followers see that millions of people are using ACA to get healthcare that they could never get in the past. And that the Republican party is a dinosaur that is looking up at the asteroid that will kill them.

Ardiril, we have a pretty effective method of resolving these deadlocks that, while somewhat drastic and risky for a government, allows deadlocks to be dealt with at 'only' the cost of a full government election.