In response to Pelosi's suggestion that Trump postpone the SotU speech because of the shutdown, Trump sent a letter back suggesting that her junket to the middle east be postponed, and denying her the use of military aircraft for her junket.
Do you know how many years--decades--I have waited for a Republican politician who was capable of giving as good as he got?
And OH...MY...GOODNESS. Federal employees who have been furloughed for more than thirty days can be laid off permanently.
And if you look at the chart helpfully appended, the top four departments are, in order, NASA, HUD, Education, and EPA.
NASA is tiny compared to any one of the other three agencies, and most of its functions are considered nonessential because its regulatory oversight is limited in scope. In general, we can exclude NASA from this list for the simple reason that NASA's budget has always been miniscule, amounting to a rounding error in the overall federal budget.
But HUD, Education, and EPA--those agencies are HUGE, even individually, and there are vast swaths of utterly useless people working in them, and I'm sure that there are plenty of people who actively attempt to thwart the Trump administration's policies.
Fire them all.
But of course the White House staff also gets furloughed during a shutdown, and the Democrats and the media BIRM chastise him for his solution to having a party with no kitchen staff to cater it.
Anything that makes the Trump administration look bad makes news. Even if it doesn’t make Trump look bad, the great minds of the media will make it look bad. It's what they do.Trump paid for the fast-food-feast out of his own pocket.
As for me, eating Wendy's hamburgers with Donald Trump by far beats the idea of eating gourmet food with Obama.
* * *
Addendum:
AHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA! AHHH HA HA HA HAHA!
Oh. My. God.OHH YES! YES! YES!!!!
The bus full of congressional Democrats had already *LEFT* the Capitol on it's way to a military jet to fly to Europe.
They were *en route* when they heard that Trump had canceled their trip.
Bus forced to turn around
Members "furious"
END ADDENDUM
* * *
Flying a Cessna 172 in the atmospheres of various bodies in the solar system. Titan looks like the best fit, though you need something better than batteries to power the thing. Go nuclear! A compact fission or fusion reactor would produce plenty of power to keep the plane aloft, and as a bonus plenty of waste heat to keep it warm.
* * *
Free health care for all, and to hell with the taxpayers that foot the bill! "I don't know where he thinks he is going to get the money for this," Karl Denninger wonders, "since states cannot run budget deficits."
Can't they? Illinois seems to be doing so.
Of course, California expected to rake in $1 billion in revenue after legalizing marajuana but so far they're missing that target.
Reasons? 1) The taxes are too high, making black-market stuff affordable; 2) the regulatory burden is too high, thus making it hard to get licenses to sell the stuff.
Only California could screw up legalizing weed this badly. FFS it's practically a license to print money.
Meanwhile, NYC is also getting into the "free shit for everyone" game: "New York City will begin guaranteeing comprehensive health care to every single resident regardless of someone's ability to pay or immigration status."
Single-payer health care on a local basis, and it's going to be egregiously expensive when people realize they can drop their health insurance and still get medical care. "Regardless of the ability to pay" doesn't mean just those who are too poor to afford it, but also those who can afford it but choose not to.
...which inevitably will lead to shortages and rationing.
* * *
"Toxic sanctimony". I like that.
A quick gander at my medicine cabinet this morning showed me that the only thing I use to shave with that's made by Gilette (or Proctor and Gamble) is the razor. In fact, the only P&G personal care product I use routinely is Crest, and that's more by habit than anything else.
Easy enough to fix.
* * *
Obamacare's records requirements are heinous. Exactly what you'd expect.
* * *
Ten years of feminism turn a pretty young woman into a hag, at age 28.
"28 is looking good on me," she tweets. NO! NO, IT ISN'T! You look like you're forty-eight!
Maybe 28 Mars years....
* * *
Snow prediction for tomorrow and Saturday has backed off from the "4-8 inch" territory to "2-6" area. It will probably not be that bad.
...which means the early morning meeting on Saturday will be "go", which annoys me. *sigh* Could have gotten out of it if the snow was bad enough, so of course it won't be. Argh etc.
* * *
Abruptly came to the end of the WataMote anime--why only 13 eps? WHYYYY--so I started looking for something else to watch and came across My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected. So far there is only one character I don't like in the series, and she's not supposed to be very likable, so that works out.
Meanwhile, the place online that I watch anime has a manga section, too, and I came across one of my Holy Grails: Golden Boy. (I use AdBlocker so I never see ads; your mileage may vary. Use caution.)
In the late 1990s I bought Golden Boy ep 1, dubbed, to see how I'd like it...and I turned out to like it quite a bit. I later found that it was an extreme rarity in anime: a case where the dub is superior to the sub.
The main character, Kintaro Oe, is voiced by Doug Smith in the dub, and he threw himself into the role with abandon. By comparison, the Japanese voice actor is refined and stoic, and Kintaro Oe is such a freak and a weirdo that the former performance fits better, and outshines the latter by a fair margin.
Best line in the entire series is when he says, "Ohhhh, shit," in ep 1. I have never heard a line delivered in animation anywhere that was done that well.
The anime series is great fun and I've wanted to read the manga for literal decades; now I can.
* * *
Although it was above freezing today, when I went out early this afternoon to run an errand it felt like it was just bone-chilling cold outside. I'm not sure how much is me being work-from-home and how much is actual weather.
It didn't feel that cold when I went out Tuesday night, though.
* * *
We're trying to figure out how to handle dinnertime around here.
My lunch break is half an hour and comes at 7 PM. Mrs. Fungus is not usually home by then, and there's no time for me cook anything except the simplest of meals. (Such as tacos.)
Next up, crock pot, I guess--try to find the recipes I used circa 2011 for relatively quick and easy meals that tasted good. Can't have pot roast every day but I could have that once in a while.
*sigh*
But it's nice not to have to commute, and I'm enjoying the "work from home dividend" that not spending $100+ per week on gas and tolls results in. It's been almost two weeks since I needed to put gas in the Jeep, which I count as friggin' awesome, and for a wonder I was able to pay two bills with one paycheck and still have money left over.
Not because I'm being paid more in this job than the last one--I'm not--but simply because my expenses have gone down.
* * *
Every time that I look at a how-to about doing drywall, or I talk to people about doing it, the universal opinion seems to be HIRE IT DONE because it's not expensive and it's a royal pain in the ass.
(Unless you're someone like Og's friend Partner, who insists on sub-millimetric flatness to his drywall.)
* * *
Tired, and hungry. As soon as I can I'm going to take a break from work and grab a snack.