At this point I’ve kinda stopped paying attention to all the state government shutdown crap. Last week I even half-guiltily fast-forward through the ‘analysis’ segments on Almanac. (And I’m a *huge* Eric Eskola fan.) But even my sudden onset topic fatigue hasn’t prevented me from drawing my own a half-informed conclusion that TPaw, Chief Sviggum, and Deano Johnson are just worthless doofs. Worthless because they’ve had all this time and they can’t get the job done. Worthless because the process has degenerated to the point where it feels like it’s more about making the other guy look bad rather than making all of Minnesota look good. Worthless because of the rhetoric and the spin and the racino and the tax/fee nonsense and for so many other wacky reasons. Worthless worthless worthless doofs doofs doofs.
And then today I read that last weekend’s meetings went like this:
A weekend of expected nonstop negotiating got off to a bad start Friday, when a meeting between Johnson and Pawlenty fell through. Pawlenty had left the Capitol to attend an evening wedding in Stillwater, telling Johnson he would return. Johnson stayed awhile — how long is unclear — then headed home. A tuxedo-clad governor came in sometime later, waited awhile, then left.
…
On Saturday, Pawlenty skipped meetings to attend his daughter’s soccer game. On Sunday, Johnson skipped meetings to attend a dinner in Louisville, Ky. By Sunday night, Pawlenty proclaimed the situation at the Capitol “ridiculous.”
Damn right it’s ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as proposing that the whole gang should fly to a Summer Camp For Worthless Legislators and lock themselves in a cabin with their bunkmates until they got double dared into either calling a girl or doing their job. No wait, that’s not ridiculous, that’s just stupid. It’s a good thing nobody suggested it.
So now we’re faced with a shutdown of all non-essential services in the state. I’m pretty sure ‘non-essential’ means ‘nobody will die if they go away’, so I’m going to assume important stuff like heath insurance, the state patrol, and the good fireworks displays will continue to function as usual.
Unfortunately, the impact will not be limited to state government: if no budget deal is reached, I will be forced to remove all non-essential content from this website. Yep, you heard me. No color, no layout, no nothing. It’s gonna be ugly:
Yuck. Who wants that? Not you, that’s for sure. So howsabout you pick up the phone and call these worthless doofs and tell them you don’t even read the paper so you don’t care about who looks good or who looks bad, you just want them to do what’s right and get the effing job done. Then slam down the phone and eat a peanut butter cup. That’s what I’m gonna do.