Wreck the government this way or wreck it that way?

Last evening I went to the Fisher Theater for Broadway in Detroit’s presentation of the musical Kimberly Akimbo. It was featured in the 2023 Tony Awards where it was nominated in eight categories and won five, including Best Musical. The featured scene and basic story intrigued me. Kimberly has a rare (one in 5 million?) disorder that causes her to age four to five times faster than normal. So she’s in high school, about to turn 16, and looks about 70. I’m pretty sure Victoria Clark, who played the part on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, got it because she really is in her 60s and acted like she was 16. Clark is not in the touring production and I was too far away to tell how old this actress looked. Kim becomes friends with fellow student Seth, one of the nerdier kids in the school. He likes making anagrams, which is where “Akimbo” comes from. Also at school are Martin, Aaron, Delia, and Teresa, members of the show choir. At times they also serve as a Greek Chorus. At home Kim is dealing with parents Buddy and Pattie, who have many issues of their own. Then Aunt Debra shows up. She has a shady past and wants accomplices for her next scheme while staying on the good side of her parole officer. In terms of the story I through Buddy and Pattie had too many of these side issues to fit in this story. I felt Aunt Debra and her scheme were not necessary to the story at all. As for the songs, they were OK, as in not memorable. The show does a good job of exploring Kim’s situation of having a teenager mind with a body in decline and not long to live. Because of that I enjoyed the show. The current federal budget runs out at midnight tonight. Signs strongly suggest continued funding will be passed in time. Avoiding a government shutdown is normally great news. Whether that is true this time is debatable. Usually, a CR continues the funding levels of the last budget and this one proposes to keep those funding levels until the fiscal year ends in September 2025. Which means the levels are essentially from when the last budget was passed (theoretically October 2023 but I’m sure it was actually signed much later). So the nasty guy would have to follow a budget signed by Biden? Sounds good! But... Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos has a few reasons why this CR gets a jeer. One of them is that Congress would relinquish oversight of tariffs to the nasty guy. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Wednesday about the tariff oversight and another nasty thing: It cuts $1 billion from the District of Columbia budget, forcing cuts to police and teachers. One Republican voted against it, so it passed. Also one Democrat voted for it.

All but one Democrat (Rep. Jared Golden of Maine) voted against the funding bill for that very reason, saying the levels in the funding bill don’t even matter because Trump and Musk will ignore what Congress put in the bill and cut from it what they want. In fact, GOP leaders were selling the bill to Republican lawmakers by making that very point. “This Congress must decide: do we have the authority to control spending, as we were granted and is laid out in Article I of the Constitution? Why would we want to relinquish this to give this administration, which is already doing massive harm, dismantling agencies, firing people, telling them today they are no longer needed, the chaos and confusion caused by Elon Musk and President Trump—why would we want to turn over our authority to appropriate bills?” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement explaining why she voted against the funding bill.

On Thursday, with the bill heading to the Senate, Republicans were already priming to blame Democrats if a shutdown comes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez written in response to Republican threat of blame:

Republicans run the House, the Senate, and the White House. You run the government. If you have the votes, then go ahead. If you need Democrats, then you need to negotiate with Democrats. Those are your two options. Blaming someone else because your shoes are untied isn’t one.

Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box wrote:

A few weeks ago, I argued that Democrats could not — and should not — vote for anything that didn’t prohibit Musk from unilaterally shutting down government agencies. Last week, after interviewing several Senate Democrats on the night of Trump’s joint address, I softened my stance. Some Senate Democrats are scared of the fight and would prefer to roll over and play dead. But many others want a strategy and are considering whether a shutdown would actually help Musk accomplish his goals of gutting the federal government. A shutdown only works as a point of leverage if Trump et al feel pressure to reopen the government. If they plan to destroy the government or are content to let the government stay closed for as long as possible, the plan is useless.

In the comments Robert Petersen included a tweet by Sam Brody.

Old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “Looking for an obituary.” Vendor says: “Those are towards the back of the paper.” Guy says: “Not the one I’m looking for.”

In this morning’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Laura Fox and Sarah Ferris of CNN:

The Democratic leader’s decision privately disappointed many in his caucus, and stunned his House colleagues across the US Capitol — leaving the party deeply divided on the path ahead at a moment when their base is clamoring for a strong response against Trump and Elon Musk’s actions to radically reshape the federal government. “We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said of Democrats’ predicament. It’s a moment that has been months in the making. Still, top Democrats in Congress struggled to find a cohesive message and strategy that would allow them room to fight without the potential risk of what it would mean if thousands of government workers were suddenly thrust into more uncertainty with a shutdown. Perhaps the clearest sign of the dilemma: Their top two leaders took opposite paths, with Schumer deciding to vote for the GOP plan that top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has spent a full week bashing.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Bryan Tyler Cohen showing a graph (source of data not given) showing the S&P 500 stock index scaled to show a value of 100 on four inauguration says and what happens for two hundred days after. Three of the lines – Obama in 2013, nasty guy in 2017, and Biden in 2021 – rise to some degree in that time. The fourth, nasty guy in 2025, rises for about 30 days, that drops sharply to day 50. Further down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing Marie Antoinette, though her face has been replaced by Musk and the words are now, “Let them buy Teslas.” Last week I included the little bit that the Defense Department removed from the Pentagon’s website and database photos of the bomber that released the first atomic bomb because the plane’s name was “Enola Gay.” Just after I mentioned that Alex Samuels of Kos posted a more complete account. The purge also include photos of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Gay; of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black squadron to fight in the US military; of an all female crew taken during Women’s History Month; and of Air Force Maj. Laura Perry before her gender reassignment surgery. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Pridesource, wrote:

“Today, I signed into law a bill that safeguards the rights of women and girls,” Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) said in a video posted to X. Sounds good to me! What’s in the bill? Reproductive freedom with abortion and birth control that is accessible to everyone who needs it? Strengthened domestic violence protections? Gun safety measures to keep kids from being murdered in school? Better access to mental health treatment? Better oversight of children in the foster care system in order to ensure that children are not placed in abusive environments? Sadly, the answer is none of the above. Gov. Reynolds did not, in fact, do anything to protect the rights of women and girls. What she did was intentionally and maliciously hurt transgender people in the state. With the stroke of her pen, Gov. Reynolds ended “18 years of protection against discrimination based on gender identity in Iowa's civil rights law," the Des Moines Register reports. “The signing makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law.”

One of my church friends told me that her sister (who refuses to be put in the box marked “female”) was instrumental in getting those protections passed 18 years ago and is now quite upset at their demise. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp of Pridesource discussed how she refuses to teach her children gender stereotypes. Her son loves to help her cook and haters object. That son likes his mom to braid his hair. His peers said that makes him “look like a girl.” But she resolved even more to make sure she describes things in gender neutral terms. That includes describing future lovers as “spouse” or “partner.”

Social media will bring out the angry, bitter people who don’t know unconditional love. Home should be a space where you absolutely know you are loved. It should be your refuge when the world is cold. The best tool I have to counter outside hate is to work on dismantling the proverbial closets in my own home. I will challenge assumptions and give my children the freedom to learn who they are and the security to be the allies our communities deserve. They are the future and I plan to fill the future with love.