This picture appeared in the Rapid City (SD) Journal today, along with a headline “Trump uses shutdown [sic] to punish his enemies.”

Good, on both counts. We here at TPOL, back from an unintended sabbatical, are excited. And feel a bit weird, hoping that the Dems win for as long as possible. (Sick, we know.)

(Unfortunately, the car in the picture has a SD license plate starting with 21 (Custer County) and not 47 (Oglala Lakota, formerly Shannon, County). The irony would be more delicious! Note that Custer State Park, being a South Dakota and not a Federal park, is still open. South Dakota, unlike some States (hint, hint: CA, NJ, NY, etc.) is not allowed to spend more than it can extort from people in the form of taxes and fees. The State Park system pays its own way. Custer State Park was formed about a century ago by trading all the “school sections” (Sections 16 and 36 in each 36-square-mile township) scattered across the Black Hills and nearby areas for the unhomesteaded Federal land in the Park of today. Unlike Wind Cave National Park (immediately to the south) and the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve of Black Hills National Forest (immediately to the north) Custer SP and its workers (and visitors) are not jerked around by Congress way back east in the District of Criminals, but only by the legis-gators cavorting among the fleshpots of Pierre (which rate at maybe 2 out of 10, if that).

But to the point: even while the Dems in Congress are begging for any spare $1.5 trillion in change the Donald et al. (that is, the US Taxpayer, now and future) happen to have in their pocket, they are of course spitting on the windshield. And with no hands (at least none that can do honest work) they have no way to smear the spit even more in the guise of cleaning up the mess.

Not that the GOP is any less liable for this sort of nonsense. They can talk all they want to about ending the fiscal insanity, but we know that is impossible short of the very sort of collapse that the old parties claim to fear – or the authoritarian dictatorship that they also are constantly telling us is on tap for tomorrow if we don’t get rid of The Donald, that evil sexist/racist/theocratic Hesgeth, and of course, gravel-voiced RFK Jr. Yesterday, if at all possible. This mess, Ollie, didn’t happen overnight. It took decades – indeed, pushing two centuries – of dedicated effort by GOP types and Dem types and parasites and egotists of every stripe to get us in muddy water this deep.

Is it any wonder that a good many lovers of liberty would just as soon (strangely enough) see the Dems “win” this time? Put off “reopening the FedGov” for weeks, even months? “Please, Mr. Schumer, throw me into that briar patch!”

Others would be willing to share just for DOGE 2 and DOGE 3: getting rid of a few hundred thousand more FedGov employees. (Including a lot of big-bottomed brass hats in the Department of War.)

One agency we here at TPOL deal with nearly daily is MSHA: the Mine Safety and Health Administration. (More about it, sometime.) It has furloughed just 1/3 of its 1500 or so employees, claiming that twice per year (four times for underground) inspections are essential to protect the health and safety of American miners. As one person noted, it’s kind of a slow start, but at least a start.

We proclaim our desire to let the good men and woman of MSHA and many other government agencies be liberated from their chains of security and kowtowing to political and appointed bosses so they can find and do the productive work many of them are capable of. Admittedly, some (like perhaps Schumer, Jeffries, and Newsom and Luhan Gresham (to name a few)) will probably end up on the welfare rolls and in street gutters, high and homeless. But better them than another PTSD-suffering veteran or body-modded, regretful transvestite-plus.