10/02/25

Good morning! It’s Thursday, October 2nd.

International Day of Non-Violence

If you don’t mind

And now, the news.

The Government Shutdown

-via The Hill, NY Times, and The Hill

Starting with the government shutdown!

Um… not sure what else to add here, substance-wise. The government is shut down. It didn’t reopen. And I’m gonna go ahead and warn you now, we’re probably going to be in this for a while.

We should strive to be as optimistic as possible. But we should also not be delusional.

Why do I believe this?

Because on Wednesday, Speaker Johnson went on something called the Moon Griffon Show and before I continue… Moon Griffon? That’s what you’re going with?

This show is called Here’s What’s Happening because Zazz was like hey can you make me the news? And I was like I was like yeah, here’s what’s happening in the news.

Here’s What’s Happening.

Maybe it’s not the most clever title in the world but it makes sense.

The Moon Griffon Show? All these GOP guys go on all these shows and then we have to learn that shows live Moon Griffon exist.

Bummer.

Can’t wait to hear about how all broccoli’s illegal on the Barbell Chicken Bone Podcast Hour.

Anyway, sorry, back to the fate of our nation – so Speaker Johnson goes on this podcast and says that while the downside of a shutdown is that hundreds of thousands of people will go without pay, some of whom will be forced to continue to work without pay, but, “It does give an opportunity to the power in charge, the president in charge, to make unilateral decisions that don’t need a vote of Congress about which programs in the government are essential and which are not.”

And, in fact, he said he spoke to the President about that already.

So there is no rush, on the Republican side, to reopen the government, because now Trump gets to decide which programs he wants to cut, and then it’s up to Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to give the thumbs up or down.

Vought is one of the authors of Project 2025.

What’s he gonna do? Tell Trump no? If anything, he’s going to point to a few programs Trump might miss.

It’s already started.

$18 billion in approved funding for two major transportation projects in democratic New York City – paused.

$8 billion in approved climate change projects across 16 states, mostly Democratic – paused.

He’s also talking about another round of government layoffs.

Meanwhile, the government is closed. And if you go to, say, sba.gov, which is the official government website for the small business association, there is a banner at the top that says: “Senate Democrats voted to block a clean federal funding bill (H.R. 5371), leading to a government shutdown that is preventing the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from serving America’s 36 million small businesses. Every day that Senate Democrats continue oppose a clean funding bill, they are stopping an estimated 320 small businesses from accessing $170 million in SBA-guaranteed funding. As a result of the shutdown, we wanted to notify you that many of our services supporting small businesses are currently unavailable.  The agency is executing its Lapse Plan and as soon as the shutdown is over, we are prepared to immediately return to the record-breaking services we were providing under the leadership of the Trump Administration.”

This is a very clear violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan behavior.

But, you know, they’ve never met a law they didn’t want to break…

So that’s where things stand right now. The government’s shut down. But on the other hand… it’s broken anyway!

Do you want to hear something so funny? Because if we can’t laugh through our tears…

On Monday, Mitt Romney… Do you remember him? Republican senator from Utah (actually, all jokes aside, there’s a great documentary called Mitt that follows his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns).

Anyway, on Monday Romney decided to announce that after Trump did deadly insurrection, and then we held onto our democracy by the skin of our teeth and got to have a transition of power thanks to the bravery of the Capitol police who prevented an angry mob that Trump sent from literally hanging the vice president and hunting Nancy Pelosi and other democrats… after all of that… once Biden was sitting behind that Resolute desk, he gave that ice cream loving, train riding Delawarean a call… and told him to pardon him!

Preemptively!

“I called a member of the White House, one of the senior advisers to President Biden. And I said, ‘If the Justice Department decides to indict President Trump, I hope President Biden will immediately eliminate that, and that he will provide a pardon immediately.’”

Hey man… I have a lot of bad ideas. Every single day. Like, on a good day, I’m coming up with 17 dumb ideas.

And I’ll tell ya what I do – I just don’t tell people. Like, no one’s making you tell people these dumb thoughts. You know that, right?

He said it’s because we shouldn’t be prosecuting political enemies, which is true. But that doesn’t mean we can’t prosecute criminals.

What on earth was this thought process? Not everyone needs to say something about every topic, ya know? Like, guy – you could have actually just said… nothing? That was an option.

“The idea that the system of justice is used to punish political opponents is a very dangerous path to go down.”

Yeah, but have you ever heard of the system of justice for, you know… the justice system? For crimes?

Oh boy… Mitt Romney. You know how some people say there are no bad ideas? They’re wrong.

New York Chimney Falls

-via ABC News

In New York City, the Bronx specifically – a brick chimney 20 stories high collapsed Wednesday morning. Just, kaboom. Sending brick, dust, and debris flying… and no one was hurt or killed!

Absolutely incredible.

Also – 20 stories high.

A 20-story chimney.

You hear a story like that and you think to yourself… you think your job is hard? Imagine being Santa trying to get back up a 20-story chimney!

Jane Goodall

-via The Guardian

In very sad news – Dr. Jane Goodall, the world-famous primatologist, conservationist, animal rights champion, humanitarian, and just general advocate for being and putting the most best we can into the world, has died.

She was 91.

91!

That’s a success story right there.

As I do sometimes, I thought I’d give her the final word here. But I couldn’t narrow down the quotes, so I chose two (even though there are a million to choose from. Turns out when you’re a very good-hearted person, you also have some very good quotes):

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of Jane Goodall. And peace. May I suggest… more of it? If we want. If you’re interested!

But more than fried scallops – it’s also fried scallops day… and because I don’t have to score you before you have taste, but if I did, I’d score you a 12 out of 10…

I’m proud of you.