Shutdown, Schmutdown!

(By Cyril Blubberpuss, conservative-American)

     "Shutdown, schmutdown!" I cried while urinating on a homeless man on Wall Street (I assumed someone would soon set him on fire). "This government could do with some pipe-cleaning, wouldn't you agree, Mr. Homeless and Legless Iraq War Veteran?"

     We've been hearing about who's to blame for this latest government shutdown for weeks now, the second one in four and a half years (Only this time without, alas, Ted Cruz reading from Dr. Seuss). The Republicans say the Democrats are to blame, the Democrats say the Republicans are to blame, Trump's blaming Chuck Schumer and Congress and the liberal media's blaming Trump.

     I'd love to smack all their under ripe melon heads together and say, "Enough is enough! The government's been shut down again. Isn't that a win-win for everyone?" After all, isn't that the ultimate goal of Republicans, to shrink government so you can drown it in a toilet while still getting your pay, perks and benefits?

     So what if people bought tour tickets to the Statue of Liberty only to be turned away at Liberty Island? "Give us your poor, your huddled masses, as long as we're open for the time being!" is what Emma Lazarus should've written. So what if the NOAA has to struggle to give us weather alerts by putting a beanie on their Director and sticking him on top of the Empire State Building to warn us about the wind?

     Really, these days I'm missing Michele Bachmann preening for the cameras at the closed veteran's memorial and blaming Obama for this latest shutdown, which, of course, he is to blame. Shutdowns are only bad for business when the proles get uppity and start bleating about working 120 hour work weeks and getting their extremities chopped off in their "unsafe working conditions."

     Uncle Sam should be put out to pasture once in a while so we can all enjoy how nice it is not have some avuncular old fart holding out his hand begging for taxes or breathing down our necks carping about pollution and Wall Street greed, blah blah. Hell, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a good friend of mine, falls asleep all the time after 11 AM even when negotiating with the Chinese, The rest of the government just followed his lead.

     What is disastrous is when this happens in the private sector, especially when the government gets involved.

     Why, my family and I still vividly remember the pandemonium that ensued when my baby brother Cecil's online business, www.cecilsprays.com, was shut down by the feds back in the 90's. Apparently, Uncle Sam's long reach extended even into Yugoslavia, in which their government authorities supposedly "rescued" over three dozen sex workers who'd been lured out of their hostels and given an alternative to a higher education.
     Those poor 37 boys were then thrown out of a job and forced to seek refuge in the European colleges from which they were lured. God only knows what they teach them in those European colleges: Probably French cheese and wine swilling and the finer points of Greek sodomy. And all because one ungrateful little whelp saw fit to saw off his own foot to escape into the Slavic wilderness and tattle on my kid brother. There's gratitude for you!
    

     And don't even get started on my baby girl, who'd once hopefully started a business beside a highway in New Jersey. It was a female-only truck stop called "Rose the Riveter's". Alas, my little girl didn't do the proper research on her demographic and overestimated the number of female truckers here in America. (Of course, the questionable items in the adult-themed gift shop didn't help any, especially as she neglected to get batteries for many of the items offered).

     But the government's not shut down for everyone, as President Trump showed in this photo op taken last Friday just before he waddled out of the White House to go to Mar-a-Lago for a rare weekend of golf. Thinking ahead, he even put on one of his famous $40 ball caps to protect his full head of hair from getting disheveled from the inevitable winds of change. It's a busman's holiday for the president as he engages in white knuckle negotiations on the back nine with heads of state and Cabinet heads as to who gets to be the first to shout, "Shockingly brilliant shot, Mr. President!" every time he slices one into the rough. And, yes, rehearsing his best moves from five years ago to trundle them out again.