It appears that due to the government shut down the US government is delinquent on its water bill if $5 million to the Washington DC water authority, which has raised the question of what should be done about it

The government is the largest water customer in the city, and because of the ongoing federal shutdown, its water bill is past due. The large unpaid bill left DC Water officials wondering what their options are, and whether turning off water to the White House is among them.

“We received an email Wednesday, January 2, from an individual at the bureau of fiscal services at the treasury,” said Matthew Brown, chief financial officer at DC Water, speaking during the water authority’s first board meeting of the year. He went on to read from the email: the federal government would not be paying $5 million of its $16.5 million quarterly water bill.

“That brings up an interesting question,” responded DC Water board chairman Tommy Wells. “Is there a time from nonpayment when we cut someone’s water off?”

“1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is that what you’re talking about?” asked another board member, to laughter.
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… I have given up on understanding the Brexit process.

While the way that the US government functions (or, as is the current situation, does not function) is difficult to understand, the current situation regarding the Brexit process in the UK has gone completely out of my range of understanding. I read this news report that says that prime minister Theresa May has received some major setbacks due to losing key parliamentary votes, but what exactly happened, what it means, and what the next steps are is hard to decipher. Next week is supposed to feature yet another key vote.

The difficulty is compounded by the fact that so many political parties are involved and members of both Labour and Conservative parties are not unanimous on what they want. I assume that there is some orderly way that they can proceed but for the life of me, I don’t think I will understand what the options are without devoting an enormous amount of time delving into the weeds of the deals and the procedures.

But at least their government is open, so there’s that.

One thing we should be clear about is that senate majority leader Republican Mitch McConnell could open the government at any time if he wanted to and thus should shoulder a large part of the blame for the shutdown. But he seems to have entered the witness protection program being conspicuously absent from the public eye while the shutdown continues. Remember, the senate unanimously passed a government funding bill in December without wall funding when they thought that Trump was on board with it. Then Trump abruptly reversed himself and said that he would veto any bill that did not have wall funding. Now McConnell says that he will not bring up any bill that Trump will veto, even if it is identical to the one that he brought up and voted for in December. But why not? If Republicans liked the bill so much then, then even if Trump vetoed it, there should be more than enough votes to override the veto and thus reopen the government.
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I did not watch Donald Trump’s speech last night but the reviews of it were so scathing that I decided to see for myself, helped by the fact that it was less that 10 minutes long and I felt I could stomach it. So I did and my reaction was that he looked like a person who knows he is in a bad situation and does not know how to get out. Trump’s strategy in the face of bad news is distraction and deflection. He could always create some new issue by saying something idiotic or making a stupid suggestion that he had no intention of carrying out, and the media would scurry after it. But there can be no deflection from the government shutdown. There is nothing he can do that is going to prevent an ever-increasing crescendo of attention to the fact that the government is grinding to a halt. I thought that he might throw a Hail Mary pass and declare a national emergency as a distraction but he didn’t.
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Donald Trump is appalled that new congresswoman Rashid Tlaib referred to him as a ‘motherfucker’ and his puppy House minority leader Kevin McCarthy joined in clutching his pearls.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed his anger with Tlaib’s comment Friday, saying, “That action should not stand. Somebody should stand up to her.”

The president also weighed in at a Rose Garden appearance, saying Tlaib “dishonored herself” with the “disgraceful” remark.

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Donald Trump is planning to give an address to the nation tonight at 9:00 pm that will be carried live on all the major TV networks. I will not be watching it because I find it hard to watch him lying in real time. I will choose instead to read later about all the lies and fear-mongering that I expect him to deliver as he gets increasingly desperate to get out of the box he put himself into by tying funding for his wall with keeping the government open. Expect to hear apocalyptic visions of the doom facing the nation if the wall is not built.
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We are seeing a familiar scenario play out now that the Democrats made sweeping gains in the November elections and switched 40 seats to gain control of the House of Republicans. They now have a 235-199 majority with the disputed seat in North Carolina still to be determined. As a result, they can set the legislative agenda and now have sweeping powers to investigate all the abuses of the Trump administration.
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While the House of Representatives is passing bills to fund the government, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring those bills up for a vote in that body, even identical ones that had been passed at the end of last year when Trump had indicated he would agree to it before he abruptly reversed course and demanded finding for his stupid wall.

But not to worry, the Senate is not doing nothing. While the government grinds slowly to a halt and people undergo hardships as a consequence, Ryan Grim and Glenn Greenwald write that the very first bill that the Senate is likely to bring up is one that punishes people who criticize Israeli policies and support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that is intended to pressure the government of Israel to end its apartheid-like treatment of Palestinians.
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The NFL has been utterly craven in its response to the kneeling protest launched by quarterback Colin Kaepernick to highlight police brutality. They have clearly conspired to punish him and any others who protest by denying them the chance to play. Now it appears that some major stars are joining the protest by refusing to perform in the Super Bowl half-time show, once a much sought after gig for any entertainer.

Some of the biggest names in pop and rap, including Rihanna and Cardi B, have turned down the opportunity to appear, while one group that has reportedly been booked, the Adam Levine-fronted pop-rock act Maroon 5, is facing pressure to pull out. Rapper Travis Scott, the only performer reportedly secured to join the show, is facing pressure from hip-hop superstar Jay-Z and civil rights groups to pull out. With four weeks to go, producers of the 13-minute event are scrambling to find additional performers for what Variety last week called “music’s least wanted gig”.

Of course, I will watch neither the game nor the half-time show since I feel that evidence of rampant traumatic brain injuries has placed football on the same level as boxing, a throwback to the gladiator days when people risked their lives for the entertainment of the public.