The American government is about as close to shutting down as it has been since the mid 90s.
For all of those non-Americans that don't watch The West Wing as well as the government flunkies that so frequently go upon this blog, let me give you the quickest run down I can.
Basically, the republicans and democrats of the intelligent Socratic society we call congress are disagreeing and are unwilling to compromise enough to fix the problem. The disagreement is over the second least sexy political issue (only after taxes), healthcare. But we're about to hit the debt ceiling aswell which is fun.
If they can not reach an agreement within the hour, the government will shutdown. When that happens, the government is defunded and can not pay for a lot of stuff except for a fewselect things. And everyone that works for the government is unofficially fired (until it reboots). It will probably take a couple of days to start up again, but I'm still flipping out.
If I die, tell Obama his hair looked especially funny today on C-Span.
There are 45 minutes left.
I'll see you on the other side.
