[quote]The U.S. government shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET Tuesday after lawmakers in the House and the Senate could not agree on a spending bill to fund the government. The two sides bickered and blamed each other for more than a week over Obamacare, the president's signature health care law. House Republicans insisted the spending bill include anti-Obamacare amendments. Senate Democrats were just as insistent that it didn't. Federal employees who are considered essential will continue working. But employees deemed non-essential -- close to 800,000 -- will be furloughed.[/quote] It continues to shock and amaze me that adult people in the modern age continue to indulge this sort of abject incompetence from their system of governance, and the people who are supposed to be in charge of it.