REVIEWING THE BIDDING

Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner and other Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate have spent several days scrambling to find the right combination of words to blame the government shut-down on President Obama... and Democrats generally.  They agreed on a strategy: say the problem has been that the President is unwilling to meet with them... unwilling to have a discussion about their concerns.  

So the President sent an invitation to the entire House of Representatives to come to the White House for a discussion.  The Speaker’s office said yesterday that Boehner wouldn’t allow all 232 members of the House to go to the White House, but that he and a small group of 18 select Republican committee chairpeople would attend, including the cheerful  Congresswoman from Kansas on the right.

Here's what happened today: President Obama met with the 18.  They came out of the meeting saying they are willing to present a bill that would extend the debt limit for six weeks in order at least temporarily to avoid default by allowing government to pay it’s bills; but they reached no agreement on restarting the government. I got my pictures for today by pointing my cell phone at a TV screen.

The government is in it’s ninth day of shutdown.  Tomorrow is day ten. It’s anyone’s guess how long the shutdown will last.  Tea Party extremists show no signs of allowing the government to restart unless the Affordable Care Act, which was approved and voted into law by a majority of Representatives in a previous congress, is undone.

Coming home on my bike from the Museum of Photographic Arts this afternoon, I stopped to watch Rick practice his rope walking. I was reminded of the President's tough day. Polls are showing that a majority of Americans approve of the way  President Obama is handling the situation.