We used to talk about how a good president could keep the trains running on time. This shutdown ended because President Trump couldn’t keep the planes flying on time.

We’re glad the Air Traffic Controllers and all federal employees are back on the job, and getting paid.

Television newscasters highlighted employees who were so broke they couldn’t afford food for their kids or gas for the car. For their benefit, I hope that, along with their back pay, the government sends a copy of the FEMA fact sheet explaining how much savings workers should set aside for emergencies. One or two month’s salary is the minimum.

We’ve got bickering and back-stabbing between Democrats and Republicans; we don’t need bickering and hurt feelings between ones who had an “involuntary furlough vacation” and the ones who had to work through the shutdown. That disparity is probably the real reason so many called in sick instead of working.

The argument over a wall on the Mexico border caused the shutdown.  My recent ideas for a physical barrier, including my analogy with “chickens on a football field,” have failed to persuade any Democrat, including Speaker Pelosi. They have their own ideas for “border security” (which loosely translates to “open borders”).

The President has 3 weeks to convince Democrats to appropriate $5 Billion for 250 miles of steel barrier. Can he convince Speaker Pelosi? Not a chance. She is so dead set against an “immoral” wall she will go to her grave opposing any kind of wall. Her grave will likely be in the back yard of the Pelosi Estate, which is surrounded by a wall.

Concerning the battle between Trump and the Democrats, here is an interesting quote by a former president, “You now see how essential system and plan are for conducting our affairs wisely with so bitter a party in opposition to us. They look not at all to what is best for the public, but how they may thwart whatever we propose, though they should thereby sink their country.”

Was that President Obama? Or Clinton? Or FDR? No, it was Thomas Jefferson, in 1804.

We’ll get back to the wall/fence/barrier argument in a week or two.

Did you see the Washington Post newspaper headline: “Five black activists arrested for vulgar verbal attack on high school students?” Of course not. There was no such story although there should have been. Instead the more common “headline” in the news and social media last weekend was “White Catholic boys wearing MAGA hats abused a Native-American Vietnam War veteran at the Lincoln Memorial.” To their credit, most of these “news” folks corrected their initial story. But a few persistent Trump-haters stuck with their story. No one is disliked more in this country than Trump and Trump supporters, unless maybe it’s the New England Patriots and a couple of NFL referees.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“I hope the Democrats win this election just for one thing. I have heard 5,000 hours of speeches on a ‘return to Jeffersonian principles,’ and I want to see what ‘Jeffersonian principles’ are.” DT #700, Oct. 24, 1928

“Jeffersonian Principles has always been a big sales argument with us Democrats. It seems that Jefferson was for the poor. Well, that strikes me as being mighty good politics in those days for that’s about all there was.” Saturday Evening Post, March 30, 1929