Local businesses are supporting federal workers. Dysfunctional elected representatives are still being paid. Think about that for a moment.

Photo credit.

I was the greeter at Pints&union on Thursday night, and it was a wonderful scene given the ridiculous circumstances. Thanks to Joe, our team and the volunteers for rocking it.

Save your Darwinian drivel for another time, and urge Senators Young and Braun, and Representative Hollingworth, to be accountable to their constituents.

And now for local chain newspaper guest columnist Amanda Beam's commentary on this matter, as picked up by CNN.

Congress and the President continue to weave a web of partisanship born out of pride. My husband and federal workers like him have gotten trapped in their sticky mess. They ask people deemed "essential" to execute their duties despite withholding funds but neglect their job of approving a workable budget.

Yet somehow the representatives who fail to pass legislation are still receiving their paycheck. A trip through Alice's looking glass couldn't produce a more mixed up world.

No matter your party loyalties, you must admit this is no way to run a household, much less a government.

Enough is enough. Not resolving this shutdown through courage and compromise is a dereliction of Congress's sworn duty. Generate bipartisan legislation. Bring it to a vote. And, if vetoed by the President, work among yourselves, override the veto and fund our nation.

To conclude, it's great to see an increasing number of local businesses picking up the pace.

Local businesses offer free services for federal workers, by Brooke McAfee (Bill Hanson's Tom May Content Reciprocator)

SOUTHERN INDIANA — As the weeks have passed, Floyds Knobs resident Robin Huntley has had to save her money while furloughed from the U.S. Census Bureau in Jeffersonville.

But a few local restaurants have made it easier for her family, along with many others, by offering free services for federal employees affected by the government shutdown. This week, she received free meals at businesses such as Pints & Union and Cox's Hot Chicken in New Albany.

Huntley said the businesses' support of federal workers defines community, and she plans to support the participating restaurants after the government shutdown is finished.

"Everyone is going through it together," she said. "When a new business opens, we come down and support them, and when they see that some of their clients are not able to come in, they pitch in and help. It really is a community relationship" ...

Save your Darwinian drivel for another time, and urge Senators Young and Braun, and Representative Hollingworth, to be accountable to their constituents.

Fact is, 800,000 unpaid federal workers are being held hostage not by one man, but by America's wretched two-party system. In any other facet of our lives, being given a "choice" between two options would be laughable, and yet we continue to accept one or the other of two entities that both suckle the same teat of accumulated wealth for sustenance.

Want to be independent? I hate to be a buzzkill this early in the year, but first, you have to think independently.

Those of you hugging the Darwinian ledge on the far right side of the aisle, who currently chortle with glee at the prospect of at last achieving Saint Grover Norquist's cherished wish to drown government in a bathtub, are displaying even less empathy toward fellow human beings than usual -- which is saying something.

You're seemingly fine with expediently eliminating "non-essential" jobs by starving job holders, when the jobs were created by ... wait for it ... the two-party duopoly. Can you explain to me why this process cannot be a process, rather than collateral damage suffered by de facto hostages, and for a reason (a wall) that has nothing whatever to do with your "small government" mantra?

Doesn't it contradict this mantra?

My friend Amanda wrote at Fb. My boss Joe was spot on: enough is enough.

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So today my husband- the FBI agent one who is currently working without pay- was told if we miss another paycheck due to the shutdown we lose our vision and dental insurance. Yeah.

I phoned my congressional representatives Senator Young, Congressman Hollingsworth and Senator Braun. I've emailed them before. This time I invited them to dinner.

Not one of them seems to care about out situation. Nor do them seem to want to respond to me or my family, their constituents.

If you can, give them a call & tell them your displeasure in their inability to even call or email back those of us who are affected by their actions. You might want to throw in that they need to do their jobs when my husband is doing his without pay. Their phone numbers are below. Let them know Amanda Beam sent you.

(And please be nice to those answering the phone. Sen. Young and Rep. Hollingsworth's staff were very kind and did a great job. I even told them to go grab a beer. Sen. Braun's assistant made ME want to grab a beer.)

Senator Young: 202-224-5623

Senator Braun: 202-224-4814

Representative Hollingsworth: 202-225-5315

Historical amnesia: "The Militarization of the Southern Border Is a Long-Standing American Tradition."

There is very little "new" under the sun, but with the advent of the internetz and social media, there are numerous and innovative ways of misunderstanding the "old."

In short, southern border issues real or imagined are a natural, longstanding consequence of America's presumed "manifest destiny," or in other words, our deity-given right to claim western territories from whomever occupied them first -- by force, if necessary.

Ever heard of the Mexican-American War?

The Militarization of the Southern Border Is a Long-Standing American Tradition, by Greg Grandin (The Nation)

Trump’s wall is just the latest incarnation of an old fixation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.

The point was less to actually build “the wall” than to constantly announce the building of the wall. “We started building our wall. I’m so proud of it,” Donald Trump tweeted. “What a thing of beauty.”

In fact, no wall, or certainly not the “big, fat, beautiful” one promised by Trump, is being built. True, miles of some kind of barrier—barbed wire, chain-link and steel-slat fencing, corrugated panels, and, yes, even lengths of what can only be described as concrete wall—have gone up along the US-Mexico border, starting at least as far back as the administration of President William Taft, early in the last century. Trump has claimed repairs and expansions of these barriers as proof that he is fulfilling his signature campaign promise. Plaques have already been bolted onto upgrades in existing fencing, crediting him with work started and funded by previous administrations.

And yet Trump’s phantasmagorical wall, whether it ever materializes or not, has become a central artifact in American politics. Think of his promise of a more than 1,000-mile-long, 30-foot-high ribbon of concrete and steel running along the southern border of the United States as America’s new myth. It is a monument to the final closing of the frontier, a symbol of a nation that used to believe it had escaped history, but now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to believe they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past.

Prior to World War I, the border—established in the late 1840s and early 1850s after the US military invaded Mexico and took a significant part of that country’s territory—was relatively unpoliced ...

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Kalin Tavern, where a passport is required to cross the barroom.

At Conde Nast Traveler, Ken Jennings writes about a tavern divided.

Sitting on an international border can be bad for business.

Running a multi-national pub in the middle of nowhere can be tricky. Kalin pays taxes only in Slovenia, but has a separate phone number in each country. He doesn't get so many Croatian guests now that they have to show a passport just to get to his front door, so he only stocks Slovene beers. An old photo in the hallway shows Kalin's mom's dog in happier times, peeing on the border marker right outside the tavern door.

The Google street view above dates to 2013, affording a clean view of the Kalin Tavern on the left (note the awnings) and the border blockade running right across the street.

In Slovene, "gostilna" is an inn or pub.

You might recall a digression from last year, in which I recounted my first and only visit to Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1987, when there was no wall across the road because all of it was part of the late Yugoslavia.

30 years ago today: (May) An introduction to Yugoslavia in Ljubljana, then Zagreb and the way to Sarajevo.

Union Pivo (beer) figured into that one, too.

So many walls, too few bridges.

The city didn't pay for this wall, either. Sorry.