Good morning to everyone and welcome to another edition of your quickly-typed-but-deeply-felt liveblog of the terrible Sunday morning political chat shows. My name is Jason, and the government shutdown is dead! Long live the government shutdown!


Yes, it has been decided that we shall, for a time, have at least the outward veneer of functionality, and even scare up a mess of Congresscritters to hash out a budget, all the while skipping merrily toward another set of grim deadlines and dire consequences that a few legislators, hopped up on some bad brown acid, would prefer to breach and impose because they've decided that the bog-standard system of trade-offs and compromises are real live "tyranny."


On top of all of that, a major initiative to provide millions of Americans with the health insurance they need to stay alive and out of debilitating debt now depends on a website that has deep and difficult-to-resolve problems, like the ones that my therapist is always telling me about, only they involved the screen going all "OH SORRY WE HAVE TO STOP HERE FOR THE TIME BEING, OMG WHAT? HA HA, SRSLY IT WILL BE OKAY JUST COME BACK TOMORROW." And then you click "OK" to save where you are to come back tomorrow and the screen switches to something that says, "ffffffffxxxxxxxxxxxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzkkkkkkkkkkkkk" and you are like, "Okay! I will hope for the best!"


Obviously, the state websites are working better and that's good news and a real lesson of why you should, if possible, move to state where the state government is filled with real live civil servants who actually want to establish a functional set of government services that work and make people happy, as opposed to states that are run by freaked out clowns and ghouls from your local haunted forest or cursed cemetery.


In the meanwhile, the Federal version of the Affordable Care Act website, which exists because too many states are run by the aforementioned ghoul-clowns, now depends on Federal IT contractors and the American customer service industry. If I could pick any two groups of people to do any important thing with me, those two groups would be way way way, super way, down my list, just above "carnies" and "people who have obvious tells when they try to bluff at poker" and "9/11 truthers." But you go to war with the army you have, I guess.


Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that between now and the next statutory deadlines for government shutdowns and debt ceiling raises, there are a lot of fun and terrible twists in the road, and it could all end in tears! So you have that going for you. For now, please feel free to let me watch these shows so you don't have to. As always, you may converse in the comments, drop me a line if you need to, follow me on Twitter if you can bear it, and click over to my Rebel Mouse page for some Sunday Reads if you get bored waiting for me to put new typing in here.


FOX NEWS SUNDAY




[More liveblog is coming in a minute. While you wait, there are entertaining reads from around the web available at my Rebel Mouse page.]