US Shutdown Day 2 and Apocalypse

The impact of the shutdown got more personal for John McCain when he found out that the Defense Department was cancelling military academy football games this weekend if the shutdown is not resolved by Thursday.  There is a sold out nationally televised Air Force vrs Navy game scheduled this weekend.

The Air Force and Navy are scheduled to square off in a sold-out, nationally televised football game on Saturday, while the Army has a planned match-up against Boston College. If the government impasse isn’t resolved by Thursday, both games will be suspended.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a graduate of the Naval Academy, told reporters that the cancelation of the Air Force-Navy game would be the “defining moment” of the shutdown.
“The apocalypse is upon us,” McCain lamented.

 The House Republicans thought to cough up funding to reopen National Parks, but the Senate Democrats said no deal, either fund it all or nothing.

Since the measures were brought before the House under expedited procedures requiring a two-thirds vote to pass, House Democrats scuttled them, despite an impassioned plea by Democratic D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who recalled that in the last shutdown 17 years ago she prevailed on House Speaker Newt Gingrich to win an exemption to keep the D.C. government running.

‘‘I must support this piecemeal approach,’’ Norton said. ‘‘What would you do if your local budget was here?’’

Republicans said there could be more votes Wednesday, perhaps to allow the National Institutes of Health to continue pediatric cancer research. The NIH’s famed hospital of last resort wasn’t admitting new patients because of the shutdown. Dr. Francis Collins, agency director, estimated that each week the shutdown lasts would force the facility to turn away about 200 patients, 30 of them children, who want to enroll in studies of experimental treatments. Patients already at the hospital are permitted to stay.