After digesting the reaction to Obama's proposed budget, I am predicting that the republicans will not be able to put together enough votes to pass the continuing resolution in early March and that the federal government will "shut down."

I heard some pundits recently saying that some republicans are saying that the reason the republicans came out on the bottom of the federal government shutdown under Clinton is that they gave in too soon. This kind of thinking would only lead one to think that there is a substantial group of republicans, probably enough to either (1) only pass spending cuts so extreme that they know that the democrats in the senate will never pass it and/or Obama would never sign it, or (2) won't agree to any continuing resolution that would appease the democrats at all, that it seems almost a certainty that the continuing resolution to fund the government past March 4, I think is the date, will not get passed.

Oh boy, this is going to be a showdown. They say that lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice, but I have a feeling it's going to strike again in a very similar way that it did back in the Clinton era. How it all will wash out is anyone's guess, but my prediction is that the republicans are not united enough, nor saavy enough to turn this to their advantage. We shall see.

There's no doubt that the federal government is too big. But what seems like a no-brainer to me is to quit giving federal money to well off people. Why are we doing that? They don't need it. But cutting poor people's heating assistance, food stamps, and help for going to college, to name a few things, is cruel and undercuts all of our arguments about us being an example of how a true democracy works.

Democracy is not just survival of the fittest. It involves compassion, that dirty word, and conscience. If our nation can't afford that, then we are in real trouble.

And I just have to add as an epilogue, that Mitch McConnell's comments making fun of Obama's budget by ridiculing "fast trains and windmills" is so beyond the pale that it is an embarassment for Kentucky and the nation. McConnell needs to spend more time with his family and less in Congress if that is the best he can do.