Bipartisanship? Not during the McConnell Presidency.

First, let's be clear about the government shut-down. Donald Trump loves the attention. But in fact, he is doing absolutely nothing. True, he's threatened to veto any measure to fund agencies till he gets his "wall." But that threat is meaningless till such a bill reaches his desk. And the person who is preventing that is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell must be giggling and chortling right now, as old Two Scoops pulls all the attention away from him. And Democrats are falling for it, when they could instead aggressively mock the GOP senators -- and Donald Trump -- as puppets of "President McConnell."
== Shall we welcome "neocon" allies against madness? ==
Oh irony. David Frum - one of the original "neoconservative" apologists - is like Oskar Schindler, a former partisan hack who found himself simply unable to follow his party beyond a certain point, down a hellhole of treason and evil. "The scandal of the Trump presidency leaves Americans only bad choices. Powers and privileges essential to the functioning of an honest and patriotic presidency are called into question by this dishonest and unpatriotic presidency. Succeeding presidents and Congresses will have to find a way to restore or replace busted norms with new ones—but pretending now that the old rules can function as intended is not only delusive, but dangerous." 
It's a well-written essay, offering insight into how hard it would be to subpoena the translator from those Putin meetings. (Still, Ms. Gross should be careful on the street, and avoid men with umbrellas.)
As for "reformed" neocons like Mr. Frum, well, we need all hands on deck, and I will fight anyone who tries to narrow the Union's big tent in this critical phase of the Civil War. That means receiving and welcoming help even from former monsters, even the 'Worst American,' George F. Will. In Schindler times, you welcome help from Schindlers, who refuse to sink all the way with their treasonous party.**
So read this piece. It shows the minefield that would lead all the way to SCOTUS, if the House tries to subpoena the interpreter. And yet, there should be a path. In particular, I am appalled to learn the answer to a question I asked at an intelligence agency in 2004. "Do you have a small office dedicated to watching for enemy subornation at the nation's highest levels?" At the time, I was thinking about the Bush family's utter devotion to their kissing cousins in the Saudi Royal House, but such an office would have had the skills even more needed, today.I got no answer then, nor did I expect one. But now I know. We all know. Crap, they never had such a team. How in the world could that be? Back then, my "threats" slideshow featured one that spoke of "subornation" and it got indulgent smirks. No longer. Now, when I show it, I get gasps.

== Another must-read ==
On WIRED a truly key insight: "THE PATTERN OF (Trump's) pro-Putin, pro-Russia, anti-FBI, anti-intelligence community actions are so one-sided, and the lies and obfuscation surrounding every single Russian meeting and conversation so consistent that if this president isn’t actually hiding a massive conspiracy, it means the alternative is worse: America elected a chief executive so oblivious to geopolitics, so self-centered and personally insecure, so naturally predisposed to undermine democratic institutions and coddle authoritarians, and so terrible a manager and leader that he cluelessly surrounded himself with crooks, grifters, and agents of foreign powers that he’s compromised the national security of the US government and undermined 75 years of critical foreign alliances, just to satiate his own ego." 
Oh, but there's more, and better.*
== Failing Bipartisan Efforts ==

A highly sapient article goes to why "bipartisan" efforts have been failing for 40 years. And why, faced with demographic collapse, GOP politicians reach for ever-more blatant methods of cheating. Secret money, gerrymandering and voter suppression are justified by your mad uncle who - with a straight face and no sense of shame - says "it's the only way we can win and keep back the mob."

Examples from the article: the Democrats' foremost proposed bill HR1 would promote wildly popular (70%+ polling) anti-cheating reforms like: "public financing of federal elections through a voluntary small donor-match, requiring that Super PACs and “dark money” groups make their donors public, requiring the president to disclose his or her tax returns, creating a new ethical code for the Supreme Court, restoring the Voting Rights Act, creating a national automatic voter registration system, ending partisan gerrymandering in federal elections and prohibiting voter-roll purging."

"While Democrats are getting ready to roll out that broadly popular, nonpartisan, pro-democracy package, what are Republicans doing? In several states where they suffered midterm defeats, they attempted lame-duck sessions to launch anti-democratic power grabs. I

"In Michigan, where Democrats won the top three statewide offices — governor, attorney general and secretary of state — for the first time since 1990, the lame-duck GOP legislature attempted to dilute the power of all three offices."

The only remaining rationalization for volcanic levels of open cheating is "keeping back the mob." The same justification offered by feudal lords for 6000 years, and the reason for both the English and American revolutions... and every subsequent phase of the U.S. Civil War. This is not politics! Politics in America was killed, dead, by Newt Gingrich and Dennis "friend to boys" Hastert in the 1990s and Mitch McConnell squats like a lead gargoyle on the coffin lid as we thump and pry to open it.

If their putsch succeeds, it will be a world run by mafias. (Did you see the high five exchanged by two leading dons from the Kremlin and Riyadh clans?

There is some unease at these levels. The smarter oligarchs are starting to realize this coming world will not let them enjoy the fruits of restored feudalism. Not when they've made enemies of all the castes and professions who know stuff like science, cybernetics, molecular biology and fission. Their dreams now drift to "Postman" style redoubts in Patagonia, Paraguay and New Zealand. And yes, those mad dreams, too, are built on fairy dust. 

The truly smartest ones are realizing that the grand plan, for all its recent successes, will not have a future. More and more, Revolution's in the air, and only one choice will soon remain.

Will it be an American-style "revolution" like we had in the 1770s and 1860s, or when the Greatest Generation revitalized market enterprise while engendering a thriving middle class and still leaving the rich very comfortable? 

Or will it be the more common style, seen aross 4000 years, in which emotion carries the angry mob? Like 1917. Or 1789? 

Now may be a good time for cheaters to pick the color of their tumbrel.

== A great place to start demanding wagers ==

In an ultimate test of the utter gullibility of our poor confederate neighbors, many of them are fixated on the latest Kremlin-sourced meme, spread by every treason site, reportedly showing Rep. Nancy Pelosi prescribing a Democratic Party smear tactic. I know a number of RASRs – residually adult-sane Republicans – who are not hateful or unpatriotic fellows, but who cling to these treason sites, suckling obscenely deceitful crap. In this case, though, OMG! Not one of them questions how the video suddenly starts?

So eager are they to actually believe she's talking about democrats using that tactic, it never occurs to them to ask for the two minutes that just preceded the sudden start of this Pelosi “confession.” It is a blatant howler, but they actually, actually swallow such an obvious ploy.

See the context and whole footage provided by Snopes… one more reason why the mad-right calls every single fact-checking service “partisan.” 

I offered a wager to one RASR I know. If it turned out Pelosi was saying what the treason site claimed, I would pay him $100. But if I was right, and he’d been suckered, he would promise to never again trust the Kremlin-funded liars who post this kind of garbage, and to in-future ask the blatantly obvious questions, and maybe spread his net wider to get other views.

Alas, as always happens when I try to corner a RASR with a wager, he scooted away. But that doesn’t mean wagers are useless! There are maybe a million decent, patriotic, intelligent and still somewhat adult-sane Republicans out there who desperately cling to magical incantations, to maintain loyalty to a party that long ago left them, betrayed them and has plunged headlong into treason. Their obedience to oligarch-mafiosi and former KGB agents who were all raised from birth to be communists is… weird. But they evade all applications of logic, and run away from bets.

What you do accomplish by demanding a wager is to bring into play a different part of their minds, one that is pragmatic about actual money and honor and even long-forgotten things called facts! Oh, your RASR will run away from putting money on it. They never have the balls to actually bet on one of their incantations. But still, he (and it is always a “he”) sometimes is shaken into thinking new thoughts.

And let me be clear, these fellows, not a majority of GOP males but an important sub-set, are worth the effort! They are decent neighbors and the old-fashioned, sincere kind of conservatives. Alas, they truly – if mistakenly – think they are on the side of the American Experiment, instead of helping its enemies.

Winning just one million of them back into some kind of light is worth trying. Indeed, that may be the last best hope for our republic.

== The bizarre Bezos bonanza... ==

In desperation, the mad right-o-sphere is gleefully attacking Amazon's Jeff Bezos over his looming divorce from his wife MacKenzie, after 25 years. Ooh, wag your fingers over some slightly corny-embarrassing texts, why don't you. (Indeed, one can be puzzled over why rich and famous people use social media at all, let alone texting or twitter. Especially for any off-the-books relationships. Can't they afford intranets?) 

After 25 years, the Bezos divorce is described as amicable, and hence -- human flaws and some silly things notwithstanding -- this is not very much my business, or yours. But sure, Red America, you are free to hold up your divorce rate against Blue America's, or rates of success for your "abstinence only" sex education programs, or rates of gambling, addiction or teen pregnancy, or STDs and so on. By all means, let's compare outcomes.

Seriously?  You can try to tar a democratic leaning zillionaire as "immoral" for a divorce far milder than any of Newt's three, Limbaugh's three, Reagan's, Trump's two, McCain's... and then perverts like Larry Craig and Roy Moore and Dennis "friend to boys" Hastert, who both buggered children and buggered America by deliberately ending all negotiated politics in the USA?

You know I was just getting started. The list goes on and on. But it really boils down to one fact -- that Jeff & MacKenzie Bezos were among the most effective teams in the history of our species. And I'd wager they'll continue to be.

----
* Look who agrees with the WIRED piece, using many of the same terms. 
** Meanwhile, just to illustrate that not all US conservative have gone insane, see the cogent legal scholar Jack Goldsmith who still had hopes a year ago that Tillerson & Mattis might moderate the insanity, in this interview by Bill Kristol who, though he was a neocon idiot, seems to have "Schindlered" along with David Frum and others, unable to follow the GOP down a rabbit hole of treason.