Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. Bill

Crystal is out. He's sitting Shiva for Dick Cheney. No, I don't know not true. He's just traveling today. He'll be back next week. And so instead, we've got to throwback for the Bullwark Pod original. So it used to be Will Salatin Mondays back in the Charlie Sykes days. And I'm excited to welcome my colleague Will Salatin back. He was known for finding ponies in the pile of horse shit back then. That was kind of the running joke. You would always try to find the pony. And I've got to warn you guys, I'm seeing a lot of, I'm the only one on the internet saying ponies this morning. So Will is running off on me. Trigger warning for positivity ahead. How you doing, Will? Good, good. I saw you in the Nuggets hat. I thought I had to wear the Rockets hat. How is it, Tim, that our teams are in the so-called group of death in the NBA Cup, which luckily nobody cares about the NBA Cup. But it's going to be fun. Hopefully a play playing. And why are we trailing? We're losing to the bad

teams in what was supposed to be the group of death. I'm hoping for a trip to Houston with you

this next summer because I think it's two really good teams. All right. Let's talk about the shutdown news.

There's been a group of weak-kneed Democrats in the Senate. We always knew this is going to happen.

It's a big risk always.

I had lunch with somebody that I can remain nameless who is friends with a lot of the Democratic senators.

He's like, you have no idea how weak these people are.

The fact that we were able to keep the shutdown going this long is a miracle.

What ended up happening is eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to advance the deal. The deal is it's

going to reverse the rifts, the firings of government workers, just not nothing. Real people,

the real jobs. Funding the government until like January, promising a vote on the Obamacare tax credits.

It's just kind of the silliest version of this because the House was never going to vote on this.

Funding several agencies, funding SNAP, guaranteeing that SNAP gets funded for a couple of years. The eight are Durbin, Angus King of Maine, Tim Cain of Virginia, Fetterman, Shaheen and Hassan of New Hampshire, Mastow and Rosen of Nevada. Democrats online are big mad, not me, but before we get to my contrarian take, Will,

what do you make of the deal?

Damn, well, Tim, I'm afraid we probably agree more than you'd like.

Okay, no, that's great.

To me, the key word and what you just said was online.

Democrats online are really pissed up.

This is not an online thing.

This is a real life thing, okay?

And I know that people wish that the Republicans would have folded because of the pain that a lot of people were suffering

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