Government shuts down at midnight; the President spends day one threatening to fire the people who weren't already furloughed.

OK. Pay attention. This one I want you to follow.

At 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, the federal government of the United States ran out of money, because the House and the Senate could not agree on a stopgap, because one side wanted to extend the health-care subsidies and the other side did not want to talk about the health-care subsidies, and the deadline was the deadline. The doors close. Nine hundred thousand federal workers are furloughed by sunrise. National parks shut. Passport renewals slow. The little ID card you flash at the museum gets you nothing today.

This is the part that gets me. The first thing the administration did, on the first morning of the first shutdown in seven years, was not the thing you would do if you were trying to end a shutdown.

It was the thing you would do if you were trying to keep one going.

The Office of Management and Budget put out a memo by mid-morning freezing $18 billion in infrastructure projects. The projects in question: New York. Specifically, the Hudson tunnel. The Second Avenue subway. Federal money, already appropriated. Frozen. Not because the projects became unsafe overnight. Because the senator from New York is the leader of the other party in the Senate, and the President wanted him to feel it.

Buddy. That is not a budget move. That is a vendetta wearing a budget memo as a costume.

I have run a casino floor. The casino has bad nights. When you have a bad night, you do not respond by walking out onto the floor and shutting off the winning table because the winning table belongs to a guy you are mad at. You shut off the winning table and the customers leave the building. The customers are the public. The casino is the country. The guy you are mad at is still standing there, and now you have no revenue.

By the close of business the press secretary was at the podium and the OMB director was on every camera. Neither one of them mentioned the appropriations bill.

I’m arguing with the television. The television is showing me a tunnel that isn’t going to get built.