The Senate and House finally passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and re-open the government late last night. What an worthless waste of time and money these past two weeks have been.
A collection of animations about Congress and the government shutdown (click on each image):
The Speaker and the nutty conservatives who lead him continue to drag the rest of America further into the hole they’ve been digging. Last night the House again failed to come up with a plan to lift the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown- so they basically threw the mess into the Senate’s lap and went home. 
Ted Cruz held a secret meeting at Tortilla Coast, a Capitol Hill restaurant last night.
We’re in day 2 of the Government Shutdown. The Republicans are trying to change the narrative from the fact they caused the shutdown over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), so they’re proposing to open parts of the governments to appeal to certain groups of voters. 
So we’re back at a government shutdown, the first in 17 years. At midnight tonight 800,000 workers will be furloughed, basically because the Tea Party Republicans refuse to accept that Obamacare is law and have turned Speaker Boehner into just a mouthpiece for their cause.