A friend wrote an almost true-to-life Western novel ("Wide Open" by Larry Bjornson, by the way). Even though it has won almost every literary award in the genre, some people do not like it because it is "kind of slow". That is code for, "Not enough people getting shot."
Not at all, each one of those animals is a vegetarian, though the pig may stray from time to time. Notice there is no shark fin soup or snake on the list. :)
Yes, everyone will be affected, despite what they think. It isn't just government employees, but what those employees do that will be affected, and sooner or later everyone has something they need from the federal government.
Congressional elections are local. Many people look at Washington and say, "This is terrible! Throw the bums out!" But they can only vote for the one bum that represents their district. And a lot of people prefer the bum they know to one they don't know.
This will probably bode poorly more for the Republicans than the Democrats. The Tea Party faction in congress seems like a bunch of toddler throwing tantrums, and despite Boehner's brave attempt to spin things like it's the Senate Democrat's fault, I think more people will end up blaming the GOP (like last time Newt shut down the government).
What were the democrats supposed to do? Give up everything they've worked and fought years for, and won, to appease the party who lost the battle over and over and over into doing the job they were elected for? The republicans couldn't defeat the Affordable Care Act in congress, in the elections, or in the Supreme Court. So they held their breath until everyone turned blue and try to blame it on the other party.
http://www.outnext.com/on/animals/
And giant pandas are so playful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tofIAnExhQ4