Opinion: No Hollywood ending. Only bad endings, and, in the Legislature, no ending at all, so far.

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Two orders, signed about a thousand miles and maybe a couple of hours apart today:

In Denver, President Obama signed the stimulus-package bill that will put gas in the bulldozer tanks and shovels in the hands of thousands of workers on public works projects in California ...

And in Sacramento, the order went out to shut down the bulldozers and lay down the shovels on different public works projects in California. The ‘budget letter’ could have simply been headed ‘STOP.’ The ‘orderly shutdown’ of about 275 projects must begin Thursday. Even these highway and waterway projects that were important enough or far enough along to have dodged earlier shutdown orders got the word this time.

‘The Department of Finance recognizes that there will be significant shutdown costs associated with this action,’ the order read. In other words, it costs money to stop spending money. And it will cost more money still to get them started up again.

If they ever get started up again.

All for the lack of one Republican senator’s vote to pass the budget.

The saying is at least 600 years old, and as true now as then: ``For want of a nail, the shoe was lost/For want of a shoe, the horse was lost/For want of a horse, the rider was lost/For want of a rider, the battle was lost/For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost/All for want of a horseshoe nail.``