It was a very subtle gesture, lost amid all the media ballyhoo over the Great Government Shutdown. But in that small gesture, we find the Rosetta Stone that helps the astute observer define and interpret the deceitful language of Washington politics. And once again, the uncovered language reveals that the Democrats not only are jerking around and playing games of dishonesty and outright fraud — but that they know it darn well.

Did you see it? Did you catch the revealing sign?

The House of Representatives already had voted to keep the Government open, and now it fell to the United States Senate to follow suit. After all the bloviating, a vote was taken. Under the Senate’s arcane rules, which are completely incompatible with those of the United States Constitution, nothing can get approved in the Senate with fewer than 60 votes out of 100. Therefore, with Republicans holding only 51 seats in the upper chamber, and with the Schumer-Pelosi Democrats sworn to The Resistance, so that they might block President Trump from achieving his agenda, there never were going to be 60 votes on the first go-round to keep the Government open.

So the vote was taken, and — predictably — all the Democrats voted to shut down the Government. Except for five of them. Five brazen liars, five frauds as phony as a promise by Barack Obama that you can keep your doctor and your health plan. The five Democrats who “broke with party discipline” were Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Also the Democrat placeholder in Alabama whose name is not worth mentioning because he will not be staying in the Senate long enough for anyone to bother learning it.

Was it courage that prompted these five to break from Pelosi and Schumer? Was it conscience? No. Rather, it was that the first four are up for reelection in ten months, facing Republican pro-Trump voters in Republican pro-Trump states, people who regret ever having put these radicals in the Senate in the first place. Voters who have been waiting six years to get a crack at these phonies who promised to be Centrist Democrats, moderates, but who instead bullet-voted with the Obama agenda. They voted with Obama on Obamacare and its modifications. They made the Iran Deal possible. They supported the Obama socialist economic agenda that focused on taking away Middle Class assets to support a burgeoning welfare state, from expanded food stamps to paying the physically able to sit on couches. They backed Obama’s agenda that inhibited the creation of new wealth, that excessively penalized efforts to repatriate American corporate assets to America. They supported trade agreements that stifled American enterprise and put Americans out of work. They sustained Obama’s choking regulations on the economy and industry. They presided over the multi-million-dollar Solyndra disaster and other disasters like it. They sustained the choking of new energy development, regulation of new and more environmentally friendly fuel exploration techniques, and supported efforts against hydraulic fracturing that offered to expand newly robust shale production. They abided the continued obstruction preventing opening the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. They sustained and supported an Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy that frittered away the gains of the Surge in Iraq, that tipped off the Taliban and ISIS as to the day we would be downgrading our efforts in Afghanistan. They allowed Obama to try closing down Gitmo, handing over the worst five murderers in today’s world in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl. They facilitated the shipment of billions in cold cash to the Iran mullahs and a policy that allowed the shaming and disgracing of American servicemen humiliated by the Iranians. They backed a policy that saw “red lines” drawn in Syria and then disregarded, that justified playing down ISIS as a “junior varsity,” that saw overseas allies like Israel brutalized and regularly criticized while love and financial aid incentives were gleefully extended to dictators like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Castros of Cuba. They stood with the Lois Lerners, the Eric Holders and his “Fast and Furious” DOJ, then Loretta Lynch and her support for injustices and Clinton cover-ups.

Remember them: Heitkamp of North Dakota, McCaskill of Missouri, Donnelly of Indiana, Manchin of West Virginia. They enabled the Democrats’ agenda under Obama, and they have been card-carrying members of “The Resistance” under President Trump. They have tried blocking President Trump’s judicial appointments, have stymied his appointments to positions in agencies. They all voted against tax reform and tax reductions for the middle class — each and every one of them.

And now, suddenly, these four con artists voted, along with the temporary interloper from Alabama, to keep the Government open. Why?

Why? Because these four lowlifes now are up for reelection, this one time in six years, and they have to face the voters, the constituents whom they were elected to represent, whose views they promised to reflect — and whom they have sold out repeatedly for six years, as they consistently have voted hard-line radical “Resistance.” But now they are up for reelection. Soon they will be going before the voters, again mendaciously promising six more years of “moderation” and “independent judgment.” And their “proof of independence” will be that they voted with the Republicans on the first go-round to keep the Government open.

Note that they cast those votes only after being certain that such votes would be meaningless because the tally to remain open would fall short of 60 anyway. They knew that the Democrat objective — their objective — of closing the Trump Government would be attained anyway, regardless of their votes. So, once they and their Democrat handlers knew assuredly that their five votes would not matter, they were green-lighted behind closed doors to vote to keep the Government open. By contrast, in a tight vote weeks earlier over tax reform, where their votes actually might have mattered if they had voted “Yes,” they voted “No.”

What does this tell us? This Rosetta Stone — the single vote they have cast with the Republicans on keeping the Government open — tells us several things:

First, that they are phonies. They are liars. They stand before their voters, make promises that they do not intend to keep. It is not like a Donald Trump or a Ronald Reagan who makes promises, works day and night to honor and fulfill them, and occasionally must compromise around the contours of the promise because, otherwise, a bill will not be passed and nothing will get done. Yes, compromise in politics sometimes is necessary and even can be honorable. Sometimes. But these five are cynical liars. At the time they make the promise, they have no intention of ever honoring their words. They lie, fully aware that they are lying, knowing that they could be imprisoned for perjury if only their promises were uttered under oath, fraudulently promising moderation in office — and then, once elected, they come to Washington with carte blanche for the next six years to join The Resistance, to pursue radical left policies until ten months before reelection.

Second, it really does reflect — and this is painful to concede — that a great many everyday people in this country, perhaps as many as half, really are much more stupid than we care to admit. When politicians say on the Sunday Morning talk shows that “The American People are too smart to believe this,” the reality is: No, they ain’t. Bro, when was the last time you watched “Watters World”? Yes, lots are smart, but all-too-many are stupider than a ball of yarn, dumber than a shirt button — even stupider beyond that, almost as stupid as Maxine Waters. Too many people are really, really stupid. If the definition of “mediocre” is “ordinary,” then by definition the intelligence level of half the population is beneath mediocrity. Because if people were not stupid — were not that stupid — then these four Senate Democrats plus Whatsizname-from-Alabama would know that the voters will see through their charade of suddenly voting to keep the Government open. Back home, the constituents would grasp that the first votes cast by these phonies “breaking party discipline” and “defying The Resistance” in their five-plus years of office, cast just on the brink of reelection, is phony. The politicians would not act double-faced because they would know that people are too smart to be fooled that easily. But in fact Heitkamp, McCaskill, Donnelly, and Manchin know that too many people back home can be and are fooled that easily.

Third, the four votes, plus the other guy, demonstrate that, despite the leftist drumbeat at CNN-MSNBC-WaPo-New York Times, etc., the politicians intuitively grasp that the American public side, from the very gut, with the GOP on this one. That the thing voters want is for their Senators to keep the Government open. That, no matter how much we do or do not care about the 800,000 Illegals who never should have entered this country without permission, you do not close down an American Government to mollify the claims of people who never should have entered in the first place. Their issue can be addressed another day.

Dreamers?

Why do we accept Orwellian Newspeak and buy into Obama’s deceitful corruption of language? What makes the children of Illegals “Dreamers”? Their idealism? Then I also am a Dreamer, and so are you, and so are we all. The only difference is that we dream here… legally. It is a fraud on the English language to call this one group “The Dreamers.” It is like these rock bands: Herman’s Hermits were not really hermits. Paul, John, George, and Ringo were not really beetles. And thus with Barack and The Dreamers.

Moreover, do the 800,000 include not only the kids of those who entered illegally but also the Illegals who brought them in? Do you see the charade? First, you have to grant an amnesty to the kids — these giggly little kiddies and coochy-cootykes some of whom are in their mid-thirties, the vast majority of whom never attended college, many of whom never finished high school. And then, once you admit them, then you have to give amnesty to their parents because of chain migration.

Try that at Disneyland. Break into Disneyland without paying. Or into a movie theater. Or a sports stadium. Then, when they catch you and try throwing you out, explain that it is not fair to throw out the kids because it is not the child’s fault that the parents sneaked in without paying. So you have to let the kids stay. And, now that you are allowing the innocent kids to stay, how can you leave innocent kids alone in Disneyland or in some stadium or movie theater without adult supervision and protection? So you have to let their parents stay, too. Try that with the liberals who run Disney and Hollywood theaters and who celebrate football urchins who kneel when the national anthem is being played. See how well that works. It will work just as well as trying to impose affirmative action on the NFL — requiring goals and timetables to assure that every college and professional football team has a minimum number of Jews reflecting the Jewish percentage of the population. (Though, truth be told, it is hard to see how the New York Giants could have done any worse this year if the Government had forced them to have Jews as 20 percent of their players as part of a regional Affirmative Action plan.)

There is so much cynicism, so much deceit, so much mendacity. Remember the names: Heitkamp, Donnelly, McCaskill, Manchin. Four repugnant liars and frauds, all deceitfully devoting their next ten months to keeping up with the Joneses.

Oh yeah. The guy from Alabama. Thatsizname.