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U.S. Politics: Oh Donnie Boy, the Feds are calling...


A Horse Named Stranger

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1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

So wait, your complaint is that  the President of the United States of America’s signature issue gets far, far more attention in a U.S. politics thread and in the U.S. media than Israeli foreign policy?

Your troll game is weaker than Nathan Peterman’s passing abilities.

You could put it that way, or you could be honest and not dismiss it as Israeli foreign policy. It is US policy, since it is the US citizens paying for it. Why can I not point out that many people spend a lot of time criticizing Trump's wish to spend five billions of taxpayer money on his "racist" wall, but they don't seem to care about the government spending much more than that on Israel's wall? Why isn't the media focusing on the US paying huge amounts of aid to a state that literally shoots children and is constantly warmongering in the middle east? A fraction of that aid could pay for Trump's wall.

How is this in any way trolling, and not a very real issue? 

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Ah, the trolls and bots are re-activated!

As for Puerto Rico, which IS a part of the USA, and whose residents are US citizens -- people who spend time in Puerto Rico, talk daily with Puerto Rican friends, who are among the various groups working constantly right now to provide the utterly necessary aid and assistance to those on the island and those displaced, doing everything from raising money, collecting and assembling femine hygiene kits, who know anything at all about what is actually happening in Puerto Rico will never agree with how great a job fema has done down there.  Check all the stories of water stored away and never distributed, and then gone back, but then fema wants to pass it out anyway, and on and on and on.  Sheesh, even BOEING, my brother's employer, via the subcorp for which he's worked all his life (though now his subcorpt has been sold to the Chinese -- yah, the tariff and trade war doesn't affect all equally does it?  Really!  The deal was made after the tariffs were imposed, and economic war on China declared by the nazi.), it's parts factory, is still having to house laborers if it wants any parts because there's still no housing. But now BOEING itself is just giving up, and getting parts from China. So shut the eff up about what a heck of a job brownie's done and doing in Puerto Rico.  NY state residents, by themselves, have done far more for Puerto Rico than the orange nazi's administration.  If 'administration' is a word that can even be used anywhere near anything to do with the orange nazi, any more than the words honest, true, factual, rational, etc. These are the people who invented fake news and believe bots and trolls are god's Putin's creatures. 

Even rethugs are floating another word these days: impeachment.  When the economy tanks because of what the nazi chooses, that's too much even for them, er, their corporate runners and owners.

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I don’t mean to disregard the rest of your post, you made valid points, and yes Trump’s approval is already dropping, but this is the key:

58 minutes ago, DMC said:

To the second point, no, the Dems don't have to increase what they're willing to give.  The $1.6 billion for border security the Senate originally agreed to should be as high as they're willing to go.  Do they even offer that at this point?  That's a political determination for them to decide.  It is tempting to take that off the table and make Trump eat it, but that could easily backfire and blame could shift to the Dems.  More importantly, I'd think it's worth it just to end the effects of the shutdown (not to mention a $1.6 billion increase in border security isn't necessarily a bad thing).

Taking it off the table would be disastrous. The narrative would absolutely shift and it would become the Democrats’ fault. The reason why I said they should increase the offer, by a small amount (say round it up to $2b), is to further ramp up the pressure on Trump. That way it looks like House Democrats are in charge and know how to govern, unlike Republicans, who could not avoid this shutdown when they had complete control of the government. The public will hopefully see that when you put Democrats in charge, you get results. It’s the first step in building up to 2020. And you can double dip here, as I said above, by making it explicitly clear that not a penny of the money will go towards the wall, thus irritating his base. You win independents, piss off his supporters and do no damage to your own. That’s how they can thread this needle.

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50 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

How is this in any way trolling, and not a very real issue? 

Fine, I'll bite.

Because you are throwing to unrelated issues together.

Let's paraphrase what you did there a bit.

Posters (including sincerely yours) call that wall a racist monument (in some shape of form).

Then you start with: What about the Wall Israel built?

Has the rejection of Trump's racist vanity wall anything to do with Israel's, apart that both are walls, and horrible?

No? There you go.

You want to talk about Israel's wall, fine. There's a middle east thread buried somewhere, or start a thread of you own. But quit that whataboutism whining in the US politics thread, where posters discuss the planned racist monument, by a racist US administration at the US-Mexican border.

Otherwise, @mormont  and others already explained it kinder terms how and why you were trolling.

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15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Taking it off the table would be disastrous. The narrative would absolutely shift and it would become the Democrats’ fault.

I'm not sure it'd be disastrous, but I agree they shouldn't do it.

16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The reason why I said they should increase the offer, by a small amount (say round it up to $2b), is to further ramp up the pressure on Trump. That way it looks like House Democrats are in charge and know how to govern, unlike Republicans, who could not avoid this shutdown when they had complete control of the government. The public will hopefully see that when you put Democrats in charge, you get results. It’s the first step in building up to 2020. And you can double dip here, as I said above, by making it explicitly clear that not a penny of the money will go towards the wall, thus irritating his base. You win independents, piss off his supporters and do no damage to your own. That’s how they can thread this needle.

This sounds nice, and inching it up by half a billion would be fine, but there is a downside there.  Even if they clearly earmark the funding for non-wall purposes, it could be viewed as capitulation to Trump, and I'm sure he'd present it that way.  I don't know if he would be perceived as the "winner" by more than his base in such a scenario, but it's certainly possible, and I'm reticent to give him any type of political victory (or possibility of political victory) for shutting down the government because Ann Coulter questioned his manhood.

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An important point to emphasize is that anything that could be seen as capitulation to Trump could set a precedent of rewarding bad behavior, which makes it incredibly likely Trump would try it again, which would lead to even worse circumstances for federal workers.

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2 hours ago, SweetPea said:

If only the people who so vehemently attack Trump's "racist" wall spent a fraction of that time campaigning against the US giving Israel several times the amount of money Trump is asking for, every year, so Israel can build THEIR wall, from behind which they can shoot palestinian children, the world might be just a little bit better. 

https://palestinelegal.org/righttoboycott/

weird how there is no big movement agasint israel’s apartheid policies and yet there are also hundreds of anti-bds laws on the books throughout the u.s.

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Those of you who wondered how this shut down for funding the government affect Mueller's investigation into the Russian meddling with the US presidential election as aid and assistance to the orange nazi getting into the Oval Office: it doesn't. At least ... so far, because 

Quote

Funding for the investigation comes from the Treasury Department and it is not tied to the annual budget

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/31/mueller-russia-probe-cost-spending-616112

With the new idiot put in charge of the DOJ, who knows what will happen, though the Dems will be running, er hopefully, at least in the House . . . .

 

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5 hours ago, Maithanet said:

From @Kalbear in the last thread

Yes, you let Trump put 800,000 people out of work (and the associated contractors who will also suffer badly).  That sucks for them, and I wish this wasn't happening, I have both friends and family members who are getting screwed on this.  But the alternative is worse.  If Trump can just shut down the government and get whatever he wants from Congress, he'll do it, over and over again.  What is the point of electing Democrats if they are just going to give Trump everything he wants because he's willing to take the government hostage?  Appeasement doesn't work. 

To be clear, I'm not talking about appeasement. I do not support giving in to his infantile demand. And normally with a sane POTUS and governing body, I'd expect the shutdown to last very little, perhaps cave in on one or two minor things and get things going.

But this is Trump. And he has staked his claim on getting this wall, and I don't see how he'll actually back down from this because he has no sense of backing off of anything. Which means that barring other major action, I don't see how Trump funds anything unless he gets something he can tout as a win. 

So yes, given the choice between giving Trump something that he can consider and play out as a 'win' and funding the government at some point, I choose the latter. I think it's more and more likely that what will happen is Trump will get the wall funding in exchange for something big. 

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

Oh, certainly, I'm not trying to belittle what low-wage federal employees have to go through.  As you and many others have said, this sucks for them, even totally sucks.  I think that's the appropriate adjective.  Was just saying I wouldn't go so far as to describe missing a couple weeks of pay (that you'll eventually get back) in any hyperbolic terms.  If it lasts a month or more?  Then sure, that starts getting into the suffering territory.

Note that this is not accurate as far as the contractors go. They are out of work, and without pay, and will not get paid back as they didn't actually work. There's a whole lot of them that basically just are going to lose somewhere between 2 and 10% of their yearly income. 

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3 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

So much this.

It totally sucks for the people getting screwed. And I'd really like to see some of the big billionaire Democratic donors like Soros and Steyer be proactive in donating money and fundraising to help furloughed workers...call it the Donald J. Trump Owns the Shutdown Fund or something, and keep it as an ongoing thing for the next time Republicans shut down the government.

But Democrats absolutely cannot cave on this. Policy-wise, it's just a dumb, stupid policy. And it would be political suicide for the Dems to bail Trump out of the corner he has painted himself into. He owned the shutdown on-camera and he's desperate now and is just throwing shit against the wall to try and get something to stick.

Not to mention, $5 billion isn't going to pay for the wall. If Dems bail him out, he's going to keep asking for more money for the wall, shut down the government when he doesn't get it, and Dems will have already set a precedent for bailing him out, so from then on, Dems will own any shutdown Trump precipitates.  They would literally be helping him fulfill his racist campaign promise that Democrats have been most opposed to.

Meanwhile, those on the center-left and the left will be furious, while the right will become emboldened. Donnie Dipshit needs to be checked hard, and Democrats have every policy, political and polling advantage behind them to be able to do so.

And if the Democrats can truly cow Trump on his signature campaign promise, that might be the crack that starts to fracture Trump's base. Coulter, Rush and Hannity will turn on him, he'll be perceived as weak, and Democrats will look like the strong ones.

 

a fine thought, but why pin your hopes on these billionaires to help out? it’s not like locally organized mutual aid funds, food/rent drives or other  solidarity actions are totally unprecedented, we do it all the time when folks are on strikes. 

plus, soros starts dumping money into this and just as likely those monies come out of my antifa superstoldier stipend

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2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

To be clear, I'm not talking about appeasement. I do not support giving in to his infantile demand. And normally with a sane POTUS and governing body, I'd expect the shutdown to last very little, perhaps cave in on one or two minor things and get things going.

But this is Trump. And he has staked his claim on getting this wall, and I don't see how he'll actually back down from this because he has no sense of backing off of anything. Which means that barring other major action, I don't see how Trump funds anything unless he gets something he can tout as a win.  

So yes, given the choice between giving Trump something that he can consider and play out as a 'win' and funding the government at some point, I choose the latter. I think it's more and more likely that what will happen is Trump will get the wall funding in exchange for something big. 

Trump has in fact backed down several times, he's just usually pretty good at hiding it.  He ended the child seperation policy even after he said he wouldn't.  Hell even previous budget negotiations he said he wouldn't sign before doing just that. 

If Trump wants to reopen giving DREAMers citizenship, or something similarly big, then Democrats might play ball on wall funding.  But if Trump wanted to make that deal, the time was last year, when he had some leverage.  Doing it now will be much harder, and Trump is a terrible negotiator.  I'm doubtful.

I expect that this shutdown is going to drag on for a while, probably late Jan or early Feb, and pressure will indeed mount on Trump as border patrol people start grumbling about not getting paid.  Trump will negotiate some pithy increase in border security, and declare victory.  Everyone will know it isn't the wall, and a few people will point that out, but mostly by then everybody is glad that this whole shutdown nonsense is over. 

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12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Trump has in fact backed down several times, he's just usually pretty good at hiding it.  He ended the child seperation policy even after he said he wouldn't.  Hell even previous budget negotiations he said he wouldn't sign before doing just that. 

That's fair, though I think that is also missing what I said before - that he needs some outside force to blame (namely the courts) before he is required to back down. And with this budget I don't see that outside source existing, which is the problem. 

12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

If Trump wants to reopen giving DREAMers citizenship, or something similarly big, then Democrats might play ball on wall funding.  But if Trump wanted to make that deal, the time was last year, when he had some leverage.  Doing it now will be much harder, and Trump is a terrible negotiator.  I'm doubtful. 

I think that may be the only actual way out of the situation. And I'd rather it not be for DREAMERs since that's something most everyone actually wants; I'd rather it be on restoration of the Voter Right's Act or campaign finance reform. 

12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I expect that this shutdown is going to drag on for a while, probably late Jan or early Feb, and pressure will indeed mount on Trump as border patrol people start grumbling about not getting paid.  Trump will negotiate some pithy increase in border security, and declare victory.  Everyone will know it isn't the wall, and a few people will point that out, but mostly by then everybody is glad that this whole shutdown nonsense is over. 

It's certainly possible that's the case, but it's also possible that Fox News milks this for all its worth. It is very scary to me that essentially who determines whether or not I can go to a national park this year is Fox News. If Fox News wants to keep the shutdown going for a while, it will. 

 

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yep, I did note that upthread.

Am curious, and I've not been able to find this - how many contractors are part of that 800k workers? I've seen as high as 50%, but I don't think that's right. 

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8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Am curious, and I've not been able to find this - how many contractors are part of that 800k workers? I've seen as high as 50%, but I don't think that's right. 

I'm pretty sure that 800K number would be akin to the 850K that got backpay in 2013 from the link I quoted upthread:  "More than 850,000 federal workers who were furloughed during the 2013 shutdown eventually got repaid."  And as this link states, those 800k will receive backpay, but there are about 2,000 low-wage subcontractors that won't and are out of work:

Quote

While roughly 800,000 government employees are set to be affected by the shutdown and likely won’t see back pay until after it’s resolved, another subset of contractors isn’t going to be paid at all.

As many as 2,000 subcontractors in federal buildings including janitors, security guards, and cafeteria servers are not only experiencing a sharp break in their work schedules, they also won’t be compensated for this pause, according to 32BJ SEIU, a labor union that represents many building service workers caught up in this shutdown.

What you may be thinking of is that over 40% of the total federal workforce are private contractors.  I don't know how they are affected by shutdowns, that's a good question.  Obviously, it would depend on how many are part of department/agencies that were shutdown.

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There are forces stronger than he is.  Two weeks can well change everything.

For a decent (didn't say great) examination of what impeachment means, and why there's provision for it, go here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/opinion/trump-impeachment-resign-drew.html?

Quote

 

....Impeachment was the founders’ method of holding a president accountable between elections. Determined to avoid setting up a king in all but name, they put the decision about whether a president should be allowed to continue to serve in the hands of the representatives of the people who elected him.

The founders understood that overturning the results of a presidential election must be approached with care and that they needed to prevent the use of that power as a partisan exercise or by a faction. So they wrote into the Constitution provisions to make it extremely difficult for Congress to remove a president from office, including that after an impeachment vote in the House, the Senate would hold a trial, with a two-thirds vote needed for conviction.

Lost in all the discussion about possible lawbreaking by Mr. Trump is the fact that impeachment wasn’t intended only for crimes. For example, in 1974 the House Judiciary Committee charged Richard Nixon with, among other things, abusing power by using the I.R.S. against his political enemies. The committee also held the president accountable for misdeeds by his aides and for failing to honor the oath of office’s pledge that a president must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

The current presidential crisis seems to have only two possible outcomes. If Mr. Trump sees criminal charges coming at him and members of his family, he may feel trapped. This would leave him the choice of resigning or trying to fight congressional removal. But the latter is highly risky.

I don’t share the conventional view that if Mr. Trump is impeached by the House, the Republican-dominated Senate would never muster the necessary 67 votes to convict him. Stasis would decree that would be the case, but the current situation, already shifting, will have been left far behind by the time the senators face that question. Republicans who were once Mr. Trump’s firm allies have already openly criticized some of his recent actions, including his support of Saudi Arabia despite the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and his decision on Syria. They also openly deplored Mr. Mattis’s departure....


 

This shift was commented on earlier too:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/us/politics/republicans-trump-shutdown.html?

Quote

 

 .... Mr. Trump is elevating the nativist and noninterventionist elements of his party. In doing so, he is deeply straining his most important links to mainstream Republican governance, and the national security hawks and conservative business executives who have long been pillars of the right.

And by disregarding the counsel of seasoned advisers, Mr. Trump demonstrated that he does not grasp how damaging his impulsive behavior was to his party in last month’s elections, when his party lost 40 seats in the House, senior Republicans said Friday.

“I don’t think we’ve fixed the problems that caused the midterm losses yet, and I don’t know if we’re on a trajectory to do so,” said Representative Kevin Yoder, a Kansas Republican who lost his re-election bid because of the suburban backlash....

 

I gotta say, considering everything about this fly-by-night and never see the officials of the country one is in, and passing out magahits, etc. -- this almost looks like a hail mary play.  In the tvfantasia where the nazi is the population of only he, him and himself, it probably looks like brilliant story line: mean people being mean to him and fixes 'em all by getting the nation's military to rise up popularly and make him emperor of the galaxy for eternity.  By-bye Mueller and Dems and NY Times and everybody who he wants bye-bye.

All though, knowing the rethugs for what they are -- OK the world's economy crashes.  Let the Dems have it then, and clean up the mess we made as they always do.  We got ours.  And we may have gotten it ALL this time around -- really destroyed both the federal government and -- democracy! -- all over the owrld, making it safe for the corporate crimes syndicates like Putin's forever and ever. But we won't have to pay taxes.

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1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Hey, man.  Let's take the tone down a bit, OK?  We do try to keep things civil like calling people fascist and the like.  You just took things to a really dark place.  

I do not take the weaponization of The Peter Man lightly.

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Since we are talking baout it.

Who the hell is Nathan Peterman? I just assume is some averagely gifted quarterback?

He’s the worst QB I’ve ever seen. This should explain it:

 

 

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