U.S. Politics: 5.7 Billion Problems But The House Ain't One

[Kalbear]

As far as trump is concerned he's not. Or at least hes far more trustworthy than anyone else. 

He can't imagine being betrayed by Ivanka, so he can't imagine being betrayed by Kushner. 

[James Arryn]

2 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

OMG, how embarrassing to have to give credit to an accomplished women with years of experience and a lifetime of skill development.

If that’s at me, you completely misunderstood me. I’m saying it bothers me that part of the reason this is hitting the GOP so hard is because misogyny is so prevalent. It’s just another reminder we’re not nearly as far along as previously hoped. 5 years ago if you’d told me that a guy appealing openly to racism etc. would get elected American President, I’d probably have bet the house against it. And I have a pretty low opinion of America in some ways. I thought we were at least heading downhill. I was very wrong. 

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, James Arryn said:

If that’s at me, you completely misunderstood me. I’m saying it bothers me that part of the reason this is hitting the GOP so hard is because misogyny is so prevalent. It’s just another reminder we’re not nearly as far along as previously hoped. 5 years ago if you’d told me that a guy appealing openly to racism etc. would get elected American President, I’d probably have bet the house against it. And I have a pretty low opinion of America in some ways. I thought we were at least heading downhill. I was very wrong. 

You're completely out of touch. Haven't you been backpacking across Europe or something? That would help explain this cognitive rejection of reality. 

I don't mean to be hurtful or hostile, I've been sad to see you less active than a few years back, but your optimistic assumptions are jarring to read.

[Zorral]

30 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

But he is Fredo. 

 

Though I gues it is Fredos all the way down in this family.

Ya watch the last episode of the first season of Succession.  It's this orange crime family all the way, with a bit of Murdochs, Kennedys, etc. thrown in for seasoning.  The entire Roy family is hating and stabbing each other all the way through, even at the festivities of the wedding where they are all gathered.  They hating each other so much and the patriarch, while one son in particular and he are racing who can take the other one down first, stands there and declares everything he's done is for his family and family is all that matters.  Then that son is taken out and he's gleefully saving his sorry ass -- and getting him right under his heel again to grind to dust.

They are as ugly as the first family of ugly all right.

[Zorral]

33 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

As far as trump is concerned he's not. Or at least hes far more trustworthy than anyone else. 

He can't imagine being betrayed by Ivanka, so he can't imagine being betrayed by Kushner. 

Because he is who he is he can imagine being betrayed as he sees it by everyone, because anything other than catering to his every whim the second he expresses it, anyone who resent being spit on, kicked and thrown to the jackels, is betraying him.  Everything betrays him.  Probably his 4th Big Mac at lunch betrayed him because it came back up.

[HoodedCrow]

James, I believe we are aligned.  I was more blunt.:)

 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

Can we say with confidence that anyone could have dog walked Trump here the way that Pelosi did?  What if Seth Moulton was the Speaker?  

Not that Moulton doesn't have anything going for him, but he's green as fuck.  

Heh, fair enough on Moulton - although after how thoroughly he got his ass handed to him by Pelosi in the Speakership battle his status as a "reasonable" alternative is borderline at best.  Granted, that was always very likely a fight he was gonna lose - but that's exactly why he shouldn't have pursued it in such an aggressive manner, nor publicly (and repeatedly) expressed with such confidence that he had the votes to block her.  He indeed clearly is green as fuck, which is partly why he didn't put himself forward as a Speaker candidate in spite of his self-importance (the other part being because so many of his caucus-mates loathe him with a passion).

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

Obamacare would not have passed without her, and not only did she get Trump to cave here, the caucus virtually did not blink in a shutdown that was totally painful.  That is leadership. 

As larry said, most copartisan critics do not question her clear ability as a legislator.  Hell, the simple fact she's led the caucus for nearly two decades straight makes it plain she knows how (and is infinitely more qualified) to hold together that caucus better than anyone else.  And while it's true that holding together wishy-washy Dems should never be assumed, I don't consider keeping a caucus unified when you're clearly winning the public opinion battle "true leadership."  That's usually what happens in legislative battles regardless of who's in charge.  True leadership is keeping them together when you're losing, such as the Obamacare battle as you mention.  And even then, Obama and her had to provide the moderate pro-life Dems with a concession in the form of the Stupak amendment/eventual EO (plus, just as a reminder, Pelosi had the luxury of allowing 34 House Dems to vote against it due to the size of their majority).

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

Just look at Schumer who seemed to actually want to make idiotic deals and stuff.  

Schumer and Pelosi represent two perspectives on building the wall within the Democratic party.  The Pelosi side views the wall as a moral issue, unwilling to provide a penny that is allocated to building "the wall" (although after how many times Trump changed the goalposts on what "building the wall" actually constitutes during the shutdown, that's harder to definitely say).  The Schumer side does not mind so much giving Trump his desired funding, as long as they can extract other concessions in exchange - as Schumer attempted repeatedly a year ago.

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

But per my Obamacare comment (and there's other stuff from 2005 onward to look to as well), Pelosi's record is strong, and maybe it was other leaders who sucked. 

She certainly has more mettle than most of the milquetoast male leaders she's served alongside of throughout her tenure (e.g. Reid, Durbin, Hoyer, hell even Clyburn doesn't exactly strike fear in anybody).

[Martell Spy]

Except Trump and the Republican caucus already broke once. Are Republican senators really going to be on board when he shuts down things over 30 days again? And if he does this twice, there is a much bigger chance voters remember all this in 2020. 

Trump also already blinked on using emergency powers. He's like a guy waving a gun around and threatening to shoot someone. But it's been weeks and he's still shouting and waving the gun. He comes off as very weak. He's probably been told that using emergency powers in this manner will hurt him in 2020.

Mulvaney says Trump didn’t lose shutdown battle

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/27/mulvaney-trump-government-shutdown-1128610

Quote

 

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump's acting chief of staff, on Sunday defended Trump's decision to end the longest government shutdown in history without any money for a border wall with Mexico by saying that the president will be judged by how the process ends.

"Ultimately he’ll be judged by what happens at the end of this process, not by what happened this week," Mulvaney told John Roberts, Fox News' chief White House correspondent, on "Fox News Sunday."

 

 

[maarsen]

42 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Except Trump and the Republican caucus already broke once. Are Republican senators really going to be on board when he shuts down things over 30 days again? And if he does this twice, there is a much bigger chance voters remember all this in 2020. 

Trump also already blinked on using emergency powers. He's like a guy waving a gun around and threatening to shoot someone. But it's been weeks and he's still shouting and waving the gun. He comes off as very weak. He's probably been told that using emergency powers in this manner will hurt him in 2020.

Mulvaney says Trump didn’t lose shutdown battle

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/27/mulvaney-trump-government-shutdown-1128610

 

As I said before, it wasn't a retreat but an advance to the rear. 

[Martell Spy]

Republicans like this are a big part of the problem, along with Jill Stein voters and centristy Democrats excited about a Howard Schultz candidacy. The emergency is not over and may not be for the rest of many of our lives. If you sit this one out you are an enormous coward. 

Quote

 

“Something will come out of this in one way or another―I just don’t know if it will be the traditional Republican Party because Trump changed it so much and it’s not what I recognize anymore and its character seems to be gone,” she said.

What’s missing, McCain said, is the decency that members of the party, including her father, once embraced. McCain added that the GOP’s new brand “scares me a lot.”

However, McCain noted she isn’t a never Trumper either, and can see why he’s in the Oval Office.

“I’m just trying ... to navigate this right now because I understand Trump supporters, I understand why they voted for him,” she said. “I also understand why people think he’s tearing this country apart and the end times are coming.”

 

Meghan McCain Says Trump’s GOP Is Unrecognizable: ‘It Scares Me A Lot’
McCain said she could understand why Trump’s critics think “the end times are coming.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/meghan-mccain-trump_us_5c4d32d8e4b0e1872d447c54

[The Anti-Targ]

Seems like McCain is angling to get herself into the Senate or House at some point, and her only pathway is through the Republican party. So she's going to criticise, but not too much. The decency the party once embraced departed a long time ago. Indeed it's hard to remember when they last had it, Lincoln? No one decent can argue Nixon was decent. If the Viet Nam war documentary is correct, he committed treason in order to get elected, and he was not a solo actor in that. So the decency was lost some time before that.

Though if she means decency between members of the party, maybe that's been there until recently, but that's not exactly something to particularly note, since it should be pretty easy to be decent to people who are part of the group.

If some people think decency is saying nice things to / about people while being corrupt and dishonest then I think some people need to re-learn what decency means.

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, The Anti-Targ said:

Seems like McCain is angling to get herself into the Senate or House at some point, and her only pathway is through the Republican party. So she's going to criticise, but not too much. The decency the party once embraced departed a long time ago. Indeed it's hard to remember when they last had it, Lincoln? No one decent can argue Nixon was decent. If the Viet Nam war documentary is correct, he committed treason in order to get elected, and he was not a solo actor in that. So the decency was lost some time before that.

Though if she means decency between members of the party, maybe that's been there until recently, but that's not exactly something to particularly note, since it should be pretty easy to be decent to people who are part of the group.

If some people think decency is saying nice things to / about people while being corrupt and dishonest then I think some people need to re-learn what decency means.

 

Yes, and no. My initial reaction was also decency? Are we talking about the Senate Turtle now?

But then on a second thought, she probably had her late father in mind, and when you look back at how he conducted himself during his '08 campaign (I mean publicly calling the Obama being a muslim conspiracy theories during a town hall as plain wrong), then you can see there was very base limit of decency still there. It's hard to imagine the orange acting in a similar fashion. So the total loss of decency (or whatever was left of it) is real.

[DMC]

6 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Except Trump and the Republican caucus already broke once. Are Republican senators really going to be on board when he shuts down things over 30 days again? And if he does this twice, there is a much bigger chance voters remember all this in 2020. 

What the hell else is Mulvaney supposed to say?  "Well John, clearly we're pretty well fucked?"

[The Anti-Targ]

13 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Yes, and no. My initial reaction was also decency? Are we talking about the Senate Turtle now?

But then on a second thought, she probably had her late father in mind, and when you look back at how he conducted himself during his '08 campaign (I mean publicly calling the Obama being a muslim conspiracy theories during a town hall as plain wrong), then you can see there was very base limit of decency still there. It's hard to imagine the orange acting in a similar fashion. So the total loss of decency (or whatever was left of it) is real.

I mean Trump did say that he personally and single-handedly ended the Obama birther conspiracy some time in the middle of 2016. Very decent of him, very decent indeed.

/s

McCain did the right thing in that town hall meeting. The fact that simply standing up for the truth is regarded as a particular act of decency is more of an indictment on contemporary political discourse than that there was a base of decency in the Republican party pre-Trump. McCain also committed a gravely indecent act, by foisting Sarah Palin onto the national stage, as an act of political calculus to shore up the loony fringe of his party. He let her say all the indecent things he didn't want to say.

As to the shutdown of the shutdown. If Trump perceives the 3-week hiatus from madness to be a political loss, on 15 Feb he will do whatever it is he thinks will make it look like he will win AND get his wall. Since a shutdown is almost certainly not going be the thing that makes him look like he won and gets him his wall, it appears his only recourse would be a SOE in the border states. What else gives him the rhetorical wriggle room to claim to have won this protracted showdown? He's [almost?] certainly not getting his wall via direct congressional appropriations.

[DMC]

20 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If Trump perceives the 3-week hiatus from madness to be a political loss, on 15 Feb he will do whatever it is he thinks will make it look like he will win AND get his wall. Since a shutdown is almost certainly not going be the thing that makes him look like he won and gets him his wall, it appears his only recourse would be a SOE in the border states. What else gives him the rhetorical wriggle room to claim to have won this protracted showdown? He's [almost?] certainly not getting his wall via direct congressional appropriations.

Yes Trump declaring an emergency is easily the most likely thing to occur after February 15.  The second most likely option is Trump just eats it, maybe with House Dems offering a considerable amount of non-wall border security funding - which they appeared ready to do right before Trump folded.  Trump shutting it down again, or reaching some grand deal, are both very unlikely.  Like, <1%.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

What the hell else is Mulvaney supposed to say?  "Well John, clearly we're pretty well fucked?"

Good point. I'm just tired of the endless sycophancy. It sounded a lot like the many times Trump was told his shit doesn't stink.

[Martell Spy]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Seems like McCain is angling to get herself into the Senate or House at some point, and her only pathway is through the Republican party. So she's going to criticise, but not too much. The decency the party once embraced departed a long time ago. Indeed it's hard to remember when they last had it, Lincoln? No one decent can argue Nixon was decent. If the Viet Nam war documentary is correct, he committed treason in order to get elected, and he was not a solo actor in that. So the decency was lost some time before that.

Though if she means decency between members of the party, maybe that's been there until recently, but that's not exactly something to particularly note, since it should be pretty easy to be decent to people who are part of the group.

If some people think decency is saying nice things to / about people while being corrupt and dishonest then I think some people need to re-learn what decency means.

 

Yes, I had that thought myself, that she angling not to alienate Trump voters for future political reasons. The thing is there is a substantial part of the Republican party that despises Trump, yet sees some advantage in the current state of things. They are trying to look past Trump, assuming he will be gone and they will gain advantages like SC justices and future political careers. But Trump is not gone yet and these waffling people and anglers are not at all helpful.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

With the stately backdrop of Oakland City Hall, where a preacher bellowed, a gospel choir sang and “artists of the black diaspora” performed, Harris’ dual message underscored her candidacy as one of both a Democratic uniter and a principled leader tough enough to stand up to the Trump White House, whose administration she said was failing the public.

Without ever mentioning his name, Harris repeatedly cast herself as the direct contrast to the president on a wide range of issues — from women’s and immigrants’ rights, to cybersecurity and American security abroad. Harris called out the Trump administration for what she called “bullying and attacking a free press” and putting “children in cages crying for their mothers and fathers.”

“Don’t you dare call that border security,” Harris said of the practice of separating migrant families at the border. “That’s a human rights abuse. And that’s not our America.”

 

Harris kicks off campaign by laying into Trump
The California senator tells an Oakland crowd: 'I will lead with integrity and I will speak the truth.'

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/27/kamala-harris-2020-campaign-1128623

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

Yes, I had that thought myself, that she angling not to alienate Trump voters for future political reasons. The thing is there is a substantial part of the Republican party that despises Trump, yet sees some advantage in the current state of things. They are trying to look past Trump, assuming he will be gone and they will gain advantages like SC justices and future political careers. But Trump is not gone yet and these waffling people and anglers are not at all helpful.

My extended in-laws pretty much all fit into that description. No doubt they will vote for Trump a second time, even if they feel rather icky doing it. I wish I could condemn them for doing it, but I actually genuinely like all of the extended in-laws I've met. I think at worst all I can do is make fun of them for voting that way. Perhaps I should follow Jesus' example: forgive them Lord! for they know not what they do.

 

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

Harris kicks off campaign by laying into Trump
The California senator tells an Oakland crowd: 'I will lead with integrity and I will speak the truth.'

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/27/kamala-harris-2020-campaign-1128623

Sure, they always start out that way. But they always end up being very flexible on that point. It's the nature of the game, so I don't hate the players for it except for the ones who get a thrill out of bullshitting the public.

[The Anti-Targ]

The only conclusion I come to is that pure socialism fails in its implementation especially when there's corruption internally and external forces determined to bring it down. Naked free-market capitalism fails in it's conception, which is why no one's even tried to implement it.