Trump 37: Tweeting instead of Leading

[CTRLZero]

My husband is very mild mannered, yet he is now yelling at the television because Trump is lying about military pay raises.  Wow, a 10% raise, really!?!  Does Congress know?  Flat out lying and everyone should understand this. 

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Sweet Rufus. The man is insane. The only thing he can think about is his bloody wall and blaming dems for not giving it to him. Will he let the shutdown drag on and on and on and on until he's removed from office? Or will he relent at some point? It's anyone's guess.

 

He will somehow relent, and will act like that has his plan all the way.  I swear he could say the wall has already been built and his base will believe him.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

I swear he could say the wall has already been built and his base will believe him.

He keeps saying that construction is ongoing. Um, no, it's not.

 

Because if you are going to lie, you should go all-in: "Trump claims without evidence that ‘most of the people not getting paid’ in partial government shutdown are Democrats"

Spoiler

President Trump on Thursday claimed that “most of the people not getting paid” in the partial government shutdown are Democrats, days after he contended that many federal workers support his call for more border wall funding.

Trump made the claim in a morning tweet as the shutdown entered its sixth day, with hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed without pay amid signs pointing toward a prolonged standoff.

“Have the Democrats finally realized that we desperately need Border Security and a Wall on the Southern Border,” Trump said in the tweet. “Need to stop Drugs, Human Trafficking, Gang Members & Criminals from coming into our Country. Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?”

The message contrasted with Trump’s claim in an Oval Office appearance on Christmas morning that “many of those workers” had told him to continue to shut down the government “until you get the funding for the wall.”

“These federal workers want the wall,” Trump said at the time.

About 25 percent of the federal government has been shut down since Saturday, with roughly 800,000 workers affected, including an estimated 350,000 who are on furlough at home without pay. At the heart of the stalemate is Trump’s demand for $5 billion in funding for his proposed wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. Congressional Democrats have rejected that figure and made counteroffers for border security of as much as $1.6 billion.

But the two sides remain deadlocked, and it appears unlikely that a resolution will come before the week is out. The Senate is set to convene at 4 p.m. Thursday, but no votes are scheduled. The House, meanwhile, is out of session until further notice, and the office of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Wednesday that it will give lawmakers 24 hours’ notice of any expected votes in the chamber.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said Democrats’ likely plan is to put a bill that funds the government, without money for Trump’s wall, on the floor on Jan. 3. That is the first day of the new session of Congress, when Democrats take control of the House.

With no end to the shutdown in site, the Office of Personnel Management sent out a Twitter posting Thursday morning in which it shared advice and letter templates for federal workers to use in negotiating for deferred rent and payments to other creditors.

“As we discussed, I am a Federal employee who has recently been furloughed due to a lack of funding of my agency. Because of this, my income has been severely cut and I am unable to pay the entire cost of my rent, along with my other expenses,” one of the sample letters reads. It also suggests the possibility of doing building chores in exchange for reduced payments.

Trump’s tweet on Thursday prompted criticism from some Democrats who argued that federal workers are not the partisans the president has made them out to be.

“This is outrageous,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said in a tweet. “Federal employees don’t go to work wearing red or blue jerseys. They’re public servants. And the President is treating them like poker chips at one of his failed casinos.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) sounded a similar note, saying that federal employees affected by the shutdown “work for the FBI & TSA (not GOP or DNC).”

“They signed up to protect us & work for America regardless of party,” she said in a tweet.

A nationally representative 2010 Gallup survey found that the political leanings of federal employees depended in part on whether they belonged to a union. Among federal union members, 40 percent identified as Democrats, 31 percent said they were independent, and 27 percent identified as Republican. Among federal workers not belonging to a union, 29 percent identified as Democrats, 36 percent said they were independent, and 33 percent identified as Republican. Of the federal employees surveyed, 1,954 were members of a union while 6,607 were not.

A more recent survey by Government Executive of 1,791 federal employees from 25 agencies found that 24 percent of federal workers identified as Democrats, with an identical amount identifying as Republicans. Thirty-seven percent of workers in the 2018 survey said they were politically independent. Because the sample of employees was drawn from subscribers to Government Executive magazines, these numbers are not representative of the entire federal workforce.

Among federal workers who donated to a presidential candidate in 2016, an overwhelming number gave to Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, according to an analysis of federal campaign contributions by The Hill.

A recent CNN poll showed that 61 percent of respondents oppose building a border wall without any funding from Mexico. Only 33 percent of respondents support such a plan, including 75 percent of Republicans, 32 percent of independents and just 4 percent of Democrats.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Trump finally found a conspiracy theory he doesn’t believe"

Spoiler

So President Trump finally found a conspiracy theory he doesn’t believe.

“Are you still a believer in Santa?” Trump asked an unsuspecting 7-year-old, Collman Lloyd, when she called in to the military’s Santa Claus tracker line on Christmas Eve.

“Yes sir,” she replied.

“Because at 7, that’s marginal, right?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the child, though she didn’t know what “marginal” meant.

I can imagine the confusion of the young South Carolinian, who had put out sugar cookies and chocolate milk for Santa. ( Mom! Dad! President Trump says I’m margarine!)

But I can’t imagine what was going through the president’s head. He has entertained notions that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination, President Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake, and that Vince Foster and Antonin Scalia may have been murdered — but he doesn’t believe an elderly man with a long beard lives at the North Pole with his wife and hundreds of elves? Trump has said he believes vaccines cause autism, climate change is a hoax, the “Access Hollywood” recording was doctored, Obama tapped his phone, millions voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, Democrats faked the Puerto Rico hurricane death toll and Muslims celebrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 on New Jersey rooftops — but he can’t accept that a herd of flying reindeer, one with an electric red nose, delivers billions of gifts down the chimneys of all households on Earth on a single night?

The day after disabusing little Collman of her trust in Christmas magic, Trump made a most unusual holiday address. In an unprompted, televised rant about James B. Comey and his other persecutors, Trump delivered ill will to all with the vigor of the Grinch shouting down at Whoville: “It’s a disgrace, what’s happening in our country. But other than that, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas.”

Might this be the beginning of a series of such holiday greetings?

It’s a disgrace, what women are doing to this country. But other than that, I wish everybody a very happy Mother’s Day.

American workers are a disgrace. But other than that, I wish everybody a very happy Labor Day.

It’s a disgrace, what’s happening with our military. But other than that, I wish everybody a happy Veterans Day.

You don’t need Rudolph guiding your sleigh, Mr. President, to find a better course than this. You need to embrace the Santa Claus conspiracy with the passion of Alex Jones discovering false-flag operations.

In 1897, a letter to the New York Sun from 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon inquiring about the existence of Santa Claus inspired the famous editorial:

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. . . . There is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. . . . [Santa Claus] lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

Thus began the era of fake news.

Could not the president, whose power comes from convincing his followers to believe in things that do not exist, likewise embrace the Santa conspiracy theory? I suggest an updated version of the story Trump could offer to his loyal supporters:

“Yes, West Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He worked with an army of little people deep below Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington. Between 3 million and 5 million of them voted fraudulently in 2016 election.

“But after I threatened to rain fire and fury on Santa’s workshop the likes of which the world has never seen, he gave us a much better deal. He will now export beautiful, clean coal from West Virginia to stockings across the world. Santa, by giving a nod and laying a finger aside of his nose, will replace Obamacare with something cheaper and better. With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head, he will cut the debt in half and make the tax cut pay for itself. He will give a whistle, and Mexico will pay for the wall. Steel jobs will return, Russia will be our friend, North Korea will surrender its nuclear weapons, Germany will pay for NATO, ISIS will disband, everybody will be home for Christmas, and all your Christmases will be white. Yes, West Virginia, and Ohio, and Michigan, there is a Santa Claus.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"An end to the shutdown depends entirely on Trump’s hurt feelings"

Spoiler

We’re heading into the sixth day of a government shutdown that is just beginning to hurt the 800,000 federal workers who are impacted. Everyone seems dug in to their position. So how does this end?

The answer will depend, unfortunately, on President Trump’s feelings.

Let’s not forget that last week the Senate passed a funding bill that could have easily passed the House, and by all accounts, Trump was ready to sign it. But then Fox News hosts began criticizing him for not demanding funding for a border wall, and like a schoolyard bully who hears the crowd saying “What are ya, a wimp?," he decided that he had to shut down the government or risk humiliation.

There’s a genuine policy difference here, of course: Trump wants a border wall and Democrats (joined by some Republicans) don’t. But if that’s all it was, a compromise wouldn’t be too hard to find. The trouble is that in his own mind, Trump has made the conflict intensely personal. As he told troops in Iraq on Wednesday, “We want to have strong borders in the United States. The Democrats don’t want to let us have strong borders — only for one reason. You know why? Because I want it." As far as he’s concerned, this is all the more reason that he can’t compromise. If it’s personal, then he has to win and his opponent has to lose.

Unfortunately, Trump makes everything personal. Whether it’s a result of his own narcissism, his history as head of a company dependent on his personal celebrity, or his lack of understanding of how government works, it leads to the same place: It’s always and only about him.

Nevertheless, there’s some truth behind what Trump is saying, not so much because right at this very moment Democrats are trying desperately to deny him some kind of win, but because everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, has their views of policy issues shaped by who’s advocating for them. To take just one example, at one time many Republicans believed that a health-care system that combined an individual mandate with government subsidies for low-income people was a wise, market-based solution to the problem of the uninsured; It was what Mitt Romney did successfully as governor of Massachusetts. But when President Barack Obama embraced the idea as a basis for his health-care reform, they all decided it was a policy demon so horrifying that it could have spat forth from the off-gassing of Joe Stalin’s corpse.

So yes, Democrats are far more resistant to the idea of a border wall now than they might have been in an earlier time when it wasn’t being advocated by a president with such a nakedly racist agenda. And the the truth is that there’s already about 700 miles worth of walls and fences along the border, and Democrats don’t object to having barriers in strategic locations. They’re willing to offer more money for border security, but they need to be able to say, to themselves and their constituents, that they didn’t give Trump his stupid wall, at the same time that Trump needs to say that he got his big, beautiful wall.

Which obviously makes a compromise tricky. One other complicating factor is while Democrats dislike the shutdown on substantive grounds, since they actually care about government functioning properly and don’t like the harm being done to federal workers and the people who depend on the services they provide, they don’t really have to worry that they’ll be harmed politically by the shutdown, since Trump is the one who will be blamed.

For Trump, it’s just the opposite. Everyone saw him proclaim, “I am proud to shut down the government for border security” and say to Chuck Schumer, “I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.” He can now say it’s all Democrats' fault, but not too many people are going to buy it, especially since most of the public doesn’t want the thing he’s fighting for. Substantively, on the other hand, he doesn’t much care, nor do the people he’s appealing to. The more political damage he perceives, the more eager he might be to compromise, but he tends to live in a bubble of denial where every unfavorable poll is “fake” and the greatest measure of success is what the halfwits on “Fox & Friends” are saying about him.

That leads us to the conclusion that the shutdown will end only when there’s a compromise that allows the president to save face. Especially now when he’s confronting so many other problems, he needs to be able to declare victory and tell his base he kept his promise. He knows that with Democrats taking over the House in a week, he might never have another chance to secure substantial funding for a wall, and if he goes into 2020 not having kept the central promise of his 2016 campaign, motivating his base could be much harder.

What does a face-saving compromise look like? Right now it’s hard to say. But if there’s a glimmer of hope, it might lie in Trump’s willingness to describe any result, even the most abject defeat, as a spectacular win for him that was only possible because of his limitless brilliance. As depressing as it is, that’s what we might have to count on.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

An excellent op-ed by Eugene Robinson: "Who’s afraid of the MAGA mob? Only Trump."

Spoiler

For the new year, critics of President Trump should resolve not to be intimidated by the potential wrath of his vaunted political base. The only one who should cower before the Make America Great Again legions is Trump himself.

And he does fear them, bigly. The latest illustration is the way he chickened out on a bipartisan agreement to keep the government fully funded, instead forcing a partial shutdown over chump change for “the wall.” I use quotation marks because there never was going to be an actual, physical, continuous wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, much less one paid for by the Mexican government. The president is desperately trying to avoid acknowledging this and other realities before the 2020 election.

Anyone who thinks Trump is a master politician is wrong. He’s a master illusionist, which isn’t the same thing. Politicians can’t keep pulling rabbits out of empty hats forever. At some point, they face a reckoning, and Trump’s is well underway.

Trump is talented at making it appear that he has more than he really does — more money, more respect, more support. All those campaign rallies before the midterm elections were not just an attempt to save the Republican majorities in Congress or feed Trump’s insatiable ego. They were also demonstrations of the fervor of his core supporters — and implied warnings to Republicans who might cross him.

Trump tries to project an image of immense strength. But it turns out that the man who made “You’re fired!” a television catchphrase can’t summon the nerve to actually dismiss anyone in person. Trump’s bluster camouflages great weakness.

Look at his political standing. Trump won the presidency with 46 percent of the popular vote. (That’s compared to 48 percent for Hillary Clinton, but who’s counting?) His margin in the electoral college, which he tries to portray as a great landslide, was actually quite puny — smaller than either of Barack Obama’s, either of Bill Clinton’s, the late George H.W. Bush’s or either of Ronald Reagan’s wins.

Trump did have a bigger electoral margin than George W. Bush ever managed to win. But only Trump has the unflattering distinction of winning a presidential election while losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes .

No matter. A skilled politician would seek to expand his base of support. But, according to Gallup, Trump’s approval has been underwater since the day he took office — never once reaching higher than 45 percent — and now stands at 39 percent.

Does that apples-to-oranges comparison of vote percentage and approval rating really mean that Trump has lost significant support? Not necessarily — until you also take into account the results of the midterm elections, which can be read only as a massive repudiation of Trump and all he stands for. Democrats captured the House, defended all but two of their imperiled senators, and grabbed governorships and state legislatures across the country. The Democratic Party’s House popular-vote margin was the biggest ever seen in a midterm.

So much for the ethnonationalist-populist wave that Trump is supposed to be surfing.

It is a mistake to underestimate Trump’s base or to suggest that all the issues he raises are, because he raises them, invalid. There are legitimate reasons, for example, to want to ensure border security. But racism is not one of them, and a useless wall, meant to symbolize rejection of a brown-skinned “invasion,” is not an actual solution.

The fact is that Trump touched a nerve that was already inflamed. Race, ethnicity, cultural heritage, economic dislocation, opioid addiction, the effects of free trade, the impact of robotics — all these issues were out there already, and a lot of people believed our elected officials weren’t dealing with them adequately. Trump hasn’t a clue about what to do or how to do it. But he knows how to poke and prod; he knows how to rile people up and sell them red hats.

If his core, unshakable base of support is, say, around 35 percent, then he almost surely would lose a reelection bid in 2020. I say “almost” because we don’t know whom the Democrats will run against him or whether there will be a significant independent or third-party challenger. And I say “would” because we can’t be entirely sure that Trump will run again.

For now, he may be calculating that 35 percent is enough to keep the GOP-led Senate from removing him from office in the event that the House finds compelling grounds to impeach him. What keeps him from compromising isn’t principle or determination. It’s simple fear.

 

[Gobsmacked]

9 hours ago, Howl said:

I think the grandparents and Melania are a rock to that child.  He's incredibly tall (closing in on 6') for his age (12, in 6th grade).  When I see him, it's obvious he just doesn't know how to be coordinated in a body growing that tall, that fast. He could also be a relatively normal 12-year-old who hates the spotlight and avoids it like the plague.

 

I agree his grandparents looking after him. Melania obviously loves him to bits. 

A tall child from a tall family copes. It's normal to them. If he looks uncomfortable it's (IMO) because of his father. The poor kid has ears and must realise what's happening. His Dad is a dick. How does any adolescent cope with knowing his father is a total dope?

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The answer will depend, unfortunately, on President Trump’s feelings.

I don't know if anyone follows "Man Who Has It All" on Facebook (and possibly twitter, I don't know) but they had a great poll asking if men were "too emotional for leadership roles".

(And now I can't find it but I did find the "would you elect a male President?" one - 97% said no... certainly not this one at least!)

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Poetic and powerful op-ed on CNN today by Patrick Mondaca, calling out Trump for, oh, lots of things, like cowardice and his cynically disrespectful use of the troops as props for his own ends. 

Author's background: Patrick Mondaca is an adjunct instructor at John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York. In 2003 he served in Baghdad, Iraq, as a sergeant with the Connecticut Army National Guard's 143rd Military Police Company. 

Quote

"If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!" President Donald Trump tweeted recently.

Let the military fix it -- that's the all-purpose solution, right? Wars to fight? Borders to defend? Americans to win over ahead of midterm elections? Trump's got a panacea.

The President seems to love the troops, unless, of course, it's raining or there's a draft and he is required to serve. In both of those cases, well, the President was unwilling to inconvenience himself for the military. He is, quite literally, a fair-weather friend, engaging with the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend our nation only when it benefits him.

Until Wednesday, Trump had yet to visit the troops in a combat zone out of concern for "personal safety and legitimizing unpopular wars." It was reported Wednesday, however, that he stopped in Iraq for a post-Christmas visit and photo op with service members, during which he called the troops "warriors" and "patriots" who are getting "billions and billions of dollars of new equipment that (Trump) approved over the last two years."

This may appear on the surface to be a genuine effort to honor the military, but those who serve, as well as the rest of us, should not be fooled by the President's empty actions. Nor will we be.

In fact, in the aftermath of his visit, the President has been called out for making the false claim that he had given the troops their first pay raise in over a decade. No one deserves to be lied to by the President, but for the commander in chief to make false statements to the faces of those who defend the nation shows a disappointing level of disrespect.

When I served in Baghdad in 2003 with the US Army, my fellow soldiers and I were nonplussed listening to then-President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. I'm sure that many among the troops who trotted out for Trump's visit felt similarly. As we knew then and now, Bush's mission in Iraq was not quite accomplished, making his words seem hollow. And as our military today under Trump's leadership can also ascertain, dropping in for a few photos and some questionably sincere words does not a worthy commander in chief make.

In Flanders at the Battle of Boxtel in 1794, a mortally wounded Private Tommy Atkins told his superior officer as he lay dying in the mud, "It's all right, sir, all in a day's work."

Rudyard Kipling immortalized the young soldier in his poem "Tommy," which says, in part:

"For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck him out the brute!'

But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot

An' it's Tommy this an' Tommy that, an' anything you please

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees."

Kipling's poem tells the stark truth of how many Americans feel about those who wear the uniform of the soldier, whether they choose to or not. We love them when we need them -- when we are threatened, when we are afraid, when we want them to potentially sacrifice life and limb for our country. But how quickly in peacetime we forget the magnitude of that sacrifice.

Our own "Tommies" patrol throughout the world to this day, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Niger. They are stationed throughout our nation in transit hubs like Penn Station and John F. Kennedy International Airport. And now they are bivouacked uselessly on our southern border, awaiting their orders to pack it up and come home. They hover bored and watchful. Later they may die terribly and ungallantly in wretched places where the average American -- and the President -- would not dare to go. And we probably won't think about them again until we see notice of their death scroll briefly across the news ticker.

But Tommy isn't likely paying much attention to the President's bloviating or his fair-weather allegiances. He won't have been listening to the President's lip service about "tremendous courage" during the Thanksgiving video conference from his Mar-a-Lago luxury resort last month with military members in Afghanistan.

Instead, active Tommies are putting in a hard day's work. And retired Tommies are standing in line at the Veterans Affairs hospital to get prescriptions for depression, anxiety and sleep disorders.

Tommy is putting on his dress uniform and taking his own life with a rifle after dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs' incompetence. He is one of the 20 veterans who kill themselves daily in this country, according to a 2018 Department of Veterans Affairs news release.

Yes, Tommy volunteered for his or her military service, but he or she volunteered for the good of the country and not for the President's personal agenda.

The lives of our service members are not pawns to be moved about a political chessboard. Our soldiers and sailors and Marines and airmen are not toys to be played with by a petulant, entitled child who could never imagine serving. And the President's "very, very" special words for the military are mere empty expressions of the hypocrisy of the elite who don't themselves defend our nation.

And when we thank our own Tommies for their service -- when they come home from those combat theaters and the Mexican border -- I expect that they will tell us the same thing that young Tommy said in that muddy field to the Duke of Wellington so many years ago. It was "all in a day's work."

And for that we should value them.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AnywhereButHere]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-i-may-be-forced-seal-southern-border-n952591

Quote

"We build the wall or," Trump wrote in a string of tweets. "...close the southern border."

Incoming White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters on Friday the president is "absolutely" willing to shut down the southern border, despite the enormous cost to the country.

"All options are on the table. Listen, it's the only way we can get the Democrats' attention," Mulvaney said.

Trump also said he would cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, where violence and crime have motivated thousands of people to flee and seek asylum in the United States. He also said another migrant caravan is heading toward the U.S.

Trump's string of tweeted threats comes as the partial government shutdown reaches its first full week amid a spending bill feud between Congress and the president...

He wants to seal the southern border now. With what? Shrink wrap?

In all seriousness though, does he even have any idea what that would entail or how expensive it would be in so many ways? Is he thinking that all the troops he's supposedly bringing home from Syria will now have nothing else to do, so why not go down to the border? Does he think at all?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump did what he always does and changed his mind. Why was Congress surprised?"

Spoiler

The only way to deal with Donald Trump is to not do deals with Donald Trump. The private sector has learned this; when will Congress?

For his entire career, our dealmaker in chief has relied on a not-so-secret technique for extracting supposedly good deals: He agrees to a given set of terms and then, at the last minute, reneges on them.

He has done this to small businesses around the country, refusing to pay for cabinetry, catering, real estate commissions, and other goods and services after they’ve already been delivered. His companies have also filed for bankruptcy six times, helping him wriggle out of bills. Given this reputation, it’s hardly surprising that vendors and lenders alike ultimately learned it was wiser not to do business with him at all, rather than count on him to keep his word.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised that he’d “run government like a business,” and in this respect — among others — he has.

Multiple times since taking office, after agreeing to a deal, he has changed his mind at the very last minute. He’s done this with “dreamers,” China tariffs, a Group of Seven communique, budgets. As Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) put it earlier this year, during the lead-up to the last government shutdown, “Negotiating with President Trump is like negotiating with Jell-O.”

Which is to say: Trump doesn’t know what he wants, only that he doesn’t want whatever he has committed to. As I’ve written before, if a man’s word is his bond, Trump’s would be rated junk.

Trump illustrated this yet again in the run-up to the latest shutdown.

Initially, Trump signaled that he’d sign a stopgap funding bill that would have kept the government open until early February. To be clear, kicking the can down the road for another seven weeks is not exactly a sign of responsible governance. But if you’re a Republican, it seemed shrewd politically. The majorities of both houses of Congress have an interest in looking at least semi-functional. Shutdowns, besides inflicting unnecessary pain on hundreds of thousands of federal workers, are embarrassing.

Which is why Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decided to endorse this stopgap bill and delay a more substantial funding battle until after Democrats take over the House in the new year. Then at least Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the likely incoming House speaker, could be scapegoated for any shutdown-related embarrassment.

Accordingly, the Senate passed the temporary funding measure, by voice vote, on Dec. 19. The House was expected to vote on it the following day, and the bill was anticipated to sail through with broad support in both parties.

Before then, Trump did what he always does: He suddenly changed his mind.

Egged on by Fox News and Ann Coulter, he announced he was torpedoing any funding bill — including this pitiful temporary measure — unless it included money for his precious border wall. And so outgoing Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) decided not to bring the Senate-passed version of the funding bill to the floor at all.

It’s precisely this sort of flip-flopping — and the cowardly congressional accommodation of said flip-flopping — that is slowly fraying the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.

We’re stuck in an indefinite government shutdown now that Congress has apparently disbanded until after the new year. Maybe the Trump administration will find ways to preserve many of the Obamacare provisions that the public loves, despite refusing to defend them in court; maybe not.

Both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and NAFTA 2.0 remain in limbo, as do the steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico that Trump promised to repeal once a deal was signed. Same with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Cold War-era arms-control agreement. And so on.

Trump has managed to convince himself, and his base, that he’s a brilliant negotiator, smarter than all the experts — including his Federal Reserve chairman, the many minions tasked with negotiating and renegotiating trade deals, his secretaries of state, defense or treasury, or really all of the “best people” he has selected to work for him.

His gut tells him more than anybody else’s brain can ever tell him, he maintains. But his gut seems to have a perpetual case of indigestion, given how often it flips.

The real question is why congressional leaders, including Ryan, repeatedly cave to Trump’s latest tweets and fleeting fancies instead of writing him off as the flake that he is. Why not at least try to whip the veto-proof votes — for a budget, really for any piece of legislation — necessary to simply govern without him? The only thing you can rely on Trump for is unreliability.

 

[Howl]

The threat to shut down the southern border is terrifying.  Existing best case scenario: Traffic will be backed up for hours at all the main crossing points, especially on New Year's Day, as tens, if not hundreds of thousands of families are returning to the US from visiting family in Mexico over Christmas break.  I've spent over 8 hours inching toward the border in Nueovo Laredo on New Year's Day.  We were literally driving on fumes when we hit Immigration in Laredo and found a gas station barely in time. 

Can you imagine people trapped in Mexico with no idea when they can get home?  NAFTA traffic stopped from coming into the US?  That will have negative repercussions for US industry big time, and hence the entire economy. 

Some Republican somewhere better be strategizing some face saving option for Trump; Democrats need to be saturating social media and TV, replaying the audio and visual of Trump saying he takes on the mantle of the shutdown. 

[formergothardite]

7 minutes ago, Howl said:

Some Republican somewhere better be strategizing some face saving option for Trump; Democrats need to be saturating social media and TV, replaying the audio and visual of Trump saying he takes on the mantle of the shutdown. 

yes. There needs to be a constant reminder that he said he would take the blame for the shutdown and now is trying to wimp out. He needs to be called a coward for trying to blame democrats. The Dems cannot give in to him.  I know there will be a tendency to think that they should just give him what he wants, but if they give him an inch he will take this and run. This is like a toddler, if he learns he will get his way by having a tantrum and shutting down the government he will do it over and over. 

It is up to the GOP to find a way for him to get out of this without admitting humiliation, though at this point I'm not sure there is a way. 

[Cartmann99]

You know that Orange Donnie threw something across the room when he read this:

 

7 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

  I know there will be a tendency to think that they should just give him what he wants, but if they give him an inch he will take this and run. This is like a toddler, if he learns he will get his way by having a tantrum and shutting down the government he will do it over and over. 

Preach! 

[onekidanddone]

20 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

You know that Orange Donnie threw something across the room when he read this:

 

Preach! 

Brilliant, kind, genuine, thoughtful, empathetic, funny, determined, .... yea, some of the words I think of when I see these two.  

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-i-may-be-forced-seal-southern-border-n952591

He wants to seal the southern border now. With what? Shrink wrap?

In all seriousness though, does he even have any idea what that would entail or how expensive it would be in so many ways? Is he thinking that all the troops he's supposedly bringing home from Syria will now have nothing else to do, so why not go down to the border? Does he think at all?

Does he know how many of his MAGA supporters who are senior citizens spend the winters in cities along the border and go to Mexico to fill prescriptions, as well as take care of dental and vision needs that aren't covered by Medicare? Surely not. I used to live not far from the border and crossed with lots of senior citizens when I used to visit Mexico.

34 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Brilliant, kind, genuine, thoughtful, empathetic, funny, determined, .... yea, some of the words I think of when I see these two.  

Gosh, I miss having a real President, one that we could be proud of!

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

HA! If true, the presidunce is losing his game of playing chicken...

 

[onekidanddone]

20 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

HA! If true, the presidunce is losing his game of playing chicken...

 

 

This is my reality right now:

Federal workers get advice for paying bills during shutdown

Quote

WASHINGTON — It appears the partial government shutdown will be handed off to a divided government to solve, as agreement eludes D.C. in the waning days of the Republican monopoly on power.

Congress is closing out the week without a resolution in sight over the issue that’s holding up an agreement: President Donald Trump’s demand for money to build a southern border wall and Democrats’ refusal to give him what he wants.

Now nearly a week old, the impasse is leading to concerns for hundreds of thousands of federal employees.

The Office of Personnel Management is offering advice to federal workers who cannot pay their bills due to the shutdown holding up their paychecks.

“Speak with your landlord, mortgage company or creditor,” OPM suggested. “Speaking with your creditors will enable you to work out the details of any payment plan.”

OPM advised federal workers to have conversations directly with their creditor, working out a reduced payment plan and then sending a letter to the person with whom they spoke.

The letter should include the employee’s phone number, address and all the details that were discussed, OPM said. 

The office also provided some sample letters that employees can use.

For instance, one of the letters starts with “I am a federal employee who has recently been furloughed due to a lack of funding of my agency. Because of this, my income has been severely cut and I am unable to pay the entire cost of my mortgage, along with my other expenses.”

For employees who are able to work out a reduced payment plan, OPM said it is important to note that the workers will be responsible for paying the remainder of what they owe after the shutdown ends.

OPM stressed, however, that it cannot provide employees with formal, personal legal advice on how to deal with creditors.

 

[PsyD2013]

My orange fuckstick loving family is going on about how the Democrats hate Trump so badly they will do anything to make him look bad stand in his way making our country great again.  So wrong- Democrats hate what Trump is doing to our country and are trying to save it.  Trump makes himself look bad.  

[onekidanddone]

4 minutes ago, PsyD2013 said:

My orange fuckstick loving family is going on about how the Democrats hate Trump so badly they will do anything to make him look bad stand in his way making our country great again.  So wrong- Democrats hate what Trump is doing to our country and are trying to save it.  Trump makes himself look bad.  

If Trump had any love for anything other than his own ego, he would be working out a deal to keep this country from imploding.

[fraurosena]

Uh-oh. Beware the inevitable self-pitying tweetstorm. 

Trump to cancel New Year's plans, stay in DC as government shutdown drags on

Quote

President Donald Trump has cancelled his New Year's plans and will stay in Washington, D.C., as the government shutdown continues, incoming acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said in an interview with "Fox & Friends" on Friday.

"He cancelled his plans for Christmas, now he's cancelled his plans for New Year's," Mulvaney said. "The president is very heavily engaged in this."

The partial government shutdown began on Dec. 22 after Congress was unable to negotiate a spending bill with the president, who has demanded $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. With no signs from the Capitol or the White House about a potential deal, the shutdown is expected to extend into next year.

Trump had planned to spend Christmas and New Year's Eve at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, as he has done in previous years. This year, he was the first president since Bill Clinton to spend Christmas at the White House. Former President George W. Bush went to Camp David every year, while former President Obama returned to his home state of Hawaii.

On Christmas Eve, the president lamented the fact that he was stuck in the White House and blamed Democrats for the shutdown. "I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal," he tweeted.

<poor me tweet>

Despite the negative impacts of an extended government shutdown, Trump seemed to double down on his demands for a border wall on Friday. "We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall," he tweeted.

According to Senate estimates, more than 420,000 government employees will be working without pay during the shutdown, while over 380,000 workers will be furloughed.

 

[onekidanddone]

Just now, fraurosena said:

Uh-oh. Beware the inevitable self-pitying tweetstorm. 

Trump to cancel New Year's plans, stay in DC as government shutdown drags on

 

I'm wondering how long I can cover my mortgage, but yea, can't go to a party so much more unfair.