Shutdown stories

[Howl]

 

[onekidanddone]

22 minutes ago, SilverBeach said:

You can go to the unemployment office nearest to where you live, the program is administered by the states. My agency is headquartered in DC also. Why couldn't you apply online? I went in because I had questions about the online application, and they just pulled up my online app and had me complete that. I went on a Friday morning and it wasn't bad. It's been about a fifteen minute wait when I have called, a little less if you get on the line right when they open at 8:30 in my state. It is all a huge pain in the ass, but I would rather use that money than mine to help with living expenses.

I couldn't do it on line because even thought my HQ is in DC, my duty station is my home in Maryland.  When I got to the question if I worked at home it told me I had to go in person or call. Do mind if I as where your duty station is?

[AmazonGrace]

Somebody had somewhere to fly huh

[fraurosena]

You can bet it has something to do with economic (and political) consequences. With airports down, the whole logistical system is down. That costs enormous amounts of money for all sorts of corporations. Corporations who like to donate to PACs. So of course there will be an end to the shutdown sooner rather than later. Can't have the donors dissatisfied. 

Either the presidunce will capitulate to pressure from the GOP, or if he doesn't, the GOP will ensure a veto-proof majority in the Senate. In any case, the shutdown is - finally - ending.

 

[Alisamer]

12 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Somebody had somewhere to fly huh

Is this the longest Trump has ever gone without playing golf? I'd be willing to bet money I don't have that if the shutdown ends today, he'll be on a golf course Saturday at latest. 

[fraurosena]

It sounds like the presidunce is caving. Yet another promise he hasn't kept -- remember the No CAVE tweet from a few days ago?

 

[ViolaSebastian]

Well, see you in three weeks, everybody. Same bat time, same bat thread. 

[nvmbr02]

I think this ended because of the bad polling (for Trump and the rest of the GOP), the delays at LGA, the IRS not showing up to work and Pelosi cancelling the SOTU. I also think the fact that the GOP bill with wall funding did worse than the clean budget bill without funding for the wall helped too.  I really hope we are not back here in 3 weeks but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. It isn't likely that our move paperwork will get sorted in 3 weeks but at least we will be getting some money in and we can breathe a little as we wait and see what happens. 

[onekidanddone]

From the food bank.  Right after we get home I find out we are back to work Monday. I’m going to give a bunch to a friend of mine. Her soon to be ex is a federal contractor and a fucking ass hat. 

Long story short she is in worse shape than my family. The ex husband ass hat pulled a Newt and walked out with on her right after she had major surgery.  

Anyway here is a sample of what we got

[SilverBeach]

3 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

I couldn't do it on line because even thought my HQ is in DC, my duty station is my home in Maryland.  When I got to the question if I worked at home it told me I had to go in person or call. Do mind if I as where your duty station is?

I'll PM you

[Ozlsn]

8 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

I think I'm in love. I would vote for Michael Bennett if I could. He was on one of the talking head shows this morning. Don Lemon played the entire clip on his program last night and gave Bennett the slow clap. Don was also without words in response to Wilbur Ross's inane and insensitive "let them eat cake" comments.

They played close to the entire thing on the Australian media yesterday. I heard it while driving to work -the morning news analysis program was discussing it. Admittedly we do love a good political rant, and this was a thing of beauty.

[Cartmann99]

9 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

They played close to the entire thing on the Australian media yesterday. I heard it while driving to work -the morning news analysis program was discussing it. Admittedly we do love a good political rant, and this was a thing of beauty

I'm just going to close my eyes for a minute and pretend that Bennett is my senator instead of Lyin' Ted. 

[Destiny]

9 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

I think I'm in love. I would vote for Michael Bennett if I could. He was on one of the talking head shows this morning. Don Lemon played the entire clip on his program last night and gave Bennett the slow clap. Don was also without words in response to Wilbur Ross's inane and insensitive "let them eat cake" comments.

Do you happen to have a link or anything? I missed Don last night and was working when this went on. 

Edit: I just realised I'm stupid. I have the CNN app on my Apple TV. Off to watch. 

[onekidanddone]

I have my colonoscopy Monday morning which means I won't be back at work until Tuesday.  I texted my boss and he seemed rather pissed that I hadn't filled out a leave slip. Well how the fuck was I supposed to fill out a leave request when we were banned from logging on for the past 34 days!?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Trump caves’ or ‘Genius’: Right wing splits after Trump ends shutdown with no wall funding"

Spoiler

The Drudge Report, in big red letters, summed up President Trump’s announcement of a temporary end to the shutdown with three words: “NO WALL FUNDS.” Ann Coulter tweeted, “Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.” Hours before the cable news personalities that the president listens to devoutly could weigh in on the deal to reopen the government, the anger at Trump began to build in the Internet enclaves that have long supported him.

The Daily Caller seemed to capture the sentiment with its headline about the deal on the homepage.

“TRUMP CAVES,” its headline read in all caps. “A serious reversal.”

Breitbart wrote:

“Government Open…

…And Border

NO WALL.”

There was similar frustration in the headlines of the Gateway Pundit, a Trump-aligned site known for helping to spread conspiracy theories. “TRUMP CAVES!” one headline shouted. “Ends Shutdown with NO BORDER WALL — Pelosi’s SECOND BIG WIN This Week.” That article included a YouTube video from December of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dancing.

“The White House finally caved to Democrats demands,” the Breitbart article said, “despite Trump’s repeated assertions this week that he would not do so.”

Many of Trump’s most ardent supporters on television still held out hope for victory after defeat.

The president’s online “base” is a tricky thing to define, as it has a history of at least partially turning on him when Trump the person fails to live up to Trump the meme: a chaotic, super-masculine fighter of “social justice warriors” who is also extremely good at deals.As the partial government shutdown stretched on, some also suggested that the president bowed to criticism from conservative pundits. When Democratic leaders seemed to force Trump to go back on his promise not to cave on his demand for wall funding as a condition of ending the shutdown, it was inevitable that some parts of the pro-Trump Internet would react poorly.

“Some” is the key word here, however. While Mike Cernovich, a far-right online personality, tweeted that Trump was now the “Commander-in-Soy” and that Pelosi was “alpha,” others rallied around the president. Bill Mitchell, another personality with a large following among Trump supporters, argued that the deal was actually brilliant.

“IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO: Trump agrees to reopen government for 3 weeks, then, during the SOTU after laying out his case in detail, with @SpeakerPelosi sitting behind him, declares a #NationalEmergency to fund the wall and explains exactly where the funds come from. Glorious,” he tweeted.

“The Democrats have 3 weeks to prove if they will keep their word on border security,” former White House aide Sebastian Gorka wrote on Twitter. “And @realDonaldTrump gets to hold a State of the Union on The Wall. GENIUS.”

“We must have his back,” right-wing activist Charlie Kirk tweeted.

Hosts on Trump’s preferred network largely stood by him.

And on his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity declared that “the left-wing media will say it’s a win” for Pelosi. But Hannity had a different view: “Some of you say, ‘He didn’t get any money for the wall,' ” he said. “No, he didn’t, but he’s going to.”

On Fox News, Jesse Watters said, “Trump lost the battle so he’s got to win the war. He’s got to get something out of an emergency declaration and if he doesn’t get something done there he has to flip the House in 2020.”

Not everyone absolved Trump of blame.

Tomi Lahren, a Fox Nation host, tweeted that Trump allowed “Nancy to walk all over him,” referring to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. “It’s President Trump, not President Pelosi. Act like it. #BuildThatWall,” she added.

On pro-Trump subreddit r/The_Donald, users rallied to justify Trump’s announcement. A top post on the forum on Friday afternoon declared: “What President Trump did today was show that Democrats would rather starve government employees and watch our airlines crash to the ground rather than have meaningful border security. 3 Weeks. The Wall Is Coming!”

Others, like the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, were more concerned with another major news story on Friday: Roger Stone’s early-morning arrest by the FBI. Stone, a former adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign, faces seven counts from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements and one count of witness tampering. Shortly after his release on bond, Stone called in to Infowars to discuss it.

 

[onekidanddone]

8 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

On Fox News, Jesse Watters said, “Trump lost the battle so he’s got to win the war. He’s got to get something out of an emergency declaration and if he doesn’t get something done there he has to flip the House in 2020.”

See I read something like this and my hope dissolves.  All it does is stoke my fears and this is exactly what the Reich wants.  

I see that quote above as a message to Trump to do just that.  You know he  listen to what these people say,

[SilverBeach]

There is no emergency. The very definition of emergency is that something must be done right now. I hope Madam Speaker mutes his ass until the three weeks have passes.

Ann Coulter and her ilk represent everything that is wrong with this country. Why does the extremist minority wield such influence? Forget them, let them bluster all they want. The majority doesn't want their crap.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

I have my colonoscopy Monday morning which means I won't be back at work until Tuesday.  I texted my boss and he seemed rather pissed that I hadn't filled out a leave slip. Well how the fuck was I supposed to fill out a leave request when we were banned from logging on for the past 34 days!?

You mean you don't plan to bring your computer with you and work until the drugs kick in?

[47of74]

Fuck face has signed the bill.

Quote

President Donald Trump signed a short-term spending bill into law Friday night that does not include President Donald Trump's requested $5.7 billion for a border wall.

The White House announced late Friday that Trump had signed the measure, a three-week stopgap bill that will reopen shuttered parts of the government through February 15.

The funding measure puts an end to the longest government shutdown in US history.

Congressional approval of the measure came quickly after the President conceded earlier Friday to mounting pressure over the ongoing shutdown, agreeing to a temporary funding measure that would allow federal employees to return to work but that does not include the billions of dollars in border wall funding he's spent the past month demanding.

Of course I didn't see any pictures of him holding it up so we could see his dumbass signature like he does when he gets his way.  Of course you all know that if the Democrats had caved and there was wall funding he'd be showing off the bill for all to see.  And he and his Branch Trumpvidian Base would be using it as a masturbatory aid.

Fuck him.

[Howl]

I don't believe there is even a remote possibility of a shutdown in three weeks; this one was a dumpster fire, getting worse and worse press and ultimately when airports were on the verge of shutting down Trump caved to a revolt from within his own party.  The entire scenario was no longer viable, Republican senators were seeing their re-election prospects circling the drain and even McConnell had to capitulate.  The Roger Stone arrest did not help matters either. 

Democrats have won this round and the SOTU round and they must win any other rounds in the future.  Pelosi and Schumer knew they had Trump when Trump said he would own the shutdown and the Dems did not blink after that point. 

And screw everyone who thought Nancy Pelosi was too old to be effective and new blood was needed.  As they say, old age and cunning trump youth and beauty. 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Another shutdown in 3 weeks? Only if Trump truly owns Republicans."

Spoiler

The government shutdown is coming to an end. After more than a month, President Trump has relented and agreed to reopen government without funding for his wall on the southern border.

For three weeks.

After an arduous 34-day shutdown that concluded with staff shortages forcing temporary airport closures on the East Coast, the many people and federal workers who were impacted have to be asking themselves: Will this just happen again on Feb. 15, when the stopgap bill expires?

The short answer is that nobody knows. Trump is still demanding a border wall, and given his leadership style, there are no guarantees until a deal is actually cut. He seemed to set the stage Friday for simply declaring a national emergency if congressional Democrats don’t agree to fund the wall, but who knows. We didn’t even think the current shutdown would happen until Trump changed his mind at the last minute, after Senate Republicans had already passed a clean government-funding bill.

But those Republicans also hold the key to Trump being able to force the issue here, and whether they would go along with another shutdown is anything but assured.

It didn’t seem they particularly wanted this shutdown, after all. But they were stuck between what they surely had to know was an unwinnable fight and a president who insisted upon throwing down. Layer over that the fact that running afoul of Trump comes at great cost within the party, and their hands were tied. Much as GOP leaders essentially had to go along with the tea party’s failed push to defund Obamacare during the 2013 government shutdown, these Republicans were hostages to their base — and to the president who promised them a wall.

We saw the first real cracks in their willingness to stick by Trump on Thursday, when six Senate Republicans voted for a Democratic bill to reopen the government with no border wall funding. Their votes weren’t enough to pass the bill, nor would they have been near enough to provide the 67 votes to override a presidential veto. But they did serve notice that Republicans were less resolute than Democrats. (Just one Democratic senator voted for Trump’s bill, which contained border-wall funding.)

Polls showing Republicans taking much more of the blame, increasingly tough headlines about shutdown impacts and a second straight missed paycheck for federal workers seemed to push things to a breaking point. Republicans were clearly losing the will to stand by Trump. As The Washington Post’s Sean Sullivan and Paul Kane reported, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expressed exasperation with the mere idea of using a shutdown as leverage:

Also during the lunch, McConnell made clear to Pence and others in the room that the shutdown was not his idea and was not working. According to Republicans familiar with his comments, he quoted a favorite saying that he often uses to express his displeasure with government shutdowns: “There is no education in the second kick of a mule.”

McConnell started using that saying after the 2013 shutdown, which lasted 16 days and ended after the public largely blamed Republicans.

That doesn’t sound like someone who is ready to shut it down again. Nor does it sound as though others were prepared to use such brinkmanship in three weeks. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) reportedly lashed out at McConnell for taking the party down this path. And Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) concluded his statement Friday by saying there should be no more shutdowns.

“The final package should also end government shutdowns once and for all,” Grassley said. (A couple such proposals have been offered in the Senate.)

You would think that the likes of McConnell, Johnson and Grassley, none of whom were among the six GOP defectors Thursday, would have made their distaste for another shutdown clear to the White House. Another shutdown, after all, would almost definitely just mimic the dynamics we saw toward the end of this one. There would still be no real prospect of success.

Of course, the reason the government shut down in the first place is because Trump needed to try to get leverage — any leverage — he could for his wall, which has very few prospects otherwise. Taking another shutdown off the table at the start of negotiations over the next three weeks gives Democrats even less reason to make concessions. They know they have less to fear politically if it happens again. So don’t expect Republicans to say there’s no chance of another shutdown, but I’d be surprised if they gave Trump berth to try it again.

Unless he truly insists upon it — and they are truly terrified of him.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

This is some grade A gaslighting.

[47of74]

6 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Yeah some secret service members actually did that

Quote

Special challenge coins are being distributed among US Secret Service personnel and their families, who are expressing frustration at the requirement they work without pay during the partial government shutdown.

The coins are paid for by agents or other personnel on their own -- they are not official and use no government money.

"DON'T WORRY, YOU'LL GET BACKPAY," is printed on one side of the coins, according to a photo obtained by CNN's Jake Tapper. The other side has "UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE" and "ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL" printed on it.

Challenge coins are historically collectable pieces of recognition that originated in the military, but have recently become more popular with civilian agencies.

 

[fransalley]

22 hours ago, ViolaSebastian said:

Well, see you in three weeks, everybody. Same bat time, same bat thread. 

I'm making a list of the food I need, then I'm going to stock my pantry.