Not funding the salaries of legislators while they are in negotiations gives substantial power to legislators who don't depend on their Congressional salary over those that do.
EAllusion wrote:I haven't seen it reported in mainstream press yet, but scientific research depends on stable, on-going funding from the government. The shutdown has gone on long enough that we're probably tipping over into the range where scientific research is getting seriously harmed due to the time-sensitive nature of experimental research. I doubt grants are getting processed in a timely fashion right now. It'd be fun to see a long-term assessment on the impacts of that.
I believe that serious damage is being done to the ice bridge project. But global warming's a hoax, so MAGA!
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
subgenius wrote: More amateur hour from Pelosi, she is slowly killing 2020....how embarrassing for you.
aww, you're not smart either. what does my statement have to do with Trump? or even Trump in 2020?
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
subgenius wrote:More amateur hour from Pelosi, she is slowly killing 2020....how embarrassing for you.
subgenius wrote:what does my statement have to do with Trump? or even Trump in 2020?
Oh, obviously there is no political event in 2020 that might have anything to do with Trump.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Res Ipsa wrote:Baby steps. McConnell and Schumer cut a deal. Two bills: Trump’s and one that reopens the government until 2/8. I believe that was the date in the bills back in December that Trump did his 180 on. With the government reopened, Democrats can negotiate on immigration after maintaining their no negotiation while the government is closed position.
My understanding is neither bill has 60 votes right now, and isn't likely to get there. The McConnell bill, backed by Trump and largely reflective of Trump's Saturday "deal", nor the bill Schumer is bringing forward which is the one passed by the House to reopen the government and put border security to the side, are expected to pull enough people across the aisles to get passed. And the House bill lacks any indications Trump is willing to support it if it passes the Senate so it's probably DOA regardless.
But it is baby steps in that it shows McConnell realized waiting for Trump and Pelosi to agree on anything that the Senate could vote on without having to get into the mud and get dirty was a pipe dream, so holding out was going bad for everyone. It's a meaningful if small shift that hopefully gets us to actual bipartisan legislation that can pass the Senate.
It's being reported that McConnell let Trump know the Senate Republicans were pushing against trying to hold the line going into the vote on these two bills. While I expected getting Senate Republicans in the middle of the public outrage was essential to movement occurring, I was surprised at how quickly it happened afterward. In a way it's promising that political reality can still impose itself when the fundamentals build up behind the dam created by bizarro Trump world and his base. It could almost give one some hope. Almost.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
McConnell hates shutdowns, and his caucus was blaming him. He’s a decent negotiator when he’s not in full obstruction mode. Pelosi is a very good negotiator. Trump wants to be seen as a good negotiator. That’s the dynamic that gives me some hope.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:Trump wants to be seen as a good negotiator.
Trump does not, I believe, have on his desk a list of rational principles, like "Be a good negotiator" that guide his decisions. All he does from minute to minute is to follow his gut feeling as to what will make him feel good about himself, and make his base applaud his sound bites.
Just because Trump at some given moment gets a nice warm feeling inside by hearing people say "Gosh! The president is really good at negotiating!" does not mean that ten minutes later he may not switch to seeking approval along the lines of "Gosh! The president is such a tough guy - he doesn't give an inch once he has staked out his ground".
In the present case, I am not sure that enough weight is being given to the fact that Trump's sudden pull back on the shut-down was very convenient in diverting attention from the arrest of Roger Stone. Wonder what he will do when Mueller comes for members of his family?
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Res Ipsa wrote:McConnell hates shutdowns, and his caucus was blaming him. He’s a decent negotiator when he’s not in full obstruction mode. Pelosi is a very good negotiator. Trump wants to be seen as a good negotiator. That’s the dynamic that gives me some hope.
Going back in the thread, Jersey Girl had asked EA (or anyone else who cared to respond) what was different about this shutdown. My comment back was that the dynamics that usually end a shutdown were already in play when this one started. Public opinion was against the President's claim a wall was needed to address a national emergency, and Trump had recognized it was a bad enough idea he was on the verge of supporting a budget bill that did not include funding for the wall. But once Ann Coulter called him out on not keeping his campaign promise he suddenly dug in. I compared shutdowns to a game of Russian Roulette, with public blame for it being the bullet. So once the bullet goes off on someone, they typically end. In this case, Trump was already shot in the head and we were dealing with a zombie President with no clear alternative incentive to end the shutdown since Ann Coulter didn't care about the consequences more than she cares about seeing libs screwed over which Trump's wall would symbolize.
I made the case in the thread that Pelosi and the other Democrats needed to drag Mitch McConnell into the debate as he had been remarkably effective at keeping Senate Republicans out of it and thus largely uneffected by public opinion which is the mechanism that ends shutdowns.
So my expression regarding seeing a slim reason for hope in this debacle comes from seeing the reality of broad public concern crashing in like a dam bursting once McConnell was no longer able to side step the issue and let it seem like it was only between Trump and the House. It represented the balance of powers still having some meaning in the disfunction that is the norm in Washington, even if it only really took effect at a moment of extremis. Representative democracy kinda did what it's supposed to do, though it should normally have prevented the shutdown completely. It's a mixed bag but atleast it's something.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
I have a difficult time with both Coulter and Maher. They seem like two people, detached from how most people live life, with a gentleman's bet on the direction of American politics that neither is really invested in enough to be any more informed than needed to play their parts. It makes for entertainment at the expense of information.
This particular piece is all the more annoying for Coulter making claims to Maher's audience about her motives for supporting Trump that Maher, if informed rather than a comedian, should have been responding to because there was a chance to engage in real substance there. Coulter's argument is interesting in that she took a similar stance to one Tucker Carlson takes, arguing that it's Trump and just about any non-socialist Washington outsider that people should support because the enemy is the wealthy elite who benefit from policies like providing a path to citizenship for immigrants. She went after the Koch brothers for God's sake! Imagining her saying the things she said in that clip just 10 years ago would be unthinkable.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
