lulzzzz back at you No one gives a **** if he declares an emergency because it’ll get struck down in the courts because it’s not an emergency.

Perhaps for your next brave moral stand you'll denounce Ted Bundy.

And yet he ultimately got both his travel bans and transgender bans upheld despite all the naysayers in multiple courts. You really think he can't pull it off?

Yep. And they're going to have a make a deal or watch their economy drop faster than a brick in the Atlantic.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46997489

There will never be a border wall like trump campaigned on. I’ll bet my life. I’ll bet you the wall doesn’t exist at the end of his administration. The loser has to kill himself. Deal?

Let's have a look then shall we?

Last five articles before this:

https://www.musicbanter.com/2037114-post17692.html

https://www.musicbanter.com/2036489-post17659.html

https://www.musicbanter.com/2032788-post17293.html

https://www.musicbanter.com/2029088-post17028.html

https://www.musicbanter.com/2018535-post16381.html

"Every one".

Liar.

Good.

You have a short memory. China have hacked us before (see: 2008 election) and kicked previous administrations around with hardly any blowback. They've made massive strides in Africa during Obama's tenure in particular. Trump is the first POTUS who has pushed them into an uncomfortable enough place where they actually want to come to the table with a deal.


No deal. I want some bagels and caviar.

^ That's a strange way to look at things, and ignores the fact that he was also pushing himself, the luckless Fed workers, the American public and the Republicans to the brink as well. He folded when confronted by the resounding rejection of his cause from all sides, even down to that loathsome Trump acolyte, Mitch McConnell.

^ Or to paraphrase, if you waste a month promoting something that fails spectacularly, try something else. Personally I wouldn't agrandise that approach as being some tactic in the art of the deal.

^ Actually, Trump has already declared himself proud to own the shutdown. Everybody, from Pence on down had made a bi-partisan agreement that would've avoided the shutdown altogether. All he had to do was sign, so the fact that he didn't is exclusively on him and his flawed decision to let Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh dictate his policy and force his u-turn on that agreement.

1. It isn't strange at all. Government shutdowns are a two way street, and it stopped being Trump's responsibility at a very clear point near the end. Trump owned it to the point where the Democrats rejected his proposal (which would have been a good concession on DACA as well). At that point, the amount Trump was asking for had already been exceeded by the cost of the shutdown itself. Seeing that, Trump realized that the Democrats were willing to keep the government shut down even when the cost of doing so was painful to everyone else.

2. Politics aren't that different from certain aspects of my own work. Look at marketing and advertising: the only way businesses achieve their goals are by shifting tactics and experimenting. You try something for a month and say "I'm willing to spend X to see if this approach will get me my target ROI". If it doesn't work, you shift gears. That's why people pay companies like mine thousands and thousands of dollars, because everything is a work in progress when you are attempting to achieve a specific goal and it's a full time job to develop methodologies that work.

3. When you look at the total amount of money available and what Trump was asking for, it's a drop in the bucket. That's why it makes no sense that the Democrats weren't willing to take any deal from him, because that would have been leverage they could have used later on. Now they don't get any concessions on DACA and he'll likely take radical steps to get what he wants instead. And the courts will uphold it in the end to boot.

My guess is that Trump would rather have the Wall than a 2nd term, so it will be interesting to see what he does to actually attempt to fulfill that particular campaign promise now that he knows that his opposition won't take any sort of compromise.

Funny how the libertarian supports authoritarian executive practices.

Your mom is authoritarian.

Do you know how much money is lost every year because of China's intellectual property theft? Besides opening up their market more to U.S. goods, that's going to be the pressure point.

He tried to get funding for the wall over a year ago, to the tune of roughly 2 billion. There was enough Democrat opposition even at that point to derail it before it even made it to the Senate. They only thing the GOP and Dems agreed on at that point was 1.5 billion allocated for tech and maintenance at the border. No new fending or the like ofc.

Yep. Because there's a big difference between China doing whatever the **** they want and China coming to the negotiating table because Trump's actions have both directly and indirectly put them in a position where they actually want to negotiate on something. That in itself is a big concession.

They're already proposing a few tasty morsels. We'll just have to see what a final arrangement might look like later in the year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/chin...us-report.html

Well, I'm sorry Anteater, but I see things from a very different perspective. Specifically:

What does that even mean? If you're suggesting there is shared responsibility for a shutdown, why are you praising Trump for pushing the Dems to the limit?

^ All along Trump could've ended the shutdown by honouring his pre-Ann-Coulter word on the bi-partisan agreement, so no, it didn't stop being his responsibility. His proposal was a disingenious mish-mash of old ideas that had already been rejected and certainly didn't contain "a good concession on DACA". Surely it has been Trump who has put the fate of DACA recipients at risk? Basically, Trump took away their security, then in the proposal you mention, he offered to give it back to them temporarily if he was given $5.7 bn. That's pretty much the same technique that is used in protection racketering.
^ Everyone knew from Day One that a shutdown would be painful. In fact Trump was one of a few Montgomery-Burns-type voices insisting right to the last that Fed workers could get loans and "work along", whatever that much repeated, but never explained expression means. Please don't suggest that he had a change of heart the day the Dems rejected his proposal - that doesn't really tally with the timeline of events.

^ Or to adapt your words to match Trump's approach, "I'm willing to let 800, 000 Fed workers suffer to see if it will get me what I want."

^ I think this piece of corporate jargon also needs to be adapted if it is to match the conduct of Trump and McConnell during the shut down. I didn't notice either of them working full-time to develop methodologies that work. McConnell was so missing in action that a Where'sMitch? hashtag was created to try to flush him out into the open.

^ This is for the future, so I can't contradict you but I don't share your certainty about how it's going to play out.

1. A shutdown always seems to happens when two sides disagree on a key issue. I'm praising Trump on this particular shutdown because it became obvious that the Democrats wanted to fly off to Puerto Rico rather than come up with a deal. They were the ones who "caved" by putting Trump into a position where he could shut down the government in the first place. It's like "guys, you were willing to send 20 billion to Mexico and South America without batting an eye. If he wants 5 billion let him have it and then use the whole debacle against him in 2020". But noooooo, "Hey, lets shut down the government and let Trump set the stage to do crazier things later. I'm sure that won't blow back on us at all later on..."

Basically, I believe their reaction to Trump's stubbornness came off as ridiculously dumb. They sound nicer on T.V. because they're all rehearsed, but they're everything that's wrong with our political system. They took their salaries and flew off to chill with celebrities instead of trying to outsmart the POTUS or make a deal sooner.

2. Trump sought funding for the Wall back in 2017 as well and Democrats + RINOs couldn't come up with a good deal then either: didn't even make it to the Senate. And all he asked for back then was 2 billion.

3. Considering the fact that Trump was already in the process of passing a bill to provide backpay to workers effected by the shutdown, it is safe to say that the timeline supports my version of events as opposed to yours. He never intended it to go on beyond a month's time. He thought they'd either cave or push him to Operation: National Emergency. Otherwise, the timing of him signing a bill for backpay to federal workers is too coincidental.

4. Fed workers always get the short of the stick during a shutdown. Does everyone despise Bill Clinton retrospectively when he shut down the government for relatively petty disagreements in the mid 90's? Of course not. The same will be true of this. It's just another petty bump in the road, just instead of Bill Clinton screaming about education moneys its Trump wanting to fulfill another campaign promise.

5. "I didn't notice either of them working full-time to develop methodologies that work" doesn't mean anything. My point still stands. Plus, you need to take media coverage of any given event or narrative with a grain of salt. None of those reports have any clue what McConnell or anyone else was working on. CNN isn't living in his sock drawer.

**** compromising with and appeasing a race baiting sociopath. No wall, no question.

Ah. Just 2 billion for his crazy symbolic fascist wall building project. Trump is a reasonable man after all. It's not like 2 billion is a heck of a lot of money and could be put to real use somewhere else.

As president I vow to fight for things the majority Americans do not want. Vote for me.

**** a permanent monument to racism for real

Not to mention we’re the ones who are likely to need to escape in a few years (or months)

Build a wall around OHs house and cut off his internet. That's 5 billion I can get behind.

I have a house? Where the **** is it????

The Democrats wanted to send ten times that much to both Mexico and South America with no apparent oversight on how the money would actually be spent.

Look at it this way: if Trump is doing a better than you at describing what he wants 2 or 5 billion for and you can't tell me what your actually going to do with 20 billion for "foreign aid", there's a problem there.

I'll give it a 50/50 chance of happening.

^ Given that in the end Trump approved the deal that was already on the table from Day One, the shutdown achieved nothing except misery for Fed workers and a massive economic downturn. I can't see much to praise in that.

^ I imagine politicians largely choose how rehearsed they want to be before making public statements. TBH I think that Dems sound nicer because they have at their disposal facts, empathy, logic and humane policies. Trump comes up blank on all of those qualities - that's really why he suffers so much in comparison.

^ That seems to bear out the folly of Trump's demand for wall funding. The Mexicans wouldn't fund his wall. For two years a Republican Senate and Republican House wouldn't fund his wall. He should've realised that the Dems wouldn't either. Why was he even asking them to? He'd have a better chance if he called in a favour from his pals, Derapaska and Putin, and asked them to fund his wall.

^ So when he said the shutdown could go on for "months, even years" what was that, some see-through negotiating ploy that failed? I don't understand how his incompetence at judging his opponents and his refusal to heed his advisors has become part of your argument for praising Trump's shutdown. :confused:

^ I thought Trump's comment about Fed workers, "They'll make adjustments. They always do" was one of the most callous, out-of-touch dismissals of other people's suffering that I have ever heard. Your comments in bold run it a close second tbh. :(

^ It's true that I rely on a couple of mainstream channels for my US news, but even senators were asking where McConnell was, and by Mitch's own admission he effectively abandoned all pretence of marshalling the Senate so that it was a third voice in the negotiations. Until Day 33, by his own declaration, his basic position was to wait and rubber-stamp whatever Trump told him to.
__________________________________________________ _________________________

Limited research again, but this was an appraisal I heard this morning on CNN about post-shutdown Trump: "His popularity fell even furthur... he comes out of this much weaker ... with much less ability to move forward"
__________________________________________________ _________________________

And finally, just a couple of the most obvious shortcomings to a border wall that Trump is failing to address:-

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vtk_zcbVAeE/maxresdefault.jpg
"It's a tunnel... where we have a wall already" >> https://static-eu-central-1.thegaily.../01/tunnel.jpg

Other probs relate to eminent terrain land purchase and the stats on where and how immigrants and drugs arrive in the US: for drugs, mainly the coasts, the controlled crossing points and airports, and in the case of illegal immigrants, the Canadian border is actually more porous. That's how Melania started working in the US without the requisite permissions I believe. Even if that's not true, the overall figures will mitigate strongly against Trump's notion that there is a national emergency at the southern border, especially as illegal border crossings there are close to a historical low at the moment. Trump's wall is a non-solution to a non-problem.

I don't know anything about that, so I'd have to read up on it to know if I agreed with your version of what happenend. Either way, a bad democrat plan does not make an entirely different bad Trump plan better.

Being at a "record low" doesn't mean it isn't a problem. He's going to have to bring some some compelling information outside of the mainstream narrative on that subject to justify an emergency. We have all kinds of problems: there's no precedent to calling something an emergency just to wiggle around a stalemate.

One angle he has could be in relations to taxes. Illegal immigrants pay in around 12 billion a year in various ways, but get paid out nearly double that. But the wall doesn't do anything about that (seeing as they're already here), so his only argument is one of deterrence.

Going back to Lisna for a minute...

There was no "deal" on the table Day One. Nobody could agree on anything. But again: do you support flying off to Puerto Rico even though you let the government get shutdown just because you suck at negotiating with a former reality TV star? The Democrats are supposed to be the better / smarter adults in the room here, right? I can plainly say that Trump isn't empathetic in most respects. But that just makes his opponents even look more reprehensible when they let things get to the point of a shutdown then do nothing about it for a month.

I could be like some of these people and whine about Trump all day on Twitter. But my response to Democrats is "Okay, great we can agree he's being a dick....so ****ing do something about it instead of flying off for a beach vacation while hundreds of thousands of your constituents can't pay their bills".



Bit of a correlation without causation thing going on here, but moving on....


It wasn't out of the question. They were willing to negotiate on wall funds before in exchange for complete amensty for DACA recipients. But Trump knows giving amnesty just means tens of thousands of new people who will vote Democrat in 2020. Hence why he tried a different approach here.


Trump uses hyperbole in a very casual way because it evokes an emotional response in his opposition. He knows what will push their buttons in a rhetorical sense...and it actually works more often that not. In this case, Pelosi and Schumer didn't take the bait. He does the same thing a lot on Twitter, and because his whole approach to rhetoric is what the courts would call "speculative" in nature, he hasn't been sued every time he opens his thumbs.


See my previous comments about him signing that bill and why I don't think he planned to stretch it for more than a month in the first place. Don't get emotional on me when we are trying to have a discussion about bloodless political schemes.


Having spent a decent part of my own life in the media world before I got into business, I can assure you that Mitch was probably doing more than twiddling his thumbs. Trump didn't tell them how long he was going to stretch it out but they jumped all over the backpay bill like ugly on a catfish. Question is, what will they do 3 weeks from now?

^ Well, I'm happy to be able to agree with most of that, Anteater. I can see that there is a problem, a constant irritant at the southern border. As I read once, it's the longest land border where the First World and the Third World butt up against each other, so there are bound to be various tricky issues arising. But tricky issues need carefully nuanced solutions. Trump is like a surgeon walking into an operating theatre with a sledge hammer, instead of a scalpel. :yikes:

I almost wanted to feel good about the Democrats for once but I killed that feeling with a horny Catholic priest and a broken glass condom. Still shocked they didn't roll over.

Have you looked near your teaching career?

In the ghetto?

^ That is factually incorrect. According to this article, dated Dec 12, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...al/2336303002/ :-

On or about the same day Mike Pence announced that Trump would sign off on the same package as well. That looks like a deal to me, until Trump abdicated to Ann Coulter and did a u-turn. Don't try re-writing history. There was bipartisan agreement to keep the government open which Trump alone scuppered.

^ You seem to be grumbling that the Dems should show forebearance because Trump is so wayward. That's not the role of the opposition. Better to demand that the Republicans stop enabling the loose cannon that they have sacrificed their integrity to.

^ I appreciate the fact that we can discuss politics without personal animosity so if you think I breached that arrangement, I apologize. On the other hand, politics is far from bloodless. It affects lives and sometimes costs lives. Federal workers are people, so please don't fall into Trump's way of thinking of them as pawns in a bloodless political scheme.

^ Dems living in idle bliss in Puerto Rico, Mitch toiling away unseen, do you have any proper evidence for either claim? From the start the Dems made their position clear, and for weeks at a time the Trump camp offered no real alternative. Were the Dems supposed to hover at his door like supplicants hoping for Trump's next utterance? Even I know that's not the art of the deal.

That article clearly mentions an "11th hour" spending bill that McConnell proposed that the Democrats rejected. McConnell's second proposal wasn't greeted warmly either. Senor Trump steps in and asks for the 5 billion. Pelosi and Schumer said no. Boom, shutdown. Whatever Pence said or didn't say is irrelevant.


They should, because if they had done so then people would have gotten their paychecks earlier. All they needed to do was take Trump's offer in regards to DACA and tweak it in their favor.

Like I said, somebody has to be the adult in the room. What were they going to do if Trump decided to go beyond a month of keeping the government closed? They had no plan at all.


Unfortunately, there isn't a single politician that really cares about their constituents in any party. Not even people like Ocasio-Cortez. Otherwise they wouldn't take salaries month after month during periods where fed employees aren't being paid....all at the expense of the taxpayer who always gets screwed first and foremost. Or fly to Puerto Rico to go see Hamilton with hundreds of corporate lobbyists under the pretense of providing "guidance" to the local government.


This avant-garde slice of photography comes to us courtesy of National Geographic: "Democrats Hard At Work With Corporate Lobbyists On Day 22 of Trump's Shutdown" :D

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dwuy69vU8AAxSBC.jpg

Everytime I think of Trump and his wall, I think of Shelley's "Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The man just wants a monument. Just carve him a statue or something.

Dude, dude, dude. Who ****ing cares who was or was not the bigger *******? It's kind of academic tbh. The Democrats have a long history of being big L liberal ****s who are not on the side of workers so any brownie points you might want to give them for standing up to Trump about a fascist wall that he wanted cause he likes building things with a "T" on them is kind of beside the point. Whoever was the bigger man here they are still collectively eligible for the gulag.

The point is that the wall is a symbol of Trump's willingness to give the finger pistols to at least borderline racist right wingers and downright alt right fuckheads, so no matter how sweet a deal he might give to the Dems that deal should be denied outright. If you want to talk about border security then whatever, fine, but not until Trump is gone. He has no place in the discussion because his place is as a racist demagogue and that should have no place. Do not give him and his position legitimacy by even considering it simply because he is a politician with power. He should be treated like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum and ignored until his term is up.

https://i.postimg.cc/vZSZqmqb/RBG.png

^ Archived from the original, which has since been flagged for removal. It sounds fake as fuck to me, but stranger things have happened.


► 5 People Killed In Louisiana Shooting


► Washington Looks To Ban Dwarf Tossing In Bars


► Venezuelan President Maduro Says U.S. Diplomats Can Stay

I see so many bizarre statements here and I try not to get involved correcting
them because, you know, it just doesn't work on people who are so tied to their
emotional involvements when it comes to finding "factual" info, but, just this once:

Snopes

They should get minimum wage then.

I've read the Vox article covering the subject, and the Fox article and that article and at least three others covering the trip. They all corroborate and support my core point, with the biggest sticking point being the 100+ unnecessary corporate lobbyists who showed up to schmooze. If I was working for Facebook or Verizon instead of doing my own thing, I bet they would have sent me there too.

Yeah they're all scum but stop being a Trump bootlicker who criticizes Trump while supporting everything he actually does.

^ Thank you for taking a moment to debunk one of Anteater's claims at least. :thumb:

^ If you have a dictionary of political terms, you might care to look up words like "opposition" and "plan." That might help you realize that the Dem plan was to deny Trump's demand for $5.7 bn for an ineffectual border wall that approx 60% of Americans don't want. If your Plan A is good enough you don't need to use your Plan B, but how and why are you saying that the Dems didn't have one?

Pity America that it took Trump 34 days to realize what everybody else saw on Day Two: that his position on the shutdown was untenable.

If it wasn't rostasi, MF'ers would get blasted for using Snopes as a reference LOL.

Trump has been good for politics though, especially in regards to energizing our better political idealists. At least I get a better picture at what's going on beneath the surface. Before we needed a guy like Snowden to flee the country just to get a handle on just how many people's rights were being violated.

Except he didn't.