Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

So many bastards, so little time.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Let’s finish the job.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Guess *Somebody* Owns Stock in Acme Novelties

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Guess *Somebody* Owns Stock in Acme Novelties

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When all you have is a tool, and that tool is your Dear Leader, everything looks ripe to be hammered on…

…“The more the focus is on the wall, the more Pelosi is forced to focus on this fight instead of the investigations,” said one source close to the White House, expressing a sentiment shared with The Daily Beast by three other individuals allied with Trump. “It’s a situation where [Trump] has no choice but to shut it down. It’s the best of the worst choices. It’s really the only choice [because] I think there are people who would vote for him today who might not if he gave in too quickly.”…

On Thursday, Republican leadership all but conceded that they would not be able to pass a funding bill until the next Congress convenes next year. But not everyone in the party universally shares a fight-it-out mindset. Some fear that the president’s open willingness to “proudly” own the shutdown will backfire and others legitimately see geopolitical harm in not having a fully functioning federal government. Inside Trump world, however, people have grown emboldened by the idea that a standoff will prove beneficial politically; or, at least, give Pelosi some early fits…

Today’s GOP: The ‘You Are Not the Boss of Me‘ Party.


Already (not) #WINNING…

Reader Interactions

196Comments

  1. 1.

    germy

    We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with. Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!

    The United States loses soooo much money on Trade with Mexico under NAFTA, over 75 Billion Dollars a year (not including Drug Money which would be many times that amount), that I would consider closing the Southern Border a “profit making operation.” We build a Wall or close the Southern Border. Bring our car industry back into the United States where it belongs. Go back to pre-NAFTA, before so many of our companies and jobs were so foolishly sent to Mexico. Either we build (finish) the Wall or we close the Border.

  2. 2.

    Cheryl Rofer

    One of the things about Democrats having some power is that we’ll learn a lot about Trulp and how his White House functions just from Democrats going to the WH for negotiations and then telling the media how nuts it is over there

    Or it will be televised directly, like the meeting a couple of weeks ago between Trump, Pelosi, and Schumer.

  3. 3.

    Soonergrunt

    This shutdown isn’t good for the Republicans, and it damn sure isn’t good for Trump. And it’s only going to get worse after Nancy Pelosi gets the original CR passed in the first hours of the new Congress, and sends it to the Senate so they can re-vote on a bill they passed unanimously two weeks ago.
    For Trump, this isn’t about hurting Nancy Pelosi’s big moment, no matter how much he and his people claim otherwise.
    She already had her big moment when she became the first female Speaker back in 2007.
    She knows how to count votes, and she knows how to play hardball. And she likes doing both.
    What this is about for Trump is that everybody is talking about the shutdown, and not about what Robert Mueller might do tomorrow, or what the Southern District of New York might do tomorrow or what have you.
    For him, this is the least bad option, cause he doesn’t have any good ones left.
    .
    And yeah, I’m furloughed.
    And one more thing–Trump says if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll “close the Southern Border entirely”.
    So, if he can do that at will, as he’s implying here–what the hell does he need a $60billion wall for?

  4. 4.

    Keith P.

    It can’t help when your staff gives interviews where they describe in detail their clever strategy.

  5. 5.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: It will be televised. The President indicated right after that happened that he thinks it went very well for him because he’s a master of television.

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    I believe the person you’re looking for here has a name that rhymes with Mephen Stiller.

  7. 7.

    jl

    @germy: As I responded in previous thread, given the situation, Trump spouting such insane nonsense in public is good. Only politically damages him, especially in the eyes of the majority of the voting public.

    As for the GOP’s clever plan, I’ve heard several soundbites in news today of House Democrats complaining that their efforts to solve the shutdown over this week have been turned down, by WH, and also by GOP House leadership, in violation of their own rules so that Dem proposals cannot even make it on record.

    So, yes, a vile plan, but also stupid and I also think it won’t work.
    Especially with Trump tweeting out insane crap about it.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Soonergrunt:

    This shutdown isn’t good for the Republicans, and it damn sure isn’t good for Trump. And it’s only going to get worse after Nancy Pelosi gets the original CR passed in the first hours of the new Congress, and sends it to the Senate so they can re-vote that McConnell can address the American people from the well of the Senate and explain why a bill they passed unanimously two weeks ago is unacceptable to the American people and, as a result, will not be brought back up for a vote.

    Fixed it for you!

  11. 11.

    dm

    @Adam L Silverman: What happened to all those stories about him stalking off, throwing his folder of papers on the floor in frustration after? Did Fox and Friends change his perception of the meeting?

    Maybe it was long enough ago (two weeks) that he’s forgotten about it.

  13. 13.

    germy

    @Adam L Silverman:

    McConnell can address the American people from the well of the Senate and explain why a bill they passed unanimously two weeks ago is unacceptable to the American people and, as a result, will not be brought back up for a vote.

    If anyone can do that, McConnell can. He’s probably writing the speech right now.

  15. 15.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: That name rings a bell. I heard some House Dem complaining that some guy like that seems to think the shutdown is sheer genius and is blocking WH talks this week. Another House Dem on the news complained that GOP House leaderships has, against their own rules, ignored Dem requests to get a clean CR going this week. They GOP doesn’t want a record of Dem attempts to do anything, so they are just ignoring rules to the official record will match their lies.

    Right after that I heard a soundbite from Mulvaney lying that the Dems have refused to do anything since last Saturday.

    This was headline news so I didn’t hear a news actor anchor fraud moaning about ‘both sides’, they moved on to other news.

  16. 16.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Gerry Connolly on CNN says budget negotiations are complicated by members of Congress not knowing who’s making the decisions in the Executive Branch: “It’s not the Vice President, it’s not the Chief of Staff, it’s not the OMB Director, and apparently it’s not even Trump.”

    O, if he had thrown in “Maybe it’s Ann Coulter? Or we should negotiate directly with Fox and Friends?”

  19. 19.

    JPL

    @Soonergrunt: Sorry to hear that you are affected also. Why don’t the dems say they need trump’s offers in writing? He’d lie that it wasn’t him anyway, but a tleast most news stations will realize it’s a lie.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dm: Who knows. He’s mercurial, which, I think, is stretching mercurial to about the breaking point. There was reporting after the meeting in the Oval Office that he was both upset that Shumer wouldn’t look at him and take his side against Pelosi, hence the thrown folder, and, at the same time, that he thinks the master of that environment.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    @germy

    The United States loses soooo much money on Trade with Mexico under NAFTA, over 75 Billion Dollars a year

    Yeah, if only we stopped simply shoveling it over the “boarder” and used it to – here’s a thought – BUY THINGS.

    What a maroon.

  25. 25.

    sgrAstar

    @Soonergrunt: Hey, Sooner. Hope you’re ok. I think the Rs are gonna be scrambling for the exits when they discover that voters do not like the shutdown. Or so I hope. Let us know if you need any help. ✊

  26. 26.

    germy

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Given he helped write the bill, he’s well prepared.

    I’m guessing he’ll point to some thing or another, say it’s affected the deal and that things are different now because of it.

    Several balloon-juice front pagers will explain that he’s lying, but the NY Times and evening TV news will report what he says as fact.

    That’s my prediction, anyway.

  29. 29.

    plato

    Pentagon: You’re the puppet.

    Pentagon officials said there was no violation of Defense Department security protocols after President Donald Trump posted a video to his official Twitter account posing with members of a special operations unit.

    The Pentagon’s response comes two days after Trump and first lady Melania Trump secretly traveled to meet with American forces at al-Asad air base in Iraq in the president’s first overseas trip to a combat zone since being elected to office.

    “The special operators voluntarily participated in this open press event,” said U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, in an email to Newsweek on Friday. “There was no security violation.”

    The Pentagon did not answer inquiries about operational security policies or to what unit the special operation forces are assigned.

    Yet another ‘institution’ trumpized.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy: I can do it too. Now whether McConnell or I can make an argument that anybody in this hemisphere of the planet will accept….

    Let’s just ask, do they have a working brain?

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Happen to see the piece in the latestThe New Yorker pulling back the curtain on “The Apprentice?” Some tidbits:

    …He wouldn’t read a script—he stumbled over the words and got the enunciation all wrong. But off the cuff he delivered the kind of zesty banter that is the lifeblood of reality television. He barked at one contestant, “Sam, you’re sort of a disaster. Don’t take offense, but everyone hates you.” Katherine Walker told me that producers often struggled to make Trump seem coherent, editing out garbled syntax and malapropisms. “We cleaned it up so that he was his best self,” she said, adding, “I’m sure Donald thinks that he was never edited.”…
    [snip]
    …At the end of each episode, Trump determined which competitor should be “fired.” But, as Braun explained, Trump was frequently unprepared for these sessions, with little grasp of who had performed well. Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump. When this happened, Braun said, the editors were often obliged to “reverse engineer” the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense.… Source

    A lifetime of sham.

  33. 33.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    Clearly they learned nothing from the midterms.

    Oh they learned a lot from it. They learned to double down on voter suppression and where Dems do make gains, strip their offices of power.

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: Right now the actual battle is the attempt by the President, his aides, McConnell, the House Freedom Caucus, Fox News, etc to redefine reality.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    You know what seriously accelerated the decline of the California Republican Party and caused them to become a small rump in our legislature?

    Their budget shenanigans that repeatedly shut down the state’s government and put employees on furlough.

    Please proceed, Republicans.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He’s mercurial, which, I think, is stretching mercurial to about the breaking point.

    Hmmmm…. I’ve never seen mercury as a solid. At what temp does it have a breaking point?

  38. 38.

    The Dangerman

    $2.5 billion

    About 2.5B too high; anything that doesn’t involve just a shitload of Cheeze-it’s and some low quality porn (as much as they want) is too much.

  40. 40.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Adam L Silverman:
    OT, sort of: Adam, are you familiar with the political theory “Inverted Totalitarianism” by the late poltical philosopher Sheldon Wolin?

  41. 41.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Trump’s understanding (if one applies the term generously) of trade is baffling. If I pay someone to paint my house and he pays me nothing for doing nothing, I’m not “losing money” on the deal. I get my house painted.

    If the U.S. pays Mexican workers to assemble our cars, we’re not losing money. We get cars.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sgrAstar: Considering that outside of PA and FL, where flood insurance is done separately from FEMA, no one can finalize a mortgage until the shutdown ends. This is going to hurt off a lot of people. You’re going to have people who have hard date to vacate homes they’ve sold, but can’t finalize the mortgage for their new homes. So they’ll have no place to move into. It is going to be a mess. It is going to have negative effects on the housing industries. Mortgages are going to get all hosed up.

  44. 44.

    germy

    ….The United States looses soooo much money on Trade with Mexico under NAFTA, over 75 Billion Dollars a year (not including Drug Money which would be many times that amount), that I would consider closing the Southern Border a “profit making operation.” We build a Wall or…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2018

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: I read it. I also saw an interview with the reporter. The next Democratic administration needs to open an immigration review of how Mark Burnett was able to get citizenship given he spent years in the US as an undocumented visa overstay.

  52. 52.

    The Dangerman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Considering that outside of PA and FL, where flood insurance is done separately from FEMA…

    I can kinda see Florida, but how did Pennsylvania get that status?

  53. 53.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    I don’t know. I’d like to believe that the United States will go the way of California, but there are a lot of mouthbreathers out there. I’d say we’re closer to North Carolina than becoming California as a nation right now.

  54. 54.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @dr. bloor:

    Is there any doubt that Hair Furor believes he “won”

    Plenty. From hearing him talk then, he believed at that moment he’d won, but his self-image is defined by how he sees people talking about him on CNN. (Not Fox, oddly. He seems obsessed with CNN.) They said Nancy and Schumer made a fool of him.

    @Adam L Silverman:

    he was both upset that Shumer wouldn’t look at him and take his side against Pelosi

    Jesus fucking Christ. Imagine the sheer misogyny that is the only explanation for believing that. You have to assume that it’s so natural for men to hate strong women that it would be more important for Schumer than who was his ally and who his enemy.

  55. 55.

    Adam L Silverman

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: I’m familiar with it, but never read the book where he laid out his argument. I finished turned my dissertation in in Fall 2001, had finished all my coursework in 2000. So once I took and passed the core course on political theory, in 1999, I didn’t spend a lot of time reading it. It wasn’t my area. Just a note on semantics: political theory in political science is what most people call political philosophy. It is not empirical theory.

  56. 56.

    Mike in NC

    Comments from these White House aides/former aides are more proof that Trump only hires the best people, right? A veritable confederacy of dunces.

  57. 57.

    Mnemosyne

    @Soonergrunt:

    And one more thing–Trump says if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll “close the Southern Border entirely”.
    So, if he can do that at will, as he’s implying here–what the hell does he need a $60billion wall for?

    FWIW, I think he’s threatening to close all of the current border crossing points in California, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, thereby fucking over the thousands of people who travel back and forth every day. Sure, it will cause mass chaos and economic disruption, but what does he care?

  59. 59.

    Gravenstone

    @Soonergrunt:

    So, if he can do that at will, as he’s implying here–what the hell does he need a $60billion wall for?

    Your first mistake was expecting anything like logical consistency.

  61. 61.

    plato

    Why does @realDonaldTrump keep changing his mind? First it's a wall from sea to shining sea, then $5b for a wall in some places, then $2.1b for a fence, then either a wall or close the Southern Border?

    Because he doesn't have public sentiment behind him or the votes.

    https://t.co/Qj1PJR6Q2C— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 28, 2018

    Hope Lieu is right, especially the public sentiment part.

  64. 64.

    jl

    Suddenly came to mind that, IIRC, lying soundbite I heard from Mulvaney on the news tried to pin the blame on Schumer. So was that soundbite from his Fox interview, or somewhere else? Is the Pelosi bashing a coordinated effort, or something Trump’s misogyny pulled out of his ass mid-stream and everyone is adjusting?

    Trump’s brilliant idea to combine Wall issue with his goofy trade war, and with an attempt to destroy his own Trumpified NAFTA, might grab all the attention, so the story of the GOP lies on Dem behavior re Wall might be lost to history.

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @The Dangerman: Florida and Pennsylvania got permission from the Federal government to set up their own state based flood insurance. I don’t know if they both work the same way, but that’s how it happened.

  67. 67.

    Mnemosyne

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I hope Midwestern Republicans are prepared to stop getting their Social Security checks as part of their desired governmental dysfunction. Losing out on needed state benefits during the state’s furlough was a big driver towards Democrats in CA.

  68. 68.

    TS (the original)

    he exists to feel good about other people’s pain

    From John on the last thread. Defines every facet of the US president*. Governs every action, every statement. He wins when someone hurts.

  69. 69.

    Gozer

    @Quaker in a Basement: I think his conception of trade is, like most of his views, stuck in 1920. Just like how he thinks the body is like a battery with a finite store of energy that exercise uses up, he thinks the US economy still consists of mostly factories, farms, and mines.

    Odd for a man born in 1946. A year when the US was already well on its way to becoming a modern service economy.

  70. 70.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I was reading about it on Wikipedia, and I was pretty disturbed by it, because a lot of it seemed to ring pretty true.

    Wolin argues that the United States is increasingly totalitarian as a result of repeated military mobilizations: to fight the Axis powers in the 1940s, to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War and to fight the War on Terror after the September 11 attacks.

    Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.

    The people – While the classical totalitarian regimes aimed at the constant political mobilization of the populace, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the populace to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the populace has given up hope that the government will ever significantly help them.

    Punishment – While the classical totalitarian regimes punished harshly (imprisoning or killing political or ideological opponents and scapegoats), inverted totalitarianism in particular punishes by means of an economy of fear (minimizing social security, busting unions, outdating skills, outsourcing jobs and so on).

    I guess I wasn’t sure if it was serious scholarship or if it was more akin to dudebro crap (“the corrupt duopoly!” etc).

  71. 71.

    plato

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yup, if it took even ‘deep blue’ CA multiple budget shenanigans before their voters started to get a clue, how long it will take for the rest of the mostly red country to get a clue?

  72. 72.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne:
    When I visited that border I was impressed by how many Mexican workers commute every day to jobs in America. If Trump closes the border he’ll fuck over not only the Mexicans who can’t get to work but the American employers deprived of their workforce.

  75. 75.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    Because of the JIT nature of supply chains, 8 million+ would be out of work inside a week, food and medicine will run short less than a week later, and that’s just in the US.

  77. 77.

    Adam L Silverman

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: It is serious scholarship. But, as I said in the previous comment, it is political philosophy, not empirical theory that can be operationalized and tested qualitatively, quantitatively, or a combination of the two. It is meant to be descriptive.

  78. 78.

    The Dangerman

    OK, there’s probably some entity out there that is deemed essential (must work) but not get paid. Let’s say TSA just for giggles. At some point, can they pull a Blue Flu (I assume they can’t strike) and royally fuck up air travel?

    As long as Trump doesn’t feel any real pain, this thing is gonna drag on.

  79. 79.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    I’d like to believe that the United States will go the way of California, but there are a lot of mouthbreathers out there.

    The key point people forget is the two decades of disastrous, strangling obstruction until the demographic tide turned far enough that Democrats could completely override the Republicans, who went batshit insane at the beginning of the process.

  81. 81.

    Gravenstone

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Imagine the sheer misogyny that is the only explanation for believing that.

    It could also be that he expected Schumer to side with him as a fellow New Yorker. But no, it really is just base misogyny.

  82. 82.

    Thoughtful David

    So Trump and the trumpanzees seem to think that Speaker Pelosi is the only Democrat who exists and will have any power. They appear to think that if they can distract her, “Hey, problem solved!” I think this is great, for two reasons: 1) I’m highly suspicious Ms. Pelosi isn’t the kind to get distracted by this, but mainly 2) if they keep their eyes on Ms. Pelosi they’ll never see the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 punches that come from the sides by the likes of Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris and another half-dozen or so committees. Not to mention from the OSC and various lawsuits that are coming to a head.
    I don’t think they have a clue how busy they’re about to get. They ain’t got nearly enough fingers and toes to plug all the holes in the dike. They’re about to lose control of the narrative, and the last thing they’re going to be able to do is distract Ms. Pelosi.

  85. 85.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    On top of that, California never had the Electoral College to fuck things up. Or the undemocratic nature of the US Senate. Or voter suppression AFAIK. Or foreign interference from autocratic powers.

  87. 87.

    patrick II

    What strikes me about the quotes from the White House is that the perspective is entirely political. Why it might be harmful to the country to continue the shutdown for any duration is not even a consideration.

  89. 89.

    Gozer

    @Thoughtful David: And this is where it gets really dangerous. We’ve seen Trumpito manufacture/attempt to manufacture crises/etc. when the WH loses control of the narrative or news cycle.

    What kinds of escalations are we going to see as he really starts to take heat on the shutdown and the political colonoscopy he’s about to get?

  90. 90.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:
    It had the equivalent, with that godawful two thirds majority to tax bill. That’s why things dragged on so long and got so bad. Republicans used that funding problem to destroy everything they could manage. Only when Democrats outnumbered them so much we could beat that two thirds did California turn around – and it did so fast your head would spin.

  91. 91.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: California hasn’t always been the blue land you know today. After Chairman Jerry’s first stint as Governor(he succeeded some guy named Reagan), we has 16 years of Republican Governors. Then we had 5 years of Grey Davis(appropriately named, he was also Chairman Jerry’s COS) who got recalled and then we got the Governator. The legislature couldn’t pass a budget and the state ended up giving out IOU’s instead of pay.

    ETA: We have our share of mothbreathers here, you leave the coast and California’s a pretty red state.

  92. 92.

    jl

    @NotMax: McCarthy is a minority, by several criteria, in California, so it fits him. IIRC, he’s the one who spilled the beans on Russian money going to some GOPers. As leader, he’ll have more hot mic opportunities. i’ll be watching for McCarthy news.

  94. 94.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Amir Khalid: I think it’s not coincidental that support for the border wall is quite low throughout the parts of the country that actually share a border with Mexico. I mean, yes, Texas is quite red overall, and Arizona is purple at most, but voters in the parts of those states that actually border Mexico are, for the most part, opposed to the wall.

    (Related: the parts of the country where immigrants actually live are the parts where support for immigration tends to be the highest.)

  95. 95.

    Jay

    @patrick II:

    Nobody there relies on a steady paycheck, and “recessions” are just an opportunity to buy low and sell high. The last shutdown cost the US Economy some $25 billion. None of “them” ever missed a meal because if it. Instead, they made money off it, from Payday Loans to Rent Evictions.

  98. 98.

    Brachiator

    I recently listened to a GOP political strategist, John Thomas claim that White House sources tell him that Trump is going to try to carve out a couple of billion from already authorized discretionary spending for his wall and claim victory.

    He sees both parties as being able to claim some bit of victory.

    He’s pretty well connected, but Republicans could just be throwing out all kinds of ideas.

  100. 100.

    NotMax

    Maybe Dolt 45 is so anxious to shut the border because he thinks* he’ll be able to toss Bezos in the slammer for Amazon shipping stuff to Mexico.

    *word used in the loosest possible sense

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Brachiator: Already appropriated funds cannot be redirected without Congress’s approval. Even within the same department, bureau, agency, and/or office.

  102. 102.

    jl

    @(((CassandraLeo))): That is why many GOPers from border districts in red areas are not eager to be on record voting for Wall. Pelosi was over optimistic about Trump never getting GOP votes in House, but at the time she spoke, she was accurate.

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I agree, Hollywood, then them damned beatniks, then them damn hippies, and Governor Moonbeam started putting CA on the map as the premier crazy state of the day, before pretenders like Florida crowded it out. But if you look at who California voted for president and Congress, it was a very centrist politically moderate state, about evenly divided between Dems and GOpers. And starting around 1900, home of a liberal, progressive, GOP state party. The relics of Robber Barons slowly died out, and the Birchers were an upstart rebellious minority for a long time.

    Pete Wilson’s anti-Hispanic ethnic demagoguery really started the sea change in CA politics. The gradual extinction of non-insane, non-progressive, GOPers at state and Congressional level politics kept the ball rolling.

  103. 103.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    ETA: We have our share of mothbreathers here, you leave the coast and California’s a pretty red state.

    California Republicans must be so pissed when they travel out of state. Everybody probably assumes they’re a godless libturd.

  105. 105.

    jl

    @schrodingers_cat: Reagan was mostly moderate center-right governor in what he actually did, though his PR pitch was definitely in the direction of is future reactionary national political career, and pointed towards current reactionary GOP.

  107. 107.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    I believe the SS continues to run. I’ve never missed a deposit.
    BTW SS now HATES writing checks. You can get one every month but it takes effort and some kind of real reason. Everyone else gets direct deposit. No checks, no envelops, no printing (so a lot of paper saved) no postage, no checks lost/stolen. Basically it’s automated.

  108. 108.

    dnfree

    @OzarkHillbilly: When I was a kid (1950s) we used to play with a little puddle of mercury on our desks at school. (This may explain something about older baby boomers.) If you strike it with your finger, the puddle breaks up into many smaller puddles. Then you can push them back together. Hours of entertainment.

  109. 109.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    What does it even mean to shut the border down completely? I’m just spitballing scenarios here. I presume Americans wouldn’t be able to drive to Mexican resorts, but could they fly? Could American car companies continue to import parts? What are we talking about here?

  110. 110.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    When do you think this will happen at the national level?

    OT: I know you’re an MLP fan from the little comments you make here and there. Could you imagine Discord dropping by the White House to torment Dear Leader Trump for a day?

  111. 111.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: ” We have our share of mothbreathers here, you leave the coast and California’s a pretty red state. ”

    Limousine liberal bigotry towards non-coastal California noted. Thank you very much and have a nice day.

  112. 112.

    Jay

    @Brachiator:

    Yeah, Treason Tribble can’t do that.

    ReThugs are just throwing out shit in the hopes that something will stick.

    John Thomas is an example of why ReThug’s can’t govern. They have no clue on how things actually work, just illusions of how they think things should work, according to their fondness for Authotarianism and Randian Leadership.

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    @Gozer:
    It would probably help to remember who taught him everything he thinks he knows about business/government, etc. Dear old dad. He was not a good person, and there is a lot of evidence of that, first and foremost, individual 1. He was smarter than his son, but the evil didn’t skip a generation.

  118. 118.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @The Dangerman: I’m talking geography, you get off the coasts and might as well be in Misery(though less humid). Another thing folk outside the state forget about is Prop 13, it’s still with us. It, and it’s successor initiatives in the 80’s, took a sledgehammer to the state and local budgets.

  122. 122.

    Ruckus

    @The Dangerman:
    He has a plane at his disposal (and it’s better than his by a long shot) and security, he doesn’t give a fuck if you or I don’t. If you told him about all the people crossing the border every day to work, that would set him off, because he has no concept that people do that and those people must be taking jobs away from murcans.

  125. 125.

    Fair Economist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    What does it even mean to shut the border down completely? I’m just spitballing scenarios here. I presume Americans wouldn’t be able to drive to Mexican resorts, but could they fly? Could American car companies continue to import parts? What are we talking about here?

    You have already thought about it more than the Russian asset in the White House.

  128. 128.

    plato

    Elizabeth Drew, Watergate journalist: "An impeachment process against President Trump now seems inescapable. Unless the president resigns, the pressure by the public on the Democratic leaders to begin an impeachment process next year will only increase."https://t.co/T0AmgdaRXp

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 29, 2018

    Amazing how the effing media minions always call on dems to clean up rethugs’ corruption, wars and now treason. Where was she in the last two years?

  129. 129.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @jl:

    What a snoot.

    Thank you. I’ve always heard that the interior part of the state regards SacTown as a den in iniquity in their midst. They do get the “delta breeze” after all.

  131. 131.

    Mary G

    @jl: Reagan the governor was a big fat liar and fraud. I was thrilled to hear I had been hired to work at the state park for the summer of his last term, because it was by far and away the best job you could get around here, both in terms of pay and not having to stand over a burger grill. I was not at all thrilled to find out that I would not be paid all summer, because the state had run out of money and he did not want to advertise the fact, because he planned to run on “balancing the budget.” My mom was the food services director for the local school district and he pulled the same shit with them. Just like Trump, a lot of vendors with valid bills due got shafted, several almost lost their businesses and Jerry Brown had to straighten out the mess when he came into office. A lot of moderates who had been contented to be Republican started to drift away.

  133. 133.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Soonergrunt:

    And one more thing–Trump says if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll “close the Southern Border entirely”.
    So, if he can do that at will, as he’s implying here–what the hell does he need a $60billion wall for?

    First of all, I’m so sorry you’re being furloughed. We went through the “Great Sequester Furlough” few years back and it was really stressful. Hang in there cuz it’s likely you’ll be paid back.

    Second, I want this question to start going viral. Everyone needs to ask it over and over to Mick Mulvaney and Sarah Sanders and anyone who tries to justify anything having to do with his shit wall.

  135. 135.

    Jay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Commercial and rail traffic is more or less separated at the border from passenger and light commercial traffic. Air and sea travel is governed by International rules.

    Dolt 45 could shut down passenger traffic, rail traffic, commercial traffic. He could stop sea and air travel originating in the US to Mexico. He can stop air and sea travel originating in Mexico and ending in the US, but he can’t stop flights from say, Canada, refuelling in the US and ending in Mexico, or vice versa.

    But of course, Dolt 45 and Vampire Miller would have to know this, and they don’t.

    So who the hell knows what they are actually yelling about on Twitter?

  138. 138.

    cs

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Government dysfunction in Kansas is one of the big reasons why we’ve now got a Democratic governor-elect waiting in the wings, and one of the big reasons why Johnson County (KC suburb) has gone blue. Your average midwestern Republican thinks they want chaos and the end of “big government”. But when the chaos actually shows up, many of them want no part of it.

  139. 139.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    What does it even mean to shut the border down completely? I’m just spitballing scenarios here.

    Nobody knows because he doesn’t even know and it he’s really being sincere (which he’s not) it involves a shit-ton of laws, treaties and government rules that cross multiple agencies and Little Stephan Miller, aka “the Last Coward Standing” simply does not have the brain-power to figure out how to “shut down the border”.

  140. 140.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @NotMax:

    Even California has its … faults.

    ;)

    LOL

    That’s the kind of wit that keeps me coming back as a Balloon Juice subscriber.

  142. 142.

    Gozer

    @Ruckus: Usually with families you can find at least one or two members that are decent. But my god…all this group is are pimps, slum lords, and grifters. The only ones that seem not completely horrible are those who haven’t had much to say in public.

  145. 145.

    plato

    @cs: And yet didn’t the Kansas voters give the rethugs something like 2 to 1 super majority (yet again) as recently as 2018 state elections? Fat lot of good it will do if you voted in a rethug state lege along side a dem gov.

  146. 146.

    James E Powell

    @plato:

    Amazing how the effing media minions always call on dems to clean up rethugs’ corruption, wars and now treason. Where was she in the last two years?

    She’s been writing anti-Trump stuff from the beginning but she isn’t a big shot in the Village, so we don’t often hear of it.

  147. 147.

    James E Powell

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    What does it even mean to shut the border down completely? I’m just spitballing scenarios here.

    There’s a part of me that really really wants him to order the border closed down completely. I want him to use those exact words on Twitter and TV. Then I want the TV to show the reaction faces of Republican senators and congress-creatures.Then the CEOs. Then cut to a diner in Dumptruck County, Iowa where Trump supporters will express their love for Their Leader.

  148. 148.

    Gravenstone

    @dnfree: We were still doing that in the 70’s. Also where I learned that mercury will form an amalgam with gold, since I managed to permanently discolor my class ring when it came in contact with the mercury we were screwing around with. They recently tore the old school down. I wonder how much extra it cost to remediate the toxic waste dump that had to be our old science lab?

  149. 149.

    Gravenstone

    @plato:

    Where was she in the last two years?

    Possibly recognizing the reality that the Republican controlled House was actively running interference for Trump? Just spitballing here.

  150. 150.

    The Dangerman

    Since we are kinda dissing on Central CA, I’ll have to add the newer and nicer sections of Fresno and Bakersfield are pretty nice. A dollar in the Real Estate market goes a LONG way there and it’s … not bad. Some Folks make the commute to work (from Bakersfield, of course).

    Now, of course, the shitty sections are best avoided.

  153. 153.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @plato: I don’t know from Kansas politics, but I have a recollection that several of these nominal Republicans caucused, maybe still do, with Democrats, and four of them to date have actually switched party affiliations over issues like transgender rights and public education, with the most recent being on the 19th. (One of them leaves office in January, but my understanding is that the other three have either been re-elected or are in the midst of four-year terms.) Someone who knows the details can certainly fill things in better, but there seems to be a pretty vast schism in the Kansas GOP, with the Brownback wingnuts and the moderate wing more or less at war. I suspect most of the moderate wing ends up in the Democratic Party within the next decade, but we’ll see how things shake out.

    In any case, state and local politics are weird. Sometimes people who are Democrats in all but name end up running and winning as Republicans in state/local races that they wouldn’t win if they were running as Democrats. There really isn’t any such thing as a moderate Republican at the national level any longer, but judging from the recent party switches, there still seem to be some at the state level – or at least there were until recently, though in any case, there are fewer every year.

  156. 156.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @dnfree: In early 50s we kids would gather outside jr high school entrance. A couple of boys brought small vials of mercury, and we’d take turns dipping pennies in them. The coated pennies could be mistaken for dimes at a distance.

  158. 158.

    debbie

    @Soonergrunt:

    And one more thing–Trump says if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll “close the Southern Border entirely”.
    So, if he can do that at will, as he’s implying here–what the hell does he need a $60billion wall for?

    I couldn’t stop laughing when I heard Trump saying that. Someone has to ask him whether that doesn’t make the wall superfluous.

    I’m more worried about his threat to bring on a recession if the Dems don’t cooperate. If that doesn’t fuck up Wall Street, I don’t know what will.

  159. 159.

    James E Powell

    @patrick II:

    What strikes me about the quotes from the White House is that the perspective is entirely political. Why it might be harmful to the country to continue the shutdown for any duration is not even a consideration.

    The same is true of the press/media. Just as it was every time the Rs threatened shutdown with Obama. It was all about the show biz, nothing about peoples’ lives.

  160. 160.

    divF

    @Gravenstone: When they tore down one of the old particle accelerator buildings at my place of employment a few years back, environmental assays were showing up relatively large amounts of mercury, where there hadn’t been any before. Apparently, someone had dumped mercury waste into the sinks or toilets, where it accumulated until the bathrooms were demolished.

  161. 161.

    Mary G

    @plato: At least two Kansas state legislature members have switched party from Republican to Democrat, saying they’ve had enough.

  162. 162.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @plato: Shen has long history of being a competent journalist. so she doesn’t get much attn. The contrast to the usual guff on offer is too glaring.

  165. 165.

    Mike in NC

    @debbie: We are way overdue for a recession, and we shall happily name it the “Trump Recession” in either 2019 and/or 2020.

  166. 166.

    catclub

    @Mnemosyne:

    I hope Midwestern Republicans are prepared to stop getting their Social Security checks as part of their desired governmental dysfunction.

    The NYT article on ‘Harlan County KY gets over 50% of personal income from the government, but they vote GOP’
    did not bother to mention intense racism of the voters. The just distrust government.

  168. 168.

    lamh36

    ‘Sup BJ.

    Mindless comic book movie time … LOL

    I have literally been sitting on my sofa watching Avengers, Civil Wars I’m sorry I mean Captain America Civil War (but lets be honest, it’s really Avengers 2.5) and I gotta say, I’m still mad at Cap, which I guess makes me Team Iron Man…like dude Bucky killed Tony’s parents…like even if he wasn’t in his right mind…so nah I ain’t mad at Tony for wanting some payback…smh.

    Rewatching the tag team fight sequence, I’m reminded how even though I appreciated the stunt choreography, that I kinda hated to see Cap and Tony fighting…smh

    besides which…wasn’t Bucky all “oh I’m so remorseful, I killed all those people…I’m so conflicted…with all the killing I did”…like ok…dude…then you need to let Tony place these hands on u…I mean dude…you DID kill his mom!!!

    Oh so wait…did I miss it, or did we not really get any kinda resolution between Cap and Tony in Infinity War did we? I don’t recall. So I’ll assume we’ll get something in Avengers Endgame?

    And that letter from Cap at the end of Civil War.. kinda weaksauce and very unfufilling…so I guess Tony forgave Cap so easily? Uh…yeah…right.

    Anyhoo still not my FAV. but better than Ultron, that’s for sure

  169. 169.

    Achrachno

    @NotMax: “San Diego may not be mouthbreath-y but does often seem eager to learn it.”

    You have it backward — eager to forget it. SD used to be very Republican, but not so much nowadays.

    Trend is positive almost everywhere in S CA, including most of the interior.

  170. 170.

    Achrachno

    @plato: “media minions always call on dems to clean up rethugs’ corruption”

    Of course! Who else is going to do it? Crooked repugs?

  171. 171.

    DHD

    @Adam L Silverman: I’m guessing that PA has this status primarily because of the Johnstown flood but also a general inclination towards building cities in floodplains and flash-flood-prone valleys, e.g. Millvale, Carnegie and various other Pittsburgh-area towns…

  172. 172.

    Jay

    @catclub:

    The only illegal border crossers are coyotes and drug smugglers. Most of the drugs and other illegal goods that cross the border, don’t cross on foot, they cross on ships, trucks, aircraft and tunnels.

    The refugee’s seeking asylum, cross through the desert, then approach the Border Patrol or Customs at an “official port of entry”, to make “claim”, because CBP won’t allow them to cross into the US to make “claim” at official ports of entry.

    99% of the illegal activity at the US Southern Border is being done by the US Customs and Border Patrol.

  173. 173.

    Achrachno

    @Mary G: “At least two Kansas state legislature members have switched party from Republican to Democrat”

    I’d not heard that before and looked up the details. It’s actually THREE in the last week or so, 2 state senators and one state rep. Most pleasing!

  174. 174.

    sgrAstar

    @The Dangerman: there is fantastic rock climbing and hiking above Bakersfield and Fresno. There definitely are a few perks for people who live there. My only beef is the summer heat. Ow!

  175. 175.

    frosty

    @lamh36: Infinity War Yeah, I don’t know how they’ll make another Marvel movie after that*. But I guess that’s the magic of Hollywood. Or screenwriting.

    *Trying to avoid spoilers

  176. 176.

    Eural Joiner

    @frosty: I think at this point spoilers aren’t spoilers – it’s been eight months and most of the plot has been memed into a new pop culture life ?

  177. 177.

    Major Major Major Major

    @frosty:

    Infinity War Yeah, I don’t know how they’ll make another Marvel movie after that*

    The same way they continue any comic book franchise forever: make it so that big universe-changing events are never actually permanent.

  181. 181.

    Yutsano

    @NotMax: Tax forms? You wanna talk tax forms? Lemme tell you about tax forms.

    So next year, there is only one form to file. Everyone will have a 1040 regardless of filing status and such. So no more 1040A and 1040EZ right? Well…it’s not that simple.

    The actual 1040 form itself has been completely revamped. Now instead of various lines on the form for income adjustments, credits, and whatnot, you have to include one or several of six separate pages or schedules.And if those schedules are missing or incomplete your return will be held. Not to mention various credits and tax requirements have been completely revamped.

    And the longer this goes on, the more people will have questions…and no one at the IRS to answer them. I’m already worried that the essential programming that is supposed to happen this week isn’t getting done because the programmers aren’t excepted. This filing season was already shaping up to be a mishegas as it was. If we’re out, it’s going to be much worse once we’re back.

  182. 182.

    Sab

    @Yutsano: @Yutsano: At least Congress didn’t manage to sneak in another tax bill at year end. Remember when under Bush they retroactively changed a lot of the corporate tax rules at the end of March, two weeks after the corporate returns were due?

  184. 184.

    Soonergrunt

    @Adam L Silverman: You’re probably more likely to be right than I am here.
    It’s going to take EVERY single Dem getting in front of EVERY single camera and reiterating “hey, we just passed the exact same bill that the Senate passed unanimously a couple weeks ago…” and still Chuck Todd and others will be like “well, if McConnell says it can’t be done, it can’t be done, and I don’t know why the Democrats in the House are pulling this stunt.”

  185. 185.

    Soonergrunt

    @Adam L Silverman: Here in Utah, as in a lot of the west, a lot of mortgages are USDA-backed farm loans. Even for properties that aren’t directly engaged in farming activities-something like a 1-acre piece of ground that you sign a letter of intent to engage in farming (lots of people have chickens) and you can get a low-interest government-backed mortgage.
    Or, you could have done, until last Friday.
    Now, there are no USDA personnel to sign off on the forms. The contractor who does the bulk of the work on the USDA side was stop-worked, and the civil servants who work that program are also furloughed.

  186. 186.

    Soonergrunt

    @The Dangerman: When a Federal employee who is exempted and working without pay during shutdown goes on leave of any type (typically the only that can be authorized is Sick Leave) that employee must be furloughed because leave is a paid status and you can’t be in a paid status during shutdown.
    That’s how I ended up getting furloughed in the last shutdown. I was exempted at VA IT. I went to an appointment that took 5 months to get (that the bosses wanted me to cancel), and when I came back to my desk from the clinic downstairs, I signed my furlough paperwork and went down to the union office and did volunteer work for the union. I think it was like 4 days and we were back at work.

  187. 187.

    Soonergrunt

    @Brachiator: He would need Congress to specifically de-allocate those funds. He can’t do that himself. Only Congress can appropriate funds, and that can’t be changed, “reprogramming of funds” is the term without Congress’ specific permission even among programs in the same department.
    Typically, funding legislation includes specific percentages of funds for programs that can be earmarked to administrative functions, paying utilities, etc. and those are fungible to some extent, but it’s basically “I bought a case of printer paper from the admin account for the Gypsy Moth eradication program but we can use that paper in print jobs for any program, including the Mormon Cricket tracking program”, not “hey, let’s take the USDA’s Gypsy Moth Eradication money and build a wall down in New Mexico.”

  188. 188.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: On page 13 of Tom Weller’s Science Made Stupid: How to Discomprehend the World Around Us (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985) there is an illustration of the interior of a black hole. It shows 3 shells, in order of decreasing radius: “Limbo,” “Escrow,” and encompassing the singularity itself – “Fresno.”

    I have never been in shouting distance of the event horizon surrounding the second most populous Armenian city in the world, but from all I’ve heard, that sounds about right.

  189. 189.

    RAM

    So let me get this straight: The GOP is now admitting the fight for funding the wall has nothing to do with border security and instead are boasting it’s to take the heat being caused by the Mueller investigation off Trump and his moron minions, but mostly to own the libs by spoiling Pelosi’s swearing-in? It’s really a wonder these idiots can feed and dress themselves and have moved beyond diapers–although that last thing is just a supposition on my part.

  190. 190.

    plato

    @Achrachno:

    Who else is going to do it? Crooked repugs?

    How about making them responsible for their own shit in the last ten years (at least) by “holding their feet to the fire”? That’s the fucking media’s job.

  191. 191.

    debbie

    @NotMax:

    Tax forms are already available. I downloaded and figured mine out last week. City and state forms are still labeled “drafts.”

  192. 192.

    debbie

    @Soonergrunt:

    The last shutdown was a mess for the USDA and people who were applying for loans and modifications. It lasted just long enough that the applicants’ financial documentation became outdated and had to be resubmitted. Customers were very unhappy at having to resubmit stuff, but became even angrier when the backlog would cause the resubmitted docs to also become outdated.

  193. 193.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @plato: @plato: The media’s job is to generate profit for its owners. Nothing more. That’s the reality of our media paradigm, and it’s hopelessly broken.

  194. 194.

    Geoboy

    @RAM: Actually, David Vitter (Republican senator from Louisiana a few years ago) was caught paying prostitutes to dress him in diapers, so your supposition is not at all far fetched.

  195. 195.

    Ruckus

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    Earning a profit and reflecting the views of the owners is the same business model that any information organization has had since the invention of words. The concept that a journalist would be hired to reflect anything else is ludicrous. I never hired anyone to work for me with the intent that they didn’t create the product that I was paying them to make. It’s no different in any business and it’s not different in the journalism business. Yes a lot of the product they produce is crap but that’s what the owners of the business want. That there is some kind of higher calling in the journalism business than in any other is an unrealistic expectation.

  196. 196.

    Mike in Pasadena

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The price of a house has risen a lot, so revenue raised by property taxes has increased. The house across the street contributed $400 annually based on its previous sales price in ’74. The new owners pay $25,000 annually in property taxes on the same remodeled house.

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