Best I can say is The Times They Are A Changin'

I certainly don't dispute majority of Americans are against the wall however lets not so easily dismiss the 40-43% minority that do favor a wall of some sort. That's a pretty darn large minority.

Interestingly #28 shows support for wall increasing from 33 to 43 and oppose decrease from 64 to 55.

Interesting survey. Lots of data. Thanks for sharing.

Just for laughs I listened to SiriusXM Patriot channel which is the conservative politics channel. It was downright frightening, I had no idea that people like that existed in the real world.

People blaming the democrats for the shutdown, absolutely. Even though it is Trump's shutdown. I don't know how they could be passionate enough to call into a radio show, yet listen so little about the world around them.

Also every commercial during the show is debt relief.

This country has always had a contingent that was against immigration, especially against illegal immigration. Irish, Asians, Mexicans, you name it.

What did you learn in American history after the 2nd grade that was so different?

We had two great big blue walls for the majority of our existence, called the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean. Most people that come into the country across these oceans are vetted at either the port or the airport.

If I take a major freeway and cross into Canada or Mexico, there is someone at that border crossing that asks for ID, and vets me. The same goes for crossing back into the country.

I am not going to put words in the mouth of everyone that supports a wall, my view is this:

1). A wall is not going to prevent entry to the country, it is a deterrent to those coming in illegally.

2). It should be designed to be backed up by other surveillane mechanisms, which will allow border patrols to react in a reasonable amount of time to those crossing illegally.

3). I believe it is important to protect your borders. It sets up what to expect in other areas of society. If your first experience with US law enforcement is flouting immigration laws, how many other laws are you willing to flout?

4). It allows us a means of documenting who is here. This is done for any number of reasons from taxes to safety.

That said, I do not believe the great menace is the Hispanic population in Central America. I think it is the ease in which terrorists and other foreign agents can enter the country. Regarding immigration, I want us to pick a set of laws and enforce them. We already do not enforce the laws on the books for immigration (otherwise we would have some sort of border security).

I could care less about what the actual numbers are. If we want to open the borders, and decide that as a nation. Let’s go ahead and do it. However, I am not in favor of offering any sort of safety net to immigrants. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the government is here for US citizens, not for foreigners. If someone wants to join the club, you are not coming in to be a parasite. You will be symbionts and provide benefit to the citizens of the nation. Second, there are other avenues for assistance that do not require the federal government to be involved. Charities and church groups can provide for the less fortunate.

Now, if we choose to limit who comes in, then WE get to decide who we want to let in. Other nations have rules, we can too. Many times, nations prefer workers with certain skill sets and have incentives or allow higher numbers of these workers to come into the country. There is no reason why we cannot have these same rules in place. It also allows a manageable number of immigrants to come in and reasonably assimilate into the country.

In either case of opening up immigration or having it limited, neither alternative is in opposition to having secure borders.

Edit: Got fooled by a tweet-oh they still removed him from committees-was just fooled by a joke about it.

Rand Paul, one of the biggest critics of socialized medicine, will travel to Canada, where they have socialized medicine to have hernia surgery. This is a follow up to the fight he had with his neighbor.



Rand Paul neighbor attack: Senator to have surgery in Canada


And no this is not a joke.

He's going to a privately owned clinic that specializes in the surgery he needs done. Not sure what the big deal is.

Heard this on NPR and it brought up something re: emergency power declaration and the precedence that I didn't think about.

Trump Still Considering National Emergency Declaration As Shutdown Negotiations Continue : NPR

I can see a Democratic President taking "gun safety" baby steps like banning bump stocks (why in the world did it take so long?). Slippery slope for sure.

That's why this emergency declaration thing needs to be shot down. If it's not then we've created a defacto monarchy and need to stop pretending we have a democracy.

True but not in those numbers. And that was a very different time.

I have a BA in history from university of Washington. One of the best schools in the country. Where is yours from?

Sounds like you should ask for a refund.

Private clinic that gets a majority of it's money from government of Ontario.


Really, if this was a D, Fox news would be all over them for either being too good for good ol' US of A medicine, or unpatriotic for not supporting the country. Either way it would be a load of crap, so there's part of that here too. It's a minor story that would have been blown out of proportion. It's an ironic story. Someone should probably say something like, maybe he can just stay there and enjoy his government sponsored medicine and stay the hell out of 'merica!

Oh, this is going to be good. :popcorn:

Touche

Not really. I have no interest in entertaining an internet tough guy. It is why I stopped posting here for 3 and a half years.

Really?




Yes Really.

Nothing wrong with good old American food. I did catch a clip of it on TV tonight.

(And yes, American pizza has definitely exceeded its origins)


To be honest, I really don't think its because Trump is cheap.

Just to play a little devil's advocate here, what should Trump have served to his guests here out of own pockets?

on the whole out of pocket thing, the President always pays for food in the White House regardless. I suspect in this instance since it's a state event, we pay for it, but it's no grand gesture of charity that "he's paying" since all Presidents pay for their own food, that's literally how it works.

I suspect past events like this, they didn't host a dinner for them at all. IIRC past events have been during the day, they come in for the photo op and then they leave. Maybe there's snacks or whatever, so this might be a bit of freelance photo op-ing, but way to turn a pedestrian event into a story because of burgergate.

To be fair, I did take slight offense at your presumption my (and 40-43% others) support of the wall was not aligned with American values.

Five Guys, Red Robin, Taco Mac - they all have better burgers. For Pizza, for sure Mellow Mushroom.

Edit: What Pilot Man said

I thought it was more heinous that his impression of what college athletes like to eat was totally fast food, burgers and pizzas. I'd have to say, going to the WH to eat fast food would probably diminish the trip for me. I'd rather not have had anthing at all. I mean, I can eat that whenever I want, why make something like going to the WH that pedestrian?

Here's the wiki. Not sure if it absolutely answers the question but it does read like its a private hospital.

If I could afford it, I would go to the best also. However, I do think there is a little bit of hypocrisy here but not as much as the press would make it out to be.

Shouldice Hernia Centre - Wikipedia

The only thing worse than McDonald's and Wendy's is McDonald's and Wendy's that has been sitting out for hours. I'm guessing these guys have trainers that have literally spent years telling these kids not to eat these exact foods.

You give the WH staff a budget and they work with the chefs to create a menu.

Like every other dinner at the WH.

Burgergate is why Trump is a madman genius. You guys are discussing the menu he should serve some kids instead of, I don't know, whether he's a traitorous dictator. Plus he probably got sponsored by McDonald's and Wendy's to mention they were providing the food. He's probably getting paid to host that shindig.

Camacho 2020

Hmm, pretty sure something like this has been covered at least once in the last 723 days. Once or maybe 723 times, give or take a few.

His abuse of the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution should have led to his impeachment after he refused to properly divest of his businesses. That would have had President Pence by mid summer 2017.

Eh if he wants to postmates in a bunch of food, more power to him.

I read somewhere ( can't remember where) that the food was actually cold by the time the players got to eat. Cold fast food is gross.

Statue of Liberty, land of the free, Ellis island, land of opportunity.....



Guess that doesn't mean what it used to. Yet the people for the wall claim to be the true patriots.

A little truth to what you say but I think the US is still doing pretty well.

Key findings about U.S. immigrants | Pew Research Center

Before we begin debate on this, I assume this is the summation of your core POV re: American values?

You serious, Clark?

The best words.

Mmmmm. Hamberders.

Everything's a con.

It's hamberders all the way down

One of my biggest issues with him is his need run his mouth. Like in this situation, why does he need to tell everyone that he's paying for all the food?

Furthermore, if I'm a billionaire, and I'm the president, and I'm paying? I'm hiring a crew and we're doing this the right way. Fast food makes him look cheap, no question.

No "especially" about it. "Illegal" immigration became a cause celèbre among the American right in the 1990s.

The rest of that statement is true, for values of true, though. Immigration, for the entire history of this country, has been a case of "I got mine, you can fuck off" on the far right. In some cases, it was explicitly about whiteness (the entire debate over whether Asians were capable of citizenry, or just pawns of the Chinese and Japanese emperors at the turn of the 20th century, the equivocation of Irish with blacks, as examples).

In other cases, it was about barring the "wrong" kind of Europeans (the quota shenanigans putting a national thumb on the scale to favor English and German immigration over, say, Italian).

But in all of those cases, there was very little concern over whether immigrants were coming here legally, and greater concern over whether they should be allowed to come at all.

Not so different, actually, from how Trump and his advisors began squalling about "illegal immigration" and then floating plans for locking down "legal" immigration, also. Because "illegal" is largely a word used to rile conservatives and right-leaning independents against the community of immigrants as a whole. Once you prime the pump to get people thinking that immigrant = bad, it becomes easier, politically, to propose things comparable to the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924, updated for the good ol' 21st century.

Do we know what kind of toiler paper the players had access to? Was it at least double ply?

Did they get regular folding chairs, those folding chairs with the padding on them, or was it more like when of those wooden fold-up chairs you can rent at festivals and outdoor plays sometimes?

Got a text last night from a friend that said

"From Filet Mignon in the field house to Mickey D's in the White House"...

Should have been Popeyes

I dont think this President could serve fried chicken to minorities without Twitter melting down.

Wonder if he thought of that or just lucked out.

I hope to god someone threw their body in front of the Popeye's van pulling up

McDonald's talked about rolling out the Hamberderer cause a petty Hamburgler is not edgy enough

Testimony in the El Chapo trial today revealed that El Chapo had paid past Mexican President Nieto a 100 million dollar bribe.

I think we know the starting point to get Trump to reopen the government.

My gut says Pelosi's move re: State of the Union address will backfire and will be the beginning of a switch in public opinion leading to the Dems caving on the wall to re-open the government.

I'm not sure. That would require people to care about the State of the Union Address.

I just can't see the Dems ever agreeing to the Wall, it would mean Trump wins and can do what he wants without worrying about Congress approval. I think McConnell is the one with the pressure point on him since he won't even allow a vote on things the Senate has already spproved 100-0.

Why?

And I think most people would be like, yeah, why are we having a State of the Union address when the government is shutdown? Probably Trump being on national TV a week ago spent any political capital he may have had in railing against this move against the State of the Union (you want to disrupt my TV shows TWICE in one month?!)

Yeah. I think that the real pressure here is McConnell weighing the fact that he's up for re-election in Kentucky on the one hand and GOP senators from moderate states wanting this to end on the other side.

Relatedly, which GOP politician since Reagan has done more for conservatism than McConnell? He kept Garland off the court. He kept Trump/Russia out of the news before the election. He kept his caucus united against Obama.

The fact that he has to worry about shoring up GOP support in Kentucky is insane to me. Who the fuck do Kentucky conservatives think they can get who will do better for them?

I can see this getting played up as "see the Dems are just against us, they don't want to get to norms, etc" and those same people ignoring what has happened for the past number of years by the Republicans.

Again, just a gut feeling, seeing how the Dems always seem to trip over themselves instead of just holding steady and not bringing "negative" attention onto themselves and off of Trump.

Betting on the Dems to step on a rake and lose the political upper hand is certainly consistent with recent history.

IMO, living here, he's in no danger, at all, sadly.

Exactly. Just seems like a move that they didn't need to make.

They can't cave for two reasons.

1. Something like 6% of Democrats want a wall. They'll either get primaried or lose support chunks of the 2018 that delivered the House will stay home and reelect Trump.

2. If they cave, Trump will do it again in the summer for the debt ceiling and for next year's budget.

Yup. You either send the message that this works, or that it does not work.

The only way I think that the Dems should "cave" on the wall is if the GOP gives up significant concessions in return. Like, for instance, DACA reform, changing the law to take shutdowns and debt ceiling fights off the table forever, and a significant COLA for federal workers and an elimination of the provision that allows a President to cancel the COLAs.

But the GOP isn't close to giving up even one thing on this list, so the Dems really just have to wait.

Yep my thoughts exactly-it'd be horrible to lose the first battle after people voted Dens to take control of the House.

Oh, and speaking of McConnell, there's a good chance that the Dem candidate in 2020 will be Matt Jones, who's a local sports radio guy and has an NFL bit on ESPN Radio. And he's a former co-worker of mine. So if he does run, it will be cool to have a guy I know running in a nationally discussed race.

MattJones4President?

:lol:

I'm all for a former AR QB star being President.

Didn't take us to the promised land but pretty exciting player.

Rudy Giuliani tonight said that he never said the campaign didn't collude with Russia, and that Trump only said that he, individually, didn't collude with Russia.

Glad that's cleared up.

Yup, no big deal.

Nice. I like it, somewhat Clintonian.

He also went onto say if Trump did collude with Russia it was a long time ago.

The Rudy backpedaling coincides with reports he's expecting the worst from the Mueller report.

Any time Rudy goes on TV he always admits something that makes it worse for Trump. Why does he still allow him to go on TV shows is beyond me.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

"My client might be a moron, a grifter, a colluder, a shyster, a con man and a jackass. But my client is no colluder." - Rudy Guilani

For folks who can get behind the pay wall, there's a WaPo article this morning that traces the goal post moving by TrumpCo on collusion since November 16.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.86eb2fe39b1c

Schumer by himself would cave. Pelosi won’t. For all the legitimate issues brought up as points against her, she’s a great legislative leader. We haven’t heard a peep about even slight cracks in the Dem caucus.

There's a great Onion article where Schumer is saying that he's as surprised as anyone that he hasn't caved yet.

I'm noticing the Dems' messaging today has been more McConnell focused than Trump focused.

I think that's smart on their part. McConnell does not want the pressure, and this helps to try and direct it on him. Trump wants the attention, and this starves him of it.

There's an argument that the best way to get Trump to agree to sign a bill ending the shutdown is to make the shutdown boring for him (i.e. not about him).

For a guy that's as dirty politically as McConnell he's largely avoided pressure. It would be interesting to see how he'd respond to a little heat.

Definitely petty but agree with Pelosi not travelling overseas during the shutdown. She is needed for any negotiations and would presume face-to-face would be most effective.

Its not as much the what but the how he did it that I find fault with.

Yeah, I agree with that. Sitting here at the airport watching Wolf Blitzer pontificate like Trump personally called the Taliban and gave them Pelosi’s itinerary and just shaking my head. With all the genuine shit going on right now why the hell is this the news.

The comedy ensues as now Mnuchin's trip to Davos got called out and subsequently axed.

:lol:

I wrote McConnell, so I'm sure he's feeling the heat now.

Also, I'm fine with trump's gambit with Pelosi. When you're playing the game, you gotta expect that sometimes shit happens. It's not outside the bounds of the game, and you're better if you anticipate it.

If this buzzfeed story turns out to be true....

Nothing will change from the Republican side. Lol

Well at least we now know why Rudy was "changing the goalposts" on CNN last night:


Attention Required! | Cloudflare


I think if Mueller has enough evidence to indict Republican Congressmen/women over all this-or least a report of their activities, there's not going to be anything left to do but to surrender and impeach the President. It will be interesting to see if Cohen says anything along those lines given his position in the RNC,

It would be great if Cohen taped the conversation and/or other corroborating evidence ... (but doubtful)

Hayes Brown on Twitter: "This is, uh, a lot of evidence it sounds like

https://t.co/CBtAs9tQgc… "


Also:


Sen. Amy Klobuchar, two days ago: “You wrote... a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?”
William Barr: “Yes.”


https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/sta...14743922905089

Should we expect tweets?

Ready for the darn Mueller report!

Democrats seize on report that Trump told Cohen to lie before Congress - POLITICO

Yeah, but unless he's on video holding a newspaper with a watch also clearly visible on it saying "I, Donald J. Trump, am instructing you, Michael Cohen, to illegally obstruct justice, which I am aware is a felony" we don't have enough to go on, right?

I don't think that would be enough for some people.

I follow a lot of media folks on twitter.

And they are all saying versions of "This is just Buzzfeed. It isn't sourced. There's credibility issues. We need to wait and see if this is true."

But, if it turns out to be false, all you will hear is how the media jumped on this story and uncritically believed it and is just out to get Trump.

Indeed (tin foil hat time), if I were buzzfeed and I wanted to help Trump, I'd put out a fake story about him telling Cohen to lie, then when it is found to be false and/or not provable, Trump gets to do his whole "fake news" "they're out to get me" bit.

Sure we should always wait and find out if something is true, but the Buzzfeed News section is a FAR FAR cry from the "Take this 5 minute quiz" buzzfeed section.


Buzzfeed News has broken a handful of major stories the past few years and Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier have done some of the heaviest hitting on the Russia investigation of all media. I believe they broke the Steele dossier just off the top of my head.

That last paragraph at least hints that the Buzzfeed story is correct.

Also yesterday a story broke that Trump instructed aides to reroute disaster relief money away from Puerto Rico and towards Texas and Florida. That's going to get lost now, but it should be a major scandal in its own right.

I assumed if Trump lost there would be violence("rigged election!") Similarly, I think it's safe to assume that if Trump is removed from office, there will be violence ("Deep State! Fake News!")

Unlike past Presidents, this guy isn't going to shut up once he leaves office

It's kind of like investigating a child abuse situation while the child is currently living at the house where he's being abused. Except with many more victims.

Well once he leaves office, all those indictments that may be coming his way, will stick. And he (or Pence) can't pardon the ones coming from the state of NY. I don't think they let you Tweet from prison.

I think anything related to Russia from Cohen will be behind closed doors due to the Mueller investigation, but if Cohen can prove he has tapes from Trump directing him to go and handle things in Russia/try to get a meeting with Putin, its pretty much game over.

I'd like to think so, but the Trump/GOP 40% base has pretty much said that they consider the Dems a greater threat to the United States than hostile foreign powers.

I imagine that for a lot of them, it's bluster. But enough of them believe it to keep the game going for far too long.

Basically, the endgame for all this has been a slow march from "No crimes were committed" to "A Putin puppet is still better than Hillary would have been."

I'm feeling pessimistic today (being forced to work without pay so people can pretend that the shutdown isn't a big deal will do that to a person), so maybe take all that with a grain of salt. Maybe GOP supporters do have a line that they won't cross. I sure hope so.

First of all, sorry to hear you are one of those most affected by the shutdown. I hope that saner heads eventually prevail and get this shutdown over with. I certainly can understand why you are so pessimistic.



Some Republicans are already breaking from the President-look at the recent votes on the shutdown, and sanctions. Most of them voting with the Democrats are up for reelection in 2020, and more and more pressure will be put on them to keep doing so as more evidence comes out, and more polls showing lack of support for the President on this issue. They just saw the House flip mostly because of Trump, so the writing is on the wall for many of them. Meanwhile the Democrats are holding strong, even when Trump tries to break them up like when he invited moderate Dems to the White House to talk about the shutdown, and none of them took them up on it.



If/when the Mueller report comes out, its unlikely there will be anything about Democrats obstructing justice, election fraud, colluding with Russia, etc. And a lot of unknown stuff about people not even talked about yet. I think now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though it still may be a long tunnel

But like past presidents, no one is going to give a shit what he says after he leaves office