I myself am feeling increasingly panicky about the toll it's taking on people, and not sure at all what side I'm on anymore.
It's possible that I'm excessively callous on this -- not being significantly affected personally by the shutdown -- but I'm not at all conflicted. You can't have the president of the United States saying, "I will have my way or I will shut down the government."
What would the reaction have been if Obama had said that about passage of Obamacare? Or the passage of a public option? People would have correctly said that Obama was trying to subvert democracy -- and it's shocking to me that this isn't the headline every single day about Trump.
And mind you, Obama probably had two houses of Congress in favor of a public option.
A background concern I have is that Mueller is a perfectionist who won't feel that his report is done until six years from now.
This doesn't actually bother me. I mean, six years would bother me, but one year wouldn't. Mueller needs to get this absolutely right, and the better job he does, the more likely that Congress will be forced to act.
And if, by some weird chance, Mueller didn't act until Trump's first term is completed , then we'd have some hope of bringing a premature end to his second term -- or putting the sonofabitch in jail. There are pluses and minuses to any timeline that Mueller chooses. I'll be a little disappointed if he wraps it up next month -- that will mean that he has run out of stuff to investigate.
I mean, you're right, it's a hostage situation and utterly destructive for democracy. It's also an ungodly toll on people. It's all the worst.
I do feel bad about the government workers. There is one way that I think I would have liked Pelosi to handle this differently. I read of the description of the meeting between her and Schumer and Trump. Supposedly, Trump said, "So what if I sign the spending bill without the wall? Will you guarantee that you'll give me wall funding within 90 days?" (this is an incorrect use of quotation marks, since I'm making it all up, but this is all pretty much fiction anyway). Nancy replied, "No! I'm against your stupid wall!" I think Nancy should have said, "Sure! Just sign the spending bill and I guarantee you that we will fund the wall."
And once he signed the spending bill she could say something like, "Oh, sorry! I lied, " or "Did I say that? You must have misunderstood me."
I'm happy with Pelosi not ostentatiously imitating Trump's style of doing business, even if it would have been a great dunk.
I was impressed at his resemblance to wet tissue paper in yesterday's "staredown" over the SOTU. Probably today the Fox shows deride him for for backing down and he escalates in some way, but in one reality this is the camel's nose for him backing down.
A background concern I have is that Mueller is a perfectionist who won't feel that his report is done until six years from now.
Occasionally I think, "I can't imagine what it would feel like to Robert Mueller right now. Just living in 2019 America feels surreal, imagine being the person who half the country is counting on to make sense of everything."
Also, the strategy in 3 would only have worked for the few weeks a new spending bill would have lasted, and then we'd get another shutdown. The GOP need to say uncle for this to be resolved definitively.
TPM sure sticks to message:
In the end to a dramatic day of symbolic assertions of power and mastery between President Donald Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump bent to Pelosi's will and agreed to delay the annual State of the Union address until after the month-long government shutdown concludes.
(Looks like the headline was changed from an original "Trump Bends the Knee".)
If this shitshow is resolved will Congress pass an actual 12 month budget or just another CR?
The GOP need to say uncle for this to be resolved definitively.
Sure, that's going to happen.
I feel more confident(still not confident at all) in my strategy in which Lucy (Nancy Pelosi) keeps on telling Charlie Brown (Trump) that this time she's really going to let him kick the football (build the wall).
Maybe a compromise where they hire what's left of Pink Floyd to go perform The Wall live at the border. The Fyre festival guy could be temporarily paroled from prison to organize the event.
Aviation workers are worried. "We have a growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines, and the traveling public due to the government shutdown. . . . In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break. It is unprecedented. . . . The situation is changing at a rapid pace. Major airports are already seeing security checkpoint closures, with many more potentially to follow. Safety inspectors and federal cyber security staff are not back on the job at pre-shutdown levels, and those not on furlough are working without pay. Last Saturday, TSA management announced that a growing number of officers cannot come to work due to the financial toll of the shutdown. In addition, we are not confident that system-wide analyses of safety reporting data, which is used to identify and implement corrective actions in order to reduce risks and prevent accidents is 100 percent operational due to reduced FAA resources."
ISTR chatter that farmers all over will wither up and die unless their federal subsidies are promptly delivered. Which frankly would serve the red fucks right.
I'm dithering about buying plane tickets.
I think what its going to take is a strike by unpaid federal workers but its really hard to ask them to do that when there are bullshit laws against it.
Wilbur Ross says federal workers can just go borrow money with no trouble and for very little interest. So, mission accomplished.
I think it's time for me to accept that this site is no longer a reliable check-every-few-minutes-for-high-reward distraction. It's too bad, because I am too sick for words of this giant website I'm working on, and yet I don't have chunks of time available to mount a serious search for better high-reward distractions. Maybe I should prop a book up in front of me.
18: You're right. Maybe we need to raise enough money so that we can pay Moby to comment here full-time. But he would still need a dim straight man to work with. Who can we pay to do that?
I found both the retrospective of Frankie Knuckles/Mr Fingers cuts and also the overview of random matrix theory results relevant to understanding the Riemann hypothesis to be distracting
https://open.spotify.com/album/1OM6ULzT778hgqBI4stbFR?si=i77ld4DPTB6OYYLqxVSxCg
https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0005300
I have literally no idea what 22 says but sure looks high-value.
Reading books causes no end of trouble.
Pwned. In my defense, I had no idea who Wilbur Ross is.
23. My casual listening and reading while waiting for stuff today. Possibly not of wide interest, in which case an excuse for not being more entertaining.
28: You shouldn't have to apologize for my mathematical illiteracy.
I wasn't threatening to leave like an asshole, just poking fun at myself for having unrealistic expectations, and blowing off steam because this work shit is taking SO. LONG. And now something seems *clearly* wrong with the commit I just did, so additionally fuck everything. Anyway!
But he would still need a dim straight man to work with. Who can we pay to do that?
And here I've been giving it away all this time.
It's because we love you so lk!
Welp, I'm sure this has been observed all over the place by now, but it seems to me that if Trump wanted to absolutely ensure that he's not reelected, this wall shutdown bullshit is the way to do it. Apparently there was word late yesterday that the administration is asking for an internal report on just which agencies would be affected if the shutdown went on into March or April. ! I guess that would be OMB's province? Headed by Mick Mulvaney, who I'm sure isn't busy at all as acting Chief of Staff.
I keep (annoyingly, I'm sure) saying to my partner some variant on "If the stakes weren't so high, this would be fascinating/hilarious/remarkably educational," meaning that it forces even Trumpians (I hope?) to consider just how our representative democracy is supposed to work, just what the separation of powers is, just what three co-equal branches of government means, what checks and balances are, and so on.
But who am I kidding; as far as I can tell the Fox News heads aren't betraying any awareness of those questions or topics. Still, a woman can hope: betcha the Trumpies on the ground are becoming disillusioned.
Still, a woman can hope: betcha the Trumpies on the ground are becoming disillusioned.
FiveThirtyEight is at least mildly reassuring on that score. Trump has gone from around -10 net approval to -16 during the shutdown. His absolute nadir so far has been around -21.
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"The soldiers of the fatherland do not accept a president who has been imposed in the shadow of obscure interests."|>
36: I should look more closely at polls that separate out Republican and Democratic approval/disapproval rates, and maybe even, among Republicans, those who are strong/medium/weak Trump supporters. Also throw the registered Independents in there. (I know there are polls this fine-grained, just haven't looked at them in detail because things can change pretty quickly.)
Meanwhile, that linked 538 aggregate graph is interesting: what the heck happened from Days 15-30 (roughly) of Trump's presidency -- the first half of February 2017? Is that just reflective of a roughly two-week time lag in polling data?
38.2: The graph's x-axis starts with him at about +4 net approval, but I remember when he was a candidate his net favorability was always negative. So my guess is that he got a honeymoon effect from being elected that he squandered faster than anyone in history has.
It's surreal in probably literally a dozen different ways.
Every headline on news.google.com is about how the Democrats won or are winning the latest battle about the shutdown, but the government is still shut down with no ETA on reopening. "Shut down" doesn't mean shut down, it means a combination of that, and working but not being paid which by the way would be illegal if it were anyone else, and things functioning totally normally. The people hurt by it the most (other than the millions of people dependent on some government service) aren't government employees but contractors because they won't get back pay, unless they aren't at all, because lots of contracts are unaffected or only partially affected by the shutdown. (N=2, but my current job is unaffected by this one, and at my last job during the 2013 shutdown, what we did changed a bit but we still went to work and got paid like usual.) Despite this slow-motion cataclysm, absolutely no one's opinions seem to be changing. (On preview I see the discussion about how Trump's poll numbers have fallen a bit, which is good news, but still.)
I think the drop in polls is severe enough they might actually take note of it, but yeah, way too early to declare victory, and people are suffering badly no matter how tactically good it may appear for Dems.
It's mostly anonymous sourcing and not necessarily reliable, of course, but Politico is now reporting that Trump is starting to realize how badly he's losing.
I bet if he sat on a fence post, it would take him a week to notice that's not just a swollen prostate.
Most agreed however that, even if they only offer money for border security measures that don't involve building a physical barrier-- including surveillance technology like drones -- they will need to meet or surpass Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding.
I don't know why "most" would agree with that, and I suspect that that statement isn't actually true.
Maybe 43 can be his first post-Presidency reality show.
I'm flying to DC in a couple weeks and international a couple weeks after that, if I die in a plane crash you all have my permission to fully politicize my death and blame it entirely on that fucker.
What if the six Republicans who voted for the Democratic plan in the Senate caucused with the Democrats? Could they remove McConnell as majority leader? I mean, it's very unlikely to happen, but while I'm imagining a world where it happens, I'm also going to imagine they then passed a veto-proof bill to re-open the government. And impeachment, I guess. Also: a pony.
I can see it now: Majority Leader Mitt Romney.
Wilbur Ross saying furloughed workers can just buy groceries on store credit and Kudlow saying unpaid workers are staying on the job out of personal loyalty to Trump is just some remarkable throwing salt in the wounds. It's like they're daring workers to strike. Folks, this is your government on plutocracy.
49 Wait, it was Trump who said that workers can buy on store credit, Ross said something else also clueless and out of touch.
Ross said he didn't understand why they were going to food banks when they could just get loans.
Both comments were very revealing of the Old Rich Guy understanding of finance.
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NMM to Roger Stone's freedom.
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54: can we have a separate Stone thread?
54: can we have a separate Stone thread?
Then we'd have two threads about poop.
Poor Ecuadorian embassy is never going get its spare bedroom back.
Surely there must be a sitcom waiting to happen set in a tiny embassy. It has all the essential ingredients of a sitcom per Clement & La Frenais: a confined space, disparate characters forced to share it by circumstance, and someone with an inflated idea of their own importance.
Setting: the Embassy of the Republic of Parador (Flat 3, 19 Market Street, Ealing, London, or similar US address.)
Characters:
Paradorans:
the Ambassador - an easygoing and mildly corrupt individual. (Father Ted type)
The First Secretary - a young and ambitious man determined to defend the honour of Parador. (Capt. Mainwaring type)
the Ambassador's Chauffeur, the Cultural Attache, the Military Attache, the Visa Clerk, the Embassy Guard and the Cipher Clerk - all the same person. (highly competent, sly, manipulative)
the Ambassador's Husband - has some comical obsession (old china? horse riding? geraniums?)
Local:
the Deputy Assistant Secretary with responsibility for Paradoran Affairs: an overworked and easily distracted civil servant
the SPAD: perpetually trying to involve Parador in some bizarre geopolitical scheme
Plot ideas:
a fugitive seeks asylum in Parador and has to be put in the spare bedroom
the SPAD becomes convinced that an Islamic terrorist group has set itself up in Parador
etc
Lawrence Durrell already wrote that. Just needs finance.
60: Maybe they could do it as a reboot of "Pinky and the Brain", with Assange in the role of the Brain, and the Ambassador as Pinky.
All along I thought Steve Bannon was savvy enough to have steered clear of the Russian collusion stuff but apparently not. He was the contact between Stone and the Trump campaign. Looks like it's his turn in the barrel.
Holy shit! The FAA has stopped flights into LGA because of the shutdown causing a shortage of air traffic controllers reporting for work. This could be the end of it.
Looks like a temporary delay only. I blame Twitter (though it was a Bloomberg reported who tweeted it).
49, 50: Ross's statement and Trump's "correction" reminds me of the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
Correction to the correction, there's been a lot of rerouting, avoiding of air traffic zones and the like due to staffing issues. https://twitter.com/NYCAviation is a good account to follow.
My sense of Bannon is that he's the kind of guy (quoting Ron White) that "has the right to remain silent, but not the ability." I imagine he will blab and blab, but Mueller and Co. will have to be very careful to determine what portion of this is truthful.
65, 68: This isn't good. My wife just flew to NY yesterday, and is supposed to fly back on Sunday.
59: Assange played by Chris Barrie in a wig.
See reports of delays of outgoing flights from Newark and Philly. Things might be changing soon.
And this seems rather alarmist, so either everything's fallen apart or we're going to see a lot of retractions.
Was 73 the tweet saying DC airspace was shut down? I saw it earlier too (I remember the handle) but it now seems to be deleted.
Appears to be delaysrather than shutdowns.
Bannon is that he's the kind of guy (quoting Ron White) that "has the right to remain silent, but not the ability."
Oh man, I hope I can remember this turn of phrase.
Shouldn't be hard, with this administration.
78: I remember it from Shrek 2. Those were great movies. Never saw the fourth but I still love the first two and the third was better than average for a third movie.
Today people are getting their second $0.00 paycheck for two weeks of work. Now is the time for labor action.
Washington Post is reporting a tentative deal to temporarily reopen the government with no wall money.
All options are on the table.
Reopening for three weeks which gets me through my business trip to DC but if it shuts down again after that will mess up my family trip to DC. Moral: don't go to DC if you an avoid it.
The under-remarked fact about the Mueller report is that, by statute, there doesn't seem to be any requirement that it be made public. The AG could read it, release a summary that says "The report does not recommend any criminal charges against the president" and that would be that.
Hard to believe it wouldn't be leaked, but as far as I know, them's the rules.
Can't the whole report be made public during the process of indicting the subordinate assholes?
88: That was an important line of questioning for Barr's AG senate hearing. He wouldn't commit to making the report public, instead weaseling.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-16/feinstein-cites-barr-equivocation-on-releasing-mueller-report
Feinstein opened the session by citing Barr's testimony Monday that Special Counsel Mueller's findings may stay private and he'd send his own summary to Congress.
"Under the current regulations, the special counsel report is confidential," Barr said then. "The report that goes public would be a report by the attorney general."
I think Marcy Wheeler is right, the report is in the indictments.
89: A popular theory is that Mueller's report is being presented in the docket. Each court filing contains far more detail than it really needs. The special counsel is speaking through the docket.https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/07/mueller-has-already-issued-most-his-report-one-indictment-time/?utm_term=.bb33c2dd4098
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/13/mueller-should-try-indict-trump-it-would-guarantee-his-report-goes-public/?utm_term=.f1e01431d0bc
Trump blinked! To sign CR.
And on the same day it was reported that La Guardia service was being closed or significantly pared down.
Trump's obsession with duct-taped women is fairly disturbing.
To be fair, it's really hard to have an obsession with duct-taped women that isn't a little disturbing.
What fresh hell is this that brings Elliot Abrams into a substantive role with regards to USA's Latin America policy.
It was looking good for a second there.
Wait, Roger Stone has a tattoo of Nixon's face on his upper back!?!
Right?! An honest Republican would tattoo Nixon his buttcheeks.