This book looks amazing:

Trump Reportedly Demanded That NASA Fly a Manned Mission to Mars by 2020


Lightfoot, my man, what are you doing here? This was an amazing missed opportunity!

onion

Thats the thing though. Most good people arent grifters. Even if they are ripping off grifters.

Rs do follow the money.
I think a large number of Never Trump R classic types would go there if given cover.
Do Ds need to message more at the centrist types that the shutdown is going to kill the economy? I don't think they care about Federal workers hurting.

Yes yes 100% yes. Trumpkin coworker has been spewing this exact same line, and he usually just parrots whatever the hive mind is saying.

He was asserting no one was adversely being affected by non essential government services being unavailable, which means theyre worthless. I told him that my US coast guard captains license is expiring in april and i need to renew right now if i want to work part time in the summer, and this is looking like it wont happen now. Tons of people’s licenses will be in kind of a murky state and i have no doubt it’s ****ing people over.

He comes back with “WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT IN CHARGE OF LICENSING, JUST PRIVATIZE IT”

No don't privatize it. Why would you want there to be a profit motive in things like that? People are dumb and just straight up absorb whatever stupid talking points they hear on the TV and radio. Liberals really need better messengers. At least we finally have someone like AOC.

If anyone can pull it off it's a dude named "Lightfoot"

I'll try to answer these all, but it will make more sense if I don't go in order or answer each one individually.

How shutdowns happen: the main job of Congress is to appropriate funds for the government. The biggest way they do this is by passing an annual budget. When they pass it, the president must sign it. Often, when things are functioning properly, this process starts with the president proposing various things for the budget - perhaps even a full budget proposal, which Congress then considers/adjusts/votes on. If Congress fails to pass a budget and/or the president fails to sign it on time, we go into a shutdown. Often times these negotiations go up to the final hour, or we have a 2-3 day shutdown (which more or less doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't include a payday or paycheck processing day). Often when there is disagreement, everyone will agree on a continuing resolution (CR). This funds the government at the same levels as the prior year, sometimes with minor adjustments and sometimes with other things tacked on. When people talk of a clean CR, they are talking about a totally clean continuing resolution that simply funds the government at the prior year's levels for a set period of time.

How this shutdown happened: Last year, before Dems took over the House, there was a deal in place between Senate Republicans and Dems (needed to break the filibuster), House Republicans and Trump. The understanding was that everyone would sign off on a clean CR and Trump would sign it. The clean CR passed the Senate 100-0, and Trump then declared he would no longer sign it unless there was wall funding. He had been told by right wing talk show hosts that he'd lose his base if he didn't fight for the wall, so he did. As a result, the House (under Republicans and Paul Ryan) decided not to vote for it and we entered a shutdown. Since then, Dems have taken control of the House and passed a clean CR. However, because it's a new session of Congress, the bill must go through the Senate again (where it already passed 100-0). Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell is now toeing the line with Trump and won't bring it up for a vote. So, the shutdown continues.

How this shutdown will end: Either Trump caves and allows the Republicans to stop standing in line behind him and agrees to re-open the government without his wall funding, Democrats cave and give him his wall money, or something unprecedented - like it goes on so long that eventually the GOP turns on Trump and a veto-proof bill passes that he can't block.

Politically, it's very complicated. Democrats know that if they cave, they will incentivize Trump's hostage taking and be subjected to it again in the future. He's shown a tendency to do this, most notably with DACA. So if they cave on this, they're basically caving on him getting all of his biggest partisan priorities. Meanwhile, they're not getting blamed for the shutdown, so they have little reason to cave.

Trump knows that if he caves, he could lose his base. He also gets other fringe benefits out of this shutdown, like the FBI being hindered in its investigations and a news story that overshadows anything related to Russia on most days.

Senate Republicans know that if they cave and betray Trump, they'll lose Trump's base and could be primaried in their next election.

Most people are blaming Trump and/or the Senate Republicans (McConnell), and typically whoever gets blamed for a shutdown caves... but given the way their base feels, they are more scared of caving and losing their base than holding on and being blamed by the other 60-65% of Americans.

I think that should answer everything, but feel free to ask more questions. Sometimes people here can be a little harsh toward newcomers, and often questions are asked in bad faith. You seem to be genuinely curious, and I think you'll find that people are pretty helpful/welcoming as long as that continues to be the case. We've got a good group here with a ton of intelligent minds, so it's a great place to learn more about politics.

Throw in the racist spin of 'government jobs' being used as work welfare for 'minority' types.
Does messaging "shutdown hurts economy" become more useful? Does that pressure Rs more than Ds to avoid shutdown?

Economic hurt is being felt much more by the shareholder class than labor at this point, so yeah, I'd argue that hammering the economic stuff encourages business folks to pressure their GOP congresscritters.

Unless im misunderstanding what you’re saying, i dont want to privatize it, i’m just saying it’s definitely a GOP talking point somewhere in the derposphere

If you're going to shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Ave, you want your license to be in order.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...123-story.html

But surely you want a competitive marketplace of licensing. What better way for customers to identify the most stringent and punctilious testing and standard-checking available?

What I would add to CuseRounder's summary is the personal aspects related to Trump's narcissism and needing to always 'win' a negotiation and now having boxed himself into a corner by publicly associating the win with getting 5.7 billion for the wall. So, it is a lot more likely the Senate Republicans open the government with a veto override than Donald will cave, but right now the public and media are framing the shutdown as Pelosi and Democrats vs. Trump and not putting political pressure on Senate Republicans.

Also, since Trump's narcissism and stubbornness is pretty clear to everyone but Trump, Pelosi and McConnell basically both have to act under the assumption that Trump will never go along with anything other than 5.7 billion for a wall. For Pelosi this would be a great opportunity for Democrats to trade some policy concessions worth much more than 5.7 billion in appropriations, but McConnell and senate Republicans will prevent that even if they can play Donald for a fool, so compromise here is again not likely.

Anyway it looks like the CR that McConnell and Schumer are negotiating only puts us back into the same situation in another month, which I think is a bad deal for the Democrats because the public has pinned this shutdown on Trump but might pin the next one on congress. I would argue that they should press for a much longer CR at this point, people don't want the government open for 3 weeks.

Democrats need to realize this and propose something that allows him to save face while not giving him the border wall. I'm not sure what it could be but when you have a successful negotiation, both sides come out feeling like they win or at least don't feel like they lose. Trump is the worst negotiator because for him everything is zero sum.

lol

He's going.......
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/u...si-letter.html

I refer to your previous invitation to the house for the state of the union and I say Yes...

If all they get from the GOP are immigration concessions then it still gets counted as a loss in my books. They need to go for things that will have people in Iowa and Oklahoma saying, 'wow, Trump really botched that up.'

Actually I live where they privatized registry services and it actually works pretty well. The government still issues the licenses, mind you, it's just all the places you go to pick them up are private companies.

Oh no he dint

This is the kind of slogan that would end a candidates campaign during primary season. We are so broken.

And it is amazing he has gone 1000x further all in on the wall than anyone could have imagined. He has essentially tossed away the rest of any agenda he might have had planned for the rest of his term to live or die on this hill. It is really quite remarkable.

LOL I don't think it works like that.

But wouldn't that allow the "non-essentials" to get paid?

He's going to allow Mitch to pass a clean CR so that Nancy will then let him do the SOTU in the house chamber which will then somehow backfire on nancy in a week when the gov shuts down again.

What can they do? Lock the door? This could be the beast reality TV yet

I mean technically the Sargent at arms could arrest him. I think.