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Trump threatens to keep government shutdown for months or maybe years!

Jason Harvestdancer said:
There are dangers from Trump's point of view.
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Trump is delusional. I think it's possible that he actually believes that the majority of Americans want his stupid wall, most furloughed federal employees are enjoying a vacation and Pelosi will learn that she works in HIS Congress.

From Pelosi's point of view the biggest danger is that people might learn to get along without the closed agencies.
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If that is a danger (fat chance), I am sure she is blissfully unaware of it. People blame the trumpublicans - she should be quite content to let it fester until November 2020 if it goes that long.

Remember, her position is that she actually believes in government, actually believes it is a source of good, and the longer it gets shut down the more likely people might be able to get along without her good.
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I don't think she's that enamored of the Trump Government.
 
Jason Harvestdancer said:
Trump's desire to get his way is overcoming his desire for good ratings.
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Eh. He's adept at sifting thru the channels until one tells him he IS getging good ratings. And he only reall cares about Hannity, Limbaugh....
Pelosi's desire to oppose Trump
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More of a mandate. Her desires don't enter into it.. If she caves on this, every Dem becomes lame duck.
 
Jason Harvestdancer said:
From Pelosi's point of view the biggest danger is that people might learn to get along without the closed agencies. Remember, her position is that she actually believes in government, actually believes it is a source of good, and the longer it gets shut down the more likely people might be able to get along without her good.
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Personally I was deeply affected by the 2013 government shutdown even though it was only about 2.5 weeks long. I had an important background check document I needed from the US government and I nearly missed the deadline because some Republicans were throwing a tantrum trying to strangle Obamacare in the cradle. I nearly didn't get the job I needed.

Maybe a bigger danger to Republicans is that people might realize just how important the government is to their lives and the entire Republican "Government is Bad" shtick might go down the drain.
 
If only the Republicans actually believed that instead of merely using it as a talking point to pull in the rubes. They love government almost as much as the Democrats.

When they get the government to themselves, they dim the lights, put on some Barry Manilow, and try desperately to get the government's bra off.
 
I think the Dems' position ought to be equal parts 'We will fund increased border security, but no wall' (with specific $$ amounts and proposed technology + manpower) and 'The wall is non-negotiable because shutdowns are immoral and coercive and destructive to good government.' Orangey must learn that a shutdown won't get him his toys. We need to put shutdowns in the same box as old-style racism. (As I type that, I question whether 'old-style' is correct as a modifier.)
 
Shamelessly stolen from somewhere else:

"Mr. President you can have your wall.

You can get it the same way that President Obama got Obamacare; the way Lyndon Johnson got Medicare; the way Franklin Roosevelt got Social Security.

In each case the president had a project he wanted enacted; so his administration crafted a bill.

That bill went to Congress where committee hearings were held; amendments were proposed; studies were conducted that tested the cost, effectiveness etc. of the proposal; testimony was held in Congress; debate ensued and if the measure had enough support, a vote was taken and the measure was passed.

That's how you legislate. It takes hard work, planning and the ability to actually negotiate. Your pet project doesn't get to leap frog over the pathway laid out by the Constitution and 250 years of precedent.

You have chosen to skip over this entire process (even when you had majorities in both Houses) and have resorted instead to taking the American public hostage in exchange for your wall.

You want a wall?

Put down the gun you are holding to the head of the American people and get to work."
 
James Brown said:
Shamelessly stolen from somewhere else:

"Mr. President you can have your wall.

You can get it the same way that President Obama got Obamacare; the way Lyndon Johnson got Medicare; the way Franklin Roosevelt got Social Security.

In each case the president had a project he wanted enacted; so his administration crafted a bill.

That bill went to Congress where committee hearings were held; amendments were proposed; studies were conducted that tested the cost, effectiveness etc. of the proposal; testimony was held in Congress; debate ensued and if the measure had enough support, a vote was taken and the measure was passed.

That's how you legislate. It takes hard work, planning and the ability to actually negotiate. Your pet project doesn't get to leap frog over the pathway laid out by the Constitution and 250 years of precedent.

You have chosen to skip over this entire process (even when you had majorities in both Houses) and have resorted instead to taking the American public hostage in exchange for your wall.

You want a wall?

Put down the gun you are holding to the head of the American people and get to work."
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What makes you think Trump wants a wall? If he wanted a wall, he would have trivially gotten the money for it anytime over the past 2 years from the fully Rep controlled congress. He could have had WAY more than he is stomping his feet about now.
He waited until there was a Dem controlled house to start this fight. The fight is what he wanted.. not a wall.

I like the big fuck you that Pelosi gave Trump. Finally a Dem that learned to grow a pair. Been looking for that, as many of you know, for a while.

Now I am wondering what those here who criticized me for telling you the Dems were too weak and the "higher moral ground" was a fool's errand are saying about Pelosi keeping 800,000 workers unpaid with her newly found ovaries.... go on... speak out against her here and now for not taking the higher ground and rescuing those people by giving trump a few pennies (relatively speaking) to waste on a win-wall. How many billions will be lost by the end of the shutdown? Let's hear it, Elixir and friends...
 
Gun Nut said:
James Brown said:
Shamelessly stolen from somewhere else:

"Mr. President you can have your wall.

You can get it the same way that President Obama got Obamacare; the way Lyndon Johnson got Medicare; the way Franklin Roosevelt got Social Security.

In each case the president had a project he wanted enacted; so his administration crafted a bill.

That bill went to Congress where committee hearings were held; amendments were proposed; studies were conducted that tested the cost, effectiveness etc. of the proposal; testimony was held in Congress; debate ensued and if the measure had enough support, a vote was taken and the measure was passed.

That's how you legislate. It takes hard work, planning and the ability to actually negotiate. Your pet project doesn't get to leap frog over the pathway laid out by the Constitution and 250 years of precedent.

You have chosen to skip over this entire process (even when you had majorities in both Houses) and have resorted instead to taking the American public hostage in exchange for your wall.

You want a wall?

Put down the gun you are holding to the head of the American people and get to work."
Click to expand...

What makes you think Trump wants a wall? If he wanted a wall, he would have trivially gotten the money for it anytime over the past 2 years from the fully Rep controlled congress. He could have had WAY more than he is stomping his feet about now.
He waited until there was a Dem controlled house to start this fight. The fight is what he wanted.. not a wall.

I like the big fuck you that Pelosi gave Trump. Finally a Dem that learned to grow a pair. Been looking for that, as many of you know, for a while.

Now I am wondering what those here who criticized me for telling you the Dems were too weak and the "higher moral ground" was a fool's errand are saying about Pelosi keeping 800,000 workers unpaid with her newly found ovaries.... go on... speak out against her here and now for not taking the higher ground and rescuing those people by giving trump a few pennies (relatively speaking) to waste on a win-wall. How many billions will be lost by the end of the shutdown? Let's hear it, Elixir and friends...
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Pelosi passed the bill the Senate passed unanimously via voice vote last session in December. The Senate refuses to pass it again... nor has the Senate passed a budget with wall funding either. This isn't about Pelosi, it is about Mitch McConnell, who hasn't had the Senate pass any budget bill this session.
 
I was disappointed in Pelosi when the repugs were in control because she didn't say much. Now she is everything I expected in a Dem leader. I misjudged her, she obviously had a plan and a strategy. She is one tough lady! Remember she is two heart beats away from the top job!


She basically is telling the orange wonder :fuckoff:
 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Torches Trump For Shutdown In First House Floor Speech
The freshman congresswoman said Wednesday the shutdown was not really about Trump’s demands for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or “the well-being of everyday Americans.” Instead, she said, it was “about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms.”

”It is not normal to hold 800,000 workers’ paychecks hostage. It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want. It is not normal for public servants to run away and hide from the public that they serve,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “And it is certainly not normal to starve the people we serve for a proposal that is wildly unpopular among the American people.”

The jobs performed by federal workers and the anti-immigrant sentiment of Trump’s administration were “stressful enough” without the shutdown, she said, noting that Trump shared in the “responsibility to maintain the basic functioning” of government.
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Earlier that day, she and some fellow Congresspeople went on a search for Mitch McConnell. They wanted to give him a letter demanding an end to the shutdown. They were unsuccessful, though AOC documented their search on Twitter.
800,000 workers are missing their paychecks and we’re pushing to get them paid ASAP.

We’re here doing our job - the House has voted to reopen government whole or in part several times - so why can’t we find GOP Senators to ask them do theirs? #WheresMitch

...
We at the House are doing *our* job passing bills reopen government, so why won’t @senatemajldr do his?

We left to drop off letters to:
- His Sen Majority Leader office
- The GOP cloak room
- The Senate floor
- His Senate office

And he’s nowhere to be found. #WheresMitch?

...
He’s not in the cloak room
He’s not in the Capitol
He’s not in the Russel building
He’s not on the floor of the Senate

And 800,000 people still don’t have their paychecks - so #WheresMitch?
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lpetrich said:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Torches Trump For Shutdown In First House Floor Speech
The freshman congresswoman said Wednesday the shutdown was not really about Trump’s demands for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or “the well-being of everyday Americans.” Instead, she said, it was “about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms.”

”It is not normal to hold 800,000 workers’ paychecks hostage. It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want. It is not normal for public servants to run away and hide from the public that they serve,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “And it is certainly not normal to starve the people we serve for a proposal that is wildly unpopular among the American people.”

The jobs performed by federal workers and the anti-immigrant sentiment of Trump’s administration were “stressful enough” without the shutdown, she said, noting that Trump shared in the “responsibility to maintain the basic functioning” of government.
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Earlier that day, she and some fellow Congresspeople went on a search for Mitch McConnell. They wanted to give him a letter demanding an end to the shutdown. They were unsuccessful, though AOC documented their search on Twitter.
800,000 workers are missing their paychecks and we’re pushing to get them paid ASAP.

We’re here doing our job - the House has voted to reopen government whole or in part several times - so why can’t we find GOP Senators to ask them do theirs? #WheresMitch

...
We at the House are doing *our* job passing bills reopen government, so why won’t @senatemajldr do his?

We left to drop off letters to:
- His Sen Majority Leader office
- The GOP cloak room
- The Senate floor
- His Senate office

And he’s nowhere to be found. #WheresMitch?

...
He’s not in the cloak room
He’s not in the Capitol
He’s not in the Russel building
He’s not on the floor of the Senate

And 800,000 people still don’t have their paychecks - so #WheresMitch?
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This endeared AOC to me more than anything else she has said or done. The woman has killer instincts, and the rethuglicans have good reason to fear her as much as they obviously do.
 
What I don’t get about the shut down is how it is that all the federal workers are just so accepting of it? Why don’t they do more to demand their damn money?

For instance, why hasn’t the TSA shut down air travel in the US? Turned the two hour lines into six hour lines and the like?

Right now, only a couple percent of the population are affected by this shut down and, since most Americans seem incapable of giving the first shit about anything which doesn’t affect them directly, it’s only by spreading the pain around that they’re going to get anyone to care enough to get action taken.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
What I don’t get about the shut down is how it is that all the federal workers are just so accepting of it? Why don’t they do more to demand their damn money?

For instance, why hasn’t the TSA shut down air travel in the US? Turned the two hour lines into six hour lines and the like?

Right now, only a couple percent of the population are affected by this shut down and, since most Americans seem incapable of giving the first shit about anything which doesn’t affect them directly, it’s only by spreading the pain around that they’re going to get anyone to care enough to get action taken.
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Some unions have lodged some lawsuits, but for the most part, their contracts are written to forbid any more direct action... so we get people calling in sick in noticably higher numbers...
 
Their contracts also require payment in exchange for doing work. It can be argued that their contracts are already in breach.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Their contracts also require payment in exchange for doing work. It can be argued that their contracts are already in breach.
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My wife's contract with the city specifies how much work they have to do in the case of interrupted pay and limits the forms their protests may take.

It's an evolutionary process. When the workers find a loophole one year, management rivets boilerplate on the next contract. Or when workers in some other district or industry exploit a loophole, management preemptively plates it shut.

And people sign, because while private industry may have disputes that go on for months and months, no one really thinks the US GOVERNMENT will shut down for more than a couple of weeks at the most...
 
Keith&Co. said:
Federal law provides that federal employees who participate in a strike against the government are barred indefinitely from government employment, and may even be subject to criminal prosecution.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/wh...have-been-told-work-without-pay-legal-n959761
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Well, they don't actually need to specifically strike, they just need to slow shit down. Right now, over 90% of the country isn't impacted by the shutdown at all. So, while the effects of it are devastating to those affected, solving it isn't much of a priority to the nation as a whole because people generally only care about things which impact them directly. They need to spread the pain around and impact larger groups of people in order for the politicians (namely Senate Republicans) to get off their asses.

TSA Agents can choose how long it takes them to wave a wand over people going through metal detectors and make the lines four or five hours long. FAA Inspectors can be really nitpicky about how they interpret regulations which ground planes. Border guards can decide that each and every car looks suspicious and needs additional inspection and pretty much grind cross border traffic to a halt. IRS workers can flag each and every tax return for audit and require additional processing before a refund can be sent out.

Unless they involve other people and make it a problem for a wider range of the population, they are going to continue to be economically devastated personally while most of the country doesn't notice the effects and doesn't demand action.
 
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