Time to give Trump Presidency it's own Thread.Follow

So, stupid opo-opo, what's the current news on the daughter?

I forgot the reason I even showed up tonight!

When your intelligence is an embarrassment, even to other racists!

You all ain't ee cummings. You get your names capitalized like you learned in first grade.

Ironically, Wikipedia writes it as E.E. Cummings so even he isn't exempt

Also, "the memo" is released it seems. From what I gather it seems people were generally aware that there was politically-motivated and funded information being fed into investigations into Trump. Of course, since it's basically a one-sided document it'll be interesting to hear the other side.

Politics never ceases to entertain.

Edited, Feb 2nd 2018 10:51am by someproteinguy

I'd imagine there's a distinctly different opinion there on how essential the information Steele provided was to getting the FISA warrant, or an argument about how the facts aren't being disputed, just the source. Dunno, it's all entertaining, but it seems like a bit of a side show with Trump vs Mueller about to go on stage in the main tent here shortly.

Also timeline stuff, which makes the whole mess a little more understandable.

Edited, Feb 2nd 2018 11:32am by someproteinguy

Don't worry, they always exempt you guys anyway. There's always money to buy beachfront condos for brave soldiers, and provide those hungry orphans in 3rd world countries with much needed ammunition. It's the kind of thing we take pride in as Americans.

Edited, Feb 5th 2018 9:13am by someproteinguy

"Drain the swamp"

Gotta make sure those ivory towers have sturdy foundations before building, don'cha know. Spoiler

Never question a man about the size of his font.

They should have just let the Democrats release their own version. At this point all we can really do is speculate about what in the memo has been spun politically, which does them no favors.

I'm sure you are, sport. I'm sure you are

How do you figure that? Here's where the scope of legislative power (and thus, legislative funding) is defined. Note, that there are 6 different items listed which touch on aspects of maintaining a military, from dealing with piracy on the seas, to declaring wars, to funding an army, and a navy, a militia, etc.

No mention of funding healthcare, or providing assistance for the poor, or housing for the homeless, or education funding though. So explain to me how you are deciding what is essential and what is non-essential?



Ironically, most non-discretionary funding is for things that aren't actually listed in article 1 section 8 of the constitution. One might suspect that is specifically because in the absence of special legislation mandating such funding, it would likely not otherwise be funded (cause it's not actually in scope). This is the result of decades of significant expansion of government funding over time though, and there's a whole historical aspect to this.

As to the point you were making though, you're correct. In this case, it's pure politics. There's nothing specifically budgetary about the issues being fought over here. Immigration reform is a subject all its own, and should be treated that way. There's no reason why passage of a budget bill should be held hostage to issues on immigration.

Now, in the context of immigration itself, it's perfectly legitimate to compromise. So one side wants DACA recipients to get permanent visa status, then they have to give something up. And, honestly, in this case, it's not even an arbitrary "give us something unrelated that we want" deal. There's a certain logic to balancing out granting permanent visa status to folks who are here because their parents brought them through our porous border security as children with some sort of effort to tighten that security up so that we don't have the same problem in 10 or 15 years. If you had a bad alignment on your car, and it caused your tires to wear unevenly, you'd certainly see the need to replace the tires that are about to blow out, right? But you'd be foolish not to also fix the alignment so that you aren't right back with pre-maturely worn out tires in a few months, right?

You fix the problem that created the condition as part of treating the condition itself. Doing otherwise is foolish. If we all agree (and I hope we do) that the current condition of DACA recipients is harmful to them (stuck in an illegal status, through no fault of their own, and often with no ties to their nation of origin), then we should all agree to work to prevent the same condition happening to more people in the future. What's strange is that the Dems don't seem to want to do this. It's almost like they want to make sure there is a steady supply of victims of our broken immigration system available for them to trot out and use for their own political agenda. But that would just be crazy talk, right? Right?

Are we talking about a tire and alignment shop where the five hundred thirty-five employees fight and bicker and it takes them eighteen months and twenty meetings to decide on all-weather or winter tires?

Because, in that case, I might be happy to just get my tires and get the hell out rather than waiting a decade on that wheel alignment before I see my car again.