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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Uh no, this isn't true in the slightest.
If the Democrats hadn't stayed strong at the direction of Pelosi the Wall would've been funded and Trump would've won, that doesn't mean that the workers had no effect but without legislative will they wouldn't have been enough on their own.
The Democratic Party absolutely had a major role to play in this.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 26th 2019 at 9:54:04 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangTrump trying to do a roundabout with the Wall funding is probably gonna piss off a whole lot of Congress GO Pers.
Power of the Purse is one of the legislatives biggest cudgels and him chipping at that for an ego project is not going to be popular.
And even Turtle knows showing him that he can get away with that is a baaaad thing for whatever control he has about Donnieboy
"You can reply to this Message!"Since it hasn't been brought up here, I thought I might share these tweets from Nancy Pelosi's Twitter @SpeakerPelosi, from my understanding they were released mere minutes after Trump signed the bill reopening the government:
https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1088990533731733504?s=19
.@realDonaldTrump’s continued efforts to undermine Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation raises the questions:
What does Putin have on @realDonaldTrump, politically, personally or financially?
Why has the Trump Administration continued to discuss pulling the U.S. out of NATO, which would be a massive victory for Putin?
The Special Counsel investigation is working, and the House will ensure that it can continue, free from interference from the White House. Read my full statement here: https://t.co/8OSuz3eq1w
First thing that made me think of was The Last Podcast on the Left series on Jonestown. In the first or second episode they describe one of Jim Jones's followers as "a woman looking for an apocalypse".
Edited by sgamer82 on Jan 26th 2019 at 8:27:16 AM
I know exactly what you mean, it's like some people want to lose.
I get being careful to not invest too much and hurt yourself but they go way too far.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangIt's a personal hypothesis of mine: if Hope Is Scary, then hopelessness is comforting.
i'm tired, my friendThe word you guys are looking for is "avoidance". Most people associate that with the avoidance of negative things, like avoiding dogs because you almost got mauled by an irritated and badly trained boxer as a toddler and have been scared, since. See dog; avoid dog; stress for hours about dog.
However, you can learn to ascribe negative emotions to erstwhile positive things, too: say you won class president and were really proud at the time, but your year in that position turned you off positions of (pseudo)authority ever again because it wasn't what you thought it was, the year was full of obstruction on all sides, you were deemed to do a terrible job, you lost your circle of friends and your grades suffered.
Cue an emotional breakdown at the mere thought of being made even project supervisor at any of your later jobs and a tendency to actively avoid thinking about taking positions of responsibility if offered them, let alone gunning for them. Dashed expectation/ hope can do horrible things to a body.
Edited by Euodiachloris on Jan 26th 2019 at 4:05:39 PM
x3
Also the recent past has not been friendly to aspirational lefties. 2008 crash, system blows up, everything surely has to change, going to have a resurgent left, going to be great... Nope, they just put the same system back together with the odd useless airbag back in and carried on as before with some tweaks slightly leftwards as in America or rightwards as in Europe and everything steadily got worse. Where the left did take power as in Greece it was crushed by external pressure or massively weakened by party infighting.
We haven't got a proper win in a long time, and when the people actually in a position to maybe score some slight victories are the exact same group and in some cases the exact same individuals who were in power during the late 90s/early 2000s centre-right consensus it's hard to trust them to suddenly change their tune and grow spines, After this long a string of systematic defeats, backstabbing and general powerlessness remaining hope is precious and must be rationed.
Then again, you did just get a localised victory, outright. There's a difference between being pessimistic after an assessment of the current state of things and being so defeatist they refuse to look. Certainly the right-wingers in UK Labour have been much more vindictive towards the left than the comparatively right-wing democrats have been towards the likes of AOC.
Edited by DeathorCake on Jan 26th 2019 at 4:11:27 PM
@Demarquis - "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst" is a motto for a reason.
That said, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he pulls that stunt after the 3 weeks if the Democrats refuse again. I figure part of why he was ready to agree to it was that it got the immediate pressure of the government's closure off of him, which will give his lawyers enough time to try ironing out the kinks on a National Emergency proposal that would have a remote chance of holding up in court, rather than the typical half-assed rush job we've come to expect. See the initial Trans military ban vs. the "refined" one that got narrowed in scope to hold up better under legal scrutiny; or the Muslim ban that got narrowed focus after it got struck down the first time around.
Alternatively, as proposed before, it'd be a means to shift more of the blame on the Democrats through consistent messaging in the intervening weeks. Namely: "I agreed to this reprieve to help the Federal employees while still getting the money for the wall I promised. The Democrats are now threatening those Federal employees by refusing to negotiate!"
Oh, and Roger Stone threatened to steal the guy's dog, not kill it
. Splitting hairs, sure, but still worth mentioning to avoid misinformation.
Also, I have to laugh at the sheer idiocy on display here. Stone's lawyer's statement: "These were charges they brought specifically to go against Roger Stone. They started looking at collusion and they were convinced there was collusion. If they'd found any collusion they would have charged him with it," he said. "He will fight vigorously because these were things he did not recall and were immaterial to the scope of the investigation."
This despite there being dozens of emails submitted by Mueller's office in which Credico encouraged Stone to be more forthcoming than he was, and in which Stone threatened Credico in response. Implausible Deniability at its finest.
Edited by ironballs16 on Jan 26th 2019 at 11:28:54 AM
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"After February 15th, how long do you think they'll shut the government down this time? January 2020?
Trump literally just surrendered, the idea that he'll last a year defies belief.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangHe surrendered for a reason, the shutdown was a massive defeat and the idea that a second shutdown will somehow turn out better for him makes no sense.
So this doesn't contradict my point in the slightest.
This doesn't contradict anything I said either.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang"i mean, it's clear that what actually ended the shutdown was the murmurs of protesting by federal employees being furloughed, not actually the democratic party specifically. they hadn't... really changed their course of action at all?"
You're really hungry for ignominy and failure. This is incredible — by any mode of rational thinking, this was a sensational victory, but you're determined to recast it as a failure. You simply can't imagine the Democrats having a success, so deeply that you don't know it when it happens. Truly the Platonic Cave in action.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Jan 26th 2019 at 12:34:29 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."If Trump tries the shutdown again he’d be literally insane by the definition of the world. There are already 6 Republican defectors who crossed the floor, expecting them to back another shutdown is going to backfire hard. And if Trump tries to demand the same thing as before with the wall then I think most people would see him as the problem rather than think that the Democrats should have caved on the same thing they thought they shouldn’t cave on 3 weeks prior.
Yeah the Democrats won now, but I don't have faith in America's electoral system to keep Trump down. A bunch of states will forget this because "he ate fast food! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!" and will blame the Democrats for the federal shutdown. We Americans underestimate how bad our countrymen can be a lot of the time.
Lets keep trying to resist, (it does bring good results) but lets keep the awfulness of many people in mind and wait till we have a popular candidate for the 2020 election to get too hopeful.

There' no actual threat to declaring a national emergency. The issue isn't the wall being built, the issue was the shutdown destroying thousands of lives.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.