The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Was it worth it?

    By Flavius on Sat, 01/20/2018 - 12:27am |

    Shutting down the Government? Basically because of DACA ?

    Yes because acting otherwise would have exposed us as posturing frauds, always on the side of right and truth and honor, etc. Except when the chips were down

    Which may be true of course. But why remove any element of doubt?

    "But you've said," you complain, "that shutting down the government was an election loser?" Yeah. The worst thing we could do,

    other than behaving as posturing frauds.

    We may have just lost the next election. But we've saved our soul.

    But it would have been kinda nice to have won in November.

    Sure. But not, as Cunegonda sang, "when purchased at such an awful cost."

    Comments

    Furthemore.

    We'll  will be blamed for the shut down. Even  by many of those who think we did the right thing. But that won't create turn out in an off year election.  Except for sore heads  who will provide a Republican  win.

    But  in 2020 when the Presidential Election creates its own turn out the 2018 abstainers will vote and since most people believe the "dreamers" should be allowed  to become citizens and  Schumer did the right thing  the good guys will win. Finally.

    Compared to an  impeachment and a President Pence, I'll take it.


    by Flavius on Sat, 01/20/2018 - 11:02am

    Op eds are noting with the crisis shitstorm every day with the Trump administration the shutdown will be long forgotten by November.

    From Booman:

    And the optics of him dining with wealthy donors or golfing at one of his resorts is going to look really bad if Democrats stay in D.C. trying to get a deal to get the country back running.

    So the real question is how long can Trump last before he has to take a vacation? I don't think the shutdown will last much longer than that.

    by Jinch


    by NCD on Sat, 01/20/2018 - 1:03pm

    He was scheduled for a $100k per couple gala. That should be remembered.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 01/20/2018 - 2:10pm

    The agony of it, worst in recorded history.!!  (Greek ἀγών)

    Of course Trump sees it as all about him.


    by NCD on Sat, 01/20/2018 - 2:27pm

    Eric Trump @$100K/pair gala: "shutdown's good for us"

    Just like the hurricane was good for Puerto Rico. The Trumps make Marie Antoinette look like Mother Theresa.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 5:25am

    MSNBC says polls show that only 33% believe it's worth a shut down  to solve the DACA problem.  57% say no.

    They didn't poll me so make it 33% plus 1.


    by Flavius on Sat, 01/20/2018 - 4:55pm

    Anyone who's read on it knows there's more problems to solve than DACA to get this budget to work out. They procrastinated precisely because they didn't have the necessary agreement on many things and it was hard nearly impossible work to get there. Besides on immigration, there's too many other conflicting ideologies in the GOP in Congress, most notably the balanced budget folks vs. trickle down spenders and strong military people vs. the libertarian isolationist defend-the-border-only guys....the immigration issue gets the most noise because Trump has made it so with his racism stoking. But that's not all that's going on here.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 01/20/2018 - 5:47pm

    Whatever might have been the case before ,now the only way the DACA participants will get a reasonable deal is for Trump to be able to claim Schumer made him do it.

    80 %   of whatever  harm this shut down does to our  November chances  has now been incurred. .Shorter would be better  of course but a 4 week shut down wouldn't be 4 times worse than a 1 week one. What would be worse would be to return to work on Monday  and then have another shut down in February.

    So whatever Schumer wants , Chuck should get.  Now before he agrees to any short term reopening.

     


    by Flavius on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 12:12am

    I agree that the Democrats did the right thing. They should not be complicit in passing the soulless Trump/Ryan/McConnell Republican budget and ignoring the Dreamer deportations. I disagree that this will hurt them in the mid-terms.


    by HSG on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 5:14pm

    Obviously I hope you're right.


    by Flavius on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 1:47pm

    Not Dems fault, they did not draw a line in the sand, they thought they had a deal; Trump's fault:

     

    They were closer to a deal than it seemed, and then it fell apart by late day. @shearm and me https://t.co/5Di34p7g5M

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 20, 2018

     

    Excerpt from above link:

    [....] As the meal progressed, an outline of an agreement was struck, according to one person familiar with the discussion: Mr. Schumer said yes to higher levels for military spending and discussed the possibility of fully funding the president’s wall on the southern border with Mexico. In exchange, the president agreed to support legalizing young immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

    Mr. Schumer left the White House believing he had persuaded the president to support a short, three to four-day spending extension to finalize an agreement, which would also include disaster funding and health care measures.

    “In my heart, I thought we might have a deal tonight,” Mr. Schumer recalled later on the Senate floor, shortly after the government officially shut down at midnight. At 11:55 p.m., he had been greeted with a blistering White House statement that “Senate Democrats own the Schumer Shutdown.”

    Mr. Trump, a onetime real estate mogul whose book “The Art of the Deal” proclaimed his mastery of negotiation, has struggled at times to seal deals as president [.....]

    Haberman also tweeted this right before the above:

     

    You mean politicians on both sides of the aisle somethings say different things privately than publicly? https://t.co/8VKuB1GF5K

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 20, 2018

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 11:35am

    Haberman also retweeted this which synched with what she knew (Trump's fault): WaPo on like negotiating with jello:

     

    Trump seemed startled last week by a proposal passed out by his own DHS head and told lawmakers to disregard. Inside the last two weeks with a president who is slippery and often tells people what they want to hear: https://t.co/hhmQpshW78

    — Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) January 20, 2018

     

    and tweeted this, how he's not listening to his own advisers:

     

    Trump's advisers are urging him to resist his impulse to try to get more involved in the shutdown fix after Schumer meeting stunt was perceived as a pmistake w @juliehdavis https://t.co/Dt0afAY9ok

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 21, 2018

     

    and this in reply to Liam Donovan, repeating that:

     

    Which his staff had been urging him not to do https://t.co/rsS8lX8g82

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 21, 2018

     

    and then retweeted this:

     

    So to recap, Trump indicates interest in Durbin-Graham before Kelly picks up the batphone to Cotton/Perdue and DJT changes his mind. Then when DHS presents wish list reflecting Cotton/Perdue-style asks, POTUS gets irked and brushes it off. Like pinning jello to a wall. https://t.co/rSrtAXpFjD

    — Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) January 21, 2018

     

    and a bunch of other stuff that fills out the story like Eric Trump just saying on ABC that "honestly, I think it's a good thing for us" which Peracles posted as well.

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 11:56am

    Via Twitter:

    Republicans: Eat this piece of poop
    Democrats: We are not going to eat that poop
    NYT: Democrats turn down free meal
    AP: Democrats refuse GOP peace offering

    AP - The Latest: Senate Democrats appear to have
    derailed a Republican bill aimed at preventing a federal shutdown.

    NYTimes - Senate Democrats blocked passage of a stopgap spending
    bill to keep the government open. Lawmakers have less than 2 hours
    before a shutdown.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 12:07pm

    Schumer played the hand as well as it could be.  I think. Calculated he was at the point of maximum  effectiveness  so he put all his chips on the table.

      And the game was worth the candle : 700,000 human beings , 700,000 of our neighbors living in the shadows, in uncertainty. No decent country should turn them down. Which was what he was trying to stop us from doing.

    Win or lose I give him  credit for trying.. Didn't work. That's life..

    You miss all the shots you don't attempt . 


    by Flavius on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 2:07pm

    Furthemore

    ​www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/daca-dreamers-shutdown_us_5a63bf1ee4b0e5630...

     


    by Flavius on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 2:18pm

    ZANINESS NOT OVER, Big giant headline @ WaPo, they're working tonight:

     

    Despite optimism from some centrist senators that they were close to an agreement, it remains unclear whether they can secure the support of leadership. After meetings with each other as well as with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), there were no immediate signs of a major breakthrough.
    “It’s going to get a lot harder tomorrow,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who said the White House was largely uninvolved in talking with the bipartisan group of senators and that staff there “has been unreliable to work with on this issue.”

    VIDEO CLIP from Congress tonight:

     

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 7:08pm

    TheHill.com:

    Senate group scrambles for deal to end shutdown

    By Jordain Carney - 01/21/18 04:23 PM EST
     
    A bipartisan group of roughly 20 senators are working toward an agreement to reopen the government.

    Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said the group had reached a "consensus of understanding," not an agreement, noting those are two different things.

    Multiple senators who were part of the talks stressed that their talks are fluid, and that the final decision rests with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who have been kept up to date on the talks. 

    But leaving a meeting held in Sen. Susan Collins's (R-Maine) office, some members expressed optimism that they will reach an understanding, if not a final agreement, that would allow them to approve a bill to reopen the government [.....]

    by artappraiser on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 7:11pm

    The Hill also published this a half hour after the above (but the above is still their home page headline story):


    by artappraiser on Sun, 01/21/2018 - 7:35pm