This is what happens when a minority of the voters elect an idiot.
53 thoughts on “Trump Shutdown”
Minutes in to the shut down, dog had to go outside for a bit, I reflect back on how stupid greedy old perverts are. Also how much they want to destroy America. As I left the office yesterday, I and my co-workers had no information about the shut down from SFB cult followers. The cabinet secretaries failed to send out any information at all, zero instructions on what to do. They are so arrogant about destroying the departments that they could not provide basics such as come in Monday morning with your phones and laptops and to stop working. Although most of us already knew who would be working and who would not be, the departments failed to tell us, as some people were funded differently and did not know it.
republicans cannot govern and failed the final test of closing the door and turning off the lights. I am going to turn off the government computer and phone now and go back to bed.
Meanwhile Diaper Don might have some other things to worry about:
Kushner’s firm tied to “suspicious transactions” at German bank, according to explosive new report https://t.co/X5K4nCaUNV
Something else for Diaper Don to ponder:
Porn star Stormy Daniels reveals details of ‘affair’ with Donald Trump https://t.co/972NyNQLf0
Glad I didn’t pay $100,000 to attend the gala at Mar-a-lago tonight (although those who went didn’t have to suffer a night with SFB – probably a good thing).
3. will resulting cartoons depict thumb in or out of mouth, tighty whities or diapers, whips or sharks
4. who plays stormy on snl and will Baldwin be able to keep from cracking up during the scene
bbronc, does shutting down on eve of weekend make a difference?
Why is there a pic of Dinny’s O face on this thread?  Going back to sleep. No nightmares, please.
Patd – It does not matter which day of the week the shutdown hits. As of mid-night I was furloughed. My department finally sent instructions on what to do just before midnight. My program is a direct congressional funded program, so I am looking to filing unemployment Monday once I leave the office. Many of my co-workers are funded through user fees so they get to show up during the shutdown, without pay.
I will be going in Monday morning to change the messages people get when they try to call me for help. The secretary is supposed to provide a script so we do not go off and tell people to call their republican congress people and tell them to go to hell. I also turn in my computer and phone so I cannot use those during the shutdown. It is illegal for me to do anything for the government. I was supposed to go to an international conference Wednesday through Friday to represent the USDA. That is off, unless we go back to work.
It is a tough call to decide whether I would rather be working in the office with my co-workers, or sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. As I wrote before, it is not a vacation because we have to return to work when called. If this was a vacation I would be on my way to US Virgin Islands right now.
One thing I, and a few others who have been through this before, did was to save/hoard money. I let everyone know there would be no gifts for the holidays until after there is a budget. I am good for at least two months, but many others are pay check to pay check. Those are the people who are in a hurt. Many of them are new to the federal government and are learning to watch politics closely.
I am enjoying the pain of those who voted for and support SFB. Yes, there are a lot of the self-loathing types in the federal government. Yesterday one was telling me how the Dems were not working with the greedy old perverts to avoid a shutdown. I, and another, asked why the republicans were forcing a vote on immigration to get a CR. His response was that it is up to the Dems to allow the repubs to do whatever they wanted.
If the govt is still shut down at the end of the month, can we skip the SOTU?
BB – I hope this gets resolved very soon.
I did like Lindsey Graham’s idea for DACA; count DACA applicants toward total immigration for the year.  They are here, they are part of our society.  Are Dems blocking any idea but their own, so-called “clean DACA”?
Would it have been better if the majority of voters had elected an idiot?
bid, it is my understanding that the dems are backing the graham-durbin bipartisan compromise.
Eight and one half hours in to this shutdown and I am settling in. Watching replay of the Santos Tour Down Under, which is the first major bicycle race of the season. It is in Australia. Sigh, it looks so nice. Also, just updated Hulu so I can watch a lot of oldies on that. Netflix is good to go, along with Amazon Prime. I might make a run to Goodwill to see if there are any interesting DVD’s in stock. Food supply is okay, but I will need to run out to H-Mart to pick up more ingredients to make another batch of kimchi. Dog and cat food needs resupply. Other than that I can hole up and check off the hours until going back to work.
Holy Sancha! The WH has backdoors.  After wolff’s teaser on Maher’s show about trump continuing WH affair? Has anyone found the paragraph in the book?  While the shutdown idiots fiddle with time?  Certainly the crowd source can figure this one out? Plus, the In Touch Weekly Stormy interview? Make gossip great again.
Flatus – McCaskill moved to pay the military during the shutdown and McConnell refused a vote.
BB, it’s ten days before banks have to be fed end of month pay data. Seems unlikely this mess will last that long, and for emergencies prior to then, the quasi-governmental relief agencies will be up and running.
A good unit will build cohesiveness during this difficult period.
Craig… Â I LOVE that photo of SFB’s shithole!
BlueB… Â I hope you do get to go back to work soon… Â as well as Rick’s brother (works for the Agriculture Dept.) and his wife (not sure which dept. she works for).
I hope the State of the Union speech is still on. Â I usually don’t watch donny’s speeches… Â but I can’t wait to see what his reaction will be when he sees the Dems sitting on their hands. Â You just know he’s going to say something stupid off the cuff.
BlondeW… Â Amazon has shipped my backordered copy of Wolff’s book. Â I finally get my hands on it Tuesday.
Son has to go through the drill on Monday morning to go in long enough to be told he doesn’t have to come to work. Has funds and military retirement so, unlike others, no financial damage at present but whether or not any pay will be retroactive with a military contractor is always a question mark?
RR
I would love to see him do the State of the Union with half the chamber empty.
. McConnell hates the military & their families.
For pity’s sake, start using this type of thing to shame them into resolving it.
Dems have never been good at exploiting the obvious.
After reading Fire and Fury and In Touch Weekly’s Stormy interview? It is pretty obvious, trump is such an easy mark.  I see it and putie surely saw it.
I never realized the connection between porn and golf…who knew the tiger woods scandal was just the tip of the iceberg?  Brings more meaning the word ‘course’ — the outer links and the intercourse.  Tournaments complete with hungry porn stars waiting for dinner invites.  Do the evangelicals know about this?
If they take eventual citizenship for DACA off of the table (so they won’t be able to vote against Repugz), would that push it through?
Jamie- I’m afraid the Repugz would pack it with their supporters, just like Dems plan to invite their supporters now.
But can’t you just hear Donny? Most successful SOTU in history.  Standing room only.
We could have had Hillary and a good, smooth running Presidency. Instead the purest of the pure combined with the raging racists gave us this garbage in the White House. Of course this proves once and for all that the slave based Electoral College has to go or come up with some format that recognizes modern life now that it has messed with virtually every election since 2000.
It would not have been smooth.  Just another mess of problems. I don’t think the DNC is in the clear yet, either.
As for scandal & easy marks, was reminded last night that during the 1995 shutdown, a certain intern named Monica Lewinsky brought pizza to the then President, William Jefferson Clinton. Cigars, anyone?
The Golf writer James Dodson may be a critical link with his reporting (in 2014) of Eric Trump telling him that the Trump Golf Courses were financed by Russian money. Golf, not election hoodoo, could be the silver bullet where #45 is involved.
Blue, I’d absolutely oppose that; just in qualifying for DACA, they’ve proven themselves top candidates for citizenship
2016 was a strange year all around – both Parties misread or turned a blind eye to the coming storm. Can’t go back & change anything; it is what it is. How we move forward is what is important now.
The Big Blue Wave is coming and taking out the gooper trash with it.
All the electoral signs point to it. I wonder what happened to Josh Mandel in Ohio – he was on track to give Sherrod Brown a real run for his money and now he has dropped out due to his wife’s health concerns (admirable if true) One of the people who is thinking about getting into the Ohio gooper primary is the guy who wrote the book about his dysfunctional family in Ohio. He is working from his own prejudice as a guy who got out and became a hedge fund manager. I don’t think either he or the clown sociologist from Cal Berkeley can sustain their lame arguments that these people aren’t racists.
The 2nd women’s march is today and it seems there are a lot of local options –there is even one in Timber Cove that is our closest. People got fired up after the last one and starting are running for office or getting involved in electoral politics and now we are seeing return on those efforts.
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell looked liked hostages in which they gave the same EXACT same speech blaming the Dems.  Wow lacking in credibility highest score ever
flatus – I agree with you.  I’m just saying that’s the one thing that probably gets Repugz to allow them to stay.  They are terrified of that block of potential voters.
Majority of DACA have been educated here, gone to college here, hold jobs here, serve in the military here. Depriving them of a path to full citizenship would be ridiculous. In fact anyone who has lived here long term with clean records, forming families, and contributing to society should be given a path to citizen. Sure make it something like a ten year process. Sure have great border security that prevents amassing more illegal people. Definitely have short term work Visas so necessary labor could be used and then go home. Definitely develop three country economic relations that makes all of North America a vibrant economic zone.
Keep is simple, actually develop policies at least 10 years in the future instead of this budget year to budget year nonsense.
Timber Cove Landing Women’s March and Rally
Timber Cove Landing• 21350 Highway 1, Jenner, CA 95450
On January 21, 2018, thousands of women, femmes and allies will come together in Las Vegas, Nevada, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March and to launch our collective 2018 Women’s March agenda: #PowerToThe Polls.
Forgot to say that I won a copy of F&F for tweeting a good reason SFB has to be tossed out of office. The tweet was about being a non-person and wanting to regain my life. It should arrive this week. Cannot wait to read it.
As questions about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election were beginning to percolate publicly, prominentbusiness leaders and activists from that country attended inaugural festivities, mingling at balls and receptions — at times in proximity to key American political officials.
Their presence caught the attention of counterintelligence officials at the FBI, according to former U.S. officials, although it is not clear which attendees drew U.S. government interest. FBI officials were concerned at the time because some of the figures had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the officials said.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment on security concerns related to the inauguration. White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The Washington Post identified at least half a dozen politically connected Russians who were in Washington on Inauguration Day — including some whose presence has not been previously reported. Among them was Viktor Vekselberg, a tycoon who is closely aligned with Putin’s government.
Another was Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer whose June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. has become a focus of the Russia investigation. She attended a black-tie inaugural party hosted by the campaign committee of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), according to an associate who accompanied her.
Other Russian inaugural guests included Boris Titov, a politician and business advocate who is running for president of Russia with the Kremlin’s blessing.
Like other VIPs in town that weekend, many flocked to the lobby of Trump International Hotel, where some encountered fellow Russian associates with surprise.
“It was a great, amazing experience,” Alexey Repik recalled in one of several interviews with The Post. Repik said he also was in Washington for President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration but did not attend any events that year.
Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia under Obama,said hedid not recall prominent Russian visitors at Obama’s 2009 events. “It’s strange,” McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, said of the number of influential Russians in attendance last year.
Some Russian guests at Trump’s inauguration said they got tickets through American political contacts.
[….continues….]
sad sound for remembering this day last year
vox:
Right now, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina looks like the only lawmaker in Congress trying to make a deal that would re-open the federal government.
In the Senate Friday night, in a desperate but ultimately failed attempt to avert a government shutdown, Graham was the main character. He had started the evening shuttling between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), eating a little dinner with each — the Republican leader had pepperoni pizza, Schumer had chicken, Graham told reporters.
On the Senate floor, with a procedural vote on the House Republican spending bill short on support as expected, Graham was in the middle of a throng of 13 Republican and Democratic senators trying to cut a deal. As the clock neared midnight, Graham was surrounded by the better part of the Democratic caucus, making an impassioned plea to Schumer to prevent the shutdown.
He failed, of course. Senate Republicans and Democrats were reportedly coalescing around a deal to fund the government for three weeks — instead of the House plan’s four — and set up floor movement on immigration legislation to fix the DACA issue, which is the source of Democratic frustration and the minority’s willingness to shut the government down. It came up short, reportedly because House conservatives were unwilling to take up the plan that Graham had been negotiating with Democrats.
But on Saturday morning, Graham was still at it. He is pushing the proposal to fund the government through Feb. 8 — a bill that McConnell is setting up a vote on — alongside a handshake deal for an open immigration debate before then
“After my discussions with numerous senators on both sides of the last night it is clear to me a commitment to move to immigration after February 8th is the key to ending the government shutdown and finding resolution on all the outstanding issues,” he said in a statement.
But Graham has one very big problem that might prevent him from the breakthrough he is working so hard to find.
[….]
Graham, for the time being, seems like the only lawmaker with a plan that could possibly crack this standoff. He proposed Friday night, and reiterated again Saturday, a shorter funding bill — to Feb. 8 instead of Feb. 16 — and an agreement that Congress would have an immigration floor debate with an open amendment process by Feb. 8.
McConnell has motioned to take up the three-week spending bill, perhaps as soon as Sunday, and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who was working the floor alongside Graham, told reporters early Saturday morning that the Republican leader had agreed to move an immigration bill even without the White House’s approval.
Whether that is amendable to House Republicans, the White House and Senate Democrats remains unclear. But nobody else seems to have a plan that would actually end the current shutdown.
[….continues…]
carl Hiaasen:
Some things should be obvious when you sleep with a porn star, but …
Twenty life lessons to be learned from the Stormy Daniels/Donald Trump affair, as illuminated by the Wall Street Journal, Slate.com and, fittingly, InTouch Weekly magazine:
1. Don’t have a fling with a porn star if you’re even vaguely thinking about running for president someday.
2. Even if you have no plans to run for president, don’t invite a porn star to ride in your golf cart at a celebrity tournament in Lake Tahoe while your wife is home with a new baby.
3. Don’t pose for a photograph with the porn star in the “gift lounge” of an adult-film company.
4. Don’t invite the porn star to your hotel room.
5. If you do invite the porn star to your hotel room, don’t greet her while wearing baggy pajama bottoms and no shirt, as this will be a memorable detail she might possibly share with others.
6. Don’t promise to put her on your reality TV show, then not do it.
7. If your resolve crumbles and you end up having sex with the porn star, try to make it better than the “textbook generic” sex she will describe in a later media interview before passing a polygraph exam.
8. Don’t tell the porn star to phone one of her friends and ask her to come join the party, because even if the friend says No, she might later give an interview on national television confirming the invitation.
9. In subsequent encounters with the porn star, remind her that it would be much appreciated if she didn’t tell a soul about your relationship, in case you one day decide to run for president (as loony as that might sound).
10. If, years later, you actually run for president, do your campaign staff a huge favor and let them know about the porn star in your past. Be sure to mention that you promised her a role on your reality TV show and somehow forgot to follow through.
11. If, as Election Day approaches, you’re shocked to learn that you actually have a chance of winning, discreetly arrange to buy the silence of the porn star. The amount of the payment should be commensurate with the potential political damage her story could cause.
12. When composing the nondisclosure agreement for the porn star to sign, don’t let her pick the pseudonyms to be used. Adult-film performers enjoy making up colorful stage names, few of which should appear in a legal document approved by the future leader of the free world.
13. Do not, under any circumstances, drag out negotiations in order to delay paying the money. You can’t treat a prominent porn actress the same way you treat your electricians and drywall contractors. If she asks for $130,000, cough up the damn $130,000.
14. If for some stupid reason you don’t pay her promptly and she begins chatting with ABC News, Slate and other media outlets, call your lawyer. Tell him or her to drop everything and send the payoff, like now.
15. When transferring hush money to a porn star, don’t do it in a way that can be traced by the Wall Street Journal a year later, when you’re sitting in the Oval Office. Consider filling a suitcase with cash instead of wiring the funds to a client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles.
16. If the terms of the secret payment get leaked, do not simply issue an indignant statement denying it was hush money. Offer an alternate explanation that casts you in a generous light — for instance, you could say were just donating to a scholarship in the porn star’s name at the UCLA film school.
17. Don’t assume it will help your credibility if the porn star agrees to publicly deny that you two had a fling, since that’s what you’ve paid her to do.
18. When she does issue a denial, discourage her from including a sentence like this: “If indeed I did have relationship with Donald Trump, trust me, you wouldn’t be reading about it in the news, you would be reading about it my book.”
19. Don’t assume she’s not really writing a book.
20. Don’t assume she’ll change her mind for another $130,000.
the hill:Â Former RNC chair: ‘This shutdown rests at the feet of the GOP’
Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele says that the GOP is to blame for the government shutdown after lawmakers missed the deadline to pass a funding bill late Friday.
“Despite the rhetorical effort to paste Democrats with ‘Schumer’s Shutdown’ and to redefine what constitutes majority control of the Senate (’60’? Really?), the fact remains that this shutdown rests at the feet of the GOP and it appears a majority of Americans agree,” Steele told Politico.
Steele, who chaired the RNC from 2009-2011, before former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus called the shutdown “pitiful” and said it “certainly could have been avoided.”
The former Republican Party chief blamed President Trump for sinking a potential deal, saying Trump “wound up negotiating against himself by taking a potential agreement off the table.”
these march’s have produced great signs
This is from the Santa Rosa Ca women’s march
My favorite handmade sign at DC march today: “Grab Him by the Midterms”
Patd – I don’t thing $130K was enough for silence. Of course she was one of the few, if only, contractors who got paid.
Now 18+ hours into the shutdown I am feeling more calm. SFB says he will pay for me to sit by the phone and at the same time will not pay for me to sit by the phone. Someday his brain will be analyzed for stupid, and it will come up lacking for anything recognizable as human or otherwise.
…
jamie – I agree with you.  Just don’t see any sticking punt except citizenship/voting, or are there?  Fever making me less coherent than normal.
bid, flu?
if so, please see doc if you have a fever…. too many people are dying from this one which fast devolves to pneumonia. take care, rest and hydrate hydrate hydrate. we don’t want to lose you.
more than likely caught it from all you guys flatus, craig, pogo, jack et al coming on the trail while you were contagious…. betcha none of ya washed your hands before touching the keyboard either. 🙂
Yep. Â Had a flu shot & a pneumonia shot several months ago. Â This is day six.
100.2
I think Dems should give up this shutdown fight and take it to November. Martyrdom is a powerful thing.
“Norwegian women for DACA”  Another great sign.
Martyrs or surrender monkeys?
The real sticking (or stinkin’) point is the wall.
Dreamers make up 1/4% of the population. The numbers do not make sense for Dems to push this DACA business to the last voter standing. However, it is yet another example of how little people are crushed by the corrupt repub machine. Uprooting the repub corruption and replacing their poisonous swamp with a level playing field ought to be the main Dem thrust in the 2018 election. Disinfect D.C. !
Get that damn john out of the White House.
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This is what happens when a minority of the voters elect an idiot.
Minutes in to the shut down, dog had to go outside for a bit, I reflect back on how stupid greedy old perverts are. Also how much they want to destroy America. As I left the office yesterday, I and my co-workers had no information about the shut down from SFB cult followers. The cabinet secretaries failed to send out any information at all, zero instructions on what to do. They are so arrogant about destroying the departments that they could not provide basics such as come in Monday morning with your phones and laptops and to stop working. Although most of us already knew who would be working and who would not be, the departments failed to tell us, as some people were funded differently and did not know it.
republicans cannot govern and failed the final test of closing the door and turning off the lights. I am going to turn off the government computer and phone now and go back to bed.
Meanwhile Diaper Don might have some other things to worry about:
Kushner’s firm tied to “suspicious transactions” at German bank, according to explosive new report https://t.co/X5K4nCaUNV
Something else for Diaper Don to ponder:
Porn star Stormy Daniels reveals details of ‘affair’ with Donald Trump https://t.co/972NyNQLf0
Glad I didn’t pay $100,000 to attend the gala at Mar-a-lago tonight (although those who went didn’t have to suffer a night with SFB – probably a good thing).
“Another time he had her spank him with a Forbes magazine.”
in the I wonder category:
1. will this hurt or help future forbes sales
2. who/what was on that cover
3. will resulting cartoons depict thumb in or out of mouth, tighty whities or diapers, whips or sharks
4. who plays stormy on snl and will Baldwin be able to keep from cracking up during the scene
bbronc, does shutting down on eve of weekend make a difference?
Why is there a pic of Dinny’s O face on this thread?  Going back to sleep. No nightmares, please.
Patd – It does not matter which day of the week the shutdown hits. As of mid-night I was furloughed. My department finally sent instructions on what to do just before midnight. My program is a direct congressional funded program, so I am looking to filing unemployment Monday once I leave the office. Many of my co-workers are funded through user fees so they get to show up during the shutdown, without pay.
I will be going in Monday morning to change the messages people get when they try to call me for help. The secretary is supposed to provide a script so we do not go off and tell people to call their republican congress people and tell them to go to hell. I also turn in my computer and phone so I cannot use those during the shutdown. It is illegal for me to do anything for the government. I was supposed to go to an international conference Wednesday through Friday to represent the USDA. That is off, unless we go back to work.
It is a tough call to decide whether I would rather be working in the office with my co-workers, or sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. As I wrote before, it is not a vacation because we have to return to work when called. If this was a vacation I would be on my way to US Virgin Islands right now.
One thing I, and a few others who have been through this before, did was to save/hoard money. I let everyone know there would be no gifts for the holidays until after there is a budget. I am good for at least two months, but many others are pay check to pay check. Those are the people who are in a hurt. Many of them are new to the federal government and are learning to watch politics closely.
I am enjoying the pain of those who voted for and support SFB. Yes, there are a lot of the self-loathing types in the federal government. Yesterday one was telling me how the Dems were not working with the greedy old perverts to avoid a shutdown. I, and another, asked why the republicans were forcing a vote on immigration to get a CR. His response was that it is up to the Dems to allow the repubs to do whatever they wanted.
If the govt is still shut down at the end of the month, can we skip the SOTU?
BB – I hope this gets resolved very soon.
I did like Lindsey Graham’s idea for DACA; count DACA applicants toward total immigration for the year.  They are here, they are part of our society.  Are Dems blocking any idea but their own, so-called “clean DACA”?
Would it have been better if the majority of voters had elected an idiot?
bid, it is my understanding that the dems are backing the graham-durbin bipartisan compromise.
Eight and one half hours in to this shutdown and I am settling in. Watching replay of the Santos Tour Down Under, which is the first major bicycle race of the season. It is in Australia. Sigh, it looks so nice. Also, just updated Hulu so I can watch a lot of oldies on that. Netflix is good to go, along with Amazon Prime. I might make a run to Goodwill to see if there are any interesting DVD’s in stock. Food supply is okay, but I will need to run out to H-Mart to pick up more ingredients to make another batch of kimchi. Dog and cat food needs resupply. Other than that I can hole up and check off the hours until going back to work.
Here is what the military community can expect
Holy Sancha! The WH has backdoors.  After wolff’s teaser on Maher’s show about trump continuing WH affair? Has anyone found the paragraph in the book?  While the shutdown idiots fiddle with time?  Certainly the crowd source can figure this one out? Plus, the In Touch Weekly Stormy interview? Make gossip great again.
Flatus – McCaskill moved to pay the military during the shutdown and McConnell refused a vote.
BB, it’s ten days before banks have to be fed end of month pay data. Seems unlikely this mess will last that long, and for emergencies prior to then, the quasi-governmental relief agencies will be up and running.
A good unit will build cohesiveness during this difficult period.
Craig… Â I LOVE that photo of SFB’s shithole!
BlueB… Â I hope you do get to go back to work soon… Â as well as Rick’s brother (works for the Agriculture Dept.) and his wife (not sure which dept. she works for).
I hope the State of the Union speech is still on. Â I usually don’t watch donny’s speeches… Â but I can’t wait to see what his reaction will be when he sees the Dems sitting on their hands. Â You just know he’s going to say something stupid off the cuff.
BlondeW… Â Amazon has shipped my backordered copy of Wolff’s book. Â I finally get my hands on it Tuesday.
Son has to go through the drill on Monday morning to go in long enough to be told he doesn’t have to come to work. Has funds and military retirement so, unlike others, no financial damage at present but whether or not any pay will be retroactive with a military contractor is always a question mark?
RR
I would love to see him do the State of the Union with half the chamber empty.
. McConnell hates the military & their families.
For pity’s sake, start using this type of thing to shame them into resolving it.
Dems have never been good at exploiting the obvious.
After reading Fire and Fury and In Touch Weekly’s Stormy interview? It is pretty obvious, trump is such an easy mark.  I see it and putie surely saw it.
I never realized the connection between porn and golf…who knew the tiger woods scandal was just the tip of the iceberg?  Brings more meaning the word ‘course’ — the outer links and the intercourse.  Tournaments complete with hungry porn stars waiting for dinner invites.  Do the evangelicals know about this?
If they take eventual citizenship for DACA off of the table (so they won’t be able to vote against Repugz), would that push it through?
Jamie- I’m afraid the Repugz would pack it with their supporters, just like Dems plan to invite their supporters now.
But can’t you just hear Donny? Most successful SOTU in history.  Standing room only.
We could have had Hillary and a good, smooth running Presidency. Instead the purest of the pure combined with the raging racists gave us this garbage in the White House. Of course this proves once and for all that the slave based Electoral College has to go or come up with some format that recognizes modern life now that it has messed with virtually every election since 2000.
It would not have been smooth.  Just another mess of problems. I don’t think the DNC is in the clear yet, either.
As for scandal & easy marks, was reminded last night that during the 1995 shutdown, a certain intern named Monica Lewinsky brought pizza to the then President, William Jefferson Clinton. Cigars, anyone?
The Golf writer James Dodson may be a critical link with his reporting (in 2014) of Eric Trump telling him that the Trump Golf Courses were financed by Russian money. Golf, not election hoodoo, could be the silver bullet where #45 is involved.
Blue, I’d absolutely oppose that; just in qualifying for DACA, they’ve proven themselves top candidates for citizenship
2016 was a strange year all around – both Parties misread or turned a blind eye to the coming storm. Can’t go back & change anything; it is what it is. How we move forward is what is important now.
The Big Blue Wave is coming and taking out the gooper trash with it.
All the electoral signs point to it. I wonder what happened to Josh Mandel in Ohio – he was on track to give Sherrod Brown a real run for his money and now he has dropped out due to his wife’s health concerns (admirable if true) One of the people who is thinking about getting into the Ohio gooper primary is the guy who wrote the book about his dysfunctional family in Ohio. He is working from his own prejudice as a guy who got out and became a hedge fund manager. I don’t think either he or the clown sociologist from Cal Berkeley can sustain their lame arguments that these people aren’t racists.
The 2nd women’s march is today and it seems there are a lot of local options –there is even one in Timber Cove that is our closest. People got fired up after the last one and starting are running for office or getting involved in electoral politics and now we are seeing return on those efforts.
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell looked liked hostages in which they gave the same EXACT same speech blaming the Dems.  Wow lacking in credibility highest score ever
flatus – I agree with you.  I’m just saying that’s the one thing that probably gets Repugz to allow them to stay.  They are terrified of that block of potential voters.
Majority of DACA have been educated here, gone to college here, hold jobs here, serve in the military here. Depriving them of a path to full citizenship would be ridiculous. In fact anyone who has lived here long term with clean records, forming families, and contributing to society should be given a path to citizen. Sure make it something like a ten year process. Sure have great border security that prevents amassing more illegal people. Definitely have short term work Visas so necessary labor could be used and then go home. Definitely develop three country economic relations that makes all of North America a vibrant economic zone.
Keep is simple, actually develop policies at least 10 years in the future instead of this budget year to budget year nonsense.
Timber Cove Landing Women’s March and Rally
Timber Cove Landing• 21350 Highway 1, Jenner, CA 95450
On January 21, 2018, thousands of women, femmes and allies will come together in Las Vegas, Nevada, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March and to launch our collective 2018 Women’s March agenda: #PowerToThe Polls.
Forgot to say that I won a copy of F&F for tweeting a good reason SFB has to be tossed out of office. The tweet was about being a non-person and wanting to regain my life. It should arrive this week. Cannot wait to read it.
wapo:
[….]
As questions about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election were beginning to percolate publicly, prominent business leaders and activists from that country attended inaugural festivities, mingling at balls and receptions — at times in proximity to key American political officials.
Their presence caught the attention of counterintelligence officials at the FBI, according to former U.S. officials, although it is not clear which attendees drew U.S. government interest. FBI officials were concerned at the time because some of the figures had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the officials said.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment on security concerns related to the inauguration. White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The Washington Post identified at least half a dozen politically connected Russians who were in Washington on Inauguration Day — including some whose presence has not been previously reported. Among them was Viktor Vekselberg, a tycoon who is closely aligned with Putin’s government.
Another was Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer whose June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. has become a focus of the Russia investigation. She attended a black-tie inaugural party hosted by the campaign committee of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), according to an associate who accompanied her.
Other Russian inaugural guests included Boris Titov, a politician and business advocate who is running for president of Russia with the Kremlin’s blessing.
Like other VIPs in town that weekend, many flocked to the lobby of Trump International Hotel, where some encountered fellow Russian associates with surprise.
“It was a great, amazing experience,” Alexey Repik recalled in one of several interviews with The Post. Repik said he also was in Washington for President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration but did not attend any events that year.
Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia under Obama, said he did not recall prominent Russian visitors at Obama’s 2009 events. “It’s strange,” McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, said of the number of influential Russians in attendance last year.
Some Russian guests at Trump’s inauguration said they got tickets through American political contacts.
[….continues….]
sad sound for remembering this day last year
vox:
Right now, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina looks like the only lawmaker in Congress trying to make a deal that would re-open the federal government.
In the Senate Friday night, in a desperate but ultimately failed attempt to avert a government shutdown, Graham was the main character. He had started the evening shuttling between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), eating a little dinner with each — the Republican leader had pepperoni pizza, Schumer had chicken, Graham told reporters.
On the Senate floor, with a procedural vote on the House Republican spending bill short on support as expected, Graham was in the middle of a throng of 13 Republican and Democratic senators trying to cut a deal. As the clock neared midnight, Graham was surrounded by the better part of the Democratic caucus, making an impassioned plea to Schumer to prevent the shutdown.
He failed, of course. Senate Republicans and Democrats were reportedly coalescing around a deal to fund the government for three weeks — instead of the House plan’s four — and set up floor movement on immigration legislation to fix the DACA issue, which is the source of Democratic frustration and the minority’s willingness to shut the government down. It came up short, reportedly because House conservatives were unwilling to take up the plan that Graham had been negotiating with Democrats.
But on Saturday morning, Graham was still at it. He is pushing the proposal to fund the government through Feb. 8 — a bill that McConnell is setting up a vote on — alongside a handshake deal for an open immigration debate before then
“After my discussions with numerous senators on both sides of the last night it is clear to me a commitment to move to immigration after February 8th is the key to ending the government shutdown and finding resolution on all the outstanding issues,” he said in a statement.
But Graham has one very big problem that might prevent him from the breakthrough he is working so hard to find.
[….]
Graham, for the time being, seems like the only lawmaker with a plan that could possibly crack this standoff. He proposed Friday night, and reiterated again Saturday, a shorter funding bill — to Feb. 8 instead of Feb. 16 — and an agreement that Congress would have an immigration floor debate with an open amendment process by Feb. 8.
McConnell has motioned to take up the three-week spending bill, perhaps as soon as Sunday, and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who was working the floor alongside Graham, told reporters early Saturday morning that the Republican leader had agreed to move an immigration bill even without the White House’s approval.
Whether that is amendable to House Republicans, the White House and Senate Democrats remains unclear. But nobody else seems to have a plan that would actually end the current shutdown.
[….continues…]
carl Hiaasen:
Some things should be obvious when you sleep with a porn star, but …
Twenty life lessons to be learned from the Stormy Daniels/Donald Trump affair, as illuminated by the Wall Street Journal, Slate.com and, fittingly, InTouch Weekly magazine:
1. Don’t have a fling with a porn star if you’re even vaguely thinking about running for president someday.
2. Even if you have no plans to run for president, don’t invite a porn star to ride in your golf cart at a celebrity tournament in Lake Tahoe while your wife is home with a new baby.
3. Don’t pose for a photograph with the porn star in the “gift lounge” of an adult-film company.
4. Don’t invite the porn star to your hotel room.
5. If you do invite the porn star to your hotel room, don’t greet her while wearing baggy pajama bottoms and no shirt, as this will be a memorable detail she might possibly share with others.
6. Don’t promise to put her on your reality TV show, then not do it.
7. If your resolve crumbles and you end up having sex with the porn star, try to make it better than the “textbook generic” sex she will describe in a later media interview before passing a polygraph exam.
8. Don’t tell the porn star to phone one of her friends and ask her to come join the party, because even if the friend says No, she might later give an interview on national television confirming the invitation.
9. In subsequent encounters with the porn star, remind her that it would be much appreciated if she didn’t tell a soul about your relationship, in case you one day decide to run for president (as loony as that might sound).
10. If, years later, you actually run for president, do your campaign staff a huge favor and let them know about the porn star in your past. Be sure to mention that you promised her a role on your reality TV show and somehow forgot to follow through.
11. If, as Election Day approaches, you’re shocked to learn that you actually have a chance of winning, discreetly arrange to buy the silence of the porn star. The amount of the payment should be commensurate with the potential political damage her story could cause.
12. When composing the nondisclosure agreement for the porn star to sign, don’t let her pick the pseudonyms to be used. Adult-film performers enjoy making up colorful stage names, few of which should appear in a legal document approved by the future leader of the free world.
13. Do not, under any circumstances, drag out negotiations in order to delay paying the money. You can’t treat a prominent porn actress the same way you treat your electricians and drywall contractors. If she asks for $130,000, cough up the damn $130,000.
14. If for some stupid reason you don’t pay her promptly and she begins chatting with ABC News, Slate and other media outlets, call your lawyer. Tell him or her to drop everything and send the payoff, like now.
15. When transferring hush money to a porn star, don’t do it in a way that can be traced by the Wall Street Journal a year later, when you’re sitting in the Oval Office. Consider filling a suitcase with cash instead of wiring the funds to a client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles.
16. If the terms of the secret payment get leaked, do not simply issue an indignant statement denying it was hush money. Offer an alternate explanation that casts you in a generous light — for instance, you could say were just donating to a scholarship in the porn star’s name at the UCLA film school.
17. Don’t assume it will help your credibility if the porn star agrees to publicly deny that you two had a fling, since that’s what you’ve paid her to do.
18. When she does issue a denial, discourage her from including a sentence like this: “If indeed I did have relationship with Donald Trump, trust me, you wouldn’t be reading about it in the news, you would be reading about it my book.”
19. Don’t assume she’s not really writing a book.
20. Don’t assume she’ll change her mind for another $130,000.
the hill:Â Former RNC chair: ‘This shutdown rests at the feet of the GOP’
Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele says that the GOP is to blame for the government shutdown after lawmakers missed the deadline to pass a funding bill late Friday.
“Despite the rhetorical effort to paste Democrats with ‘Schumer’s Shutdown’ and to redefine what constitutes majority control of the Senate (’60’? Really?), the fact remains that this shutdown rests at the feet of the GOP and it appears a majority of Americans agree,” Steele told Politico.
Steele, who chaired the RNC from 2009-2011, before former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus called the shutdown “pitiful” and said it “certainly could have been avoided.”
The former Republican Party chief blamed President Trump for sinking a potential deal, saying Trump “wound up negotiating against himself by taking a potential agreement off the table.”
these march’s have produced great signs
This is from the Santa Rosa Ca women’s march
My favorite handmade sign at DC march today: “Grab Him by the Midterms”
Patd – I don’t thing $130K was enough for silence. Of course she was one of the few, if only, contractors who got paid.
Now 18+ hours into the shutdown I am feeling more calm. SFB says he will pay for me to sit by the phone and at the same time will not pay for me to sit by the phone. Someday his brain will be analyzed for stupid, and it will come up lacking for anything recognizable as human or otherwise.
…
jamie – I agree with you.  Just don’t see any sticking punt except citizenship/voting, or are there?  Fever making me less coherent than normal.
bid, flu?
if so, please see doc if you have a fever…. too many people are dying from this one which fast devolves to pneumonia. take care, rest and hydrate hydrate hydrate. we don’t want to lose you.
more than likely caught it from all you guys flatus, craig, pogo, jack et al coming on the trail while you were contagious…. betcha none of ya washed your hands before touching the keyboard either. 🙂
Yep. Â Had a flu shot & a pneumonia shot several months ago. Â This is day six.
100.2
I think Dems should give up this shutdown fight and take it to November. Martyrdom is a powerful thing.
“Norwegian women for DACA”  Another great sign.
Martyrs or surrender monkeys?
The real sticking (or stinkin’) point is the wall.
Dreamers make up 1/4% of the population. The numbers do not make sense for Dems to push this DACA business to the last voter standing. However, it is yet another example of how little people are crushed by the corrupt repub machine. Uprooting the repub corruption and replacing their poisonous swamp with a level playing field ought to be the main Dem thrust in the 2018 election. Disinfect D.C. !
Get that damn john out of the White House.