UN Government Shutdown Megathread/Updates - News of the ongoing/halted Goverment Shutdown from 12/22/18 -1/25/19

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Here's the news of the Government Shutdown as of 1/22/19

It's been a month now since this shutdown started which started back in December and no deal seems to be coming.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...day-32-as-democrats-vow-to-reject-trump-offer

"The longest government shutdown in U.S. history entered its 32nd day on Tuesday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expected to call up legislation to advance a proposal from President Donald Trump, which Democrats have already said they’ll reject.


The president said in a Jan. 19 speech he would support a mix of immigration-related proposals in exchange for $5.7 billion to build a wall or other barriers along the border. Trump’s supporters, including Vice President Mike Pence, pointed to the offer as evidence of the president’s willingness to strike a compromise with Democrats.


Pelosi’s Democrats, meanwhile, plan more votes of their own in the House to reopen the government, with a new offer of $1 billion for border upgrades -- but not a wall -- on tap this week.
 
I'm so confused...

The Republican party is split between NeoCons like McCain, and more libertarian leaning thinkers who sometimes talk about smaller government and less international military intervention, both do the same thing, but one faction hates Trump, and they tend to be the NeoCons who have been in power for years. They see Trump as a threat due to stealing their base. McCain, Romney, Jeb!, all from a line of political elites, united against the man of common-birth who bought his way into politics and somehow won where the long-standing names like Romney, McCain, Bush couldn't get anywhere near the white house. They have no idea why people voted for Trump but he is a threat to their way of life, continuing to live as High Birth nobles who deserve the seat in his senate due to the reputation brought from their name, funding from the GOP, not from any real large population caring about what they say or supporting their politics.

The other shake-up was when the "tea party" opposed Obummer and got a lot of "freedom" in the traditional American founding sense politicians, at least that's what the name is supposed to invoke and their language is like. Rand Paul got elected when the "tea party" surged, which latched onto the Republican party.
 
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That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Both tend to favor urban areas by a wide margin, and urban areas tend to be pretty anti wall. My neighborhood is like 40% Hispanic, and the only race that seems to have conflict with them is the one that seems to have conflicts abound.

I feel it would be better to look at it from a geographical perspective, as well as the groups one associates with. My grandma (who's white and hails from Iowa) who lives at a retirement community on the Texas border during the winter months is going to have a different perspective than an elderly Chinese lady who lives in Seattle, and both perspectives will certainly be different than an old Latina woman who lives in Arizona.
 
Supporting Trump unilaterally out the gate would probably put their own political career on the line, not only would they have been going against the significant nevertrumpers who the leaders of the Republican party appeared to support during the primaries, but they'd be opening themselves up to media and public abuse from the left for aiding "literally hitler". You have to tow the party line, nod in agreement with McCain even if he is an old lunatic. That's what the bosses want to see.

And that was a fuck up. They've been acting like listless enfeebled second party for a while, more or less rolling over on everything. I THINK they are finally coming to their senses, but I'm not optimistic.

The Kavanaugh hearings were a bit of a watershed moment, and I'm glad to see Graham in particular step up. Grassey did pretty well as well. Cruz hadn't gotten his shit together yet. They need to get behind him completely, and I think more and more of them realize this, or there could be several election cycles of democratic wins. The republicans are as close to losing elections, rather than the democrats winning elections, as much as Trump didn't so much win the election, as democrats lost it.
 
The Republican party is split between NeoCons like McCain, and more libertarian leaning thinkers who sometimes talk about smaller government and less international military intervention, both do the same thing, but one faction hates Trump, and they tend to be the NeoCons who have been in power for years. They see Trump as a threat due to stealing their base. McCain, Romney, Jeb!, all from a line of political elites, united against the man of common-birth who bought his way into politics and somehow won where the long-standing names like Romney, McCain, Bush couldn't get anywhere near the white house. They have no idea why people voted for Trump but he is a threat to their way of life, continuing to live as High Birth nobles who deserve the seat in his senate due to the reputation brought from their name, funding from the GOP, not from any real large population caring about what they say or supporting their politics.

The other shake-up was when the "tea party" opposed Obummer and got a lot of "freedom" in the traditional American founding sense politicians, at least that's what the name is supposed to invoke and their language is like. Rand Paul got elected when the "tea party" surged, which latched onto the Republican party.

yes I suppose it's hard to explain to people there are factions within the party. The way I see it, the Democrats are made up of the Democrat Neocons, which are like the Republican neocons, but instead of a religious lip service coat of paint they have a progressive lip service coat of paint, same thing different packaging. They have the Clinton Foundation, probably the personal support of some of the FBI and CIA heads, since they are one of the "royal families of washington" as well as funding from Hollywood and other media corporations.

I'm not sure if the Bernie Sanders type of socialist/libertarian leaning type of moderate is still supporting the Democrats, or if they got disgusted and left to support the Trump mish mash of centrists, moderates, right leaners and libertarians of the Republican "Tea Party" faction.

The only other faction I've noticed is the Democratic purist/idealogues/radicals. Who appear to be on the side of LGBT, marxists, anarchists, Anitfa, etc.

If I'm totally wrong I'm sure someone will correct me.
 
Why not both?
If you mean having either a physical wall or towers/drones where appropriate, that's pretty much what I think the ideal solution would be.
A wall could complement the high-tech solutions in the same area, but I don't think the benefit would outweigh the comparatively large cost.
 
If you mean having either a physical wall or towers/drones where appropriate, that's pretty much what I think the ideal solution would be.
That's pretty much what's planned. There are places where a wall would be very impractical to construct and those tend to be places where a wall is unnecessary as a barrier anyway.
 
I heard on the radio news this morning that some contractors worried about not receiving their back pay have set up GoFundMe accounts to which people can donate.

Of course, if President Trump makes good on his promise to help the contractors get their back pay, one wonders if the GFM money will be refunded or if the contractors will double-dip and keep the money along with the back pay.
 
He's going to have to re-earn my vote after this. He gave them the spending bill which is the only fucking thing they gave a shit about.

No one's forcing you to fly.

If you posted that unironically, please take a short walk off of a tall building.

That's the whole plan, just hamstring him til the election and minimize whatever things he has done, so you can say he's a useless leader that does nothing but play golf. Say he's a moron that can't even build a wall, neglecting to mention you've been the one making sure the pro-illegal articles and anti-wall ads are up and calling in favors for people to block the vote. Refuse to even negotiate about the wall and then blame Trump for being unreasonable. Say it's Trumps personal pet project and neglect to mention he was elected on that platform and due to that its' a virtually voter mandated measure.

This is his third major fuck-up. There's no amount of sweet-talking and spin-weaving that anyone can do to make it sound like it's anything other than him caving on the one thing the public has him dead-to-rights for promising them.

I'm gonna vote for Trump in 2020 because the Republican establishment is complete shit, the Democrats are complete shit, and I want to see all the tears and TDS that will follow.

I don't know if you realize that Republicans have been called Nazis since the end of WWII, but literally any Republican being elected president would've had the same result. It's not that Trump won, it's that he's the guy who beat Hillary.

Speaking as someone who opposes it (I’ll leave it to you to decide if I’m sane or not), I oppose it because:

It’ll cost way too much. I don’t even know where Trump got $6 billion. Try 100 times that.

The military budget alone for the U.S. is insane. Acting like $6B, or even $60B is a lot for our government, is absurd.

Border patrol claims that a wall would make it too hard for them to see what’s happening on the other side. Regardless, it seems to me that a wall would lull border patrol into a false sense of security, or maybe Congress might decide to decrease their funding, which is a problem since a wall is not insurmountable.

That's why the fence design is actually (much to the chagrin of a lot of people who don't really get that border patrol needs to see) a really great concept as long as it's well-made enough that it'll deter the majority of would-be crossers.

Most illegal immigrants get here via tourist or student visas, which they overstay.

I both love and hate how fucking stupid this point that's always dragged out is. Those statistics - and this is important - come from the people who get caught. So yes, a majority of the people who get caught are either coming here via plane or boat.

A gigantic fucking open land border which has people from Africa taking ships to try to get across not having more illegal crossings is absurd. This is the same as saying there's not a poacher problem in Africa's wildlife reserves because they don't catch them as often in the act as there are dead animals with bullet-holes in them.

Crossing the border is already dangerous (pick your poison: dehydration in the desert or drowning in the Rio Grande) with a decent chance of being immediately caught by border patrol. Our influx of illegal immigrants isn’t nearly as bad as it would be if the crossing weren’t dangerous and especially if we had open borders.

That's retarded. You're literally saying that we should throw open the borders because it's too much of a problem to build a fucking wall.

Or to put it another way, this is the "Well if the problem is they're crossing illegally, why not make all border crossings legal?" fucking dipshit argument and you should be ashamed for making it.

I couldn’t care less about the liberal aversion to walls because it’s “mean”. I don’t believe in open borders. And I especially am not liking the liberal obsession with illegal immigrants vs. immigrants who waited their turn. But I also think there are a lot of other ways, cheaper ways, better ways to deal with this issue

You're a terrible liar.

Lol why is trump a pussy and cave in

Good question.

The thing is, until the past elections where the Dems won back the house, the government was pretty solidly in Republican hands.

I don't know about Trump, but if you think that Lindsey Graham doesn't have a couple senoritas attending to his abode that aren't supposed to be there, then that right there answers your question.

I'm the type who would've held out forever & laughed that my opponents were willing to sacrifice the country to score a Pyrrhic victory, because policies are mutually exclusive across party lines & holding everybody back is a thing that mature people do & it's totally worth it to watch the world burn to spite my opponent for being with the wrong group. If Trump ran as a democrat then the democratic party wouldn't give a shit about the border wall and it'd the republicans trying to keep it from going up.

Yes, because border security is something to compromise on when it in and of itself is already compromised. Fantastic logic. Made even better when you consider that the alternative is the party that hasn't known what the word "compromise" means since the 1950's.

One argument in favor of a literal wall is the result of the lie that America has birthright citizenship (we don’t, that’s why DACA exists)

The 14th amendment said:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

I'm not sure what part of that is either a lie or fictional.
 
Yes, because border security is something to compromise on when it in and of itself is already compromised. Fantastic logic. Made even better when you consider that the alternative is the party that hasn't known what the word "compromise" means since the 1950's.

That is not at all what I said.
 
That is not at all what I said.

I'm the type who would've held out forever & laughed that my opponents were willing to sacrifice the country to score a Pyrrhic victory, because policies are mutually exclusive across party lines & holding everybody back is a thing that mature people do & it's totally worth it to watch the world burn to spite my opponent for being with the wrong group. If Trump ran as a democrat then the democratic party wouldn't give a shit about the border wall and it'd be the republicans trying to keep it from going up.

So to recap, you weren't trying to imply that Trump was being immature and uncooperative, and that people supporting him were just being contrarian to the opposing side? Because you did a damn good job convincing me otherwise.

Hell you ought to be given an award in peak skepticism™.
 
So to recap, you weren't trying to imply that Trump was being immature and uncooperative, and that people supporting him were just being contrarian to the opposing side? Because you did a damn good job convincing me otherwise.

That is not at all what I said.
 
Nah, it really seems like it is.

If you're going to write a paragraph-long snarky quip at least have the decency and balls to own up to it when called out on it. Playing at Schrödinger's sarcasm isn't a very good look.

I really shouldn't have to break this down nor should you give nearly as much a shit about this as you do, but here we go.

I'm the type who would've held out forever & laughed that my opponents were willing to sacrifice the country to score a Pyrrhic victory,

Here I am clearly putting myself in the place Trump. Who else would be in the position to score a Pyrrhic victory than the democrats, exactly? They gain nothing by getting Donald Trump to renege on the border wall and have everything to lose by holding the country hostage the way the democrats had been. How could holding out to get the border wall built be interpreted as a Pyrhhic victory when Donald Trump would've achieved his Donald Trump's chief campaign promise. The democrats are the reason it's been going on for so long & the reason why is because they want the Republican President of the United States, Donald Trump, to renege on the border wall.

because policies are mutually exclusive across party lines & holding everybody back is a thing that mature people do

I should not have to explain that I'm clearly describing the democrats hating on the border wall because it's not their idea. I even said as much in that very exact same quote.

If Trump ran as a democrat then the democratic party wouldn't give a shit about the border wall

Everything I said in that paragraph was tantamount to "If I were Trump I wouldn't have budged at all". How could you have interpreted that differently?
 
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Personally i'll wait to see what happen after the 3 weeks, i feel it's too early for me to make up an opinion just yet
 
Personally i'll wait to see what happen after the 3 weeks, i feel it's too early for me to make up an opinion just yet

I’m at the point where it’s show me, don’t tell me. Empty threats and “I’m gonna do this!” are completely meaningless at this point. When dirt starts to get overturned to build that big, beautiful wall, that’s when I’ll start taking him seriously again.
 
I wasn’t aware it was shutdown in the first place

Edit: Rhetorical statement. If it weren’t for news, most of us wouldn’t even be aware it was down which shows how little influence our government has / how little we need big brother.
Probably because most of the stuff it does is taken for granted. I hate the fed as much as the next guy but if weren't for them San Francisco would have burnt to the ground last year, Mexican slaughter houses could use dogs as filler in your sirloins, etc...
 
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