Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Nevertheless, he persisted.

eta: Or you could say he bluffed.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

And not to be jerky but she controls who can come in? How? Like could the R speaker in 2013 have told President Obama no speech? I’m glad people fuck with him but not real cool on any more basic aspects of the country being ruined.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

For someone to be invited to a joint session of Congress, the Senate and the House both have to agree. It's not Pelosi's choice personally, but he could try to call her bluff again and see if Democrats aren't behind her.

I don't like seeing norms trampeled, but I'm really tired of the Republicans using the federal government as a hostage.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I'm flying tomorrow, to get home, so i do blame people, and by people I mean a particular subhuman. But hasn't there been brinksmanship on the budget forever when the congress (either side) and white house are split? Difference is, until now no one had the disregard to let this happen.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Depends who you ask. Hoyer and Pelosi seemed to have different interpretations of the letter. It seemed designed to look strong to those who want to to strength, but reasonable to those seeking compromise.

This stand off is characterized by both sides playing to the rabid and more moderate members of their respective parties at the same time.

The problem for Trump is, the rabid base and the more moderate wing of the GOP are bitterly opposed to one another. A moderate R hates the wall and thinks this shutdown is mindlessly fucking with an already skittish economy. A member of the base thinks Trump standing up to the libruls is great.

Contrast this with the Ds, where moderates and the base are fairly well aligned. Moderates would throw Trump a bone to get the govt open, but agree with the base that building a wall is idiotic and a waste of money. Pelosi can satisfy both of these groups.

Trump's a king on the run with no bishops, knights, or rooks, and a queen on his tail.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I'm flying saturday. Is it slow because of TSA? I thought they were still on the job.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Lots of no show TSA. If Philly has Clear get it.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

What you're trying to say is that the shutdown is being driven by rabid conservatives who understand that they have to do things like take hostages and causes crises in order to get their way, because their ideas are not only unpopular generally, but also often within their own party.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think you're crediting the GOP's rabid base with more rational thinking than it deserves. The base is more emotional, more lizard brain, than that. Particularly on this issue. It knows the wall is a bullshit policy that infuriates both moderate Rs and Ds. It wants to flex its muscles against both groups.

I just watched Brexit on HBO. It's highly entertaining and explains a lot of what's happening with the wall. The rabid GOP base wants respect (areas of the country in which it is strongest tend to still have "honor culture"). It wants to be heard and have an ongoing voice. Like the blue collar Brexit voters (as opposed to the well-off conservative ones which formed the other half of Brexit voters), its chief message is: We're Here, and You'll be Dealing With Us.

I think you're seeing rational thought with a policy goal where the reality is more emotional outburst and demand to be heard and made part of policy negotiation.

ETA: For the last near thirty or so years, if you'd paid attention to the news and data, you could see that the middle and lower classes were increasingly falling behind. Occasionally, it'd lead one to this thought: Where do these people go? I'd normally answer that internal question with, Oh, they'll just soak into the economic/social fabric in some way I can't imagine... a bunch of them will die. But apparently, that blase attitude, one I think many of us shared and perhaps still share, was way off. A lot of these people went into a form of hibernation. They survived somehow and social media provided a means to spark them to action. And I think, and the movie highlights this, their chief grievance is having been ignored. The neat takeaway from the Brexit movie, its sole revelatory message, is that these "deplorables" can be neutralized, and all it takes is letting them have a voice. They probably can't and won't win on any policy issues, but if you know who they are, if they feel they have representation, you can better understand, counter, and control them. Ignoring them and thinking they'd go away, OTOH, was a really lazy and foolish approach.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Sure. The whole idea of building a wall is a marketing ploy. The fact remains, it is something that a minority of the country wants. If there were majority support for it, a shutdown wouldn't be necessary.

I don't buy that your hibernating lizards are the key here. In the US and in the UK, nationalist conservatives have taken over one of the main political parties. Brexit is different from the wall because it gets Labour support too, and in particular Labour is led by someone who is more interested in using a Brexit train wreck to become PM than in stopping it.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Or fly out of SFO, whereat Covenant Aviation Security, a private company under contract with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), provides the passenger and baggage screening.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I wonder how long contractors like that one can continue to pay their employees but not get paid by the federal government, and what happens at airports like SFO when that dog no longer hunts.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

LGA was shut down today. I suspect others will shut down too. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/loca...504861791.html

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Hey Sebby, this thread from Paul Krugman has an interesting angle on something you talk about. It's about the way that less populated areas are hit by changes from international trade. Because they are less populated, and because trade increasingly drives specialization, changes in the economy that have small aggregate effects can have huge effects in particular places. If you have a small town with a single factory and that factory closes, the town gets totally whacked, even if the aggregate effects on its state or the country are small and/or generally positive. And in the background, you have a steady, long-term decline in jobs from farming.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Trump caves. Will the right-wing echo chamber defend him?