Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Nobody wanted to hear her speak for free this summer and fall.

I never understood these speaking fees she was getting.

 

The GOP already has a filibuster-proof majority. They will nuke the filibuster on Day One. Completely.

No hearings, no debate, no discussion of anything. Voice votes. Bam boom.

 

I doubt they nuke the filibuster.

They'll follow Harry Reid's lead.

 

You think the GOP Senate's going to nuke the filibuster? I highly doubt it. Keeping the filibuster is a great insurance policy to (help) keep Trump in line.

 

I actually more or less agree with this. Better to give the wicked Democrats the blame for stuff you didn't really want to do yourselves. Nomination filibuster gone anyway. Besides, once it's gone it's gone and the sun don't shine on the same dog's ass every election.

 

Why would they need a filibuster to keep Trump in line when they control the Senate?

 

They're not going to allow the Dems to delay or block anything.

Even with the filibuster gone, the majority party can debate anything as long as it wants, until they see fit to cut it off. Then it's over.

 

Because they don't want the heat of actually voting against him themselves. When the Dems had the big but not filibuster proof majority in 2009, they didn't get rid of it for the same reason. Wouldn't have gotten 50 votes. Senators cherish their power.

 

Here's SJ Election Post-Mortem No. 241 of the day:

1. Unsurprisingly, I'm rather pissed. Trashed an empty box after getting home from the office. Threw some small objects. And yeah, I had my social media discourse this morning. Since you don't know me and vice versa, I'll give you the CliffsNotes version: I believe I've made a lot of sacrifices over the years in an attempt to be a good man. Maybe if I were more of an asshole like Trump and went into banking instead of newspapers, I'd have a lot more cash and maybe some arm candy. But when a racist, misogynist anti-intellectual is elected to be the most powerful man in the world, it's very easy to feel like a dupe for I don't know, having a conscience and being engaged and such.

2. Seen two interesting justifications raised. One, the moral equivalency argument. I always considered Clinton to be a politician with a history and a long list of enemies. The justification I'd always made was, if your worst enemies sic'ed a PI on you for 20 years to catch every time you jaywalked or fudged your taxes, you'd probably get paranoid and cut some corners, too? Well, I guess nobody else saw it that way. I still find Trump to be, in comparison, an existential threat to American democracy, but that may be more credit than he deserves. I still view this as the choice between a bruised apple and a poisoned one, but what the hell do I know? If it proves anything, it's that I read Slate too much.

3. A right-leaning columnist in our sister paper made an argument I've since heard echoed here and other places, that a big reason rural voters went so decisively against Clinton is that they chafed at being considered racists for not adopting multiculturalism, particularly when it is perceived to be against their economic interests. I believe it, but I don't think they're right. You see, my first car (in 2006) was a 1986 Ford Taurus, that thanks to rust, was three different shades of tan. At the time, I would have chafed at you calling my car ugly. That does not mean it was not ugly. Likewise, just because someone refuses to accept that they're a xenophobe doesn't make them not a xenophobe. I grew up in the U.P. and saw it all the time. But there are a lot more people who are that way because they don't know any better (the 'all lives matter' and the 'I have a black friend!' crowd, for example) than those who choose to be that way. It was not helpful for the Democractic Party to lump Janet from Iron Mountain in with Milo Yiannopolous.

4. My chief anxiety with all this is trying to figure out the best case scenario by this time in 2020. If things pan out OK, Trump realizes at about 1 p.m. on Jan. 20 that he has no idea what he's doing, delegates almost everything out, has a few lieutenants who know what they're doing, a few harmless goofballs (Interior Sec. Sarah Palin!), but day to day life is basically the same (at least for a straight white male like me), the next recession is tame enough that it doesn't finish off the whole industry, social unrest stays mostly at mid- to late-Obama levels and in November 2020, the electorate treats the Trump Administration like a dose of ipecac syrup, vomits, gargles with mouthwash and gets back to normalcy. Or we have a thermonuclear exchange with the Russians and/or Chinese. Here's hoping the wind's out of the north and Putin decides we're not worth bombing.

Sorry for the length (and the Les Miserables parody 150 pages ago. That really seemed funny at the time.)

 

I wouldn't put it past those Ayn Rand disciples. #Bootstraps!

 

The Dems didn't get rid of the filibuster because they're fucking idiots.

"Maybe if we make a gesture of goodwill by keeping the filibuster, the GOP will react in kind and give Obama's nominations and legislation a fair hearing."

Yeah, how'd that fuckin' work out for ya?

 

That's not what it was, Star. It was fuckers like Lieberman, Manchin, etc. wanting cover for preventing things they didn't want but their voters did.