Shutdown Over Border Security?

[Starlight]

Interesting how Trump has gone from from Mexico paying for a wall to not paying government employees until the American people pay for a wall.

Trump can pay for the wall. He's good at pretending to be rich, right? And he pretends to be in the building industry. So he can pay for the building of it.

[Tassman]

Trump can pay for the wall. He's good at pretending to be rich, right? And he pretends to be in the building industry. So he can pay for the building of it.

Sure. And he's such a "great 'builder" he tells us, that he can supervise its construction...especially as its morphed from a "big beautiful wall" to a glorified picket fence.

[firstfloor]

Interesting how Trump has gone from from Mexico paying for a wall to not paying government employees until the American people pay for a wall.

Very good. The Dems should use that.

[Bill the Cat]

She isn't interested in ANY wall and her pansy socialist base is cheering her on. And the liberal media is narrating the story just how she wants it - with half truths and outright lies. Not that you'd know what the truth was about US border security anyway...

But the Trump spin echoed by acolytes such as you that Pelosi et al are against border security is a "flat out" lie.

No it isn't. They have shown time and time again that they will throw a token pittance to a few small areas to hire an extra border guard or two, and maybe one or two drones to fly around and record border crossings to post to YouTube, but that's about it. That's why CNN called successful border security a "non-story".

Pelosi is for sensible, practical border security

If she would take 5 minutes and actually VISIT the border in the state she claims to represent and talk to the Border Patrol agents about what they actually NEED, she'd know what practical and sensible border security is. And it means a wall, people and technology. All 3. Not 1 or 2. All 3.

as contained in the bipartisan legislation

That "bipartisan" legislation was nowhere near enough to do what needs to be done. But again, if you are ignorant of what the border patrol actually say they need, you have no clue how much it costs.

that Trump rejected because of Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

you forgot the [/cite=CNN] after that turd.

Exactly. This quote shows the utter ignorance of Congress on BOTH sides on what is needed to better secure our borders. Walls are neither wasteful nor ineffective. I've shown you several times that it is quite effective in reducing illegal crossings, yet you continue to barf this liberal media lie from thousands of miles away.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ns/2512363002/

1.3 B is only enough to build about 50 miles of new border fence. Talk about ineffective



And that is in hopes that there is no legal action to pay for, which you libtards love to use as an excuse for why not to build it...

More to the point, the majority of Americans aren't buying Trump's crap about the wall and the alleged "terrorists", "people smugglers" and "drug traffickers" supposedly flooding across the southern border.

The majority of Americans have never been to the border and only get their opinions from the news, conveniently narrated by the left. And worse is foreigners like you who don't even have a vested interest in the situation. At least JimL lives here. I take his objections a bit more than foreigners like you.

[Bill the Cat]

Trump can pay for the wall. He's good at pretending to be rich, right? And he pretends to be in the building industry. So he can pay for the building of it.

No he can't. His companies don't own the land.

[lilpixieofterror]

And where did I say that those democrat loses under Obama was no big deal? Apparently the deluded one is yourself Lilpix.

[carpedm9587]

The "election has consequences" statement always makes me laugh at conservatives who use it to try to pretend Obama was some sort of dictator... (a) there's precious little evidence Obama ever actually uttered those words, and (b) Obama went out of his way to absolutely bend over backwards to try to compromise with Republicans and achieve grand bargains with them etc, he was the precise opposite of a dictatorial non-compromising tyrant that they try to make him out to be.

Ironically, I personally think that actually the single biggest strategic failure of Obama's administration was precisely that he spent his first 6 years in office trying too hard to achieve compromise with people who were very clearly not interested in compromise. Many of his greatest failures as a President, IMO, arose precisely because he wasn't strong in negotiating with the Republicans and wasn't prepared to stick it to them and tell them "elections have consequences" and play hardball with them and tell them where to stick it, and instead played soft-ball namby-pamby mealy-mouthed negotiator with them for years even after it was abundantly clear it wasn't working.

He was naively and egotistically convinced that he could achieve a successful bargain with Republicans where previous Democrats had failed just because he was prepared to offer the Republicans a better deal than had been offered before and sacrifice Democratic priorities to an extent that no one had been prepared to do so before. He thought if he offered them the possibility of cutting social security that Republicans would leap on it. Instead they responded with the Tea Party movement that demanded zero compromise whatsoever under any circumstances and proceeded to torpedo all negotiations, thus defeating Obama's entire strategy of trying to work with and compromise with the Republicans.

The "elections have consequences" quote has long been attributed to Obama as being from a response he made to Republican Whip Eric Cantor concerning the ACA. Your comment about "scant evidence" made me go digging. Pretty much every reference I find sources back to the same place. I am not not finding any other corroborating site, or independent report. That source appears to be a blog of some sort. So I guess I have to acknowledge that there is no strong evidence that Obama ever said this - unless someone else can point me to other sources...?

[carpedm9587]

I've been tracking the impact of the shutdown on Trump's approval ratings, and I am pleased to report it is indeed having a negative effect. His aggregate disapproval rating has shifted from a low of 51.1% on 12/16/18 (a low he had not seen since 5/4/17), to his current disapproval rating of 54.9 (a high he has not seen since 3/5/18). Remember we are talking about disapproval - so high is bad, and low is good. So there is a segment of the "middle" that he is losing.

His approval rating is dropping somewhat, but Trump's "base" stands pretty firm and I doubt there is anything he can do or any discovery that can be made that will cost him that group. His aggregate approval is currently at 41.7%, down from a high of 44.7% (10/25/18). He has not seen this low since he hit 40.8 on 9/13/18. His gap is at 13.1 (negative), which is a gap he hasn't seen since last March.

Go, Trump, go! If you keep it up, maybe you can exceed your all-time high gap of -21.1%!

[Bill the Cat]

I've been tracking the impact of the shutdown on Trump's approval ratings, and I am pleased to report it is indeed having a negative effect. His aggregate disapproval rating has shifted from a low of 51.1% on 12/16/18 (a low he had not seen since 5/4/17), to his current disapproval rating of 54.9 (a high he has not seen since 3/5/18). Remember we are talking about disapproval - so high is bad, and low is good. So there is a segment of the "middle" that he is losing.

His approval rating is dropping somewhat, but Trump's "base" stands pretty firm and I doubt there is anything he can do or any discovery that can be made that will cost him that group. His aggregate approval is currently at 41.7%, down from a high of 44.7% (10/25/18). He has not seen this low since he hit 40.8 on 9/13/18. His gap is at 13.1 (negative), which is a gap he hasn't seen since last March.

Go, Trump, go! If you keep it up, maybe you can exceed your all-time high gap of -21.1%!

Again, most Americans are stupid.

[Mountain Man]

Not to mention that approval ratings are just another opinion poll, and we know how meaningless those really are. Remember the polls that said that Trump was going to take a beating during the midterms? And remember how Democrats ended up under-performing compared to historical averages?

So, yeah...

[carpedm9587]

Again, most Americans are stupid.

Interesting. So if an American disagrees with, and disapproves of, Trump - it makes them "stupid?"

[Bill the Cat]

Interesting. So if an American disagrees with, and disapproves of, Trump - it makes them "stupid?"

No. Their lack of knowledge on subjects on which they vote in surveys does.

[carpedm9587]

No. Their lack of knowledge on subjects on which they vote in surveys does.

So what makes you think their vote is based on a lack of knowledge?

[Bill the Cat]

So what makes you think their vote is based on a lack of knowledge?

Because they blame Trump alone for the shutdown. No one in their right mind thinks he alone is responsible.

[carpedm9587]

Because they blame Trump alone for the shutdown. No one in their right mind thinks he alone is responsible.

Interesting. I consider myself "in my right mind" and I largely hold Trump responsible for the shutdown. My reasoning is fairly simple:

First, before Trump said "no" he said "yes." Indeed, the House and Senate had both signed a bill that Trump signaled he would sign to keep government open while negotiations continued. Then Trump was raked across the coals by the right-wing media pundits for "chickening out" and warned that his base would abandon him - and he changed course midstream, triggering the shutdown.

Second, before the shutdown began, Trump explicitly said he would take pride in shutting down the government over this issue, and that he would take full responsibility and not blame anyone else. Most of us knew THAT wasn't going to happen - because Trump ALWAYS blames someone else (and I seldom use superlatives). Still - he said it.

Third, Democrats have repeatedly offered to negotiate over border security (which is the umbrella issue we should all be concerned about) and Trump is locked onto "the wall." He has painted himself into a corner, because he made "the wall" the optical representation of "security" and worked to convince his base that "we can't have security without a wall." So now - his base wants a wall. So it is Trump unwilling to negotiate - not the Dems. The Dems want an open discussion about security - and Trump wants a wall.

I would allocate a bit of blame to the Republicans for not passing any bill at all - but I understand McConnell's position: it is pointless to waste the effort so long as Trump is not going to sign it. Personally, I think they should vote anyway, so we can see exactly where the Republicans in Congress stand on the issue (we know where the Dems stand). But so long as there is no vote - there is no hard-fast evidence of Republican complicity in the issue.

So - my vote is "Trump is to blame."

You can disagree with any part of that - but it doesn't make me (and others like me) "stupid" because we hold these informed and considered opinions.