Category: Politics

She was probably expecting a softball game on Fox News.

Surprise!

“White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders attempted on Sunday morning to further the lie that thousands of terrorists have been stopped trying to cross the the southern border of the United States. Fox News’ Chris Wallace was ready.”

———

Sanders: “We know that roughly, nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally and we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Wallace said, stopping her there. “Because, I know the statistic. I didn’t know if you were going to use it, but I studied up on this. Do you know where those 4,000 people come—where they are captured? Airports.”

As Sanders replied, “Not always,” Wallace interjected and repeated, “Airports,” adding,“The state department says there hasn’t been any terrorists that they’ve found coming across the southern border with Mexico,” Wallace said.

“It’s by air, it’s by land, it’s by sea, it’s all of the above,” Sanders added, “but one thing that you’re forgetting is at the most vulnerable point of entry that we have into this country is our southern border. And we have to protect it.”

“But they’re not coming across the southern border, Sarah, they’re coming and they’re being stopped at airports,” Wallace said once again.

I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.

Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! 💃🏽

Have a great weekend everyone 🙂 pic.twitter.com/9y6ALOw4F6

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 4, 2019

Interesting. I never thought about it before, but it makes a lot of sense. Gallup’s theory is that there is almost no success that will allow Trump to win over his opponents, and almost nothing so heinous that it can turn his base against him. Breaking sharply from the trends in past years, only a small portion of the population can be swayed by current events.

“Americans’ approval of the job Donald Trump is doing as president has been highly stable, showing less movement than all previous presidents’ ratings during their first two years in office. His presidency also has been notable for the absence of two historically reliable patterns in presidential job approval — honeymoon periods and rally events. It is possible that Trump … has ushered in a new era of marked stability in job approval ratings resulting from extreme party polarization.”

One of the remarkable facets of the stability of Trump’s approval ratings is this: while his low points fall within the normal range, he has no high points.

LOW points: Trump’s low of 35 is not the lowest on the list, and five other Presidents have dipped into the thirties in their first two years: Clinton, Reagan, Ford, Carter and Truman.

HIGH points: This is where Trump is unusual. Every other president has risen at least to 59 in his first two years. Nine of the Presidents crossed the 70 threshold, and four of them topped 80. Trump’s high is 45. Six former presidents have a LOW point higher than Trump’s HIGH!

As a result of Trump’s lack of high points, his average approval rating for the first two years is BY FAR the lowest in history. He has averaged 39%. The next lowest is 48%. The average for all Presidents is 59%.

I think Gallup may be reaching a hasty conclusion about Trump’s inability to create approval increases through rally events. The fact that he has not done so doesn’t mean it is not possible. I believe he could still get his ratings up with notable successes or acts of statesmanship, the equivalent of killing bin Laden or the Camp David accords. I just don’t know whether he is capable of such acts.

Wow. Trump and Pelosi and now waging a real battle of the minds.

Trump wants to take money and labor from the military to build a wall, and Pelosi calls the wall an “immorality.”

Ladies and gentlemen, your elected representatives, America’s best and brightest.

As the good lord intended!

That’s such a bad look that I’m pretty sure they will refuse those raises, probably down to the last man and woman, now that Scott Pruitt is gone.

At least I hope so.

“Asked by Today’s Savannah Guthrie about the Department of Justice’s guidance that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Pelosi said that was not settled law.”

I have to call bullshit on that one, at least in terms of a public indictment and conviction of a sitting president. The justice department is correct in their policy, and the reason has nothing to do with the law or the Constitution. Here is why: an indictment and even a conviction does not remove a President from office. Only a Senate trial can do that.

So let’s assume the President commits murder in front of hundreds of witnesses, or is discovered to have raped someone before he took office. If he can be convicted of a crime, no matter how heinous, he is still the President and the Commander-in-Chief, and would be running the country from his jail cell. I’m pretty sure we don’t want America to be in that situation. I presume that is one reason why we have the impeachment process and the 25th amendment – to prevent just that from happening. Imagine Donald Trump in the slammer, but still controlling the mighty U.S. Military and the nuclear launch codes.

Instead of prison, I suppose he would be under (white) house arrest.

Does that mean that a President can commit any crime he wants, as long as the Senate supports him and he stays in office until the statute of limitations expires? No, I don’t think so. Pelosi may be right in a legal sense. If the President commits a crime, assuming the Senate will not remove him, and the statute of limitations will expire before he leaves office, there seems to be no reason why a court cannot issue a sealed indictment against him while he is President, with the indictment to be opened when he leaves office. I think the answer to that must be “yes, he can be indicted,” for practical reasons rather than on Constitutional grounds, because that is the only way he can be held accountable for his crime, and the first principle of justice is that nobody can be above the law.

There are probably no sealed federal indictments against Trump because Mueller’s team putatively intends to respect the “no indictment” policy of the justice department, but there could be sealed state indictments against him right now. We would not know about them.

Now our government is making it easier to discriminate?

To quote Mel Brooks: “Now what’ll that asshole think of next?”

To be fair, some of these rules do need to be clarified or modified. Case in point:

“In New York, a lawsuit alleges that a large apartment complex in Queens will not rent to anyone with a criminal record, and that this has the effect of discriminating against African American and Latino renters. The suit is pending, relying on disparate impact to make the case.”

In my opinion the principle of “disparate impact” needs to be overridden by the same BFQ rules that apply in employment law. For example, if I am hiring an actor to play Louis XIV as a teenager, I am allowed to discriminate against minorities and women and old people and post a casting call for young white males only. If I am hiring somebody who needs to be able to reach shelves eight feet in the air without assistance, I am allowed to specify that, even though it discriminates against women, who are shorter than men on average. That is called a “bona fide occupational qualification.” Bona fide qualifications should apply elsewhere as well. A landlord not wanting to rent to people who have defaulted on previous rental agreements, or who have broken into other people’s homes, or who have molested children, seems like a bona fide qualification to me, even if it would disproportionately affect minorities. (Just hypothetically. I have no idea whether it would affect any group more than others.)

However, BFQs should have to be defended in court if challenged, to prevent landlords, employers and others from establishing bogus qualifications for the sole or primary purpose of discrimination.

In the same sense that I am “essentially” as sexy as George Clooney.

Related: Trump’s most unhinged comments of the day

From the comments section:

Actually the Orange Buffoon’s most unhinged remarks were in his little mini-seminar on the relationship of Russia, Afghanistan and the USSR.

“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. … The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan”

Wow. Where do you start? As Kelly Bundy might say, “It wobbles the mind!”

I’m not opposed to border security, and a high wall may make sense in some remote areas, but Beto is right about that stretch along the Rio Grande

First, much of the land on our side is owned by private landowners, each of whom would have to be subjected to eminent domain processes. Eminent domain can be challenged in court. Not only could that be a long, dragged-out process, but if even one challenger wins, there would be a big opening in the wall! And the USA can’t just take a narrow strip of land like a railroad path. There has to be room on the river side for flood control, repairs and patrols. There also has to be room on the other side for patrols and repair crews. There will have to be a second wall built by any ranchers that have livestock in order to keep them out of the strip of federal land, and out of the way of border officers making their rounds. (That may or may not be at government expense. The ranchers and the state of Texas may have to build their own barriers from the newly-formed federal territory.)

Second, the actual border between the USA and Mexico is in the middle of the river. Therefore, any immigrants who cross the river would have reached USA territory before they get to the wall, and could then claim asylum, and/or deliver an anchor baby without even reaching the border wall! Therefore, border patrol officers would have to patrol the river side of the wall as well as the area beyond the wall.

I very much doubt that anything will ever be built there, and if it is, it will probably be far in the future.

And even if it does happen, it will cause more problems than it solves.

The Government Suggests Furloughed Workers Do Chores for Landlords to Help Pay Rent

The majority of people are unimpressed with Trump. The problem is the Democrats have to run a real person. Either the possible candidates are ancient, or Americans don’t much care for them. The current favorite of Democrat voters is (I’m not kidding) “none of the above.”

In head-to-head match-ups:

* Joe Biden beats Trump in a hypothetical match-up, but he would be 78 if he took office in 2021.
* Bernie Sanders is about even with Trump, but he’s even older than Biden.
* The younger candidates don’t do as well. Trump wins by a large margin over Beto.

Shockingly, the leading Democratic candidates were doing better in a hypothetical match-up back in August. Despite all of Trump’s scandals and boners, he has gained on all of them!

In 1968, after receiving four deferments due to education, Donald Trump was diagnosed with bone spurs in his heels at the age of 22, seven years before the Vietnam War ended.

Elysa Braunstein also told the newspaper that her father implied that Trump did not have a foot ailment. She was not sure whether her father even examined the future President.

You can’t blame Trump much for this one. Very few people wanted to go to Vietnam in 1968. I sure as hell didn’t want to. To be honest, I would have done the same thing in his position.

Of course, I’m a known chickenshit, and not the commander-in-chief of the mightiest military force the world has ever known. I can’t even win at “Men of War: Vietnam.”

If there is a shutdown, the president should be fired. “It always has to start at the top.”

I’m sure you know the answer already. The president’s most vociferous critic always turns out to be the same pesky guy.

“Sorry, folks, the USA is closed. Statue in the harbor should have told ya.”

“Trump Already Souring on Next Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney Over ‘Terrible Human Being’ Jibe“