US Politics December 2018: ~very legal and very cool~

lindsey graham? but now he's in trouble because he made his dad mad yesterday on twitter

so the house is going to try to pass a CR with border funding, just to show mean old nancy pelosi that they can do it (during her smackdown of trump earlier this week she said that the house didn't have the votes to pass it in the first place). wouldn't it be kind of satisfying if it didn't pass because it didn't get the votes of GOP members who were criticized by trump after the midterms for not "embracing" trump? i'm sure they would relish an opportunity to say "fuck you" on the way out the door

lindsey graham? but now he's in trouble because he made his dad mad yesterday on twitter

It would be amusing to see Graham try.

so the house is going to try to pass a CR with border funding

I look forward to their failure

bracing for the president to announce the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan soon

This would be wholly in character for Trump and seems extremely plausible, given how badly the news cycles have been treating him lately. he's looking for something, anything, he can use to change the conversation and make his crackpot base happy, without needing direct congressional approval. in the process, he's just burning more bridges to all his non-crackpot allies.

and many of them aren't even there because they're bummed about losing their election, have been kicked out of their offices already, are mad at trump and the world, never understood the meaning of public service, or some combination of those things

xp

What are words for

! This line of Mattis resignation letter (h/t @Elizabeth_McLau): “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.” pic.twitter.com/S1z75wotsK

— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) December 20, 2018

he probably is withdrawing from afghanistan then

and also the paragraph before that, where he talks about "treating allies with respect"

wonder if this is in protest of the syria decision, then

xp

hey, a silver lining from the goldplated grifter

...if it happens

seems kind of fucked up. wouldn't the taliban just regain a bunch of ground if US troops weren't there to support the afghan forces?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OO9LloDSJo

BREAKING: Mulvaney to be new acting Secretary of Defense, as well as Chief of Staff, Director of OMB, and head of Consumer Finance Protection Agency.

Bring On Sargeant Slaughter!

Gonna be an interesting 2019.

well well well, looks like Don is more isolated than ever

Why is anyone surprised at Trump's normal negotiating mode?

David Brin: The Failed Art of the Deal

Time and again, Donald Trump tries the same pattern: break something the other party wants, threaten copious pain, then watch them scramble 90% toward what you want. It worked for Trump against Merv Griffin and dozens of real estate development ‘partners’ and shivved contractors. It worked when he got his (very clever!) 1980s tax break deal with New York City. It reliably worked on his television show, The Apprentice.

remember that NYT op-ed from inside the white house?!

written by Barron iirc

weigel breaks it down correctly here imo

Why does Congress keep ending up here? Simple: The base of the Republican Party, amplified on conservative media, has both endorsed the wall as a must-pass litmus test issue and insisted that a shutdown that ends with wall funding will be an incredible win for the president.

The second part of that is true, but not as some conservative talkers understand it. Early this year, the president briefly entertained a deal that would have secured $25 billion of border security funding, which he interpreted as money for the wall, in exchange for a Dream Act. Without rehashing the drama, we know two things: It could have passed, and it would have divided Democratic politicians from an activist base that rallied around a "Clean Dream Act" with no wall money. Trump had, and squandered, an opportunity to weaken his opponents and get what he wanted.

That's not an option anymore, but there's a large amount of conservative commentary that insists it is — or that the polls are wrong, and getting money for a wall would set the president up for 2020. There's a real risk of the president being talked into a series of confrontations, across 2019 and 2020, that shore up a base too small to reelect him. It's hard to find any Democrat worried about this.

Not inaccurate.

Let's not forget that Mattis chose to carry water for a lot of grubby, unethical, destructive and downright cruel stuff for Trump. His resignation letter a strong defense of NATO, but far too late. 3,000 troops in Syria was his breaking pt, not shooting at refugees in Mexico.

— Dan Murphy (@bungdan) December 20, 2018

this is from the givesmart newsletter (a thing about state politics). it maybe belongs on a left wing drift thread.

To me the most important story of the week came out of Kansas, where Republican state senator Barbara Bollier changed parties because she agreed with Democrats on Medicaid expansion and school funding https://shawneemissionpost.com/2018/12/12/sen-barbara-bollier-changes-party-affiliation-to-democrat-says-republican-party-morally-not-going-where-my-compass-resides-75694. Bollier had openly mused about joining some type of centrist third party so she’d have a chance to continue representing a district that went from supporting Obama by less than 500 votes to one that supported Clinton by 20%, but decided that Democrats were the only viable home for people like her. But Bollier’s move was later followed by a pair of additional switches from Dinah Sykes and Stephanie Clayton, both of whom represent more marginal districts that voted for Romney but flipped to Clinton.

Kansas still has a solidly Republican legislature and Democrats could’ve won those three seats in 2020 regardless. So why is this so important? Well, there’s been some hand-wringing on the left that the Democrats’ increasing reliance on suburban voters will end up transforming them into a socially liberal but pro-austerity centrist party. But Bollier cited expanding health care and all three cited increasing education funding as their reasons for flipping. And they all consider these positions to be centrist. Democrats may rely on the centrist suburbs, but the center and the suburbs are both moving left.

. wouldn't it be kind of satisfying if it didn't pass because it didn't get the votes of GOP members who were criticized by trump after the midterms for not "embracing" trump? i'm sure they would relish an opportunity to say "fuck you" on the way out the door

― Karl Malone

Curbelo hinted as much a couple hours ago

The Mattis legacy is SUPER complicated. The one narrow claim I can make confidently: We would've bombed North Korea last year (or early this year) if instead of him we had a Secretary Graham, Rich, Cotton, Bolton, or [insert conservative doormat] #OntheBrink

— Van Jackson (@WonkVJ) December 20, 2018

So we’re probably getting SecDef Cotton ... who wants to start laying money on the over-under for wars with Iran and North Korea?

— Lindsay P Cohn (@lindsaypcohn) December 20, 2018

we will not go to war with either Iran or North Korea for the simple fact that the Pentagon and the military don't want to do it/know the only options are no-win scenarios

I assume Maddis is going to be the good soldier up until the very end, and despite resigning in protest won't say a bad word about the president from his perch in the private sector.

“Officials said Mr. Mattis went to the White House on Thursday afternoon in a last attempt to convince Mr. Trump to keep American troops in Syria. He was rebuffed, and told the president that he was resigning as a result” via ⁦@helenecooper⁩ - https://t.co/dM4OeZvRRe

— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) December 20, 2018

I suspect that Trump doesn't actually want to start a new foreign war. So while he may blunder into one, I worry more about the destruction of US alliances for the next two years, particularly with South Korea. https://t.co/o7pdFNeVM8

— (((James Acton))) (@james_acton32) December 20, 2018

That’s true, but he can be talked into a limited strike—a “bloody nose,” if you will—that spirals into a war.

— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) December 20, 2018

Setting aside the guy without spray on hair check out that chyron ... pic.twitter.com/BCADW9XVHO

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 20, 2018

so much winning!

Trump will only "stumble into" a war if somebody bombs us first tbf

Oh shit, Mattis. You were our 25th Amendment fall-back line.

There's not going to be a single patriot left on the cabinet to evict Trump when he contests the 2020 results.

were u really expecting anyone in Trump's cabinet to defy him, come on

Oh shit, Mattis. You were our 25th Amendment fall-back line.

There's not going to be a single patriot left on the cabinet to evict Trump when he contests the 2020 results.

― Sanpaku, Thursday, December 20, 2018 3:44 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is hilarious fan-fiction

I feel that way about a lot of Sanpaku's political prognostications tbrr

Good ol' fashioned corruption

NEW: John Kelly’s closest side devised a plan to “hang out” on the WH complex with pay for six months, then retire early from the Coast Guard with the help of a legislative move to allow such retirements. W ⁦@npfandos⁩ https://t.co/bx0kIKOUEY

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 21, 2018

Should read "side piece"

Wall funding CR passed in the House

But Pelosi said... :(

well that's fucked up

no fucking way

Kinda feel like they did it just to prove Pelosi wrong. It’s def DOA in the Senate tho.

Requires 60 votes in the Senate.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is withdrawing roughly 7,000 troops from Afghanistan in the coming months, two defense officials said Thursday, around half of what the American military has there now.

Mr. Trump made the decision at the same time he decided he was pulling American forces out of Syria, one official said. The move is likely one of the first steps to end the United States’ involvement in the 17-year-old war.

The 14,000 American troops currently in Afghanistan are divided between training and advising Afghan forces and a counterterror mission against groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. The reduction, one official said, is in an effort to make Afghan forces more reliant on their own troops and not Western support.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/politics/afghanistan-troop-withdrawal.html

hell of a day

t’s def DOA in the Senate tho.

what makes you think this?

There are not 9+ Dem Senators that will vote for it

It needs 60 votes

House republican headbangers convinces trump this was legislative jujitsu to get dems to share the blame for the shutdown. We’re getting a shutdown.