At the risk of completely derailing this thread, I should add that my tax-averse father hated the military and loved movies like Catch-22 and MASH* that mocked it. Too bad he couldn’t be bothered to read the book, or he might have actually gained some self-awareness.
They’ll simply lie and say that it’s happening. The idiot muppets will believe it.
I really really hope that a man who has been in the US Senate since 1984, a Judge and a US attorney prior to that, and is the leader of his party in the Senate isn’t that stupid.
Deplorable; yes, stupid; no.
Wonder if we could do a switch-up & trade the wall idea in for something a bit more enticing? When I used to babysit, if a toy was getting super annoying, Id trade the toy for a cookie & park time. What would Trump do if faced with the possibility of over-throwing the corrupt Mexican government & making Mexico a US territory (making them a commonwealth like Puerto Rico), instead of building a wall? It could potentially start the process of solving the humanitarian crisis, allow the citizens to invest in their own communities & infrastructure by implementing an FDR-era New Deal or something similar. Think Trump would go for it?
If by “overthrow” you mean “nuke”, you might be able to get some traction there.
So… Never. Oh well, the American Experiment was good while it lasted. Last one there please turn out the lights.
Those that self-identify as Republicans at this point are either corrupt, evil, or irredeemably stupid. They are the kind of people who blame Obama for not doing more for victims of Hurricane Katrina, or blame him for just sitting around at his desk in the oval office during 9/11.
Coal is not petrified trees. 
You lost me on the second part.
Trump did -maybe- the absolute bare minimum when it came to helping hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico. Trump doesn’t want Mexico. The last thing Trump wants is more responsibility.
Correction: The last thing Trump wants is responsibility. The second to last is more.
A lot of people think that money paid in taxes just sort of disappears into a black hole called ‘government waste’. They don’t consider that even if it was all spent just on salaries for lazy bureaucrats that the money still reenters the economy when those folks buy things.
I have a cousin who used to be a supervisor of some sort with the MN Department of Transportation. Not a stupid man, generally liberal in his beliefs. He looked at taxes as a black hole of waste. I think he was genuinely surprised when I suggested that the money spent by the government actually affected the economy in a positive way - he just had never thought about it.
Imagine the outcry if air travel is disrupted during Super Bowl weekend… Super Bowl planners: Shutdown brings ‘uncharted territory’.
Orrin Hatch went out saying that he thought Trump was just the victim of lies and innuendo. He had no real reason to maintain the party line, while retiring.
Smart people aren’t proof against self-delusion. And if you have spent decades creating conspiracies and lies, it might make you believe that everything is conspiracies and lies.
Yes. And self-justification is a powerful motivating force. Avoiding the feeling “guilt” is important enough for many, that they find within themselves the resources to entirely re-write reality.
Retire with your Trump bucks and delude yourself into believing “It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault.”
Oh, darn. This makes me sadz…
White non-college Americans move away from Trump during shutdown
A 9 point drop among the “base” in a month.
Because our society is visceral. The GOP knows their base wants an excuse to hate liberals/Democrats. They don’t talk about their own party’s shortcomings and their memories are fatally short. Rather than confront Trump, they slink away and retire.
Believe me, this former Reagan-era conservative identifies with your confusion and dismay. The GOP used to be all about fiscal responsibility, accountability for one’s actions, and considering Russia the enemy. Now they’ve completely abandoned those principles and see that their voters don’t care if they lie their asses off.
McWattle is a master manipulator and managed to shift anger away from the Congressional Republicans. He probably realizes those tactics won’t work in the long run, but he already has experience using minority power under Obama. After the next blue wave, he’ll regrow GOP strength like a cancer.
Honestly, if a person has not stopped being a Trump supporter by now s/he will not be turned away by anything anybody (Reps, Dems, prosecuters, Russians, Trump himself) says or does in the next two years. Rather, those who oppose Trump need to get the “Apathetic Party” fired up. After all, both Trump and Clinton were ‘outvoted’ by those who didn’t vote at all. Win enough of them over, convince them their vote does matter, and not one more MAGAt needs to be won over.
Paddle a liferaft to Sweden?
Self-government? Is that what you call the US system? The ratio of representatives to individuals makes that claim one of ideology, not reality, which is where the pageantry and pledges come in.
And?.. Why do you, with no prompting whatsoever, bring up that factoid?
And yet, they choose to remain ignorant.
Yeah, that’s racism.
But they also don’t care if minorities suffer, so long as they don’t have to be around them.
And they prefer to see people suffer, and minorities are an easy target.
No, it is not.
Maybe you were confused by my glib use of fossilized trees as a reference to the fossil fuel known as coal, which is actually made more of other forms of organic matter than trees, but it would require a certain absurd level of both pedanticism and ignorance to actually have that confusion.
I think he was seeing if he was being wooshed by someone pretending to be dumb.
Actually, just about the only time that your tax dollars do not reenter the economy is when it goes to pay off the national debt. (The other being to make payments to foreign entities and governments.)
From your job description, doesn’t that mean that he was getting paid by tax dollars?
In their defense, this administration has provided a lot of evidence for that black hole. There’s Carson’s $31,000 dining set, and Price’s use of military jets, and Mnuchin’s honeymoon, and … etc., etc.