You Will Anyway: So how's the family vacation going?

Thursday, February 1, 2018

So how's the family vacation going?

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — President Donald Trump said Thursday that Speaker Paul Ryan called him the other day and said he’d “never ever seen the Republican Party so united.”

Politico

Trump's world is always superlative.

Trump tried to talk past those differences with a speech promoting Republican solidarity. “There is a great coming-together that I don’t think either party has ever seen for many, many years,” he declared.

[...]

ny sense of harmony evaporated in short order, when Trump left without taking any questions from lawmakers that might have provided clarity on the most pressing issues they’re facing.

He just dropped in to say hello. They're not allowed to ask what he wants done, because he has no earthly idea beyond he wants to "win".

Republicans are united behind Trump politically. But age-old ideological and tactical differences between the House and Senate — and the president’s silence or lack of guidance on how to bridge them — remain a major problem for accomplishing big-ticket items.

[...]

After spending barely 24 hours together at a ritzy resort here in the West Virginia mountains, Senate Republicans bade farewell to their House counterparts on Thursday afternoon with no clear path forward on immigration, infrastructure or how to raise the debt ceiling. House Republicans spent part of the getaway regurgitating long-running gripes with the Senate filibuster.

[...]

"Are we united on issues? No. We never are. It’s not going to change now,” [Representative] Dent said.

[...]

Standing shoulder to shoulder at a news conference Thursday, No. 3 Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota and No. 4 House Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state contradicted each other in real time over how Republicans would deal with Dreamers.

McMorris Rodgers said heightened border security, restrictions on family migration and an end to the diversity visa lottery program were essential to any deal, a statement of support for the president’s framework. But moments earlier, Thune floated the idea of cutting Trump’s four-pronged immigration approach in half: border security in exchange for a path to citizenship.

Apparently there wasn't one subject on which they could agree amongst themselves - no budget, not immigration, not ingrastructure. Buckle up.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

------
ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

------
GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

------
GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

------
PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.