More Reasons Why Donnie Dotard Will Soon Have To Cave In This Shutdown Standoff

Trump acting as a Russian Agent has never been a surprise to most of us. With this and other bad news piling up, the degenerate will have to yield by the State of the Union - or be booed off the dais.

"Now, the economy is hurting (S&P Global Ratings put the damage at $3.6 billion so far, nearly the amount Trump sought for his border wall), and most Americans correctly blame him (he is, after all, the one who boasted: “I’ll be the one to shut it down”)."  - Dana Milbank, in The Washington Post ('Please Help Donald Trump Find Work During The Shutdown')

The bodies -  displaced federal workers - from FDA food inspectors, to FBI agents, to TSA screeners,  Park rangers, the Coast Guard and contract workers,  are piling up and the degenerate traitor and Russian puppet Trump is at the center of it all.  (Well,along with his consigliere, Mitch McConnell, see below).   This is now the longest government shutdown (at 24 days) in U.S. history and like a drowning rat trying to grab at a floating plank crowded with his fellow rats (Mulvaney, Pompeo, Pence et al) he has nowhere to go but down.  None of his stunts or attempted bullying moves have worked and Nancy Pelosi is no more likely to give in to his extortion than Martians will land tomorrow atop the Empire State Bldg.   But with only 1 in 4 deplorables backing this scum he has to realize his hostage taking will not last.   I predict that by the SOTU on January 29th, with two million more cable and network TV optics gone south - gov't workers struggling, their disabled kids in need of care, oldsters tossed out of gov't supported housing in FLA (Sec. 202 support) and piling up lawsuits - this swine will be advised to throw in the towel.

His support will further dwindle as even more news reports about his acting as a Russian agent get out showing he has no more interest in the national security of the U.S.  than he has in breaking up with Putin.  But this grifting con man is hoist on his own petard, especially -as Joe Scarborough put it this a.m. - he continues to skunk his own team's negotiating efforts with more and more demands. As David Ignatius also noted, Trump "wants a 100 percent win" but he can't get it. There is no "art of the deal" that will bail him out because elections DO have consequences - and that refers to the one in November last year in which the Dems took the House in a Blue wave.  The consequence is that Trump can no longer get a one -sided  deal and he will have to now give something in return.  Or go down as the most deplorable, disgusting vermin president - worse than James Buchanan and Richard Nixon - in U.S. history.

Of course, some in the media only partially get it, still opting to play their "both sides are to blame" games. Such was the case with Peggy Noonan ('End This Stupid Shutdown', WSJ, Jan. 12-13, p.  A13) who only after slobbering past two columns with 'both sides' malarkey, finally admitted (making one wonder why she didn't lead with this):

"The president at the center of this drama is an unserious man. He is only episodically sincere and has no observable tropism toward the truth. He didn't get a wall in two years with a Republican Congress and is now in a fix. He is handling himself as he does, with bluster and aggression, without subtlety or winning ways. He likes disorder."

With her admission, finally near the middle of her piece, Noonan reveals how and why this is all a big nothing burger  about Trump's ego:  a narcissist McGuffin about getting a cheap win for Right wing rabble rousers, nothing more. It also accounts for why the so-called border wall has nothing to do with any serious border security. (As Ezra Klein also noted.)  Trump, if he truly wanted this wall, could have had it with $25 billion in 2017 - when all he had to do was remove the rescission on DACA,  the Dreamers' Act.  He didn't do that, despite promising he would at an Oval Office meeting. Once again, he tuned into Rightwing Screech TV-radio and the bombast caused him to back down. Just as it did 4 weeks ago when he was ready to sign a CR, then tuned into Limbaugh, Coulter and Co.  and saw them castigating his sorry ass. He turned chicken shit and dumped the CR pledge, leading the nation into the current shutdown shit storm.  So all of Noonan's doggerel about the Dems playing a role and "pretending to be the non-racist party"  is just that, doggerel.

The biggest pressure point now is with all the displaced, income -less federal workers - including associated contract workers who number in the millions. As they collect more and more pay stubs labeled $0.00 and more and more screen shots show them lined up at food pantries, and TSA lines snake around the airport terminals, and more lawsuits are filed, you can be sure Dotard will have to crack.

But the real cracking point will be when the 22 Reep Senators up for re-election next year (including many in blue or purple states) tell Mitch McConnell this farce cannot go on and he needs to bring any or all of the House Dem bills to a floor vote.  For reference,  67 "yay" votes on any one of them renders it veto-proof, and the bill passes.   Once this happens the shutdown ends and all Dotard's protests and blusters won't change that.  But this also tells us that a hidden collaborator in the shutdown hitherto has been Mitch McConnell.  He constantly uses the balderdash that he "can't bring anything to the floor that Trump won't sign"  - but refuses to 'fess up that it doesn't freaking matter once the two thirds majority is reached. Most observers - like Scarborough and Ignatius - believe this won't be a problem at all, and provide an 'out' for many Reep Senators under the gun for inflicting so much pain.   The takeaway here? Bitch McConnell (Trump's bitch, that is) is running covert interference for Dotard while he holds the real key to stopping the shutdown on a dime. As wifey has put it; "Of course McConnell is to blame, maybe even more than Trump,  because he can stop it with one floor vote! He's a guppy -faced, miserable coward and enabler!"     Ouch!

Nor will this wall bunkum effort at diversion work, via Trump's attempts to deflect attention from the tightening Mueller probe.  But also from the continued press disclosures of how Trump not only tried to keep the Putin translator notes (from assorted meetings)  a secret, but also the fact the FBI had to open a counter-intelligence investigation into his unseemly behavior.

Let's also get it straight the Trump shutdown has been selective, allowing public lands to remain open for hunters as well as oil and gas development. (Denver Post, Sunday, p. 1A).   As reported, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this past week, announced using "left over funds" from 2018 to "return staffers to work, ensuring planned activities on those lands, including organized hunts".  So the Trump shutdown is selective where it wants to be and will pay affected workers where and when it chooses. Just not the hard -working TSA agents, or park rangers at national parks - or the FBI agents - who as the NY Times reported investigated Trump being a Russian agent after he fired James Comey.

We also know the Trumpies, degenerates that they are, have explored end -arounds to get their stupid ass wall done. That includes appropriating any and all funds allocated for the hurricane disasters that clobbered Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida in the past year  or so. Yes, it is true! This is what the government that's also caged infants has mutated into: a kakistocracy, or government of vermin.

As for the national emergency bullshit, Trump's minions (like the execrable coward Lindsey Graham) are still calling for it, but sensible conservative pundits (what few there are, like George Will) know it's a non-starter. Even if Trump could declare it (according to a specious 1976 act) he would set such a precedent for a low bar, mock "emergency"  that any future president could invoke it for the flimsiest of pretexts. For example, a President Elizabeth Warren could use it to stanch inequality or fight climate change.  A President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2032 could use it to eliminate all student loans - thereby freeing millions of debt-loaded grads. So no, the Trumpies, dumb and desperate as they are, don't want to open that door.

I predict that with the pressure mounting, and soon from the Senate, this shutdown  will be over by the State of the Union on January 29th. If it isn't, the assembled congress needs to stand with the still out of work federal employees not with this mock "president". They need to  forget all "decorum" and boo Trump as he walks in with his shit -eating grin, and keep booing him as he tries to pump out more lies and excuses.  That is the American free speech way, and the only way to deal with this two- legged maggot now.

The TV networks already erred by giving him prime time to deliver what was basically a campaign speech to arouse his asinine base. What we don't need now is the State of the Union used as another prop for his lies, degeneracy and bad faith.

See also:

Immigration

How Not to Build a “Great, Great Wall”: A Timeline of Border Fortification