Thursday, January 24, 2019

Tell me again

Whenever Trump does something outrageous, it's not attributed to his mercurial temperament or his blatant incompetence, it is attributed to his genius, and called a "distraction."  But how can it be a distraction if everyone sees it and identifies it and talks about how it shouldn't be a distraction?  Sleight of hand doesn't work like that; it works like this:

The Senate will take two votes Thursday to reopen the federal government and end the longest shutdown in history. Both votes are expected to fail. The shutdown will continue.

The pageantry of failed floor votes has become one of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s calling cards in the Senate over the past few years. They’ve proven a potent tool to defuse awkward standoffs and to navigate stalemates. It used to be that a failed bill on the Senate floor signaled weak leadership, but McConnell has used them to his tactical advantage in a highly polarized Washington.

McConnell has used this gambit before in high-pressure situations. Some Republican lobbyists in town have called it a “show them a body” strategy: holding votes you know will fail in order to break the impasse over a given issue.How this doesn't come down to one person.  

Looks like Mitch McConnell has outsmarted his opponents again, doesn't it?  But only if you ignore the context of this vote; only if you weren't paying attention yesterday:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked legislation on Wednesday that would reopen most of the government currently closed during the partial shutdown.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) went to the Senate floor to ask for consent to take up the House-passed bill that would fund every agency and department impacted by the partial shutdown, except the Department of Homeland Security, through Sept. 30.

McConnell, however, objected. It's the fourth time he's blocked the bill to reopen most of government. He has also blocked, as recently as Tuesday, a House-passed bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8.

The hand doesn't have to be quicker than the eye if they eye is lazy and doesn't pay attention.  Or if you don't notice that the devil is in the details:

The proposed bill includes some big changes to U.S. immigration policy that were not included in the president's public announcement, such as a provision that would sharply limit asylum applications for children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

"It's a Trojan horse filled with many extreme immigration proposals," said Kerri Talbot of the Immigration Hub, an immigrants' rights organization, during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. "The bill includes the most extreme proposals on asylum I think that I've ever seen," Talbot said.
"Good faith," it turns out, is rather faithless:

When he announced his proposal on Saturday, Trump said it includes "critical measures to protect migrant children from exploitation and abuse," including a new system that would allow Central America minors to apply for asylum in their home countries.
But the president did not mention that the proposal would in fact require migrant children to apply from their home countries and prevent them from applying in person at the border. In addition, only migrant children with a "qualified" parent in the U.S. would be permitted to apply for asylum — a sharp break from current policy.

"This historic change in asylum law would categorically block tens of thousands of children from ever applying for asylum," said Greg Chen, government relations director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

When Trump announced the proposal over the weekend, he said the bill would provide "three years of legislative relief" for recipients of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA protects about 700,000 young immigrants, including DREAMERs, who were brought to the country illegally as children, from deportation. He also said the bill would extend protections for 300,000 holders of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

Protections offered to immigrants under both DACA and TPS have been targeted to end under the Trump administration, though federal courts have stepped in to extend both programs for now.

But on closer inspection, immigration experts say, the Senate GOP bill would likely cover fewer immigrants than are currently protected under DACA and TPS.
So who is at fault for this impasse, and what is the fight over?  Watch the donut, not the hole.



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The Party's Over


I've thought for some time now that Trump's administration was over. The election in November marked it, but the end is only clear now. Trump had no idea how to govern, and with a Democratic House, he can't even pretend to. The government shutdown began his lame-duck Presidency. These tweets are merely the tombstone.
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Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Meanwhile, downstairs among the servants....


"Accordingly, there are no security concerns regarding the State of the Union address."
The President of the United States to the Speaker of the House, January 23, 2019.

Uh, you sure about that?  I mean, I don't doubt Secret Service agents are very professional, but this is the equivalent of the waiter spitting in your salad.
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And Now for the Presidential Response....


“The State of the Union has been canceled by Nancy Pelosi because she doesn’t want to hear the truth,” Trump said. “She’s afraid of the super-left Democrats, the radical Democrats. What’s going on in that party is shocking.”

He added, “Now Nancy Pelosi, or Nancy as I call her, she doesn’t want to know the truth.”

He continued to unload on Pelosi.

“So Nancy Pelosi, knowing these facts and knowing that she can’t win, that she just went out and said ‘let’s cancel for the first time in the history of our country, let’s cancel the State of the Union address,'” Trump said. “It’s a disgrace. She used it on the basis of the shutdown. When she asked me to make the address formally in writing, most of you have a copy of the letter, when she asked me to make the address, she did it during the shutdown, well into the shutdown.”

He then called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a “puppet.”

“I think that Chuck Schumer sadly is dominated by the radical left and he’s dominated by Nancy Pelosi. Very strongly dominated. He can’t move. He’s a puppet. A puppet for Nancy Pelosi, if you can believe that,” Trump said.

He doesn't have a clue, does he?

You could fact-check some of that (the history of the SOTU is all wrong), point out he doesn't understand what the SOTU is, point out it isn't even canceled, just postponed.  Why bother?  He's clueless, a child in a man's clothes.  If this doesn't prove it, what will?  My favorite line is this one:

"Now Nancy Pelosi, or Nancy as I call her, she doesn't want to know the truth."

This from the guy who gives nicknames to everybody, and the best he can do is "Nancy, as I call her"?  And since he can't bring himself to attack her, he attacks Schumer, who is "dominated by Nancy Pelosi," because that's the worst thing he can say about Schumer?  And that has what to do with the SOTU, since McConnell is the man who can bring a resolution to the Senate, the very resolution Speaker Pelosi refuses to bring to the House floor.

He continued: “We just found out that she’s cancelled it. I think that’s a great blotch on the incredible country that we all love. It’s a great, great horrible mark. I don’t believe it’s ever happened before and it’s always good to be part of history but this is a very negative part of history.”

I dunno, which is worse?  This cancellation, or the continued refusal to allow all of the government to function while he tries to negotiate his beloved border wall like a normal President would do?

The cute part is, he thinks there's something he can do about it:

Trump added: “We’ll have to respond to it. We’ll respond to it in a timely manner.”
One can only imagine what he thinks he's going to do.  Meanwhile, as  another observer put it, on the matter of funding the wall:

“If the president put up a bill with permanent protection for Dreamers for border security money, it would pass,” said Todd Schulte, president of the nonpartisan immigration advocacy group FWD.us and a major critic of Monday’s draft bill. “If the president wants money for the wall, he knows how to get it.”

The problem is, the POTUS doesn't know how to get it.
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That Didn't Take Long




According to NBC News reporter Kelly O’Donnell, Pelosi’s letter said that she will not bring forward the resolution necessary to authorize the speech.
Turn out the lights, the party's over....
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Truth is not objective, anyway.....


Love may mean you never have to say you're sorry (sorry; I lived through the '70's; it left scars); but pride means you never want to say you were wrong:

A CNN reporter traveled to Montecillo, Iowa where soybean prices have plummeted because of the trade war with China, but where farmers are getting free-flowing subsidies to offset their losses with $12 billion in American tax dollars.

The farmers he talked to support Trump, while their neighbors are aghast.

Farmers are able to subsist on their generous handouts, but are not able to invest in infrastructure on their farms with banks refusing to loan money.

They also can’t get data they need from the Department of Agriculture because of the shutdown.

Despite this, Dave Walton, a soybean farmer, “refused” to criticize Trump, who flipped the state from blue to red with the help of people like him.

“He campaigned on a lot of the things he’s doing right now and he’s doing it,” Walton said.
Farmer Brian Wolken said a lot of farmers are “big fans of Donald Trump.”

“Until he’s out of office I don’t think you’ll hear them say anything bad about him,” he said. “They’re just gonna say ‘This is going to be good for us in the long run.'”

Not everyone has been swayed, though. Others in the town, which now has a Democratic Congressman, said they are shocked by how the farmers are acting.

One eye doctor said he’s lost patients because he criticized Trump, and doesn’t care.

An elderly rural Iowa resident named Mel Manternach said it’s “unbelievable that the farmers of Iowa continue to support Trump.”

“I can’t believe that they’re that blind,” he said. “Some of the die-hards are dying harder.”
I would like to say I'm surprised;but I'm not.  More interesting than the mulishness is the reasoning:  “He campaigned on a lot of the things he’s doing right now and he’s doing it,” Walton said.  Uh-huh; name three.  But there's the rub:  who knows what is true, except what we believe to be true?

The example of the MAGA hat wearing teens is instructive here.  Which video of the event is the "true" record of what happened?  Everyone has their point of view, their preference, their conclusion.  I have mine, but it's based mostly on the smirk on the kid's face, and that same kid's statement that "I had every right to be standing there."  Punk needs to learn some respect for his elders, especially if those elders are non-white.  He also doesn't shift responsibility by immediately following that statement with a claim he wishes he could have had a dialogue with the older man.  His desire for dialogue comes from a place of privilege:  white and economic privilege.  He wants a discussion on his terms, not on terms of equality or even humility.  Then again, he's a punk kid; I can forgive him his sins, because they are mine, too.

Let's be honest.

But what of the farmer who claims Trump has accomplished what he said he would?  Based on what, aside from Trump's claims of accomplishment?  Then again, what other claims are there?  There are reports now that "moderate" Democrats and Republicans want to end the standoff over the border wall, but those reports overlook the "poison pills" in the legislative package the White House sent to Capitol Hill.  Where is the good faith required to reach a deal?  Or is the problem just the stubbornness of Democratic leaders, who should yield now and stand firm next time (until they yield then)?  Arguments, arguments, arguments, and where is the truth, the valid picture of reality?  Can we even know, when reality is whatever is reported to us by the news?  Aye, there's the rub.

Trump calls all news he doesn't like "fake news," and it's a pernicious lie.  But how do I verify the news?  What is being discussed among Senators and Representatives?  What efforts are being made to end this stupid stalemate, and why?  How do I know, except what the news tells me, and news reports are inherently incomplete and inaccurate.  What gets into the next report depends on editors and reporters and decision about what the "narrative" is for this story or that one.  Has Trump accomplished anything?  I don't think so, but my opinion is based on news reports.  Trump claims he's accomplished much because of judicial appointments and regulation reform (not all his Cabinet Secretaries have resigned in disgrace).  Is that an accomplishment, or merely a shift in the winds that will shift back in two years?  Even Gorsuch and Kavanaugh haven't (yet) significantly altered the trajectory of the Supreme Court.  Besides, I don't consider those things accomplishments; and in the face of the trade wars and the significant failures to achieve anything in foreign diplomacy and concerns that Trump's actions will trigger a world-wide recession, and the support of farmers in Iowa that can only be described as mulishness and the ethos that, however bad things are, farmers can survive it....

Truth, as Kierkegaard observed, is subjective.  Which is not to say truth is relative, but just that what is, in Tillich's terms, your "ultimate concern," determines what is most important to you; and what is most important to you, is what is true.  "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be, also," is a true statement, but it's also a statement of truth, a statement about the nature of truth.  Now, do you put your truth on a MAGA hat, or a determination to prevail against the future, or on what news reports say?  Or is the problem that we don't really know where to seek our truth?
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Breaking News As It is Broken

I liked "Build The Wall and Crime Will Fall!" better.

"Not realistic"? Really?
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the "bitchy woman" argument is a dog that'll hunt this time. Especially as the President vainly addressing an empty chamber won't be on even C-SPAN, so all complaints will be empty descriptions of the noise the tree made when it fell. And I suppose all that really matters is that Trump keep Hannity onboard:

And while we're doing Twitter, this is precisely what witness tampering looks like:
May you live in interesting times.
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Well, this is interesting....


 According to McClatchy, Trump can enter the floor of the House of Representatives.  But the camera might not be on, the lights might not even be on, and he can't address a Joint Session of Congress if there has not been a joint resolution to hold such a session.  And that resolution can't come to the floor of the House without the approval of the Speaker.

Donald Trump is about to find out that the Speaker of the House is a Constitutional office of a co-equal branch of government.

Let's start with the joint session:

A joint session isn’t an ad hoc event. Both the House and Senate must formally agree to the session by adopting a “concurrent resolution.”

These resolutions are typically noncontroversial, often simply advanced by voice vote or what’s called unanimous consent, meaning no one objects so the measure is agreed to.

Pelosi, as the speaker, can control whether this resolution comes up for a vote at all in the House — or, if it does, she can urge her members to vote “no.” If there’s no joint session of Congress, Trump can’t come to the House floor to deliver his address.

Will anybody even be there?

Whether Trump could just get up on the dais and start delivering his State of the Union address is another question. Nothing could physically stop Trump from speaking in the House chamber, but there is a strict set of rules governing what is allowed to take place on the floor and what would be subject to condemnation.

In order for someone to deliver formal remarks in the House of Representatives, the chamber must be “in session,” which is at the discretion of the speaker.
And if the House isn't in session, and Trump walks into an empty chamber?

Ordinarily, C-SPAN is the only entity allowed to record House floor proceedings. But C-SPAN only has permission to operate when the House is officially in session. If the House isn’t in session and Trump comes to the floor and begins speaking, there would be no way of broadcasting the address to a national audience. The chamber lights might not even be on for Trump to see his written speech.
Can Trump demand other networks have access to the cameras?  No.  Can Trump demand the lights be turned on?  No.  Will this be a "Constitutional crisis"?  No; that would occur only if Trump got his way per that letter he sent to Pelosi.

Pass the popcorn.*

(In my mind's cinema I see the humiliation and rage as Trump's motorcade arrives at the Capitol and he enters the empty chamber, lights off, cameras dead.  Of course, to see that would require the lights be on and the cameras active, so I don't get my dream; but the effect will be like the tree falling in the forest that no one hears.  Trump may rage on Twitter, complain on FoxNews, but without the visual of his humiliation, who will really care (there is no Constitutional requirement that he make the speech to Congress, just that he deliver a report)?  And would he want to broadcast his powerlessness?  This is almost too perfect a victory over hubris and stupidity.)

ADDING:

“The fact is that we can understand, politically, the Speaker wanting to deny him the platform,” said [Andrea] Mitchell. “He wants the stage because he knows he can dominate.”

“He now wants that speech in that House as much as he wants to win the showdown,” replied [Margaret] Carlson, describing the standoff as “a preliminary bout.”

“He has to win it, because Trump has to be seen as a winner in his own mind or it’s debilitating for him,” she said, adding that she expected the president to win despite the shutdown. “That letter was spell-checked with all those exclamation points because he’s dead serious.”

Emphasis, obviously, added.  This is the best part of this nonsense; Trump cannot buffalo the Speaker of the House.  January 29 is much too far away. This is going to be like waiting for Christmas, all over again.
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Pray without ceasing?

Let us be clear:  there is no legitimate purpose here, just government by slogan and catchphrase.  Ordinarily government is guided by facts and reasons; legislative inquiry, investigation, testimony, build a basis for a law or a governmental expenditure.  In the Great State of Texas, where the one task required of the Lege every two years is to establish a budget for the biennium based on the State Comptroller's forecast of revenue for the state (it's an elected office; we elect everybody in state government in Texs; everybody), the Comptroller is asking ordinary citizens to PLEASE come to Austin to testify so the Lege will have some idea how to spend the taxpayer's hard earned.  That's the way it's supposed to work.  

Trump doesn't understand any of that.  He just knows he ran on a slogan, and now he has to make the slogan a reality.  He doesn't even defend his racism and xenophobia; he just stands on it as if it were the Rock of Truth itself.  So this isn't about Trump's "political destruction," it's about governance and how our government should operate.  Congress should debate the wall, investigate the wall, consider all the reasons for and against the wall.  But they should not fund it's construction because the President came up with a new catchphrase.

And there's the curious appeal to faith, couched in two tweets:  "No doubt!' and "Use it and pray!"  What is the appeal here?  To unwavering support for Dear Leader?  And to pray without ceasing that the catchphrase will work?  I doubt seriously Trump has 1 Thessalonians in mind, but is he suddenly coming to religious language because he has nowhere else to turn?  That's the usual use of religion in public life:  when all else fails, God help us!

And, of course, the wall is not under construction now, else we wouldn't be in this quagmire (for which there is a simpler solution than capitulation; there is no reason for the government to be shut down because the President won't sign a funding bill.  It's past time to take that weapon away from the toddler-in-chief).

But given these tweets, does it matter what the Senate votes on today, tomorrow, next week?  Until the 100 Senators who voted to fund the rest of the government are willing to stand by that vote against a Presidential veto, it really doesn't matter what Congress votes to do.  This is really not on the Democrats at all.  The guy in the White House has said that all along; and today he's said it again, three times.

How many times does it take to realize he means it?
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Tuesday, January 22, 2019

"(do you believe this?)"



As early as 10:00 in the morning:

In one interaction with then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, Elving described President Donald Trump “wandering off” during a complicated discussion of tax reform.

“He literally gets up while Paul Ryan is in mid-description and wanders out of the Oval Office and down the hallway into a side room where one can hear the television being switched on,” Elving said, adding the “eventually” the vice-president had to go retrieve the easily distracted commander in chief.
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Kids these days!

In the '70's, as the Vietnam War was moving toward its finale, I wore a green Army jacket, courtesy of my then girlfriend, who had it from her older brother, a veteran of the war (both brothers served).  The jacket was a simple cloth jacket; no padding, no fur, no lining, the kind of thing you might expect to wear in tropical climes.


I wore it despite the fact I was virulently anti-war, and secretly scared to death I'd be drafted (and had been since the 6th grade, when a friend told me it was inevitable.  Fortunately it wasn't; I was in the last cohort (class?) to be in the draft lottery.  My number was high enough I missed altogether, and went off to college without worrying about failing out and getting caught to do my duty for Uncle Sam (as we put it then, derisively).  I wore the jacket derisively; but also because I liked it.  It was clearly military, but I thought it stylish (no comments from the peanut gallery!), at least comfortable, and besides, my girlfriend gave it to me.

So I think I understand why MAGA hats would be a thing among teenagers, especially those who want to annoy their parents or associate with a "winning brand."  Honestly "brand" seems to be all teenagers are about these days, something that isn't entirely new, so I won't go further afield with that.  Although, thinking back on my days of my Army jacket (I had a fake Navy peacoat, too; for a guy who didn't want to be in the military, I liked the clothing.  The peacoat was from Sears, and "navy" referred more to its color than anything more nautical), I don't think it would have been appropriate wear to a, say, anti-war protest, not that such things would have been a field trip for my high school.  Even if I thought I wore my jacket ironically, the irony was likely lost on almost everyone else:

“With regard to the hats, they were there for a pro-life march, which, granted, focused on abortion,” he said. “The hats that they were wearing, the so-called MAGA hats, the Make America Great hats, come with a certain political agenda that in my opinion can be seen as anti-Catholic, anti-Christian.
Certainly they represent a political agenda; even if it isn't anti-Christian (I think it is, but YMMV), what were they doing wearing them while on a school field trip?  As the priest said about their behavior:

“First of all, I think the students acted inappropriately,” he said. “I was raised at a time when we were taught, respect your elders. no matter how the Native American gentleman wound up in front of that student, that was the time to turn the other cheek, to step aside, no matter what you thought,” he continued.

“It wasn’t a time to thrust both cheeks, smirking, into the face of that elder. So, yes, where were the chaperones? This situation was escalating. you had the group that you mentioned with racial slurs. You then had kids behind them seemingly mocking this elder and smirking and laughing at him,” he said. “I don’t understand how the chaperones don’t step in and say, first of all, boys, get to the bus, to defuse the situation. that’s why a chaperone is there,” he said. 

If a picture is worth 1000 words, that kid's face is the dictionary illustration of "white privilege."  Answers to the priest's questions that involve reference to "baptized heathens" are unseemly and will not be countenanced here, or further discussed.  But yeah, I am thinking about it....
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Monday, January 21, 2019

So Much Honoring!

We're getting tired of all the honoring!
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So this is why?


Trump played golf on MLK day last year. He's made himself a prisoner of D.C. this year, so he had 2 minutes to kill.
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Sunday, January 20, 2019

Ariel Poems: Epiphany 2018


'Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul'
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
And running stags around a silver tray;
Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,
What the fairies do and what the servants say.
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of 'is and seems'
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.

Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
For Boudin, blown to pieces,
For this one who made a great fortune,
And that one who went his own way.
Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the yew trees,
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
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Worst legal advice imaginable

Somebody's been watching"The Paper Chase." My advice is to switch to "On The Basis of Sex." Much better presentation of real legal reasoning.
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Friday, January 18, 2019

If at first you don't succeed....

Prayer rugs!  Terror Alert Black Watch Plaid!

Try, try again.
And again.
And still again.
(the answer to the question is: to reassure NATO the U.S. is not pulling out of NATO anytime soon. Watch the donut, not the hole.  And yes, threatening the father-in-law is, again, witness intimidation.  Trump still doesn't understand what being POTUS means.) And again:
As Sen. Angus King put it:

“It’s very frustrating for me because my whole instinct is: Let’s find a way to get this solved. But so far anyway, his idea of negotiating is to say ‘here’s what I want, I’ll give you nothing,’” King remarked. “I could sit down with Mike Pence for an afternoon and we might come to some agreement. And then [Trump would] blow it up.”
And if you need an object lesson in non-denial denials:

 “This is absolutely ludicrous that we are giving any type of credence or credibility to a news outlet like BuzzFeed,” [Deputy Press Secretary Hogan] Gidley said. “They are responsible totally and completely for the release of a discredited, disproven false dossier.”

Gidley claimed one of the reporters admitted he could not corroborate the evidence used in the article, but Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer said the reporter said the reporter had relied on two trusted sources.

“But that’s not news, that’s something he sees and puts out there,” Gidley said. “It’s the same reason and rationale behind a dossier that has caused this entire fake witch hunt Russia investigation, and now it’s all been disproven and debunked at this point. This is the type of thing that we have to do with every day, we’re used to it. A report came out that 90 percent of the coverage against this president last year was negative, this is another in a long line of ridiculous charges without any corroboration or credibility whatsoever.”
So much winning!*


*And Cohen plead guilty based on evidence of perjury and fraud, not because Perry Mason forced him to break down and confess his guilt under harsh cross examination.  Cohen may be a confessed liar, but his lies were proven against him, not proven by his guilty plea.


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Why Is This Woman Scary?

Yeah, we're all laughing at you, too, Mr. Woods.
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Thursday, January 17, 2019

So Maybe Trump Pulled the Trip for Other Reasons?


So Trump denies the Speaker the ability to "express appreciation and thanks to our men and women in uniform for their service and dedication" and "to meet with top NATOR commanders, U.S. military leaders and key allies--to affirm the United States' ironclad commitment to the NATO alliance"?  Because of a shutdown that doesn't affect the DOD, which has been fully funded for the year?  This is what he considers a "public relations event"?

I don't think we should overlook the significance of the purpose of the trip to Brussels in all the attention being paid to the pettiness of the POTUS.
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The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight



“We haven’t heard — he’s very silent, more than 24 hours … We haven’t heard yet,” she said.

Nancy Pelosi, speaking of Donald Trump, on the subject of the postponed SOTU.*  But it applies to almost everything.

This is his first tweet in 24 hours:


And yeah, it's got a typo.  Kind of hard to be menacing when you can't be literate. That was followed by one more, notable for who it doesn't mention, and for what it does:
No, I don't know either, and don't care.  Seems to be like his post about walls in the world, which one account blamed on FoxNews, another on USA Today.  But nobody, best I can tell, even wants to fact check this stuff anymore.  I mean, why bother?
And he's throwing himself a pity party, because he re-tweeted this:
He blamed "Speaker Pelosi" for not allowing Democrats to negotiate a deal (not that there are any reports they are anxious to), and the "radical left" for controlling the Democrats.  Pretty weak tea in the face of AOC's actions yesterday.  He still won't mention Pelosi, which is what's telling; and he's not talking about the SOTU, because it's a fight he can't win.  But he thinks he can fight anyway:

Which is not playing on the same field at all.  Trump isn't shaming Pelosi with this act; he's being childish and petulant because he can't force the Speaker to allow him to address Congress or even enter the floor of the House of Representatives.  Not going overseas during the shutdown actually plays to Pelosi's point.  And it's worth noting:

DHS considers the State of the Union to be a “national special security event” requiring “some of the most complex and logistically complicated protective operations undertaken by the Secret Service, often requiring anywhere from 3 to 18 months of planning.” 

Trump's attempt at retaliation does not increase confidence in the abilities of the Administration.  While it's a veiled attempt at responding to Pelosi's withdrawal of the invitation, her statement we opened with is still true:  Trump hasn't responded to her about that.  There is no quid pro quo offered here, no real mention of the SOTU at all.  Certainly nobody's getting eaten alive by that letter.


*It's worth noting the SOTU is required by the Constitution "from time to time", and between the Presidencies of Jefferson until Woodrow Wilson, it was merely sent to Congress as a document. The idea of reading it to a joint session is a product of communications technology, and honestly, who needs Trump preening himself on the idea of making so many people miserable and creating so much chaos due to incompetence, just because he's got the Presidential seal?
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Asking for a friend....


Which returns us to the question:  why are we letting this happen?  Why do we think this is normal and even required by our Constitutional form of government?  This is not the example of a government of laws, this is the perfect example of a government of men (almost explicitly "men").

 
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