Nerd Pride Radio

First off, I feel for the people who will actually suffer due to the shutdown. That sucks. That includes people who will actually lose time and pay (or have it all delayed because of this), but also includes people who live paycheck to paycheck and were counting on their tax refund, but just found out that that the IRS isn’t accepting returns yet--and won’t at least until this is resolved, if not longer with the new tax laws.

But let’s be fair here. It takes 60 votes to keep the government running. Therefore, both sides have the ability to block this and keep it from passing. Neither side has the ability to keep the government open completely on its own. So it is unfair to blame the closing entirely on one side or another. The nuanced discussion that no one is having is that BOTH sides have chosen to allow the government to shut down, because whatever principle they are standing on is more important to them at this moment.

DACA seems to be the sticking point. Democrats in Congress are willing to let the government shut down if they don’t get some continuation of the DACA program. They have been willing to grant more money for border security and “the wall” in exchange, even though most of them disagree with providing more money for those things. They were willing to give some things, but getting a guarantee on DACA is important enough to them to shut down the government.

Republicans in Congress are willing to let the government shut down rather than provide any sort of guarantee of the continuation of DACA. DACA is something that Trump and all the major Republican leaders have said they wanted. At the last budget face-off, they promised that they would put DACA to a vote. They never did. Now they say they still want to vote on DACA and provide help to the people it covers, but they don’t want to do it now with the budget resolution. They want to move forward on the promise that they will get to it. And delaying action on DACA is important enough to them to shut down the government.

Both sides have chosen a government shutdown. If you want to play blame, you have to talk about why each side made that choice and debate who (if anyone) is being unreasonable or disingenuous or whatever. The color of my explanation above makes it clear that I think the Republicans are the ones who are being unreasonable and playing at political games at the expense of people’s lives and livelihoods. But I’m sure there are people on that side who can give me the counterpoint to that.

Sadly--we HAD a bipartisan resolution ready, but Trump's shithole talk seems to have scuttled it. Which doesn't alter any of my points above... It's just sad that we seemed to have been so close to resolving this.

Not just DACA. CHIP too.

Funding for CHIP was included in the GOP-supported bill that was defeated.

Despite claiming to support DACA, McConnell said something along the lines of: I can't believe Senate Democrats are willing to side with illegal immigrants over American children.

Brinksmanship is the only move they have.

Well, that and lying.

CHIP is being used as an extortion tool by Mitch McConnell. They are the ones choosing to let it die if they don't get the other cuts they want. This absolutely cannot be blamed on Democrats when even Republicans don't agree on their proposals. I get that there are politics on both sides but one side takes giving poor kids health care as an obvious yes and the other is happy to make it a poker chips and destroy as needed. There's no "both sides" to this thing. One side only has that long track record of being willing to shut the government down over what they want, and it ain't the Democrats.

Then there are multiple reports where GOP senators accuse WH of shifting positions that scuttles the debate. Debating a jello was a quote throw around.

If the Republicans have enough votes to even pass a bill, much less get the additional Democrats on board, then it would make more sense to blame the latter. If the GOP can't even get to fifty, maybe it's time to stop dangling the prospect of taking away CHIP as a bargaining tool. Makes it clear they really don't give a shit about CHIP. The Republicans are equally willing to stop government to make sure a bunch of kids who know no other home can be deported, including college students and successful young professionals. ICE is targeting them, because this admin doesn't subscribe to normal human ideas about who makes a desirable citizen. Maybe we assume nobody is going to deport nurses in the midst of a nursing shortage, because we aren't nakedly racist and have sense, but they don't want any nurse who came here as a baby from Central America to stay, period. Republicans said they'd make a deal on DACA after Trump set the early March deadline, but they clearly will not, so their promises cannot be believed. We are going to lose vital people in a senseless, cruel way over this. Thank God someone has priorities straight somewhere. The media has collective amnesia about not only why the past shutdowns happened, but also how they were reported (again, the supposed fault of Democrats!). I remember it well, given that my husband's job was affected. No matter what happens or what the cause really is, the shutdowns are blamed in the supposed liberal mainstream outlets on D's and it's idiotic and mendacious.

Are you arguing with someone or just ranting? Because we seem to agree on who the bad actors are in this situation.

Congress?

Just ranting. Things are really bad over here.

The Democrats would fuck over every immigrant and every child living in poverty in exchange for Paul Ryan affectionately ruffling their hair and calling them good boys.

Shapiro is a crypto racist. He frequently uses selective quoting to support his ideas on policy. His vdeps where he ”demolishes black lives matter" for example. He is clearly an intelligent man, so I am less inclined to believe his statements are from a position of ignorance, and more inclined to believe that he is purposefully spreading disinformation.

Yep, a Shapiro video about being transgender is just a mental health issue is responsible for a bit of a falling out between me (the parent of a transgender child) and a few members of my family who thought his video was all-that-and-more.

Trump again said that he'd talk to Mueller "under oath" only for his lawyers again to walk it back.

Oye. Just realized that we're going to get decades of Trump's Strategy of Incoherence like this is all a brilliant way of keeping his opponents off-kilter, when he's just doing it to everyone, because he's incoherent.