Republicans Archives – Bent Corner

Once, twice, three times a Trump government shutdown

If you awoke this morning feeling off-kilter, annoyed, or as though something was just off, it’s because of the federal government shutdown that went into effect early this morning.

The reason for the shutdown is because President Trump declared he would not sign a spending bill into law unless it included $5.7 billion for a wall between Mexico and our southern border. The Republican-controlled House passed just such a bill, but the Republican-controlled Senate could not muster the 60 votes needed to advance the bill for a final vote. The final vote needs only a majority to pass.

This current government shutdown is the third government shutdown under President Trump’s astute leadership.

Once, twice, three times a Trump government shutdown - Bent Corner — Any wall built should not only be impervious to Mexicans and their delicious food but also to Titans.

Personally, I think this is a stupid reason to shut down the government. Although I think building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico is even more stupid, the big orange man-baby we have as our president did run on building a wall. Elections have consequences. At least they should.

Let Trump begin building his stupid wall

Sadly, some people will not realize just how dumb building a wall on our southern border is unless we begin to build the thing. Let’s spend over $5 billion on a wall and see exactly how much wall we get for that money. Then, people can calculate for themselves how much it will then cost to repeat the process for the entire southern border.

Not capitulating to Trump’s demand for wall money could mean the government is shut down for a very long time. Are Senate Democrats ready for that? Is this something they want to find Trump on?

If the $5.7 billion sounds like a lot of money, remember that both houses of Congress already signed off on a providing the military over $700 billion for 2019. Compare that to Trump’s wall money, it doesn’t sound like a lot. Sure, it’s a waste of money, but so is most of the money going to the military.

If you ever want to see how the military wastes money, enlist in the armed forces.

It wouldn’t be Trump’s military parade, it would be ours

From Bloomberg in an article titled, House Republicans Prepare to Endorse Trump’s Military Parade:

House Republicans are preparing to endorse President Donald Trump’s plan for a military parade in the nation’s capital, with warfighting vehicles rolling down city streets and planes flying overhead.

The display in Washington would be authorized under the Republican-proposed draft for the annual defense policy measure, according to a bill summary released Friday. The measure is scheduled to be taken up by the House Armed Services Committee on May 9.

Bloomberg isn’t the only cog in the wheel known as the mainstream news media to refer to the military parade as “Trump’s military parade.” Everyone seems to be doing it.

I googled “Military Parade” and these are the top-three results:

We as a nation spend a lot of discretionary money on our military. It’s one of the reasons we have the largest, most lethal fighting force the world has ever seen. The thing is, unless the average American has volunteered to serve in the military they will probably never know just how massive our military force is.

I’m not a fan of Donald J Trump. I didn’t vote for him. I would never vote for him. That said, when he said we ought to have a large military parade like he witnessed in France, I agreed with him.

Trump was right.

A broken clock is right twice a day. Even a buffoon like Trump can be right sometimes.

Living in a representative democracy, we Americans should have a better grasp and understanding of how our discretionary money is spent. The largest chunk of our discretionary spending is spent on our military.

In comparison to the rest of the world, we spend a lot more money on our military than the rest of the countries do.

If our elected leaders choose to build and maintain the world’s largest, most expensive military in the world than we should know just what that military looks like.

A large military parade might help do that. The bigger that better I say. It should be a national holiday and carried on all three national broadcast TV networks.

Jimmy Kimmel vs Sean Hannity

Evidently, late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel has been going at it with conservative talk show host Sean Hannity over Melania Trump’s accent. Being that I dislike all three people, Jimmy Kimmel, Sean Hannity, and Melania Trump, I feel I’m in the perfect place to comment on this controversy.

Shame on Jimmy Kimmel for making fun of someone’s accent. That’s low hanging fruit when it comes to material for making fun of someone. She has a weird accent because she’s from another country. She not only speaks English, she speaks the language of her native country, Slovenia. How many languages do you speak Jimmy Kimmel? I’m guessing only one unless you count crying as a language.

It’s not like Jimmy Kimmel comes up with his own funny barbs to throw against his adversaries. He has a whole staff of writers who are tasked with making up funny things for Jimmy Kimmel to say.

Shame on Sean Hannity too. He’s made an entire career delivering propaganda for the Republican party. One of the reasons I could never be a Republican is because of Sean Hannity. He’s an uneducated blowhard. He’s not a commentator, he’s a propagandist. He says things that he knows are factually incorrect, but he says them because he wants to help the GOP. I’d have more respect for him if he actually worked for the GOP. Instead, he works for Fox News, fair and balanced.

And finally, shame on Melania Trump. She chose to marry Donald J. Trump and even have a child with him. I’m guessing she was hoping for a girl but instead had a boy. Donald Trump’s daughters turn out better than his sons.

It’s a proven scientific fact.

It’s pretty clear at this point that Donald J. Trump had a sexual relationship with a porn actress while he was married to Melania Trump. A porn actress. That’s like having a sexual relationship with a urinal at Yankees Stadium.

Donald J. Trump’s porn actress girlfriend Stormy Daniels.

Does Melania Trump leave Donald J. Trump and file for divorce? Nope. Instead, she continues to be his wife, whatever that means.

I have no respect for that. Melania Trump has the means and the reason to divorce him, yet she stays married to Donald J. Trump. I don’t get that. All she’s doing at this point is sending a message, the wrong message, to women in a similar situation. If you stay with a man who commits adultery against you and your marriage, you are doing something wrong.

They shut down the government shutdown

Democrats caved and the 2018 government shutdown is over. I’m impressed. The Democrats stood up and shook a first in the air for a full three days.

That’s impressive for Democrats. There’s a reason I changed my party affiliation from Democrat to Unaffiliated. The way the Democrats fumbled this shutdown is one of those reasons.

It’s clear at this point Republicans aren’t going to do anything to protect the people previously protected by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). These are people who were brought to this country as small children and now face deportation back to countries many of them don’t remember. These are people who did nothing wrong. What should we do, punish someone for something that happened when they were a small child?

I guess so.

We have a failed immigration system. We’ve had one for years now. We chose not to fully enforce the immigration laws we had and we allowed millions of people to come here illegally. DACA was something, in my opinion, that helped fixed problems we allowed to happen.

If you ignore the law and allow people to come here illegally, some of them are going to bring their families. Some in those families are going to be young and truly blameless in the actions of their parents.

If anyone should be punished, punish the parents, not the children.

I expect the Republicans will fix DACA by the simple removal of the first two words, deferred action. The program goes away for good in March. I expect some young people who’ve lived in the United States most of their lives will be deported back to countries many of them don’t remember.

Some, not all.

That’s the way the law enforcement works in this county. Sometimes the law is applied, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes people who are here illegally are deported, sometimes they’re not.

My hope was that the Democrats would force Republicans to fix the problems they both allowed to happen. Not that DACA was perfect. It should have included a pathway to citizenship. I don’t want anyone immigrating to the United States unless their goal is to become a citizen.

Red alert! We have a government shutdown!

The U.S. Senate could not come to one of its 60-40 agreements late last night so that means our government has shut it down. The House passed a four-week spending bill. The Senate could not/would not do something similar. The Democrats wanted something in the spending bill, any spending bill, that would protect Dreamers, the people brought to this country illegally as children and who under the Obama Administration were protected by DACA.

People are now looking at who to blame, Democrats or Republicans. I blame the Republicans. They control the White House. They control both houses of Congress. I think this is the first government shutdown in my life where one political party controlled both houses of Congress and the White House and yet the government was shut down.

Congratulations Republicans.

The onus is on Republicans to get an agreement worked out. Like it says in the Bible or the pages of Spider-Man, with great power, there must also come great responsibility.

I agree with the Democrats that the Dreamers need to be protected. These people did nothing wrong. Their parents or the people who brought them here illegally did something wrong, but they didn’t. Something needs to be worked out that will stop Dreamers from being sent back to countries many of them don’t even remember ever living in.

DACA needs to be fixed. It’s not a Democratic issue, it’s not a Republican issue, it’s an American issue. DACA need to be extended and the people protected need a pathway to citizenship.

These government shutdowns are always a joke. The mail still gets delivered. Social Security checks still go out. The military still gets paid.

National Parks are usually closed, but who really cares about that? These shutdowns are always telegraphed well ahead of time. When it’s about to happen, how about you keep your family out of Yosemite? Chances are everyone would have come down with Lyme disease or someone would have been eaten by a bear. That’s the kind of stuff that happens all the time at National Parks.

Government workers are furloughed, but when the shut down ends, they get paid retroactively for work they did not do. They still will get paid.

Money for nothin’ and chicks for free. I think that’s from the Bible too. Or Spider-Man.

The only true ‘nuclear option’ involves a nuclear weapon

From CNN:

The announcement sets Republicans up to change Senate rules — referred to as the “nuclear option” — to lowering the threshold of advancing Supreme Court nominees to just 51 votes from 60.

This annoys me. Changing the number equaling a majority in the U.S. Senate from 60 to 51 is not a nuclear anything: it’s basic math. A country with as many nuclear weapons as we have should never throw the term “nuclear” around unless it’s actually referring to something nuclear. We’ve used nuclear weapons before. Twice. We’re the only country in the world that can make that claim.

With that said, we should stop being so flippant with the word nuclear. We should only use that word when it actually applies to weaponizing the energy released from nuclear reactions.

A bunch of mostly rich, old men changing the way they vote on something is not nuclear, it’s just plain old democracy. At least our retarded version of it.