The Trial

“Good morning your Honor, The Crown will plainly show the prisoner who now stands before you was caught red handed showing feelings, feelings of an almost human nature.”

This will not do.

So, confronted with the approbation of his Faux Noise Demagogues, Unidicted Co-conspirator Trump caves yet again.

Nancy Pelosi was exactly right when she told him just a week ago that he didn’t have the votes even in the House to pass the $5 Billion for his damned Border Wall and he still doesn’t. Even Chuck Schumer can be right twice a day and when he says Unidicted Co-conspirator Trump doesn’t have them now, won’t have them next week, and won’t have them in 2 months it is one of those times.

Paul Ryan is slinking out of town (perhaps more on that later) and a large number of Legislators including many “moderate” Republicans who lost and are anxious to get on with their lives have already ditched D.C.. If summoned back resentful and inconvenienced they are no more likely to support it than they were in the first place.

This is doomed and everyone knows it.

But the Nazi, Racist, Bigoted, Misogynous, Republican Base know also that this is their last chance to get their Big Beautiful Wall blocking the Brown people invasion of ‘Murika because they’ve been told so by their Bubble Blockleiters.

Ho, ho, ho to a shutdown we go. Mostly you’ll hardly notice since 2 thirds of the Government is funded and essential services will not cease, but a lot of people aren’t going to be getting checks and that has what Economists call multiplier effects.

Wall Street is responding by dropping like a stone.

                 12/20/17   12/20/18
        Dow      24726.65  22,859.60   -1867.05
        S&P 500   2679.25   2,467.41    -211.84
        NASDAQ    6960.96   6,528.41    -432.55

I’ve felt the Markets overvalued since 2005 and evidence of inflation in Luxury Goods which reflects our growing wealth inequality but what do I know? I’m a Historian, not an Economist Jim.

Anyway, good luck with all that.

Shutdown fight isn’t Trump vs. Democrats. It’s Trump vs. GOP.
By Colby Itkowitz, Washington Post
December 20, 2018

Last week, President Trump was happy to fall on the sword for his border wall. Then on Wednesday, the White House seemed to indicate he would be willing to sign a short-term deal to keep the government open until early February.

But all of that fell apart Thursday morning when Trump began his day tweeting about the need for a border wall and placing the blame on GOP leadership for failing to get him the money he wants for it. A morning news conference by departing House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was hastily canceled after he spoke by phone with Trump, suggesting talks were breaking down.

If Trump maintains a hard line stance on the wall and lets the government partially shut down Friday at midnight it won’t be because he couldn’t be swayed by incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N. Y). It will be because he couldn’t be swayed by Republican leadership.

Trump has shown time and again that he cares way more about his supporters and his good standing with them than he does about the Republican Party. That has made him an impossible negotiating partner.

When it seemed as if Trump might cave, the right-wing media piled on. Ann Coulter called him “gutless,” and Breitbart News noted Trump’s walk-back of promises from the 2016 campaign (like the fact that “the big, beautiful wall” is now concrete slats). Moreover, Trump’s loyal foot soldiers on Capitol Hill are urging him to reject the spending deal, warning of the major damage it would cause Trump with his base and his 2020 reelection bid. In fact, the leaders of the Freedom Caucus are going to the White House on Thursday afternoon to deliver that message.

Adoration from his base is Trump’s lifeblood. The threat of losing his supporters’ affection is enough to make him throw the rest of the GOP and the federal government under the bus. As soon as he started getting criticized by them, he yearned to appease them.

A similar dynamic played out over immigration earlier this year when Schumer offered Trump a deal: funding for his border wall in exchange for a path to citizenship for “dreamers,” the undocumented immigrants brought to America as children. Schumer believed Trump was on board, but as soon as Trump received pushback from his supporters, he turned down the deal.

The Senate passed a short-term funding bill Wednesday night believing he would sign it and woke up the next morning to find out he wouldn’t.

Then they have to start all over again. It’s needless brinkmanship of the kind Trump has played with Republicans for the past two years.

But things are about to get much worse for Trump next year. He knows, and his allies on the Hill know, that if they don’t push for the wall funding now, it’s never going to happen.

Because in January, Trump won’t have the luxury of a GOP leadership in the House to bend the knee. Pelosi will control the agenda, and Trump will be forced into the untenable position of actually negotiating and risk losing support from his base, or sticking to his hard-line views and getting absolutely nothing for it.

“The evidence before the court is incontrovertible, there’s no need for the jury to retire. In all my years of judging I have never heard before of someone more deserving of the full penalty of law. The way you made them suffer fills me with the urge to defecate. Since you have revealed your deepest fear I sentence you to be exposed before your peers.”

Tear down the Wall!