Saturday, December 22, 2018

It's official: This shutdown won't be resolved until after Christmas. The Senate is set to adjourn today with no deal. Next formal meeting at 4 p.m. Thursday, McConnell announces, per


CBS: Brett McGurk, top U.S. envoy in ISIS fight, resigns


Celebrities And Lawmakers Flood Twitter With #TrumpResign Tweets “I’ve been saying for a long time that the one honorable thing Trump could do would be to put down his cell phone and go peacefully into the dark.”


One reason that Trump's "steel slat" project would cost so much: Trump's own steel tariffs


wtf the bill he is claiming to sign is literally a blank piece of paper


Shutdown Proves Once and For All Trump Has No Idea What He’s Doing


Taliban greets Pentagon's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan with cries of victory.


Former defense secretaries: Trump unfit for office


Lavrov says Moscow will not recognize the Donbas republics because to do so would be “to lose all the rest of Ukraine" -- a clear indication from “Putin’s Ribbentrop” that the Kremlin wants to control all of Ukraine


#TrumpResign trending at #1 on Twitter


Why is anyone surprised that Trump's willing to shut down our government when it's clearly not the one he works for?


Remember when the #GOP went berserk because Hillary's spouse had a casual conversation with AG Lynch at the airport? Waiting for GOP to go berserk again because @POTUS is now having direct conversations to influence acting AG Whitaker on investigations that implicate him ....


"Thursday's decision by Jim Mattis to leave the stifling, rapidly collapsing confines of Trump’s insane clown posse administration was always inevitable, but that hardly makes the psychological impact of his departure any less traumatic."


Scared yet? If so, support HR 669 / S 200 by Sen @EdMarkey and me. The bipartisan legislation prevents @POTUS from launching a nuclear first strike without Congressional authorization


Jim Mattis Compared Trump to ‘Fifth or Sixth Grader,’ Bob Woodward Says in Book


A superb reconstruction of Jamal Khashoggi’s last 18 months


Getting the US to withdraw from Syria has been for years quite literally one of Putin’s top foreign policy goals. This is just a fact.


The latest Senate Intel Committee reports shone a new light on an undercovered aspect of the Russian election interference campaign: phony black activist trolls urging votes for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.


The shape of reform in Saudi Arabia: Car races, concerts and crowds of men and women mixing, but no criticism of the crown prince.


Why is the northeast feeling the most housing pain? That's easy: Trump's tax cuts.


Opinion: Barr’s memo on Mueller embraces a dubious constitutional vision


Iran says U.S. troops in Syria "illogical, source of tension" -report


Disarray in Europe and the U.S. leaves a leadership vacuum in the world's wealthy democracies


EXCLUSIVE: Bolton’s hawkish Syria plan backfired, pushing Trump to get out.


Media talking heads need to keep this shutdown story pure and simple: Congress and Trump had agreed to a deal to keep the government open until Trump reneged after he was attacked by FOX News.


LeBron James rips NFL team owners as "old white men" with "slave mentality"


Fun fact: 27 out of the 34 bills sent to his desk for signature yesterday were just renaming post offices.


So the Violence Against Women Act just officially expired. This will cut off funding for programs that help victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. Trump and the Republicans refused to reauthorize the law which has been in place since 1994. Make sure people know this.


Stocks plunged again on Friday due to fears of a looming government shutdown and the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates earlier in the week. The Dow dove about 400 points to end its worst week in 10 years.


I am told to expect more resignations at the Pentagon in wake of Mattis. A senior US defense official tells me: “Make no mistake - Mattis is resigning in protest over the President's national security policies," a resignation based on "principle."


Now "The Wall" is a fence.


The New York Daily News has taken aim at "Grinch" Donald Trump over the government shutdown.


In the Middle East, officials see Russia ascendant, Iran on the rise, an Islamic State that has survived—and Trump calls this victory?


5 ways a partial government shutdown would inflict pain


Words fail me. The President is having conversations w/the Acting AG he installed (w/out Senate confirmation) about a criminal case in which he is directly implicated. Compare U.S. Constit., Art. II "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"


“The government is shutdown” — what does it mean? A mom standing guard on the border won’t get her paycheck. A family ready to open the door to their first home will find it locked. & a small business owner will lose his first big government contract. This #TrumpShutdown is real.


Home buyers and those looking to visit national parks will be among those affected by the shutdown.


“Do we succumb to tyranny of radio talk show hosts?” Corker told us on Hill “We have two talk radio hosts who influenced the president - that’s tyranny isn’t it?”


“Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving,” said one analyst. “Trump implements Russia’s negative agenda by default, undermining the U.S.–led world order. Russia can just relax and watch and root for Trump, which Putin does at every TV appearance.”


President Trump: "We're totally prepared for a very long shutdown."


Watch how angry he gets. He turns more orange than usual. ‘I am proud to shut down the government…I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down.’ — President Trump. Remember these words.


Because of Trump’s temper tantrum, Americans will not be getting paid during the holidays. His irresponsible and reckless actions demonstrate he has no regard for hard-working families.


I know that gvmt shutdowns tend to get spoken of in abstract terms, but this has a *huge* impact on low-wage workers in DC. Most fed workers get repaid for furlough days but the janitors, security guards, & cafeteria servers who work as subcontractors in federal buildings don’t.


Lordy did @KFILE find a tape -- Mick Mulvaney, Trump's new White House chief of staff, said during the campaign that Trump's border wall idea was "simplistic" and "absurd and almost childish."


NEW: Corker revealed today that the U.S. military was planning a “major clearing operation” targeting ISIS in the Euphrates River Valley in six weeks—one that won’t take place anymore after Trump’s abrupt Syria withdrawal order


Psychiatrist: With Trump, “You See Sadism In Everything He Does. ... There's a way in which he takes a kind of manic glee in causing harm and pain and humiliation to other people.”


Ever since the Cambridge Analytica cataclysm, the Mercers have gone silent, cut funding, and hope to be forgotten. Good luck with that.


Congressional GOP saves room for cheese amid shutdown crisis


Congress back to square one as Trump forces government shutdown


Hirono: Trump only wants an A.G. who will do his bidding


Judge sparks intrigue by lifting gag order in Butina case


"We're in trouble... on very shaky ground. The President sounds erratic, impulsive and making fundamentally bad decisions... Congress [is] going to have to... step in. provide oversight over what increasingly looks like a rogue presidency"


Shutdown


Opinion: Mattis endured a lot. Here’s why this was the last straw.


Congressional GOP saves room for cheese amid shutdown crisis


Trump Discusses Firing Fed's Powell After Latest Rate Hike, Sources Say


Trump already lost the Middle East to Putin. Asia is next.


Russia is ecstatic about the Mattis resignation: "Trump is ours again"


Trump has reportedly lashed out at Matt Whitaker at least twice in the past weeks over the NY Cohen investigation. Trump pressed Whitaker on why more wasn't being done to control the prosecutors who brought the charges, suggesting they were going rogue


It's official. The government has shut down for the third time in a year. Republicans still control the White House, the Senate, and the House.