Excellent news about the press briefings.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
Thank you, 2Bob.
Moving along... could the President shut off pay to Congress until there's resolution?

Have not seen responses to this, and my understanding may be faulty. However, Trump runs the executive branch. The house and senate are in the legislative branch. Don't see how Trump could cut off pay to a branch he does not "own".

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:
If the press really wants to continue the briefings, just hire someone like Milo to insult and battle with them for 30 minutes.

Bravo! Excellent idea!

quote:

Originally posted by Elk Hunter:

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
Thank you, 2Bob.
Moving along... could the President shut off pay to Congress until there's resolution?

Have not seen responses to this, and my understanding may be faulty. However, Trump runs the executive branch. The house and senate are in the legislative branch. Don't see how Trump could cut off pay to a branch he does not "own".

Unfortunately. What we need is a constitutional amendment that for every minute the government is without a budget the legislator are docked all pay, per diem, and any other benefits. (While we’re wishful thinking, all legislators are on exactly the same health plan as the American people, with no additional benefits. If OBozoCare is good enough for the rest of us, it is good enough for them and all their staffers.). Any pay, per diem, or other benefits lost while there is no budget because they failed to do their job is lost forever. No back pay like nonessential govt. workers get when things are settled. Heck, let’s make it a little challenging and require that the budget be balanced in all cases except for a declared budgetary emergency voted by 80% of the house and senate and agreed to by the President.*

*We don’t want to have our hands tied if WWIII or 2008 redux happens, but we don’t want these clowns declaring a perpetual emergency to get around having a balanced budget.

https://theconservativetreehou...speech-cancellation/

It looks like Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi has no intention of allowing the House chamber to be used for a State of the Union address.

Speaker Pelosi has informed the House Sergeant at Arms that no executive branch official will be permitted entry into the Capitol building.

Earlier Fox News reported Pelosi cancelled a walkthrough last week, and a second request for reconsideration from the White House is expected to meet the same fate. The House Speaker controls who is, and who is not, permitted entry to the House floor. Until Speaker Pelosi calls for a vote to support a joint session of congress, the President cannot enter the chamber.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley discusses the status of the current shutdown negotiations and the likelihood a SOU address will have to take place outside Washington DC.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/22...ion-plans/index.html

Over the holiday weekend, the White House asked for -- but was denied -- a walk-through by the House of Representatives' sergeant-at-arms in preparation of the speech. Still, on Tuesday a senior White House official said the administration is "moving forward" with plans for the speech at the US Capitol.

^^^^^^^^
Since few Dems will attend, probably enough room in the Senate chamber.

“Speaker Pelosi has informed the House Sergeant at Arms that no executive branch official will be permitted entry into the Capitol building.”

I don’t think Pelosi can refuse entry to the Senate.

Pelosi is playing this all wrong... Now he can give a state of the union to a select crowd, like a rally environment, with cheering crowds and supporters and no chance for an opposition response.

Fuck Pelosi, do it anyway, do it bigger, better, and with fireworks. Leave her sour egg sucking face at home

McConnell made a deal with schumer...

Why would any Senate Democrat vote for a funding bill with the wall, when thy know that they can follow that with a vote on a CR without wall funding? This is all Kabuki Theatre. Considering the weak-kneed Republican UniParty members, the most likely result is that the Bill will fail and the CR will pass.

Not surprisingly, this is a stinky deal. For any Republican to vote against the wall would be pure stupidity, as it would be politically for any Democrat to vote for the wall.

As stated emphatically in many posts above , PDJT is the only loser as he has to either veto or pass the CR and which ever way he goes it kills momentum that has been built over the past month.

quote:

Originally posted by Elk Hunter:

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
Thank you, 2Bob.
Moving along... could the President shut off pay to Congress until there's resolution?

Have not seen responses to this, and my understanding may be faulty. However, Trump runs the executive branch. The house and senate are in the legislative branch. Don't see how Trump could cut off pay to a branch he does not "own".

Hmm. You make a good point, sir.

How about an executive order? Again, "you jerks don't get paid until we have a solution. 'We the People' have suffered enough; it's time for you 'elites' to embrace the suck."

Fuck em, bring it down to the border in Texas, hold it here, and he can point out on tv the illegals coming across as part of the State of the Union, showing how full of shit the Dems are.

quote:

As stated emphatically in many posts above , PDJT is the only loser as he has to either veto or pass the CR and which ever way he goes it kills momentum that has been built over the past month.

Can we get a temporary cut of "Sandy Vagina" for calling Trump a loser.

The White House on Tuesday announced the re-nomination of 51 federal judicial nominees left over from the previous Congress, kickstarting the administration's effort to install more conservative judges after GOP activists worried that such appointments had stalled.

Nine of the 51 appointments are for spots on prestigious and influential federal appellate benches, including two on the mostly liberal San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which President Trump has often derided as politically biased.


Neomi Rao, the president's "regulatory czar," who would replace now-Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, is on the list. Case Western University School of Law professor and Washington Post commentator Jonathan H. Adler wrote when Rao first joined the administration that "Trump's selection of Rao suggests the administration is serious about regulatory reform, not merely reducing high-profile regulatory burdens."

Also on the roll was Brian Buescher, for a seat as United States district judge for the District of Nebraska. In December, Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, raised concerns about the Omaha-based lawyer's membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization -- prompting legal commentators to suggest the Democrats were engaging in religious discrimination.

“The Knights of Columbus has taken a number of extreme positions,” Hirono said in a questionnaire sent to Buescher. “For example, it was reportedly one of the top contributors to California’s Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage.”

Harris, in her questions to the nominee, called the Knights of Columbus “an all-male society” and asked the Nebraska lawyer if he was aware that the group was anti-abortion and opposed to same-sex marriage when he joined.

The California senator and 2020 presidential hopeful also referenced Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson’s statement that abortion amounted to “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale” and asked Buescher if he agreed with the statement.

In his response, Buescher argued that the Knights of Columbus’ official positions on issues do not represent every one of the group’s members and said he would recuse himself from hearing cases where he saw a conflict of interest.

“The Knights of Columbus does not have the authority to take personal political positions on behalf of all of its approximately two million members,” Buescher wrote. “If confirmed, I will apply all provisions of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges regarding recusal and disqualification.”

In an op-ed this week in The Washington Post entitled "Anti-Catholic bigotry is alive in the U.S. Senate," columnist Michael Gerson wrote that questions like the ones from Harris and Hirono were inappropriate and "scare the hell out of vast sections of the country."

Missing from the list were three conservative judges the White House has said it will install on the Ninth Circuit without seeking what's known as a blue slip," or an opinion, from California senators.

In a snub to California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Harris, the White House announced in October Trump had nominated Patrick Bumatay, Daniel Collins and Kenneth Kiyul Lee (all from the Golden State, and reportedly all members of the conservative Federalist Society) to the traditionally liberal Ninth Circuit. The court, with a sprawling purview representing nine Western states, has long been a thorn in the side of the Trump White House, with rulings against the travel ban and limits on funding to "sanctuary cities."

The Judicial Crisis Network announced in a statement it would launch a $1.5 million national advertising campaign on both television and the Internet calling on Democrats to support the judges, and noting that there are an "unprecedented 163 judicial vacancies in the federal court system."

“Because of Democrats’ unprecedented obstruction of judicial nominees, we now have significantly more vacancies than when President Trump took office," Judicial Crisis Network Chief Counsel and Policy Director Carrie Severino said in a statement.

"Senator McConnell has restated his commitment to filling the vacancies and has maintained that this is a Senate priority. It’s time for Democrats to end the bullying and smear campaigns and confirm the judges," Severino added.

The nominations seemed poised to quiet growing conservative unrest about the relative lack of news on appointments during the ongoing partial federal government shutdown, which commenced Dec. 22. Six new appointments to federal district courts, which are effectively trial courts, were announced by the White House last week.

“People are starting to scratch their heads and wonder, ‘When are we going to start up again?" one source close to the White House told Politico earlier this month.

The White House, along with Senate GOP leaders, has made appointing conservative judges and justices a key priority. Under the Trump administration, 85 federal judges have been installed, including Associate Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and 30 appellate judges.

Senate Democrats previously eliminated the filibuster for federal judicial nominees below the Supreme Court level during the Obama administration, meaning that each of the 51 nominees needs only a majority vote in the Senate to win confirmation.

Once they claimed their current Senate majority, Republicans, in response, eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees as well.


https://www.foxnews.com/politi...iberal-ninth-circuit

we've come too far to compromise on the wall

border security and national security is the single most important thing President Trump was elected to ensure

giving this away would be bad

we're being held hostage by democrats and that needs to change

Remember before the shutdown?
Prior to the shutdown, House Republicans passed a wall-funding proposal, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) concluded it was a no-go given the Senate's 60-vote threshold to end debate.
McConnell could have brought it to the floor.

If he couldn't get to the 60-vote threshold to end debate.... he could have let them debate. He could have let them speak until they were blue in the face. He could have let them fall over trying to keep up the debate.
And then... he could have called the vote.

But McConnell doesn't really care about the wall or giving the President a win. McConnell's constituency still seems to be the Chamber of Commerce folks who don't want a wall.

The 60-vote threshold is not to pass legislation. The 60-vote threshold is only to end debate. Debate will end, at some point, without a vote to end debate. It only takes a majority of 50 votes, +1 (pence as tiebreaker) to pass legislation.

Just declare a National Emergency

I heard something this morning that President Trump may do the SOTU from somewhere on the border?

Preisdent Trump: Madam Speaker; eat shit and die you dried out bitch.

quote:

Dear Madam Speaker:

Thank you for your letter of January 3, 2019, sent to me long after the Shutdown began, inviting me to address the Nation on January 29th as to the State of the Union.

As you know, I had already accepted your kind invitation, however, I then received another letter from you dated January 16, 2019, wherein you expressed concerns regarding security during the State of the Union Address due to the Shutdown. Even prior to asking, I was contacted by the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Secret Service to explain that there would be absolutely no problem regarding security with respect to the event. They have since confirmed this publicly.

Accordingly, there are no security concerns regarding the State of the Union Address. Therefore, I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the State of our Union.

I look forward to seeing you on the evening on January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!

on the evening on January 29th?
Whoops.... his proof reader missed that.
Otherwise, it's a great letter.
My guess is that the SOTU address will take place in the House as scheduled.

Cohen Postpones House Testimony, Citing Threats From Trump, Giuliani


Michael D. Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer who subsequently turned on his formerly employer, and who was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee - which will also sport Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez among its ranks - has indefinitely postponed his congressional testimony, his lawyer said in a statement on Wednesday.

According tot he NYT, Cohen was set to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7 at the invitation of Rep (D, MD) Elijah Cummings and the chairman of the committee, but according to the NYT, "backed out because of ongoing threats against his family, his lawyer Lanny Davis said in a statement." Davis cited Trump’s verbal attacks on Mr. Cohen and some of his relatives.

“By advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date,” Mr. Davis said in the statement. “Mr. Cohen wishes to thank Chairman Cummings for allowing him to appear before the House Oversight Committee and looks forward to testifying at the appropriate time.” He added, “This is a time where Mr. Cohen had to put his family and their safety first."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news...reats-trump-giuliani