Shutdown Over Border Security?

[carpedm9587]

Politician to audience after an actual emergency (e.g., a hurricane) has impacted people:

I could do relief over a longer period of time. I don't need to do this. But I'd rather do it much faster."

Yeah... I can see someone making such a statement in an actual emergency (sarcasm intended). Sorry...but that very idea actually earns an


Hint: the problem, MM (and others) is the insertion of "I don't need to do this" in the middle. When we have an actual emergency, we actually need to act and do so quickly. It's not a matter of something we'd "rather" do. The emergency does not permit the luxury of time.

[carpedm9587]

Tass is a media tourist, from a foreign country, and only looking for those news stories that are on his map.

I see...so - bottom line - if someone isn't from here they have no business making observations about our politics or news?

[Mountain Man]

Hint: the problem, MM (and others) is the insertion of "I don't need to do this" in the middle. When we have an actual emergency, we actually need to act and do so quickly. It's not a matter of something we'd "rather" do. The emergency does not permit the luxury of time.

Taking Trump literally instead of taking him seriously. He obviously meant that he shouldn't need to do this. In context, he was responding to the inadequate funding doled out by Congress.

[Bill the Cat]

I see...so - bottom line - if someone isn't from here they have no business making observations about our politics or news?

About matters that take specific knowledge of what is going on here, pretty much. They have no actual frame of reference on how this country is run, and the intricacies of policy. They see through the lens of their own country's politics.

[carpedm9587]

Taking Trump literally instead of taking him seriously.

I realize this is a common Republican trope - but it's pretty lame. He said what he said.

He obviously meant that he shouldn't need to do this.

Obviously? No - what's obvious to me is that there is no emergency. Trump seems to have inadvertently acknowledged the reality. The tough thing about lying is keeping your lies straight. Trump doesn't even bother trying to do that.

In context, he was responding to the inadequate funding doled out by Congress.

In context, he was acknowledging that there is no emergency.

That being said, I think there are two inevitable realities here. First, it doesn't really matter what he said. Any court challenge is likely to fail. Congress gave the president sweeping powers in the National Emergencies Act, and it has not been deemed unconstitutional. This will eventually go all the way to SCOTUS (I cannot imagine either side "letting it go") and they will very likely rule in Trump's favor. Reversing the National Emergencies Act is unlikely to garner enough support in Congress to survive the inevitable presidential veto by this president or any other.

Second, in order to do this Trump is going to have to take money from Peter to pay Paul. The people that will be satisfied by this will be his base. But he already has them in his camp, so satisfying them gains him very little. The people that will be very unhappy with this will include the anti-Trump camp. He has already lost them, so nothing lost. The rest of the people he will lose, however, are the moderates who have expressed opposition to this wall, and anyone negatively impacted by his appropriation of funds. Of course some is coming from Puerto Rico (which has no electoral votes - so Trump loses nothing) and from California fire relief funds (and California is solidly blue, so except for further erosion of the popular vote - little harm done). But he is also likely to take from the military and other cherished projects to the right, and there are voices on the right objecting to the "executive over-reach" on the basis of their previous objection to Obama (kudos to them for being consistent!).

So, tap, tap, tap - Trump keeps chipping away at the extremely narrow electoral win he had in 2016. Which is why I say, "go Trump go!"

[carpedm9587]

About matters that take specific knowledge of what is going on here, pretty much. They have no actual frame of reference on how this country is run, and the intricacies of policy. They see through the lens of their own country's politics.

Sometimes...seeing from outside means you are not trapped by the walls of your own box....

[Bill the Cat]

Sometimes...seeing from outside means you are not trapped by the walls of your own box....

And other times, it means you have no idea what the box is about in the first place.

[carpedm9587]

And other times, it means you have no idea what the box is about in the first place.

So if you put both of those together, it suggests that there are times when an outside perspective is useful, and helps us see things we might miss because we are too close to it, or too biased by our own perspectives. In other words, we shouldn't be dismissing people simply because "they are outside and don't know." Indeed, if the only people who could have a valid opinion or idea were people who had direct experience, the fields of medicine, psychiatry (and counseling in general), and law would be impossible.

[Starlight]

Sometimes...seeing from outside means you are not trapped by the walls of your own box....

It's a common US conservative way of insulting their cult from other opinions...

Foreigners aren't allowed to have views cos they aren't American.
Media views are discounted cos they're the 'fake news liberal media'.
Academic views are discounted cos they're liberal.

It allows US conservatives to basically clap their hands over their ears and sing 'la la la' when it comes to hearing views other than their own.

[Bill the Cat]

It's a common US conservative way of insulting their cult from other opinions...

Foreigners aren't allowed to have views cos they aren't American.
Media views are discounted cos they're the 'fake news liberal media'.
Academic views are discounted cos they're liberal.

It allows US conservatives to basically clap their hands over their ears and sing 'la la la' when it comes to hearing views other than their own.

When your view is as typically tone deaf as yours and Tassy's, We can't help but put our hands over our ears to shield the garbage.

[Bill the Cat]

So if you put both of those together, it suggests that there are times when an outside perspective is useful, and helps us see things we might miss because we are too close to it, or too biased by our own perspectives. In other words, we shouldn't be dismissing people simply because "they are outside and don't know." Indeed, if the only people who could have a valid opinion or idea were people who had direct experience, the fields of medicine, psychiatry (and counseling in general), and law would be impossible.

Of course. But other times, only an expert's perspective is useful. Immigration is one of those issues.

[carpedm9587]

It's a common US conservative way of insulting their cult from other opinions...

Foreigners aren't allowed to have views cos they aren't American.
Media views are discounted cos they're the 'fake news liberal media'.
Academic views are discounted cos they're liberal.

It allows US conservatives to basically clap their hands over their ears and sing 'la la la' when it comes to hearing views other than their own.

I was listening to a podcast earlier today, and the person being interviewed (don't remember who it was) made an interesting statement. They observed that if you pick two Democrats at random, the probability that they will be the same race, gender, and ethnicity is significantly smaller than if you do the same thing within the Republican party. The net effect of that reality is that it is easier for Republicans (in general) to paint people as "other" and dismiss them. It is harder for Democrats because there is simply not as much cohesion within the party.

A little looking suggests that this is actually statistically accurate, which suggests the conclusion is as well. However, I was fascinated to see that the two parties have badly skewed perspectives of each other.

[Starlight]

I was listening to a podcast earlier today, and the person being interviewed (don't remember who it was) made an interesting statement. They observed that if you pick two Democrats at random, the probability that they will be the same race, gender, and ethnicity is significantly smaller than if you do the same thing within the Republican party. The net effect of that reality is that it is easier for Republicans (in general) to paint people as "other" and dismiss them. It is harder for Democrats because there is simply not as much cohesion within the party.

An interesting interview I heard with an academic several months ago was about some media studies he had been doing. His team had done an automated analysis of hyperlinks posted on twitter and facebook to see what variety of news and opinion sites any given poster linked to. They also did the same analysis on the media outlets themselves to see which media outlets were linking to each other.

They found that the average liberal tended to have a wide spectrum of media that they would link to - a person who linked to HuffPo might then link to the Wall St Journal then the BBC, etc. In general liberals' media linkage was broad, would include all sorts of mainstream and non-mainstream media, and wasn't tied tightly into any particular site or small set of sites. Conservatives by contrast, exhibited the exact opposite pattern - their links tended to all go to the same small range of sites which themselves almost solely linked to other members of their own group. This tight far-right Drudge-Fox-Breitbart sphere of sites and hangers-on was found to be very isolated from the remainder of the broad spectrum of American and global news and opinion sites that liberals were interested in.

They also had a manual look at the question of: When one site critiqued a story from another site, why did it critique it? The pattern they saw in mainstream media and liberal sites was a "fact-check" - if one site spotted any error in another site's reporting of a story, they would post an article explaining the error. However they found almost none of this at all among the tight conservative sphere of sites. When one conservative site critiqued another's story, it was almost always critiqued on ideological purity grounds - namely the site would accuse the writer of the original piece of not being sufficiently conservative.

In both cases the conservatives are showing cult-like behavior: A tightly enclosed sphere of 'legitimate information', combined with a focus on purity of ideas rather than factual truth of them. Whereas the liberals are acting like you'd expect a standard media-consumer to act - wanting to know facts and not being particularly concerned about the source so long as the information being conveyed was factually accurately and liking to see it rapidly corrected if it wasn't.

[Tassman]

Tass is a media tourist, from a foreign country, and only looking for those news stories that are on his map.

You should look to yourself re looking for selective news stories. No reading of the US Constitution would ever uphold the view that a president can declare a state of emergency when there is demonstrably no such emergency and which is unsupported by the majority of the public. Recent Pew Research polling reveals that most Americans oppose a significant expansion of the border wall, and two-thirds oppose Trump using emergency powers to fund its construction.

[Terraceth]

You should look to yourself re looking for selective news stories. No reading of the US Constitution would ever uphold the view that a president can declare a state of emergency when there is demonstrably no such emergency and which is unsupported by the majority of the public.

That is somewhat besides the point. Even if the Constitution does not grant power to the president to do something, Congress can pass a law giving the president additional powers. The question here is not "is this allowed under the Constitution?" but "is this allowed under the National Emergencies Act"?

Also, in regards to your mention of it being unsupported by the majority of the public, I am personally unaware of any power granted to anyone in the US (by the Constitution or by law) in which the popularity of using that power is somehow a factor in the legality of it.