Originally Posted By: craigd
Originally Posted By: L. Brown
....I think I need a translation of what you mean by "one trick ponies" in this case. I'm starting to get a whiff of what those ponies leave behind them in the pasture.

Morning Larry, sorry for being too clear.

My point, and it's a good thing we can stand being around ourselves, is you say you would have voted R if another candidate made it through the primaries. I took a different view of the value that you tried to peddle with voting third party.

I prefer to ask you what policy you lost out on because your preferred Republican primary candidates didn't win, you preferred evasion. Right?

It's no big deal Larry. You point the optics of the shutdown at the President, I say a Bill has to come out of congress and land on his desk for signing.

How about this, spend a little pungent lobbying effort on switching the Coast Guard to essential? Except for a little tweaking, and your aroma therapy, didn't the shutdown prove that fifteen or twenty percent of the gov could get trimmed off and only bs'ers would notice?


Sorry Craig. I focused on the part where you asked me about what Hillary would have done for the military. Since I never would have voted for her, that's irrelevant. Other Republicans in the primary . . . well, some of them are members of Congress. A lot of people were attracted to President Trump because he's an outsider. One advantage members of Congress have: they understand how Congress works. I shake my head over what Trump's doing now. He told us how great he was at cutting deals. Yet in his first two years in office, he wasn't able to cut a deal--with his own party in control of Congress--to get his wall built. So he's now shut down the govt, and maybe soon will shut it down again, because he can't cut a deal with the Dems in control of the House? Really seems strange to me. I'm thinking one of those candidates with Congressional experience likely could have cut a deal--with his own party in charge--to get a bill passed to put his major policy goal(s) into law.

As far as being able to trim the govt because of what we've learned from the shutdown . . . when have you seen that happen from previous shutdowns? What I've learned from shutdowns is that we're giving a whole bunch of govt employees a paid vacation. And once the shutdown is over, they go back to work. (Republicans are supposed to favor fiscal responsibility. That does not seem very fiscally responsible to me!) The trimming doesn't happen. And it's far less likely to happen now that the Republican Party no longer controls Congress. Because of the Republican defeat in last year's Congressional elections, Trump now has far less chance of doing much significant at all when it comes to "draining the swamp". Again, I ask myself: Why didn't he try more of that when he had Republican control?