[Doug64]

Source?

For what, how the nuclear option works? All you have do do is check Wikipedia:

"The nuclear option is a parliamentary procedure that allows the United States Senate to override a rule – specifically the 60-vote rule to close debate – by a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the two-thirds supermajority normally required to amend the rules. The option is invoked when the majority leader raises a point of order that only a simple majority is needed to close debate on certain matters. The presiding officer denies the point of order based on Senate rules, but the ruling of the chair is then appealed and overturned by majority vote, establishing new precedent.

"This procedure effectively allows the Senate to decide any issue by simple majority vote, regardless of existing procedural rules such as Rule XXII which requires the consent of 60 senators (out of 100) to end a filibuster for legislation, and 67 for amending a Senate rule. The term "nuclear option" is an analogy to nuclear weapons being the most extreme option in warfare."

If you mean whether McConnell could get 49 more Senators to go along with it now, I haven't seen any estimates on how that vote would break down but McConnell has already said he won't use it and I can't see the Republicans killing the filibuster over what's essentially a rounding error. If both Trump and the Democrats hang tough maybe that'll change, though that's unlikely with the Democrats taking over the House with the new year.

[Drlee]

Thank you for admitting that it was Republican McConnel's decision not to vote for this bill even though he has the majority. Stop blaming democrats.

[One Degree]

Thank you for admitting that it was Republican McConnel's decision not to vote for this bill even though he has the majority. Stop blaming democrats.

It’s not like the Democrats are blameless with everyone of them voting against any Republican proposal. Not a single Democrat is willing to vote their conscience. Drones. If a Democrat does dare think for themselves they are crucified. How anyone can stomach such authoritarianism is beyond me.

[One Degree]

20% of Democrats wanted the wall funded, but not a single one of their representatives would vote for it. Ridiculous.

[Doug64]

Thank you for admitting that it was Republican McConnel's decision not to vote for this bill even though he has the majority. Stop blaming democrats.

Why? when all it would take is a quarter of the Democrats voting with the Republicans to get to the sixty votes needed to overcome a filibuster and give the president his fig leaf. But of course, that's what Democrats can't do -- give Trump even a symbolic but ultimately meaningless victory in order to fund the rest of the government. All to demonstrate to their base that they will do nothing to improve the security of our southern border.

As for the filibuster, do you think the Republicans should kill it over a rounding error? A Supreme Court justice, sure, but a measly $5 billion?

[Drlee]

What part of the majority of people do not want the wall are you having trouble understanding? What did your poll say about democrats and the wall? And you want the democrats to vote for it? DUH.

It’s not like the Democrats are blameless with everyone of them voting against any Republican proposal. Not a single Democrat is willing to vote their conscience. Drones. If a Democrat does dare think for themselves they are crucified. How anyone can stomach such authoritarianism is beyond me.

And this is untrue. Democrats voted in large numbers for the sentencing reform bill that just passed. Give them a bill that makes sense and they will vote for it. You are way beyond intellectually dishonest on this. The disgusting tax break for the wealthy. The attempt to take health insurance away from millions of Americans. The totally dishonest and racist attempt to vilify immigrants. All republican; all the time.

Our foreign policy is in the shitter. We have a president that, wait for it, lies in public on the average over 17 times a day. It isn't over yet. More disaster to come. And it is not about the democrats. Sadly, Trumps followers are simply either not smart enough or too damaged to see it. And those few who do see the lunacy that the White House has become are not patriotic enough to do something about it. These are the most disgusting traitors of all.

[Hindsite]

It is not true that President Trump lies over 17 times a day. The Democrat media claims everything Trump says that they do not agree with is a lie. It is all just more Fake news.

[Drlee]

https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

Here is the Truth from Pulitzer prize winning Politifact. There are many big words. Let me know if you need any help with it.

[Hindsite]

https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

Here is the Truth from Pulitzer prize winning Politifact. There are many big words. Let me know if you need any help with it.

I don't trust PolitiFact as being an unbiased source of what is truth and a lie. They are just sating their opinion, not necessarily fact. The following are some of my reasons:

Politifact has been called left biased by some right leaning sources.

Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard criticized all fact-checking projects by news organizations, including PolitiFact, the Associated Press and the Washington Post, writing that they "aren't about checking facts so much as they are about a rearguard action to keep inconvenient truths out of the conversation".

Politifact uses minimal loaded language in their articles and headlines such as this: Trump falsely claims NATO countries owe United States money for defense spending. PolitiFact often refuses to consider itself mistaken when it makes a real mistake. PolitiFact's story selection is biased. Republicans' statements were 39 percent "Pants on Fire" or "False" while Democrats' statements were 12 percent "Pants on Fire" or "False." That's strong evidence of selection bias.

On October 9, 2008, Angie Drobnic Holan of PolitiFact published an article using the site’s “Truth-O-Meter” to evaluate this claim: “Under Barack Obama’s health care proposal, ‘if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it.’” The article assures us in its headline that “Obama’s plan expands [the] existing system,” and continues that “Obama is accurately describing his health care plan here…It remains to be seen whether Obama’s plan will actually be able to achieve the cost savings it promises for the health care system. But people who want to keep their current insurance should be able to do that under Obama’s plan. His description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True.”

By the summer of 2009, with the White House safely in Democratic hands, Holan and PolitiFact evolved their evaluation of Obama’s promise. Holan and PolitiFact described the “keep your plan” claim as “Half True.” If PolitiFact had spoken with anyone at Aetna or Humana or UnitedHealth, it would have learned about what the law would do to the insurance market. But that would have required actual reporting.

So that brings us back to the fall of 2013. As Obamacare’s battle station became operational, and tens of millions of health plans became illegal, PolitiFact was caught with its flaming pants down. Louis Jacobson rapped Valerie Jarrett for tweeting that “nothing in Obamacare forces people out of their health plans”—a claim Jacobson rated as “False,” even though PolitiFact had rated it as “True” and “Half True” before.

“The promise was impossible to keep,” says Holan in her December piece. Now she tells us! But none of the key facts that made that promise “impossible” in 2008 had changed by 2013. The President’s plan had always required major disruption of the health insurance market; the Obamacare bill contained the key elements of that plan; the Obamacare law did as well. The only thing that had changed was the actual first-hand accounts of millions of Americans who were losing their plans now that Obamacare was live.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothec ... 387dd47c14

In December 2011, Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy wrote in the Huffington Post that the problem with fact-checking projects was "there are only a finite number of statements that can be subjected to thumbs-up/thumbs-down fact-checking".

Matt Welch, in the February 2013 issue of Reason magazine, criticized PolitiFact and other media fact-checkers for focusing much more on statements by politicians about their opponents, rather than statements by politicians and government officials about their own policies, thus serving as "a check on the exercise of rhetoric" but not "a check on the exercise of power".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico

[Doug64]

What part of the majority of people do not want the wall are you having trouble understanding? What did your poll say about democrats and the wall? And you want the democrats to vote for it? DUH.

The poll says that 1/4 of Democrat Likely Voters favor a wall. It also say that a bare plurality of only 2%--pretty much a tie--oppose building a wall. As for whether the Democrats voting, it comes down to whether it's more important to fund the government or refuse to give Trump his rounding error request for a wall they had no problem with not all that long ago. At this point it's all about whether Democrats are willing to buy into the concept of border security at all. So far, the answer is apparently "Hell, No!"

[Drlee]

What is the source for your poll. Let me guess. Rasmussen

But CBS News polling from mid-November found that a majority -- 59 percent of Americans -- oppose building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a partisan issue, though. A large majority of Republicans support the wall -- 79 percent. A majority of independents -- 66 percent -- oppose the wall, and 84 percent of Democrats are also against it.

Hardly to close to call.

The public is not any more supportive of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Thirty-one percent of the public favor the construction of a wall while 63% are opposed. Public views have not changed significantly over the past six months. In 2017, roughly one-third (36%) of Americans expressed support for the construction of a wall along the country’s southern border.3

Political differences are again stark. More than two-thirds (68%) of Republicans support building a border wall while 27% of independents and only 7% of Democrats agree. Nearly nine in ten (89%) Democrats oppose building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

More?

Washing Post article:

also checked Polling Report to see what other polls in the past two months said about U.S. attitudes about building the wall. Here’s what I found:

Quinnipiac University Poll. June 14-17, 2018: 39 percent support building a wall, 58 percent are opposed.
Pew Research Center. June 5-12, 2018: 40 percent support building a wall, 56 percent are opposed.
CBS News Poll. May 3-6, 2018: 38 percent support building a wall, 59 percent are opposed.

So, since May, five polls have been conducted on the question of building the wall. Exactly one of them shows a bare majority in favor of building the wall if the responses are aggregated. The other four show pretty solid majorities in opposition. Going further back, the numbers pretty much have looked like this since the 2016 election. The only exception is if the $25 billion price tag gets mentioned — in which case, support for building the wall drops to the low 30s. Oh, and as it turns out, the mainstream media has less of an effect on public attitudes on this issue than the president’s bully pulpit. So even though he has the largest microphone, Trump is losing.

Maybe, just maybe, that CBS/YouGov result was an outlier because of the way the question was framed.

There is a reason I keep harping on this issue. Pundits keep asserting public support for immigration restriction, but the data keeps not backing up that assertion. A few days ago, Nate Silver noted, “Immigration is a weird issue where pundits, despite being quite liberal on the issue themselves, probably underestimate how liberal the general public is.”

Give it up dude. Americans are just too smart to buy this shit.

[Hindsite]

What is the source for your poll. Let me guess. Rasmussen

Surely, you must know that CBS News is another one of those left leaning Democrat sources for political news. That is why their polls were wrong on the presidential election.

[Doug64]

Here's this weekend's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

The stock market reeled again Thursday, turning largely on news of Apple’s prediction of lower profits, but was recovering yesterday after the U.S. Labor Department reported not only a big gain in jobs across the economy—312,00 for December compared to 176,00 in November—but also an average hourly earnings gain of 3.2% for the year.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Americans rated the economy positively last month, and most Americans remain optimistic for a good year in 2019.

While voters are overwhelmingly aware that there’s a partial shutdown of the federal government, so far at least it isn’t bothering them.

However, perceptions of how President Trump is dealing with the economy and foreign policy have fallen slightly as his second year in office comes to a close.

As Trump prepares to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, voters' beliefs that American political leaders put U.S. troops in danger too much is at its lowest level in more than five years.

On the heels of Trump’s planned removal of troops from Syria, voters are far less likely to think the United States needs to be more hands-on in the Middle East.

The president earned a monthly job approval of 48% in December, unchanged from the month before. That’s down just one point from his high for the year of 49% reached in both April and October.

In other surveys last week:

-- Sixty-three percent (63%) of Americans said they would be at home at midnight when the new year arrived.

-- But while Americans welcomed the New Year, they aren’t heralding the holiday as one of the nation’s most important.

-- Still, Americans had faith at the beginning of 2018 that it would be a good year, and now they say it turned out to be an even better one than the last several.

-- Thirty-nine percent (39%) of voters think the country is heading in the right direction, the lowest since early July.

[Doug64]

Here's this weekend's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

The partial government shutdown enters day 22 and record territory today over the inability of President Trump and Democratic representatives to come to an agreement over funding for a Mexican border wall while the president mulls the possible declaration of a national emergency to fulfill his campaign promise.

Voters think Trump’s border wall is likely to work, but they aren’t prepared to declare a national emergency to build it.

Amid the party standoff, two-out-of-three voters still think illegal immigration is a serious issue, but nearly half of voters think the government isn’t working hard enough to stop it.

With the new session of Congress under way, voters aren’t optimistic that things will get any better either, but they are growing more convinced that Congress should follow Trump’s lead.

However, Democrats strongly identify with their congressional representatives, while Republicans still line up more with Trump than with GOP members of Congress.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren announced last week that she was forming an exploratory committee, a major step toward a 2020 presidential campaign. Voters in her party are confident the favored Democrat will go all the way, though voters in general are less convinced.

Voters give Trump the edge over the new Democratic-controlled House of Representatives when it comes to which will be more beneficial to the next Democratic presidential candidate, but Democrats themselves see the House as a bigger factor.

Mitt Romney may have pleased Democrats and the media with his recent op-ed criticizing Trump, but Republican voters by a better than two-to-one margin line up with the president.

Nonetheless, voters continue to think Congress puts the media’s interests ahead of voters, though more now think Congress has their best interests at heart.

Meanwhile the hum of international issues fills the background of domestic politics.

As talk of another U.S.-North Korea summit heats up, voters now consider the nation less of a national security interest but aren’t confident the nuclear agreement between Kim Jong Un and Trump will produce results.

In other surveys last week:

-- Following a rocky few months on Wall Street and the partial government shutdown at the end of December, consumer confidence struggles to keep up the enthusiasm felt throughout 2018.

-- Americans think Democratic candidates are more likely to include lower-income folks in the middle class than Republicans are. GOP candidates are more likely to view higher-income Americans as middle class.

--The new class of Democratic representatives and senators sworn in to Congress brings with it a growing movement of socialist ideologies, but while Democrats are intrigued by the ideas of socialism, they’re not willing to commit to becoming a socialist party.

-- Thirty-seven percent (37%) of voters think the country is heading in the right direction, the lowest since early March.

[Doug64]

Here's this weekend's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

To quote the Bard, the Trump vs. Pelosi show is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” So the partial government shutdown enters a record-breaking fifth week.

President Trump on Thursday grounded an overseas junket by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional Democrats, saying they needed to stay in town to resolve the shutdown. Pelosi, meanwhile, is urging Trump to postpone his annual State of the Union speech to Congress until the shutdown ends. At issue is funding for border security and the wall that the president wants and Democrats oppose.

Most voters want tight border control and disagree with Pelosi’s charge that a wall is “immoral.” Most also continue to think that illegal immigrants are a significant strain on the U.S. budget. A plurality believes they increase the level of serious crime, too.

Half the voters in the country don’t like Pelosi, the highest ranking Democrat in Washington, D.C., but just as many disapprove of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Congress’ top Republican.

Democrats have long been less critical of their leaders in Congress than Republicans. Most Republicans are still unhappy with their congressional representatives and are less convinced of the need for Trump to work with other GOP officials.

But the president’s job approval rating also has fallen to its lowest level in a year following his recent Oval Office address calling for increased border security including the wall to help stop illegal immigration.

The good news is that the vast majority of voters say the shutdown has had no major impact on them personally. Fifty-eight percent (58%) share an unfavorable view of the government anyway.

Most also think the Founding Fathers would view the current federal government as too big. Very few of any political persuasion say the Founders would find the government too small.

However, an increasing number of elected Democrats including several presidential hopefuls are endorsing a so-called Green New Deal that calls for more government involvement in the economy. Democratic voters love a Green New Deal that would focus on climate change, income inequality and racial injustice, but other voters still aren't convinced.

Critics see many of the things proposed under the umbrella of a Green New Deal as socialist ideas that have failed in the past. While Democratic voters are intrigued by socialist solutions, they’re not willing yet to become a socialist party.

Speaking of socialists, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a new Democratic member of Congress, is the darling of many millennials. Ocasio-Cortez runs a surprisingly close race with Trump in a hypothetical 2020 presidential matchup. Fortunately for the president, she’s not old enough to run.

This past week, more Democrats who are old enough jumped into the race for the party’s 2020 nomination or at least said aloud that they’re interested in running. Even Democrats, though, aren’t thrilled at the prospect of a huge field of presidential contenders.

Trouble ahead? The Rasmussen Reports Economic Index has fallen to its lowest level since November 2017.

Another of Rasmussen Reports’ regular measuring tools has been sliding downward in recent weeks. Just 36% of voters now think the country is headed in the right direction, a finding that ran in the 40s most weeks last year.

In other surveys last week:

-- Voters strongly believe journalists and political opponents are targets of spying by the U.S. government, and they don’t trust the judgment of the feds when they do it.

-- The current teachers’ strike in Los Angeles and those in other states last year have not cooled Americans’ support for labor unions, but they tend to favor private sector unions over those for public employees.

-- By a near two-to-one margin, Americans also continue to believe that teachers' unions are more interested in protecting their members' jobs than in the quality of education.

-- Seventy-two percent (72%) of parents with school-aged children rate the performance of their child’s school as good or excellent. But just 27% of voters rate the performance of U.S. public schools in general as highly.

[Drlee]

If I ever needed proof that Rasmussen is just a republican tool it is this:

Most voters want tight border control and disagree with Pelosi’s charge that a wall is “immoral.” Most also continue to think that illegal immigrants are a significant strain on the U.S. budget. A plurality believes they increase the level of serious crime, too.

Really. That is the question? Something Pelosi said?

Or this even worst piece:

The good news is that the vast majority of voters say the shutdown has had no major impact on them personally. Fifty-eight percent (58%) share an unfavorable view of the government anyway.

The good news? To whom?

Speaking of socialists, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a new Democratic member of Congress, is the darling of many millennials. Ocasio-Cortez runs a surprisingly close race with Trump in a hypothetical 2020 presidential matchup.

As they say in cards, read 'em and weep. She is what passes for far left in the US and she is close to beating Trump? Imagine what a mainstream Democrat like Biden could do.

Now a couple of real polls:

More voters in Georgia, a GOP-leaning state, view President Trump unfavorably than Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), according to a a new poll released Friday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The poll found that 55.6 percent of respondents view Trump unfavorably, compared to 37.4 percent who view him favorably.

In comparison, 47.6 percent of those surveyed held an unfavorable view of Pelosi, compared to 38.7 percent who held a favorable view of the Speaker.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has President Trump to thank for a remarkable shift in public opinion in her favor. “Pelosi’s favorability rating has increased by eight percentage points since Election Day in Civiqs’s tracking polls,” The Post reports. Thanks to a surge in her Gallup poll numbers, “Pelosi is now more popular in Gallup polls than she has been in a decade.”

57 percent of registered voters said they would definitely vote against President Donald Trump, according to the latest poll from the PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist.

Another 30 percent of voters said they would cast their ballot to support Trump, and an additional 13 percent said they had no idea who would get their vote.

...we can see signs of an impending horror show in 2020 for Trump and the GOP. Among independents, 57 percent disapprove of his performance; 43 percent of Republicans want a primary challenger to Trump, while only 46 percent do not (among Republican-leaning independents, that split is 47-44).

“When it comes to the shutdown specifically, 54 percent of respondents said they blame Trump, and another 31 percent blamed congressional Democrats,”

By more than 2-1 (66 percent to 31 percent), Americans say they oppose invoking an emergency to build a border wall. The poll finds 51 percent say they strongly oppose such a declaration.

So there you have it. A little balance. If I was a Republican Senator I would be quaking in my boots right now. A wall is about to fall on them.

[Doug64]

I hope Drlee feels better after his regular rant about how EVIL Rasmussen polls are. As for what Likely Voters actually said in the polls he referenced:

Are illegal immigrants a significant strain on the U.S. budget?

• Yes 52%
• No 37%
• Not sure 11%

Republicans

• Yes 79%
• No 16%
• Not sure 6%

Independents

• Yes 52%
• No 36%
• Not sure 11%

Democrats

• Yes 27%
• No 57%
• Not sure 16%

Does illegal immigration increase or decrease the level of serious crime in America? Or does it have no impact?

• Increase 44%
• Decrease 8%
• It has no impact 40%
• Not sure 8%

Republicans

• Increase 74%
• Decrease 5%
• It has no impact 16%
• Not sure 4%

Independents

• Increase 44%
• Decrease 8%
• It has no impact 38%
• Not sure 10%

Democrats

• Increase 17%
• Decrease 10%
• It has no impact 62%
• Not sure 10%

In terms of your own personal life, how much of an impact have you felt from the current government shutdown?

• No impact at all 54%
• A minor impact 35%
• A major impact 10%
• Not sure 1%

Republicans

• No impact at all 68%
• A minor impact 25%
• A major impact 6%
• Not sure 1%

Independents

• No impact at all 56%
• A minor impact 36%
• A major impact 8%
• Not sure 0%

Democrats

• No impact at all 42%
• A minor impact 43%
• A major impact 14%
• Not sure 2%

[Drlee]

Source?

Nice try.

[Doug64]

Source?

I provide the link to the updated newsletter every week, as I state every week the links to the actual articles can be found there. Many of them will have most of their content behind a paywall, but if you want to shell out the cash like I do you can get access to them yourself. This is hardly new information.

[Drlee]

Wait! You pay for a Rasmussen poll?



Lordy.