Yep!

"BP and Mari." LOL

with a guy, who voted for Hillary. He's quite pleased with his stocks going up. His attitude toward Trump seems to be changing already. I have to pinch myself once in awhile, to see if I'm still in reality. The men and women, who I talk to over breakfast, most of whom are Republican's, and voted for Trump, we have great relationships with one another; have no animosity toward each other based on our party affiliation, or voting record. Then I come on this board. Two different worlds!

Croix says it accurately. People will generally vote for what is in their best interests.

There is an optimism, at least on the economic front, that I haven't seen in many years, since election day.

Wasn't it Carville that said, "its the economy, stupid?"

The R's now own the economy. For better or worse. Trump will get the praise or the finger pointing. No middle ground.

-- Modified on 12/9/2016 1:31:16 PM

Putting aside of course the people who will find fault with him no matter how well he succeeds or the other group of people who will defend him even if we ended up in a full blown depression.

Trump so far has done a great job getting at least his own party behind him. That looked VERY unlikely only a month ago. The bigger job of course is to get at least "some" of the Dems to play ball with him. If the Dems do put up a united front and say NO to "everything" he proposes, most people are still going to blame Trump for being ineffective and not the Dems for being "obstructionists" The loony wing of the Dems has been blaming an "obstructionist" GOP Congress, even when they had a super majority for years, mainly to deaf ears. Trump won't have any better luck blaming Congress if he can't get his agenda passed either.

Yes, Trump has to either put up or face the political consequences, but so far at least, I am rather optimistic about Trumps chances of getting enough of what he wants to make a difference. and on shit like the wall, I simply don't give a fuck and as long as the economy is booming, neither will anyone else.

The Dem party is SO powerless at the moment, all they can do is bitch and hope they are on the right side of the politics.

The senate is a bit trickier then the house but even so, Trump will have several Dems crossing party lines, especially with anything that can be deemed as "pro-worker/middle class" like infrastructure.

And with Harry Reid setting precedent with the nuke option, the Dems are in a world of hurt

I rarely engage in politics with anyone on Facebook but the amount of vitriol there is amazing on both sides.  The rabid righties aren't satisfied they won but are foaming at the mouth over lefties who show disrespect for Trump -- despite the fact that the righties themselves have long disrespected the current President.  Then there are the lefty sites that distort so much about what's going on -- especially the recounts and reports of Trump electors switching sides -- as if Trump will still lose or be quickly impeached. Both are full of shit.  Lots of others are "Unfriending" people with whom they disagree or simply leaving Facebook in dismay. It's pathetic.

WHAT?  You really have no clue how the Senate rules work, do you Jack-O?  Perhaps you need to find a Parliamentarian to teach a JDU course on "Senate Rules Promoting Gridlock, 101?"
I'm too lazy to give you a full reality check on this so please go do some homework.

You know how much I dislike agreeing with you on matters like this. But yes, if the Dems  want to dig in their heels and play that game, the GOP without a "super majority" is going to have a VERY difficult time getting anything done.  

That said, I believe Trump has the ability to get a good chunk of what he wants to do through Congress, not the silly shit like building a wall or deporting 11 million people, but the things like a tax holiday to repatriate that 2 TRILLION dollars currently parked offshore, and making a deal with the Dems to do an infrastructure spending bill couple with some tax reform. Those things I think Trump can accomplish.

Now of course there still is the matter of SCOTUS, and that is going to be tricky. I think Trump will be tempted to cave on the issue and go off his "list" but if he does so the base will revolt so perhaps we may end up with an 8 justice SCOTUS for quite some time to come.  The Dems will be well within their rights to make a stand on this issue after what the GOP did with Garland. I don't see an easy fix coming, but the country can operate just fine with an 8 member SCOTUS, it's hardly the end of the world.

The one about the "rabid righties foaming at the mouth over lefties who show disrespect for Trump"  

Trump got at least as much "disrespect" from his own party both during and even after the primaries as he has ever gotten from the lefties.

Aside from that, or actually "including" that, I agree with your assessment. I don't know about pathetic as it seems to be the new normal, but it is rather ironic to say the least.

......in exactly the same way GOP Senators checkmated the Dems during Obama's first two years as POTUS. Probably not!

END OF MESSAGE

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and now that Reid used the nuke option, only 51 votes are needed for approval of executive and judicial nominees.

Again, the precedent has been set as to using the nuke option and R's can always point to D's for political cover

And you'll note most are D's many in states Trump won. I don't think they'll be following Harry off the cliff do you?

To hate cops. You're despicable.

Dems have 5 seats up in red states in 2018 (MT, IN, WV, ND, MO) and Reps only have one in a blue state (NV).  

Dems have virtually no chance to take back the senate while the R's have an excellent chance to increase their majority.  

Many of those 5 will join the R's on many votes.

Only that they could. I doubt seriously that Trump is not going to get a LOT of what he wants. and I also think that partly for the reasons you cite, that quite a few Dems are going to go along with it.

...that I'm on the editorial staff of RealClearPolitics who thought that cartoon said something so important that it would be selected as one of the cartoons of the week from the thousands of political cartoons published every week.

Good to see you've not forgotten how to be stupid.

.....during the midterms. We shall see!

What do you think will happen in mid-term elections? Do you really they will abolish the filibuster? MM is against it the last time I heard. With respect to the ACA, they can only use reconciliation to repeal the mandate, subsidies, and taxes. What is the point of doing that and leaving the rest of the Aca in effect?  

That would cause total chaos, Jack, and guess who the voters would blame.

I agree with you.  I'm just not sure if the Dems will go to the mat on the next SCOTUS justice or the one after it.  Because the next one, being a replacement for Lucifer, er, the arch right-winger Scalia, won't change the balance of the court the way it existed prior to his death.  But the one AFTER that might.  Both sides will be careful about "the nuclear option."

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I think the Dems will go after the next SCOTUS because they have plenty of political cover to do so after the Reps wouldn't even give Garland a hearing.

That said, I don't think they will win as Trump owes it to his base to hold his ground on this first pick. Which means I "partially" agree with you that they are more likely to succeed on the following pick, assuming of course there aren't only 7 members on the court by then if they are still squabbling about the next pick before the next Supreme kicks the bucket.

The super majority still holds for SCOTUS nominees, which is what I was talking about since I already knew what Reid did. There are other ways of dragging out the process short of filibuster.  Here is a discussion of some.  Please study this, then have some warm milk, take your blankey and go to bed.  It's been a long day for you.s  From Wikepedia:
"Other forms of filibuster[edit]
While talking out a measure is the most common form of filibuster in the Senate, other means of delaying and killing legislation are available. Because the Senate routinely conducts business by unanimous consent, one member can create at least some delay by objecting to the request. In some cases, such as considering a bill or resolution on the day it is introduced or brought from the House, the delay could be as long as a day.[65] However, because the delay is a legislative day, not a calendar day, the majority can mitigate it by briefly adjourning.[66]

In many cases, the result of an objection to a unanimous request will be the necessity of a vote. Forcing votes may not seem an effective delaying tool, but the cumulative effect of several votes, which are at least 15 minutes, can be substantial. In addition to objecting to routine requests, votes can be forced through dilatory motions to adjourn and through quorum calls. The intended purpose of a quorum call is to establish the presence of a constitutional quorum, but senators routinely use them to waste time while waiting for the next speaker to come to the floor or for leaders to negotiate off the floor. In those cases, a senator asks unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum call. If a member objects, the clerk must continue to call the roll of senators just as is done with a vote. When a call shows no quorum, the minority can force another vote by moving to request or compel the attendance of absent senators. Finally, senators can force votes by moving to adjourn or raising specious points of order and appealing the ruling of the chair.

The most effective methods of delay are those that force the majority to invoke cloture multiple times on the same measure. The most common example of this is to filibuster the motion to proceed to a bill, then filibuster the bill itself. The result is to force the majority to go through the entire cloture process twice in a row. Where, as is common, the majority seeks to pass a substitute amendment to the bill, a further cloture procedure is needed for the amendment.

The Senate is particularly vulnerable to serial cloture votes when it and the House have passed different versions of the same bill and want to go to conference (i.e., appoint a special committee of both houses to merge the bills). Normally, the majority asks unanimous consent to

Insist on its amendment or amendments (or disagree to the House's amendments);
Request (or agree to) a conference; and
Authorize the presiding officer to appoint conferees (members of the special committee).
However, if the minority objects, each of those motions is debatable, and therefore subject to a filibuster, and are divisible, meaning the minority can force them to be debated (and filibustered) separately.[65] What's more, after the first two motions pass, but before the third does[citation needed], senators can offer an unlimited number of motions to give the conferees non-binding[citation needed] instructions, which are debatable, amendable, and divisible.[67] As a result, a determined minority could cause a great deal of delay before a conference.

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Did you read the analysis of how vulnerable the Dems are in the next cycle?  Also, beware of predictions after what happened this year.

It's cold out now. They will go back to their parent's basement soon. ha!

That you posted it here with a direct and implicit endorsement from yourself. Now you're backtracking? That's not you. I remember when you used to own your bigoted cop hating posts not be a total pussy as you are here "blaming" some editorial cartoonist/editor somewhere far far away. You're an bigoted asshat. Man up and own it.

...I simply showed you that a "bigoted asshat" cartoonist has the same view as I do and that a prominent website chose it as one of the "Cartoons of the Week" so the cartoon obviously has something important to say.  It's not just me that thinks cops routinely get away with murder.

Are you a waiter at Denny'

......we will probably have several episodic scandals during the first two years of his administration. Trump's conflicts of interests between his businesses and official duties are bound to get him into trouble.  

DEBT— roughly $64 trillion of it. That’s what is crushing the U.S.economy, and until the mechanics of its relentless growth is stopped and reversed, the odds of achieving and sustaining the 3–4% real economic growth that Trump’s economics team keep yapping about is somewhere between slim and none.

-- Modified on 12/10/2016 2:00:18 AM

...The bigger the debt, the better the country is doing.  THAT'S Trumponomics.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-king-of-debt-224642