Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Appliance delivery, carrying refrigerators up and down stairs, hard work for not much money. I ask the guy where he’s from, he says he came here two months ago from Venezuela.
I try to cheer him up, tell him that in a year or two his life will be better. He replies that it’s already better.
#USA
We are now in week three of the partial government “shutdown” over the refusal of Democrats to fund any of Trump’s wall. They see this as another “Read My Lips” situation which, if they can make Trump back down, it will kill his re-election campaign just as it did to Bush in 1992.
But Trump’s base takes the wall itself seriously, and, like George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign pledge on taxes, the wall has become the president’s “read my lips” albatross. His supporters may not abandon him over it, but Trump’s re-election hinges entirely on their enthusiasm. Yes, they will vote for him, but will they engage in the get-out-the-vote activities that drive to the polls enough additional voters to put Trump over the top?
How is that going ? Even Texas Monthly, no friend of Republicans agrees.
Jet skis dropping off pregnant women. Chinese border crossers in fancy workout attire. A park full of could-be spies. These sights of the Rio Grande are almost hallucinatory, but they don’t seem to alarm Spratte. They seem to fatigue him. Not long ago, he says, agents’ mouths would drop open when they’d hear about a group of fifty immigrants getting caught. Now, he says, “if you tell me, I’ve got a group of fifty, I need help, I would laugh at you. If you said, I’ve got a group of three hundred, now that would be cool, because that would be a new record. And the records are only going to keep increasing.” (According to Spratte, agents in the Valley have had a single pickup of around 280 immigrants.)
Trump visited the wall yesterday and CNN’s Jim Acosta gave Trump a hand at making his case.
I know this might be hard for you to comprehend Jimbo, but the reason why all of Twitter has been mocking you today is because you were at a part of the border WITH A WALL. So yes, of course it was working. Replicate that across the border & we’ll all be safer. #RealNews #ByeBye
It did not look too good for Acosta to brag about how safe it was near a wall. OR fence, if you prefer.
Well, it certainly started off with a bang … or, strike that, a number of spectacular public tantrums on the part of people that ordinary humans might have expected to have cultivated a more mature approach when it came to coping with others in the public sphere. I speak of the Gamestop shop customer of indeterminate sex who went off on the cashier for addressing … ummm, the customer as a man, when on the thin basis of some eye makeup, the customer apparently hoped to pass as a woman and not a member of a 1980s tribute rock band. Let me break it to you gently, guy – as a woman myself, you’re doing the woman-thing all wrong. A little more care with the coiffure, a skirt and some nice stockings and low heels, and a soft-spoken Southern lady demeanor – even adorning a six-foot-something frame with shoulders like a football quarterback – would make it easier for those you encounter in public to go along with a pretense of you being a delicate little flower of womanhood.
Of the vape-store clerk (now a former vape-store clerk) feeling all righteous and entitled to go off on an abusive rant against a customer wearing items of clothing identifying him as a Trump fan … seriously, when did it become OK to be an abusive butthead in public? Or is it just that incidents like this are more likely to be documented in this age of practically everyone having a telephone capable of recording short video? Cannot we all agree on a new year resolution – to act like mature, well-adjusted adults in public?
We currently have a “partial government shutdown” which no one seems to notice. Most of the appropriations bills were passed and signed. The Homeland Security budget became a Continuing Resolution and is being held hostage in the Senate where Chuck Schumer has vowed “So, President Trump, you will not get your wall,”
Trump has not vetoed anything so the responsibility for the “shutdown” is not obvious. The 40,000 federal employees who are furloughed or not getting paid are over 80% Democrats. The most recent pay period will result in checks today. Then the next pay period in two weeks will be the one where the “nonessentials” will not be paid.
Schumer: “So, President Trump, you will not get your wall,” Schumer added. “Abandon your shutdown strategy. You’re not getting the wall today, next week, or on January 3 when Democrats take control of the House.”
How is this playing in the country ? Some surprises.
Ann Althouse reads the Washington Post so I don’t have to.
She notices the comments to that article on the child that died in US custody.
I’ve excerpted the parts of the article that might make a reader want to blame the father. Was the boy exploited? Was he regarded as expendable? There’s plenty else in the article that might make you want to blame the U.S. government (mainly for not giving quicker medical treatments). I would also think many readers would mostly feel sad that a boy died and bemoan poverty generally. So I was surprised at how harsh the comments were against the father. I didn’t expect this at The Washington Post. This is the most liked comment:
This child’s siblings in Guatemala are alive and well. The child was dragged to the US using money that could have paid the father’s overdue electric bill, which is not a reason to grant asylum.
I wonder how long the Democrats will let this go on if Trump does not cave in ? He seems to have a gut instinct about what Americans think.
CNN seems to think that signing MAGA hats in Iraq is some sort of crime.
CNN Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr said “a lot of questions” have been raised following President Trump’s surprise visit to troops in Iraq where he signed ‘Make America Great Again’ hats and flags.
“There’s a lot of concern because military policy, military regulation prohibits military members in uniform from doing anything that can be construed as a political endorsement. That’s what you want from your U.S. military. They’re not a political force,” Starr reported.
“How did the red hats get there? Some people are saying, well, the troops just brought them and wanted to get them signed. But even if that is the case, the question remains, there were commanders, there were senior enlisted personnel on the scene, they know the regulation. Why did this happen?” Starr asked.
The cluelessness is almost painful. Obama signed stuff when he was president.
What will the end game look like? The new House is even farther left wing than the Senate. Could the “shutdown” go on for months ?
Look at the comments to the WaPoo article.
Thank you. I am liberal myself but I get tired of people who shut off their critical thinking when it comes to brown people. This guy made a spectacularly risky decision, and his child paid the price. It’s on his head. This is, of course, on the assumption that the U.S. wasn’t negligent in the kid’s care – which is certainly possible. Nonetheless it’s his father who endangered him.
This looks like trouble for Democrats. What if Trump stares down Democrats for months ?
First, everyone should view this Steve Bannon Oxford Union debate.
It’s an hour long and, while I rarely watch hour long YouTube videos, this one is worth while.
He gives a talk about his European sessions with new “right wing” leaders like Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister.
Viktor Mihály Orbán is a Hungarian politician serving as Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. He also served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002. He is the present leader of the national conservative Fidesz party, a post he has held since 2003 and, previously, from 1993 to 2000.
Orban is hated by the globalists in Germany because he has built walls to keep put “migrants,” which he says his county cannot support.
Orbán’s social conservatism, national conservatism, soft Euroscepticism and advocacy of what he describes as an “illiberal state” have attracted significant international attention. Some observers have described his government as authoritarian or autocratic.
In August 2018, Orbán became the 2nd longest-serving prime minister after Kálmán Tisza. If his current government lasts a full term, upon its completion, he will become the longest-serving Hungarian prime minister in history.