Political Discussion Thread


:angry:
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Thoughts on the speech anyone? Personally I suspect I detected McConnell’s hand in it, as it was a particularly deft piece of political maneuvering. It works on multiple levels, ranging from giving Trump good press as offering a ā€˜compromise’, to moving the battleground towards border security in general (which is arguably a better position for him than focus on the wall) while still avoiding ceding anything the Democrats want. I confess myself grudgingly impressed, as it demonstrated a solid understanding of both the media and the public. It was also strangely non-Trumpy in places, most notably on legal immigration.

I’m less sure what this means in regards to the shutdown itself though. While I could see it going somewhere as a negotiation tactic if he was willing to offer the Democrats something, on its own it’s just a PR piece.

Something just occurred to me, and the following/related question is in a field that I am admittedly uneducated in, mostly because I have not the inclination nor means to do so. If you (as a current American citizen) are exiting the United States to move to another country, how exactly does this shutdown affect that process?

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Interesting question. My personal assumption (and this is a pretty big assumption) is that unless you’re abandoning citizenship it shouldn’t really matter. Passports aren’t shut down if you’d need one (they exist on fees), and I’d expect the paperwork to be where you’re going, not where you’re coming from. Albeit I should note that the IRS collects taxes regardless.

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Stumbled onto this old bit:

I’d like to live to see a day where the IRS gets shutdown - 4EVA!

Even though that means it would unarguably be replaced by something much, much worse?

Temet is almost certainly right. Unless you didn’t have a valid passport at all, and there was a delay in issuing or conveying said passport to you, you’d be fine leaving. If, once you’d left, you wanted to renounce US citizenship, it might take longer. But you’d really only want to do that if you were planning to never live or work in the US again, and didn’t want to run into banking issues thanks to FINTRAC stuff.

Edit: At some point, I’d imagine staffing issues would make the already-lengthy TSA line ups at airports worse. Can’t imagine you’d be actually prevented from going though.

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Why? Why must you constantly sabotage my anarcho-capitalist dreams? I dream of a day where the income tax is abolished, but I’m also not so foolish to think it’ll ever happen. But let a guy have his dreams, k?

I could be wrong, y’all know I have been at least once before, but I thought I read that passports weren’t being issued during the current Federal gubmint unpleasantness?

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Rechecked, yeah they’re still being issued. Like I said, they’re partially funded by fees.

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Well, my question is primarily whether you would be prevented from traveling outside the US at all for the duration. I ask this because of a couple of things.


About Pelosi’s trip, I have a question with some possible implications. If the trip is kept secret to protect the travelers, is it a potential crime if it was intentionally outed?

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Not sure of the answer to your Pelosi trip question, but just saw this:

So some delays, but no closures that would prevent travel. (Yet.)

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I have a possible theory stemming from his Christmas tweet…:


…and him talking about his ā€˜yuge’ crowd sizes and saying lots of ā€˜people support him’ and what he’s doing.

I’m pretty sure you can guess at why I asked about all external travel being shut down.

I saw it when you posted before and edited it, was going to respond, but you changed the post before I could. Honestly, it’s an interesting topic, not because of Trump, but because emigration bans have gone from endemic in some parts of the world (such as eastern Europe) to basically verboten the world over in an incredibly short time historically speaking. That said, what he’s done so far would be utterly ineffective in such a matter, and honestly it would produce a much bigger backlash than his anti-immigration policies.

As for whether Congressional travel plans are classified or merely secret, I actually checked the same thing back when this first happened. I did run across some articles which specifically mentioned the word classified, but there was no further clarification, and it could’ve been lazy wording. As a result, I’m still not entirely sure. That said, I don’t know if it would be a crime even if he did reveal classified information, from recollection he did so at least once before and there was an argument that it amounted to deciding to declassify it.

Let me put it another way:

Trump re. the loss of the WTC:

The travel plans are apparently kept secret to ensure safety of the travelers. If he revealed their travel plans and consequently put their safety in jeopardy, the question is then one of intent.

ā€œI’m angry at stupidity. I’m angry at incompetence.ā€
– Donald Trump




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I think the incumbent R’s have to take at least some responsibility for that, since basically they let him get away with it (and sometimes repeat the lies when it suits them.)

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For those who want to enjoy some schadenfreude, Stone just got indicted.

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Pain-joy!

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Heh. Regardless, I expect a lot of people are happy about this. Which isn’t surprising given some of the things he’s done over the years. His history is fascinating, particularly how he got into politics.

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I say this with all the reverence for different ideas and party strength I can muster.

Roger Stone is the blackened stale blood point on the cancerous ovary/testicle tumor of america that caused the chain reaction of cell degradation and the only solution is high energy radiation directed at the source.

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If it helps, he’s tried to work for the Democrats before too. That didn’t work out after they caught him at a swinger club from recollection.

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