US Government Shutdown Watch: 2018 Edition. More Bricks in the Wall?

Schumer - “When the President brags that he wins North Dakota & Indiana, he’s in real trouble.”
Trump (making Schumer’s point) - “I did win, I did win North Dakota & Indiana!”

Trump also talks about all these sick contagious people are pouring into the country because there’s no wall. The new caravan! Lepers maybe? I don’t know what he’s referencing but then when do we ever?

Prior statements by the GOP operatives was that the immingrants were bringing leprosy (which isn’t actually that bad an illness now, and already exists in the US as it’s carried by various animals like armadillos), and smallpox (which has been eradicated from the earth for decades, thanks to vaccines).

They literally said this on TV.

They probably meant Yersinia. Gotta get those diseases straight y’all.

The plague however, is still around. Madagascar, of all places.

Fucking lemurs.

Anyone who has ever played Plague Inc knows the perils of Iceland and Madagascar.

Freaking islands.

That’s what’s so ironic about it, Madagascar is supposed to close its ports super early and be impossible to infect.

You don’t have to go to Madagascar to get the plague. It can be found in the southwestern United States and has been present in the US since 1900.

Plague is not very deadly to humans in modern times, though. For one thing, antibiotics work on it. For another, to get it you need to hang out with fleas who also hang out with the animals which carry the disease. So it’s mostly found in remote rural areas.

Edit: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh now I geddit. Well, now I’ve infected you all with facts about real-world plague.

There was also an episode of House where a patient had the plague. I hope that helps.

So THAT is how you get it? I always wondered…

Was I the only one that read this in Emma Stone’s voice?

So Trump claimed to Pelosi that he had the votes for the wall in Congress without the help of the Democrats. Is this true?

Not a chance. It would have been passed long before now if so.

Well, he was saying he had the votes in the House but not in the Senate. Pelosi was saying he didn’t have the votes in the House either. Is THAT true? What Republican house members would be voting against it, I wonder? Freedom caucus, for… reasons of their own?

In the past, Ryan needed Democratic votes to pass pretty much ANY spending bill, as you have hard-core Tea Party folks who pretty much vote against any bill that increases the amount spent by the government. Whether the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus folks would vote for a “poison pill” bill that they know the Dems in the Senate would never stomach is an open question.

I don’t think Pelosi would challenge Trump to hold a vote in front of cameras if she didn’t know he didn’t have the votes.

But maybe she’s a great bluffer.

PS - If Trump had the votes, it’d be done already. He doesn’t have the votes.

He’s full of shit either way. We’re in a lame duck session. Trump knows this is most likely his last chance. So instead of pleading to the nay votes within his party, he’s pushing Pelosi and Schumer to round up some votes in the House. He’s had AMPLE opportunity for his “wall” to be funded, or as part of previous budgets and bills. The latest round is the Wall Act, and it’s full of bullshit, and even at the proposed 25 billion, wouldn’t get it all done, as some estimates have said it will take as much as 80 billion or more.

If there were enough votes in the House, and if the Republican Senate really wanted to pass funding for the wall, they’d find a way to pass it in the Senate. Probably use Reconciliation, or even toss the 60 vote rule.

So that implies he doesn’t have the votes in either chamber.

I thought they could only use Reconciliation once a year, and they already used it in the tax cut bill?

Also as a reminder, he’s asking for help here but has repeatedly hung the Democrats out to dry in previous tit-for-tat negotiations, the dreamers being one of them.