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[Maximum Spin]

Did Sarah Sanders *actually* cook a pie for the holidays?

Obviously not.

Pies are baked.

[Trekkin]

And now it's time to beeline to the important issues of the day. Did Sarah Sanders *actually* cook a pie for the holidays?

Yes. She just doesn't want to admit it's nothing more than pecans pressed into a layer of whipped covfefe.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Did Sarah Sanders *actually* cook a pie for the holidays?

Obviously not.

Pies are baked.

Having defeated the riddles three of Trumpelstiltskin, Maximum Spin watched with glee as he sunk into his shoes, leaving only a cloud of smoke behind. He then realized that the greatest gift of all was not gold or power, but love.

He still took the gold though.

I mean, obviously.

[smjjames]

Everything that Congress has on their plate for December: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/congress-taxes-shutdown-immigration-december-259826

[redwallzyl]

Everything that Congress has on their plate for December: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/congress-taxes-shutdown-immigration-december-259826

I'm sure it will go great. Nothing to look at here.

[smjjames]

Probably as great as it has been going for the past year. The government funding fight will end up being a big one for sure

[Trekkin]

Probably as great as it has been going for the past year. The government funding fight will end up being a big one for sure

I'm curious whether Trump will try to shoehorn The Wall into some part of the upcoming legislation, although perhaps not in the funding bill itself. It sounds counterproductive even on a level Trump understands, but consider:

1. All eyes are on Congress right now (and the FCC, to a lesser degree.) Trump cannot stand other people having that much attention.

2. This is a negotiation. Trump knows how negotiation works: you demand things and then you get them because you make the best deals. Trump also knows that he hasn't got much to show for his time in office, so he has a reason to start demanding.

3. These bills are all precisely the "little shit" which Trump has previously instructed assorted Congresspersons not to sweat. He "just want(s) to win", and he sees nothing wrong with just throwing together nonsensical legislation for its own sake because laws aren't real to him. Child deductions? Health care? These things are not Trump. They are not winning. What do they matter?

The impetus is there, I think, for him to try to negotiate what looks to him like a stalled debate about pointless minutae into something he can rally the MAGA-hat crowd around.

[wierd]

Trump apparently does not comprehend the truth behind the phrase, "The devil is in the details"

Big picture perspective is great and all, but you have to be sure your big picture is not a moronic fantasy-- you do that by having cogent paths to that endgame, by understanding and planning for the minutiae.

You cannot get chocolate cake from lemons-- etc.

[sluissa]

Trump apparently does not comprehend the truth behind the phrase, "The devil is in the details"

Big picture perspective is great and all, but you have to be sure your big picture is not a moronic fantasy-- you do that by having cogent paths to that endgame, by understanding and planning for the minutiae.

You cannot get chocolate cake from lemons-- etc.

Sure you can. You have your lemons, you find someone with chocolate cake. You make arrangements to purchase said chocolate cake. When time comes to pay for said chocolate cake you offer the lemons instead. When they complain you make their life so miserable with lawsuits they give up the fight and let you have the cake... and if you're good, the lemons as well.

[wierd]

No, the lemons are not really a part of the process there. They can be exchanged with literal nothing, and the process still continues as stated.  Also, the Trumpster does not actually MAKE any cake-- he makes empty promises then fails to deliver, and walks away with a cake somebody else made in expectation of remuneration, which they never get.

Devil in details--- But like I said, Trump is apparently not the kind that cares about such things-- which is why he confuses his process for actually making cake.

[Trekkin]

Devil in details--- But like I said, Trump is apparently not the kind that cares about such things-- which is why he confuses his process for actually making cake.

No, he confuses his process for actually making cake because that's how American grade schools teach that capitalism works: the rich get richer and it trickles down until a rising tide lifts all boats up by their bootstraps and somehow a tiny minority of people accruing ever-more-ludicrous excesses of wealth is going to positively influence everyone else economically, because that's what Congress is bribed to make you believe. This is part of why Gary Cohn was shocked -- shocked -- to learn that not every corporation in line for a tax cut is planning to invest the money they save back into specific sectors of the economy, because he believes in the mythos of the job creator.

There's a lot about Trump that is unique to him. This is not, and it's important to recognize that the 1% believe everything he believes, from the creepy quasi-Lysenkoist eugenics to the magic economics to the ultracrepidarianism.

[birdy51]

To be fair, my own U.S Government teacher did an ace job at instilling the idea that Capitalism without restraint rarely solves anything. But, maybe that was luck more than the norm.

[smjjames]

@trekkin: He understands how negotiation works in Real Estate, which might not translate as well to negotiation in politics.

To complicate matters even further, the Dems are throwing DACA legislation into the government funding stuff (a couple Republicans are on board. I think Lindsey Graham is one of those?). Would be pretty hard to reconcile the wall with the DACA stuff. I've also heard months ago that the Republicans would try to include some border security stuff in there as a counter to DACA.

As for all eyes being on Congress, he knows it's an important time and I don't see it being much different from the way he was during the healthcare stuff. Except that he's taking an active role this time.

[Antioch]

I have always found it weird that a lot of Americans hate the idea of the government having any form of power over them, yet they love being controlled by big companies.

Businesses are a form of power and where there is power there is the potential for abuse.

I'd much rather have a democratically elected government have power over me than a large corporations, which are basically all run like fascist dictatorships.

[Trekkin]

I have always found it weird that a lot of Americans hate the idea of the government having any form of power over them, yet they love being controlled by big companies.

Because big companies mean jobs^tm and opportunities^tm, and there's a whole lot of dissatisfied Boomers out there, particularly among the politically active, convinced they'll be C-suite executives any day now because obviously the economy can grow infinitely to accommodate them all. Hope is a hell of a drug, and they got hooked on it back when America was unquestionably going to rule the world one neocolony at a time if only insidious Russian communism could be stopped. It was easy, then, to just assume nonstop expansion if you were myopic enough. They're also having to deal with their children asking how the didn't realize that optimal corporate behavior is not globally optimal; every company would optimally have a global monopoly over a process in which everyone is forced to give them everything they own in return for nothing, and the most monotonically profitable route to that is via regulatory capture, lobbying, and generally cheating the rules of a game that's supposed to reward consumer-facing efficiency and innovation.

So they love it because Cold War propaganda trained them to love it and their increasingly desperate hope remains profitably exploitable. They still remember when The American Way put a man on the Moon; young adults only remember how The American Way broke the economy, stole the pieces, made sure they would be desperately poor forever in a world where money is everything, and justified destroying their futures by claiming the world is just.