Trump, be a leader, not a blamer.

Not really. Hiding from people that you aren't capable of confronting is pretty sad. Better to take on reality head-on, I say.

Very Good Advice

Hiding from reality like an ostrich is actually bad advice.

I realize that you are not capable of confronting reality. But that doesn't make hiding a good idea.

You cannot provide any examples of me ever finding the truth inconvenient, or any examples of me ever avoiding the truth in any way.



The Second Amendment is one of our civil liberties, and progressives are always trying to violate it.



I do other things too.

For example, I set the record straight when people falsely accuse the US of having had something to do with the UK's firestorm at Dresden.

That's a lie. On page 294 of the Guns: How Much Longer thread, you specifically said that. You might have deleted it, or the mods, but you did say that.

It was a dishonorable and disgusting thing to say.

You've shown your true intentions to violate a human being.

Your statement is unforgivable.

And then you all impotently whined about how mean I am....

Seriously though, I didn't show any intention to do anything. All I did was show contempt for virtue signaling about "the poor precious victims".

I even stopped when you asked me to. I didn't resume until you later started spouting name-calling against me. I decided that the sensitivities of a name-caller were not very important to me.

There is nothing dishonorable about treating progressives with the contempt that they deserve.

I do not require forgiveness for standing up to progressives. Standing up to progressivism is a good thing.

Again, another lie.

You reused the phrase on a subsequent page on the same thread. It was then, when I realized you'd violate a person's civil liberties just for fun in a heartbeat, even though you tout that as being the most important issue.

You have no honor, no integrity nor intelligence to refrain from violating civil liberties. Therefore, your understanding of the concept of civil liberties is not trusted.

You cannot provide examples of anything untrue in any of my posts.



Your strange ideas about me say more about you than they say about me.



You cannot provide any examples of dishonorable behavior on my part.



You cannot provide any examples of any lack of integrity on my part.



My IQ is 170. Your IQ is considerably lower than mine. You might even be a double digiter.



You cannot provide any examples of me violating anyone's civil liberties.



You cannot point out any errors in my definition of civil liberties.

Since you cannot fathom the indecency of your statements, and since I've proven your lies there's nothing else you need to respond to.

You cannot provide any examples of untrue statements in my posts.

Even if you could provide an example of an untrue statement in my posts, you lack the intelligence to understand the difference between an error and a lie.

No, you have not. You saying you did is a lie. Can't help yourself, huh?

I happen to be reading a novel written by an Indian writer named Arundhati Roy, who has been adulated by both American and British book critics. I have read some novels written by James Patterson, who is said to be the highest-paid novelist, according to Forbes. Indeed his crime novels have nothing to do with literature; one of his novels has been panned by some critics and American novelists, who even argue that his writing is utterly awful. Yet I still decided to read it because I wanted to find out the reasons behind his success in terms of sales.

I have also read the novels written by D H Lawrence, E.M. Foster, Anthony Doerr, Hanya Yanagihara, and Mark Helprin . I have to go back to read the novel. Good luck to you.

If you like crime novels you may be interested in the Bernie Gunther novels by Phillip Kerr.

Unfortunately Kerr recently died, so there won’t be any more.

One of the worst novelist I have ever had the misfortune to read. I recommend to you someone who is just the opposite, Ruth Rendell. Originally seen as crime novelist, over her long career, she expanded her literary horizons, and her offerings became more eclectic and innovative. She wrote mysteries which were not serial detective offerings, and developed new ideas for fiction. Writing as Barbara Vine, she produced Asta's Book (published in the United States as Anna's Book), in which the central character is the diary of the by then long-dead ancestress of the characters. In Tigerlilly's Orchids the central character is a block of flats, what Americans would call a condominium (the apartments are sold, not rented).

Ta.

I think I have heard of Ruth Rendell before. Thanks for the tip.

I'll keep an eye out for her. Also outstanding is Alifair Burke - daughter of James Lee Burke.

You think Patterson is bad? Check out Stuart Wood.

Uhm . . . I'll pass. Most of Ruth Rendell's novels were published with the pen name Barbara Vine.

Trump faces roadblocks with threat to adjourn Congress
BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 04/16/20 06:46 PM EDT 541

President Trump's threat to adjourn Congress so he could force through dozens of nominations is quickly hitting steep roadblocks that make the plan all but guaranteed not to happen.

The idea, floated by Trump during a White House press conference, threatened to pour new fuel into the long-simmering fight over nominations, which have emerged as a lightning rod within the Senate in recent years.

The president’s power to adjourn Congress, enshrined in Article II of the Constitution, has never been used before by a president, setting an all-but-guaranteed court fight if Trump moved forward.

But legal experts say Trump doesn’t have the authority to adjourn Congress without cooperation from at least one chamber, and Senate Republicans poured cold water on the idea.

Steve Sanders, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, told The Hill that Trump was making “off the cuff, unsupported assertions about his power.”

“The president is not in charge of Congress, I think that’s the main point. Congress is a co-equal, independent branch of government,” he said.

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said that Trump’s threat to adjourn Congress is “hollow” and that the president was “misreading” the Constitution.

“Trump’s argument is legally impulsive, practically moot and another example of his attempts, guilefully or not, to move the Overton window on constitutional debate,” Vladeck wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, referring to a phrase for the range of ideas viewed as politically acceptable.

Trump surprised Washington on Wednesday when he used his daily coronavirus task force briefing to make a segue into railing against the Senate for holding pro forma sessions. The brief meetings are required to take place every three days under the Constitution unless both chambers pass an adjournment resolution.

“If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam, what they do,” he said.

He appeared to be referring to Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which grants Trump the power to “on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.”

The pro forma sessions are largely a holdover from the Obama era, when Republicans used them to prevent then-President Obama from making recess appointments.

For Trump to actually use the power to adjourn Congress, there would have to be a “disagreement” between the House and Senate on when to adjourn, creating an opening for Trump to try to act, according to constitutional experts.

“He can do it only if the Senate agrees to [adjourn],” said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow in governance studies at The Brookings Institution.

But neither chamber has signaled they will try to adjourn. Trying to do so, absent a unanimous consent agreement, would require lawmakers to come back to Washington and formally vote to adjourn even as they are staying in their home states because of safety concerns due to the coronavirus.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled on Wednesday that while he was frustrated about the pace of nominations, any quick action would require the cooperation of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“The Leader pledged to find ways to confirm nominees considered mission-critical to the COVID-19 pandemic, but under Senate rules will take consent from Leader Schumer,” a spokesman said.

McConnell then set up additional pro forma sessions on Thursday, which will keep the Senate technically in session until the chamber returns on May 4. A spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) confirmed that the Democratic-controlled chamber will also continue to hold pro forma sessions. The actions prevent Trump from making recess appointments.

Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), a member of Republican leadership and chairman of the Rules Committee, said Trump had “every reason in the world” to be frustrated but “I don't think the president has the authority to do what he suggested he ... might do.”

Trump hinted that the fight over adjournment could be played out in court, but both Mann and Sanders appeared skeptical that the courts would be willing to get in the middle of a political fight between the two branches.

“The courts are very reluctant to enter into a dispute between the president and the Congress. They stay out of that as best as they can,” Mann said.

The Supreme Court has previously upheld the validity of pro forma sessions when they sided with Senate Republicans over then-President Obama.

“For purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause, the Senate is in session when it says that it is, provided that, under its own rules, it retains the capacity to transact Senate business,” the Court held in NLRB v. Noel Canning, which contested Obama naming members to the National Labor Relations Board by a recess appointment.

Trump railed against Democrats who he accused of slow-walking executive nominees, saying they are “holding us up. We cannot get approval.”

Republicans have also accused Democrats of a historic level of obstruction on lower-level executive branch nominations, which can be confirmed by a simple majority after Democrats nixed the 60-vote filibuster for most nominations. Republicans, in 2019, also went “nuclear” to cut down on the amount of debate time required for most executive nominees and district judges.

“He has every reason in the world to be aggrieved by this, you know the Democrats were terrible,” Blunt added.

The Senate has taken 172 cloture votes on executive and judicial nominees during the 116th Congress, and an additional 128 cloture votes during the 115th Congress, according to data obtained by The Hill. Filing cloture forces the Senate to eat up days of floor time on a nomination.

The 128 cloture votes during Trump’s first two years compare to 12 during the same time for then-President Obama and four during the same time period for then-President George W. Bush, according to the Senate data. That includes 84 executive branch nominations that had not previously required cloture.

But two of the positions specifically mentioned by Trump — the director of national intelligence and a Federal Reserve pick — are facing delays because of Republicans.

McConnell as majority leader also has the ability to determine what nominations to file cloture on and force floor action. And the GOP leader has been frank about the fact that judicial nominations, particularly circuit court picks, are his top priority when scheduling Senate floor time.

The administration has also been slow to nominate individuals.

One hundred and fifty of 749 “key positions” tracked by The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service do not have nominees, while another 15 are awaiting nomination. Trump’s “A Team”— influential positions within the executive office of the president — have also seen an 85 percent turnover, according to tracking by Brookings Institution.

“The staffing problems are the president’s,” Mann added. “The Republicans have been in charge of the process from the beginning of his administration.”