People newly elected to the House of Representatives are usually considered political nonentities. Nobody outside their districts pays any attention to them, they get put on minor committees that deal with issues on the fringes, and have to slowly work their way up the seniority ranks before they are taken seriously. So the prominence of the new batch of Democratic congresspersons, especially the women, is something different. And of these, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the standout.
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Glenn Greenwald writes that now that Donald Trump is president, Democratic party members have become more likely than Republicans to want to continue the many wars that the US is in, and the reactions to Trump’s call to withdraw troops from Syria illustrates this.

Both GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the country’s most reliable war supporters, and Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama for insufficient hawkishness, condemned Trump’s decision in very similar terms, invoking standard war on terror jargon.

But while official Washington united in opposition, new polling data from Morning Consult/Politico shows that a large plurality of Americans support Trump’s Syria withdrawal announcement: 49 percent support to 33 percent opposition.

That’s not surprising given that Americans by a similarly large plurality agree with the proposition that “the U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for too long and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm’s way” far more than they agree with the pro-war view that “the U.S. needs to keep troops in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to help support our allies fight terrorism and maintain our foreign policy interests in the region.”

But what is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents overwhelming favor their removal. The numbers are stark: Of people who voted for Clinton in 2016, only 26 percent support withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it. Trump voters overwhelmingly support withdraw by 76 percent to 14 percent.
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Thanks to all who commented on my earlier post expressing my bafflement as to where things stand with respect to Brexit. It was helpful in clarifying the situation somewhat. Via commenter Jeff, I read this article that explains what is at stake and it is worth reading. The article is by Tim Russo who described himself as “an American Clintonista who worked on all three of Tony Blair’s Labour victories” but discovered his own “radical lefty zeal of the recently converted during Corbyn’s rise”.
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It appears that due to the government shut down the US government is delinquent on its water bill if $5 million to the Washington DC water authority, which has raised the question of what should be done about it

The government is the largest water customer in the city, and because of the ongoing federal shutdown, its water bill is past due. The large unpaid bill left DC Water officials wondering what their options are, and whether turning off water to the White House is among them.

“We received an email Wednesday, January 2, from an individual at the bureau of fiscal services at the treasury,” said Matthew Brown, chief financial officer at DC Water, speaking during the water authority’s first board meeting of the year. He went on to read from the email: the federal government would not be paying $5 million of its $16.5 million quarterly water bill.

“That brings up an interesting question,” responded DC Water board chairman Tommy Wells. “Is there a time from nonpayment when we cut someone’s water off?”

“1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is that what you’re talking about?” asked another board member, to laughter.
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… I have given up on understanding the Brexit process.

While the way that the US government functions (or, as is the current situation, does not function) is difficult to understand, the current situation regarding the Brexit process in the UK has gone completely out of my range of understanding. I read this news report that says that prime minister Theresa May has received some major setbacks due to losing key parliamentary votes, but what exactly happened, what it means, and what the next steps are is hard to decipher. Next week is supposed to feature yet another key vote.

The difficulty is compounded by the fact that so many political parties are involved and members of both Labour and Conservative parties are not unanimous on what they want. I assume that there is some orderly way that they can proceed but for the life of me, I don’t think I will understand what the options are without devoting an enormous amount of time delving into the weeds of the deals and the procedures.

But at least their government is open, so there’s that.

One thing we should be clear about is that senate majority leader Republican Mitch McConnell could open the government at any time if he wanted to and thus should shoulder a large part of the blame for the shutdown. But he seems to have entered the witness protection program being conspicuously absent from the public eye while the shutdown continues. Remember, the senate unanimously passed a government funding bill in December without wall funding when they thought that Trump was on board with it. Then Trump abruptly reversed himself and said that he would veto any bill that did not have wall funding. Now McConnell says that he will not bring up any bill that Trump will veto, even if it is identical to the one that he brought up and voted for in December. But why not? If Republicans liked the bill so much then, then even if Trump vetoed it, there should be more than enough votes to override the veto and thus reopen the government.
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I did not watch Donald Trump’s speech last night but the reviews of it were so scathing that I decided to see for myself, helped by the fact that it was less that 10 minutes long and I felt I could stomach it. So I did and my reaction was that he looked like a person who knows he is in a bad situation and does not know how to get out. Trump’s strategy in the face of bad news is distraction and deflection. He could always create some new issue by saying something idiotic or making a stupid suggestion that he had no intention of carrying out, and the media would scurry after it. But there can be no deflection from the government shutdown. There is nothing he can do that is going to prevent an ever-increasing crescendo of attention to the fact that the government is grinding to a halt. I thought that he might throw a Hail Mary pass and declare a national emergency as a distraction but he didn’t.
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Donald Trump is appalled that new congresswoman Rashid Tlaib referred to him as a ‘motherfucker’ and his puppy House minority leader Kevin McCarthy joined in clutching his pearls.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed his anger with Tlaib’s comment Friday, saying, “That action should not stand. Somebody should stand up to her.”

The president also weighed in at a Rose Garden appearance, saying Tlaib “dishonored herself” with the “disgraceful” remark.

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Donald Trump is planning to give an address to the nation tonight at 9:00 pm that will be carried live on all the major TV networks. I will not be watching it because I find it hard to watch him lying in real time. I will choose instead to read later about all the lies and fear-mongering that I expect him to deliver as he gets increasingly desperate to get out of the box he put himself into by tying funding for his wall with keeping the government open. Expect to hear apocalyptic visions of the doom facing the nation if the wall is not built.
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