Of course, that kind of begs the question: Why *DO* you live in Florida?

But the only surprise was the lack of backbone. Which, in retrospect, maybe shouldn't have been much of a surprise.

7/end

I was deeply ambivalent about the shutdown. I thought tying it to the subsidies was probably good policy but bad politics. And once the course was set, if Trump had fought back with something unexpected, I could understand reevaluating.

6/7

To my mind, that means that there would have been no excuse for caving without the condition being met - even if this week's elections hadn't moved the window.

5/

When the Democratic leadership was deciding whether to insist on a condition for voting yes on the funding bill, those known knowns were presumably priced in.

4/

But this was a battle in which the only weapons he used were known knowns. As far as I can tell, his only unanticipated acts were ineffective at best, or (like the extravagant parties and the timing of the East Wing demolition) self-inflicted wounds.

3/

Trump is often unpredictable, in part because (to be polite) he doesn't hew to established norms. So you go into battle with him facing a lot of what someone once described as unknown knowns and unknown unknowns.

2/

I'm old enough to remember when making the point that genocide is bad suggested the opposite.

Jesus. They're kids. Even assuming that they were uniformly privileged, that wasn't their choice.

Is there any society without megalomaniacal men who perpetrate demonic acts in their name?

Seems like either no nation is truly free (in which case the concept has no utility) or we need to recognize the difference between degree and kind.

The bare fucking minimum *and only when he was personally attacked*.

Get it while there's still a Bill of Rights!

"You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."