Hope everyone is having an ok week so far!
Writing this early the day before so maybe something exciting will happen by post time!
House debating resolution to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker
https://wapo.st/3t9RhT6
McCarthy on verge of removal from House speakership after allies fail to block motion to vacate – live
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/oct/03/mccarthy-speaker-republicans-trump-trial-biden-live-updates
Shocking he can’t keep his gd mouth shut
Judge issues gag order in Trump fraud trial after ex-president posts about law clerk
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/03/trump-business-fraud-trial-former-president-blasts-new-york-ag.html
Some punk effed up
US congressman held up at gunpoint by Washington carjackers
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/03/us-congressman-henry-cuellar-carjacking-washington
Sprots!
‘Chris died in my arms’: NBA star Carlos Boozer on the murder that shaped his life
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/03/chris-died-in-my-arms-nba-star-carlos-boozer-on-the-that-shaped-his-life
Stonks!
Dow drops more than 400 points Tuesday and turns lower for 2023 on interest rate spike: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/02/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
Have a nice day mmm k
When I was young and I watched bet comedy, they did a lot of white/black jokes but they seemed more like poor/not poor jokes because I could never relate to the “white,” parts, this seems like something along those lines. Apparently I don’t act like white people, and before anyone gets up in arms, I can talk about white people, I know some.
…I think for me it raised a smile…but it ran ling & started to feel laboured?
…like…I’ve had people say similar sounding stuff…but I’ve also had people clearly struggling to say something because they’re struggling with the route they committed to but seem to want the random stranger about to pass them in the other direction to know they’re not out of breath…so I don’t think it’s been a “just white folks” thing to say something (or at least briefly make eye-contact & nod or something) to acknowledge that you saw the person who’s been in your eyeline for anywhere between a minute & a good chunk of an hour depending on the trail because doing otherwise feels like it lacks what I’m apparently old enough to think of as common courtesy
…but there’s a richard pryor bit about the difference between white people & black people walking in the woods that’s pretty funny & basically comes down to a difference in gait…so I guess some of that smile it got out of me might have been riding the coat-tails of a man who could make having heart attack funny?
When I encounter someone coming the other way along a hiking trail, I usually ask if there’s a bar or hot dog stand along the route. It’s one of my dad jokes.
Apparently I don’t hike enough, I guess?
It’s TOOOOOOTALLY a walk around the lakes in my neighborhood!😆😂🤣💖
I dunno if it’s so much “white people” maybe, as it is “Midwestern white folks”!🤣🤣🤣
It’s making me giggle, but that’s probably *also* because it SO reminds me of the way I end up helping folks to find stuff at the Grocery store allllll the time😉
Especially the guy at the end mentioning where the waterfall is?–that is TOTALLY *me* giving customers directions to the item they’re looking for, when I’m in the middle of helping *another* customer at the store😂
They NAILED us dorky Midwesterners!😆
Same. I walk every day. I say hello to everybody, regardless of what they look like. Yes, there are Black, Latinx, and Indian people in my neighborhood and I say hello to them same as everybody else. It took me almost to the end of the video to figure out the joke.
If I was drawing a sweeping generalization, I’d say young people respond less than older, and young women the least of all. Which doesn’t bother me in the slightest because from their perspective I could totally be a creep.
I will say that I usually get a nod from younger Black men rather than a spoken greeting.
…it got deleted pretty quickly (like they pulled him into a room to get schooled & he deleted it pretty much straight away) which made it not too easy to figure which things people said he’d said were true if you were late to the party…but…I’m yet again somehow stunned while not surprised that he pulled that shit *from the courtroom*…like…the woman is in the same room as him & he’s out there trying to pull the MAGA version of SWATing her or some shit
…when he isn’t spouting nonsense about choosing to be electrocuted by a sinking electric boat for which he was presumably too cheap to spring for the marine deep cycle batteries that I’m pretty sure couldn’t do that…rather than eaten by the shark…he’s claiming shutting the government down would cancel the federal cases against him…that this clerk should be thrown off the trial because she was once in a picture with schumer…that off-shore turbines are “windmills” that are making whales crazy…that gag orders preventing him from blatant attempts to intimidate or otherwise improperly influence the outcome of his trials equates to preventing him from campaigning
…& not only is he still by a margin the leading candidate for the party’s nomination for president…in a race against a man less than 10yrs his senior where the primary appeal is based on a perceived risk that he might be losing his faculties…but there are people (apparently unaware of the clause that says you can’t if the person is under federal indictment the way he multiply is) claiming they want to put him forward for speaker…people who got elected to congress, even…MT greene all but promised the big rock candy mountain would appear if they’d just anoint his orangeness already…no more war with russia…no more weaponized government…every republican gets a pony…the moon on a stick
…are we going to find out one day that something actually fused chunks of these people’s brains…or that crazy pills are real & they all signed up for alex jones’ “vitamins” & never made the connection?
…because the idea that these are people considered to be credible, legitimate, viable prospects for positions in a representative democracy couched in a rule of law…is fucking nuts
This is a rare condemnation of Trump by Axios (I mean, they’re safe — MAGAs don’t read — so why not?). It’s a pretty good roundup of the shit he’s been saying, and to their credit they actually correctly contrasted it to the false concern’s about Biden’s age.
Trump’s words turn violent as pressure on him builds
They also point out the threat of stochastic terrorism, even on law enforcement and Republicans.
One of the nuttier things to me is that the overall press assessment of Trump as a direct threat to them never went up significantly after the pipe bomber targeted CNN in 2018. It didn’t go up after rioting police during peaceful Black Lives Matter protests targeted journalists or when the 1/6 mob targeted journalists.
The executive mindset is still that the threat to them is somehow from people like trans activists sending polite letters asking for equitable application of journalistic standards.
I think a lot of individual reporters on the ground get it. But the farther up the food chain the more likely they are to get lulled by Republicans in their social and business circles. Of course the irony is that a lot of those Republicans can’t grasp how easily they could be targeted by Trump’s people either, because of how tight their own circles are.
To add a much more cynical layer to the unholy mess, I don’t think media executives actually care about the rank-and-file as, y’know, real human beings. If a few got murdered, well, then, that’s going to shoot ratings through the roof.
That was one of the big complaints frontline CNN reporters had with Christ Licht. They raised specific incidents they had dealt with and he just kept babbling about balance and hearing from different voices.
It’s also fueled a lot of internal anger at the NY Times management from LGBTQ employees. Top editor Carolyn Ryan repeatedly squelched internal concerns about the paper’s anti-trans coverage, despite employees raising the real life implications for Times staff.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-new-york-times-trans-coverage-debacle-was-years-in-the-making
…I posted a clip from the life of brian yesterday (well, a trio but this would be the middle one) that, while still pretty well-observed in some senses…dated pretty hard in a couple of ways…eric idle declares he wants to be a woman & wants to have babies & the woman in the group suggests that they look past the impossible nature of becoming pregnant while lacking a womb & agree to just support his right to want to
…& the part of the exchange played by john cleese sounds…like something john cleese might say in earnest these days rather than in jest…which still makes me a little sad
…but then today I came across a tweet buried in the coverage of his conference speech where he finally mustered the gumption to confirm he was cancelling the high speed rail line from birmingham to manchester…that more or less paints the tories as literally john cleese’s part in that scene
https://twitter.com/pippacrerar/status/1709536552978612430
…plus ça change, I guess
ETA: …seems like it’s less that it won’t embed & more that it got deleted…so…could be something in it wasn’t accurate & I haven’t listened to the whole speech or turned up a transcript yet…but…iirc…it said the biggest cheer yet was for a statement along the lines of “we can’t be bullied into believing people can be any sex they want – men are men & women are women & that’s just common sense” to which someone in the audience was heard to respond “about bloody time”
…not saying it was john cleese…but that’s what had me thinking about the different way that clip landed for me the first time I laughed at it & the way it sounds these days?
…the guardian ran a thing today about a dude who made it back up out of the rabbit hole that was an interesting read even if in many ways exactly what you expect from the premise
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/04/escape-from-the-rabbit-hole-the-conspiracy-theorist-who-abandoned-his-dangerous-beliefs
…& I think his experience with what happens when you turn to your fellow non-conformists in your best “I did my own research” regalia & say “uh, guys…doesn’t that sound a bit…you know…like it’s bullshit?” says a lot about how stunted your ability to develop awareness of anything outside your closed loop of crazy without being instantly shunned is a lot like…well…how cults work
…& whatever vestigial elements of the GOP might remain notwithstanding…it’s being looking, sounding & quacking like a cult for going on a decade or so
…the guy in the article is quoted repeatedly as saying things like “don’t ask me to make it make sense because I can’t because it doesn’t but when you’re in that world you just accept it” while others are quoted as saying things like “Conspiracy theories are a misfiring of a healthy and justifiable political instinct: suspicion.”
[…checking back that one would be quoting naomi klein…quoting marcus gilroy-ware]
…& they make the point that these people are way off base when it comes to the facts but maybe not so crazy in terms of the underlying feelings that sway them…the sense that something is badly wrong & a fantasy that not only can it be made to make sense but that justice can be achieved…so…maybe frank herbert was right & fear is the mind killer
…but the post was talking the other day about how it’s anger that switches off our ability to think
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/29/anger-management-techniques
…so as cocktails go it’s like a feedback loop from hell…which would certainly explain a few things, I guess…these are after all mostly people who are equal parts angry, frightened & determinedly dumber than seems plausible?
I can’t tell from the article but I’m going to assume Lee is British. And that leads me to why this won’t work on Americans: You’ve got a better public education system. And that helps your citizens see through bullshit better.
We’ve got a system largely based on a mythology. So we’re predisposed to believe nonsense.
Interesting analysis of how religion crowds out rationality:
America doesn’t need more God. It needs more atheists.
…I wasn’t sure for most of the article whether it was just written by a brit or about a brit…but I think at one point it says he met the guy in a cafe in bristol which would suggest you’re right about that part
…& it would be nice to think the schools are something to brag about but…brexit & all that…so…kind of a mixed bag…not least in the expensive ones, too…there are definitely a statistically significant sub-section of the population who are firmly convinced that attending an educational establishment is the same as acquiring an education…& that you get what you pay for
…to the extent that some very dumb people indeed do enjoy the benefits of an expensive education…they’re not entirely wrong, at that
…not to mention it doesn’t exactly sound like he’s had much luck earnestly trying to get others to see the light
…but…yeah…totally see what you’re saying all the same
No good parent, teacher, or pet owner ever got anywhere leading with anger. Anger means losing control of the situation, and either perpetuating the problem or creating new ones.
Of course denial of anger leads to secondary complications too. You shouldn’t just be cheerful when the dog lashes out at the cat. The key is to deal with issues promptly, consistently, and concisely, take the long view, and keep working through lapses.
What we get from execs toward Trump is essentially the relationship between bad parents and a spoiled child. He’s turning on the gas and playing with matches, and they long ago gave up doing anything. And as far as the cult, they figure that’s someone else’s problem even when Trump invites them into the house to play….
…I think it’s possible for some of them that it’s sort of a form of magical thinking
…like…if you think of yourselves as to some extent…I dunno the current buzzword bingo terms but “thought makers” or whatever that set the terms of the national conversation…then you can want him to become an irrelevance…& sort of be persuaded that if you treat him as an irrelevance you can make that happen
…if you’re aware that giving him all the oxygen that an orgy of free publicity confers was part of what led him from being a joke candidate in search of a punchline to the de facto capo of a nakedly criminal enterprise looking to take advantage of the lax regulations about money that can play the political funds card…& presumably feel at least a bit bad about that…but prefer not to think about it too hard…then that “act like he’s irrelevant” approach seems like it protects you from making the same mistake twice with a bonus of feeling like you’ve moved beyond the whole fever dream
…not saying that’s actually how they ought to look at it…or that it doesn’t maybe represent just as big a mistake as the other thing…but…I can kind of see how somebody might fall into it as a sort of path of least resistance?
Magical thinking is right, and something that I think encapsulates the current morass is this clip and the followup story.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/29/the-real-story-behind-that-viral-clip-of-keith-ellison-predicting-a-donald-trump-victory/
Keith Ellison, who made his name as a grassroots focused politician, warned about Trump in 2015 on ABC’s panel show This Week.
The panel of insiders laughed at him, including Maggie Haberman and George Stephanopoulos. In the article, ABC’s top political director, Matthew Dowd still insisted Ellison wasn’t serious, and Haberman insisted what happened on screen somehow wasn’t what really happened.
The kicker is everyone on the panel is still deeply embedded to this day in the inner circle of DC pundits. Ellison barely gets a call.
All of the talk about trying to understand Trump and his voters has been coded language for keeping the pundits who failed propped up in place and circling the wagons even tighter. And the net effect is freezing into place a mindset much closer to where Maggie Haberman was in 2015 than what Ellison saw as plain as day, even though the pundits have the benefit of eight years of experience.
…I guess to me “all” might seem like it tips into overstating it…but…yeah…that all tracks
…the covered-this-way-&-that puzzle that’s been the head-scratcher for me this week was the one with the fire alarm on the exit a dem went through between that “clean” bill of kevin’s being put to a vote & them managing to get it passed
…the first time I heard about it there was just a photo that looked like the guy was pulling the fire alarm the way a kid trying to get out of an exam might in a moment of desperation…& the implication was that it was an effort to delay/disrupt a vote by getting the house evacuated
…then it turned out not to be the same building
…then it turned out not to be an emergency exit but a door that’s more usually just a regular exit but (not least on a post jan6th basis) is alarmed during certain hours & has a sign on it saying that if you hit the emergency release the alarm will sound but in 30seconds the door will unlock…& the guy’s statement early on that he thought he was unlocking the door & was just trying to hurry his ass to the chamber to stand up & be counted in accordance with his job description made a whole lot more sense
…but at some point yesterday I ran across a suggested timeline that seemed to imply that had there not been some degree of hold up because an alarm went off the dems might not have been able to get enough boots on the ground, so to speak…& kevin might have had a shot at forcing through a vote count in enough of a hurry for the measure to fail so he could blame it on the democrats
…which…is on brand enough to sound plausible…but equally sounds like an outlandish conspiracy theory looking to paint the business with the alarm as significant rather than a genuine mistake
…& I honestly don’t know what to think…except that maybe if the conspiracy theory version is true someone ought to buy the guy a cape to hang in his closet so he can be a low key superhero?
ABC’s Jake Sherman was carrying water for GOP accusers of Bowman, and Sherman claimed Bowman was lying because of the existence of tunnels between House office buildings and the Capitol.
Except Sherman would know if he spent any time not following McCarthy around like a hungry Yorkshire Terrier that those tunnels aren’t convenient to many offices in the House office buildings. If you ever happen to be on Independence Avenue before a vote, you’ll see Capitol police stopping traffic for gaggles of voting reps who are taking the fastest route outside.
Sherman knows nothing about what really goes on outside of a handful of GOP leaders. But he pretends he’s an insider.
…it’s possible I came across it via ABC at some point in that progression though I don’t honestly know which step…would have had to be in the middle stretch though…wasn’t the first time or the last one with the timeline
…& really it’s that last one that I’m curious about…but the only way I can see to really guage how plausible that version is would be to know whether or not the speed with which the members got to the chamber was important…which it seems like it would be up to a point but I wouldn’t expect there to be an option where kev could keep the window for registering votes down to a small enough one that short notice on a saturday really could get him a decent chance of closing the vote before enough dems could get theirs in
…would have been inclined to dismiss it as implausible but that twitter thread you posted isn’t the only place where I saw it claimed that maccarthy said they had to vote within a timeframe or he’d call a verdict without their votes…which in that thread the guy says meant he wouldn’t wait for an hour & half before the vote but hadn’t closed the vote when they went to vote having taken the hour & half anyway
…so…the alarm was tripped somewhere in the midst of all that…& may or may not have had any bearing on any of it…but…in the event that it did make a difference it would kind of appeal to me that an entire mob over-running the capitol for an afternoon failed to shift the result of a vote…but one guy triggering a fire-alarm like something out of ferris bueller might have…conceivably if not necessarily plausibly
…so not only do I not know what the actual answer is…I’m not sure which answer I want to be true?
Splinter —
It’s not just time for the route that members walk, it’s convenience. For a lot of the offices it’s a hassle to go through one of the tunnels and much more roundabout. Also, the distance between that door and the House chamber is significant. Independence Avenue is a six or eight lane road, and there’s an entire parking lot beyond that. There’s simply no way pushing that button was some kind of delaying tactic. They may as well claim someone hitting the wrong button on a car key fob in a rental car lot is an attempt to stop a plane at a gate from taking off.
Again, that’s something a reporter like Sherman would know if he bothered to spend any time with backbenchers, but instead he’s permanently panting outside McCarthy’s door. Or at least he was.
…not sure if this will let me thread it right but assuming it does & thus lands where I think it will I think it’ll make sense
…the thing I remain curious about has no particular connection to how long it took bowman to cover the distance to the chamber…either through the door with the alarm or by any other route
…& one way or another I might not have seen people talking about every conceivable route anyone could take from any point in or around the capitol yesterday…but it certainly seemed like it…& none of it told me what I wanted to know, either
…if, however, there are…as it seems plausible there might be…measures such that for security purposes any time an alarmed entrance indicates a breach there’s some stuff that immediately happens…like a check that everyone the capitol police expect to be on the premises is still there & unharmed & they know for a fact that nobody who wasn’t supposed to gained access to the place
…then it could have…conceivably if not particularly plausibly to my mind…been the case that doing so interrupted the rush kevin was in to say time was up as far as casting votes was concerned
…& if that much were true…which could all still be the case without bowman having triggered the thing with any such intent…it could as a by-product have hypothetically enabled members who perhaps hadn’t already been on the premises or otherwise wouldn’t have made it in before the cutoff…not bowman himself…to register votes they might have been denied if it was up to maccarthy
…& way out on the end of a tenuous limb would then be the possibility that if all that were true…& it applied to enough votes to have made a determinative difference to the overall outcome…then the guy would potentially be an accidental hero who single handedly kept the government open by (irony of ironies) opening a door that said he shouldn’t…though I’d argue this counts as an emergency so that part would be debatable
…but…since I’m pretty sure if I start trying to make a full on wall of crazy with strands of thread & pins & pictures & spend a bunch of time online trying to ascertain the precise coordinates at which every dem congress-critter could be found at the exact moment the alarm was triggered…I’m going to get visited by the sort of people I don’t much want to waste the time of…I’m content to leave him as schrödinger’s accidental hero?
BDC, Ellison’s plenty busy nowadays!😉😁💖
He’s Minnesota’s Attorney General–he and Neal Katyal headed up the team that sent Chauvin (& the others) to prison for George Floyd’s murder, and lately Ellison’s been straightening out the Police-officer-panic here, regarding the new law saying cops can’t prone or *otherwise* unnecessarily assault kids, if they need to cuff or arrest them.
I ranted about it last week-or-so, but basically what it amounts to, is that our state Legislature passed a law last session, that banned SRO’s (School Resource Officers) and other adults in schools from using “unnecessary force” on kids.
*MULTIPLE* Law Enforcement agencies across the state pulled out their SRO’s from schools, citing the new law, znd “worries” about “being accused while they work in these “Dangerous Places!”
Mind you, people like *me* work in those SAME schools–using ONLY our words and an allowed hold or two, to de-escalate those SAME situations–and *we* don’t panic *every damn day* about how “Our LIVEZ are in DAAAAYNGUR!!!!!” (🙄🙄🙄)
(YEP, we DO know there’s an infinitesimal chance we *could* be killed at work.
But, really, the chance is *incredibly* small–especially in comparison to all the *good* we can do there😉💖)
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
On an non-Star Wars note about anger, I’m constantly astounded by Karens and Chads who march up to customer service and start screaming. You’ll get much farther if you start rationally. There’s a place for anger, but it’s not at the beginning of the discussion.
I would almost go even further and say that a lot of low-level Trump-curious voters probably feel pretty similarly about the government and the current state of affairs to the way I do. Their mistrust is completely earned and valid. It’s just that they’re incapable (and in fairness to them, with a LOT of misdirection thrown their way) of getting to the root cause of why things are bad and they end up fighting to make things worse for themselves.
Not that Europe is free and clear of this issue (cough Brexit cough) but class is a part of politics there in a way that’s almost unimaginable here in the US and that makes a difference. People complained about Bernie voters going to Trump — and it wasn’t a huge amount and didn’t swing the election, etc. etc. — but the reality is that if a low-info voter felt like things weren’t great and things needed to be shaken up and if class (Bernie fighting for the little guy vs. a real estate billionaire) wasn’t an issue … that switch actually makes plenty of sense in 2016.
…the class thing is one of those weird cultural idiom things that sort of resists translation while also sort of not being all that different in some ways…or at least in my experience that’s how it seems
…so…there’s definitely a way that people who think of themselves as “born” tories (or labour) think of the connection to the party being a fundamental part of their identity…& with the tories being the party of money (old & the grudgingly-tolerated new) & the labour party being named for the working class that’s sort of the obvious split by which to classify the two
…but…it’s also not entirely the way it works…in that there are plenty of people who did pretty well for themselves & on paper would be comfortably middle (or even upper middle) class who’d vehemently deny that they aren’t staunchly working class…& labour-for-life…& not a few people who are pretty hard up but think they’re the inheritors of the legacy that brought about magna carta who are bone deep tories that cling to notions like “an englishman’s home is his castle” & “britannia rules the waves & britons never, never shall be slaves”
…but I’ve definitely met a lot of what might be called legacy voters in the states…in the sense that they come from a long line of partisan voters…& they can cover the spread the same way in terms of the things that get considered signifiers of class
…I lean towards the idea that both sides of the pond are quite stratified in a societal sense but that the ways those are delineated don’t seem like they marry up…possibly…& not in a “we have this thing in europe called history” way but simply in the sense that it’s run through that many more iterations…it tends to be more codified in the UK rather than subsumed into other considerations?
There’s an effort by GOP spin consultants like Ari Fleischer to portray McCarthy as the victim of a Democratic plot aided by a few Republicans. ABC’s influential reporter Jake Sherman is going along with the framing.
A big part of the effort will be to suggest that Democrats had no reason to distrust McCarthy and are just playing politics. In order to do that, they’ll need to continue to treat the House GOP’s evidence-free impeachment push as legitimate, which got a lot harder after Chairman Comer’s committee completely botched it last week. Not that they had anything in the first place.
A lot of it comes down to both sides framing with a hefty dose of nihilism, as if this would have zero impact on 2024 congressional elections. The scaffolding gets crazier and crazier.
It’s cracking in places. I think the bulk of the press understands that this won’t fit into the usual boxes, not that they won’t try. But I can guarantee that one point will be buried that Democrats having been bringing up over and over — this didn’t happen when Pelosi ran the House. The DC press corps has always minimized House Democrats, and it hurts their reporting, but they simply can’t conceive of how it matters.
Pelosi’s eviction from her office by the “speaker pro tem” is a golden opportunity for Democrats to frame it as payback for actually being an effective speaker. So they’ll probably whiff it.
…this one confuses me…think I read somewhere or other that the pro tempore version of the speaker is empowered to do about three things…which I was under the impression were to open & adjourn proceedings…& recognize nominations for speaker
…being able to get the keycards reprogrammed to effectively boot pelosi (in absentia no less since she’s off commemorating the passing of feinstein on the other side of the country & couldn’t plausibly have returned before they’d got those locks changed) out of a workspace seems both immeasurably petty & a straightforward over-reach?
…aside from getting mileage out of it in a campaigning sense is there any way to also say, “you don’t get to pull that kind of bullshit antics until you e done your homework & elected a real speaker” on the part of the dems in the house?
Way back in the day, Rep. Wayne Hays was a major power in Congress. He was the chair of the normally obscure House Administration Committee, but he built a power base because his committee controlled funding for maintenance staff patronage jobs, and he was able to install a bunch of flunkies who would do things like turn off the heat to offices or remove furniture at his command. Other reps wouldn’t cross him as a result.
He technically didn’t have that authority, but as long as his flunkies listened, it didn’t matter.
…in fairness to the dems I’ve seen asked for comment they’ve all been at pains to stress that they have ample receipts on the charge that maccarthy can’t show a reason they wouldn’t be fools to trust him…& most point out his own members don’t trust him either for a host of similar reasons…& that their votes shouldn’t be seen as being what did for him…simply a reflection of the part where he gave them no reason to save him
…may or may not make a difference…but as party lines go they seem to be toeing it pretty consistently where they’re given the opportunity?
They’ve learned. It took a while, but they’ve learned.
This is a great explainer from the perspective of a Democratic staffer, and I think it fits the facts better than most reporting.
https://nitter.net/Fritschner/status/1709559909488976279
It gets into the weeds of House procedure, but the gist is this:
McCarthy tried to get cute on the shutdown.
He knew a small but decisive handful of his party would vote against anything he did. And he wanted to give vulnerable members of his party a bill they could vote for.
So McCarthy broke his rule about giving 72 hours notice on passing a bill, and put the short term bill up for a vote with zero notice. He expected Democrats would vote en masse against it, which would mean his captive press would blame Democrats for the shutdown.
Except Democrats sniffed out the trap and voted to pass it with a portion of the GOP.
Now McCarthy had two choices. One was to suck it up, admit to the about face, and continue down a path of cooperation with Democrats, but face more complaints from the kooks.
The other was to slam on the brakes, pretend passage was his plan all along BUT he was also not really in support of funding and try to kill it in order to appease the kooks. Basically he was The Joker!
The problem is that nobody believed him except a portion of the press. And even then, for every reporter who was dutifully pumping out how McCarthy was the winner, others were asking WTF was going on. They’re terrible at counting votes, but not that bad.
McCarthy continued down his path of promising his kooks that next time he would really, truly stiff the Democrats. And the Democrats sensed that he was too cowardly to ever cooperate again.
So without even a hint that McCarthy would negotiate in good faith, Democrats decided it made no sense to offer him a lifeline.
Wait, Democratic pawn Matt Gaetz used the ruse of McCarthy cooperating with Democrats as an excuse to depose him for the purpose of………………………………..what, exactly?
Matt Gaetz, bipartisan dealmaker. Who’da thunk it?
…much as I want to take the laughs where I can…even if the next speaker takes less than a record-breaking number of attempts to get seated it eats into the 45day clock on the continuing resolution…at the end of which they kind of need to have gotten a proper omnibus spending bill through
…& even the odds of them actually doing that in spite of the shit-flinging monkeys in their back benches seem better than anyone who can get the votes of said shit-flinging contingent required to get themselves seated putting the kind of bill required to get the funding needed for ukraine passed
…so…it’s kind of a sick joke even if it is at the expense of people thoroughly deserving their fates to be a punchline?
This needs to stop!
https://www.levernews.com/insurers-are-gaming-medicare-to-the-tune-of-140-billion/
and this is disgusting!
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits
and I could NOT agree with this more…
https://hartmannreport.com/p/is-non-accountability-for-the-crimes-6be
welp…thats a little close to home..shooting about 200 meters away from my house…right on the path i walked half an hour earlier
not too surprised considering how much drugs get dealt in that particular area
still…good thing i didnt need to do any shopping on my home…that delay could have made for an awkward encounter
anyways…theres an army of cops over there now and my routes been cordoned off….so i guess ill be taking a detour to the shop
It has begun! Raaaauuuughhhh!
come to think of it…we did have our nationwide emergency systems test this monday
Some rando rang my front doorbell five minutes before the test. Sure, asshole, I’m going to open the door and let you eat my face. Thanks, tinfoil hats, for warning me in advance!