Indeed. A modern Nissan Leaf with a 62 kWh battery can charge in a little over 11 minutes if you have a 2kV 160 amp line to toss into it. Because you know, it’s completely safe and cool to deal with those kinds of values for the average consumer.
Florida district court Judge Aileen Cannon’s latest comically pro-Trump ruling, her order Tuesday that temporarily blocks the public release of Smith’s report on his two criminal investigations of Trump, remains a big deal.
Cannon’s ruling isn’t some sudden motion here. The core argument for tossing out the entire case is predicated on Jack Smith not being appointed per 28 USC § 515. Cannon agreed with the motion that Jack Smith wasn’t appointed correctly. Obviously the DOJ disagreed. So the whole thing went to appeals.
All Cannon is doing is indicating that the Government can not release a report that a person who wasn’t correctly appointed created. This was absolutely something everyone knew was coming. This is just the logical follow up of what she already ruled on. I’m not saying she’s correct in her determination, just saying that this was absolutely expected to happen like way back when the case was originally tossed out.
I think we aren’t really enjoying the true flavor of this vote. Allow me to enlighten.
McCarthy had added new rules to the budget process under Rule XXI related to the budget. It creates a “cut-as-you-go” system as opposed to the old “pay-as-you-go” system. This new rule change makes it fifty times more difficult to get an actual budget passed, I won’t go into details as it’s a lot to cover.
Now we arrive to H.Res. 10515, Trump’s amended American Relief Act. Now no part of this bill follows House Rule X or XXI on the budget except Division C (via H.Res. 8774), Division F (via H.Res. 8752), Division G (via H.Res. 8998), Division J (via H.Res. 8580), and Division K (via H.Res. 8771).
Side note for those wondering, the US budget has 12 regular appropriations (because the original theory was that you could pass one per month as opposed to a 1,500 page omnibus bill. I’m sure we can all see how wonderful that theory is working out) that are required that are labeled Division A, Division B, … Division L. Sometimes budgets include Division M and more letters past that like Division AA, BB, CC and so on, those are called “supplemental appropriations”. But the A through L are (in alphabetic order):
A - Agriculture, rural development, FDA, and related agencies
B - Commerce, justice, science, and related agencies
C - The Department of Defense
D - Energy and water development of the United States and related agencies
E - Financial services and general government appropriations
F - The Department Of Homeland Security
G - The Department of the Interior, environment, and related agencies
H - The Department of Labor, HHS, and Education, and related agencies
I - The Legislative Branch Appropriations
J - Military construction, VA, and related agencies
K - The Department of State, Foreign operations, and related agencies
L - Transportation, HUD, and related agencies
SO. Here’s the really tasty part. Because of McCarthy’s strange ass rules on the budget. The House has to “suspend the rules” in order to approve this bill (because the other seven divisions that haven’t follow the rules). That means it’s not just a simple majority, but a ⅔ majority is required. Even if every Republican did vote “yea”, they still needed 63 Democrats to sign on and they got only two. And they had to do this because McCarthy fucked them over with the rule change that the House Freedom Caucus asked for.
Had the House Freedom Caucus not asked for this “cut-as-you-go” system, Republicans wouldn’t have needed the Democrats in the vote. That’s what I think is amazing.
And the thing is, what was different between the Trump amendment and the original is, I detail in my comment here..
Literally this failure is so much on the Republicans for getting played at their own fucking game here. Maybe on January 3rd, they’ll adopt better rules. But who knows, there might be another fight over Speaker again. I would find it hilarious if the Democrats forward a continuation of the rules of the House just to keep McCarthy’s strange ass shit in there out of spite.
For those not in the know, the US House makes new rules every two years (which is when a new session of Congress starts, the next session is the 119th session for those wondering). Most times they just forward the standing rules of the previous session, but every so often a speaker of the house gets “Creative” and it’s always a fun show watching unintended consequences. McCarthy’s rule changes have not yet disappointed.
It’s very disappointing to us that all but two Democrats voted against aid to farmers and ranchers, against disaster relief, against all these bipartisan measures that had already been negotiated and decided upon
Division A didn’t change from the original and the amended version. So the two were the same. Democrats were on board with Div. A in the original, what changed was Democrats denying Trump the suspension of the debt ceiling. And the reality is Republicans have the House Freedom Caucus to blame for this failure.
Republicans spent the 117th blocking everything they could from Democrats. Why Republicans thought Democrats were going to play ball in the upcoming 119th is likely the dumbest thing for them to bank on. Yeap, Democrats denied the gimmie for Trump because Trump doesn’t get to rug pull bills when he’s being pissy. That’s how that works. Trump wants to suspend the debt ceiling? Democrats had to swallow a ton of bitter pills to get a suspension in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. Republicans made bank in favors for giving Democrats that one favor.
Democrats are just looking for the exact same treatment. Want to suspend the debt ceiling? There’s going to need to be a lot of bitter pills for Republicans to swallow. So Democrats are of the mindset, Republicans take it up the ass for that request like the Democrats did, or they are going to have to crack that whip on the Freedom Caucus which has in it some of the loudest members of the House who have everything to prove.
Like Republicans clearly forgot, you don’t ask for the golden goose free of charge. Trump wanted an unlimited credit card for all his plans, and Democrats are going to want a lot for that privilege. Unlimited credit card didn’t come cheap for Biden, it sure shit ain’t coming cheap for Trump.
Republicans don’t want to be stuck in this budget loop for the next two years? Agree to the original stop-gap and you all can come back in March to talk about a full budget. But oh no, Democrats aren’t doing this “pray I don’t alter the deal” 30 fucking hours before the Government shuts down. Republicans can play blame games all day long, but short end of the deal is, Republicans control the House. Republicans can get their house in order or start appeasing Democrats, but either way if Trump wants the Deluxe Package, he’s going to have to pay out the ass for it. Democrats had to, and they suffered a ton of backlash to those bitter pills. Or maybe Republicans don’t have the back bone to do the hard things in Congress.
I remember my sophomore year in High School a friend walked up to me and we got to talking and then they ask “so are you planning anything for homecoming?”. I just replied “nah. I’m not really into football and I think I have to work that night anyway.” And they were like “Okay well cool.”
Fast forward 35 years, I tell this story to a friend and they said “so did they ask you out anyway?” And I was like “No, I… WAIT! Is that what they were getting at? It actually flew over my head? Holy shit!” And it took a whole 35 years before I finally realized it.
In all fairness though, I had a lot going on at that point in my life. My mother two years earlier had passed away from a three year battle with cancer and my father had left us orphan about three weeks later. I was still processing shit with the whole foster care and nobody else in my god forsaken family wanting to take me or my siblings in.
Oh and I never got with the person because like maybe four months later I had to move to another foster family (which side note: I eventually had to leave that other family too because the parents were that weird religious abusive kind and I got pulled during a welfare check to go elsewhere) which meant a change in schools (had to change schools yet again after that second family). Something, something the foster care dad got arrested with a DUI, something something, you can’t keep kids in your house. But you know looking back maybe it was for the best because it would have sucked to have to move after developing emotions for someone.
To note, the US has not sent an ambassador to the Bahamas since 2011. Nicole Avant, the last US ambassador, left the position to work with then President Obama’s reelection efforts in 2012. Since then we’ve largely left the role to the Chargé d’Affaires in the Bahamas. Nothing big happened, Avant’s tenure as ambassador wasn’t some ordeal or anything. It’s just been a long stream of weirdness and dysfunction that’s left the position open this long.
The fact that Walker is being picked is hilarious because the guy likely has zero ideas about anything related to foreign relations. It’s not some big secret that being Ambassador to the Bahamas carries with it the key to a really nice house in Nassau. And the embassy itself is quite nice though quaint. The real question is, will Walker be ambassador once the new facility gets done? Because the new embassy is supposed to be super fancy.
Even going off the final assertions by this report and let’s just toss them a bone and say 100% of what they present is EXACTLY as they say it is presented. None of this rises to criminal liability. None of it is a level that the FBI could really do anything about. Violation of House rules by House members is up to the House to vote on punishment. Violation of the standing rules of the Senate is up to the Senate is also up to the Senate to vote on how to punish. There’s zero ways anyone in the judicial branch would want to take up any of this.
Even Trump diehard justices wouldn’t touch this because doing so would open up ANY rule breaking in the House to prosecution, which is literally something nobody in Congress would want.
But again, that’s just ignoring all the stretch allegations made. Like for example, they’ve indicated that Cheney reached out to Hutchinson and then apply their definition of “it went too far” when that’s exactly how they’ve conducted several of their investigations into Hunter Biden which is exactly why we wanted a hearing in front of cameras as opposed to off-record and then on-record statements.
All of this is just Gentleman’s agreements on how testimony is entered into record, there’s not some “gold standard” to how committees go about this whole affair. And literally every time something like this goes down, once the power dynamic changes, it’s “this is where the other team didn’t do what we believe to be reasonable™”.
I mean, I get it. It looks like they wanted a stronger narrative than they had, but at the same time a lot of people within the office who were loyal to Trump didn’t want to testify. There was a ton of pushback from former members of Trump’s team to the investigation. Remember all those subpoenas that they ignored from the House? So okay, the linkage to Trump and the J6 rioters isn’t strong, but that’s no surprise. I don’t think anyone thought for ten seconds that the House could make a case for incitement, that’s just a massive bar to clear. And the J6 Committee did indeed stop short of calling it an orchestrated coup officially. NOW that didn’t stop them from making that statement in front of cameras, but at no time did the House officially call it a coup. Just “strongly hinted at it”.
Now, that might sound like I’m splitting hairs here. But that’s exactly what Republicans did with the whole Burisma thing. They didn’t outright officially say squat. But goddamn didn’t they strongly hint at it.
All of this gets really old because they are fighting over rules that they themselves skirt at nearly every chance. But none of this reaches “breaking laws” sort of how like “insider trading in Congress isn’t TECHNICALLY breaking any laws.” It’s all silly nonsense because this song and dance is all bad-faith arguments from both sides.
I would love to see what kind of argument the FBI tries to cobble together for conspiracy for former Senator Cheney. Because boy do Congress critters really rely on that Article I Section 6 part of the Constitution that indicates.
and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place
Like that’s a very core, boy do we have thousands of cases to draw precedent on, right of Congress. And gosh, this is starting to look like the 119th session is going to be doing a whole lot of the 118th missteps.
Freezing investment into the country and nuclear grade austerity will always bring inflation to an almost stand still. You’re literally tossing liquid nitrogen on your economy, it’s absolutely going to freeze.
The IMF does not expect the Argentine economy to grow this year, but rather to decline by 3.5%, while it should start growing next year.
And this is the key aspect that usually makes people who consider this pause for a second. Because freezing your economy might solve the right now problem, it also has the ability to ice economic activity completely, triggering an economic depression. This is the “balance” so to say. The harder your freeze, the more you’ll need to rewarm the markets to get your economy going again.
President Milei and the government hope that the new laws, which offer investors decades of tax and customs relief, will quickly attract capital and curb the recession.
This has always been the super tricky part of the weapons grade austerity. The what comes after part. So Milei has done it, he’s cooled the markets and supply has nearly cratered in the country. The next steps is to get production back and start pesos in the country to start flowing again.
I’ve always been a bit irresolute about Milei’s approach on the economy. I’m not against it, it’s just a strategy that’s playing with fire in a gun powder factory. First and foremost, I hope that the people in Argentina find economic stability, because boy do they deserve it. So to that end I hope WHOEVER succeeds in getting that done. And second, I really hope this is something that can be long lasting. Hyper austerity has a history of bad boomerang effects. It can work, it’s just takes a ton of work, more than most governments are willing to invest. And so there’s a big chance that we could start to see some positive only to then watch it completely crumble once again.
If I was a leader, this isn’t exactly a strategy I would pick. There’s just a ton of places where it can go all wrong. But I hope the guy gets it fixed once and for all. But dang, I don’t know how dude is smiling in that photo because if I was going down this road I wouldn’t be able to sleep properly.
The 118th Session? Yeah, we don’t even have a parallel in all of the history of the US to mark how unproductive this session has been. Like not even during the Civil War was Congress this underwhelming. The 118th Session has set a new low water mark for “things gotten done”.
The biggest issue was that the House spent something like ~60% of their time in Committee doing “investigations” that ultimately led nowhere. Like, I’ll throw Congress a bone here, if they actually impeached someone with all those investigations, I’d give it to them. But that literally nobody was impeached all those investigations basically go into the “wasted time” column.
And they can’t impeach any of them come the 119th session because… New President, new people. So all that time they invested goes to waste. Hell, even Hunter I can’t give it to them, because in the end, he got a pardon. And as soon as Trump gives the J6 folks a pardon, all that work the Democrats did becomes wasted as well.
But the 118th spent the vast majority of their time in investigations, so they got so little actually done and passed.
Some have suggested that the Deep State is already seeking to undermine Trump’s second presidency by plotting a civil war or scheming ways to prevent him from entering the White House
Because they are, and this is the really important part, FUCKING IDIOTS WHO SAY DUMB SHIT.
This is the shit that gets me upset. Back in the early 90s there was this group online, had an IRC chat room and everything, that would wax prophetic about pyramids, exotic matter, the Kennedy’s, and the Pentagon. NO ONE FUCKING WROTE ARTICLES ABOUT THEIR DUMB ASSES. Because they were idiots.
“Some have suggested” WHO?! Name and shame or shut the fuck up about it. Articles like this just fucking make idiots look bonafide. This isn’t an us vs them situation. This is like eight people who are detached from reality saying crazy ass shit and some outlet reporting it on a slow news day.
I swear one day, I hope, media will see how fucking twisted they themselves have made this god-forsaken planet. What they draw from it, I know not what, but hopefully a bit of “damn maybe we should chill a bit” is in the cards.
Faith.
Same reason I don’t cite poor farmers giving to Trump’s presidency.
Faith in an idea is a powerful motive. The poorer you are the more you rely on faith rather ability and/or resources. Literally take a political science 101 class. Belief that something is right or true is like 99% of how organized humanity works.
Exactly. Like I’m going to feel whatever for the opposite side of the aisle here. But the fuckers who looked at the state of affairs outside and was like “nah, fuck it”. Oooo, that’s a whole other feeling that’s not pleasant one bit.
I do really hope that everyone understands that the default nature of the universe is to be undone, including the niche that humanity inhabits, and that are continued still being here state requires some input from us. Get up off your collective asses and do something for fucks sake. Somehow I don’t believe it’s a tall task to press a fucking button. Which one we can debate, but at least PUSH ONE OF THEM.
Nobody knew health care could be so complicated
— President Trump (February 27, 2017)
I mean if nobody got the message he wasn’t going to anything. Being direct this time isn’t going to help. Literally didn’t even fucking LOCK HER UP like he said he would. Don’t even get me started on his tax return, still waiting on that, likely will happen on infrastructure week.
Anything that guy says is just utter shit.
Oh man tell me about it. The ones who voted Trump, yeah. But the vast majority that decided to stay home? I have less savory words for.
Article gives zero reasons. I’ll add my opinion. Newness factor. Not having the meta settled, the lack of map knowledge, etc. Just all the things that circle the “new” of such a game drives the folks at the moment. It’s got the feel of early OW when you just picked your person, got on a map, and did the objective not really knowing anything.
It’s yet to see how the balance patching goes for the game and how new characters for the game go. I’ll say the game does one thing out the gate better than OW2 and that’s the reduced FOMO in the game related to battle pass. You buy the battle pass, you have infinite time to complete it. Now you can’t sit the fence on if to buy the BP or not, hence my “reduced FOMO”, but this is one of those things they’ve started doing in a lot of other games like Halo and what not, and it’s something that I think Blizzard should do for OW. But I don’t think that alone is going to turn the tide massively.
But I will say that Rivals and OW2 are absolutely proving the F2P is here to stay as a model for games. So I really think those in the OW community who were salty about OW2 swapping over have basically lost the war on the topic.
Again, all my 2¢, and I’m not claiming to be some scion of knowledge in the gaming industry. Just letting you know my feels.
Not exactly related to this, but I find it incredibly interesting the sheer level of media coverage on the shooter, when compared to media’s supposed new rule of trying not to linger too much on the shooter least copy-cats get made.
The last five days has been a deep dive into this person’s hunt, social media accounts, and a complete life bio. Like cops are going to toss him into jail, but this guy hit rock star status and it’s got the feels of we’re going to see this again down the road.
I don’t condone the dude’s actions, but goddamn has everyone including law enforcement made this man shine brighter than any shooter that has come before. If law enforcement plans on having some sort of backburn narrative getting out but shit like this, where the guy acted on pain.
That starts transcending the guy himself. That makes it a lot harder to prevent McVeigh style inspiration for retribution. We had the Ruby Ridge / Waco spawn the OKC Bombings because those events stirred ideas, so the people themselves became less important to the narrative. Columbine’s major memory was one that was alluring to disaffected youth that continued to be largely ignored.
The toothpaste is coming out of the tube on this shit. If law enforcement is going to get a handle on this situation, they’re going to need to start picking up the pace. Senator Fetterman’s hot take of “news media is just shitty” on a story about how this was inevitable has been largely seen as clears throat:
Wow they’re all fucking disconnected from reality
Like it’s not some new science that if you back into a corner a wild animal, it’s likely going to strike. The fact that Senators are THIS blind to their failures to address this issue that both of them continually indicate they want to solve, is unsurprising, but holy shit that’s the kind of shit that turns words into gasoline on an already raging fire.
No shortage of shitty takes on the 2024 election or on this assassination
— Sen. Fetterman (via Twitter)
Yes, excellent choice of words to ignore how Congress for the last three and a half fucking decades has continued to FAIL over and over again on fixing this problem. No need to look at this event as yet another failure of Congress to do their fucking job correctly or anything like that. It has to be the various shitty opinions at fault here.
But the media has stories they need to hype up so that you’ll put money in their pocket and Congress will just continue to do their favorite past time of pointing fingers until the heat death of the universe. All the while they’ll look at each other befuddled on how the next one of these could have possibly happened?
I find all of this wildly interesting in how most of them professed not too long ago that they had learned their lesson to only show, yet again, no they didn’t. But that’s about par for people who have long since become comfortable with their positions of wealth and power, there comes a point where feelings and the emotions of the masses just no longer appear on their radar. When you stop giving two shits about anyone else but yourself, every wrong looks like someone else’s fault. For Fetterman, I hope his ass gets primaried, one can only hope.
It is, the police are trying to save face by finding someone dumb and innocent to scapegoat into “he was totally resisting arrest”. They’re going to murder someone, call it him, and promise that anyone else attacking the rich will meet the same end.
As a liberal I will feel so fucking owned if Trump gets rid of selects the Governor of Florida.
but Trump might test limits by forcing a Senate recess using a rarely invoked constitutional provision
I highly doubt Trump can use Section III here. This whole story is predicated on a process that’s a massive maybe.
If Section III was a possibility then it’s likely that the Senate would just suspend confirmation hearings and just floor vote instead. No need for Section III to be invoked.
It just makes no sense to even pitch this idea.
“Will”? We got Sen. Fetterman the other say saying that we should be thinking about Greenland like we do the Louisiana Purchase.
The Orange Turd isn’t even in office and everyone in DC is already lost their goddamn mind.