OldWoodFrame

The default if Congress can't pass legislation should be that legislation doesn't happen.

"Nock! Nock!"

"Who's there?"

"Mark!"

"Mark who?"

I was fine with like 80% of Obama and like 60% of Clinton's actual policies while enjoying the economy that I don't credit him for. But then W Bush was like a 10% and Trump 1 maybe 15% (Warp Speed, passing the vast majority of Covid stimulus, ironically all the stuff he's against now) and I'm batting zero so far on Trump 2 but I assume at some point he'll do something I agree with.

I try to keep a sense of perspective, every president I disagree with seems to be the worst president ever at the time.

I really want to say Bush's useless Trillion dollar wars are worse than this.

But it's close and we have 3.5 more years of this.

I don't have a ton of "the court is wrong" opinions, but Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution flatly gives Congress the responsibility of regulating trade and imposing tariffs. The President just doesn't (shouldn't) have the authority to change rates. The executive needs to execute the will of the Legislative branch.

Market cap of Twitter was $41B, Musk overpaid at $44B,

Fidelity valued it at $9.4B late last year.

xAI paid $33B for it this year.

So this is a significantly worse overpay.

Reagan was a lot of things but he sure wasn't a Russian asset.

Can't tell if the way small minded bigots stay away from the best parts of every country is a fun coincidence or causal.

South Africa, so well known for being racist against white South African emerald mine heirs.

Sure, so they don't have power right now. Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency. Blame the voters who wanted this scenario if you don't like it.

Schumer is playing the long game trying to get power back at the midterms.

The fascists will do what they want either way. They only use laws when it is convenient for them to do so.

If that's your actual stance, then none of what Schumer or any Democrat does, matters at all.

What the fascists wanted was to be legitimized by bipartisan support of their bill. They wanted the Democrats to consent in advance. To take the next small step willingly.

In what world is this the thing that matters? You're really saying fascists would do whatever they want regardless of all laws or institutions, but...not really, the one man holding them back was Chuck Schumer, minority leader in the Senate.

Chuck Schumer has handed the country over to the fascists in exchange for nothing because he serves the same billionaires.

I see how you're getting here, he does fund raise from Democratic billionaires, but the Internet Leftist urge to just dismiss anyone with any political power as not ideologically pure enough and thus the enemy puts such a small ceiling on the movement in terms of actual political results. Nothing to do with this comment thread it's just something that annoys me.

There wasn't a sudden realization from Schumer that flipped his opposition on Wednesday to his support on Thursday. That was his obvious cover to try to hide the billionaires he serves. Don't fall for it.

He flipped overnight, ok. What's the more likely scenario, he got some overnight polling that showed people were going to blame the Democrats for the shutdown so he switched out of political necessity, or he...secretly agreed with the Republicans the whole time but decided to pretend to oppose it for exactly one day for no reason.

Whoever controls the messaging can blame the other party for the shutdown. Democrats don't bother to even have a narrative let alone control one.

Voters are not dumb, they just don't all agree with you politically. They blamed Congressional Republicans in the Ted Cruz shutdown over Obamacare, and they blamed Trump in the shutdown over the Wall. Because those are the people who caused it. In this case, it would be the Democrats forcing a shutdown.

Given enough time, we were always going to have right wing authoritarians back in power.

But call me an idealist, I didn't think it would be actual Nazi sympathizers. Thought the brand was appropriately tarnished what with the Holocaust.