BOO-URNS

… And they named an airport after him!

I think AOC will make a perfect Presidential candidate, in 2040 or 2048 after a few terms in the Senate. She will still be “young” by Presidential standards. Maybe by then many of the misogynists will have died off.

Don’t get me wrong: she would make an extremely good candidate in 2028 too. But I don’t think she has a chance of winning in the current climate. Too many people won’t vote for a woman right now, but are self-aware enough to know they can’t admit it anymore, so will come up with bullshit reasons why they can’t do it.

If she is on my ballot she is getting my vote, full stop. But I want to keep her for NY for a while longer.

There may be a way to make lemonade out of these lemons. While there are 3 appropriations bills bundled into this package, most of the rest of the appropriations would be on a continuing resolution until the end of the year, which isn’t really a very long time. So, absent some sort of breakthrough with the House, we will be in this same position in January.

If Republicans renege on the December vote, then Democrats can go back to them and say “No, we mean it this time, put back the ACA subsidies or we dont agree to kick the can further. We trusted you once and you lied.”

Meanwhile, in this bill there are explicit guarantees for SNAP funding and protections for federal workers during the shutdown. Yes, those things were already law, but it reinforces things if Trump signs a bill in November and then ignores it in January. Those are the things that made this shutdown especially painful, and the current bill’s passage will limit the pain Trump can inflict.

Basically, I don’t buy into the narrative that Democrats got nothing in exchange. It seems like they got a lot of incremental things, that will help give them leverage when Republicans decide to screw them. In the meantime, Federal workers get back pay to prepare for the next one.

You can’t, at least not yet. They are all either not on the ballot in the midterms (because their term is longer), or have already announced retirement. They are betting on all this blowing over before they have to ask for votes again.

It’s even dumber, because it’s not about the budget, it’s about the allocation of funds to certain departments and the authorization to spend that money, which comes after the budget. Some other countries separate budgets and appropriations like this, but those other countries put in those safeguards you mention, because they want government agencies to function even if the politicians are having a snit.

In the US, thanks to “small-government” Republicans, we make it extremely difficult to spend any money without explicit authorization. And since we also have no concept of a no-confidence vote, politicians can basically hold government funding hostage if they want. The politicians that are doing this right now know they won’t have to face another election until next November at the earliest. (Senators serve six year terms, and it’s telling that all of the Democrats who voted for cloture on this bill are either retiring or not up for election next year…)

Well, they tried to, but he won, and now they are all going to cozy up to him as long as he keeps winning

The DNC backstabs those folks if they run for President, but would have no problem backing a certain victory for a Senate seat.

Yeah yeah, I know. Trading their votes for the promise of a vote in the future is kinda dumb. But then, there is this nugget buried here:

There is also a negotiation to reinstate all of the federal workers Trump laid off during the shutdown, the report adds.

That might just be worth it, because it would be Congress passing something that puts direct constraints on what the President can do, and daring him to veto it.

Edited to add: don’t sleep on the 3 spending bills that are being negotiated too. This effort looks like a continuing resolution that extends most agencies through the end of the year, but those 3 bills constitute full appropriations for agriculture, military construction and legislative agencies. And it looks like Democrats may have won back some funding for programs that the House budget gutted. This is all from the NYT, if I happen to find a non-paywall link I’ll add it

What do you mean? Making a backroom deal to get the Next One Up across the finish line is exactly how they operate

Hmm, I think even 4 retiring every day seems to be a lot…

I guess there are over 14,000 controllers normally, so if 20 retire a week that’s a turnover of about 1000 per year, or about 7%, just through retirement. That seems high.

But at 20 a day, we might have run through that number just during the shutdown.

My pet theory is that Schumer will agree to not run again, and AOC will take over his seat without primary opposition, as long as she promises to not run against Newsom for President.

wrong

The OBBB was passed through the budget reconciliation process, which allows it to be passed in the Senate without a cloture vote, but also limits it to strictly budgetary items. It is a budget bill, full stop. It has to be I order to be passed through the Reconciliation process.

The current shutdown has nothing to do with the budgetary process, it has to do with a lack of appropriations.

I don’t block many people, but I am blocking you, because you are a troll.

And then give the facts.

The problem is that even facts are even subjective for these people. It’s always been that way.

I remember that after 9/11 I had a coworker who was convinced the problem was with Islam itself. “I’ve read their book”, he would explain to everyone who was within earshot, “They want to kill all the infidels. Their religion is incompatible with our country”. He held that as a fact, just as sure as the fact that the sun sets in the west, and that God gave him the right to bear arms.

To many people in this country, Muslim = Terrorist, no further questions asked. You can’t argue with that. Not because they are right, but you literally can’t argue with someone who thinks God gave them those incorrect facts.

No, the budget was passed as the One Big Beautiful Bill. It was passed without Democratic support because the Senate used the Budget Reconciliation process to bypass the filibuster. But now, the Senate cannot again use Reconciliation to pass any of the two competing appropriations bills. (And as far as I know, neither bill actually performs the appropriations from the budget, and just keeps current spending levels in place, with the Democratic bill adding the healthcare fix.)

The OBBB includes provisions that fucks over healthcare. The House appropriations bill kept those things in place. The Senate rejected it, then the House stopped working.

We have no concept here of triggering an election. All of our Federal elections are for set terms, no matter what. We don’t have any notion of a “no confidence” vote in government. If we did, I bet it would fail every time.

It’s even worse than that. They passed a budget, but need a separate vote for actually authorizing the money to be spent.

Congress set it up this way, on purpose, so that small-government types would have an additional opportunity to negotiate shit that’s already been negotiated.

Buffalo already is Upstate…

This is Buffalo, NY. Can the pig play defense? The Bills are out a few CBs this weekend…

I don’t think I have voted for the eventual winner in the Democratic primary since Obama in 2008. But the current primary process is broken, and only exists to rubber-stamp the establishment candidate. And remember that in 2008, Obama was not the establishment candidate, his win was not expected. If anything, the party has made the primary process even more of a game since then.

Having said that, though, if Newsom is the primary winner I will hold my nose and vote for him, because he will still be better than any Republican. (And if Trump is still alive by then, we will know that whoever gets the nomination will be in his pocket, anyway).

I would fix the Democratic Party primary process by doing it all in one month. Four weeks in May or June, 12 to 13 states per week, rotating by region. Fuck all these states who think they are special by having “first in the nation” primaries or caucuses, where the one Podunk town with 13 registered voters gets to be in the news every 4 years. Every state is important.

Oh, and do it on Saturday. Let the media cover it like it’s fucking March Madness.