IHeartBadCode

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell reportedly warned that there will be no recess appointments

Recess appointments stopped being a thing in 2016 altogether and really the water source was shut off back in Obama who only got 32 as Pro Forma became popular in Congress.

I am seriously doubtful that the House wants to get rid of Pro Forma nor would they risk a Section III dismissal to appease Trump.

As much as Trump is power hungry, so too are a ton of GOP members of Congress equally hungry.

ICE: We did it. We did it. We did it! Yay! ¡Lo hicimos!

Yeah, something got in their crawl and Bluesky is on low key TPOT rising.

Someone did a post on it, you can see the map that was done in the picture there with TPOT in blue.

I don’t know why they started coalescing on Bluesky, but it is what it is. If they get annoying there, I know how to mute them. But as long as that doesn’t also herald the “free speech absolutists” that literally add zero value, I’m cool with TPOT heading to Bluesky.

Besides, I’m more active on Fedi/Mastodon at this point than Threads/Bluesky so it’s not really a pressing thing for me. I mean shit, I wouldn’t have a problem with Musk’s network if he’d clamp down on the utter trash going on over there. Like it’s gotten to pure garbage, I haven’t the time to block everyone who pops into my feeds that how hard the algo there is pushing the trash.

The postrat folk. The deep value Silicon Valley folk. Core Techbro kind of people.

Would have thought they’d be prone to sticking with Musk

Ditto, but at the same time. Being with daddy Musk might be too traditional at this point. No idea the reasons, but you can to see a lot of this popping up in that circle on Twitter.

TPOT → Bluesky is actually an interesting example of what looks like a successful transplantation… quasi-existential concerns about Elon Twitter, vibes have been off leading to big cascades of migration tend to happen after inciting incidents (eg twitter banning substack links being a canary in the coal mine)

You know the “I sound super thoughtful” kind of stuff. Lots of praise from that Group on XTwitter/Bluesky.

I don’t know. Lots of folks pointing out That Part Of Twitter (TPOT) also migrating over.

That’s not the victory Republicans will think it is.

The House Freedom caucus routinely has at least one or two who dig their heels in over “this bill doesn’t go FAR enough!”

With a 218 majority, that means 100% of the Republicans have to toe the line. Not a single person can be out of line, something that rarely happens with either party. There’s usually at least ONE person who doesn’t like the outcome.

This is going to put a lot of people who are known for digging in their heels into very precarious situations. Either they toe the line and have to accept some compromise because of Democrats in the Senate looking to filibuster. Or they alone hijack the Republican plans.

And woe if someone dies, gets sick, or retires in office on their side, something that also happens at least once per year on either side.

Yeah. We don’t have anything in place for this kind of thing, so we had to rely exclusively on things we use for corporate litigation and what have you. The whole impeachment, that’s about it as for what our founders created to protect us and if Congress doesn’t exercise that power, well this is what happens. That whole argument way back “the courts will settle this” from the Senate that gave him a pass, that was the Senate knowing they failed and trying to pass the blame elsewhere.

Trump got away with everything because the actual few protections we have, the people entrusted to use those powers lacked the spine to actually use that power. Cowardice is how we got here. A short but important line of defense was entrusted to weak minded people and so they failed at every step of the way.

Perhaps we will one day fix these shortcomings. Maybe. But this shows that if we give power to weak individuals that will put wealth, power, and their own interests over the rule of law, then we don’t have a country. The Constitution is only a sheet of paper if we do nothing to enforce it.

Bold of you to assume that any family member of Trump’s would not already be stealing the money.

Someone, somewhere wished that Rubio and Gaetz were no longer in Congress.

And the monkey paw curled a finger.

This cluster just gets worse by the day.

And we all have 1,529 days left to watch that hope get even dimmer.

One. Trump can’t fire the Comptroller. They report to Congress.

Two. Trump will get to select the next Comptroller on December 22 of 2025. So it’s kind of a moot point.

WHAAAAATTT?!

Rubio? Dang. That’s a choice. There’s Romney, Paul, Barrasso, and Cruz that are some heavy hitters on the Committee on Foreign Relations and he went with Rubio? I mean shit, Rand Paul is who I would think would slide the best into Trump’s Sec. of State. There’s likely no one for Sec. of State that’s on Foreign Rel. that’s been more meticulous about the southern border that him. Additionally, the man is an easy pick for if you wanted to have someone sign a giant check from the US Treasury to Israel in the amount of ALL dollars.

Rubio is a bit more slow paced. Don’t get me wrong, he wants a wall just as much, but he’d likely slow walk it to allow it to gain heavy media traction. Paul would just be like “Give me some fucking bricks”.

is viewed by State Department officials as unlikely to overly politicize the role

That is a massive understatement there.

All I have to say is color me surprised by the choice. I mean, obviously Trump is going to tell Romney to eat shit, but shit if Foreign Rel. is where Trump was going for Sec. of State, I would have surely thought Paul would be a a perfect fit to Trump’s mannerisms.

Dems Should Steal It Back.

Or you know, Bernie should just have it and everyone should stop stealing it. I mean I’m as liberal as they come, but c’mon Democrats, stop stealing Bernie’s shit and leaving him behind and just listen to what Senator Sanders is telling you will actually win Americans.

I mean, I get it, I’m bummed about Trump, but shit, PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING THIS CYCLE DNC!! I mean there’s a ton of reasons for why Trump won, but holy fuck, Democrats if you could run something just few nanometers short of the current level of insipid political rhetoric, that would be amazing.

I’ll still vote Democrat on the mid term, but c’mon drink a Red Bull or something.

“He’s not hurting the people he’s supposed to” Part II, convicted felon screws you.

Oh well, I guess we’re doing this again.

You’ll have to speak up. He can’t hear you over the leopards.

There’s no polling data showing that Gaza was even a top 3 issue among voters

I didn’t say it was. As you may note from my comment.

So it speaks more to apathy than genocide

is a moot point since Biden will have killed everyone there months beforehand

One, neither Biden nor Trump are killing anyone. It’s the permissive nature of the United States and their supplies.

Two, Israel isn’t in a position to carry out the operation that you are indicating. They’re still far short supplied on that front. Over the weekend ahead of the election, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin indicated that the negotiated terms for aid had failed, which clears the path for the US to end weapons delivery to the country under a Leahy determination. Now of course Trump will resume those shipments, but critical missile deployments are likely to end for the time being, especially seeing how it doesn’t matter if Biden or Harris secure shit in votes.

Three, the UN World Food Programme has indicated about 10% of their target supply mission for aid is getting through. So there is indeed food, just not enough to feed everyone.

The thing is, the suffering will likely continue long into 2026 because Israel has every intention of sending a very clear message for future Hamas recruits. And you have a hard time sending a clear message with just dead people. The suffering and the pain is the point of what Israel is doing. The land is a nice bonus, but just killing everyone outright doesn’t show the level of suffering that Israel can actually implement. It’s that being able to drag one’s pain and misery out for years on end that Israel is after.

If Israel wanted to carpet bomb the place, they would have asked for that at the start before the relationship soured.

While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.

Goddamn this hits the exact thing that Democrats really need to learn.

There’s a ton of emotion in this nation. Given:

• The opioid crisis where the people responsible are in perpetual litigation.
• The wars we fought that costed us deaths of young people who had lives ahead of them, and scarred millions more. All so that a few rich asshats could profit.
• The corruption of large companies as they swindle the working class, only to watch legislators continue to profit off of insider trading.

And that’s just to name a few. There’s a ton of emotion in this nation. And Trump, for better or worse, taps into that emotion. The cut and dry democrats, they keep telling us, “The system will work, this time” and you have a public that just screams “well how soon is now then?”

Democrats cannot just keep tapping on the system as it currently stands when the system so obviously doesn’t deliver. There are hungry democrats looking for change to the system to form a more better system that will serve them, and the party just keeps dressing the bones of the long gone bird from days long pass.

Sanders fucking sinks the nail in a single stroke of the hammer on this. And Republicans are using that emotion, that pent up distrust of the system as it is, to move people in their direction. The entire point of this living government is to have a government, to have a system, that matches the people who are alive and having to deal with it. Sanders sees that and cut and dry Democrats keep going “but Trump will ruin the system that doesn’t work for you!!”

Goddamn, one day, they will learn. Democrats will pick up on what Sanders is saying one day. But holy shit, they are going to clearly take an incredibly long and winding road to get there. I don’t agree with where Republicans want to take us. I don’t agree with how Republicans want to get there. But goddamn, we’ve got to hand it to them that they’re actively pointing out the exact same thing the Sanders is pointing out. “Status Quo ain’t going to fucking work anymore.” The sooner the traditional Democrats learn that, the faster they can come back to being relevant.

Remember 4 years of Russia-gate, everyone

That whole thing was about Russia using social media to spend disinformation. The entire thing wasn’t that, Russia hacked into the ballot boxes and changed votes, it was that Russia was using social media as a means to give false information to the public.

Underpinning the whole Russia-gate episode is the fact that human beings still physically pushed the buttons they pushed and that the vote they cast was indeed the vote they wished to cast. So we still accept the results as, technically speaking, the people have spoken.

But c’mon, you’ve seen the increase in AI slop. You know the Russia-gate stuff is true. In fact, I would dare say this election cycle they’ve gotten worse at doing it as they’re still pretty new at the whole AI stuff. Now where I, myself, and other Democrats likely disagree is the how to solve it. Lots of Democrats want to ban AI and regulate social media, but my opinion is you can’t fight fire by banning the match. You have to teach fire safety and hope the public is smart enough to not set themselves on fire.

But the important aspect is in all of this, the ballots that were cast, we still respect the final tally. That’s the fundamental difference between the Russia-gate and Trump’s legal challenges. The Russia-gate stuff is basically people are being misled. Trump’s stuff was that people were literally altering the ballot computer.

I think people are still being misled… BUT, Trump won this one fair and square. The law doesn’t say a person being misled shouldn’t have their vote count, and such a law would be insanely stupid/incredibly dangerous, even if it favored my particular team. We fix being misled by educating people and so losing this election just means that the educating folks game needs to up the ante. Best anyone can do is put the sources out there, show where the misinformation is wrong, and leave it up to the voter to read all of that come to the conclusion that matches reality. But if they don’t, we’ve got to accept that and work on better messaging.

That’s how one makes a point. They present the view, present the evidence, and use a persuasive argument. The rest is up to the voter to put together.

“They’re not hurting the people they need to be hurting”

We are so going to be hearing this again.