#dysfunctional GOP

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the struggle in the House of Representatives today looked like a preview of the 2024 election. 

Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), a staunch supporter of former president Trump and a key figure in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, is pushing hard for election as speaker, emphasizing how imperative it is for the House Republicans to enable the House to get back to business. As Karoun Demirjian outlined in the New York Times, Jordan and his allies have deployed a pressure campaign against those Republicans opposed to him, as she puts it, “working to unleash the rage of the party’s base voters against any lawmaker standing in his way.” 

This is the same tactic that the extremists have used for decades to move the Republican Party to the right. But there is a different dynamic at play in this speakership crisis. Jordan and his allies created the crisis in the first place by supporting Trump’s demands to shut down the government, tossing out former speaker Kevin McCarthy because he would not agree to shut down the government, and refusing to abide by the vote of the Republican conference to accept the choice of the majority: first McCarthy and then Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA).

There is another way in which this moment is different. Jordan is a flamethrower who was one of the original organizers of the right-wing Freedom Caucus. Republicans saw McCarthy, who was an excellent fundraiser, as a pro-business Republican who worked with the far right, but Jordan is the real deal: a far-right extremist. Republican donors have already suggested they are not enthusiastic about working with him to fund Republican candidates.

The third way this moment is different is that putting Jordan in the speaker’s chair makes him, along with Trump, the face of the Republican Party going into the 2024 election. Representative Pete Aguilar (D-CA) previewed the many downsides of Jordan as speaker when he nominated Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) for the speaker’s chair. Aguilar blamed extremism and partisanship for the unprecedented chaos of the House and urged the Republicans to embrace bipartisanship to do the work the American people had sent them to Washington, D.C., to conduct. 

Aguilar noted that Jordan was “the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier, and an insurrection inciter.” He has “spent his entire career trying to hold our country back, putting our national security in danger, attempting government shutdown after government shutdown, wasting taxpayer dollars on baseless investigations with dead ends, authoring the very bill that would ban abortion nationwide without exceptions, and inciting violence on this chamber. Even leaders of his own party have called him ‘a legislative terrorist.’” 

Aguilar pointed out Jordan’s opposition to disaster relief, veterans’ relief, support for Ukraine, and military aid to our allies, including Israel, and added: “This body is debating elevating a speaker nominee who has not passed a single bill in 16 years. These are not the actions of someone interested in governing or bettering the lives of everyday Americans.” Jordan as speaker would mean the Republican Party would “continue taking marching orders from a twice-impeached former president with more than 90 pending felony charges.”

Even without mentioning Jordan’s involvement with the cover-up of a sexual assault scandal at Ohio State, Aguilar put Republicans on notice that placing Jordan at the head of the party would have brutal consequences in Democratic campaign ads. 

When House members voted for speaker, the Democrats were unified behind Jeffries, who won all 212 of their votes. Jordan won only 200 of the 217 votes necessary to become speaker, with 20 Republicans voting for someone else. His allies initially said they would call a second vote tonight but changed their minds, apparently realizing that another loss would weaken his candidacy significantly. They say they will hold another vote tomorrow.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Republican Dysfunction is not just an opinion. It's real, and it's measurable. Republicans in the House of Representatives have a repeated history of dysfunction, causing long government shutdowns.

Of course, the President and the Senate have their part to play in shutdowns. But it can't be a coincidence that of all the days that the U.S. government has shut down over the last 40+ years, 93% of those days started when Republicans were in control of the House of Representatives. (source)

In fact, the three longest government shutdowns in U.S. history all started during a time when Republicans were in control of the House of Representatives. The last one (during the Trump administration) was the longest and most expensive in U.S. history. It cost Americans $5 billion. (source)

Unbelievably, this worst-ever, 35 day government shutdown started when the House, the Senate, and the Presidency were all under Republican control! They couldn't even agree among themselves long enough to pass a budget to keep the government running.

So how did it finally end? It was only after Democrats were given control of the House that they, together with outcries from the American public, were able to get Trump to give up his tyranny of extortion and get the government running again.

And it's not just shutdowns. Of the 11 recessions in the modern era, 10 have begun under Republican presidents. Also job growth has been significantly greater under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents since the early 1980s, and the national debt got worse under Trump than Biden. (source)

Economists warn that Trump (who, due to his incompetence, has had to declare bankruptcy SIX times) will balloon the national debt, just like he did before, with even more tax breaks for billionaires and huge corporations, and ruin the economy with his massive tariffs.

And we're the only ones that can stop him.

[tomorrowusa]

Q: What's worse than being somebody's puppet? A: Being a puppet of a puppet.

"MAGA Mike" Johnson has gained nothing by being Trump's House mouthpiece. The GOP caucus is even more dysfunctional than it was under Kevin McCarthy. Trump is too busy screaming "BLOODBATH" and proclaiming himself to be a dictator to bother helping out his stooge who is being challenged by other MAGA nihilists.

Mike Johnson's job is impossible thanks to disruptive Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz

Loyalty to Trump will not be repaid. He will toss you out like a used ketchup packet from McDonald's once he no longer has any use for you.

[imkeepinit]

[acronymking4tdp]

Letters from an American November 9, 2023 (Thursday) HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

If you were forgetting how much disdain the GOP Congress holds for our political system and the responsibilities of government:

The Republican-dominated House of Representatives remains unable to agree even to a way forward toward funding the United States government. This is a five-alarm fire.

The continuing resolution for funding the government Congress passed in September when then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) couldn’t pass appropriations bills runs out on November 17. If something is not done, and done quickly, the U.S. will face a shutdown over Thanksgiving. This will not only affect family gatherings and the holiday, it will hit Black Friday—which, as the busiest shopping day of the year, is what keeps a number of businesses afloat. 

The problem with funding the government is the same problem that infects much else in the country today: far-right Republicans insist that their position is the only acceptable one. Even though the majority of the country opposes their view, they refuse to compromise. They want to gut the government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights. 

To impose their will on the majority, they don’t have to understand issues, build coalitions, or figure out compromises. All they have to do is steadfastly vote no. If they can prevent the government from accomplishing anything, they will have achieved their goal.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) perfectly illustrated how much easier it is to destroy than to build today as he objected to the promotion of military leaders, one at a time. Democrats tried to bring up each promotion of career military personnel, many of whom have served this country for decades, by introducing them by name; Tuberville had only to say “I object” to prevent the Senate from taking up those promotions. 

That refusal to budge from an extreme position weakens our military. It also weakens our democracy, as was apparent today in Michigan as Republican lawmakers joined an antiabortion group in suing to overturn a 2022 amendment to the state constitution protecting abortion rights. Voters approved that amendment with 57% of the vote in a process established by the state constitution, but the plaintiffs want to stop it from taking effect, claiming that by creating a new right, it disfranchises them and prevents the legislature from making laws. They could launch their own ballot initiative to replace the amendment they don’t like, but as that seems unlikely to pass, they are instead trying to block the measure the voters have said they want.

Continue Reading...

[govtshutdown]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/10/24/government-shutdown-house-speaker/

Watching this all very carefully. It seems all the Speaker candidates have promised to kill any attempt at an omnibus spending bill.

[puffin902]

Word to the judges involving this traitor, Ball Gag.

Only way to shut the idiot up

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

On an eventful day, less is more

March 23, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Friday was packed with a dozen significant developments, each of which deserves extended discussion. But when the news comes at us from every direction with high velocity, less is more. So, I will give an overview and attempt to tease out a few threads to help place the stories in context. Readers can discuss the stories at their leisure in the Comments section—or spend their time outside, enjoying the early days of spring!

It is worth noting that as I begin to write on Friday at 7:30 p.m., the Senate has only 90 minutes to pass a budget that will avoid a government shutdown. Prospects for passage do not look promising. The repeated crises are an insult to the American people. We deserve better. Much.  [Update: The Senate passed the bill after the midnight deadline.]

But before turning to the details of the latest GOP meltdown, it is worth noting that the chaos in the Republican Party is not only unprecedented, it will never be repeated in the history of our nation. If the Democratic Party experienced a similar meltdown, the story would be the subject of non-stop, breathless, front-page coverage for weeks. The press would declare the death of the Democratic Party and begin a political autopsy that would drag on for months.

Today, the GOP’s Hindenburg-style implosion was “below the fold” news in most outlets. Don’t let the media’s lack of interest fool you. It is a big deal. It will likely help Democrats increase their ability to protect the integrity of the 2024 election, which in turn will help preserve democracy in 2025 and beyond.

As explained below, the chances that Democrats will control the House on January 6, 2025, increased on Friday. Ensuring control of even one chamber of Congress during the count of electoral ballots in January will allow Democrats to defeat baseless objections designed to frustrate the will of the people.

In short, despite the chaos, Americans should feel renewed confidence. The Republican party has been a dagger aimed at the heart of democracy. On Friday, the GOP appeared to be on the verge of losing control of the House because its members keep quitting.

With that, let’s look at the leading stories on Friday.

Congress struggles to avoid a shutdown—House GOP turns on itself.

Events in Congress proceeded at a rapid-fire pace on Friday—of necessity. With only hours before a government shutdown, the House passed a $1.7 trillion bill over the objections of a majority of the GOP caucus.

As on two prior occasions, Speaker Johnson was forced to rely on majority Democratic support to pass a spending bill that will keep the government operating.

Speaker Johnson’s reliance on Democrats to pass a bill that was anathema to the “Freedom” Caucus quickly led to a new crisis for Speaker Johnson.

First, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she had filed a motion to “vacate the chair”—i.e., fire Mike Johnson as Speaker. See The Hill, Greene files motion to oust Speaker Johnson. Despite announcing the motion, Greene has not taken the steps to trigger the 48-hour period for a vote. But Greene was unequivocal that she intended to remove Johnson, saying,

[T]his is basically a warning, and it’s time for us to go through the process, take our time, and find a new Speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans in our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.

However, it is not clear that the motion to vacate will succeed in removing Johnson. See The Hill, Republicans lash out at Greene over threat to oust Speaker Johnson.

But the next shoe to drop on Friday raises the question of whether Mike Johnson—or any Republican—will be elected the next Speaker of the House. GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher unexpectedly announced that he would resign his seat on April 19—leaving Republicans with a single-vote margin in the House after that date. See Politico, Johnson's margin drops to one vote as Gallagher heads for early exit.

There are indications that another GOP member of the House will resign soon—leaving Johnson in a situation in which a single defection results in a tie vote in the House. See Newsweek, Ken Buck Teases More Republican Resignations Are Coming. A tie means that nothing can happen in the House without Democratic cooperation. If another Republican resigns—a possibility hinted at by Ken Buck—then Republicans and Democrats would share power in the House.

The unwinding of the House majority is happening before the November elections, during which Democrats are likely to pick up a few seats in districts won by Joe Biden in 2020. That would give Democrats control of the House—and a hedge against baseless objections to the 2024 electoral count.

The drama is not over for House Republicans, but the handwriting is on the wall. Meanwhile, Democrats are holding together despite strong policy differences on several issues. The difference is that Democrats are disagreeing over which policies are in the best interests of the American people, while Republicans are arguing over power and greed.

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

[beauty-funny-trippy]

[tomorrowusa]

As if the US House of Representatives were not experiencing enough chaos and dysfunction, Donald Trump will be visiting Capitol Hill next week. It will be his first visit since he encouraged MAGA terrorists to rampage through the Capitol on 06 January 2021.

He also stated that he would be "open" to becoming House Speaker. The holder of that position doesn't necessarily have to be a House member, but both parties have policies which prevent indicted individuals from being part of the Congressional leadership. Trump faces four indictments featuring 91 counts against him.

Since Seth Meyers made that vid, Trump has declared his support for conspiracy nutcake Gym Jordan (R-OH-04).

Trump endorses Jim Jordan for House speaker - CBS News

[wilwheaton]

The most generous analysis — the kind you might hope to see in mainstream media coverage — would focus on a Republican Party in disarray on a level conservatives have long falsely accused Democrats of but which no party has exhibited to this degree since before WWII. By comparison, the Democrats of 1968 look like they were cast for that iconic Coke commercial of the era. The Republican field sans Trump couldn’t agree on Trump, the Constitution, Jan. 6, Ukraine, climate change, or — unbelievably — abortion. Kumbaya. And yet that still doesn’t fully capture the dysfunction and self-delusion that the GOP exhibited last night. It’s not riven by factionalism or dueling power bases vying for supremacy. Chris Christie, Asa Hutchison, and Doug Burgum represent no one and had no place being on the debate stage. Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott represent the last vestiges of the former GOP, and their anemic response to Trump even now exemplifies how the Republican Party got itself into this mess to begin with. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy are explicit about wanting to be the next Trump and are soulless enough to pull it off but lack his skills and appeal. Ramaswamy was particularly horrifying to watch, a know-nothing who will say anything and do so convincingly. If this debate had an iconic moment it was the halting raising of hands captured in the photo above when the candidates were asked if they would support Trump as GOP nominee even if he were a convicted felon by then. All but Christie and Hutchison were down for Trump 2.0. No winners in this debate. Just losers.

The Most Unsettling Presidential Debate Spectacle Ever

[contemplatingoutlander]

The House GOP is a circus. The chaos has one source.

Republicans spent two years sabotaging the U.S. House. Another two years would be ruinous.

Dana Milbank does a masterful job of describing just how dysfunctional the House GOP members have been in the past two years.

This is a gift🎁link for the entire article. Below are some highlights:

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Six weeks after his improbable rise from obscurity to speaker of the House in late 2023, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson decided to break bread with a group of Christian nationalists. [...] “I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here,” Johnson teased the group, unaware that his hosts were streaming video of the event. Johnson informed his audience that God “had been speaking to me” about becoming speaker, communicating “very specifically,” in fact, waking him at night and giving him “plans and procedures.” [...] Today, Johnson’s run looks anything but heaven-sent. In the first 18 months of this Congress, only 70 laws were enacted. Calculations by political scientist Tobin Grant, who tracks congressional output over time, put this Congress on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving. But Johnson’s House isn’t merely unproductive; it is positively lunatic. Republicans have filled their committee hearings and their bills with white nationalist attacks on racial diversity and immigrants, attempts to ban abortion and to expand access to the sort of guns used in mass shootings, incessant harassment of LGBTQ Americans, and even routine potshots at the U.S. military. They insulted each other’s private parts, accused each other of sexual and financial crimes, and scuffled with each other in the Capitol basement. They screamed “Bullshit!” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address. They stood up for the Confederacy and used their official powers to spread conspiracy theories about the “Deep State.” Some even lent credence to the idea that there has been a century-old Deep State coverup of space aliens, with possible involvement by Mussolini and the Vatican.

The above article was adapted from Dana Milbank's (2024) book: Fools on the HILL: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House.

[See more below the cut.]

And this is on top of the well-known pratfalls: The 15-ballot marathon to elect a speaker, the 22-day shutdown of the House to find another speaker, the routine threats of government shutdowns and a near-default on the federal debt that hurt the nation’s credit rating. They devoted 18 months to a failed attempt to impeach Biden, which produced nothing but Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly displaying posters of Hunter Biden engaging in sex acts. One “whistleblower” defected to Russia, another worked with Russian intelligence and is under indictment for fabricating his claims, and still another is on the lam, evading charges of being a Chinese agent. As soon as Biden withdrew his candidacy, they promptly forgot their probe of Biden’s “corruption” and rushed to launch a new series of investigations into Kamala Harris (over her record on border security) and Tim Walz (over his military service and “cozy relationship” with China). After a number of failed attempts, they did impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (the first such action against a Cabinet officer since 1876) without identifying any high crimes or misdemeanors he had committed; the Senate dismissed the articles without a trial. House Republicans created a “weaponization committee” under the excitable Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), but it was panned even by right-wing commentators when it produced little more than a list of conspiracy theories from the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. They lapsed repeatedly into fits of censure resolutions, contempt citations and other pointless acts of vengeance. In all of its history, the House had voted to censure one of its own members only seven times; in the two weeks after Johnson became speaker, members of the House tried to censure each other eight times. [...] In lieu of consequential legislating, they passed bills such as the Refrigerator Freedom Act, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards (SUDS) Act. On the House floor, the Republican majority suffered one failure after another, even on routine procedural votes. Seven times (and counting), House Republicans voted down their own leaders’ routine attempts to begin floor debates — something that hadn’t happened once in the previous 20 years.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

The GOP’s 43-year tax-cuts-for-billionaires-while-we-ignore-the-needs-of-the-country grift has an analogy in condos and homes across America that might help voters understand how it works and how they’ve gotten away with it.

Fully 84 percent of all homes and apartments built and sold in 2022 came with a homeowner’s association (HOA), and an estimated 27 percent of all homeowners nationwide currently live in a property controlled by an HOA.

And many are very unhappy about the experience.

According to a survey by Rocket Mortgage, only 47 percent of HOA residents think their HOA has made their community better, only two-thirds (64%) believe their HOA “honestly handles its finances,” and one in ten people nationwide who have an HOA cite the HOA itself as their main reason for moving.

How and why is this?

Louise and I have lived in five communities with HOAs in two different states. Three (including where we now live) were well managed, kept up the community, and set aside money from the dues every month for the inevitable future maintenance. I was on the board of one of them. The other two ran, essentially, a shell game or reverse Ponzi scheme, which led us to eventually quit those communities and move.

READ: Deep-red 'Republican stronghold' thought to be 'easy win for Trump' is now a swing state

I remember attending a board meeting in one of those “shell game” HOA communities we’d lived in. There were multiple common-area maintenance issues needing attention, but a group who called themselves “low-tax conservatives” had run the board for over a twenty years.

There was almost nothing in reserves, so maintenance had been continuously postponed until things hit a crisis level. Then they’d hit us all with a series of “special one-time assessments” ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars to pay for the upkeep. They refused to raise the monthly HOA fee, referring to it as a tax, because, they said, they were “low-tax conservatives”; in fact, they were just cheapskates.

That HOA board had been, in the past and the present, stealing from future homeowners.

They did it so they could enjoy the community during the first 30 or so years — when maintenance costs were minimal — without setting aside money for the future, when things would rot or wear out and need replacement or upgrade.

For the first three decades, they were able to coast with $200/month in dues and no assessments; by the time we arrived when the units were pushing 35 years old, though, the assessments were hitting $3000 to $9000 a year, and, when the buildings’ roofs need repair (soon) it’ll be twice that amount or more.

Fortunately, once we saw the handwriting on that particular wall we were able to sell our condo and move to a well-run community. Americans, though, don’t have that option: Republicans have been running this same shell game or reverse Ponzi scheme against all of us (except the very rich) across the entire country ever since Reagan successfully pitched trickle-down economics to the nation in 1981.

If you’ve ever lived in one of these shell game HOA’s, you now perfectly understand Reaganomics and why it seems that America has deteriorated so badly over the past 40 years.

You could call it the disaster of pothole economics: all across America, roads, bridges, water systems, schools, and other vital public infrastructure have been underfunded and neglected ever since Reagan popularized the idea of “austerity” among Republicans.

In order to pay for the second most massive tax cut for the morbidly rich in history (Reagan cut the top tax bracket from 74% down to 25%), his administration cut spending on education, housing, roads and bridges, and pretty much every other aspect of America’s infrastructure. George W. Bush did the same thing, and Donald Trump tripled down on the scheme.

The result was a $51 trillion transfer of wealth — over a mere forty-three years — from the homes, retirement accounts, and savings of average working families into the money bins of the extremely wealthy. Thirty-four trillion of that transfer show up as our national debt, which was a mere $800 billion ($0.8 trillion) when Reagan first came into office and started this scam.

President Joe Biden and his Vice President, Kamala Harris, ran the first administration of either party to significantly repudiate Reagan’s neoliberalism by injecting trillions into rebuilding our nation (over 35,000 projects) while raising taxes on rich people and corporations to pay for it.

The result was immediately visible, just like in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: we now have the best economy on planet Earth with unemployment lower than any time since the 1960s (and lower than any time in history for women, Blacks, and Hispanics). Inflation has been at or below 0% for the past two months and is annually running around 3% (Reagan never got inflation below 4.1% in his entire 8 years); all across America we’re putting our rural areas, towns, and cities back together.

For the past forty years, Republicans and their administrations have focused almost entirely on taking cash away from working class people and handing it off to the billionaires who own and finance their party. At the top of the list of ways they did this was a series of five tax cuts for the morbidly rich and big corporations adding up to over $30 trillion since 1981.

But they’ve also been cutting spending to compensate for their tax breaks for the billionaire class: They blocked extending the child tax credit this year, throwing millions of American children back into poverty. They’ve fought lifting the cap on Social Security taxes so people making over $168,600 will begin paying on all of their income (millionaires and billionaires currently pay only a tiny fraction of the percentage to support Social Security that the rest of us do).

Fully 100% of congressional Republicans voted against Biden’s Build Back Better program that’s now putting America back together and his American Rescue Plan that lifted millions out of poverty and put millions more back to work. They successfully blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act that would have penalized employers for wage discrimination based on gender; they’ve refused to expand Medicaid in almost a dozen Red states; they even filibustered an attempt to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10.

For the past forty-plus years, Republicans — just like these dysfunctional HOAs — have been stealing from America’s future; our infrastructure deficit alone is several trillion dollars, meaning Americans will be paying more in taxes to make up for all those decades of neglect.

Democrats want those tax increases to hit people earning over $400,000 a year; Republican tax proposals, on the other hand, mostly focus on increasing income taxes and fees on working class people while continuing or even expanding tax breaks for the very wealthy.

One of the “low tax” HOAs we used to live in, instead of raising their monthly fee or instituting an assessment, recently negotiated a million-dollar-plus 20-year loan with people’s properties as the collateral to fund painting and repairing serious rot on the buildings.

This should have been paid for with an increase in HOA fees twenty years ago, anticipating the future maintenance and upkeep needs.

But instead they kept the fee low, never built up a reserve, and are now borrowing from the bank. In other words, they’re continuing the all-too-common HOA board scam of requiring future generations to pay for current repairs, just like the GOP budget proposals we’ll see when they return from summer vacation in September will require future generations to pay for their past tax cuts.

It’s the equivalent of Reagan, Bush, and Trump jacking up the national debt to keep things glued together, forcing future generations to pay it off when the bill comes due, while their wealthy corporate funders rob us blind.

Homeowners across America are waking up to these toxic HOA boards, as social media sites for HOA members are forming and local homeowner uprisings are happening against boards, either replacing the board members or, in some cases, even suing them. Some states are even starting to require they build up reserves for future maintenance.

Hopefully, Americans will realize how successfully Republicans have inflicted this very same scam on voters and working class people over the past forty-plus years and vote the bums out this fall.

ALSO READ: Mike Johnson's now-deleted Trump social media post sparks controversy

[igglemouse]

Ugh...

Sorry, no posts today. I know I never talk about politics its because this website is my one safe space from politics. Unlike others, I'm unable to escape politics. I wish I was like my mom who said she simply won't listen to a thing he says but I must.

This sucks. I was so confident this cycle that she'd win, I did everything in my power to help her, and it hurts that she didn't, it doubly hurts that latinos have basically sent him into office again. I have a feeling many of us will forever regret this, I hope not, but based on his entire campaign being deporting millions of people and I guess putting them in camps...the only hope is that the GOP is very dysfunctional whenever they do get power like this and usually end up doing very little as they all scrabble for power and positions.

I don't know if I'll have posts tomorrow either, I'm just down a little, i didn't feel like writing or posting. It's a day to day vibe check.

HOPE

I want people to know this is not the end. They want 'liberal tears' so I'm sure they got it for a few months, let them enjoy it. Once he's sworn in we give them liberal anger.

It looks like the main culprit is a lot of democrats stayed home and didn't vote (again) so the good news is the country is not this red. We just have to find a way to motivate people to get up and vote again.

So we fight back. We have two years of fighting back, that's it. Be loud, be visible, be heard. Elections matter, and 2026 will be here before you know it...they want you to give up. They want you to roll over and feel like their rule is inevitable. We do not consent to that and we will not go back. No matter what.

And pray to whatever god you believe in that Sotomayor hangs on. The goal is to hold serve, gum up things for 2 years as much as we can by letting them know their policies are not popular and they will be punished for enacting them, then make him a lame duck in 2026.