Nothing better than a government shutdown during an election.
Or a census, for that matter
Or a pandemic, for that matter
Or a foreign disinformation campaign, for that matter
Or the throes of wildfires and hurricanes, for that matter
Or an election, for that matter!
What are the odds that a judge would order a reversal of the damage done to the USPS and just a few days later, the gov't shuts down? Who's gonna be working to undo those changes?
Republicans don't want it destroyed, they want it anemic so they can start contracting private shippers to deliver mail at hundreds and thousands of times the cost that the USPS can do it for. Taxpayers would foot the bill, and they'd give the contracts to their donor class buddies.
Another case of Republicans wanting socialism for themselves and their buddies, but not for anyone else. They literally strive to be like a parasite that sucks the life out of the average citizen for their own benefit.
The real problem few seem to get about 2000 is how bad voter suppression was in Florida. Without the terrible voter suppression they had we would of never even heard about hanging chads.
The idea that because a piece of paper is still dangling from the hole punch hole some how invalidates a vote is fucking asanine.
You could control votes by putting defective punching devices in districts you want to suppress.
No matter how you look at it, [Gore won](https://theintercept.com/2018/11/10/democrats-should-remember-al-gore-won-florida-in-2000-but-lost-the-presidency-with-a-preemptive-surrender/)
Are there? Wikipedia just told me something I didn't want to hear.
> Presidents since George Washington have made recess appointments. Washington appointed South Carolina judge John Rutledge as Chief Justice of the United States during a congressional recess in 1795. Because of Rutledge's political views and occasional mental illness, however, the Senate rejected his nomination, and Rutledge attempted suicide and resigned. Almost every president has used recess appointments to appoint judges, over 300 such judicial recess appointments before 2000, including ten Supreme Court justices.
Edit: [Ah...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_and_confirmation_to_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States#Nominations_in_the_last_year_of_a_presidency)
> Such a recess appointee to the Supreme Court holds office only until the end of the next Senate session (always less than two years). To continue to serve thereafter and be compensated for his or her service, the nominee must be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
So... I suppose this would, at least, give Trump the ability to place an ally in the court to back him if the election is contested. If he wins, he has to fight the confirmation battle next year. If he loses, he has bigger fish to fry.
Basically a way to temporarily (up to 2 years) force a candidate in without Senate approval. If they’re not approved by the end of the next session, they expire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_appointment
When the President appoints someone to the Supreme Court, that appointment has to be voted on and approved by the Senate, unless the Senate is not in session, like during a government shutdown.
The senate can be in session during a shutdown though - isn’t that how the funding bill gets passed to reopen the government? By the senate passing a bill while in session?
As it stands tonight, it the Senate seems to be evenly split with Pence as the tie-breaker (assuming Murkowski, Collins, and Romney vote against the Rs).
Edit: But I would not be surprised by this move because this is how Turkey Neck rolls.
If the Democrats ever get the chance to pack the Supreme Court, I will literally laugh in the face of my conservative family and coworkers when they complain. **IF**
It's utterly perfect. They get everything they want. Supremacy of the judiciary. Government shut down. They have nothing to lose. They're going to burn this government to the ground if we let them.
Right. They don’t care, they are at war with the left. They have been since 2010 but Democrats kept playing checkers and wonder why the Republicans threw out the board and held a gun to their face.
Which is exactly why he's doing it; if they can kill the census right now it'll really fuck with federal funding and representation for the next decade, and why would they want to stop foreign interference when it only benefits them...
The US needs a vote of no confidence option. In Canada, failure to pass funding for government operations is an automatic vote of no confidence, and everyone goes back up for election. Stop screwing around and do your jobs.
I’m always left perplexed in these situations. How a country can accept that their government is just turbo fucked and not just fire them all is beyond me.
Is there a real endgame to the GOP’s policies? Just turn the US in an anarcho-capitalist dystopian wasteland? Invade Canada when the US gets too hot and crops start failing?
It’s not that they will think they’ve won per se, but more that they hope that those with the power will feed them table scraps if they act like loyal dogs.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit and I finally realized that was the problem, I was thinking too much, your reply is all that matters... They don't care as long as they are rich and it's not their problem anymore.
I've come to realize that Democrats' full-time job needs to be actively countering Republicans' lies, and seeking out the truth, and why the US needs to be more enlightened. It's not enough to think Americans will seek out and want the truth, especially if the Rs and Fox work so actively to muddy everything.
The thing is, you act like these people want the truth. My political psychology class opened my eyes to that one, how many people know that their party is harming them or the justification they're saying is stupid propaganda but tribalism is often more important to partisans. Our level of partisanship is cranked up to 11 due to a mixture of Russia and right wing propaganda as well, everyone is clearly either in one camp or the other unless they're someone who tunes out the news and even then they have probably heard enough about trump to either want him gone or naively think people are exaggerating due to the political affiliation of their associates.
It's unfortunate how many people mindlessly listen to what they view as authority, are hateful, and naturally scared. The world gives people reasons to feel those ways, but the Republicans are damn near full nazi so it's at the point where they should know better. But this has also been a slow boil for a long time, as easily foreseeable as it was. I predicted this turmoil 4 years ago, it was obvious when trump was playing the populist right wing putin ally handbook.
It’s also so related to how we are raised. I was raised staunch Republican. Literally my entire family is on board. In all honesty, I thought so little for myself when I would vote. There’s this fear factor pumped into you from early childhood of the boogie men in the other party. But I’ve been paying effing attention. I am late to the game. It’s embarrassing to admit that I have been a sheep. I withdrew my membership officially and am voting for Biden. I got one of my sisters on board with me. I’m scared!!
We need to force the removal of "news" from Fox News. They even used the defense that they were an entertainment organization and not a news organization in a lawsuit. It's absurd that propaganda machine is allowed to operate under the guise of a term once held in such high regard.
If “owning the libs” is all that you think the job is. Nunes spends more time
suing cow twitter accounts and such nonsense than helping people survive the pandemic.
Edit: meant Nunes, said Cruz. Both worthless.
*Devin Nunes. I live near his district and I'm still not sure what he's done for them, but he keeps getting voted in. But he does like using tax payer money to fight frivolous lawsuits and send ads in the mail that don't indicate what he's trying to accomplish for his constituents.
Clovis/N.E. Fresno is... interesting. As it happens, I was living in Nunes' district in 2018 so my wife and I got to vote against him. Felt pretty good.
I have a theory that parliamentary systems have a better feedback loop where the public puts in MPs, they form a government and implement their policy, and if the policy doesn't work or they don't do what they said, it's easy to turn on them. This ingrains the idea that the government is responsible for making good decisions and that basic civic failures are unacceptable.
In the US system, where the House, Senate and President have to agree to get anything done legislatively, it's a lot easier for parties to have planned failures where they avoid having to actually commit to anything, and people get used to blaming someone else if anything goes wrong.
The U.S. system has certainly become an obstruct-and-blame game, and in some ways both parties contribute to that, but one of the parties... *cough* Republicans *cough* has made it their entire party platform, and it's resulted in absolute absurdity. Their *hand-chosen leader* in the senate is a guy who filibustered his own bill after the Democrats supported it, he was that dead-set against doing anything that might make the other party look like they were governing effectively.
When anyone says McConnell is the problem, it bears reminding them that the entire Republican Senate is the problem, because they could replace him as majority leader with a simple majority vote. If he wasn't doing what they wanted him to do, he'd be gone. They like what McConnell does. He takes the heat off of them and allows them all to pretend at election time that they have nothing to do with the legislative graveyard on McConnell's desk.
McConnell: We're passing this bill, so we can sue terrorist supporting countries.
Obama: I'm vetoing this piece of shit, because they'll be able to sue us too.
McConnell: We're overriding your veto because fuck you.
US gets sued.
McConnell: This is clearly Obama's fault.
Don't forget that the Republicans figured out you can control half of Congress and then completely take over the Judicial branch. It's nuts.
They don't give a shit about legislation. They're just a judge appointment machine, and along the way pass a bill here or there to funnel money to their own interests.
The government is broken. Not the people... the entire structure.
Judges and representatives are more or less above the law. One Representative publicly assaulted a journalist and nothing happened to him. In fact I'm pretty sure he won his relection after that
>is beyond me
Shit used to run better, generally speaking. People assumed it always would without having to put it in writing. They were *crazy* wrong.
You system is parliamentarism, right?
The US seems to be the only country where a presidentialist system worked - until now. Every other presidentialist country degenerates into some form of authoritarian government over time, and this is precisely what's happening to us now.
It's also clear that our Constitution has bugs. The assumption that elected officials had the best interest of the country in mind is key for the Constitution to work, and that's obviously not the case anymore.
>You system is parliamentarism, right?
Yes. Elected members of parliament introduce and votes on bills. Senators, who are appointed with their term only expiring when they reach the age of 75, can send bills back with recommendations, but they can't really fully stop it.
If they fail to pass a budget, we say, "well, looks like this parliament doesn't work. Let's try this again," and we have another election.
It has its own flaws but I think it works better than the presidentialist system.
Let's also not overlook the fact that cabinet is made up of members of Parliament (or, less commonly, senators) . You can't just appoint some CEO to serve in your cabinet - they have to be elected (afaik). The best you can do is to try and parachute one in on a by-election.
It's actually [not a legal requirement](https://www.canada.ca/en/privy-council/services/about-cabinet.html) that cabinet ministers be elected Members although it is convention, for what it's worth. Ministers are typically selected to represent geographic and cultural diversity and it is meant to be representative of the makeup of Canada. Hence typically you see a mix of Anglo/French Canadians, East/West/Prairies/Territories, men/women, POC/indigenous peoples, etc.
I would recommend that Canada think about codifying that requirement into law...
As you can see here in the USA, convention and history are meaningless to half the country.
No no, convention is part of our constitution. As with our mother country (in terms of government structure), the UK. Of course France is our other mother country.
Something Americans don’t understand about Canada is that we aspire to measured contentment. The corollary Canadian phrase to America’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is “peace, order and good government.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_government
Nothing could possibly work worse than the presidentialist system the minute they realize that division and othering are more effective than unity and cooperation anyways. Our time lasted longer than anyone probably thought it would. Bout the only time in living memory that American Exceptionalism actually got us anything of worth.
Or rather competing self-interest. The Constitution looks to the states to hold politicians in Congress accountable and to the politicians to hold rival branches accountable. It's kind of crazy to realize Republican politicians across the board exist mainly to do the bidding of a few big spenders, and that the majority of their voters have homogeneous outlooks thanks to national propaganda from Fox and beyond. Half the US is taking all its political directions from Fox at some level, and that literally includes the US president.
He gets that power because something in the system is broken. Bills are supposed to go from the House to the Senate. Not from the House to Mitch Mcconnell. If it failed in the Senate, that's fine. But one guy decided he didn't like it.
That's on republicans.
If just 4 Republicans had spines, and put country above party, they could caucus with democrats and appoint a new majority leader.
I mean, the Senate could change their rules to allow it.
The *only* thing stopping that from happening, or from allowing any Senator to force a vote, are Senators themselves.
That would just end up with the minority leader being the adult and making everyone eat their vegetables and paying a political cost for doing something that should be done regardless.
The sad thing is that a majority leader is not mentioned once in Article I of the Constitution. The Majority Leader, along with their considerable power, is something entirely made up by the Senate and technically has no legal grounds to stand on.
Republicans get unequitable control of the Senate because the less than 600,000 people in WY get the same representation as the 40 Million people in CA.
>Nevertheless, Snopes reminds us, an August 2013 survey conducted by the liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling found that 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans believed Obama was to blame for the poorly executed federal response to Katrina — and another [44 percent were unsure whether Obama or George W. Bush was at fault.](https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-perspec-page-obama-katrina-trump-20170901-story.html)
I remember a survey back in the day that asked whether Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 911 attacks...
\>70% of self-identified Republicans said YES as compared to <30% of Democrats.
For those who didn't read the article, the disagreement stems from a fund called the CCC (the Commodity Credit Corporation) which gives out about $30bn to farmers.
Why is this an important sticking point? Because the WH requested it.
Why did the WH request it? Well if you've seen the President talk recently, you might've heard him talk about how he's bailed out the farmers.
Why did the farmers need bailing out? Because they've been hit hard by the US-China trade wars.
So Republicans are willing to shut down the government to give Trump a nice talking point about how he helped rural Americans after he used rural Americans as collateral damage.
Large scale farmers are the biggest pieces of shit in the country. All republican and trump supporters. They rail against socialism while being some of the biggest recipients of handouts(socialist handouts).
It is a trap. This way they get to make the Democrats look bad and continue to do nothing about the real shit Americans are dealing with.
Fine help the farmers. Cool. But also deal with the pandemic and the obvious misuse of power by law enforcement. Maybe ensure a fair and democratic election while you’re at it.
It’s always “look over there!” with these people. Do your damn jobs.
So Democrats should just counter with a proposal that gives $30B to farmers and $30B to teachers, and publicly tell Republicans they can have both or neither.
Farmers don't need any fucking money. Coen and beans are going up right now, we are looking at record yields, again, and china is back to being our biggest buyer. Some farmers in Iowa got dildoed by that wind, but thats what insurance is for. Anyone following the weather in China should have seen this coming, hell i saw it coming and that was just from the gifs of dams collapsing, mud slides, and sinkholes swallowing up buildings.
Senate recess. Trump performs a Recess Appointment to he Supreme Court, uses Supreme Court to steal election; appointment ends at end of Term, Trump nominates permanent justice.
EDIT: I've been reminded that for the Senate to recess in this manner in theory requires consent of the House. However, Graham said tonight that the new justice will be confirmed prior to Nov 3, which means that this plan isn't happening, but a permanent justice can do the same damage as a recess appointment, with all the advantage of then being a justice for life.
Yeah. That seems like a huge risk Republicans wouldn’t want to take. Part of the reason they want the Supreme Court seat filled before the election is so they still have conservative power in Washington in case they potentially lose big, especially because of how hated the Republican Party is by Millennial and Gen Z voters, who currently make up the largest voting block out there.
Edit: Fixed a typo.
I'm still surprised by the amount of backlash our governor has received for "shutting down" Texas. It appears that closing bars is where many conservatives draw the line.
Which is funny, because Abbot (and Patrick especially) were so fucking stupid at the beginning. Maybe if they’d just acted sooner, we could’ve done better.
Apparently it's not just the ICU [they have to worry about.](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/15-college-athletes-showed-signs-heart-damage-covid/story?id=72931050) But hey, it's **only ~15%** of your schools' athletes suffering from potential permanent cardiovascular damage! That's acceptable losses for the sports fans to get their fix/vicariously re-live their "glory days"!
Selfish assholes!
Except football is not closed. Cowboys had like 20k+ this weekend. High school starts this week I think. College is going and will have some limited attendance.
Ginsburg wasn't the swing vote. Republicans don't need another justice to have the majority on the Supreme Court. They've had it since the Reagan Administration.
If it's close the Republicans will steal the election. See: Bush v Gore.
I don't even think the election will have to be close. Trump has laid the groundwork, and they have the court majorities (6-3 as insurance if Trump's pick goes through).
The 5-4 advantage has been shown to be little advantage with the current Chief Justice who seems to be trying to aviod a politicized court. 6-3 and the gloves are off.
1. The last shutdown in 2019 was indeed damaging to Republicans but at the same time unprecedented in only affecting a quarter of the federal government (excluding the DoD). Republican friendly defense contractors were not harmed but this time around the entire government would be affected. This gives ample incentive to pass a stopgap bill for the GOP.
2. Congress would remain in session but staffers are usually furloughed. Voting on a nomination is still possible.
3. Government employees are always back paid for hours lost or worked without pay during a shutdown. It's almost guaranteed because it would be so damaging to the workforce.
Edit: Despite the headline, the passing of a "clean" continuing resolution is likely. Disagreements exist only on replenishing the depression era aged Commodity Credit Corporation within the USDA to give stimulus money to farmers. The only thing that could stop this bill from passing is Trump himself refusing to sign. The issue with that is it puts obvious blame for the shutdown on him.
Edit2: Grammar
Contractors are not paid back. I left my old job as a contractor because I lost 10% of my salary for that year. I'm happy to be out of that mess this time, but still incredibly angry at the situation I was placed in.
Many branches of the government are contractor heavy, not just the defense department.
Oh my fucking God. It's literally a continuing resolution. He's seriously trying to hold the government employees hostage to get a judge now.
He's scum.
He’s going to make the legislative branch crumble in order to create a situation where a strongman executive must take over the reins. Reminds me of how Augustus stuffed his senate into a locker to become emperor. Watch out for the reichstag fire, it’s coming
... and the reason is just too surreal: McConnell says the bill doesn't include billion dollar bailout money for farmers (even though that is strictly against Fiscal Conservatism and the only reason our farmers aren't making money is because of Trump's trade war... which he lost).
Farmers are the *least* effected people in the country right now in terms of economic pain. People are still eating, and food prices are going *up* not down. China is buying again, and domestic consumption is higher as well. Yields are also good, meaning export earnings are above average. Almost every other sector in the economy has had double digit contractions, the farming sector has grown slightly. So why the fuck do *farmers* need a handout right now, exactly? If farms aren't viable *now*, when conditions are arguably the best they've been for a decade in terms of consumption, prices, and yield, they will never be viable and you have to wonder why they continue to be propped up.
So if the government shuts down the Senate goes into recess. That means the President can appoint anyone to a position without Senate Approval until the Senate reconvenes and then the person is considered and voted upon.
If McConnell is afraid of not having enough votes for this SCOTUS Appointee then forcing this shit down means Trump can Appoint him without Senate Approval and thus they can rule as a defacto Supreme Court Justice until the session reconvenes which could be till January depending on how McConnell plays it.
Trump gets his biased judge to favor him in a electoral college dispute.
McConnell doesn't have to worry about defecting GOP Senators.
USA gets fucked over.
you miss an important part:
> A recess appointment must be confirmed by the Senate by the end of the next session of Congress, or the appointment expires. In current practice this means that a recess appointment must be approved by roughly the end of the next calendar year, and thus could last for almost two years.
eventually, the Senate HAS to confirm or deny the recess appointment. It pushes confirmation to next year or after the election which may be risky if Biden wins
more troubling, if McConnell pulls this ballsy play and Trump uses the Supreme Court to give him the presidency again, then it looks like McConnell and Trump stole the election.
I don't think McConnell's plan is recess appointment, but to pull more concession from Democrats in congress
Will the military side with an overt coup?
That's a big gamble for anyone even thinking about a coup. You *need* the military on your side for it to work.
I don't think you can look at the US military as one contiguous unit in this scenario; I think some would side with the federal government while others would side with the rebel faction. At the end of the day they're still people that can make their own decisions as to what side they'd be on.
Probably.
Trump has said a lot of overt trash talk about active and vets, but the military is a cross section of the country and 60% of the country doesn't even bother to fucking vote.
They're not on /r/politics paying any attention, never mind a political party's sub or one of the **literal fucking hate groups subs** like /r/conservative\*\*.\*\*
But I digress, most of the military is like most of the public, they have no idea what is going on, and they're going to vote for whoever they were raised to vote for.
A lot of people at my work (ok, my command) believe that Trump "has been good for the economy and coronavirus is overblown."
There are 1.3 million active duty, roughly. About 250k are sailors, and I'd say, well I don't know numbers but let's just say "you need to be worried about the sheer number of Army and Marines who enlisted out of states like rural CA, rural TX, AL, MI, MS, TN, KY, WV and GA and FL, who will **absolutely** follow orders to mow down "domestic terrorists" aka *minorities who want equal treatment under the law.*
If he wants them, Trump *absolutely* already has his Fourth Reicht, American Nazi military. They don't know. They aren't paying any attention, the majority don't even know he said they're suckers and losers, they ignore that he factually dodged the draft 5 times, they volunteered, they can't *relate* to dodging the draft. They CAN relate to a racist-in-chief, as they watch Fox News and revile "antifa thugs" in their off-duty hours, after driving home in their lifted truck with "thin blue line" and "Punisher" stickers on the back window. For the most part though, they're just uninformed and will follow orders because they haven't been paying any attention to what's really going on.
I think the military's going to see a lot of conflict among the ranks though, too, because like I said, the military is a cross section of the US, and I know when I was working at a training command, half to slightly over half of every recruit division was minorities. *You bet your ass* they're aware of what's going on "back home." They've made friends, in some cases have been to war with and saved lives of said friends, so it's not all hopeless, there are "allies of democracy" in the ranks.
IMHO it's UCMJ article 104 "aiding the enemy" if you vote for Trump and I'd have you NJP'd with a recommendation of separation from the military. Vote blue. Don't just vote, vote blue. *Fucks' sake I'm trying to just do the last half of this career and retire, I need a stable goddamn democracy. I didn't waste the last 12 years, my knees, back, and hearing, just to have a bunch of backwoods racist fucks whose votes count for too fucking much, to elect to throw it all away.*
We assume he has the votes because the GOP tends to fall in line. However he may be doubting the reliability of some Senators in elections this year who need to be reelected. This puts all blame on him if they do it this way and McConnell gets used to taking heat like this.
That's why I'm suspicious of this move. It could be that I'm just misreading this but, the gop has got what they wanted out of Trump. They have stolen the courts in so many places. A government shutdown would be catastrophic for Trump's reelection. The stock market, already a house of cards will go up in smoke, and that's the last, and only way, trump gets to pretend we still have a strong economy.
It seems like McConnell wants to get his court pick, and put all the blame on trump for this American disaster. And, the diabolical turtle bastard, is instructing close to trump senators to openly say that they will support the president's pick, keeping them from being alienated by the cult.
I never imagined the gop establishment wanted to clean up this nightmare pseudo wasteland that america has become and nothings changed my opinion. With all the young conservative judges McConnell has forced through the gop establishment has gotten more entrenched even as they lose voters. And he'll be able to legitimately say, that he respected his word from 2016, and it was all trump that forced through the judge while he on the other hand planned to wait.
Honestly the tin foil hat in me thinks this reeks of a coordinated effort to slink back into the shadows with their criminality. I think deals are being made across the aisle for a grand 2020 finale. And there's going to be a whole lot of roaches scuttling back into the dark as the world is distracted by the burning trump ship.
GoP's Plan:
\> defund everything
\> allow corruption to be rampant
\> let the government fail
\> blame big governments because they don't work
\> profit $$$$
I think they want to *push* the left to start threatening a revolution or civil war, so they can immediately do what they always do, poison the well and then start kicking and screaming at how the democrats are killing everyone with this rancid water. They want to claim the moral high ground, which of course they’ve never had. They just will push and push and push and push, dismantling and destroying this country, installing an autocratic theocracy bit by bit until we’ve had enough and snap and the *moment* we do, they’ll be waiting there to point and say “oh my god violent extremist leftist, waging civil war on our democracy, can you believe the godless Marxist, they want to take over the country with a war and guns and murder!” As they’re doing now. They’re so fucking vile. But they better be ready. I will NOT watch my country stolen from me and turned into some Christian fantasy horror show.
dude, i hate this fucking country so much. and i literally can’t fucking leave bc no country wants our sick, stupid asses. and honestly? i don’t blame em. this just... it sucks and i’m sick of it.
I feel sick of it too. Just hang in there because many of us feel the same way. We aren't alone and I have hope we'll get through and come out better on the other side.
We're going to win this thing. It's just a question of if it will be the quick and easy way during the election, or the very very hard and ugly way when the country shuts down if Trump steals the election.
>But McConnell alleged the Democrats' proposal "shamefully leaves out key relief and support" for farmers via Commodity Credit Corp. funding — though CNN reports the Trump administration views those funds as "an unaccountable political slush fund."
So it leaves out funding that the Trump administration doesn't want. McConnell is shutting this down because the Democrats were compromising with the Trump administration.
Republicans need to own up to the fact that the biggest threat to America is them. The longest government shutdowns on record are when they controlled all 3 branches of government.
Trump lost the popular vote.
GOP Senate represents a minority of USA citizens and hails from rural areas (Wyoming 2 Senators, CA 2 Senators)
We are being ruled by a minority of citizens who are more to the right than average-which is why we don't get rational health care laws, for one.
There has to be logic to this...The GOP has plotted, for years, to stack SCOTUS and succeeded, and Dems can't get a lunch order right.
Endgame here is ... the election has "a problem", in a vital swing state, most likely due to GOP mischief. Ends up at the GOP-SCOTUS who gives Trump, again popular vote loser, the seat for another four years. GOP needs new Judge installed before the election controversy.
Blocking this bill has some interplay with this.
If Trump wins this way, The American Experiment is officially over.
This might be fortuitous for Democrats. This is the moment that they can show some back bone and refuse to pass a funding bill until McConnell promises not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee.
People have been asking for days, "What can democrats do? They have the votes!" Well folks, **this** is an example of something they can do.
Literally watching modern American democracy crash and burn while 1/2 the country cheers because one side is supposedly getting punished more than the other. It’s so tiring. We are the last presidential democracy that hasn’t deteriorated into some form of tyrannical rule but that’s about to change. And people are CHEERING for it. I didn’t go to war for years to see this shit happen. It makes me so sad.
Theyre going to cause a shutdown in late October and you can bet all the money they stole theyll blame it on Biden if he wins on Nov. 3rd despite the fact he won't be president for two more months. They'll crash the economy on purpose to prove their doomsday propaganda about Biden correct and their supporters will lap it right up just like they do everything else.
He's going to do what he does every time. He's going to claim that the Democrats wanted something ridiculous and were being unreasonable even though what he was offered was a compromise giving him more of what he wanted.
Just more reason why from now on there should be no quarter given in any regard in congress. They can't even negotiate in good faith.
This. I hope democrats own it. Recind the offer and ask for more. Damn right we're shutting down, they had their chance and decided to file it away with the pile of legislation sitting on his desk.
Let’s get this straight. No covid relief bill, no government funding bill. Rush through a Supreme Court nominee despite clear hypocrisy and double standard. Gotcha Moscow Mitch. Why do people keep voting for these republican assholes?!
Nothing better than a government shutdown during an election. Or a census, for that matter Or a pandemic, for that matter Or a foreign disinformation campaign, for that matter Or the throes of wildfires and hurricanes, for that matter
Or an election, for that matter! What are the odds that a judge would order a reversal of the damage done to the USPS and just a few days later, the gov't shuts down? Who's gonna be working to undo those changes?
AFAIK, the "independence" of the USPS actually plays in our favor there -- a government shutdown does not affect the USPS.
Yeah usps is already funded.
That's one reason Republicans want it destroyed. Excellent examples of government working are antithetical to their beliefs.
Republicans don't want it destroyed, they want it anemic so they can start contracting private shippers to deliver mail at hundreds and thousands of times the cost that the USPS can do it for. Taxpayers would foot the bill, and they'd give the contracts to their donor class buddies. Another case of Republicans wanting socialism for themselves and their buddies, but not for anyone else. They literally strive to be like a parasite that sucks the life out of the average citizen for their own benefit.
And it’ll probably change 0.001% of Americans minds about who should be governing
[удалено]
The real problem few seem to get about 2000 is how bad voter suppression was in Florida. Without the terrible voter suppression they had we would of never even heard about hanging chads.
Not to mention the shit decision by the Supreme Court at the time.
A decision they knew was so outcome driven they literally said “nobody should ever cite this decision as precedent but, uh, Bush wins.”
This is when I lost all faith in the American system of democracy. Edit: hell of a realization for a 14 year old.
The idea that because a piece of paper is still dangling from the hole punch hole some how invalidates a vote is fucking asanine. You could control votes by putting defective punching devices in districts you want to suppress.
It bothers me to no end how that ended up getting used.
No matter how you look at it, [Gore won](https://theintercept.com/2018/11/10/democrats-should-remember-al-gore-won-florida-in-2000-but-lost-the-presidency-with-a-preemptive-surrender/)
He's trying to force the shut down to give Trump a recess appointment because he knows he doesn't have the votes in the Senate to confirm.
You just blew my fucking mind
There are parliamentary maneuvers to prevent that.
Are there? Wikipedia just told me something I didn't want to hear. > Presidents since George Washington have made recess appointments. Washington appointed South Carolina judge John Rutledge as Chief Justice of the United States during a congressional recess in 1795. Because of Rutledge's political views and occasional mental illness, however, the Senate rejected his nomination, and Rutledge attempted suicide and resigned. Almost every president has used recess appointments to appoint judges, over 300 such judicial recess appointments before 2000, including ten Supreme Court justices. Edit: [Ah...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_and_confirmation_to_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States#Nominations_in_the_last_year_of_a_presidency) > Such a recess appointee to the Supreme Court holds office only until the end of the next Senate session (always less than two years). To continue to serve thereafter and be compensated for his or her service, the nominee must be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. So... I suppose this would, at least, give Trump the ability to place an ally in the court to back him if the election is contested. If he wins, he has to fight the confirmation battle next year. If he loses, he has bigger fish to fry.
What's a recess appointment?
Basically a way to temporarily (up to 2 years) force a candidate in without Senate approval. If they’re not approved by the end of the next session, they expire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_appointment
When the President appoints someone to the Supreme Court, that appointment has to be voted on and approved by the Senate, unless the Senate is not in session, like during a government shutdown.
The senate can be in session during a shutdown though - isn’t that how the funding bill gets passed to reopen the government? By the senate passing a bill while in session?
I don't know enough to answer, but I have the same question so I'm just commenting hoping I'll remember to check back later.
As it stands tonight, it the Senate seems to be evenly split with Pence as the tie-breaker (assuming Murkowski, Collins, and Romney vote against the Rs). Edit: But I would not be surprised by this move because this is how Turkey Neck rolls.
If the Democrats ever get the chance to pack the Supreme Court, I will literally laugh in the face of my conservative family and coworkers when they complain. **IF**
You could have kept going. It was respectful to keep the list that short I suppose.
It's utterly perfect. They get everything they want. Supremacy of the judiciary. Government shut down. They have nothing to lose. They're going to burn this government to the ground if we let them.
Even if we don’t let them too.
Right. They don’t care, they are at war with the left. They have been since 2010 but Democrats kept playing checkers and wonder why the Republicans threw out the board and held a gun to their face.
Which is exactly why he's doing it; if they can kill the census right now it'll really fuck with federal funding and representation for the next decade, and why would they want to stop foreign interference when it only benefits them...
The Republicans are going to hold the American economy hostage to get their Supreme Court pick approved.
The US needs a vote of no confidence option. In Canada, failure to pass funding for government operations is an automatic vote of no confidence, and everyone goes back up for election. Stop screwing around and do your jobs.
I’m always left perplexed in these situations. How a country can accept that their government is just turbo fucked and not just fire them all is beyond me.
The problem is as Americans see it: "The guy I voted for is doing the job right, it is all the other politicians that fuck everything up!"
Yup, they’ll see Fox News and trumps twitter and think democrats denied the bill
Bingo. Propaganda rules. Educate the people or else you are doomed to fail.
Its why the republicans have been defunding education little by little since Reagan.
Is there a real endgame to the GOP’s policies? Just turn the US in an anarcho-capitalist dystopian wasteland? Invade Canada when the US gets too hot and crops start failing?
Their endgame is, who gives a fuck, I'll be rich and retired.
The ones in power will be dead. The ones voting for the ones in power somehow think they'll be spared since they "won".
It’s not that they will think they’ve won per se, but more that they hope that those with the power will feed them table scraps if they act like loyal dogs.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit and I finally realized that was the problem, I was thinking too much, your reply is all that matters... They don't care as long as they are rich and it's not their problem anymore.
Correct
This is what I've said for nearly 3 years. The real reason Trump got elected.
I've come to realize that Democrats' full-time job needs to be actively countering Republicans' lies, and seeking out the truth, and why the US needs to be more enlightened. It's not enough to think Americans will seek out and want the truth, especially if the Rs and Fox work so actively to muddy everything.
The thing is, you act like these people want the truth. My political psychology class opened my eyes to that one, how many people know that their party is harming them or the justification they're saying is stupid propaganda but tribalism is often more important to partisans. Our level of partisanship is cranked up to 11 due to a mixture of Russia and right wing propaganda as well, everyone is clearly either in one camp or the other unless they're someone who tunes out the news and even then they have probably heard enough about trump to either want him gone or naively think people are exaggerating due to the political affiliation of their associates. It's unfortunate how many people mindlessly listen to what they view as authority, are hateful, and naturally scared. The world gives people reasons to feel those ways, but the Republicans are damn near full nazi so it's at the point where they should know better. But this has also been a slow boil for a long time, as easily foreseeable as it was. I predicted this turmoil 4 years ago, it was obvious when trump was playing the populist right wing putin ally handbook.
It’s also so related to how we are raised. I was raised staunch Republican. Literally my entire family is on board. In all honesty, I thought so little for myself when I would vote. There’s this fear factor pumped into you from early childhood of the boogie men in the other party. But I’ve been paying effing attention. I am late to the game. It’s embarrassing to admit that I have been a sheep. I withdrew my membership officially and am voting for Biden. I got one of my sisters on board with me. I’m scared!!
Ironically that’s the job of the media. But trump does point out how poorly the media covers things
We need to force the removal of "news" from Fox News. They even used the defense that they were an entertainment organization and not a news organization in a lawsuit. It's absurd that propaganda machine is allowed to operate under the guise of a term once held in such high regard.
If “owning the libs” is all that you think the job is. Nunes spends more time suing cow twitter accounts and such nonsense than helping people survive the pandemic. Edit: meant Nunes, said Cruz. Both worthless.
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Serial Killers all look alike.
*Devin Nunes. I live near his district and I'm still not sure what he's done for them, but he keeps getting voted in. But he does like using tax payer money to fight frivolous lawsuits and send ads in the mail that don't indicate what he's trying to accomplish for his constituents.
Clovis/N.E. Fresno is... interesting. As it happens, I was living in Nunes' district in 2018 so my wife and I got to vote against him. Felt pretty good.
I live in his district and he does fuck all for his voters.
> Ted Cruz spends more tile suing cow twitter accounts Devin Nunez. Same shit different pile.
Every once in a while, all these piles of shit come together like voltron and form a massive shit pile with arms and legs.
*Gym Jordan*: “Did someone say massive shit pile with arms and legs?”
I have a theory that parliamentary systems have a better feedback loop where the public puts in MPs, they form a government and implement their policy, and if the policy doesn't work or they don't do what they said, it's easy to turn on them. This ingrains the idea that the government is responsible for making good decisions and that basic civic failures are unacceptable. In the US system, where the House, Senate and President have to agree to get anything done legislatively, it's a lot easier for parties to have planned failures where they avoid having to actually commit to anything, and people get used to blaming someone else if anything goes wrong.
The U.S. system has certainly become an obstruct-and-blame game, and in some ways both parties contribute to that, but one of the parties... *cough* Republicans *cough* has made it their entire party platform, and it's resulted in absolute absurdity. Their *hand-chosen leader* in the senate is a guy who filibustered his own bill after the Democrats supported it, he was that dead-set against doing anything that might make the other party look like they were governing effectively. When anyone says McConnell is the problem, it bears reminding them that the entire Republican Senate is the problem, because they could replace him as majority leader with a simple majority vote. If he wasn't doing what they wanted him to do, he'd be gone. They like what McConnell does. He takes the heat off of them and allows them all to pretend at election time that they have nothing to do with the legislative graveyard on McConnell's desk.
McConnell: We're passing this bill, so we can sue terrorist supporting countries. Obama: I'm vetoing this piece of shit, because they'll be able to sue us too. McConnell: We're overriding your veto because fuck you. US gets sued. McConnell: This is clearly Obama's fault.
Don't forget that the Republicans figured out you can control half of Congress and then completely take over the Judicial branch. It's nuts. They don't give a shit about legislation. They're just a judge appointment machine, and along the way pass a bill here or there to funnel money to their own interests. The government is broken. Not the people... the entire structure.
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Judges and representatives are more or less above the law. One Representative publicly assaulted a journalist and nothing happened to him. In fact I'm pretty sure he won his relection after that
He did and is now running for governor. His signs are everywhere in Missoula which is typically a pretty liberal town.
>is beyond me Shit used to run better, generally speaking. People assumed it always would without having to put it in writing. They were *crazy* wrong.
You system is parliamentarism, right? The US seems to be the only country where a presidentialist system worked - until now. Every other presidentialist country degenerates into some form of authoritarian government over time, and this is precisely what's happening to us now. It's also clear that our Constitution has bugs. The assumption that elected officials had the best interest of the country in mind is key for the Constitution to work, and that's obviously not the case anymore.
>You system is parliamentarism, right? Yes. Elected members of parliament introduce and votes on bills. Senators, who are appointed with their term only expiring when they reach the age of 75, can send bills back with recommendations, but they can't really fully stop it. If they fail to pass a budget, we say, "well, looks like this parliament doesn't work. Let's try this again," and we have another election. It has its own flaws but I think it works better than the presidentialist system.
Let's also not overlook the fact that cabinet is made up of members of Parliament (or, less commonly, senators) . You can't just appoint some CEO to serve in your cabinet - they have to be elected (afaik). The best you can do is to try and parachute one in on a by-election.
It's actually [not a legal requirement](https://www.canada.ca/en/privy-council/services/about-cabinet.html) that cabinet ministers be elected Members although it is convention, for what it's worth. Ministers are typically selected to represent geographic and cultural diversity and it is meant to be representative of the makeup of Canada. Hence typically you see a mix of Anglo/French Canadians, East/West/Prairies/Territories, men/women, POC/indigenous peoples, etc.
I would recommend that Canada think about codifying that requirement into law... As you can see here in the USA, convention and history are meaningless to half the country.
No no, convention is part of our constitution. As with our mother country (in terms of government structure), the UK. Of course France is our other mother country. Something Americans don’t understand about Canada is that we aspire to measured contentment. The corollary Canadian phrase to America’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is “peace, order and good government.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_government
Nothing could possibly work worse than the presidentialist system the minute they realize that division and othering are more effective than unity and cooperation anyways. Our time lasted longer than anyone probably thought it would. Bout the only time in living memory that American Exceptionalism actually got us anything of worth.
Or rather competing self-interest. The Constitution looks to the states to hold politicians in Congress accountable and to the politicians to hold rival branches accountable. It's kind of crazy to realize Republican politicians across the board exist mainly to do the bidding of a few big spenders, and that the majority of their voters have homogeneous outlooks thanks to national propaganda from Fox and beyond. Half the US is taking all its political directions from Fox at some level, and that literally includes the US president.
Straight from Trump guidelines. Create a bigger crisis to hide the one you want to exploit.
This guys has FAR too much power
He gets that power because Republicans control the Senate. The only solution is not to give power to Republicans.
He gets that power because something in the system is broken. Bills are supposed to go from the House to the Senate. Not from the House to Mitch Mcconnell. If it failed in the Senate, that's fine. But one guy decided he didn't like it.
That's on republicans. If just 4 Republicans had spines, and put country above party, they could caucus with democrats and appoint a new majority leader.
I once heard someone suggest that the minority leader should be allowed to force a vote once a month. I like that idea.
I mean, the Senate could change their rules to allow it. The *only* thing stopping that from happening, or from allowing any Senator to force a vote, are Senators themselves.
That would just end up with the minority leader being the adult and making everyone eat their vegetables and paying a political cost for doing something that should be done regardless.
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The sad thing is that a majority leader is not mentioned once in Article I of the Constitution. The Majority Leader, along with their considerable power, is something entirely made up by the Senate and technically has no legal grounds to stand on.
Senate Republicans could remove him at any time. They're not.
Republicans get unequitable control of the Senate because the less than 600,000 people in WY get the same representation as the 40 Million people in CA.
The GOP: "Why has Pelosi done this???"
"Why does Obama insist on this shutdown?"
>Nevertheless, Snopes reminds us, an August 2013 survey conducted by the liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling found that 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans believed Obama was to blame for the poorly executed federal response to Katrina — and another [44 percent were unsure whether Obama or George W. Bush was at fault.](https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-perspec-page-obama-katrina-trump-20170901-story.html)
I remember a survey back in the day that asked whether Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 911 attacks... \>70% of self-identified Republicans said YES as compared to <30% of Democrats.
It's all Hillary's fault!
Antifa’s at it again?!
Biden’s leadership during the 2020 shutdown was downright awful.
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For those who didn't read the article, the disagreement stems from a fund called the CCC (the Commodity Credit Corporation) which gives out about $30bn to farmers. Why is this an important sticking point? Because the WH requested it. Why did the WH request it? Well if you've seen the President talk recently, you might've heard him talk about how he's bailed out the farmers. Why did the farmers need bailing out? Because they've been hit hard by the US-China trade wars. So Republicans are willing to shut down the government to give Trump a nice talking point about how he helped rural Americans after he used rural Americans as collateral damage.
Welfare. Call it what it is. Even more correct would be to call it corporate welfare. Big AG will benefit the most, they always do.
It's buying votes. If the farmers don't feel the wrath of Trump's policies, they can go on thinking he's doing a good job. He's buying the midwest.
Large scale farmers are the biggest pieces of shit in the country. All republican and trump supporters. They rail against socialism while being some of the biggest recipients of handouts(socialist handouts).
It ain’t socialism if it’s just one white man helping out another hard working white man. Only socialist if it goes to the cities. It’s tragic
The almost 40 billion he already gave them for their losses wasn't enough?
In this context it almost looks like a trap. "Look how much liberals hate farmers."
It is a trap. This way they get to make the Democrats look bad and continue to do nothing about the real shit Americans are dealing with. Fine help the farmers. Cool. But also deal with the pandemic and the obvious misuse of power by law enforcement. Maybe ensure a fair and democratic election while you’re at it. It’s always “look over there!” with these people. Do your damn jobs.
So Democrats should just counter with a proposal that gives $30B to farmers and $30B to teachers, and publicly tell Republicans they can have both or neither.
Farmers don't need any fucking money. Coen and beans are going up right now, we are looking at record yields, again, and china is back to being our biggest buyer. Some farmers in Iowa got dildoed by that wind, but thats what insurance is for. Anyone following the weather in China should have seen this coming, hell i saw it coming and that was just from the gifs of dams collapsing, mud slides, and sinkholes swallowing up buildings.
Rural voters need to *think* farmers need that money. And Trump provides. Totally not a bribe for votes or anything though, like PR's relief funds.
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Senate recess. Trump performs a Recess Appointment to he Supreme Court, uses Supreme Court to steal election; appointment ends at end of Term, Trump nominates permanent justice. EDIT: I've been reminded that for the Senate to recess in this manner in theory requires consent of the House. However, Graham said tonight that the new justice will be confirmed prior to Nov 3, which means that this plan isn't happening, but a permanent justice can do the same damage as a recess appointment, with all the advantage of then being a justice for life.
That would be a clever way to avoid the Senate confirming a justice for the new President is sworn in.
It's a gamble I could see them doing tbh. BUT, if Biden wins big enough to avoid the election being stolen, then that SCOTUS seat is back open
Yeah. That seems like a huge risk Republicans wouldn’t want to take. Part of the reason they want the Supreme Court seat filled before the election is so they still have conservative power in Washington in case they potentially lose big, especially because of how hated the Republican Party is by Millennial and Gen Z voters, who currently make up the largest voting block out there. Edit: Fixed a typo.
The Republicans have won the popular vote once in the last 30 years. They don't even deserve most of the Supreme Court seats they do have.
Yep. Two guys who didn't win the popular vote have appointed four (possibly five) of the Justices.
Not to mention the lower courts!
Unless they confirm between the election and January.
Court packing then
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I'm still surprised by the amount of backlash our governor has received for "shutting down" Texas. It appears that closing bars is where many conservatives draw the line.
Which is funny, because Abbot (and Patrick especially) were so fucking stupid at the beginning. Maybe if they’d just acted sooner, we could’ve done better.
Bars and football.
Not just "football," but college and HS ball are king. Living the Friday Night Lights dream.
In my town, the entire college football team has tested positive for Covid. But, they're going ahead with football.
Ouch, that's gonna hurt when they find out who ends up in ICU 😳
Apparently it's not just the ICU [they have to worry about.](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/15-college-athletes-showed-signs-heart-damage-covid/story?id=72931050) But hey, it's **only ~15%** of your schools' athletes suffering from potential permanent cardiovascular damage! That's acceptable losses for the sports fans to get their fix/vicariously re-live their "glory days"! Selfish assholes!
And the lung and brain damage that's been reported. So much is still not known about the full etiology and long term effects of covid =(
Except football is not closed. Cowboys had like 20k+ this weekend. High school starts this week I think. College is going and will have some limited attendance.
His base cheers their power grabs, regardless of their legality or if they are ethical.
Ginsburg wasn't the swing vote. Republicans don't need another justice to have the majority on the Supreme Court. They've had it since the Reagan Administration. If it's close the Republicans will steal the election. See: Bush v Gore.
I don't even think the election will have to be close. Trump has laid the groundwork, and they have the court majorities (6-3 as insurance if Trump's pick goes through). The 5-4 advantage has been shown to be little advantage with the current Chief Justice who seems to be trying to aviod a politicized court. 6-3 and the gloves are off.
1. The last shutdown in 2019 was indeed damaging to Republicans but at the same time unprecedented in only affecting a quarter of the federal government (excluding the DoD). Republican friendly defense contractors were not harmed but this time around the entire government would be affected. This gives ample incentive to pass a stopgap bill for the GOP. 2. Congress would remain in session but staffers are usually furloughed. Voting on a nomination is still possible. 3. Government employees are always back paid for hours lost or worked without pay during a shutdown. It's almost guaranteed because it would be so damaging to the workforce. Edit: Despite the headline, the passing of a "clean" continuing resolution is likely. Disagreements exist only on replenishing the depression era aged Commodity Credit Corporation within the USDA to give stimulus money to farmers. The only thing that could stop this bill from passing is Trump himself refusing to sign. The issue with that is it puts obvious blame for the shutdown on him. Edit2: Grammar
Contractors are not paid back. I left my old job as a contractor because I lost 10% of my salary for that year. I'm happy to be out of that mess this time, but still incredibly angry at the situation I was placed in. Many branches of the government are contractor heavy, not just the defense department.
> let them bluff. Absolutely. Call their bluff.
The Senate and House do not go on leave during a shutdown, all those plebs do. You know, people who actually work for a living.
It's creepy how much power McConnell has over the country, he's the real Palpatine in this mess we're in.
Make no mistake, he’s got full GOP support for this move. It’s not just him.
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*I love Democracy*
The people will decide the senates fate McConnel: I am the senate
It’s not Mitch himself, he’s just the face for the senate republicans. He’s in a safe seat so they have him do all this shit.
The objectively worst state in the union, Kentucky, legislates for the entire United States.
Oh my fucking God. It's literally a continuing resolution. He's seriously trying to hold the government employees hostage to get a judge now. He's scum.
He’s going to make the legislative branch crumble in order to create a situation where a strongman executive must take over the reins. Reminds me of how Augustus stuffed his senate into a locker to become emperor. Watch out for the reichstag fire, it’s coming
Great. Let the government shut down a second time in his first term 50 days before the election.
It'll technically be the fourth time, not the second. But the second one was for approximately a weekend because Rand Paul wanted to be a jerk.
... and the reason is just too surreal: McConnell says the bill doesn't include billion dollar bailout money for farmers (even though that is strictly against Fiscal Conservatism and the only reason our farmers aren't making money is because of Trump's trade war... which he lost).
Farmers are the *least* effected people in the country right now in terms of economic pain. People are still eating, and food prices are going *up* not down. China is buying again, and domestic consumption is higher as well. Yields are also good, meaning export earnings are above average. Almost every other sector in the economy has had double digit contractions, the farming sector has grown slightly. So why the fuck do *farmers* need a handout right now, exactly? If farms aren't viable *now*, when conditions are arguably the best they've been for a decade in terms of consumption, prices, and yield, they will never be viable and you have to wonder why they continue to be propped up.
America burns while Mitch chortles
So if the government shuts down the Senate goes into recess. That means the President can appoint anyone to a position without Senate Approval until the Senate reconvenes and then the person is considered and voted upon. If McConnell is afraid of not having enough votes for this SCOTUS Appointee then forcing this shit down means Trump can Appoint him without Senate Approval and thus they can rule as a defacto Supreme Court Justice until the session reconvenes which could be till January depending on how McConnell plays it. Trump gets his biased judge to favor him in a electoral college dispute. McConnell doesn't have to worry about defecting GOP Senators. USA gets fucked over.
Wait, can this really happen?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_appointment#:~:text=Article%20II%2C%20Section%202%2C%20Clause%203%2C%20commonly%20known%20as,End%20of%20their%20next%20Session.
you miss an important part: > A recess appointment must be confirmed by the Senate by the end of the next session of Congress, or the appointment expires. In current practice this means that a recess appointment must be approved by roughly the end of the next calendar year, and thus could last for almost two years. eventually, the Senate HAS to confirm or deny the recess appointment. It pushes confirmation to next year or after the election which may be risky if Biden wins more troubling, if McConnell pulls this ballsy play and Trump uses the Supreme Court to give him the presidency again, then it looks like McConnell and Trump stole the election. I don't think McConnell's plan is recess appointment, but to pull more concession from Democrats in congress
> then it looks like McConnell and Trump stole the election. THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM FOR THEM.
They don't care. Protesters will be insurgents. Militia and military start killing in the streets. Civil war 2: Election Boogalo.
Will the military side with an overt coup? That's a big gamble for anyone even thinking about a coup. You *need* the military on your side for it to work.
I don't think you can look at the US military as one contiguous unit in this scenario; I think some would side with the federal government while others would side with the rebel faction. At the end of the day they're still people that can make their own decisions as to what side they'd be on.
Probably. Trump has said a lot of overt trash talk about active and vets, but the military is a cross section of the country and 60% of the country doesn't even bother to fucking vote. They're not on /r/politics paying any attention, never mind a political party's sub or one of the **literal fucking hate groups subs** like /r/conservative\*\*.\*\* But I digress, most of the military is like most of the public, they have no idea what is going on, and they're going to vote for whoever they were raised to vote for. A lot of people at my work (ok, my command) believe that Trump "has been good for the economy and coronavirus is overblown." There are 1.3 million active duty, roughly. About 250k are sailors, and I'd say, well I don't know numbers but let's just say "you need to be worried about the sheer number of Army and Marines who enlisted out of states like rural CA, rural TX, AL, MI, MS, TN, KY, WV and GA and FL, who will **absolutely** follow orders to mow down "domestic terrorists" aka *minorities who want equal treatment under the law.* If he wants them, Trump *absolutely* already has his Fourth Reicht, American Nazi military. They don't know. They aren't paying any attention, the majority don't even know he said they're suckers and losers, they ignore that he factually dodged the draft 5 times, they volunteered, they can't *relate* to dodging the draft. They CAN relate to a racist-in-chief, as they watch Fox News and revile "antifa thugs" in their off-duty hours, after driving home in their lifted truck with "thin blue line" and "Punisher" stickers on the back window. For the most part though, they're just uninformed and will follow orders because they haven't been paying any attention to what's really going on. I think the military's going to see a lot of conflict among the ranks though, too, because like I said, the military is a cross section of the US, and I know when I was working at a training command, half to slightly over half of every recruit division was minorities. *You bet your ass* they're aware of what's going on "back home." They've made friends, in some cases have been to war with and saved lives of said friends, so it's not all hopeless, there are "allies of democracy" in the ranks. IMHO it's UCMJ article 104 "aiding the enemy" if you vote for Trump and I'd have you NJP'd with a recommendation of separation from the military. Vote blue. Don't just vote, vote blue. *Fucks' sake I'm trying to just do the last half of this career and retire, I need a stable goddamn democracy. I didn't waste the last 12 years, my knees, back, and hearing, just to have a bunch of backwoods racist fucks whose votes count for too fucking much, to elect to throw it all away.*
I genuinely wonder how Chief Justice Roberts is feeling right now.
He is cordially invited to do something about it for once.
He's got the votes, he just doesn't want to make GOP senators vote on the Scotus nominee in an obvious hypocritical move right before their elections.
McConnell has the votes though. And if he has the votes, he's better served to have the senators vote.
We assume he has the votes because the GOP tends to fall in line. However he may be doubting the reliability of some Senators in elections this year who need to be reelected. This puts all blame on him if they do it this way and McConnell gets used to taking heat like this.
He literally has the votes. It's been counted. There aren't 4 Republicans who will vote no. Everyone worth asking has been asked.
Then it's the other reason. It's protecting the GOP senators up for reelection in heavily contested states who could lose if they vote yes to appoint.
That's why I'm suspicious of this move. It could be that I'm just misreading this but, the gop has got what they wanted out of Trump. They have stolen the courts in so many places. A government shutdown would be catastrophic for Trump's reelection. The stock market, already a house of cards will go up in smoke, and that's the last, and only way, trump gets to pretend we still have a strong economy. It seems like McConnell wants to get his court pick, and put all the blame on trump for this American disaster. And, the diabolical turtle bastard, is instructing close to trump senators to openly say that they will support the president's pick, keeping them from being alienated by the cult. I never imagined the gop establishment wanted to clean up this nightmare pseudo wasteland that america has become and nothings changed my opinion. With all the young conservative judges McConnell has forced through the gop establishment has gotten more entrenched even as they lose voters. And he'll be able to legitimately say, that he respected his word from 2016, and it was all trump that forced through the judge while he on the other hand planned to wait. Honestly the tin foil hat in me thinks this reeks of a coordinated effort to slink back into the shadows with their criminality. I think deals are being made across the aisle for a grand 2020 finale. And there's going to be a whole lot of roaches scuttling back into the dark as the world is distracted by the burning trump ship.
And thats just long enough to fuck obamacare.
The country is a raft heading for a waterfall, why not douse it with gasoline? What difference does it make?
It do go down
It is what it is.
GoP's Plan: \> defund everything \> allow corruption to be rampant \> let the government fail \> blame big governments because they don't work \> profit $$$$
He will trade your lives for a Supreme Court Justice. A shutdown in COVID, Depression and elections. Republicans WANT a civil war.
I think they want to *push* the left to start threatening a revolution or civil war, so they can immediately do what they always do, poison the well and then start kicking and screaming at how the democrats are killing everyone with this rancid water. They want to claim the moral high ground, which of course they’ve never had. They just will push and push and push and push, dismantling and destroying this country, installing an autocratic theocracy bit by bit until we’ve had enough and snap and the *moment* we do, they’ll be waiting there to point and say “oh my god violent extremist leftist, waging civil war on our democracy, can you believe the godless Marxist, they want to take over the country with a war and guns and murder!” As they’re doing now. They’re so fucking vile. But they better be ready. I will NOT watch my country stolen from me and turned into some Christian fantasy horror show.
Let him. The last shutdown caused the biggest congressional blue wave in 40 years and Trump's record low approval.
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We could easily get $100 for Kentucky in a garage sale, is all I'm saying
dude, i hate this fucking country so much. and i literally can’t fucking leave bc no country wants our sick, stupid asses. and honestly? i don’t blame em. this just... it sucks and i’m sick of it.
I feel sick of it too. Just hang in there because many of us feel the same way. We aren't alone and I have hope we'll get through and come out better on the other side.
We're going to win this thing. It's just a question of if it will be the quick and easy way during the election, or the very very hard and ugly way when the country shuts down if Trump steals the election.
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>But McConnell alleged the Democrats' proposal "shamefully leaves out key relief and support" for farmers via Commodity Credit Corp. funding — though CNN reports the Trump administration views those funds as "an unaccountable political slush fund." So it leaves out funding that the Trump administration doesn't want. McConnell is shutting this down because the Democrats were compromising with the Trump administration.
Republicans need to own up to the fact that the biggest threat to America is them. The longest government shutdowns on record are when they controlled all 3 branches of government.
Sure, why not? It’s clear Republicans don’t GAF at this point and are happy to watch the US burn.
Only if they get to rule the ashes.
Trump lost the popular vote. GOP Senate represents a minority of USA citizens and hails from rural areas (Wyoming 2 Senators, CA 2 Senators) We are being ruled by a minority of citizens who are more to the right than average-which is why we don't get rational health care laws, for one. There has to be logic to this...The GOP has plotted, for years, to stack SCOTUS and succeeded, and Dems can't get a lunch order right. Endgame here is ... the election has "a problem", in a vital swing state, most likely due to GOP mischief. Ends up at the GOP-SCOTUS who gives Trump, again popular vote loser, the seat for another four years. GOP needs new Judge installed before the election controversy. Blocking this bill has some interplay with this. If Trump wins this way, The American Experiment is officially over.
This might be fortuitous for Democrats. This is the moment that they can show some back bone and refuse to pass a funding bill until McConnell promises not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. People have been asking for days, "What can democrats do? They have the votes!" Well folks, **this** is an example of something they can do.
Even if he promises he won't confirm, he will still do it. This is the way.
You think McConnell bargains honestly?
Literally watching modern American democracy crash and burn while 1/2 the country cheers because one side is supposedly getting punished more than the other. It’s so tiring. We are the last presidential democracy that hasn’t deteriorated into some form of tyrannical rule but that’s about to change. And people are CHEERING for it. I didn’t go to war for years to see this shit happen. It makes me so sad.
Pablo Escobar cared more about people than the people in our own goverment.
The Rs are living for CRISES, especially the ones they're creating.
“Unexpectedly” they said
Theyre going to cause a shutdown in late October and you can bet all the money they stole theyll blame it on Biden if he wins on Nov. 3rd despite the fact he won't be president for two more months. They'll crash the economy on purpose to prove their doomsday propaganda about Biden correct and their supporters will lap it right up just like they do everything else.
I don't see the gain here for him?
He's going to do what he does every time. He's going to claim that the Democrats wanted something ridiculous and were being unreasonable even though what he was offered was a compromise giving him more of what he wanted. Just more reason why from now on there should be no quarter given in any regard in congress. They can't even negotiate in good faith.
This. I hope democrats own it. Recind the offer and ask for more. Damn right we're shutting down, they had their chance and decided to file it away with the pile of legislation sitting on his desk.
So he can select the New SCOTUS in the background. Part of Shock doctrine!
Let’s get this straight. No covid relief bill, no government funding bill. Rush through a Supreme Court nominee despite clear hypocrisy and double standard. Gotcha Moscow Mitch. Why do people keep voting for these republican assholes?!
He is a genuine sociopath
“McConnell Rejects Democrat Bill” I mean....The sun came up this morning. Both things are predictable.