The filibuster has never really been a thought out and considered rule of the senate so much as a fluke of debate rules. It’s basically just a loop hole noone has wanted to close since the first senate. Noone’s made it easier so much as debate rules have streamlined and the filibuster along with them.

Fuck it, I’d welcome an invasion at this point provided whatever country did it super pinky promised not to do half the shit Republicans do.

Bro took a long shower I guess.

There’s also just no creativity. I’m pretty sure I saw a new “let’s go Brandon” sign out and about recently. By this point that is very nearly a three year old meme. Like, I’m not really surprised that they can’t do better, but it’s a little telling that they come up with one thing they think is “good” and stuck with it basically though Biden’s entire presidency. “Creatively bankrupt” does not even begin to describe it.

I think it’d also count as a full term in office so far as the rule against running more than twice goes. So you could run for reelection, but that isn’t a “one werid trick” to getting three terms in office.

Those who believe in conspiracy theories have become our conservative party. Some (myself included) would argue they’ve always been there or that that’s always been the nature of the republican party. But the important thing here in the modern day is that the conspiracy theorists now control half of the country’s political system.

I’m personally of the opinion that conspiracy theory is the result of a fundamental unwillingness or inability to engage with reality. If that is the case then why on earth would you choose to believe in climate change? It’s scary, and an existential threat to humanity if it’s taken seriously. Besides, theres a lot of money to be made burning the planet.

I think at the end of the day that’s what the American right’s denial of climate change boils down to. Everyone in that party participates in some way in denying reality in favor of a collective fantasy. What’s one more denial?

While the other cable news networks stuck with live special coverage for the rest of the evening, Fox News decided that its audience needed a break from the deflating electoral results for conservatives. After Hannity signed off at 10 p.m., Fox aired its regularly scheduled broadcast of “comedy” show Gutfeld!, which was pre-taped and didn’t make any mention of the elections.

Gutfeld acting as a conservative american “swan lake” might be the saddest thing I’ve heard all day.

Shit, after 2016 I just stopped paying attention to polls all together. I veiwed them as flawed even before 2016. After? Shit man I might not even be living in a democracy tomorrow, a pollsters opinion on who might win an election a year from now is interesting but post 2016 it’s something I refuse to loose sleep over.

Plus, would the rule remain that it only takes one house member to initiate a vote to expel the speaker? If so then that’s all they’d be doing. I mean I’d say fuck it, if yall can swing it give a shot, I just think that dems fucking with the republicans heads by backing McCarthy is more likely.

If McCarthy survives with democrats help than I think it solidifies the idea of an intraparty split between what used to be called establishment republicans and the hard right. For my part I think the republican party is causing real and actual harm to the nation and to the world at large. If this breaks their coalition and gets them to fight amongst themselves then great. Aside from that I don’t really care all that much.

Think that’s where it started actually.

I’m kinda more in this camp. I think Russia and the GOP are working together (kinda hard to live through 2016 without believing that on some level) but does that mean that Russian intelligence has “flipped” the GOP? I don’t think so.

I think it’s more of a convergent goals kinda situation. I think one of the things that the GOP wants to do to American politics is turn it into a open moneymaking venture. Not saying that it isn’t defacto already there, but it is still looked down upon and technically criminal behavior to accept bribes and the like. Matters of enforcement aside.

Not only is that kind of blatent corruption already prevalent in Russian politics, Russia for there part would love a united states that they could just bribe to get off their back. The GOP is trying to comodify American politics and by consequence American power abroad and Russia is looking to be their number one customer.

Does that mean that Trump gets marching orders daily from Putin? No, probably not. There’s probably some level of communication between them, but I doubt any of that takes the form of any kind of directives or anything.

There’s a part of me that legitimately wonders how far Twitter could go as an influncer bubble. Granted this is unlikely to happen but if everyone who’s not an influencer just left for Mastodon and Twitter just became a hollow shell of influencers trying to sell products to customers who just aren’t there, how far would Twitter’s inerta carry it before anyone realized?

I kinda don’t get these articles. “Giuliani expected to surrender” the fuck else is he gonna do? Flee to Russia? Make a run for it? Cover himself in his own melting hair dye like Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to escape from the predator? I’d fucking love to see him try. But really the fuck else could he have even done?

I’ve actually been wondering why that’s the case for a while. Like is it a limitation of something their doing under the hood of GSUITE products?

It’s like Elon has read every book with an evil corporation in it and decided to make it his whole ascetic. X corp, sounds like the big bad that some plucky band of YA book protagonists have to team up to take down.

I also feel like Reddit skewed slightly more towards this demographic then a lot of other social media sites did. Like that’s not to say that you didn’t have this demographic on Facebook or Twitter, but Reddit always felt (to me at least) like it more aligned with the sensibilities of this crowd in part because of some of the same factors mentioned above. So I think a lot of the folks who ended up here tended to be the techier edge of the already preexisting techie bias that existed on Reddit.