Yup, all those folks withheld their votes, and now Gaza is saved!

Trump did have an “airline” at one point, he owned one of the air shuttles between DC/NYC/BOS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Shuttle

It was never profitable, though, and eventually he had to sell to “pay” his debts. (This was also around the time he was bankrupting casinos…)

The modern fillibuster is a general agreement to let other Senate business happen while a particular vote is postponed. But Republicans want to enforce some of the older rules that mean that when a filibuster is happening, no other business can take place.

Thune is smart to proceed cautiously. There are a lot of other things that Republicans want to get through the Senate, including the DHS funding bill, and the Senate’s HR role of approving appointments. Given the state of the current rules, Democrats can hold up the voting bill without stalling all that other stuff. Once they pull the trigger on this, that all changes. Schumer will start reading names out of the Park Slope phone book for weeks on end, and all that other stuff doesn’t get done.

Or, they’re lying about the gun and the guy was just bringing Grubhub to a resort guest…

Isn’t “Never get involved in a land war in Asia” one of the classic blunders?

They are only expanding the parts that inflict violence on people they don’t like, everything else is getting deleted. Remember DOGE?

I can see an uncharitable way it ends well, if he finally eats that last cheeseburger already.

Republicans despise government, though. They view Congress’s job as doing nothing.

Bad Bunny embodies the values some of us aspire to, Trump embodies what most of the country actually values.

The problem isn’t necessarily the screens. These screens are a portal into the entire collective knowledge of humanity, after all. There is so much information that, as recently as 30 years ago, was impossible for anyone outside small niches to access, which is now available in just a few seconds. It is nothing less than democratizing information. And connections between people have also gotten a lot easier. We take for granted now that we can talk with anyone in the world, at any time.

However, it’s the social media that these screens enable that is the problem, because they take the agency away from people. Inquisitive minds are no longer seeking out relevant information, they passively sit back and let the information come to them. Social Media sites hold engagement as their only value (just as TV media did before), and will shove absolutely anything in someone’s face to get them to keep scrolling. It doesn’t matter whether the content is enraging, uplifting, or even true: if it grabs someone attention long enough to see the ad, it is successful in their eyes.

We haven’t really put many restrictions on our kids’ screen time. (And how can I? I make my living looking at screens all day). But from the beginning, we have made sure our kids understand that we want them seeking content out, not passively consuming it. While the kids were younger, we only gave them access to social media like YouTube in a shared area, where we could see what they were watching and searching for, and watched with them. We curated their own mental algorithms, and if they stumbled on something we didn’t want them to see, we explained why. I can’t say they never succumb to brainrot, but they do seem to have developed the critical thinking skills that their peers have missed out on. (In other words, they know it’s brainrot when they see it, even if they watch anyway!)

They also cancelled special TSA escorts for members of Congress. That’s a perk that some members take very seriously.

This seems like a targeted attempt to affect Congress directly. And with all due respect to Rep. Mace, I think more Democrats fly commercial than Republicans. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me to find Elon funding a fleet of private jets to ferry his preferred Congressmen (and maybe a few Congresswomen, if he thinks they’re hot) around during this dark time, leaving Democratic officials stuck in line.

https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wages

34 states have set wages above the Federal minimum, which means that 16 feel the Federal minimum is not too low.

I’m surprised the Grifter-in-chief hasn’t pardoned them on the spot. Or maybe he is jealous that these guys can screw over immigrants more effectively than ICE can…

You need to look at it a bit differently: it’s not that 38 states are needed to approve amendments, but rather that only 13 states are needed to block them. And Republicans have been very effective at electing politicians at the state level. Republicans have total control of 28 State Legislatures, and also hold the Governor’s seat in 23 of them.

So, any amendment that manages to get through Congress (and the filibuster) will have to be approved by a bunch of these State Republicans. So pretty much any policy that that can be considered liberal will be DOA.

In fact, Democrats have more to worry about in the other direction. They only hold 18 State Legislatures, holding the Governor’s seat in 16 of them. That is perilously close to the threshold of not being able to block amendments. If Democrats lose just a few more of those safe states, the the next time Republicans hold majorities in the House and Senate, they may be able to force amendments through that the blue states don’t like.

(Source: https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/state-partisan-composition)

I bet Trump’s diaper leaked

Yes, you understand that correctly. All I can say is that it wasn’t always this way.

Partisanship is such a driving force in our politics that even someone who only bucks their party 4% of the time is considered “bipartisan”. I’ve seen reports in the media calling a vote “bipartisan” if it only gets two or three votes from the other side.

And yes, it depends on that person’s reputation. Since Collins is seen as a moderate, all it takes is her support on a bill to call it “bipartisan”. OTOH, Senator Rand Paul frequently votes against the Republican party line, but only because he is a batshit crazy libertarian. He can vote against a Republican bill, and nobody calls that “bipartisan”, I guess because both sides think he’s nuts.

No problem! But, it’s still a link to a random X post and not an article so will probably get removed soon.

I know, it stinks, just like you-know-who’s diaper…

You forgot the link

At that point, the government may decide to simply set up a refund program to reimburse folks and try to save some money by not challenging every claim in court.

Doubtful. This administration has no problems spending lots and lots of money if it aligns with the Monarch’s decrees. And if there are two things Trump values, it’s tariffs, and blind loyalty. They will aggressively challenge everyone who is not letting Trump grab them by the pussy.