Democratic senators voting in favor:
My point isn’t passing the legislation, it’s that most Democrats seem to be opposed to this. Most Senate Democrats flipped out when they learned about this secret deal, and Jeffries issued a preemptive statement. It could all be an act (particularly Jeffries), but I do suspect a lot of them really are just as pissed as we are.
I get it. But this is a handful of senators. Everyone else said no. House Democrats are vowing to say no, even Jeffries.
Whoops! Thanks for the correction. I was thinking of the maximum length of time an appropriation could be used for defense spending, not general budgeting.
The Congress shall have Power … to raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
Thanks, it was a genuine question since I haven’t seen the latest coverage. I guess Russia’s missile defense is doing its job since I haven’t heard about power in Moscow being shut off yet.
It’s like the penultimate form of justice.
What’s the ultimate form then?
Is Ukraine “allowed” to fire missiles into Russia yet?
They should never have offered a one-year extension.
But more broadly, fascism should not be treated like normal, and certainly should not be funded. But I don’t know what it will take to snap people out of their complacency.
Edited to remove misremembered detail about budget process.
befingered
I don’t mean to be rude given this is clearly a passion project, but who is this for?
Yep, her dad built a successful construction company and then she and her then-husband took it over as majority owners. Her husband ran the company while she collected paychecks but never showed up, then she left to go teach CrossFit. She’s basically a trust fund kid.
Does it have an intermission or do I need to prepare for this like I’m going to filibuster the Senate
He also thinks “affordability” is a new word. Again, because he’s never had to use that word his entire life.
Then there’s this, about energy prices:
While the national average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline has remained lower than last year, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found the average retail price of electricity has risen faster than inflation in 26 states in the past six months, according to The New York Times.
Data centers. I’m telling you, this is a sleeper issue. They’re going up like wildfire for AI. If Democrats came out hard against these local sweetheart deals that tech companies are extracting from city councils in exchange for bribes, it would be a winning issue for them.
These companies get tax breaks to build them, the electricity to power them is paid for by the community, they consume water, they create no jobs besides temporary out-of-state construction jobs, and they privatize all the profits.
Often the terms of these deals are secret because of NDAs, but either way they try to keep these deals secret. Even if it’s discovered, the city councils just ram approval through over the objections of the community.
This is a progressive issue that I think red voters would cross the line to vote for, because the Confederates have gone all in on wealth extraction by these companies, and the residents hate them.
The idea that “groceries” is an old-fashioned word is fixated in his brain. He rambled on about it multiple times on the campaign trail.
He’s never had to think about groceries, so to him it’s basically an unused word in the English language. Food has always just appeared before him like magic his entire life. I’m sure he can’t understand why people keep using this strange word he’s never had to say before the last couple of years.
I predict a trailer with a slow, downbeat rendition of the main theme
Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are the mummies in this one
Back in 1933, Robert Sterling Clark, one of the heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune, was worth what would today be about $1 billion. He had no profession other than professional rich person: art collector, horse breeder, financier…
He famously said in the course of plotting a coup to overthrow FDR, “If I have to spend half my money to protect the other half, I’ll do it.” He meant spending half his money to finance a coup.
These useless scions of wealthy families really do think that the socialists are coming for all their money, either through taxation or unrestrained spending leading to inflation. They did absolutely nothing to deserve it in the first place, but they’ll commit treason to hoard it, if necessary.
That’s actually a misconception that I believed for quite a while as well, because it was reported as fact in the mid 2000s by the BBC (I even saved the original report back in the day).
But Butler never reported Prescott Bush as a conspirator, to our knowledge (at least not publicly, which is all we have to work with). The only reason Bush’s name came up at all in the report was because he and his firm were being investigated separately by the same congressional committee because of deep business ties to the Nazis, and it was around the same time. But basically, Bush was too busy making money by working with the Nazis at the time to be involved with the plot.
Quite a lot of American industry at the time was working with the Reich, because many business leaders supported Hitler. Once America formally entered the war, doing business with Germany became illegal and any remaining fascist sympathies instantly became socially verboten.
I’ve read a lot about this incident. The bottom line is it was going to be too embarrassing to the US government and corporate interests and so the business leaders likely received a stern talking to behind closed doors to never attempt anything like this again or else bad things would happen to them (presumably family names ruined, contracts canceled, etc.). A deal that, in fairness, they appeared to honor afterward.
They’re giving up a big part of it. They’re funding several different departments through 2026.