Absolutely useless
Call your senators, they can still block this despite Schumers push. The vote is tomorrow. If all republican vote for it, they need 7 dems. 8 with Rand Paul who has said he’ll vote no. (Republicans are not using reconciliation so it needs the the filibuster)
Many senate dems are publicly coming out against voting for cloture (meaning they won’t vote to let it get through the filibuster). As of what I last read, around
1110 dems are thought to potentially vote to let it pass filibuster. Most of those are still not sure. We only need a handful more of those to become noes and it will get blocked. Some yeses have flipped to noes because of public pressure. We cannot let up nowLink to find direct numbers your senators
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Or call the capitol switch board (202) 224-3121
House dems are publicly telling the senate not to do this (and it’s not just AOC on this - it’s quite a few of them). Earlier read that 7 Dem state AGs are saying the same. Federal worker unions are telling senate dems not do this. Keep the pressure up
One thing to keep in mind though…
I was outraged a minute ago, but now I’m not sure.
When the government is shut down, so are the courts, and we need them.
How one branch is capable to shut down apparently a co-equal branch of the government?
Not immediately
Unlike executive branch agencies, the federal courts can continue operations for about two weeks following a government shutdown. When a shutdown loomed in September 2019, the U.S. federal courts confirmed they could use reserve or carryover funds accumulated from various revenue sources not dependent on Congress, such as case filing fees. When courts are on notice that a government shutdown may be looming, they can take steps to conserve funds by deferring non-critical expenses — for example, by curbing travel, new hires, and certain contracts.
Plus voting in favor of this CR would be codifying much of what these cases are about. Many of the illegal spending cuts would become legal until September making the cases moot.
It would also fuck over DC local government in a way the executive branch cannot easily do. Congress can control DC budgets but very little of the DC budget comes from federal money (<1%) where Trump could mess with. The CR has a clause to cut $1 billion from their budget despite that not saving the federal government any money
That’s a good point. Looks like both ways are bad, but voting yes, still looks worse.
Indeed, there’s a reason the Federal Worker Unions are saying to vote against the CR despite the likely shutdown that would entail
Plus it would teach senate Republicans that they can do basically whatever they want as long as they threaten a shutdown. You have to stand up strong to bullies it’s the only thing they understand
Which are the 11?
Turns out it was actually 10 as I accidentally counted Cortez Masto as two people whoops
Schumer, Hassan, Peters, Durbin, Schatz, King, Shaheen, Fetterman, Cortez Masto and Gillibrand
https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lkbxyja44s2c
In terms of what’s more confirmed by statement and such here’s one tracker that seems to somewhat regularly update
deleted by creator
The DNC is a zionist first organization. Members winning is secondary to zionist rule over America.
Yeah, they’re not meek or cowards.
They bravely stand up to their own base.
What is this from?
Removed by mod
Even if they are a tankie, they’re still putting forth a valid criticism.
Tankies don’t belong in US Politics. Supporters of Russia and China don’t have a say in what is best for the USA.
no one is this meek. this is collusion. they’re complicit, and it’s not by accident. they’ve always been this way.
Democratic politicians suck up Super PAC money the same as Republicans. It’s just that Republicans just do other forms of corruption out in the open because they know their voters are too stupid to notice.
Trump scamming people with memecoin currency, MAGA doesn’t care.
This is the correct take. Dems are owned by corporations, conservatives are owned by oligarchs (and corporations, but I don’t think corporations are too happy with what’s going on with Trump and Musk)
And Musk and Trump are just mad that everyone thinks they are weird spoiled assholes, so they are seeking revenge on…everyone.
Bingo
They’re not meek, they’re bought.
It’s really hard to remove bought politicians when it’s the rule and not the exception
That’s why I am 99% certain America gets a civil war. When half the population are so mentally ill that they support Trump, and the other half so brainwashed they blame progressives for Trump — the only group that has consistently warned that conservatism and neoliberalism will result in fascism — you can’t simply “deprogram” them.
One major reason Europe rebounded after WW2 is because the vast majority of fascist “true believers” died in the war, and fascist leadership was executed. Europe essentially had a political and sociological “reset”. Without that, America’s cancer will continue to grow and fester. If civil war does not happen, or the fascists win it, the world gets US fascist imperialism and WW3 in the 2030’s; give or take a few years.
Only if you play by the rules.
I’ve often been a defender of Democrats being realistic, but Schumer is on some bullshit here.
It’s unclear what, if anything, Schumer got in return for his decision to allow the House bill to proceed
Says it all right there. The Republican bill was just a list of laughably insane things they knew Democrats would oppose so they could blame the shutdown on them. It actually cuts funding of DC’s local budget forcing them to fire teachers and even cops. Again, nothing to do with the federal government. It just grabs power from a local government and says that they can’t use their own local tax revenues to educate kids and fight crime. It’s complete rabid insanity that has no point other than to bully a blue city. And Schumer’s like “Sure, ok. whatever.”
The budget also cuts medicare and medicaid by some pretty substantial amounts, among many other government programs.
This is the CR. This allows for more time to work on that budget… which only needs 51 votes because of reconciliation.
Ah, ok. Kind of weird that they would even bother with a CR when they could just move the debt ceiling with the budget proposal? Still, a weight is lifted knowing that it isn’t coming to pass right away.
The US has no form of vote of no confidence. So therefore no way to have consequences for bad governing outside of the voting period, which has its own problems. Importantly here is the need for quick backlash rather than wait two or more years to choose someone else (if there is anyone else allowed to be a pick).
A lot of the flaws in the government are inherent from the beginning because there were certain expectations assumed, and that a document of rules can’t be perfect the first, second, or even only a third time. It needs consistent revisions to keep up with the needs of the group it is designed for. This is where the biggest failure has happened, and can be attributed to lack of attention, not wanting to change what seems to work, sacred holding of what was never meant to be set in stone, or just that it often benefited not being changed at the time by those with the power to change it.
Add to all that a very short attention spanned public, fine tuned to be ignorant and forgetful as well as easily manipulated by the simplest of sound bites.
The rot is in the walls. Not that the American Experiment was a bad thing, it’s just that it wasn’t maintained and updated, so you get eventual decay.
Kevin McCarthy would still be the house leader if that were 100% true. Congressional leadership can changed with enough intrer-party pressure. Schumer is highly unlikely to face any expulsion vote from congress, but he could more realistically be stripped of leadership position. This is a breaking point that might actually build that pressure and we can play a roll in that by calling your senators.
Not delaying Trump’s nominees with all tools (only some of them) isn’t nearly serious as him pushing to give up the one piece of genuine dem leverage until September for basically no gain. Directed pressure - not on social media - but in places senators can see will let us do it. That means calling them, emailing them, hell even faxing, showing up in person to their office and town halls, etc.
Also do this for the bill vote itself too before tomorrow morning. See my comment about we can still block this vote
Only if you’re ready for a decades long campaign to flip towns, cities, districts, and state level legislatures like it took the republicans from 1972 to just a month ago.
That’s what we’re up against.
The US needs to break the two-party system so minor parties and independents actually have a chance at representation.
Of course there’s no incentive for the establishment to do that. Is there any way for new candidates to run with the major parties, but on a platform to introduce preferential voting when they have the numbers? I don’t know much about factions within US parties, but they certainly exist in my country, and can transform parties quickly if they think they have election-winning appeal.
It would have to happen bottom-up, as you say, so people can get comfortable with such a big change. Also, people are much more likely to elect independents at a local level.
Gotta move to direct voting.
I’d throw my vote behind the naarp
I love how these conversations happen many times every session, but then campaign time comes and everyone calls me a Russian asset for reminding people of what the “Blue No Matter Who” mentality gets you.
The time to have that conversation is before and during the primaries. After that, it’s not a worthwhile conversation.
The message isn’t the issue, your timing is.
How long do I have to wait for this to work? It’s been 25 years of voting blue no matter who and Republicans are just getting more and more power. When do we get to say that’s a failed strategy? When there’s no elections anymore or when there’s only one party on the ballot?
Oh, wait, that happens a ton already because Democrats are fucking useless. Three seats on my 2024 ballot had Republicans running unopposed.
It HAS worked. Do you know how bad it would’ve been had we had Republican after Republican?? It would’ve been project 2000.
Damage has been mitigated. Progress has been made. If you don’t appreciate that, then I’m happy for you because it means you are well of enough to not notice.
Youy know why Schumer said he wouldnt fight and voted with the republicans?
“Harm reduction”.
Sound familiar?
He’s a failure.
Harm reduction isn’t 100% of possible harm reduction.
I’m not saying they’re good. I’m saying they’re useful and sometimes not horrible.
So it works when a fascist is elected eventually rather than immediately.
Gotcha.
And exercise doesn’t prevent death, only extends life. Better not bother.
Way ahead of you.
But if all we can hope for is death, I don’t see a point in participating. Society is awful, people are terrible, and I can’t see the stars. And there’s literally nothing I can do to fix this, just bang my head against a wall.
I don’t see the point in trying to make things better anymore.
I hear ya. I had the same feeling of futility for a long while.
I got rid of it by getting out of the house and meeting little who think like me in real life. Going to protests and school board meetings has helped me not think it’s useless.
And showing up to those things let’s you push back on those who are pushing the wrong way. If you can’t gain ground, slow them down. Make it expensive for them to hurt us.
LOL
What primaries? The Democrats invented superdelegates to subvert democracy in the primary process, and then argued in court in Florida that it was their right to do so when they were sued for it.
Good point. Better to do nothing then. Give up.
Or get more involved in the only party with a chance and change them from the inside?
No, that sounds like work. Forget it.
It is a good point, and I’m not advocating for doing nothing, just acknowledging that change via the Democrats is impossible. Unless you’ve been asleep for 40 years, you’re well aware that real, meaningful change is impossible in this party duopoly, and nothing underscores that more than running a publicly brain-dead man and the entire “progressive” party apparatus lining up behind him in order to suit his fragile, stupid ego.
What I advocate for is doing good with one’s own two hands, because that’s always possible. Be willing to pick up dog shit even if it’s not yours. When someone in your building asks for a favor, be generous with your time. When ICE comes knocking, and they will, find that maybe you have difficulty remembering things. (And if you really want to underscore how shitty the Democrats are, remember that Tom Homan was also Obama’s guy.)
I agree. But my point is that the Democrats are the only tool we have at the moment within the government.
We have plenty of tools outside of the government, and you’re 100% right that we should use those as well.
But let’s not throw out the one tool we have inside the government. Let’s improve it so it’s useful.
That’s the thing, we don’t.
The Democrats in Washington do not give a fuck about you, me, our families, or anyone else. They exist to do performative things and make nice speeches, then go vote in a manner that can be charitably called conservative but more often enables fascism. For example, remember when they did their nice little stunt kneeling in Congress with their African wear? Those same Democrats linked up behind Biden when he wanted to militarize the police even more.
The only power you or I have is local unless you’re willing to commit an extraordinary act of vigilantism or you’re a billionaire. That’s it.
So join local Democrat groups
Do we have Democrats as a tool inside the government? Are you sure they aren’t another of the oligarchs’ tools?
It’s both. And they’re the most likely group that we could turn to our purposes.
Let’s improve it so it’s useful.
The devils in the details of that vague proposal. So, sure I guess.
A broken tool is no tool at all
/c/im14andthisisdeep
I can tell you’ve never had to sweep or shovel with something when half the haft is gone. Or tear the lid off a garbage can because the mechanism to lift the lid stopped working.
depends on what you mean by, " get more involved in the only party"
If you mean gut the dems and start over with 100% new leadership and without being at the behest of the rich, I’m in. Otherwise its a pointless pantomime and I’m not interested in playing along in corpo-fascist games any longer.
I love the idea. What’s the first step we can take to accomplish that?
tough one. Its not something that comes up often. I’d say for starters we re-register to a new party to get some momentum going. DSA maybe.
Unfortunately then we’re back to the FPTP problem. We don’t have ranked choice voting, so there can only be two parties.
If we create a new one, we’ll need to convince the moderates to join, and the 35% of people who call themselves Democrat like it’s a sports team. That’s quite a task.
The tea party tried this approach and failed. Then they gave up and infiltrated the Republicans instead. Now they are in charge, rebranded maga.
This is the proper attitude for primaries, not general elections.
You’re either with the oligarchs or you’re with the terrorists
Oof
Liberals are, for all their talk, in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of love with the DNC. BlueMAGA is some combination of a death cult and an abusive relationship.
It is very culty.
BlueMAGA sounds like weak bothsidesism, come up with some real criticism
I did.
Liberals are, for all their talk, in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of love with the DNC.
So your criticism of liberals is… they vote for the party the most closely aligns with their views? And this is somehow analogous to death cults and MAGA extremism?
It doesn’t align with their views; that’s the whole problem. Liberals carry water for the DNC even though they hate the nonsense it does as much as everyone else. At least I don’t think I’ve seen anyone around here say that Biden supporting genocide* or not going after price gouging were good things. It’s always excuses, “lesser” evils and false dichotomies to make sure the Democrats are always just good enough to not throw aside. That’s why I likened it to the Stockholm Syndrome.
*well Zionists think so but screw them
That’s still not analogous to MAGA extremism, Democrats have much more favorable social policies, which is what most Americans care about. Voting for the party that does more about the values you care about is not a death cult unless you think basic LGBT rights are a death cult.
Now that I think about it I was using liberal to mean DNC supporter and I’m pretty sure that’s a misnomer (though there likely is significant overlap) so I’ll say DNC supporter from now on. Also what I personally call blue MAGA is only a subset of DNC “supporters” (since most of them are closer to willing hostages, at least around here). My personal blue MAGA line is actually thinking the DNC is a competent or honest political party despite being shown evidence to the contrary or has some kind of right to people’s votes. “America didn’t vote for them so they have no duty to act/America clearly wants fascism” rhetoric and thinking accepting genocide was competent electoral strategy (again despite being shown evidence to the contrary) also fall under this. They also like to claim Bernie’s losses in 2016 and 2020 were “the will of the voters” rather than the result of DNC tampering. Edit: Seeing a headline about genocide in Palestine and writing something to the effect of “Gaza voters bad” is also a pretty clear tell.
That’s still not analogous to MAGA extremism,
The blue MAGA comparison isn’t about extremism; it’s about other hallmark MAGA traits like tribalism, enforcement of ideological homogeneity, vilification and mocking of critics and uncritical support for “us” over “them”. For what I consider emblematic blue MAGA behavior, remember how in the lead up to the election everyone critical of Biden and later Harris or the DNC was called a Russian troll or MAGA in disguise? Yeah, it’s that. So yeah, they’re called blue MAGA because they’re perfectly willing to imitate MAGA when it suits them. Fortunately the number of blue MAGAs (as opposed to willing hostages) shrunk since then, but you’ll still see a few of them around.
unless you think basic LGBT rights are a death cult.
Within the context of the Western, and especially American, slide into fascism, people who want to stop that must do what works and ditch what doesn’t work. Well, we call argue all day about what works, but voting for the DNC and in DNC primaries doesn’t. Bernie 2020 and their abandonment of Jamal Bowman are all proof needed for that. And what do you call a group of people who insist on and defend walking a path down which only their misery lies? Because I call that a death cult. Whether one realizes that (the willing hostages) or chooses not to (blue MAGA) is irrelevant.
come up with some real criticism
The whole thread and all the rest of lemmy is full of real criticism. So maybe take your own advice before you attack that person.
I’m not attacking them, and I wasn’t talking to the rest of Lemmy so they are irrelevant
We’re not going to give Donald Trump what he wants, so we’re going to pass this spending bill that gives him everything he wants! That’ll how 'im!
Donald Trump wants the courts to stop overturning his random EOs. A shutdown would close the courts.
So we should just give him everything he asked for on a silver platter with no resistance whatsoever and not offer any meaningful alternatives?
It’s like invading Iraq when a bunch of Saudis that hate Iraq attack you. You have to ask yourself “is this exactly what they want me to do?” And then “If I want my revenge, whom should I attack and how?”
Attacking federal workers on behalf of Trump is not the way to “Stand up to Trump”
You know that’s a really good point, maybe I was too quick to react.
You have meek fuckers in leadership because that’s who the corporate/wealthy donors want there. If you want to get rid of them you’re going to have to get rid of the money and influence that put them there.
Here’s the actual story, Schumer relented one day after GOP and DNC megadonors threaten to pull funding away from 10 Democrats.
So the super rich really do control everyone and everything.
Who knew?
Historians and artists have been trying to tell us this for years.
We didn’t listen, but we liked their work.
They backed down on govt funding? They backed down, didn’t they?
Not they. So far it’s only Schumer and Fetterman, and Fetterman was a lost cause anyway.
Next time I’m donating to the strokes act blue.
Trump will destroy America and blame democrats if we don’t fully back Trump destroying America, including removing congressional power to block the destruction of America while it is done.
On blame, easy path is push for clean CR that will keep government open, or reopen, when house votes on it when they feel like coming back to work. GOP will be blamed for the shutdown.
DOGE is already tearing wiring out of the walls. Crazy to get weeks of “Half Department X has been fired and the budget has been slashed” articles only to hear Schumer take the blame in advance for further defunding.
He’s not meek he’s corrupt
If you’re old enough to draw Social Security, you shouldn’t hold office. Period.
Dems agree to set Social Security age to 105
I know what you mean and mostly agree with upper age limits on office holders but children can receive social security survivors benefits. It is not just (although mainly) old age pensioners.
