volkris @volkris@qoto.org

Under #Biden US national labs found themselves hamstrung by micromanagement, demands from the administration that resources be diverted away from #science while regulators repeatedly shut down programs much to the chagrin of our International partners.

It's been a breath of fresh air that the new administration has allowed us to actually get back to work. I don't even care if they know what they are doing, at least they are no longer interfering. Science is getting back on track now.

Regardless of everything else that #Trump might be getting into, and maybe it's just because he's just that incompetent, at least the US is getting back on track with its scientific endeavors. Our experiments are getting back up to speed after years of crippling bureaucracy, and we can start making progress again.

There's a lot to complain about with Trump, but I am very glad to see that the expectations for science are living up to what I'd hoped.

#USPolitics

Lately I've been thinking about how the #Republican party has evolved over the last decade or so as viewed through the lens of the games that major voices in the party play.

Previous generations of #GOP speakers were proudly golfers, but lately major voices are football fans. You can hear them make that shift from talking about golf to talking about football.

Well, over the years Republicans have made this marked shift from looking to work together and build consensus to just looking to fight their opponents. And it strikes me that that's also a difference between golf and football.

The new generation of conservative speakers don't understand the realities of political systems where they have to work with others, convince others, to get things done. It's as if they are projecting philosophies from football on to their politics in ways that didn't happen previously.

And that's a shame for us all. That's how you get #Trump... and #Harris.

#USPolitics

There's an old idea of fairness that when cutting a cake between two people one person cuts and the other picks the piece they want.

This method aligns the interests of both parties, no matter how corruptible and *human* they may be.

I think it's underappreciated how often the US government design has a similar method in its checks and balances: one group can reject an official, but they don't get to choose the replacement.

See, for example, impeachment proceedings.

After all: "This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public."

--Hamilton (maybe)

#USPolitics #politicalscience #federalistpapers #hamilton

Listening to the unedited #SCOTUS argument over the birthright citizenship process, the #Democratic appointed justices continue to be just the worst. Just want to pull my hair out, these justices are completely unqualified, making a joke out of the courts.

Just right off the bat they were making arguments, not asking questions making arguments, that went against history and went against even how courts themselves work. It's like, somehow you managed to find yourself on the Supreme Court but... have you ever been in a court? Because that's not how this works.

From not knowing the role of courts in the US system through seeming to be unaware of other parts of the judicial system through asking bizarre questions about why they themselves don't do things that they themselves can do, they are just bizarre and just pathetic.

But we knew that when they were up for confirmation. Democrats confirmed se these people that clearly were not up for job.

In the end they just came across as children stomping their feet and asking why they can't just make the whole country do what they want to do.

And it's just really a shame.

We need better people in that position to counter #Trump but unfortunately we just have these small-minded justices who can't carry an argument.

#uspolitics

Idiot Republicans: #China was limiting the import of metals and magnets to the US, and that was ruinous to the country. Therefore #Trump must... limit the import of metals and magnets.

Today's mainstream conservatives are dumber than I ever remember them being, as if after COVID they rejected any deep thought or professional analysis as elitist.

#GOP #USPolitics

The huge changes in the new #Ukraine deal once again underscore that #Trump botches everything he gets personally involved in, so the strategy is to distract him or wait until he gets bored and wander off, and then the real adults can actually work on solutions.

Even if they give him credit for show.

It's important to hammer home on this because it tells even his own political side that regardless of what his beliefs are, he's going to fail to deliver what they want.

I doubt Trump would have been elected had we been emphasizing this the whole time, instead of the opposite.

#uspolitics

The announcement of a #Ukraine #US deal on minerals continues a pattern that people need to emphasize, that they should have been emphasizing all along: #Trump botches everything he touches.

Yet again, his personal involvement in something blew up *his own program*, and it wasn't until he wandered off that it could be cleaned up.

Had we been emphasizing this long, long history of his bungling things there could have been consensus now that he's incompetent. Instead, so many promoted ideas that he would successfully implement right-wing governance models... which validated his candidacy.

We wouldn't have a president Trump today if his opponents had pointed out his record of inability to govern instead of promoting him as an effective dictator.

#USPolitics

Mainstream Republican media has devolved into children on the playground stomping their feet and yelling "Not fair!" every time they lose a game they don't even understand.

All the hyperventilating about fascism is unhelpful, but they're just annoyingly pathetic.

They're not even interesting most of the time.

#USPolitics #GOP

I just have to laugh at this headline.

Chinese communist owned stores? That's funnily contradictory in itself, but add in the military part, an organization that by necessity has some communist-type structures involved, and well...

Gentleman, there's no fighting in the war room!

Both #Biden and #Trump are past their prime and not all there mentally.

There is a crucial difference in their presidencies, though: I didn't hear many people relying on Biden personally, but I hear a ton of people saying that these #tariffs don't seem right, but they trust that Trump knows what he's doing.

Even Trump supporters don't think it's right, but they think he knows what he's doing.

It's a mess.

#USPolitics

@0x00string I'm honestly curious what you're talking about.

Yeah, I did other things that year. But what are you talking about?

People seem not to understand that the presidency is defined by the Constitution; it's not subject to compliance, voluntary or otherwise.

I'm not the president by definition. It doesn't matter if I agree; it doesn't matter if I refuse to accept that I'm not the president; by definition I'm not because I don't fulfill the constitutional definition of what the president is.

All this talk about Trump refusing to accept an election or, in the last couple of days, saying he would take a third term misses that it's not up to him. He can think he's the president all he wants, but the Constitution, not Trump's beliefs, define whether or not he is the president.

I wish more people understood this because it's an important part of understanding how the US government is designed.

And it's an important part of ignoring #Trump trolling.

#USPolitics

Under #Biden US national labs found themselves hamstrung by micromanagement, demands from the administration that resources be diverted away from #science while regulators repeatedly shut down programs much to the chagrin of our International partners.

It's been a breath of fresh air that the new administration has allowed us to actually get back to work. I don't even care if they know what they are doing, at least they are no longer interfering. Science is getting back on track now.

Regardless of everything else that #Trump might be getting into, and maybe it's just because he's just that incompetent, at least the US is getting back on track with its scientific endeavors. Our experiments are getting back up to speed after years of crippling bureaucracy, and we can start making progress again.

There's a lot to complain about with Trump, but I am very glad to see that the expectations for science are living up to what I'd hoped.

#USPolitics

People are really sensationalizing the report of #Roberts pushing back on #Trump's call for impeaching judges.

No, the statement doesn't have teeth. It's a mild statement of the record, that it's an established norm not to impeach over disagreement.

#Congress is always free to go there anyway.

No, it's not Roberts throwing bombs or a sign of a new direction. In fact, it was about preserving direction.

Sure, it was appropriate for Roberts to make the statement, but it just wasn't the big deal so many are making it out to be.

Sensationalizing it does play into Trump's rhetoric, though.

#SCOTUS #USPolitics

So many people upset about #Schumer in the #Senate are falling into the same trap that people fell into with regard to Mitch McConnell:

Minority and majority leaders in the Senate don't have that much more authority than any other senators. But, the other politicians use them as scapegoats to escape their own accountability.

The minority leader here didn't single-handedly give the Republicans a win. He doesn't have that authority or that power. Instead, blame the rest of the Democratic senators who voted for the Republican position.

Don't let them get away with it by just focusing on the minority leader.

#USPolitics