volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@HamonWry It would only make things worse

@WideEyedCurious I mean it would be better if Congress simply voted on legislation clarifying it.

That's the job of our representatives.

It shouldn't be outsourced to a research group like this, and if the people we elect to Congress can't be bothered to address the issue then that itself says a lot.

@TammyGentzel Yes, that seems to be their official position.

@raploc@mastodon.social I imagine Putin is pretty happy with Harris being the nominee.

So let's not.

@NZedAUS If you tune into right-wing media, the response so far is exactly what they were predicting.

You say the media never anticipated it, but I was listening to the media, they absolutely did anticipate it.

@anonimno she's running a populist campaign, so no?

@bronakins they didn't, though. That's not what the ruling said.

@tomiahonen

@chessert Go read the ruling directly from the Supreme Court, because a whole bunch of these press outfits are putting out stories that flat out lie about what the Supreme Court actually said.

That's why the press has lost so much legitimacy lately, because those of us who actually read underlying documents realize that even outlets like CNN are just not telling the truth.

@PDFlynn

@Lyle Right, apparently the judge came out and made some statements that I would regard as incredibly inappropriate for a judge.

If you and I want to say that we would commonly call what the jury affirmed rape, that's one thing. But technicalities matter in law, so I've seen this going around and I don't think the judge should have spoken out in that direction.

It's more bar talk than judicial expertise

@knittingknots2 Well the other side of The ledger is that young families would end up paying for this.

@Lyle No that's incorrect. The jury refused to return a verdict saying that he was a rapist.

@BohemianPeasant Oh this is one of my favorite hobby horses.

People really don't understand what McConnell did because they don't understand how the Senate operates, so that let all of these politicians really pull the wool over people's eyes.

It was a win-win-win arrangement though, so they were really happy to promote it.

The rules of the Senate really emphasize equality, for the most part all of the senators are equal, even the leaders. The president of the Senate has special powers but never mind the sidetrack talking about how we misunderstand the role of the VP these days...

Any Senator could have walked to the podium to start the nomination process, and if the Senate wanted to do it then McConnell could not have stopped it. That's just how the equality rules in the Senate work.

But! As happened so often, Democrats were happy to blame McConnell as a campaign stunt, Republicans were happy to blame him to get out of votes they would rather not deal with, and McConnell himself got to present himself to his own constituents as super duper powerful because everyone else was saying so.

It was a win-win-win arrangement, even though it was terribly misleading of the American public.

To emphasize it, if the Senate wanted to confirm Garland then they would have outvoted McConnell and It would have gone through. The Senate functions largely on pantomime, they negotiate behind the scenes what they're going to say on the floor and script it, and what we see is just the script that they all agreed to.

@nancylwayne Well it's not two different Americas, is two different sets of facts, two entirely different sets of reality based on who you believe, who you listen to.

And this has been the case for years now.

A third of America believes one thing while a third believes the exact opposite. And we no longer have a way of reconciling those two sets of beliefs, those two sets of facts.

This is a very important thing to keep in mind. We really need someone to figure out what's going on, someone that we can all believe in to sort everything out, but there is no such authority looming anywhere on the horizon.

From now on, until we figure out how to work this out, we are going to be living in a world where a huge majority of the population are just going to believe that they are being gaslit by the other half.

It's no way to run a society. But that's what we're dealing with right now.

@malderi FWIW, conservatives are promoting it as a success

@chris careful: given his opposition he might win.

@USelaine I mean the Trump supporter response is that he's American...

@doctormo I really don't like the idea of tying exchange of ideas to money like that.

@PDXDemSocialist seriously, Reich became a political hack long ago and that was a shame, but we all need to recognize that these days he just panders in propaganda, and we need to call him out on it.

This is just as misleading as most of the stuff he puts out these days.

@rbreich It doesn't, though.

Because this post is trying to set up a false equivalency between budget and action.