@rdfranke keep in mind that more Democrats are voting for the shutdown than Republicans.
@darulharb Americans keep reelecting these people who suck at their jobs, so...
Apparently we like it this way?
We should stop reelecting these idiots.
@crecente Hank Johnson is apparently talking about Elon Musk, who has no vote in Congress, but how did Johnson vote?
Did he vote against funding government? Or is he trying to deflect the authority that he actually has towards someone who has no actual authority in this?
Elon Musk is not in Congress. He has no authority here. But a whole lot of people who could vote to fund government sure seem eager to talk about Elon instead of actually doing their jobs.
#Democrats overwhelmingly voted against keeping government open.
That really gets lost in all of the media discussion about this. But it really needs to be emphasized. Did your representative vote against keeping government open? You should know that, and hold them accountable for that vote.
@daedalean when you look at the voting roles you'll see plenty of them.
@dougiec3 no, the thing people miss is that Johnson doesn't work for the president. In fact, the exact opposite: the Speaker of the House works for all House members.
It's not Trump putting Johnson in a bind, but the members, including Democrats, that refuse to work together because they generally see political advantage in keeping the fight going.
Trump and Musk only matter to the extent that House members want to use them as fodder.
We need to emphasize that this is the House members that we elected causing this. We need to hold our representatives accountable for their positions, not let them pass the buck to Trump.
After all, that just plays into Trump's hands.
@napocornejo It's not much different from a ton of other government operations that have been going on for a long time.
Plus, the US government already holds Bitcoin. That part isn't actually new. This sort of formalizes it.
@Kichae in short, I think you're just giving a rundown of how ActivityPub works and some of the rough edges that their model necessarily involves :)
Those issues of moderation and different administrative boundaries are simply how this system is set up, and it's functionality that we accept when federating.
@catloaf under the #ActivityPub model, no, if you're banned from one community the ban has no bearing on what happens on instances that don't actively respect that ban.
You can still comment away. The ban merely means your comments won't be displayed to some people.
Remember, #Democrats in the #House have nearly a majority of votes in the chamber.
The math says that if they wanted to, they could partner with even a few moderate #Republicans to take control of the chamber outright or at least move their preferred legislation ahead.
The ONLY way a few #GOP hardliners get their way is if Democrats vote with those Republican extremists, supporting their cause.
We shouldn't let politicians point fingers at others, scoring points in this us-vs-them mentality, when they themselves have the tools to make things better.
If the #US government shuts down it will be because Democrats refused to break with Republican extremists and vote to pass funding.
Dems have the votes. Hold them accountable for using them.
@RememberUsAlways NASA is buying from SpaceX!
Yep, we have NASA, and NASA says they need SpaceX.
What the article describes isn't cleaning up the history of the country, and it was an effort undertaken deep into the last administration.
You know, under that Nazi regime known by Biden/Harris.
No, they were tailoring some public displays to better match the intended audience. The history is still there, untouched, but the displays were set in a way that they considered to be more accessible.
This clutching of pearls is unwarranted.
Far too many people overlook that when the US writes a check to #SpaceX they're getting something in return. They're buying from the company. It's not mere support or charity or relief.
People can disagree about whether the US should be buying the things they buy, whether those services are worth purchasing, but it's not comparable to things like hurricane relief.
It's an argument I see way too often, and it's clearly faulty, comes across as a stretch just to bash #Musk by association.
@FantasticalEconomics that over simplifies what's going on.
The congresspeople are looking after their own individual political interests, horse trading among themselves, engaging in PR with the public, etc.
Musk is just riding that for his own benefit, and you're taking the bait.
If our elected representatives thought they'd score more political points passing legislation with the public, then they would, but currently that's just not how we, as a society, have set the table.
We reward them for gridlock, so gridlock is what we get. Has nothing to do with Musk.
I'd go a step farther than maybe people are more comfortable with the twitter clone and say maybe people simply prefer it.
A lot of it might come down to the user interface. BlueSky was surprisingly slow to roll out, but maybe they simply took more time to polish the UI and/or understood better what their future users would be wanting.
@Hippasus500 there are no disenfranchised states. They're all represented in the EC.
@JuanWild the EC doesn't disenfranchise any Americans, and it's really not helpful for politicians to trot such claims out.
We should be celebrating the EC as being extremely relevant even today, especially because through the EC we were able to tell Trump's people, in no uncertain terms, that he lost in 2020. We had every EC vote counted without question, so there was no room to argue with the result.
So no, the EC doesn't disenfranchise anyone, and it provides great value to this day.
@toadly1.bsky.social if you pull up the ruling, that's not what the Supreme Court ruling said.
@Nonilex well, the law provides for that...
@mhjohnson no, Democrats are still running the same playbook of pretending like they have no role in government, escaping accountability by pointing fingers at the other side and pretending to be powerless.
But... we let them get away with it.
Since I guess everything is political these days, I'll identify as extremely liberal but without a home in US politics.
Mainly, there's so much misinformation out there that people in society have trouble even organizing into coherent political groupings. So I'd rather not talk about politics but instead focus on information and education. Nothing else matters until the bedrock of fact is buttressed.
But... people are always going to be wrong on the internet, as the saying goes.
So: Old man yells at clouds is a famous joke from The Simpsons, and it probably fairly describes what we do when venting on social media.
Just speaking into the void, since I figure it's an exercise in futility to conduct discussions on these platforms.