and many hands make light work, so showing it to more people gets you a sort of twofer as everyone pitches in. 1500 people can read 1500 pages in 5 minutes. 15 million can have it parsed, passed around, and rebutted. 150 million? yeah, best of luck congress. nothing gets past that.
------------
That's what they don't get. It might take a poorly motivated congressman three weeks to skim through a 1500-page bill -- but it doesn't take thousands of motivated Americans long at all. The real crime is these idiots forcing us to pay attention to politics right before Christmas.
And today, the media thinks they can blame Elon Musk instead of defending the crap that was in the bill.
That's not going to work, either. Elon didn't really DO anything -- he just amplified the people who did.
I don't use X. I found out about the shenanigans in the bill through several Substacks I subscribe to.
So, it wasn't directly Elon Musk that helped me learn about it, but it was social media. I was going to write to my congress critter today and state my displeasure, but I guess I don't have to, now.
I disagree. The only thing keeping X half honest is Substack. Look who Musk put in charge. Censorship queen herself. "Freedom of speech but not reach" is her motto. So you can say anything but they can limit the number of people who see it. How is that not censorship?
The BEST Hitler Rant EVER - "And then there was Substack. How could we have not captured that platform like all the others. Free speech and truth." - ROTFLMAO
I was going to call mine!! If you notice, the section of the bill that originally got all the press was the raise. Red herring if I ever saw one!!! Hey look this way! while I slide this past you! NO MORE!!!!!
I think the difference now for Social Media is that, because of X, it's hard for anyone to just conceal and misdirect and obfuscate and they can't insert their own Truths and supress The Truth.
When you have millions and millions of eyes on each post with millions of ppl 'doing their own research' in the blink of an eye (see what I did there?) and linking supporting sources or debunking sources, how can we NOT be better informed?
Late yesterday afternoon I saw so many Congressmen/women who were saying that they were not going to vote for the CR - one even said, "I'm not saying 'no'. I'm saying, 'Hell, no'. I thanked each Congressman/woman for listening to WeThePeople so X definitely made a big difference to how many saw it, echoed their sentiments & passed it on.
And each one of these posts had 25,000, 47,000, etc 'likes'. And Elon's posts about what was in the bill had over a hundred thousand posts.
The local Talk Radio Guy, Torrey Snow, is asking why is it a bad thing that We the Little People now know how the Sausage is Made.
The station and this host are neutral to a little conservative but the station's in Baltimore so locals do call in and they tend to be less to maybe much less conservative, and the unhappy callers are all "Elon Musk doesn't understand what it's like to be a regular person!" and the host replies, "What does that have to do with the CR? About the raises? The Forget All My Previous Crimes and Maybe Some Future Ones Too clause? What is it that _Elon Musk_ has done?"
I bit the bullet a few weeks ago and finally created an X account. Still getting a feel for it. But, I did follow Musk et al and saw what was happening when this pork pie was dished out.
Agree with your assessment, Musk just amplified We the People.
SimCom, I will publicly admit that I am shocked, to my very core, that social media killed that bill. I don't give congresscritters much credit, since they are typically folks too dumb to make it in the real world. However, the hidden assholes behind and among them are unlikely to go quietly. I foresee some type of surreptitious plan to get a lot of the same B.S. implemented. Time will tell, I reckon.
It is easy to be cynical re. the future performance of congress, but today - whether we realise it or not, we have witnessed a miracle. This phenomenon of miracles seems to suddenly be happening frequently.
Yes yes. As soon as we saw the height of that stack of paper and recognized the date (right before Christmas) the answer was obvious. At first I thought it was just a pay raise... as I said earlier, how naive of me. Thanks for your posts.
1500 kool cats reading only one page each! United we stand, firmly in a position to stomp on the head of the Big Totalitarian Government snake. They are catching on that We, the People, will Never Give Up, Never Surrender! Claws OUT!!!
Another interesting aspect that I don't think El Gato Malo made explicit was that this was entirely self-organizing: there was no leader at the top handing out those pages to specific individuals.
On the nose, Yuri. I listened to the first few minutes of Nicolle Wallace's show on MSNBC this afternoon and they were raking Elon over the coals - that HE is really the Pres-Elect, that his suggestions are making him richer by the day, that Elon says 'jump' & Trump says 'how high'?
He's the most visible scapegoat at the moment. And, I imagine, the Dems are jealous that he is supporting MAGA issues. The schadenfreude is just too delicious.
Absolutely not, Claudia, when the administrative is state shut down it can’t phuque up peoples lives. Furthermore, a shut down government helps stop Congress from making more trouble. Why give them a incentive to do government work?
Point well-made… Yes, the operative word is “work,” which means, of course, other legal ramifications related to real work/real efforts to benefit American citizens … instead of spending tax dollars on time trying to raise money to be re-elected, etc., etc. The system definitely needs a serious overhaul.
Done right, a government shutdown could make the work for DOGE a lot easier.
Let's unplug everything and see what we truly need. Let's turn all the hangers around in the closet and see what's still unworn at the end of the year.
This is the best social hack I have heard to date and the clever way you used it to frame a way to test for government spending was equally apt.
There are so many pop psychology guides that tell you to throw out clothes (and other stuff) you have not used for 6 months yet so far I have not heard the simple technique mentioned of how to implement it in a way that might even work without having to continuously remember to keep track. Genius.
However I hasten to add that ESPECIALLY for clothes a 6 month rule is simply a textile industry marketing tactic and quite possibly has been started by them because it will MISTAKENLY get people to toss winter clothes out in summer simply because they were not needed in that season. The correct time period is obviously 13 months but the sentiment is correct.
In Finland the seasons are rather extreme so the clothing changes radically. It is common practice to rotate the winter and summer clothes into the attic or basement so that they do not clutter the closets unused for 6 months. Well to do people routinely dispose of clothes used during one season or just part of a season that they are not interested in using a year later. The flea market tradition is VERY strong in Finland and the prices are very reasonable 5-30% of retail for something that looks only once or twice used sometimes, occasionally the tag is still on.
It’s only a threat to the all the pork-industry and those who feed on it. They’ll continue to frame it like we need it…I love how we call it the “debt ceiling” when in reality there is no ceiling and they spend like there is a mountain of gold out back
Yea, and only 'essential personnel' need to show up. If all the others are 'non-essential personnel' doesn't that mean that by definition those jobs are superfluous?!?
I would like to know more about exactly how it is that this happened; you know, the mechanics: who, how, what & why. How organized was this take down? Who did this, or was it just something spontaneous? Hopefully this can (needs!) to be replicated again and again. The House and Senate are the two most broken parts of our federal government.
Hooray to Chip. And to Rand Paul, who stated he would use Senate rules to stop the bill in the Senate. And to Thomas Massie who is always on top of spending.
I must most vehemently protest against this continued use of pig, pork and other words related to the esteemed Sus, be it of either the scrofa or domesticus variant.
Especially when there are so many more fitting animals to liken politicians and their ilk to:
I must wholeheartedly agree. The habitual reference of our incredulous public ilk to that of a most valued and regarded animal such as the Sus of either variety does in fact place the shadow of undeserved indignity upon that most noble beast... I recommend "Blood Sucking Parasites" so as to cover all bases.
Remoras are capable of self propulsion, dine mostly on scraps from a predator's meals and only steal such crumbs + their motive force between predation events from a host, rather than chewing their way into victim bodies & living off their host animal's blood?... IE, Remoras may be freeloaders but don't just suck blood while embedding themselves forever? "Remora" is TOO POSITIVE a simile.
(Why, yes, I have been SCUBA diving for about half a century)
Thanks for the lesson on fine-tuning my similes. "At best, remoras." To me means just that . Remoras are capable of self propulsion (as are lampreys) but remoras prefer the free ride from one free meal to the next. Might be an "at best" description for the least parasitic of the legislative class? Appropriate in my book. Thanks for the writing lesson, nonetheless. The scuba diving qualification is an added bonus.
Nah. Leeches are super-useful in therapy for people who can't use blood-thinners. The problem with leeching/bleeding historically was that they had no way of knowing if the leeches used were in turn carrying something nasty themselves.
I still think ticks fit the bill best. The kind they have in parts of Africa, that kind grows to grape-size or bigger when feeding.
Although I do not want to see it, imagine if there was an actual insurrection on January 6th this time around led by the Democrats. Would it, like the riots in the wake of George Floyd, be once again rendered as "mostly peaceful protests?"
We the public need to learn the names of who exactly wrote the bill and who voted for what in the past. There should be an easy way for the public to see this quickly. But there isn't.
The answer is the same answer to why I doubt term limits will accomplish anything. This was written by a thousand staffers under the direction of Chiefs of Staff and Asst. Chiefs and committee staffs. All the nameless, faceless bureaucrats who run congress so the entitled can just focus on speeches, elections, and stock trades. I doubt anyone actually knows who wrote specifically what.
It's also the reason Dick Durbin seemed caught off guard about he pay raise. Not even his people could tell him all of what's in it. They probably didn't know, even though he's a senior member.
Good post, but you left out the lobbyists - they and their staffs grossly outnumber everyone on capitol hill; and I’m pretty sure the congressional staffers do more editing than writing.
This is true. much like the "first day" executive orders, more of our regulations, orders, and laws are written by lobbyists than we imagine.
But we still will never be able to point to a person. That's the true "blob" or "deep state". Unidentifiable and unaccountable people running the core processes of the government.
That’s my problem with term limits too. Any of us who have served on a government body knows the staff is really in charge. They are the gatekeepers of all information given the members. They write the bylaws, draft the budget, set the agenda, draft every document and steer decisions with “recommendations”, often paired with obscure references to prior decisions. They “orient” the new members as they join the body, and make themselves the go-to for guidance.
Realize these are careerists whose first objective is to follow the path of least embarrassment, and an informed contrarian member can be extremely embarrassing. Term-limiting elected officials and leaving staff in place is sending sheep to slaughter.
There is a case for institutional memory. But we are so far down the path of over-complexity in government at every level the stronger case is that institutional memory IS the problem. If you want term-limits to effect change, then it must apply to both elected officials and staff.
It’ll never happen but image the reduction in the size of government if every bill was created and modified via a publicly available repository like git. All edits would be attributable to the representative or senator that wrote it, or at least to their office.
It's called _Bipartisan_ legislation. So, sure, maybe there's a little Horse Tradin'.
--
Geezer Dem Senator at swanky Georgetown Happy Hour: "Mortimer, my boy! How's Penelope? And the grands?"
Decrepit GOP Senator swishing his $47 Manhattan, sloshes vermouth on his tie: "Hammond! Just wonderful! Penny is with Jasper's kids at the Zoo today. It's been ages - how's Madeline?"
Ass Party Guy: "Great, great. *gulps $23 worth of Blanton's in one take* So listen - *looks around, makes sure no one's nearby* I've got this idea for a really shitty idea for a bill, and it will hurt a bunch middle class taxpayers - uh, voters... BUT if you can get a few of your guys to go in on it, we could make some serious bank."
Team Pachyderm Guy: *leans in, whispers* "You think _that_ is a shitty idea? Hold my Manhattan..."
And this, taxpayer(s), is how we get Bipartisan Legislation.
No matter how many rocks they hide stuff under, we can kick the hell out of the rocks & take a serious look at whats hiding underneath. el gato malo, this is your most inspiring post! BRAVO!
Many hands do indeed make light work! And some of us steal the work of others and spread that work to anyone who might see it! I saw the GEC funding for an allegedly dead agency censorship group (gee thanks for that gross violation Hillary Clinton) and the Section 605 exemptions from subpoenas to shield the critters from the consequences of their actions (sorry Liz Cheney, you duplicitous B). I responded to an Elon tweet to express my outrage and although I have no real reach I’m THRILLED I wasn’t screaming in the dark!
This sounds suspiciously like democracy, Liberal minds (oxymoron) will be exploding all over the place once they realize this. Be sure to carry an umbrella to protect from the spatter!
This is republicanism. Rome at her height. The pinnacle of the founders' dream. The people actually participating in their own governance on an equal basis.
and many hands make light work, so showing it to more people gets you a sort of twofer as everyone pitches in. 1500 people can read 1500 pages in 5 minutes. 15 million can have it parsed, passed around, and rebutted. 150 million? yeah, best of luck congress. nothing gets past that.
------------
That's what they don't get. It might take a poorly motivated congressman three weeks to skim through a 1500-page bill -- but it doesn't take thousands of motivated Americans long at all. The real crime is these idiots forcing us to pay attention to politics right before Christmas.
And today, the media thinks they can blame Elon Musk instead of defending the crap that was in the bill.
That's not going to work, either. Elon didn't really DO anything -- he just amplified the people who did.
I don't use X. I found out about the shenanigans in the bill through several Substacks I subscribe to.
So, it wasn't directly Elon Musk that helped me learn about it, but it was social media. I was going to write to my congress critter today and state my displeasure, but I guess I don't have to, now.
Over the past year, I have learned in real time what’s going on around the world from X more than I have from any media over my lifetime.
And it is so much easier to catch the drift of where the post-er is floating to.
SAME here! I swore I wouldn’t do ONE more
media thing but X has been a blast. It’s the Wild West out there and the TRUTH is winning!
Probably time to join X
I disagree. The only thing keeping X half honest is Substack. Look who Musk put in charge. Censorship queen herself. "Freedom of speech but not reach" is her motto. So you can say anything but they can limit the number of people who see it. How is that not censorship?
The BEST Hitler Rant EVER - "And then there was Substack. How could we have not captured that platform like all the others. Free speech and truth." - ROTFLMAO
https://metatron.substack.com/p/leaked-video-from-the-wef-global
Well, all the really cool kids are doing it.
@Julinthecrown
That means about next Tuesday, it will be out of fashion IME?
Do it anyways. Consider it a warning shot across his bow.
Dick Minnis
Agreed...especially if said CC is a Democrat.
I was going to call mine!! If you notice, the section of the bill that originally got all the press was the raise. Red herring if I ever saw one!!! Hey look this way! while I slide this past you! NO MORE!!!!!
I think the difference now for Social Media is that, because of X, it's hard for anyone to just conceal and misdirect and obfuscate and they can't insert their own Truths and supress The Truth.
https://youtu.be/2kuQ29uGr-k?si=2HY0JCxqBV1BB6Sm
When you have millions and millions of eyes on each post with millions of ppl 'doing their own research' in the blink of an eye (see what I did there?) and linking supporting sources or debunking sources, how can we NOT be better informed?
Late yesterday afternoon I saw so many Congressmen/women who were saying that they were not going to vote for the CR - one even said, "I'm not saying 'no'. I'm saying, 'Hell, no'. I thanked each Congressman/woman for listening to WeThePeople so X definitely made a big difference to how many saw it, echoed their sentiments & passed it on.
And each one of these posts had 25,000, 47,000, etc 'likes'. And Elon's posts about what was in the bill had over a hundred thousand posts.
I would still recommend it. A reminder that we are watching. Very carefully.
@Madjack
"Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of being hanged at dawn."
-Samuel Johnson
"Elon didn't really DO anything -- he just amplified the people who did."
I think I said it here recently but it might turn out that Musk buying TwiXer is his greatest contribution to society.
And the ironic thing is that the walked away from the deal and the owners SUED HIM and forced him to buy it!
The local Talk Radio Guy, Torrey Snow, is asking why is it a bad thing that We the Little People now know how the Sausage is Made.
The station and this host are neutral to a little conservative but the station's in Baltimore so locals do call in and they tend to be less to maybe much less conservative, and the unhappy callers are all "Elon Musk doesn't understand what it's like to be a regular person!" and the host replies, "What does that have to do with the CR? About the raises? The Forget All My Previous Crimes and Maybe Some Future Ones Too clause? What is it that _Elon Musk_ has done?"
"He doesn't understand what's it's like to be a regular person in the House who needs the ability to ignore subpoenas!"
"But we're not hurting anyone!"
#TeamSnoutsInTrough
I don't know what you mean, Sim.
Maybe this will help: https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/musk-to-purchase-twitter
Ah, yes. I believe that I read that article when you posted it. You have a terrific writing style.
I like your portmanteau of 'TwiXer'. Very savvy.
I bit the bullet a few weeks ago and finally created an X account. Still getting a feel for it. But, I did follow Musk et al and saw what was happening when this pork pie was dished out.
Agree with your assessment, Musk just amplified We the People.
Every single thread on the topic was swamped with angry Americans, not Elon Musk.
Nail on head!
SimCom, I will publicly admit that I am shocked, to my very core, that social media killed that bill. I don't give congresscritters much credit, since they are typically folks too dumb to make it in the real world. However, the hidden assholes behind and among them are unlikely to go quietly. I foresee some type of surreptitious plan to get a lot of the same B.S. implemented. Time will tell, I reckon.
Not so sure. Now that WeThePeople have gotten our taste of true information freedom I don't think we are going to go gently into that good night.
So true, we’ll be shining that so there is “no good night “ that we will accept.
I agree. I don't believe they'll give up.
They won't give up, but we are not going to give up even more
It is easy to be cynical re. the future performance of congress, but today - whether we realise it or not, we have witnessed a miracle. This phenomenon of miracles seems to suddenly be happening frequently.
Yes yes. As soon as we saw the height of that stack of paper and recognized the date (right before Christmas) the answer was obvious. At first I thought it was just a pay raise... as I said earlier, how naive of me. Thanks for your posts.
1500 kool cats reading only one page each! United we stand, firmly in a position to stomp on the head of the Big Totalitarian Government snake. They are catching on that We, the People, will Never Give Up, Never Surrender! Claws OUT!!!
Another interesting aspect that I don't think El Gato Malo made explicit was that this was entirely self-organizing: there was no leader at the top handing out those pages to specific individuals.
Very agile! A self-managing team
Great point.
That's good!
🎯🎯🎯
On the nose, Yuri. I listened to the first few minutes of Nicolle Wallace's show on MSNBC this afternoon and they were raking Elon over the coals - that HE is really the Pres-Elect, that his suggestions are making him richer by the day, that Elon says 'jump' & Trump says 'how high'?
He's the most visible scapegoat at the moment. And, I imagine, the Dems are jealous that he is supporting MAGA issues. The schadenfreude is just too delicious.
I love how "shutting down the government" is supposed to be a threat.
Indeed. And look how long we’ve gone without a president.
Oh No... We've had one... He's just been behind the curtain for a 3rd Term.
You are so right! But he's losing his shit now! His power is dwindling!
Too soon, but oh so accurate! #WellPlayed
Ya 8 years
I think a law should be made that any time the government is shut down by Congress legislators’ paychecks get shut down.
And they don’t get back pay as technically the budget is their job
And if part of a government organization fails an audit they do not get funding until they make their spending auditable.
🙌👊<--- Me fist bumping you.
Like how the owner pays himself last.
Endorsed.
The majority are millionaires. They don't care...
Absolutely not, Claudia, when the administrative is state shut down it can’t phuque up peoples lives. Furthermore, a shut down government helps stop Congress from making more trouble. Why give them a incentive to do government work?
Point well-made… Yes, the operative word is “work,” which means, of course, other legal ramifications related to real work/real efforts to benefit American citizens … instead of spending tax dollars on time trying to raise money to be re-elected, etc., etc. The system definitely needs a serious overhaul.
Every time I hear someone say we need the government working to run the country; I want to puke!
🙌👍
Every time today my husband has heard the crying over a potential shutdown, he answers "f**k 'em".
Done right, a government shutdown could make the work for DOGE a lot easier.
Let's unplug everything and see what we truly need. Let's turn all the hangers around in the closet and see what's still unworn at the end of the year.
This is the best social hack I have heard to date and the clever way you used it to frame a way to test for government spending was equally apt.
There are so many pop psychology guides that tell you to throw out clothes (and other stuff) you have not used for 6 months yet so far I have not heard the simple technique mentioned of how to implement it in a way that might even work without having to continuously remember to keep track. Genius.
However I hasten to add that ESPECIALLY for clothes a 6 month rule is simply a textile industry marketing tactic and quite possibly has been started by them because it will MISTAKENLY get people to toss winter clothes out in summer simply because they were not needed in that season. The correct time period is obviously 13 months but the sentiment is correct.
In Finland the seasons are rather extreme so the clothing changes radically. It is common practice to rotate the winter and summer clothes into the attic or basement so that they do not clutter the closets unused for 6 months. Well to do people routinely dispose of clothes used during one season or just part of a season that they are not interested in using a year later. The flea market tradition is VERY strong in Finland and the prices are very reasonable 5-30% of retail for something that looks only once or twice used sometimes, occasionally the tag is still on.
Yes, yes and more yes!
It’s only a threat to the all the pork-industry and those who feed on it. They’ll continue to frame it like we need it…I love how we call it the “debt ceiling” when in reality there is no ceiling and they spend like there is a mountain of gold out back
A Do-Nothing Congress is like a Do-Nothing Rapist, I always say.
I believe the preferred term is "rape-involved individual"
LMAO!
Huh. These Style Guides go out of style pretty durned quickly.
Yea, and only 'essential personnel' need to show up. If all the others are 'non-essential personnel' doesn't that mean that by definition those jobs are superfluous?!?
🙌
Generally, yes.
Shut it down....
Isn't that basically what we voted for?
IKR?! I have always thought that! People in apoplectic fits, "They're going to shut down the government! 😳😱😲" Me, "Yeah. So?"
They still all get their paychecks.
Good point. We should beg them to go away forever
The people roasted the pork. The Year of the Rat is approaching, so it's time for the cats to sharpen their claws.
As a stainless steel rat in the concrete wainscoting of society, I approve of this message. Squeak!
Go Chip Roy! Chip Roy is the rep for my district. He emailed to let us know he was fighting this.
chip is a great guy and a gatopal.
I would like to know more about exactly how it is that this happened; you know, the mechanics: who, how, what & why. How organized was this take down? Who did this, or was it just something spontaneous? Hopefully this can (needs!) to be replicated again and again. The House and Senate are the two most broken parts of our federal government.
DOJ
Hooray to Chip. And to Rand Paul, who stated he would use Senate rules to stop the bill in the Senate. And to Thomas Massie who is always on top of spending.
Those guys are always at the forefront of ferreting out the grifters, the liars, the n'er-do-wells and I love how vocal they are about it.
Great to have such a responsive Congressman.
I must most vehemently protest against this continued use of pig, pork and other words related to the esteemed Sus, be it of either the scrofa or domesticus variant.
Especially when there are so many more fitting animals to liken politicians and their ilk to:
Ticks. Intestinal parasites. Bot-flys. DEI-experts.
Plus, Mmmmm... Pork.
*looks out window at Big Green Egg on Patio, daydreams about 14 hours of smoke and 8 pounds of Pork Shoulder, swoons*
I must wholeheartedly agree. The habitual reference of our incredulous public ilk to that of a most valued and regarded animal such as the Sus of either variety does in fact place the shadow of undeserved indignity upon that most noble beast... I recommend "Blood Sucking Parasites" so as to cover all bases.
But, but what would expect from a pig,but a grunt? The PIGS in congress are squaling.
@Rickard
Hagfish or ocean lampreys. Possibly the candiru fish, under certain circumstances?
https://futurism.com/fact-or-fiction-the-urethra-invading-fish
Hagfish? (looks it up)
Notes "lacks vertebrae" - yeah, that makes them fit the bill! Spineless indeed.
I'd suggest Goblin shark for the look alone, but the animal isn't a bother to anyone so it's off the hook, pardon the pun.
Maybe that parasite that replaces the tongue of some fish?
At best, remoras.
@J. Lincoln
Remoras are capable of self propulsion, dine mostly on scraps from a predator's meals and only steal such crumbs + their motive force between predation events from a host, rather than chewing their way into victim bodies & living off their host animal's blood?... IE, Remoras may be freeloaders but don't just suck blood while embedding themselves forever? "Remora" is TOO POSITIVE a simile.
(Why, yes, I have been SCUBA diving for about half a century)
Thanks for the lesson on fine-tuning my similes. "At best, remoras." To me means just that . Remoras are capable of self propulsion (as are lampreys) but remoras prefer the free ride from one free meal to the next. Might be an "at best" description for the least parasitic of the legislative class? Appropriate in my book. Thanks for the writing lesson, nonetheless. The scuba diving qualification is an added bonus.
The more I look at the similes, the more I see "hagfish"?
https://web.archive.org/web/20220620103114/https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/14/us/slime-eels-highway-accident-oregon-trnd/index.html
Leeches.
Nah. Leeches are super-useful in therapy for people who can't use blood-thinners. The problem with leeching/bleeding historically was that they had no way of knowing if the leeches used were in turn carrying something nasty themselves.
I still think ticks fit the bill best. The kind they have in parts of Africa, that kind grows to grape-size or bigger when feeding.
Look up Helminth Therapy, there is a treatment wiki somewhere out there.
You may have to revise one more of your slurs to be a good thing.
:-)
Ha!
I'll take cover behind that the science is still out on that issue (looked it up). And boy-oh-boy will it be a hard sell!
Doctor: "So, what we're going to do is, we're going to out these intestinal worms inside of you..."
>Patient disappears in a puff of smoke, looney-tunes style.<
Imagine if someone had recommended /that treatment/ for Covid! Then, to get rid of the worms?
Ivermektin!
Maybe Pfizer-and-pals missed a chance at making even more money, but also making it in a way that'd have them be the good guys.
Tapeworms, leeches, barnacles, lampreys. HR Depts.
And the tension mounts! As we move ever closer to Jan 20, Leviathan flails about, wounded, but not yet in it's death throes (unfortunately).
This all too rare triumph of common sense serves only to spur the Beast on to ever more destructive extremes.
We have four weeks to wait.
*They* have four weeks in which to destroy the country beyond the ability of Trump, or anyone else, to repair.
Pray for a peaceful transition - but keep your powder dry!
Although I do not want to see it, imagine if there was an actual insurrection on January 6th this time around led by the Democrats. Would it, like the riots in the wake of George Floyd, be once again rendered as "mostly peaceful protests?"
Without question.
But I bet there would (will? 😬) be more injuries and more damage.
....and the police will do nothing.
No, the O'Bidens will use it to declare Martial Law and stop the inauguration process...
We the public need to learn the names of who exactly wrote the bill and who voted for what in the past. There should be an easy way for the public to see this quickly. But there isn't.
The answer is the same answer to why I doubt term limits will accomplish anything. This was written by a thousand staffers under the direction of Chiefs of Staff and Asst. Chiefs and committee staffs. All the nameless, faceless bureaucrats who run congress so the entitled can just focus on speeches, elections, and stock trades. I doubt anyone actually knows who wrote specifically what.
It's also the reason Dick Durbin seemed caught off guard about he pay raise. Not even his people could tell him all of what's in it. They probably didn't know, even though he's a senior member.
Good post, but you left out the lobbyists - they and their staffs grossly outnumber everyone on capitol hill; and I’m pretty sure the congressional staffers do more editing than writing.
This is true. much like the "first day" executive orders, more of our regulations, orders, and laws are written by lobbyists than we imagine.
But we still will never be able to point to a person. That's the true "blob" or "deep state". Unidentifiable and unaccountable people running the core processes of the government.
That’s my problem with term limits too. Any of us who have served on a government body knows the staff is really in charge. They are the gatekeepers of all information given the members. They write the bylaws, draft the budget, set the agenda, draft every document and steer decisions with “recommendations”, often paired with obscure references to prior decisions. They “orient” the new members as they join the body, and make themselves the go-to for guidance.
Realize these are careerists whose first objective is to follow the path of least embarrassment, and an informed contrarian member can be extremely embarrassing. Term-limiting elected officials and leaving staff in place is sending sheep to slaughter.
There is a case for institutional memory. But we are so far down the path of over-complexity in government at every level the stronger case is that institutional memory IS the problem. If you want term-limits to effect change, then it must apply to both elected officials and staff.
I agree. Staff should go, too.
That ain't an accident!
Leave stuff out of a proposed new bill and see who whines about what.
Unelected Lobbyist
It's not officially dead yet. I plan to contact my Congress people today.
Yeah. Government's quite capable of passing something worse still.
Zombie Bill 😄
"...and it don’t work like that no more."
Man—felis catus I mean—no unbefuckinglievably wonderfully kidding.
And if you think they hated us before...
It’ll never happen but image the reduction in the size of government if every bill was created and modified via a publicly available repository like git. All edits would be attributable to the representative or senator that wrote it, or at least to their office.
“GovHub”
Love this approach…gitbill
Of course, it would also have to apply to all regulations as well…
Put it in git, and then let everyone chime in as to what needs to git. ¡Afuera!
I like what you did there, but more importantly we could see WHO needs to git, “blame” is a powerful command!
So each would put something in for their district.
It's called _Bipartisan_ legislation. So, sure, maybe there's a little Horse Tradin'.
--
Geezer Dem Senator at swanky Georgetown Happy Hour: "Mortimer, my boy! How's Penelope? And the grands?"
Decrepit GOP Senator swishing his $47 Manhattan, sloshes vermouth on his tie: "Hammond! Just wonderful! Penny is with Jasper's kids at the Zoo today. It's been ages - how's Madeline?"
Ass Party Guy: "Great, great. *gulps $23 worth of Blanton's in one take* So listen - *looks around, makes sure no one's nearby* I've got this idea for a really shitty idea for a bill, and it will hurt a bunch middle class taxpayers - uh, voters... BUT if you can get a few of your guys to go in on it, we could make some serious bank."
Team Pachyderm Guy: *leans in, whispers* "You think _that_ is a shitty idea? Hold my Manhattan..."
And this, taxpayer(s), is how we get Bipartisan Legislation.
But perhaps not anymore. This gives me The Happy.
Wow. All you'd have to do is mention the labels on their suits and ties and it would sound just like American Psycho.
🤣
I love Christian Bale.
No matter how many rocks they hide stuff under, we can kick the hell out of the rocks & take a serious look at whats hiding underneath. el gato malo, this is your most inspiring post! BRAVO!
🤘😎🤘
Many hands do indeed make light work! And some of us steal the work of others and spread that work to anyone who might see it! I saw the GEC funding for an allegedly dead agency censorship group (gee thanks for that gross violation Hillary Clinton) and the Section 605 exemptions from subpoenas to shield the critters from the consequences of their actions (sorry Liz Cheney, you duplicitous B). I responded to an Elon tweet to express my outrage and although I have no real reach I’m THRILLED I wasn’t screaming in the dark!
I'm not a big fan of AI, but there was also some helpful AI analysis enabling people to zero in on the pages of interest to them.
Last week I said I wouldn't use AI to summarize a government report because I didn't want to spend all my time proofreading the summary.
Then government goes out and does this and leaves me little choice.
If Musk could spin up an AI specifically tweeked to read, parse, summarize, and rank what's in a bill...
Some people said it worked for them today, but when I tried it, it said it couldn't access a PDF url, and that it has a 5 MB size limit.
Someone on X did it 100 pages at a time
AI is neither Good nor Bad, just like Nuclear Energy and Gunpowder.
Cane and Abel, David and Goliath aren't stories about a Rock.
It can have its uses. But at least currently as an aid, not as the final word.
Utility is the key.
I think we have all learned that we all need to pay attention to what goes on in Washington, all the time.
There is no delegating governance ever again....Ginger Breggin
That is THE QUINTESSENTIAL lesson to take from this!
Eternal Vigilance!!!
This sounds suspiciously like democracy, Liberal minds (oxymoron) will be exploding all over the place once they realize this. Be sure to carry an umbrella to protect from the spatter!
This is republicanism. Rome at her height. The pinnacle of the founders' dream. The people actually participating in their own governance on an equal basis.
It's glorious. I just hope we can keep it.
I think it become addicting. Imagine regular people's voices being heard!
Instead of calling their congress critter's office and having the junior staff laugh at them and hang up.
"It's glorious."
Goodness, is it ever.
Love that Millei Gato at the end!!
Meowllei
#TeamChainsaw