It's a fallen world, where we have to look to Scott Ritter for moral backbone. A fallen, fallen world.
I was about to query the wisdom of quoting Ritter.
2: I think Ritter is right here, and not in a stopped-clock sort of way. He's just right. But ..... he's got a (disgusting) history, and after that has become an enemy of our Republic and the Western Alliance. So it's ..... pretty uncomfortable, that he's right.
We really screwed up, invading Iraq, and nobody paid a price for that except for the (h/t Atrios, Driftglass) the DFHs who were right all along. Ah, well.
One might point out that Trump is the way we are and will be all paying for it.
It is hard to resist a bad idea when professional persuaders have sold it to the public. In hindsight, though, Gambon was clearly a mistake as Dumbledore.
In the field of two (2) field-tested Dumbledores, Gambon was clearly superior.
I cannot imagine what possesses anyone who hears a news story and thinks "ooh, I wonder what respected and reliable political analyst Scott Ritter thinks about this?" I suppose Jeffrey Epstein was unavailable for comment.
But, really, guys, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that anything Ritter says here ever happened. Fibbers' forecasts are worthless, as D2 said in this context. Yeah, and so are fibbers' accounts of past events.
6 is right, unless we count young Dumbledore in the nice suits.
Gambon was a terrible Dumbledore, though.
I have no idea what this means and I'm happy to keep it that way.
Gambon was clearly superior
You're trolling me! Gambon had approximately zero impishness, which is so important to making Dumbledore interesting. He played Dumbledore like he was playing Zeus. The first movie was very flat, but Harris was on the right track. In the second movie he was manifestly dying.
On the Ritter thing, the "someone dead told me I was right about everything" isn't the most convincing argument I've ever seen.
I have a question about Congressional politics that doesn't have to do with Feinstein or Ritter or the Senate*: what's a good way to evaluate whether to donate to a House campaign for a district you don't live in which also doesn't get much press coverage? A few years ago I donated to a campaign relatively late in an election cycle because I thought the candidate was a good one and the small amount of polling suggested the race could be close and it would flip the district. It turned out not to be close enough to feel like it was worth having donated.**
Is it inevitable that you're more or less guessing at whether a campaign will be close when there's little polling? Or was there some more research I could have done? To be clear, I don't expect a candidate to win when I donate, it's more that if the race is a 10 point loss it doesn't feel like there was much real chance for success, even if losing by 10 to a long-time incumbent is closer than lots of districts usually are. To be clear, I'm not talking about campaign like whoever runs against McConnell, where it looks like you're just lighting money on fire for the sake of FEC reports.
*Off-topic about 30 comments early but also I don't want to talk about Ritter.
**Since then I've only donated to nonprofits and charities that don't depend on winning elections.
To be clear, I hate it when I start two sentences in a row with "to be clear" and don't notice.
what's a good way to evaluate whether to donate to a House campaign for a district you don't live in which also doesn't get much press coverage?
Apparently, the current best knowledge is that people give more to whoever texts them the most times.
Or who can invent the highest number for the alleged "matching".
Eighteen of the 21 are under the age of 80 and thus eligible under Church law to enter a secret conclave to elect the next pope after Francis' death or resignation. They are known as cardinal electors.
When Church law makes more sense than yours, you have to ask questions.
Is it inevitable that you're more or less guessing at whether a campaign will be close when there's little polling?
Pretty much, yeah. In some cases you might be able to do some research on the demographics of the district and recent trends, etc., to identify a possible underrated opportunity, but for the most part you do just have to guess. Your money goes a lot further in these sorts of races than in, say, high-profile Senate races, so I think it still is generally worth it on the off chance it works, but it's very much a gamble.
16 reminds me of my irritation at the apparently well-researched Robert Harris book "Conclave" which has a dramatic plot twist in which, several rounds into a deadlocked conclave, a chap appears and turns out to be a hitherto-unknown cardinal appointed in pectore by the previous pope, thus breaking the voting deadlock.
But in pectore appointments expire with the pope who enacted them, unless they're made public before his death! Gah.
12: Didn't Balloon Juice try to identify some of those in 2022, and maybe even in 2020? I think they've also gone looking for flippable districts at the state level in purple-ish states, on the theory that smaller resources can make a larger difference there.
Isn't this kinda what the Cook Political Report is for?
So, uh, looks like McCarthy is going to lose the Speakership...
If they need me to do it, I'm just down the street.
Someone just drove by in a big motorcade.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says the Speaker of the House can't be a place kicker.
Ford was a long snapper at Michigan. I guess he was never Speaker though.
20, 21: Yes, there are projections and I looked at them. But IIRC, they were off by enough to make me feel it was a waste.
And, yep, no more Speaker McCarthy. For now.
Yeah, I really thought he'd drag things out by bargaining with the Dems. That went down much faster than I expected.
He might have tried, but he was trying to push them around like a week before - they asked for 90 minutes to quickly read the budget resolution before the vote, he refused - so on top of the merits, they were in no mood.
Yeah, they really, really hate him, and for good reason. He may have reached out but the Dems very quickly decided to oppose him full stop so they would presumably have rebuffed any overture he made.
I'm confused-- the speaker's power is partly transient (which committee gets a bill) and partly personnel-derived? What happens to the existing rules committee with no-one in speaker's office? Speaker pro-tem still has authority to decide on house agenda, right? If there's extended inability to choose a speaker, can other business (voting on a CR in November) get done in the house? Who decides about day-to-day agenda?
The only acceptable compromise is for enough Republicans to resign to restore a Democratic majority.
33: The short answer to all those questions is that no one knows! This has never happened before so there's no precedent for exactly what powers the Speaker Pro Tem has, and experts on legislative procedure disagree on how to interpret the language describing it.
I mean, they couldn't accomplish anything when they had a Speaker either, so.
The house gets to decide its own rules, so all they need is for a majority to decide what powers the speaker pro tem has... oh wait...
I wonder if the outcome is no Speaker except during brief periods of time when they make a specific bipartisan deal and then the Dems vote for McCarthy. So like, no speaker for the next month and then Democrats all vote for McCarthy so he can put forward a bipartisan CR, and then when that's over you let the Republicans kick him out again, repeat until the next election.
33 AIUI, there's a speaker pro tem, and he can do all the things until there's someone new. But he's not going to do much
A bipartisan delegation should ask Taylor Swift if she'll take the job. A uniter not a divider.
Sorry, I was petting the cat before hitting Post.
They're trying to figure out some of the details for presidential succession on Bluesky. It seems without a speaker, second in line is Senate Pro Tem, so Patty Murray.
Not clear that even the speaker pro tem (from that 9/11-born emergency contingency list) will be in the line of succession once confirmed. Right now "McHenry isn't actually the full speaker pro tem, only the ACTING speaker pro tem (pro tem pro tem)".
McCarthy not running again? That's the first actual surprise here. I assumed we were just heading for another 30 votes and then he'd be back.
43 Why would anyone want to strike the deal they'd have to strike with these people? As the man said, 'fool me once, won't get fooled again.'
Or, as the future speaker says, 'shake shake shake it off.'
44: It's a mystery, but so is why he wanted the job in the first place. I too am surprised he's not running again.
I missed the earlier discussion but clearly Gambon was the inferior Dumbledore. It says in the book that when Harry's name came out of the Goblet of Fire that Dumbledore stared at the paper, cleared his throat, and read out "Harry Potter", then nods to McGonagall, and says "Harry! Up here, if you please!" Later he "calmly" asks Harry if he put his name in. Gambon instead played that scene as a screaming, wild eyed Dumbledore, which is a level of emotion never ascribed to him in the books.
Yes. My thought when I saw Gambon's Dumbledore was "he never read the books."
Until this week, I didn't know there were two Dumbledores. I assume the first one died of boredom during a quidditch match.
He'll get to join John Bohner and Paul Ryan on the list of recent Republican speakers who crawled away from their caucus saying "fuck this shit."
I mean, that seems like an unhealthy dynamic for their party, no?
50: Technically, Gingrich as well. Republican House Speaker is a career-ending position. The only one of the last five who managed to survive was Hastert, and his legacy is just a little tarnished by his retirement stint in federal prison after being designated a "serial child molester" in federal court.
Technically, Gingrich as well.
"I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals."
The tattered shreds of Twitter occasionally still deliver:
Kevin McCarthy was abused so badly that Jim Jordan had to pretend he didn't see any of it.
https://x.com/ponderranch/status/1709476921606832450?s=46&t=qd8I3ZXUD2bzNhzE_AtTxA
31, 32: That hasn't stopped reporters from addressing this as something that Democrats would normally rescue him from. Murc's Law means that when McCarthy tore up the budget deal from June, that was just a thing that happened with no human intervention, like a traffic jam or climate change.
It does make you wonder if Republicans are capable of learning. The next Speaker is going to run into another shutdown fight in a couple of weeks, and it's pretty clear that if he doesn't cooperate with Dems at all, they won't bail him out when his own party turns on him. On the other hand, possibly building allies on the other side of the aisle could save him.
But maybe the incentives to never never never cooperate are too strong.
55: Is it possible to get links Bluesky tweets that aren't behind firewalls asking me to sign up for Bluesky? I'm not really inclined to sign up for an app that doesn't respect the open internet.
I dunno, but if you want to join I've got a couple of codes. Email me if you want, as should anyone else.
Thanks, but since I can't even see whats in there I'm not inclined to join. I've got enough going on and another exclusive sandbox is not what I'm looking for.
I sympathize with that -- it's what's kept me off Mastodon. I don't really have a principled distinction between that and Bluesky, it's just that everyone talking about Mastodon talks up how awesome the walls of the garden are, and Bluesky doesn't seem to have the same vibe. But not wanting to get into anything of the sort is perfectly reasonable.
Offer's open to anyone else who wants it.
I think Mastodon at least doesn't require you to log in to see the tweets toots. Its more about walling off shitty commenters than keeping all the content confined to the ecosystem. All the talk on there about maintaining garden walls does get tedious, though.
I think there is a way to make open links? I'm on my phone so I can't check, but try copying the link in 55 and change the "bsky" bit to "psky". I'm not sure at all this will work, I get confused by this stuff super easily, but give it a shot.
I just tried that.... doesn't work. It gets redirected to bsky.
I think "psky" will work for making it unfurl on Discord/Slack, but don't work for just viewing the post on the web. (Spike, here's the important part of that tweet.)
And Mara Wilson once liked my bweet, so her too.
I believe those in the know call it a "skeet". Why? I have no idea at all.
Thanks for the link. The idea that McCarthy would have gotten help from Democrats is kinda out there, although perhaps smarter Democratic leadership would have given it to him. Republicans in disarray makes for better TV, but I don't think the next swamp monster that emerges from the bog is going to be at all interested in keeping the government open after the 45 day extension is over.
On follows, I just sort of followed people I know and then anyone who looks interesting. There's a core of early adopter weirdos who shitpost at each other, and I think if you like that kind of thing it's good quality nonsense, but I get confused and bored easily so I've managed not to see much of it.
I sympathize with that -- it's what's kept me off Mastodon. I don't really have a principled distinction between that and Bluesky, it's just that everyone talking about Mastodon talks up how awesome the walls of the garden are, and Bluesky doesn't seem to have the same vibe.
This is mostly wrong. Mastodon is open, though like twitter you can restrict some posts to followers. There have been people who talked about how some aspects of mastodon discourage twitter-like dynamics but I think by now they've been proven wrong and lots of people think the interface sucks. Some people praise the crappy aspects of the interface for keeping the place smaller.
I've assumed bluesky would eventually open their accounts but haven't seen a compelling reason to join before than.
Mostly, the protesters in Layafette Square appear to be Jehovah's Witnesses.
I mean, that seems like an unhealthy dynamic for their party, no?
Somehow I have Briahna Joy Gray in my Twitter (now X) feed, and she is complaining because Democrats like AOC don't do shit like this. If your policy goal is self-promotion and government paralysis, then yeah, the Matt Gaetz approach makes perfect sense.
It took me awhile to understand that this is exactly what these "leftists" are advocating. There are people who want government policies that preserve the environment or promote healthcare or otherwise help people. Their opponents are people like Briahna Joy Gray and Matt Gaetz.
I am irritated to report that both my centrist colleague and my fearful-Democrat mother dinged the house Democrats for not saving McCarthy.
McMegan is joining in on blame-Dems-for-GOP-being-bad, bringing us full circle.
Speaking of.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/theyre-just-meat-russia-deploys-punishment-battalions-echo-stalin-2023-10-03/
54: Kurtz over at TPM offers another one from Twitter (now X) that I think Moby especially would appreciate:
GOP learns the hard way: Turning the base up too high blows out your Speaker
Can't talk. Looking at natural history.
75, 76 - I mean, if the Democrats can't support a good-faith moderate like McCarthy you'd think they'd respond to his explicit offer of "nothing".
Hey I went to HS with that guy (the tweeter, not McCarthy)
This place is really pro-evolution.
I thought the old lady dropped it into the ocean, but the diamond is supposedly here.
They sell water in pounders and it doesn't taste right.
It's bizarre that people somehow think of McCarthy as a moderate option in any sense. He supported the coup! He's way to the right of Mitch McConnell!
They have just a coal mine exhibit instead of a stratavator into a coal mine.
house Democrats for not saving McCarthy
This is utterly mystifying to me. The Democrats voted the *exact same way* they voted for all 15 rounds of McCarthy's election. And McCarthy has done absolutely nothing except scorched earth policies toward them during his entire tenure. So now they should make up the difference when his own party bails on him? Would Republicans have stepped in if House Democrats had revolted against Pelosi? Please.
69
The idea that McCarthy would have gotten help from Democrats is kinda out there, although perhaps smarter Democratic leadership would have given it to him.
I don't know, I don't feel like it wouldn't have been smart for the Democrats to vote for McCarthy without some kind of deal, and as of Tuesday morning it's hard to imagine what kind of meaningful deal they could have made. If you go back a week and imagine McCarthy not blaming Democrats for the near-shutdown, or go back to months farther and imagine him not reneging on the deal with the White House (in fairness, I can't find any details about this, so maybe I imagined it?), then maybe Democrats could have trusted him enough to work with him, but as of Tuesday, I wouldn't have called that smart.
Republicans in disarray makes for better TV, but I don't think the next swamp monster that emerges from the bog is going to be at all interested in keeping the government open after the 45 day extension is over.
That being said, I admit I formed the opinion in my previous paragraph when I thought that the most likely outcome would be McCarthy as speaker again, after some pain and humiliation. But now he says he's not running. So who knows.
And 89 is completely correct. "How are you liberals going to enjoy Speaker Jim Jordan?" Well, the news will be way shoutier and more annoying, but functionally what would be any different? McCarthy already handed them the keys on Day 1. This is a personal dispute, not an ideological one.
Snarkout and apo beat me to it, more succinctly.
Why does the HUD building look like Hillman Library.
I was recently at a training on inspecting housing to meet HUD standards, and the last slide the guy showed was exposed rebar (against standards!) on... the HUD building!
I really don't know how things will play out with any of the new guys, but someone further right but who kept his word and had control of his caucus might actually be better than McCarthy. Biden, McConnell, and McCarthy made a bipartisan deal months ago, and then McCarthy just backed out and didn't bring it up for a vote. How are you supposed to negotiate with someone like that? You need someone who's actually competent at his job if you want to make compromises and negotiate.
The HUD building is one of those rotting old brutalist facades in the Federal Area of DC, yes? Boy those things have got to be replaced.
I don't think McCarthy's personal qualities sunk their cohabitation. The problem is HFC demands all the control and none of the responsibility, and a veto over everything the speaker might do, and the rest of the caucus either supports them quietly or doesn't want to confront them. Jordan or Scalise or anything "less crazy" (debatable) is going to have the same issue.
Effectively, no working majority exists in the House. When does the king have to call for new elections?
McCarthy did exactly one thing that argued in favor of him remaining speaker: He allowed for the 45-day extension. But he didn't do it for America. He did it for the Republican Party. Saving McCarthy means protecting the Republican Party -- which is why Republicans almost universally favored it.
If the Republican Party goes down the tubes, it might take the US with it -- that's a real risk and Democrats are properly concerned. But if the Republican Party survives in its current form, the US is fucked, and the Dems are smart to understand that.
It's up to the Republicans to decide whether they want to be minimally functional.
The interesting question going forward is not so much who will be the next speaker, but on what terms will that person take the job. McCarthy is out because -- unlike his promise to Biden -- his promise to the Freedom Caucus was binding.
Speaking of politics, I just won my primary by a vote of 117-26. I'll be facing the same guy in the general, but its a load off my mind because I thought I had more haters than that. I was concerned he would break 40%.
if the Republican Party survives in its current form, the US is fucked
This x100. Democrats stepping in would have simply preserved the status quo, both for McCarthy and Gaetz. Democrats shouldn't do anything for Republicans, period. Not just in government, in general.
Is there any reason Democrats can't pick a speaker and try to peel off 4 Republicans to elect them?
I'm on bluesky as bagatsen. I found LB, and I found sifu. Moby found me.
Maybe this is naive and dumb, but it almost feels parliamentarian. The FC is functioning as an actual third party insofar as they're not putting the Republican party first, and so no party has a majority and no one will get elected without a coalition.
105: If they're doing that, we probably won't hear about it until 2 hours before it happens.
108: Kind of. The HFC speaks for a lot of the caucus who are not formally its members, so it's not as simple as "they're a different party usually but not always aligned".
(I'm on bsky as snark.)
Twitter thread from Rep. Don Beyer's chief of staff giving his stated thinking. The whole thing is worth reading, but this jumped out at me: "A speakership founded upon Democrats' trust that McCarthy will lie to his own guys and not to us is not rational, folks! It isn't sustainable or reasonable and it's no way to run the House. We needed him to give us any reason to help him and he very intentionally did not do so." Fritschner says people were particularly pissed at the failure to give Democrats time to read the CR, which they assumed (probably correctly) was a stunt designed to shift blame onto Democrats for a shutdown.
101.1: I think it's increasingly likely that this was all just a big screwup, and he thought that Democrats were going to vote down the CR and just got outplayed when they voted for it. That is, he wasn't trying to keep the government open, he was trying to shift the blame to Democrats and thought the cute to Ukraine funding was enough of a poison pill that Democrats would vote it down.
A glimpse at casual racism/misogyny from a guy who was one of the NYT's mainline "straight" political reporters for years here's Jonathan Martin (now at Politico since last year):
A smart Repub notes that we're on verge of having a soon-to-be-81-year-old potus, a vp w scant experience on world stage (to be charitable) and a vacancy in the speakership.
What a fucking dick (to be charitable).
It was so much more solid when Kevin freaking McCarthy was in there.
McHenry is or isn't in the line or does it go right to the senate? McHenry is an ultradick all on his own who has just been overshadowed in recent years by the transcendentally towering phali Gaetz, Gossr et al.
People seem to think it skips McHenry and goes right to the Senate.
111: Beyer's chief of staff explicitly gives some credence to this thought.
112: Martin was the one who blew the story that got Trump impeached the first time because he was getting spoon-fed Burisma gossip and missed the forest for the trees, right?
110 I don't remember if I'm already following you there but I can't find you as "snark"
I'm BarryFreed there
113: Analysts seem divided. NYT: "It is also not clear whether Mr. McHenry would be considered second in the presidential line of succession -- behind the vice president -- as the elected speaker of the House is. Experts said they did not believe that applied to an acting speaker."
I remember someone on Bluski referenced the Presidential succession Act (3 USC 18) as speaking to this issue, but I don't see how, unless it's that somehow the plain word "Speaker" is to be read as exclusive to a full one.
115.2: No I think you are thinking of Jen Vogel, another thin-skinned asshole.
116: Their search is bad; it looks like you have to put in "snark.bsky.social" to find me.
Informative thread here, by one of the top experts on House procedure.
The upshot is that he thinks the powers should be interpreted pretty broadly given the intent behind the rule, but McHenry's actual behavior so far implies that McHenry believes his own authority to be more limited (but not as limited as the minimalist interpretation).
With great power, comes great responsibility. McHenry is trying to finesse his lack of responsibility by claiming a lack of power.
Took me a while to figure out what people were abbreviating as MTV. I blame the cable channel for rarely showing music.
His first order of business was to kick Pelosi out of her office?
128: And second, third, and fourth. The Trumpification of the GOP is complete. It's assholes all the way down.
Greenwood is usually a good follow but he keeps riling up a harassment campaign against Yglesias. Deeply obnoxious. I could be wrong but I think a few years ago he was one of those MeFites shitting up every thread with a man as the subject.
130: It's not a pogrom if the target isn't Jewish. It's "domestic racist terrorism. "
It's not a "pogrom" unless its Russian. Otherwise, it's "sparkling lynching."
"The arc of conspiracy theory is short, and it bends toward blaming Jews."
Was that an Unfogged original, or did I likely see it somewhere else?
It's not a pogrom if it's fomented by a tech baron, then it's a brogrom.
||
On cue:
https://caspiannews.com/news-detail/azerbaijan-turkiye-join-forces-to-diversify-natural-gas-supplies-to-nakhchivan-with-new-pipeline-2023-9-26-0/
Which implies at minimum Aliyev doesn't think he can straight up conquer southern Armenia right now.
OR It's just a hedge IN CASE he can't conquer it right now.
OR It's just the first leg of a projected pipeline crossing Turkey and Nakhchivan AND conquered Armenia.
|>
131 They/them. And that's a strong point in their favor in my book.
A few notifications upon the screen made him close the window. They had begun to grift again. He watched warily the pitch, overblown and dark, a sort of shrieking against reality. The time had come for him to set out on his journey leftward. Yes, the newspapers were right: grift was general all over Republicand. It was falling on every part of the reactionary centrist plain, on the Trumpist shills, falling thickly upon the bog of think tanks and, farther rightward, thickly falling into the dark mutinous Bannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely hideaway on the Hill where Kevin McCarthy lay sulking. It fell viscous and vicious on the crooked lawyers and talking heads, on the bullets of the insider sheets, on the podcast hosts. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the grift seeping steady through the internet and steady seeping, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
It is quite an extraordinary rule that the Speaker of the House doesn't actually have to be a member of the House. They didn't get that from the House of Commons, and I wonder where it came from.
It seems that the authors simply didn't think that it would be conceivable to have a non-member as speaker, so they didn't bother putting a rule in saying the speaker had to be a member.
139: Oops, meant to check after writing but just hit post and forgot.
one thing that argued in favor of him remaining speaker: He allowed for the 45-day extension
I actually suspect he thought he was pulling a fast one here and it blew up on him. He put forward the extension without Ukraine funding thinking that would be a poison pill, Democrats would balk, and then he would blame the shutdown on them. Then he went out the very next day and said on a TV interview that Democrats had tried to shut down the government, because his entire narrative depended on that being the case and he had no backup explanation.
It's honestly difficult to imagine that *any* member of the House who can get the votes of the caucus would be particularly worse than McCarthy in functional terms.
I think a lot of the assumption that McCarthy is/was some sort of grownup just comes from him being able to wear a suit like a normal grownup, an increasingly rare skill in the GOP.
I need to buy a new suit. I finally got big enough that my 1996 suit doesn't fit in the shoulders.
I actually suspect he thought he was pulling a fast one here and it blew up on him. He put forward the extension without Ukraine funding thinking that would be a poison pill, Democrats would balk, and then he would blame the shutdown on them. Then he went out the very next day and said on a TV interview that Democrats had tried to shut down the government, because his entire narrative depended on that being the case and he had no backup explanation.
Yes, this seems increasingly likely to be what actually happened. He tried to corner the Dems for political advantage but they called his bluff and he had no idea what to do. Then he expected them to save his Speakership in exchange for nothing. He seems to be very dumb and incompetent.
The bus driver lowered the bus for me to get on and now I feel 107. Maybe it was just the luggage?
I wonder if anyone suggested a non-member Speaker before the release of Air Bud (1997).
I'm getting what I assume are scam calls, but they keep asking me if I speak Hindi (I think) and apologizing for the wrong number when I say I only speak English.
I guess the scam only works if you speak Hindi. They guy calling clearly speaks English pretty well, so I think he could at least try to scam me if the scam wasn't too specific for that.
yes and drew him down to the House floor so he could feel my rules of order all precedenty yes and his gavel was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes
138, but not really: Thanks mc for nudging me back to reading the Banffy book. Long about page 50 it turned into something great, on par with the best things I have read in years. A young person totally could not have written those passages, but neither could an older person who had forgotten what it was like to be young, or whom age had curdled.
I hope it stays even half this good the rest of the way through.
(Why am I on the internet instead of reading more of this book? Maybe that's part of my problem.)
Do I remember correctly that in some (or many?) parliamentary systems, government funding continues even if the no one can form a majority, averting shutdown situations? And beyond that, did something like this help Belgium delay austerity after the financial crisis in 2008?
So many big questions, so few search engines where I could research them.
Yeah, I think we're basically the only country in the world that has things set up this way.
And only quite recently! The whole shutdown thing only started during the Carter administration when they reinterpreted how funding authorization works.
Australia had one in 1975 when their senate blocked the budget passed by the lower house, which resulted in all kinds of shenanigans, drama, and eventually both a change of government and an emergency general election. I don't know if they've changed the rules since to prevent that scenario happening again, but most Westminster systems usually either reserve the budget to the lower house or provide for a tiebreak that overrules the upper house in some circumstances (in the UK's case, both, as the Parliament Act both denies the Lords the right to block or really do anything to the budget and provides for the Commons to overrule them).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_bill says that although the Australian constitution still lets the senate block the budget, since 1975 the political parties have agreed not to do that again.
154: May have been me. I believe I posted about it recently. Just finished the trilogy; wife is mostly done with the first. High quality throughout. I did get a bit weary of one plot line. Descriptions make me want to visit Transylvania.
Does the intertidal zone have topography or bathymetry?
The former at low tide, the latter at high tide.
RIP Terence Davies. Until yesterday probably Britain's greatest living filmmaker. Go see one of his films (my personal favorite being Distant Voices, Still Lives). It's a shame we couldn't have had many more from him than we did but such is the sorry state of film culture and funding in the UK (and generally).
164: I've only seen his House of Mirth, with a tremendous Gillian Anderson as Lily.
That was probably just forced perspective. They can't make her bigger.
I've only seen "Deep Blue Sea", but the twist that happened to Samuel Jackson was great.
161: It was you! I cheated by going back and looking. Thanks for the nudge to return. Page 125, so about 25% of the way through the first book, really digging how he gives the reader enough to understand the people without becoming heavy-handed. Also liking how many characters there are because part of the point is that all of these people knew lots of others.
165: One of my favorite literary adaptations. Too bad it seems like no one ever streams or plays it.
Tidal flats, the werewolves of cartography.
Rather like the AP Herbert case of the man driving along a flooded road (and keeping left, as per the Highway Code) who collided with a small motorboat going the other way (and keeping right, as per the Rules of Seamanship): which set of rules should be applied?
||
Penetrating the natives: Peanut breeding, peasants and the colonial state in Senegal (1900-1950) 1|>
171 is another reason you're doing it wrong.
OK, maybe intertidal driving is the only place where driving on the left has a hypothetical problem. Saying "another reason" was hyperbole.
150: Looking at its Wikipedia page, I don't think I ever heard of the movie before you mentioned it.
I was apparently confusing "Francis the Talking Mule" and "Gus." Because I saw both of them but thought it was only one movie.