Blue Footed Booby posted:

I love when Americans act like super hero comics are the only kind the West makes.

quote:

In an ad from Unite the Country, shared ahead of its release with The Associated Press, Clyburn ticks through what he says are major Biden accomplishments, saying the president “has eliminated $137 billion in student loan debt” and “capped insulin costs for seniors at $35 a month.”

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

A federal judge has reversed the previous order allowing Alexander Smirnov to remain free while awaiting trial and is now requiring him to be detained until criminal proceedings finish after his attorneys were suspected of petitioning for his release to help him flee the country (allegedly to Russia).

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1762174865744822342

Cimber posted:

Imagine the ratings CNN will get when they are livestreaming the nuclear warhead incoming track to the US east coast! That'll make a big splash for that quarter!

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Biden announced that the U.S. has been secretly negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza and expects to announce a ceasefire agreement within a week.

The deal includes the release of 40 of the remaining Israeli hostages and dozens of Palestinians convicted of terrorism in Israel.

The initial ceasefire would last 6 weeks and include a negotiation for a permanent cessation of hostilities.

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1762249127469998113

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/26/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

Fork of Unknown Origins posted:

But we know where that money is going at least. Nobody is making a profit on public education like drug companies, insurance companies, etc are with healthcare.

FlamingLiberal posted:

Good news everyone

https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1762906260322562233?s=20

The appeal will go forward but the court can begin to enforce the judgment

Cimber posted:

It's not like she was all that influential either. I doubt she built much of a network worth lobbying with.

zoux posted:

quote:

The House on Wednesday approved $459 billion in new government spending, a crucial step toward funding federal agencies for the next six months and preventing a partial shutdown this weekend.

The legislation passed by a 339 to 85 vote and now heads to the Senate, which must pass it by midnight Saturday to keep crucial agencies from shuttering when funding lapses. The bill, which was drafted by bipartisan leaders in both chambers, is not expected to face substantial opposition.

But another larger and trickier shutdown deadline lurks just over two weeks from now on March 22, and lawmakers remain fiercely divided over how to fund those agencies and which policies to attach to that legislation.

Still, Congress is now on a realistic path to finally conclude the 2024 fiscal year appropriations process after extending the deadline four times over disagreements within a fractious House Republican conference that led to the historic ousting of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)

“Passing these bills will give us much-needed momentum to finish the next package of spending bills by the March 22 deadline,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber’s floor Wednesday. “But as I’ve said repeatedly, it will take bipartisan cooperation to finish the job.”

Far-right Republicans in the House had sought to use the appropriations process to significantly curtail spending by prohibiting funding for Planned Parenthood, slash resources for the Education Department, enact rigid new immigration restrictions and claw back some of the money for the White House’s climate agenda.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has recently been more direct in defending the pathway he’s charted to ensure the government does not shut down, as a majority of Republicans recognize they would get blamed for it — a hefty political price during an election year where the GOP is fighting to keep and expand their two-vote majority.

Over the past week, Johnson has encouraged his conference to accept that the “singles and doubles” they have scored in the first tranche of funding bills could have turned into grand slams had Republicans not allowed ideological difference on how to fund the government to limit his hands in negotiations with other congressional leaders, all whom agreed on funding levels set by McCarthy and President Biden last year.

“We want to cut spending. We want to limit the size and scope of the federal government. The reality right now is that we have divided government … so we have to be realistic about what we’re able to achieve,” Johnson said Wednesday.

Biden is set to confront the relative progress and brewing impasse during his State of the Union address Thursday while also attempting to lay out his most direct pitch yet to voters for a second term.

But some of his priorities and Congress’s spending debates have become entangled with U.S. support for Ukraine and Israel and immigration debates at the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden and Democrats are eager to send more arms and resources to Ukraine as Russian invaders attempt to push deeper into the country’s territory. The president has also sought to send funds to Israel for its fight against Hamas terrorists but has run into opposition from fellow Democrats concerned about rising civilian death tolls in the Gaza Strip.

Johnson and Republicans say they want to pass border and immigration legislation before sending aid to U.S. allies, and some of those policy pushes, lawmakers say, have clouded the government funding picture. Members of the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus have repeatedly argued that Congress should not fund agencies that they believe have contributed to the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, ease access to abortions or support LGBTQ and diversity, equity and inclusion measures.

“Republicans will go around and talk about how they scored major wins, how they somehow delivered for the American people. The fact of the matter is we did no such thing,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) said on the House floor. “If any member from the body can come down and explain to the American people in terms they can understand, explain it — what exactly the cuts look like.”

Wednesday’s bill funds roughly 30 percent of the federal government — including the departments of Justice, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and crucial government research functions — for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

It was the product of two bipartisan compromises in Washington, agreements that have faced substantial scrutiny and threats from far-right legislators.

Last spring, Biden and McCarthy agreed to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling in exchange for restraining federal spending to $1.59 trillion in 2024. House Republicans chafed at the deal, and disagreements over spending ultimately led a band of rebels to oust McCarthy from the speakership even after he directed the House Appropriations Committee to incorporate their demands to cut slash spending by an extra $1 billion.

In a move that riled up House conservatives, McCarthy had also struck an extra $1.2 billion side deal with Biden that top Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and appropriation chairs from both chambers respected.

Johnson, his replacement, stuck to that deal and then in January made another agreement with Schumer on a top-line discretionary spending amount for the year: $1.7 trillion. Wednesday’s bill covers a portion of that amount. Expensive programs like Social Security and Medicare aren’t included in that total because they are not subject to annual approval by Congress.

Some Republicans were unhappy with that $1.7 trillion total and hoped to attach policy provisions to the legislation as a consolation for not cutting spending more. Those “riders” — so called because the policies “ride along” on often-unrelated legislation — included limits on which items some food stamp recipients could purchase, a crackdown on the availability of abortion medication and a ban on regulations on menthol-flavored cigarettes.

Most of those provisions did not make it into the final legislation, angering conservatives. Littering appropriations bills with culture-war poison pills — as House Republicans had done in versions of spending legislation last year — would have doomed its chances of passage. Vulnerable House Republicans would have shied away from some controversial measures and Democrats in the House and Senate would have opposed it.

The lack of cohesion among Republicans to pass measures through their two-vote majority has forced Johnson, and McCarthy before him, to suspend the rules of the House to dodge procedural holds thrown up by the Freedom Caucus and rely on Democrats to ensure bills pass with two-third support of the House.

“This is a long, methodical process. It is overdue,” Johnson said. “But we are very happy now that we’re finally to the point where we can move beyond it.”

zoux posted:

https://twitter.com/mchalfant16/status/1765837992675959155

Whoa goddamn. You couldn't get a 50-0 vote in favor of kissing puppies on their widdle heads.

https://twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1765800349640630298

Seems like.

https://twitter.com/LisaDNews/status/1765842761670889900

lmao

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Perhaps there is a third way where we can agree

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

New inflation report is out.

Inflation ticked up slightly - from 3.1% to 3.2%.

...

Housing rose at a slower rate, but still made up the largest single source of inflation.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/12/business/cpi-inflation-fed

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The dentist commercial is being posted on the official Governor of South Dakota's twitter account as well as her personal account.

https://twitter.com/KristiNoem/status/1767392635944059202

The North Dakota grocery store ad is apparently just a print ad and not a commercial, but still pretty weird that she is doing ads for businesses outside of her state. I guess it is maybe ethically (and legally) better than being paid by businesses in her state?

It doesn't appear to be illegal, but it is very strange that she is doing it at all and blasting a commercial for a dentist in Texas on the official South Dakota government page.

zoux posted:

He's sick of this poo poo:
https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1767617625532645475

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

A tale of two housing policies:

Arizona Governor vetoes a bipartisan housing bill over concerns that it isn't "balanced" in considering current homeownership home values and building new housing because it errs too far on the side of new construction.

Nelson Mandingo posted:

Shamelessly stealing this from the GBS thread. I actually live in this district so I'm over the loving moon.

I wanna temper some expectations that while it's pretty significant in the swing, but for standards, the Huntsville-Madison area that she represents is pretty middle to upper class and extremely progressive for the standards of the rest of the state. It's got the University of Alabama here, it's got the space and rocket center and NASA, the redstone arsenal and then just all residences otherwise.

Still that is quite a swing, and in that key suburb demographic that everyone is chasing this election year.

James Garfield posted:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/election-forecast.html

538 just released its 2024 forecast

rscott posted:

Nate got fired from 538 like a year ago or something

Bar Ran Dun posted:

I don’t think the World Central Kitchen thing was an accident. I think it’s an explicit threat. Within the next month that temporary pier is going to be up and running.

Whatever is going to happen is going to happen in the next 30 days (and to me they’re keeping up with the 60 day goal announced March 1). They’re either going to be feeding everyone in Gaza or Israel is going to do something unprecedented. The news at the end of the month is going to be wild.

This is all public right now fwiw y’all can watch on whatever public AIS service you prefer.

Tarezax posted:

And guess what, Prop 13 applies to *all* real estate, including commercial real estate.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Thomas most likely didn't skip the opening arguments because he is unexpectedly dying, so it is all kind of moot.

haveblue posted:

Now just eliminate overbooking and let us keep our shoes on and we might have good air travel again

Koos Group posted:

I'm not sure symposia could be considered a true analog for colleges. From what I know they were occasions where people drank, socialized, viewed entertainment, and occasionally had philosophical discussions, so they would be more similar to a college party than a university as an entire institution. Ancient Greeks already had a much closer analog, which would be the academy, from whence we get the term "academic."

theCalamity posted:

To think all of this could have been avoided if the colleges either did nothing at all and let the protests run out of steam or divest from Israel.