Me fail English? That’s unpossible!

And this was only like the 3rd worst thing to happen to O’Brien that day

Well that’s why they demand the Republicans hold up their end first - the would-be Speaker and a couple of his/her allies sign a discharge petition to implement whatever it is they agreed to, and only after that passes do the Democrats support them.

An under-appreciated point here is that with McCarthy gone, the math for somebody else to become Speaker is that much harder, and the odds of that person needing to rely on Democratic votes - and to make major, major concessions to get them - commensurately higher; in other words, just because McCarthy wouldn’t make a deal with Democrats to remain Speaker, it doesn’t mean that somebody else won’t eventually make one to become Speaker.

Checkmate.

That train left the station a loooooong time ago, Johnny boy

I think the judge gives him an extremely stern last-chance warning tomorrow and if he does it again, he gets cited for contempt. Doesn’t have to be much, chuck him in a private cell in the Manhattan Detention Center for 1 night with Secret Service outside the door, but it seriously hurts the rule of law to have him able to get away with this sort of crap with no consequences.

There’s legitimately not enough space for everyone to bring a carry-on, especially on smaller planes; until that changes, carry-on fees are as good a way to allocate that space as any.

This is great + well-deserved, plus it has the side benefit of making some of the world’s worst people really, really mad.

The other side of the argument is that McCarthy is the GOP’s greatest fundraiser, and getting rid of him would help Democrats take back the House. No replacement for McCarthy would have the same set of relationships and the donor network and political operation.

This is, to me, the winning argument - it hurts them politically, both by taking away their best fundraiser and by replacing him with somebody who’s likely to be even more extreme and so do even more dumb things the Democrats can campaign against. A McCarthy replacement is even likely to shut down the government in 45 days than McCarthy is, and for Democrats that’s probably a good thing - Republicans screwing up air travel right before Thanksgiving and taking away government employees’ paychecks right before Christmas.

Is it good for the country, maybe not, but Republicans losing the House in 2024 will do several orders of magnitude more good for the country than whatever harm might be done by that short-term idiocy.

My point is that the likelihood of the Democrats immediately turning around and using that new standard themselves is quite high here. It would be equivalent to what would happen if Thomas or Alito dies in the next few months and the Democrats promptly announce that they’re going to go ahead and confirm his replacement in an election year just like Republicans did for Ginsburg, except with the actuarial odds of a 90 year old instead of a 75 year old.

Chuck Grassley is 90, and he was just re-elected in 2022, which means he’ll still be there when he’s 95. The life expectancy of a 90-year-old man is 3.72 years. And, thanks to Senate seniority bullshit, he’s on Judiciary.

So it is more likely than not that Grassley will keel over (or resign) before he completes his term, which means that breaking this precedent now would have almost certainly backfired on them in the next few years.

Congratulations to rat #1, may your journey away from the sinking ship be slightly less cold and wet and miserable than the next rat’s.

41 percent of Democrats have an at least somewhat favorable view of Kennedy

Yeah, no. I’d guess that only a single-digit % of Democrats - mostly Extremely Online ones - have any idea who he is; this is a survey where they pressed for lukewarm responses from mostly-uninformed voters and then pretended that it actually reflected public opinion in a meaningful way.

I almost planned a trip to DC with the kids for Columbus Day, glad I didn’t.

(probably not a good idea to plan to fly anywhere in October, actually - possibly November too)

Single-issue anti-vaxxer voters might trust him more than they trust Trump. (and none of them were going to vote for Biden anyway, so probably at worst a wash for Biden)

Vonnegut wasn’t a Too Good For This recluse like Pynchon or Salinger or whoever, and the content of his books made him fairly well insulated against charges of being a sellout; they probably offered him a bunch of money and he shrugged and said sure.

The tourist-y parts of it are pretty much all newly rebuilt anyway; there’s not much of the original wall left at Mutianyu or Simatai or wherever.

They very well might, but Biden has already had 3 years of appointing judges, and he’s already gotten probably the only Supreme Court appointment he’s going to get for this term. Refusing to let them replace Feinstein now gains them little - maybe a couple of extra unfilled district court slots - while if a Republican wins the White House and then Grassley dies in 2025/2026, the consequences for Republican judicial confirmations could be catastrophic.

Placeholder Senate seat isn’t so bad, you still get to be a Senator even if only for a little while.