Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Mongrel]

Just checking in that everyone has by now heard the breaking story that

1) There's a new Borat film
2) The premise of this one is that he's trying to bribe Mike Pence on behalf of the government of Kazakhstan
3) He manages to get as far as Guiliani
4) He tries to bribe Rudy with his 15 year old daughter (actually a 24-year old actress), who is a replacement for the bribe money, lost earlier in the movie (of course)
5) Footage includes Rudy visibly fondling himself and beginning to drop trou before Borat bursts in
6) Shit hits the fan on the internet, including a screenshot of Rudy with his hands down his pants
7) A college professor who had nothing to do with the movie posted screenshots supposedly showing him texting Rudy by pretending to be Ivanka(!) by simply claiming "I got a new number" and manages to get Rudy to say "there's some truth to it". Supposedly.
7b) Reminder that if 7 is true, Rudy is still Trump's Cybersecurity advisor.

[Yoji]

I'd like off this ride now, please. I'm scared and so very very confused

[Mongrel]

October 21st, 2020, has certainly been A Day.

[Blossom]

Giuliani is kind of infamous for responding candidly to any rando who gets his cell phone number and sends him a text. It's led to a lot of pretty goofball shit.

[Mongrel]

Like, the person convinced him he was Ivanka by texting him an Ivanka selfie, which is... yeah, classic Rudy.

[Grath]

Did someone say the Trump admin is hilariously incompetent with technology?

[beatbandito]

If it took this long for people to figure that out, I'm really feeling better about my own bad security practices never even being tested.

[Thad]

Biden proposes panel to study reforming 'out of whack' U.S. judiciary

Seems reasonable. I don't think there's another solution besides packing the court, but I recognize that path is fraught and unless we find some way of preventing another GOP Senate majority first (*cough*statehoodforPuertoRicoandDC*cough*), is just going to result in them turning around and adding more justices themselves the next time they're in power. Plus, for now packing is unpopular among the public; I think that's probably going to change once the expanded conservative majority starts issuing rulings, but it's probably best to leave the threat of packing as a last resort for now.

Not for nothin', statehood for Puerto Rico already enjoys broad public support. That's something Democrats can start moving on immediately come January, provided Biden wins and they take the Senate and Puerto Ricans actually want it.

[Thad]

Barrett confirmed.

Complete list of Republicans who voted against confirmation:
Susan Collins

Complete list of Democrats who voted to confirm:

[Mongrel]

Complete list of Democrats who bothered to meaningfully obstruct her, or at least delay her appointment long enough that she couldn't be seated in time to make rulings on the election:

List of Democratic Senators who gave her a hug and congratulated her: Dianne Feinstein

List of Democratic Presidential candidates who said of Barrett "I have nothing-- I'm not opposed to the justice," Biden said. "She seems like a very fine person.": Jeff Bidet

[Mongrel]

WHEN ARE THESE PANSY ASS FUCKING CRACKERS GONNA FIGHT, GODDAMNIT?!

[beatbandito]

when it's against the progressives

[Thad]

Complete list of Democrats who bothered to meaningfully obstruct her, or at least delay her appointment long enough that she couldn't be seated in time to make rulings on the election:

How? What were the options here? Shut down the government during a pandemic?

I think I've been pretty clear about my general disdain for the Democratic Party over the years, and caught my share of shit for it. But I'm just not seeing what they could have done to stop this.

They've got plenty of time to disappoint us on things they can actually control. I don't think this was one of them.

[mharr]

Why do the shitty regressive votes always pass 52-48? We need to ban those numbers.

[Blossom]

Complete list of Democrats who bothered to meaningfully obstruct her, or at least delay her appointment long enough that she couldn't be seated in time to make rulings on the election:

How? What were the options here? Shut down the government during a pandemic?

I think I've been pretty clear about my general disdain for the Democratic Party over the years, and caught my share of shit for it. But I'm just not seeing what they could have done to stop this.

They've got plenty of time to disappoint us on things they can actually control. I don't think this was one of them.

Chain the doors. Slash tires. Block votes. Disrupt, instead of rolling over and doing absolutely nothing. The Senate's in recess until the 9th now anyway, why not shut it down? Fuck all is it doing about the pandemic?

[Mongrel]

The not-really-secret thing about the Senate that the Republicans have realized and are using to nearly the fullest they can, but which the Democrats have either failed to learn or are ignoring at their own peril (won't someone think of the decorum), is that very technically, if you look closely enough at the Senate bylaws and regulations, almost all of them are things agreed-upon by the Senate itself, and that 51 votes is enough to do anything, up to, and including rewrite the rules.

Now that's not just a nuclear option, it's a thermonuclear one. I get it. But the Republicans are already pushing that as far as it can go to hollow out any existing procedural checks anyway. It's the same problem they've already had for years - the Republicans won't even obey the arbitrary rules they set for themselves only weeks and months previously, let alone ones years old.

But then, the Republicans are Fascists, and the Fascist ethos dictates that rules are for the weak. The fight is already on and has been for years now.

I'm not going to go into detail about the exact bylaws etc, because it's not my area of expertise (I've been tuning into a couple conversations between folks way more knowledgeable about that than I am), but it seems there are a large number of existing procedural tricks as well as a bunch of no-holds-barred ones Senate Democrats could have used to - at the very least - delay Barrett's appointment to the lame-duck session where she at least can't fuck with the election.

Now if this election goes ANYTHING like 2000, the Democrats have gone from "Probably fucked" to "Absolutely 100% fucked".

[Upthorn]

Complete list of Democrats who bothered to meaningfully obstruct her, or at least delay her appointment long enough that she couldn't be seated in time to make rulings on the election:

How? What were the options here? Shut down the government during a pandemic?

Here's a memo a group of people knowledgeable of congressional procedure sent to Chuck Schumer, detailing strategies, before ACB was even nominated.

[Brantly B.]

I'm sure the beginning and end of their reasoning was "Gee whiz I really am afraid of what those mean ol' fundamentalists would do if we put up any sort of resistance this close to an election", but in a way they got what they wanted. The Supreme Court was only ever going to be either strictly conservative leaning (as it has been with absolute reliability for years) or else the Dems would have had to take the blame for firing the first salvo in a court stacking arms race. Now the Court is very conservative leaning, sure, but also nobody gives a fuck what the Supreme Court thinks because its veneer of independence has been totally obliterated. Up to this point the public had been firmly against Congress fucking around with the Court, even I think with Kavanaugh on the bench. But now the Dems are lined up to take over two branches of the government with a publicly backed mandate to do whatever they want with the third, within the bounds of the Constitution because they don't have enough votes to make changes to that yet.

The danger of course is if they don't manage to deliver a fix, and soon, well... the only other options are accept it, which I don't think anybody can just do any more, and the third option is really messy.

[Brantly B.]

Okay I'm excepting Pelosi now who's not doing much to hide the fact that she was salivating at the idea of a court reform mandate the entire time.

Schumer I'm still tagging as "was a wimp, basically".

It's a dangerous game of course, since the Court was one of the government institutions that the public still held in some small regard; I don't think anybody appreciates knowing that both of these God damned congressional parties were, separately or not, consciously involved in ratfucking it.

[Mongrel]

So news today is that Kavanaugh basically said straight out that he's fine throwing the election for Trump if anything comes before the SCOTUS.

EDIT: