Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 400: Pad Taiwan's Defense Budget

(+) Yeah! (+)

Biggs voted present... that's it unless someone else switches back from the last vote

Crane votes Present so now Gaetz can't backstab them by moving off present. This should be it, unfortunately.

sad

Speaker Vote (Ballot 15) Results:

McCarthy (R) - 216 (50.47%)
Jeffries (D) - 212 (49.53%)
Present - 6

Votes Cast: 428 (+6 Present)
Number Needed for Majority: 215

Biggs, Crane, Good (VA), and Rosendale all move to Present to join Boebert and Gaetz. McCarthy is elected Speaker after 14 rounds of humiliation.

And here's our final update to Longest Speaker Elections in US History:

By Number of Ballots:

1. 133rd Ballot - 1855-1856 (Decided by Plurality)
2. 63rd Ballot - 1849 (Decided by Plurality)
3. 44th Ballot - 1859-1860
4. 22nd Ballot - 1820 Special Election
5. 15th Ballot - 2023
6. 12th Ballot - 1821
7. 11th Ballot - 1839
8. 10th Ballot - 1834 Special Election
9. 9th Ballot - 1923
T10. 3rd Ballot - 1793
T10. 3rd Ballot - 1805
T10. 3rd Ballot - 1847
T13. 2nd Ballot - 1799
T13. 2nd Ballot - 1809
T13. 2nd Ballot - 1825

By Time:

1. 61 Days - 1855-1856 (Decided by Plurality)
2. 58 Days - 1859-1860
3. 20 Days - 1849 (Decided by Plurality)
4. 5 Days - 2023
T5. 3 Days - 1820 Special Election
T5. 3 Days - 1839
T5. 3 Days - 1923
8. 2 Days - 1821
T9. Same Day - 1793
T9. Same Day - 1799
T9. Same Day - 1805
T9. Same Day - 1809
T9. Same Day - 1825
T9. Same Day - 1834 Special Election
T9. Same Day - 1847

I listed 2023 as 5 days because it was officially read out on Jan 7th. But even if you put it as a 4 days it doesn't change its rank.

So apparently the guy held back from getting to Gaetz is the current top ranking R on the House Armed Services Committee (which Gaetz reportedly wanted to chair). Guessing Gaetz was given his chairmanship.

Hi friendly Canadian here, the united states is a clown circus, thats all

Parliamentary systems suck and the US system is cooler than it.

- signed, a disenfranchised Canadian

Canada better watch itself. Read an article yesterday about the rise of Canadian QAnon

Gotta love the the never Kevin Republicans all voting present to ensure he gets elected while still pretending like they aren't voting to make him speaker.

Yet they will still all posture about never giving in to McCarthy.

Maniac64 posted...

Gotta love the the never Kevin Republicans all voting present to ensure he gets elected while still pretending like they aren't voting to make him speaker.

Yet they will still all posture about never giving in to McCarthy.

Can't vote to impeach Biden if you never elect a Speaker!

Pokewars posted...

and the US system is cooler than it.

let's not say anything too crazy

the us system is a nightmare

I can not imagine looking at the US governing systems and thinking the word "cool"

Cool is definitely a more apt descriptor than, like, functional or good.

https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1612163675959472128

jfc

Kenri posted...

Cool is definitely a more apt descriptor than, like, functional or good.

yeah but so's the word citrus

y'all got a real citrus government fr

LordoftheMorons posted...

https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1612163675959472128

jfc

What kind of backwards country allows this happen

Apparently congress is in recess there till February

So they are storming a building

....Shit's empty?

Are they planning to like...hold up in here or did they....not know?

Honestly, "we didn't know" would be less stupid than them knowing but not actually having any type of goal.

Camping trip obviously

I guess that is less terrible thank storming a capitol building during the process of the new leader being confirmed.

Rumors are that the governor of the federal district (basically their DC) helped facilitate it, and that local police escorted the protestors.

They sure ended up arresting a lot of them if they were escorted. The count is over 400 at this point.

https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1612602335590600705

Welp, looking forward to the US defaulting on its debt in the near future

LordoftheMorons posted...

Welp, looking forward to the US defaulting on its debt in the near future

Let them try. The 14th Amendment says the government isn't allowed to default on its debts. Biden can just point at that and defuse the whole issue forever unless SCOTUS wants to do something really stupid.

I'm pretty sure even if he did do that the uncertainty caused by any question of the legality of what Biden was doing would have large economic consequences. It wouldn't be as bad as actually defaulting, of course, but it would still be vastly preferable for Congress to raise the debt limit (or better yet eliminate it entirely...!)

LordoftheMorons posted...

I'm pretty sure even if he did do that the uncertainty caused by any question of the legality of what Biden was doing would have large economic consequences.

So would the massive spending cuts the Democrats would have to vote for to get the debt ceiling raised, but only one of these leads to Democrats accurately being blamed for causing the problem.

rip to diamond

condolences for silk

another covid denier dies of covid

Debt default is one of the less apocalyptic end game scenarios. Probably ends with Medicare getting shut down and all the old people dying before universal health care shows up.

I can envision worse

We can envision worse, but that's still pretty damn bad. That said, I never expect things to approach even the "less" apocalyptic scenarios like that - rich, property owning elderly people use MediCare too, and they must be protected at all costs. Remember at the start of the pandemic, when middle class and upper-middle class suburbanites were also getting laid off and seemingly at risk of becoming less wealthy? Congress passed the $600 weekly UI increase in like a day. If covid were somehow a disease that only impacted poor communities, that never would have happened.

I think most of the pandemic aid was before it turned political. I dont think the same thing would happen now

Well, we know what the House GOP will be talking about for the next 2(0)+ years:

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/biden-center-classified-documents/

Biden's lawyers were packing files in his think tank and noticed there were about 10 documents marked classified and that same day they notified the National Archives of their discovery and the Archives took possession of them the very next day.

But the false equivalencies are going to be shouted from the rooftops, we'll probably have like one impeachment per document or some wild shit, and they'll try to gaslight the country into thinking that this is not only the same thing Trump did but "actually like 200x worse."

Yep. We can expect Lock Him Up cries for Biden while at the same time arguing that Trump did nothing wrong and should receive no punishment.

Maniac64 posted...

Yep. We can expect Lock Him Up cries for Biden while at the same time arguing that Trump did nothing wrong and should receive no punishment.

This is already happening

When the base can be outsmarted by an amoeba you can get them to believe literally anything

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1613601550122860544

Right move, I think. While the situations still appear to be worlds apart, for accountability purposes (and, ~optics~) best to handle it like this.

I think this would be a great opportunity to swap Joe for a better candidate.

When it happened once I shrugged it off

But happening twice certainly made me go hmm

Thorn posted...

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1613601550122860544

Right move, I think. While the situations still appear to be worlds apart, for accountability purposes (and, ~optics~) best to handle it like this.

This sounds exactly like what's his face announcing an investigation of Hillary right before the election only because he thought she would win anyway and it would make him look impartial

Same attitude

banananor posted...

This sounds exactly like what's his face announcing an investigation of Hillary right before the election only because he thought she would win anyway and it would make him look impartial

Same attitude

FBI Director Comey and not really. This is actually based on current revelations and not shit that's been investigated for years.

Its absolutely not the right move, imo.

By playing for accountability and ~optics~, Garland has immediately ceded the image game to put Joes fuckup on par with Trumps.

Its only the right move if the plan is to give Joe his gold watch and thank him for his service.

Yeah I think I agree with Tony here about it being the wrong move, but it's hard to say.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Its absolutely not the right move, imo.

By playing for accountability and ~optics~, Garland has immediately ceded the image game to put Joes fuckup on par with Trumps.

Its only the right move if the plan is to give Joe his gold watch and thank him for his service.

Hey, as of next weekend Joe can step down and Kamala can get two more terms

Just hold on for 9 more days Joe!

Jakyl25 posted...

Hey, as of next weekend Joe can step down and Kamala can get two more terms

She'd have to be capable of winning an election to get even just one more term.

My thinking on why I think it's the right move is that regardless of what Garland did, the GOP was going to relentlessly push the false equivalency of the two situations (including the doublethink of "We must impeach and lock of Biden for this" and "Trump is completely innocent and the victim of a witch hunt.") and the media would be all too happy to play along as they always do when it comes to scandals (and even not-scandals) on the Democratic side.

By appointing a Special Counsel they can blunt the idea that Biden is holding himself to a different standard (even though, again, the situations - at least as far as current reporting goes - aren't even in the same league and the technicality that the DOJ is supposed to be independent so Garland should be acting on his own judgment and not on Biden or the administration's.)

It also means that instead of the House GOP and Jim Jordan being the only "investigation" of this and being able to put out uncontested "findings" that are ludicrously biased there's a counter-balance here.

Also, divorced from the politics of it all, it's leading by example. Per reports, Biden's team self-reported all this, immediately turned over the documents they found, and now are subject to an investigation of how it happened. This is supposed to be how it works. Just because Trump and the Republicans writ large have abandoned the rule of law and acted like unaccountable dictators doesn't necessarily mean Democrats should follow suit. There are times when Dems should probably go "fuck it" and adopt the same bullshit the GOP has rather than remain the only side playing by the rules but I don't know that this is one of them.

I'm not arguing this is a good situation, it's not - this is an unforced error Biden has brought upon himself. But I'm cynical and pessimistic enough to believe that there is no action (or lack of action) that could be taken at this point that would prevent the "image" of equivalence from being shouted out by both the GOP and media. That ship sailed the minute a single classified document was found at that think tank, let alone any future developments. The GOP, their media arm in the right-wing news outlets, and the mainstream media which happily follows along after them were going to equate these even if Garland did nothing here. So given that, I think most of the downsides people are saying - which are real! - were already a given.

(also there's no dem bench lmao. there's no one to replace biden at all, sad as it is)