Even you perceive Schumer as the person who decided whether or not to go ahead with the shutdown, or else you wouldn’t blame him for not shutting down the government.

You’re doing exactly what he is asking you not to.

Oh my God.

You have left out galaxy brain giant IBM model M. (Not more keys, but thicc keys.)

It’s not just the size. It’s also the way the sound of typing will bother everyone else in the room.

Neither side wants to be responsible for a shutdown.

Mr. Trump and the mostly men he has appointed to office often behave as if rules did not apply to them. That has been part of his appeal.

They see it like a war. Even when your soldiers do something wrong, you’re not going to hope that the Germans win the battle because of it. You will, however, take every advantage if they make the same mistake.

the Trump team’s story is that no wrongdoing occurred

The point of the lies isn’t to convince anyone - supporters know or at least suspect that their leader is lying and they approve. The point is to cripple rules-based opposition, which constantly has to disprove the official story before it can do anything.

How do you disprove a story when your opponents are themselves lying about believing it? They already know it’s not true. Meanwhile, that story changes faster than you can respond. So what if this was illegal? It won’t even be in the news in a week, forgotten because of some new outrage.

I’m not sure he actually did the wrong thing there - he has no fear of being primaried for opposing Trump (but rather the opposite) and a lot more political experience than most of his critics. Maybe it really was the smaller loss in a lose/lose situation.

With that said, the part where he opposed it before supporting it was weird. With things the way they are, I can’t even rule out that he was threatened somehow.

A thorough summary of what’s going on. It’s up to the judiciary now. Will the Republican-appointed judges in the Supreme Court oppose him, either out of patriotism or pride? I’m quite concerned, because I didn’t expect the Republicans in Congress to give up that institution’s authority but they have done so. I don’t know if Congress will have any power left by the time the Democrats have a chance to gain the majority there in the midterms.

that series of keypresses is that exits vim

One of the great mysteries of the universe. However, I can confirm that my standard power button also exits vim.

What are your thoughts on ketamine as a depression treatment? Several people have suggested it but they don’t have firsthand experience and I have a “don’t do drugs” inclination myself so I’m skeptical.

Is this a “forced out by Trump” resignation, a “forced out by the university” resignation, or a “protest against capitulation” resignation?

49.8%, but 50.8% of those voters who didn’t lodge a protest vote. I have more respect for the protestors than for the people who didn’t vote at all (they literally don’t count for anything) but the protesters still had something to do on election day which they thought was more important than helping determine who would be the next President.

As for his policies polling negatively: I don’t care, unless they’re policies that he didn’t campaign on. (And even in that case, the voters still chose the dangerously unpredictable candidate.) Frankly, I have more respect for those Republicans who are happy with what’s going on than for the ones experiencing buyer’s remorse. At least they’re good at being bad, rather than grossly negligent.

With that said, I do think it’s funny that if only about 0.8% of the voters had chosen otherwise then my assessment of the American national character would be dramatically different. I admit that I’m not entirely rational about this.

The thing is, Trump is the legitimate ruler (I won’t say leader) of the USA. He didn’t conceal his cruelty, his ignorance, and his plans for the country. Most Americans who cared enough to express their opinion asked for that cruelty and ignorance, and the chaos we’re seeing now is simply democracy in action.

(Trump is attacking that democracy, but that’s also something the majority asked for. Why should the USA’s former democratic values be imposed on a people that rejects them?)

He’s exercising (or attempting to exercise) much more executive power than prior Presidents. Even if he has dementia (and I doubt he does) then whoever gives him papers to sign clearly has no intent to minimize the amount of damage he could do.

Having $2,000 is better than having $2, but in practice I’m usually skeptical that plans to achieve an outcome like that will work out rather than failing and leaving both of us with $1. The manner in which the outcome would be achieved also matters - some of the plans seem to me like proposals to just steal the money and I object to that on moral rather than economic principles.

(I don’t mean to imply that people I disagree with think that stealing is OK, but rather that they and I don’t agree on the definition of stealing.)

I’m not one of those few completely uncompromising libertarians who don’t want public roads - I actually think the government should be doing all the things you list, and I pay my taxes. I do prefer individualistic ways of doing things, but I’m pragmatic and there are many problems for which the collectivist solution is the only practical solution. When I say I’m fiscally conservative, I mean that I think society should be more libertarian than it is now, not that it should be absolutely libertarian.

I’m someone who actually calls myself socially liberal but fiscally conservative, and that’s because my primary concern (in the terms of moral foundations theory) is the liberty/oppression axis. In other words, I think leaving people alone is a good thing, and while it’s not the only good thing and it needs to be balanced against other concerns, we should still be doing it more than we are now.

Two caveats:

1. I’m socially liberal because a free society requires tolerating even the people you hate. This is hard, and even many people who consider themselves tolerant because they simply don’t hate a particular group aren’t (and often don’t want to be) tolerant in this sense.

2. I’m economically conservative because the freedom to act without government interference even in an economic context has great inherent worth (but I’ll repeat here that I don’t value it to the exclusion of all else) but also because the free market usually does a better job than central planning at making everyone prosperous. I don’t care much about wealth inequality - a world in which I have two dollars and you have two million dollars is a better place than a world in which we both have just one dollar.

Edit: in practice I always end up voting for moderate Democrats at the national level, both because I think social issues are generally more important than economic issues and because neither party usually does what I would want regarding economic issues. However, I have more options at the state and local level.

Criticism from Democrats is not going to have any effect.

Except it’s not just some guy vandalizing a car, or else you wouldn’t be making memes about it.

Identify specific acts Trump has taken to harm you that cannot be construed as core executive functions. This will give Roberts the chance to list some conduct that is—and conversely that can never be—a core executive function, to diffuse Trump’s notion that he can get away with murder. Hint: trying to impeach a federal judge is not, and can never be, a core executive function. Lying to American citizens about a foreign invasion is not, and can never be, a core executive function.

I don’t see how the Presidential immunity ruling is relevant to Trump’s current actions. So what if something Trump does is not a core executive function? The idea that Trump could face criminal charges right now, as the sitting President, seems far-fetched. It’s especially far-fetched for these examples, which he doesn’t need immunity for because they’re not crimes.