UPDATE: In sloppy resistance from Democrats, the Senate this afternoon passed the MAGA/T-Rump endorsed House bill– an “…an attack on everyday Americans” — to fund the federal government through September, averting a shutdown. Via the Guardian: ‘Ten Democrats joined with Republicans to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the measure. Democrats confronted two painful options Friday as a midnight deadline loomed. They could allow the passage of a bill they believe gives President Donald Trump vast discretion on spending decisions.‘
Waffles with shit syrup.
Heavy overcast with on-and-off rain this near-noon Friday here in California’s Central Valley — we’ve been racked with deep-seated wetness since Wednesday, and it appears the conditions will continue for a few more days.
Weather is becoming shitty, joining a chorus of other shit that’s becoming shitty.
As on the brink of a federal government shutdown due to explode into being at midnight tonight.
Except:
Nancy Pelosi urges Democratic senators to go against Schumer and vote NO on the Continuing Resolution.
And if you get kudos from the Orange Turd, even if laughingly nasty, you’ve already shit in your mess kit: ‘Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social, “congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing,” calling his plan to vote for the bill a “really good and smart move,” taunting Schumer—who Trump insulted earlier in the week by claiming he’s “not Jewish” and is “a Palestinian”—after he agreed to back the bill under threat from Republicans to blame Demcrats for a shutdown if they didn’t approve it.‘
Apparently, all of a movement:
Congress giving away its power, we’re cooked.Most compliant congress ever
— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) 2025-03-14T13:07:29.692Z
Josh Marshall at TPM a little while ago:
It’s hard to write clearly when you’re being flooded with new information. But here goes. I’ve heard people arguing the “‘yes’ on cloture” argument, essentially saying, “don’t assume you can shut DOGE down, undo the damage. It’s not a silver bullet.” I can only speak for myself, but if anyone is thinking, based on the arguments I’ve made, that this is a silver bullet and if Democrats just do this we can shut this whole thing down, I haven’t been clear. I will further say that while the things I’ve written over the last week or so make it pretty clear where I stand on this, I have several times over the last week had a hard think with myself: are you sure you’re right about this? I’m not sure I’d say this is a close call. But it’s a hard call, for me at least. Both options hold out possibilities of calamity and destruction I’ve never seriously contemplated before. That is simply where we are. I wish we weren’t here. But we are here.
As I’ve written, my ask would be, right out of the gate, “we’ll give you the keys, we’ll give you your bill, if we write down the DOGE plan for each department and agency. And we just do an up or down vote. If you can pass it through Congress, that’s all we ask.” (I’ve explained previously why I think this is a good idea.)
[…]
What if Democrats get “blamed”? Logic and the public opinion data I’m seeing don’t make this look as likely as some people seem to think. But what if they do? I really don’t think that’s that big a deal, frankly. I’m pretty confident that increasing the visibility and salience of what the White House is currently doing would hurt Republicans’ popularity even more. Do you think carving up Social Security is popular? I don’t. Education Department? Same. The VA? No. Maybe Democrats will get bruised up too. I don’t see that as anything like a deal killer. This is a vast public battle over the future of the Republic. I want to raise the visibility of things that I’m very confident, based on a lot of data, are very unpopular. I also think having your demand be that the party in the majority should simply vote on what it wants to do is a hard thing to argue against in American civic discourse. If you raise it and you get the public more against what’s happening, it’s an afterthought in my mind how people view the Democratic Party or its current leaders.
[…]
I know this has been a pretty dreary and negative post. I’m writing it for two reasons. First, I don’t want anyone to be unrealistic — certainly not based on anything I’ve written — about what that choice would mean. Second, I don’t believe the “bad outcomes” are that bad or meaningfully different from the situation we’re already in.
Sadly, appears one of them ‘between a rock and a hard place‘ scenarios. In other words: We be fucked!
Marcy Wheeler correctly explains:
Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).
And Democrats, on both sides of this fight, are not fighting that fight. I’ve seen none of the most powerful voices — not AOC, not Bernie, not Jasmine Crockett, not Tim Walz, not Pete Buttigieg — put out a video talking about the fight over impoundment, about the stakes of having elected representatives of both parties fight for funding for their own constituents.
Democrats who want a shutdown have done none of the messaging to those already hurt by Trump’s power grab work to make it a short term political win, to explain the tie between right wing capitulation to Trump and services shutting down. Instead, they’ve been fighting among themselves, mobilizing politically active Democrats.
I get the anger with Schumer — though I do think his concerns about the courts need to be taken very seriously.
But until Democrats stop thinking in terms of their own leadership in Congress but instead think exclusively about winning the political fight with people being hurt, not as Democrats, but as people opposed to fascism, they’re going to be looking for power in the wrong places.
We can’t continue like this for too much longer, no matter what the talking/writing heads say about it. This is some horrid shit taking place at super-sized speed — the T-Rump and the Muskrat are doing their best to create a hole in the universe of the nowadays and make it impossible to close it back up, much less do something even better. Due to the T-Rump being the evil, piece-of-shit, mean-spirited asshole he is the entire world, and not just the US, is hanging by a single, thin thread over an open flame, which is reaching further and further upward.
Even amid all this terrible, depressing goings-on, the future does indeed look dark and gloomy.
So, let’s close out with hope:
Little darling
I feel the ice is slowly melting
Little darling
It seems like years since it’s been clear
Nightmare ending or not, yet once again here we are …
(Illustration out front: Edvard Munch‘s ‘The Scream,’ lithograph version, found here.)