• ATDA@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    3 days ago

    They’re dead serious and doing what they were paid to do.

    They weren’t paid to protect you, they weren’t paid to make your life easier, they weren’t paid to represent you at all.

      • KingJalopy @lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        28
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        Never had a national bird, according to this article. Thank God our infinitely wise and useful government got on that before they lost all their power to actually do anything meaningful or helpful. 🦅🇺🇸

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        5 days ago

        It’s what Franklin wanted. And Franklin had humor and consistent set of morals. And got France to back us up by having sex with so many French women.

        I think the Turkey would be better than a bird we have to ADR in the screech of another animal.

        • Wogi@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          15
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          5 days ago

          Turkeys: invasive, will absolutely move in and fuck up your shit

          Bald Eagle: almost went extinct because it ran out of a particular type of tree.

          Turkeys: will eat literally anything under the sun. Grass. Seeds. Other, smaller inferior turkeys. Car bumpers.

          Bald eagles: almost went extinct because salmon was in short supply.

          Turkeys: big, fat, aggressive birds with absolutely no fucks to give. The Always Sunny crew if they were all birds and not just D.

          Bald Eagles: sleek, reclusive, and quiet. Literally sounds like a mouse.

          It’s turkeys, it was always turkeys. It’s not even close.

          • leadore@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            5 days ago

            It was hunting (considered pests) and DDT (pesticide that made the eggshells break too easily) that made eagles almost go extinct.

            • Wogi@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              4 days ago

              Shhhhhhhhhhh. Their inability to make up bullshit on the Internet also nearly caused their extinction.

              Unlike turkeys which as we all know are the driving force behind generative AI platforms. Obviously

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    Both parties are very serious…

    …About keeping this economy and system exactly as it is, as they bicker over social wedges that don’t meaningfully impact quarterly earnings expectations.

    They’re both paid well by the same oligarchs to do so.

    If you wanted to see them scrambling to pass real legislation to protect the government from an incoming administration, you should have elected a leftist. You’d see Democrat and Republican reps holding hands, having sit ins, and desperately chanting we will overcome if an incoming administration was promising to dismantle for profit healthcare, for example.

    Don’t worry though, they’d never let that happen. They have all the tools they need to prevent such a disaster as they see it. Their bribes would dry up overnight if they lost control of the narrative and their plebs.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    52
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    5 days ago

    It’s not like if they didn’t pass this law they would have snuck in Medicare for all - I hate the “Is this a good use of your time” argument.

    But it’s never a bad time to criticize how ineffective lawmakers are.

    • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      53
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      5 days ago

      Anything other than this would’ve had an impact on people’s lives. They don’t need universal healthcare. They need something.

      Your comment is a prime example of the nirvana fallacy.

      • Gork@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        edit-2
        5 days ago

        Healthcare for some none, small American flags for others!

      • adarza@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        this session has been a dud from the start.

        a split congress isn’t gonna get much of anything worthwhile done, especially not this late in a session… and extra-especially-not with the ultra hyper-partisanship exhibited by the ‘modern’ republicant party since at least the 1990s.

        want something done? something awesome and good? help get democrats and progressives 75%+ of each chamber of congress, plus 38+ state legislatures.

        • krashmo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          5 days ago

          Republicans get large chunks of what they want without a majority like that in Congress on a regular basis. If they can do it so could Democrats. They choose not to. There’s no shortage of convenient scapegoats but there is a massive shortage of meaningful action.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 days ago

            My dude, they couldn’t even repeal Obamacare.

            Dems get blasted for not doing enough. Republicans get praise for just stopping things, half of which weren’t happening anyway

            Thanks, Republicans for another decade without letting the Dems take our guns. Fuck the Dems for not passing some very basic gun control legislation.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 days ago

            I feel like you’re missing the very clear context that Republicans are hyper partisan who refuse to cross the isle. Earlier this year they voted down their own border security bill because Biden gave it the greenlight.

            • krashmo@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              5 days ago

              I’m very aware of the context. For my entire life Democrats have spent more time talking about building coalitions with racists or pointing at their token centrist progress blocker than they have doing anything useful. Say what you like about Republicans but they get their horrible shit done when they have the chance and they don’t give a fuck about decorum or tradition and their voters love them for it.

    • IHeartBadCode@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      5 days ago

      The 118th Session? Yeah, we don’t even have a parallel in all of the history of the US to mark how unproductive this session has been. Like not even during the Civil War was Congress this underwhelming. The 118th Session has set a new low water mark for “things gotten done”.

      The biggest issue was that the House spent something like ~60% of their time in Committee doing “investigations” that ultimately led nowhere. Like, I’ll throw Congress a bone here, if they actually impeached someone with all those investigations, I’d give it to them. But that literally nobody was impeached all those investigations basically go into the “wasted time” column.

      And they can’t impeach any of them come the 119th session because… New President, new people. So all that time they invested goes to waste. Hell, even Hunter I can’t give it to them, because in the end, he got a pardon. And as soon as Trump gives the J6 folks a pardon, all that work the Democrats did becomes wasted as well.

      But the 118th spent the vast majority of their time in investigations, so they got so little actually done and passed.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      It’s not like if they didn’t pass this law they would have snuck in Medicare for all

      I might have been at least somewhat mollified of “Natural Bird” meant “New environmental focus on protecting the species” rather than “National Meme”. Might as well make America’s national bird the Dodo, given the rate at which we’re decimating their ecology.

      • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        The bald eagle is well protected as a species. Federal charges for killing one. Course that may change under Trump.

    • normalexit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      5 days ago

      They could get a vote on the record where Republicans voted against healthcare. We got this bird thing though, so that’s neat.

    • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 days ago

      They could have tried to do anything actually beneficial for Americans instead though. Like, think about how many hours of work it took Klobuchar’s political peons just to draft the stupid thing. And, they we paid them to do it!! Get fucked Congress.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 days ago

    Actually the Senate passed this in July. It took until now for Congress to pass literally the easiest partisan bill probably because they were waiting to use it as their next shitty rider platform, or because they were too busy wasting time creating a new committee to investigate TikTok.

      • turmacar@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        4 days ago

        TikTok is shady in how much info it collects and how tailored the feeds it shows people get.

        It is not unique about either of those.

        Facebook/Google/et. al. being on this coast instead of that coast doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have exactly the same scrutiny. Literally the only evidence offered that TikTok was in any way special was “we can’t tell you but there’s classified info that means we should ban it.” Which is less than encouraging that the ban is for anything other than because of ‘those dang kids’ being annoying.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          4 days ago

          TikTok

          Is Run

          By Dictatorship Military

          It’s a weapon that wants to cause permanent irreversible harm to hundreds of millions of people, by design.

          • turmacar@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            Agreed.

            They’re also not materially different from Instagram or Youtube. Singling them out as “the problem” is short-sighted at best.

    • Sabata@ani.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 days ago

      Bet there gong to spend millions to brag about a partisan feel good bill that will distract us from tasty CEO blood.

    • phx@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      5 days ago

      Or was a close call. I heard that were debating changing the national bird to the Hawk Tuah

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      16
      ·
      5 days ago

      It is time to dissolve the United States. Once a nation reaches this level of corruption and political dysfunction, it cannot be repaired. Even the nominally liberal party is so utterly corrupted by money that it can no longer keep things from further degrading, let alone actually fix things. We are at our “dissolution of the Soviet Union” moment.

      The national government needs to be dissolved in its entirety. Each state needs to be granted full independence. Then individual states can come back together and form whatever new federations or confederations they want.

      This nation can no longer be salvaged. It is broken beyond all repair. It’s time we put it out of its misery. The alternative is we limp along as a parody of our former self, like the Roman Empire pretending to still be a Republic.

      The United States is already dead. We’re just too afraid to admit it.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        5 days ago

        Buddy. We are nowhere near where we used to be. We used to call out the soldiers to shoot at striking workers. We used to grow out our hair so we could get paid for voting 3 or 4 times. (Get a shave, get a haircut, lose the mustache and the rest of the hair.) It used to be impossible to convict anyone of killing a black man.

        We aren’t anywhere near as bad as things have been in the past.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          And the Soviet Union at its collapse wasn’t as bad as the nadirs or tsarist Russia. Just because things were worse 150 years ago doesn’t matter. The problem is the system is now intractably broken and further progress cannot be made.

          • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 days ago

            It’s broken for 4 years at least, sure… But it’s not beyond hope. Did you see share that Luigi guy did the other day? That dude was American, and he’s broken far less laws than our next president.

            • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              4 days ago

              The President has never been above the law in reality. Nixon thought he was, Reagan got away with shit, but they always had the law to obey or face punishments. Trump doesn’t need to worry about anything other than his health or a 3rd shooter.

      • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        5 days ago

        What do you propose happens to the nuclear weapons? Or the treasures in the Smithsonian? Or the gold in Fort Knox? Or the federal currency that each of these states economies relies on?

        The US simply cannot be undone.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          8
          ·
          5 days ago

          Nominally give each new state a proportional share of the weapons. In reality, the states will quickly come back together into one or a handful of new countries. Nuclear weapons are incredibly expensive to maintain. A newly independent North Dakota will not be able to maintain the weapons that are assigned to it. They’ll quickly trade them as bargaining chips in negotiations with some larger state.

          It’s important to consider the alternative to dissolution. We are no longer capable of solving real problems. The currency and economy are already doomed, as we’re not going to be able to put our fiscal house in order before the debt collapses everything.

          A major economic upheaval is already locked in, assured by our irreparable political system. Better to just admit it now and dissolve the country peacefully. The alternative is we have a series of bloody and ruinous civil wars as states try to break away one by one from the dying empire.

          • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            5 days ago

            They’ll quickly trade them as bargaining chips in negotiations with some larger state.

            Full stop. If part of your solution is selling nuclear weapons to whoever pays the most to cover your bills your plan is already shit.

      • djsoren19@yiffit.net
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        The problem is that the second the federal government fully collapses and states are left on their own, a majority of them will become captured by megacorporations or China. Red states like Mississippi just fail to function on their own, they would require an entity with seriously sizable funding to subsidize them, and the number of entities that can fit that bill is pretty small. Even if these red states band together…they’re the worst states. 5 of them together doesn’t equal the income brought in by places like California or New York, who would perhaps instead enjoy a large surplus of state funding they could make use of and maintain individuality in the face of a corporate dystopia.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 days ago

          They would still be among the wealthier countries on the planet. Mississippi is wealthier than the UK outside of London. They’ll manage just fine. As far as corporate corruption, well they can be responsible for their own sins.

    • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 days ago

      If only someone had bothered to research this and write it up in a clear, easy to read fashion. Oh, there’s a link along with this post!

      If you’re thinking to yourself, “Gosh, I thought the bald eagle was already the United States national bird,” welcome to the club.

    • Skua@kbin.earth
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      5 days ago

      Actually no I really kinda wish it was so I can get more of him trying desperately to act like he isn’t terrified of the eagle brought in for a photo shoot. That shit was priceless