volkris @volkris@qoto.org

Under #Biden US national labs found themselves hamstrung by micromanagement, demands from the administration that resources be diverted away from #science while regulators repeatedly shut down programs much to the chagrin of our International partners.

It's been a breath of fresh air that the new administration has allowed us to actually get back to work. I don't even care if they know what they are doing, at least they are no longer interfering. Science is getting back on track now.

Regardless of everything else that #Trump might be getting into, and maybe it's just because he's just that incompetent, at least the US is getting back on track with its scientific endeavors. Our experiments are getting back up to speed after years of crippling bureaucracy, and we can start making progress again.

There's a lot to complain about with Trump, but I am very glad to see that the expectations for science are living up to what I'd hoped.

#USPolitics

Lately I've been thinking about how the #Republican party has evolved over the last decade or so as viewed through the lens of the games that major voices in the party play.

Previous generations of #GOP speakers were proudly golfers, but lately major voices are football fans. You can hear them make that shift from talking about golf to talking about football.

Well, over the years Republicans have made this marked shift from looking to work together and build consensus to just looking to fight their opponents. And it strikes me that that's also a difference between golf and football.

The new generation of conservative speakers don't understand the realities of political systems where they have to work with others, convince others, to get things done. It's as if they are projecting philosophies from football on to their politics in ways that didn't happen previously.

And that's a shame for us all. That's how you get #Trump... and #Harris.

#USPolitics

There's an old idea of fairness that when cutting a cake between two people one person cuts and the other picks the piece they want.

This method aligns the interests of both parties, no matter how corruptible and *human* they may be.

I think it's underappreciated how often the US government design has a similar method in its checks and balances: one group can reject an official, but they don't get to choose the replacement.

See, for example, impeachment proceedings.

After all: "This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public."

--Hamilton (maybe)

#USPolitics #politicalscience #federalistpapers #hamilton

I just have to laugh at this headline.

Chinese communist owned stores? That's funnily contradictory in itself, but add in the military part, an organization that by necessity has some communist-type structures involved, and well...

Gentleman, there's no fighting in the war room!

Both #Biden and #Trump are past their prime and not all there mentally.

There is a crucial difference in their presidencies, though: I didn't hear many people relying on Biden personally, but I hear a ton of people saying that these #tariffs don't seem right, but they trust that Trump knows what he's doing.

Even Trump supporters don't think it's right, but they think he knows what he's doing.

It's a mess.

#USPolitics

@0x00string I'm honestly curious what you're talking about.

Yeah, I did other things that year. But what are you talking about?

People seem not to understand that the presidency is defined by the Constitution; it's not subject to compliance, voluntary or otherwise.

I'm not the president by definition. It doesn't matter if I agree; it doesn't matter if I refuse to accept that I'm not the president; by definition I'm not because I don't fulfill the constitutional definition of what the president is.

All this talk about Trump refusing to accept an election or, in the last couple of days, saying he would take a third term misses that it's not up to him. He can think he's the president all he wants, but the Constitution, not Trump's beliefs, define whether or not he is the president.

I wish more people understood this because it's an important part of understanding how the US government is designed.

And it's an important part of ignoring #Trump trolling.

#USPolitics

Under #Biden US national labs found themselves hamstrung by micromanagement, demands from the administration that resources be diverted away from #science while regulators repeatedly shut down programs much to the chagrin of our International partners.

It's been a breath of fresh air that the new administration has allowed us to actually get back to work. I don't even care if they know what they are doing, at least they are no longer interfering. Science is getting back on track now.

Regardless of everything else that #Trump might be getting into, and maybe it's just because he's just that incompetent, at least the US is getting back on track with its scientific endeavors. Our experiments are getting back up to speed after years of crippling bureaucracy, and we can start making progress again.

There's a lot to complain about with Trump, but I am very glad to see that the expectations for science are living up to what I'd hoped.

#USPolitics

People are really sensationalizing the report of #Roberts pushing back on #Trump's call for impeaching judges.

No, the statement doesn't have teeth. It's a mild statement of the record, that it's an established norm not to impeach over disagreement.

#Congress is always free to go there anyway.

No, it's not Roberts throwing bombs or a sign of a new direction. In fact, it was about preserving direction.

Sure, it was appropriate for Roberts to make the statement, but it just wasn't the big deal so many are making it out to be.

Sensationalizing it does play into Trump's rhetoric, though.

#SCOTUS #USPolitics

So many people upset about #Schumer in the #Senate are falling into the same trap that people fell into with regard to Mitch McConnell:

Minority and majority leaders in the Senate don't have that much more authority than any other senators. But, the other politicians use them as scapegoats to escape their own accountability.

The minority leader here didn't single-handedly give the Republicans a win. He doesn't have that authority or that power. Instead, blame the rest of the Democratic senators who voted for the Republican position.

Don't let them get away with it by just focusing on the minority leader.

#USPolitics

With the breaking announcement that #Ukraine agreed to a plan for a ceasefire on the way to resolution of the war, it's worth reviewing what just happened:

#Trump, the world's greatest deal maker, torpedoed his own not very good deal because he couldn't shut up for 5 minutes and had to pick a fight with #Zelenskyy in front of an international audience.

And then, once his idiotic face was out of the way, the real adults sat down and actually made a worthwhile plan to sort things out, really showing that Trump was nothing but a problem and will continue to be nothing but a problem, even when it comes to his own cabinet members who will have to work around him to save him from himself.

At least, this is the breaking news, but Trump supporters are celebrating the announcement, but they're too damn stupid to realize that the thing they're celebrating actually puts them to shame for supporting the guy.

Trump's mind is gone. The question is whether the people around him will put up with it, and for how long.

#USPolitics

It's noteworthy that both parties claim there was significant election fraud in the '24 election stealing wins from them.

Same as 2020, a dispassionate review of the facts can settle a lot of this, but lord knows that's not going to be reported broadly.

#USPolitics

A quick overview of the questions about whether #Ukraine actually has the mineral deposits that put dollar signs in Trump's eyes. I've heard this skepticism of the deposits before.

I have a suspicion that #Zelenskyy is not such a big fan of the minerals agreement with #Trump because he knows it's not really going to pan out, he's just going along with it to get to the next step that might actually be substantial.

Until Trump botched his own deal, of course.

https://youtu.be/PFr5dei95KQ?si=JhucizZAw2HnlsLj

#USPolitics

#Republicans have been pushing this story that #Trump had his explosion with the #Ukraine president after the Ukrainian said the wrong thing, forcing Trump to cancel his big deal.

It's just another example of, if y'all listen to yourselves, are you saying your guy really is that weak that the foreign president is able to manipulate him that way? Doesn't sound like much of a president.

It's unfortunate that this administration is really being run by the stupidest, most oblivious people on the scene.

#USPolitics

The head of #DOGE has been revealed!

It really says something that it took this long for people to figure out who was actually in charge of this high-profile group.

#USPolitics

A while back I heard an interesting way of viewing positions in #USPolitics:

> The left tends to make an error of sign while the right makes an error of magnitude.

That is, #Democrats might get the effects of some proposal backwards while #Republicans might think it will have far more impact than it actually will.

I see this often now that I look for it, including here in this #DOGE era where conservatives are vastly overestimating the amount of savings that they can get from the effort.