System 7 Ready!

Yes, the VP position can remain vacant indefinitely, or at least until the end of a term when another VP can be elected through the normal process. The only thing that is lost is the tiebreaking vote. Well, and the fact that if the President has a colonoscopy and is put under sedation nobody is available to be acting President. I don’t think the House Speaker is able to take that job for just a few hours like the Vice President can.

Kamala Harris was actually Acting President for 85 minutes in 2021, and probably at least once after that.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/politics/kamala-harris-presidential-power/index.html

(nope, she did it just that once. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_President_of_the_United_States )

It has never happened before, so we don’t really know. What I think would happen is that Vance would just get immediately sworn in as the President on Jan 20 if God exercises His Ultimate Veto on Trump’s second term.

But the Presidential Succession Act only covers vacancies for the Presidency. Once the office of the President is filled again, nothing else happens. It’s not like everyone else “moves up” a slot. Mike Johnson would probably see the VP position as a demotion honestly.

The Office of the VP would remain vacant until President Vance nominates a candidate, and then it must be approved by both houses of Congress in order for the position to be filled.

I’m kind of hopeful, actually, that the fact that they are publically whining so much about escalating to a world war is an indication that they don’t have the means to do so, short of going Nuclear, and I think even Putin realizes how that will end up.

I mean, he is already bringing in foreign fighters. isn’t that a concession that Russian fighters can’t do the job in Ukraine themselves? If they had the means to escalate while still fighting in Ukraine, they wouldn’t whine about it, they would just do it.

You are making the mistaken assumption that the brute squad will bother to differentiate between them. How many second+ generation immigrants carry around proof of citizenship, anyway? They can be detained just like anyone else who doesn’t look right.

(And it’s super easy to carry that now, the passport card is cheap, fits in your wallet, and is a good first line of defense against being disappeared.)

How is Mint internationally?

All my shit is in the Google ecosystem. I am fairly confident that Gmail is not going away anytime soon. However, I am more afraid that some obscure ToS violation will forcibly disconnect me from their ecosystem, and I will have to scramble to make sure all my contacts have my alternate info. I am doubly screwed, as a Google Fi customer. If we all get suddenly degoogled, I lose a phone number that I have had for over 20 years.

As good a deal that Fi is for me (I normally don’t use bandwidth unless I travel internationally), I may switch soon just to reduce my exposure to Google.

1. Burn it all down
2. ???
3. Profit

There is another point, at least for Americans. While I know a few people who have emigrated to the US and still maintain ties with their original homeland, I know others who have intentionally given up their privileges back home. While they may still be citizens of their home country, they owe them no obligations.

The US is different, they tax your income no matter where in the world you make it. if you are living in a country with a tax treaty in the US, you can fully deduct all foreign tax payments so you will likely end up owing nothing to the US. But you still have to file. And in return for that you retain the right to vote from the state you last resided in. Furthermore, it is quite hard to give up your US citizenship. It can be very costly, because we will make you pay taxes on assets as if you sold them before they let you leave, including any retirement funds.

Americans living abroad are much more likely to still consider themselves Americans first, because we remind them about it every April 15th.

Right, I think without the Open Internet, we would still be getting fast broadband, but likely tied to your Cable or Telco provider’s network, and things that are currently websites would have to arrange for a presence on each network they want to do business on. And they would probably meter access, just like they do with your electric bill, or your cable company does with a basic tier but then paid access to anything important.

Hey it’s not just a meme, it’s DeCeNtRaliZeD fInAnCe. I bought some DOGE as a joke several years ago, now it is worth real money. I sold some the last time it was at $0.69, because of course I did.

I have some left, the price is currently $0.36 but maybe Elon can meme it up to $4.20 and I can retire early.

It still works that way, until the rules change. Republicans have the votes to change how Congress works, if they act in unison. But they will have just a slim a margin as last time, and they had trouble electing a Speaker. Even in the next Congress, they needed a secret vote to elect the Senate Majority Leader because they didn’t want any receipts on who voted for whom to make it back to Dear Leader.

It is possible that the Republican Party turns into a oroboros of spite, eating itself from within because of perceived grievances. That might be the best possible outcome we can hope for.

I think we need to differentiate a bit between “no Internet” and “no open Internet”. I have just enough grey hair and health problems to remember what life was like before the Internet really took off: you dialed into your ISP, like Compuserve or AOL, over a land line, and were charged per minute. And those services couldn’t really talk to each other. But back then, computers also ran at 10 MHz and couldn’t fit in your pocket.

So there was even connectivity back then, it was just very limited and each ISP had to provide it’s own information, because they didn’t really talk to each other. The same technological advancements would have happened over the last 50 years. Computers and networking would have gotten faster, cell networks would evolve to handle data and be more efficient, and broadband access to everyone’s home and office would have happened. But if the Internet didn’t happen in the open way it did, with an emphasis on open standards, its entirely possible each major media company would have had its own network to subscribe to, and it would be a lot more expensive.

But would that really be bad? Would social media really have eaten our brains if we paid for it per minute?

I think it’s because there is a difference between the Budget and Appropriations in Congress. The budget is a plan, where programs are authorized and an overall budget is set. The appropriations process is what assigns particular dollars to particular discretionary programs. (Certain programs deemed “mandatory” by Congress, like Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt, get allocated money automatically and are not involved in appropriations)

If I had to guess, I would say that once a program is authorized once under a budget, it can continue as long as it (or the Federal department it is part of) is not specifically de-authorized, and as long as it continues to receive appropriations specifically for that program.

So, it is likely that this is all about Ramaswamy’s total ignorance of how Congress works. Which tracks pretty well with what this DOGE is all about.

Today’s Republican Party didn’t get into their position of awesome power by listening to experts…

Ah. I wasn’t aware of that. It still sucks, but maybe for the folks who are left and still protected by the union some malicious compliance is in order.

it’s comically hard to be fired unless you’re a political appointee.

Didn’t they change the rules to count many more jobs as political appointees without protections right at the end of Trump’s term, only to have Biden change it back? Trump is definitely doing that again.

These companies are huge, and know how to lobby the government. It seems to be the wrong industry to piss off.

Maybe you’re right. But if the fix were really in, Rick Scott would have been the majority leader.

Don’t be so sure. These Senators know how much power they have, and their 6 year terms guarantee that the ones elected this year will have to deal with life in the next Administration, whatever that happens to be.

I think Trump is expecting Gabbard’s and Gaetz’s nominations to fail in the hopes that he can get the Fox News guy in charge of the Pentagon. There seems to be a lot of jockeying around regarding the military, that scares me more than what Gaetz can do at the head of a department that despises him.