Who got rid of it? If it’s gone, to what are Pence/Trump failing to comply?
The House Majority Leader
Please link me.
In real terms it’s an unambiguos defeat. Without the Senate, we have really nothing. Even an opposite scenario, with +Senate -House, would be a win. This is a defeat. The real legislation we need needs Senate power, election integrity, putting reins on the communist hare brained economic policies, putting reins on the evil empire designs on Russia, etc. We are suffering from the abortion ruling, which nonetheless makes it a hit worth taking. As so often with Trump, we win 60% and lose 40%, but the 60 is epochal. What the house can really do is butkiss. On the other hand, if we get Georgia, a 50 50 senate is enough for a full house with a Trump White House.
All this said, the Republican party better have the spine to demand recounts in all close senate elections.
So it’s a defeat, and I like reading people like Nate Silver, closest thing to a smart commie, to let myself feel it. But then you peruse Breitbart and you remember that, if you scale back, we really are winning so much that the risk of getting tired of it is real. There is also the fact that Trump is taking over the Republican party, and you can’t do that without some losses along the way. A traumatic shift, as they say.
Trump really is honestly the greatest politician since Octavian. The real terms things he has done will determine thousands of years to come. But the price we have paid little by little is the machine, which people that have never experienced a revolution cannot fully appreciate. We allow them to get a tighter noose on the political machinery levers, to monopolize media, normalize marginal cheating in elections, normalize illegal overreach of government power, even treason. We do this for the real wins, like ending genocides and all sorts of really bad shit. When we pay this price, those of us who have not lived through a communist revolution think, well, it’s not such a big shift overall, it tightens but later it will loosen, etc. But the reality is that every inch you lose is an inch gone forever. Right now they only cheat a little, because the races are close. But because they have gained tighter control over the machinery, the day they need to cheat a lot, they will be able to, and they most definitely will. Hard autocracies never spawn until they have to, and are preceded by years of careful almost undetectable maneuvering, rearranging. They are saying and doing preposterous things, and we allow them because it doesn’t seem like it could get a lot worse very quickly, like we have a lot of time, like it is a give and take war of attrition. But it is not. The power they take, they keep.
So, all in all, the reality of the situation is an icky one but, if we pull back the scale, we should be able to appreciate and maybe sacrifice a lamb or two for the protection of Trump that it is icky instead of horrifying.
It’s just a matter of
Inconsequential functions
Running from the bright light into the shadows
And in the shadow pining for the light
With eyes closed
It’s the light in where we belong
But a plant, a seed, doesn’t know
Sweetness, working functions is the artifice
A happenstance that makes evolution’s mechanism
A stone core waiting for the chisel
Alligators roam the streets, the rivers
Leaves fall from trees and wetness takes them
This is well, it’s God’s world
As long as you remember
That the working function is the artifice
War the only constant, eternal
Reminds me of something I think Malbus wrote a while back… the TAGA days… two lines/thoughts stand out… why tear down walls we fought wars to rebuild… and something about a seed he had planted and … something about waiting … like it was only a matter of time before it would grow, etc.
The guy who wrote Narnia said something which is pretty much the Catholic perspective: that if you take divinity away from the New Testament, it is simply the ramblings of a madman. The Catholic perspective has always been this, and that the Old Testament does speak for itself with incredible wisdom. In fact, the dissonance between the awesomeness of the Old Testament and the flaccidness of the New Testament has always been part of the joy of Catholicism. Even though it is flaccid and dissonant, it is submitted to because it is the will of the God of the Old Testament. For a Jew, this would be impossible, because the idiocy is too bare. But for a Roman, the glue of Zeus holds the two together. There is already a slight dissonance, if a dissonance between two great and wise powers, to begin with. A Roman can appeal to a power beyond the Tradition of the Old Testament, and more, the Old Testament and the tradition it comes from is only an illumination of Zeus rather than a source for knowledge of Him. For a Jew, if you contradict the source, you are walking into mistake. For a Roman, they are simply two separate expressions of a single coherent thing.
The caprice of such a flaccid and dissonant expression of God’s power is a joy for the Catholic because, as Nietzsche said, the true source of God is the person. It is a discussion on a power that one has, that is within one. The joy of discovery of one’s own power. And the caprice of it is what makes it joyful. But because it is so very flaccid and dissonant, eventually a true religious person will require for there to be actual truth behind it, otherwise it is simply power spinning its wheels. The expression of the power within one’s self which is God is not there to be wasted, the caprice is only joyful if it is an expression of real power. The Catholic must, eventually, relinquish the New Testament.
Which is wild because what Goths did was the exact opposite. Drop everything else and keep the flaccid New Testament. This is the same source of communism and nazism and fascism as well. That which is flaccid, protecting itself against anything beautiful and strong, the obliteration in one’s self of anything beautiful or strong.
Fun fact. The first Bishop of Athens got his name from Dionysus.
anyways, the old and New Testament are of the same God. Jesus said that the command he gave and demonstrated in his own blood is the sum of the law and the prophets. The apocalyptic stuff in the New Testament is like insanely worse than anything you can find in the Old Testament. Might want to check your sources.
The greater the heights of love, the further one will go to protect the sheep. Wouldn’t want to mess with that shepherd.
Bored as shit.
Pass
Yes. Bored AF is the correct link here, for those who mess with that shepherd. He knows how to turn wolf to sheep dog, snappity snaps.
_
When I’m bored, I either inadvertently find something to occupy myself with… or fall asleep. 
Nothing to do, around your way?
Who, me? I haven’t been bored since… erm.
I don’t recall.
_
You do like putting yourself in the middle of my [obvious] replies to others, don’t you.
my bad
It’s a privilege really. I might be willing to spill considerable amounts of blood for it.
Lol!
Boredom… being a luxury? …like art, crochet, knitting, and all other such time-consuming pastimes that the ill-afforded can ill-afford.
I’ve filled my month up with Yuletide engagements… Christmas, being filled, with the most abundant of all the best memories all rolled into one.
Mercury retrograde coming Mags, watch yourself out there. Dec 29 to Jan 18. Allow a week before and after at least for some fuckyness. And observe the dates for the actual retrograde to the day (29 to 18).
…date’s in the e-cal, thanks… 
When people think that such things aren’t real, but some of us can sense it as it begins to approach… which is what separates Us from Them, but I’m not sure who Us or Them are… 