comment: >
  
  Watch how quickly that changes if he starts pissing off the moderates big donors.
context: They don't have the votes to block it, fortunately. >
  
  Couldn't McCarthy just not bring it up for a vote? >
  
  If he wants to go against the majority within his own party to appease people like Gaetz, sure. >
  
  The house rules they adopted allow the Russian caucus to force another vote for speaker.
  The GOP is controlled by Putin, because their majority is dependent on a minority that is controlled by him. >
  
  “The GOP is controlled by Putin”
  Jack pot. The GOP has sold our country out. >
  
  Republicans want an unstable world because it helps them argue “you need hard liners like us to save you in this uncertain time!”
  Peace is bad for their political prospects, so escalating global tensions is in their favor. >
  
  This is how our current era will end. Individual selfish politicians looking to increase their power at the expense of the system, and thinking that it couldn't possibly collapse or even worse, just not caring.
  It only takes a few idiots to cause untold suffering, and as the war in Ukraine demonstrated, in a global supply chain, everything is connected. >
  
  
  This is how our current era will end. Individual selfish politicians looking to increase their power at the expense of the system, and thinking that it couldn't possibly collapse or even worse, just not caring.
  
  This pretty much perfectly describes the downfall of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Constantly striving for individual power and victories by lower lords who intentionally crippled their empires ability to stop them while the empires slowly collapsed both internally and externally. >
  
  What's insane is the same story throughout human history that is it was the system that brought wealth and prosperity. So those who were already prospering destroyed the system within bringing everyone down. Like you figure humans would have learned this lesson a few thousand times over already. >
  
  I think those people realize that it doesn't matter if everyone else is poorer, as long as they themselves get richer.
  It's not that humans haven't learned the lesson so much as we haven't developed a good way to apply it. >
  
  I think it is more than that, I think there is a feeling that if other people are prosperous it somehow makes the rich less rich (even if their objective financial value hasn’t changed). >
  
  once you get rich enough, there is literally no further difference in your lifestyle to feel richer, as there is NOTHING that you cant simply buy. once the rich hit that point the only way to feel richer is to make others noticeably poorer, then they can still feel richer by comparison. its yet another unachievable form of infinite growth the rich seem to love >
  
  Money up top isn't just about living a comfortable lifestyle or having decently nice things, it's about the ability to wield influence and holding power, a social structure based on being more or less wealthy than the other guy, and not just having "nice" things but rare things. The social structure varies depending on how much money you have. Just having the money itself really isn't what matters, because everyone in your circle has that money. At that point, you need other ways to put yourself up top. Networking and power. >
  
  This was 100% what that whole standoff with the treason caucus was about >
  
  This is where you’ll see a revolt of the “moderate Republicans.” Because remember, “moderate Republican” means in the defense contractors’ pockets and I’m sure they are making a fortune off of this war. So it might be one of those rare occurrences where the morally right thing to do aligns with what “moderate Republicans” want to do and that forces McCarthy’s hand. >
  
  So far, the only thing McCarthy seems capable of doing is keeping the moderate Republicans in line with whatever the loons want.