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Hong Kong: You're banned!
Edit: oh wait i should just check the article
Edit: it seems like it probably refers to the practice of hogging reservations for sports facilities, which seems to be a problem there. And it wouldn't surprise me that it is given how densely populated built areas of Hong Kong are, so demand for facilities is probably quite high, leading to some people who try to take advantage of systemic quirks.
Otherwise I'm surprised there isn't a secret black-market trade in spots at public facilities if it's this much of a concern.
Though I still am not entirely sure what "tout" means here.
Massachusetts conjurer accused of summoning bees to fend off republican guards.
The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is actually an important role. (This is unlike the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, which is analogously the head of the Senate but has remained largely ceremonial.)
Basically, the Speaker is the leader of the majority party (or coalition) in the House, outranking even the Majority Leader. The Speaker has various powers and other influence, including over the selection of which members get to serve on various committees, including the very powerful Rules Committee. (Bills are generally considered in committees and passed by them before being brought to the floor of the whole House to be voted on.) Thus, the Speaker basically has a big say in what bills even get voted on. (This ability can be, and is, used to avoid bills that make the majority party look bad, and instead bring bills that serve the majority party's agenda and/or try to make the minority party look bad (based on how they vote for it), for example.) The Speaker also has various other powers, see the Wikipedia article for more details.
The issue is that the rules of the House basically say the following:
First, the Speaker of the House is elected by a majority of the members-elect who vote for a specific person.
Then, the members-elect are sworn in, and become members, at which point they're allowed to discharge the duties of being bona fide members of the House of Representatives. (N.B. I am going to call everyone a member-elect even if they've been elected before to a previous term. As of right now, without the election of a Speaker and the swearing-in of the members, there is no U.S. House of Representatives, legally speaking. This is kinda fucking hilarious if your sense of humor is sufficiently cynical.)
Then, a package of rules for how this two-year term will be organized is passed by the (now) members. And they can also do other things.
The Republican caucus (technically the House Republican Conference, going by what they call themselves) in the House has a sufficient number of crazies to gum up the works of step 1.
Right now, there are 222 Republicans and 212 Democrats (not counting temporary absences, but counting the absence of Rep.-elect Donald McEachin (D-VA-04) who passed away before term began); a total of 434 means that 218 votes are needed for a majority. And it's normal for each party's members-elect to vote only for candidate of their own party for Speaker. So that means that a Republican nominee for Speaker needs at least 218 of all 222 Republican votes, and only up to 4 can do funky stuff, by which I mean vote for someone else. (The majority threshold goes down slightly if members-elect are absent or vote "present" (i.e. no particular person, but the vote just records their presence).)
But there are up to 20 crazies in the Republican caucus. On the first ballot (i.e. first time everyone voted) for Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy (who had been the minority leader when Democrat Nancy Pelosi was previously Speaker) tried for the Speakership, but got only 203 votes. He got 203 votes on the second ballot, then 202 on the third ballot and several subsequent ballots on subsequent days. (This number fell as low as 200 due to some absences and/or one "present" vote.)
Today, after some more negotiations, on the 12th ballot, McCarthy finally...got a plurality, 213 votes, but that's still not enough. On the 13th ballot, McCarthy...got 214 votes, which is still not enough.
(Meanwhile, Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (the nominee of the Democrats) has consistently gotten 212 votes from all 212 Democratic members-elect, except for the one time today on the 12th vote that Rep.-elect David Trone (D-MD-06) was out for a medical reason. He's back in now.)
But Glenn, why can't they just let whoever has the most votes wins?
Short answer: the rules.
Long answer: they could change the rules, but doing that requires a majority vote itself. So let's see the incentives each faction faces:
Non-crazy Republicans: want McCarthy. Would vote for a plurality if they think McCarthy can win. Note that in all votes before today's, Jeffries (D) got the most votes...so supporting this is risky.
Crazy Republicans: they hate McCarthy, and/or they want to force the leadership to cave to their demands -- which is basically stuff like the rules of the House during this term (including how easy it is to (at least try to) yeet the Speaker) and some things about how committees work. There are enough of them that they are able to hold the Speaker vote hostage to their demands. A plurality vote would make them give up this leverage and instead put them in the hot seat (either vote for McCarthy or let a Dem win), so they have no incentive to support it.
Democrats: they don't want McCarthy either, but as today's votes prove, they don't necessarily have a plurality either, if (as has already happened) McCarthy is able to somehow reunite more of the Republicans to support him. So it's a risky play for Dems too.
So yeah, a plurality is a risky play for everyone except the crazies, and a downright disadvantageous one for the crazies.
Enjoy your popcorn while this lasts.
You can count on me there, rest assured.
See, that's the part where I was most confused about. "Party faction holds entire party hostage by abuse of parliamentary procedure" is a concept clear enough even if I don't know the procedure, but the motivation of the Crazy was elusive to me.
As in, as I understood, the trumptards and related nutters were on the side of the McCarthy guy, which meant that the most logical internal opposition would be the remnants of the saner elements of the party, but by what I know of American party politics, they are virtually extinct. So, I didn't know what flavour of crazy they were. Like, also trumptard, but personally hostile to the McCarthy guy? With your explanation it makes some sense finally.
Also, we've had enough crazy of our own over the last... three decades, I guess, but the stuff you guys have going on in there is the kind of deliberate stupidity that still seems quite apart. I mean, it looks like we've only had genuine idiots, where you have folks who deliberately make themselves into idiots, sort of like that.
(I'm reminded of a rock song from like a decade ago: "those were such beautiful times, when we were ruled not by thieves, but by idiots". But right now, it feels like there happened some Hegelian synthesis of thieves and idiots.)
The "MAGA"/"America First"/[other names] faction is sort of a mix of diehard ideologues whose faction/ideology was supercharged by Trump's influence but who don't even necessarily listen to Trump himself. Like, in this particular fight, Trump actually endorsed McCarthy and there's a now-famous picture of Marjorie Taylor Greene (reportedly) having Trump on the phone basically telling one of the diehards (Matt Rosendale) to get on the phone with him. (MTG herself is actually one of the crazy ideologues but in this case she chose to side with McCarthy for whatever reason, so there's also some cleavage between said ideologues.)
Also I think some of these diehards were basically just intending to troll the process. I'm pretty sure that's how Kevin Hern got nominated repeatedly (despite he himself supporting McCarthy), particularly considering how some of the holdouts would say his name ("Kevin!!......Hern!!"). Meanwhile, one of the holdouts even actually tweeted to seemingly imply that he was satisfied that the House failed to organize, because it helped "US Taxpayers" and hurt "Zelensky" [sic]. So intentionally preventing government from functioning, and doing it for the lulz, are not off the table for these people.
sorry about that -_-
https://apnews.com/article/us-environmental-protection-agency-kay-ivey-alabama-climate-and-environment-0ae21074db2008f1071f1326c6e7f346
The state of Alabama is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help put out a fire in an underground landfill. It's been burning for two months now.
FWIW, Florida National University is a small for-profit university in Miami-Dade County founded in 1988. Florida International University is a much larger public (and thus not-for-profit) university in Miami-Dade County founded in 1972.
Florida U Sues Florida U Over Similar Name
(I kinda hope they're, like, on the opposite side of the same street.)
Also, you remind me it's been a while since I saw a proper Meanwhile in Poland story. Fortunately, though that's not a piece of news, I still find the occasional picture once in a while.
TIL about pop-up urinals. No wonder the British Empire declined.
Also, that honestly kind of sucks, to die by a toilet. I mean, of all things.
Sadly, this number cannot decrease.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet-related_injuries_and_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_on_the_toilet
Somewhat related, the other day I learned about the prestigious, privileged and profitable job of royal ass wiper.
On the topic of Poland, I might have coincidentally stumbled upon a story which, while not exactly meanwhile-in-Poland, is just close enough to mention. It's more of a meanwhile-in-Russia, really: apparently Russian state media have just aired a report on special LGBT formations being actively established by the Polish army. Katechons worldwide, soon you will fear the Polish gay battalions!