They're not even funding the government. They're just doing the extra stuff. So they're

just. Yeah, they're. Yeah. So here's stuff. OK, please continue. Sorry. Here's the lay of the land. The lay of the land is obviously we are going from a Republicans control one of the three chambers that determine things, just the House barely, to Republicans will control all three in the new year. So they want to do a continuing resolution to essentially fund the government between now and next March, which will fall in the middle of Trump's 100 days. So they'll probably wind up having to kick it down the road again. But still, that's what they want to do now. Here's the problem. The Republicans are not like the Democrats in that they can do a party line vote because there are enough Republicans that have made their entire personality and career on the fact that they don't do continuing resolutions. So there are not enough functioning Republicans that would even agree ever to do a continuing resolution to to move it forward. So it has to work with the Democrats. So what I have heard are that the Democrats understanding that they can delay this as long as possible and they don't have to pay the bill because it's Speaker Johnson who's going to have to eat it. And, you know, the Republicans are the chaos. Congress are essentially their entire personality for the next two years. They might as well get a head start on it, have a made incredibly ridiculous asks to get their votes, made total non-starter negotiation tactics. And then Speaker Johnson, who now is well ensconced in Trump world and doesn't really feel like he has to care about the opinions of any of the fringier members of the House, has essentially negotiated this entire thing in secret, therefore violating all of the promises that he made when he got the worst job in the history of D.C., which is the leader of a Congress with like a three vote majority. And so now everybody's mad and they want to go home and they can't go home. And the continuing resolution is essentially an omnibus, which Speaker Johnson said he would never do. And meanwhile, there's a bunch of stuff that's in there specifically with like trade. And there's a thing about aid to Haiti that's being bandied back and forth. And the frustration, this is what I've heard, is that the members of the Republican conference don't know it's in this bill two days ago, right? Then they have lobbyists come into their office and explain to them what's in the bill because the lobbyists have seen it because the leadership has it. They just haven't disseminated it down the road because they know what is happening right now that they would be very mad about it. And they want to get this as close to Christmas as possible before they try to force it up the chain. So that is that is what I have heard. The

bill came out last night. I already have it downloaded on my computer. And just to explain like what I mean by it doesn't fund the government, there are 12 appropriations bills that are supposed to be done, carefully crafted for 2025. A continuing resolution just kicks the 2024 numbers. And all the agencies hate these because they can't start any new programs. There's a lot of problems when you're operating on a CR. And they're kind of used to doing that until December. They've testified, we're used to congressional dysfunction. So we've kind of changed how we do everything. Like we wait for our big purchases until the new year. And this is a new Congress. So this is even more so they are expecting this to be done. So it's kind of scandalous that they're finishing zero out of the 12 and kicking it now until March into a brand new Congress to begin with. But usually when they do these CRs, if there's something that's an emergency that might get stuck onto it. This is different in that like the omnibuses, when you are funding the government the proper way, they'll stick all kinds of shit onto those. Like have them hitchhike their way into law. I call these things dingleberries. Well, this is a continuing resolution. So it's still like not doing its job, which is one thousand five hundred forty seven pages full of dingleberries. It's I've never seen a continuing resolution like this. Because it's not.

It is an omnibus. It's like a sneaky,

sneaky, peaky omnibus. Yeah, it's the craziest. I mean, it's the perfect ending to this horrible Congress. They've done everything wrong. And so, yeah, and it's just stuffed with all kinds of stuff. There's something about the football stadium for the what do we call it now? The commanders or whatever.

I guess a stadium that they would be paving away for refurbishment of that stadium within D.C. Well, that seems like a great use of taxpayer funding from across the country. Well, they're good again. Yeah.

Because how could how could America ever somehow come up with the money through the private sector to build a stadium? It'd be impossible. There's not

enough people to like football to pay for it. It's not like the NFL is profitable.

Yeah, it's not popular or profitable. Yeah, you should be

able. I'm down to pay for their stadium, but they have to call themselves the Redskins again and they can never. And their mascot has to be more offensive. I like that idea. Yeah. I yeah. But this is all ridiculous. My

initial thought is you're describing this shit show to me is this is an absolutely ridiculous way to run the federal budget. But maybe if we give these same people more money and power, it would fix everything. Can I

can I can I float a thing that came into my head today though

i think right

now and i mean within the next year and i would i would say that this is something we could all get we could all get behind and listeners to this show could be the foot soldiers in a grassroots movement now's the time for gerrymander reform. Because right now, there are arguments to be said that gerrymandering actually prevented the Republicans from gaining more seats than they already had, because they actually had a better overall nationwide number in terms of people who voted for us for them. So right now they could make the argument like, OK, hey, the days of milk and honey are here forever. We're now the party of the working class, which means that we're going to do better on a wider scale than we did before, because it's the Democrats that are pocketed in smaller and smaller places. And therefore, in the way that we do these House appointments, that means that they are going to have less and less of a land to play with. But also, we're close enough to Democrats making gerrymandering such a priority that they would look like massive hypocrites if they didn't support any kind of reform. So there's a very small window where you could try to push something federally. I don't know what that would be. It would obviously butt up against the sovereignty that the states have to draw up their own districts. Maybe you tie it to funding for something. But yeah, that's I think that there's a small, small, small window where Republicans would be very horny for gerrymandering reform, whether or not depending on where it goes. So

I'm going to put a little bit of sand, bury your hopes, because I actually talked to Representative Ray LaHood about this, and he's one of the higher ranking dudes. And so he's from Illinois, gerrymandered by Democrats, big mad about it. And so he's against gerrymandering, but only in his state. So he makes us a state's right thing. And I think as long as you have that ideological barrier, I don't see the Republicans being down with doing something federally, even though like what's wrong in one state is wrong in 50. That argument didn't seem to like compute with him. So I just don't think the Republicans are there yet.

Well, right, the Republicans are probably are going to, at the very least, get four years of dealing with a four seat majority. And who knows whether or not they are going to lose it. History would say that they will in two years, but

they barely kept it this time. Great news. The great news is there's actually a lot of really hypocritical Republicans that only give a shit about states rights when it advances their options. But I am I am, as you all know, jurisdictionally fixated on what is the law. So if the law is, look, this is the states, it's their prerogative, they can do whatever they want, including stupid bullshit. I would support that if that is the law. Right. That being said, it was when it was when Colorado, I think, like full on legalized it, that he was like, well, we're going to sue Colorado in federal court through the interstate cause or cause. And I was like, wait, what? Like the Commerce Clause, the thing that you're constantly railing about as this bet noir of states rights and how they got like, you're going to use that. And it's like, oh, yeah, because you just you don't like marijuana. So when somebody else uses it, then all of a sudden it needs to be a federal issue. So figure out how to corner

the bastards. Yeah.

If

you argued to Republicans, if you went on Fox News enough and said if we had federal gerrymandering reform, Republicans would have a 20 seat majority in the House based on the numbers. You might have some people calling their congressman saying, get this Jerry out of, uh, out of the house. I don't care what the Mander family has done for us. I

mean, I would consider voting for them if they were actually serious about it. And just the fact that like, they know it's wrong. Like having that conversation with LaHood, there was no question about gerrymander as wrong. It was just he wanted it to stop in his state and not in the Republican state. So that's where it got icky. But they know. So I think if we made a fuss, there's a chance. I

also think that gerrymandering has had a point now where we're at the point of diminishing returns on it, where it has gone so far and these districts have gotten so ridiculous that they are easy to be wrong it's one thing if you're just generally drawing a circle around like okay liberals be living here like is there a college congratulations you get one district and we're going to go all the way through the neighborhood where all the professors live that's pretty much it that's now one district congratulations but when you do like like there's an argument to say that the republican gerrymander that descent that DeSantis did in Florida denied the Republicans like three seats because they wound up putting places that turned out to be voting redder than they were expecting into a Democrat held areas. And so I do think that that part of it is also like, hey, we have shifting coalitions. So in a world of shifting coalitions, all the math that you just did on these are Democrats, these are Republicans are all demographically based and they're changing. They're wrong. Like Texas, I'm sure the next time that they draw districts, they're going to draw their districts on the border different because now they're like, oh, holy shit. Now there's a bunch of Republicans that are going to quinceañeras. So now we want more of them.

Yeah. Well, just look at our district, Justin. Like our district is ridiculous. It shatters our community because we live austin and yet our district also includes a significant portion of san antonio which is like an hour

drive away well no no you're part of the larger austin san antonio metroplex like everybody everybody in texas thinks of it that way austin it's like you know round rock completely separate round rock completely yeah georgia that's like but like san antonio austin they're basically the same city they're what like three hours

that do that. It's not just ours. It's why? Yeah. So

now we are

in the same district. We were at one point, despite living 10 minutes away from each other, Jen, myself and Heaton had three different representatives in Congress because Austin had been sliced and diced deli thin by the Republican gerrymandering. My first book was called Laughter is Better Than

Communism. And it had it was just a grab bag of random things. And one of the chapters was gerrymandering as Warshaw tests, where I just looked at congressional districts and was like, what does this look like to you? This looks like to me, two squids having sex on a surfboard. This one looks like a monkey throwing a Frisbee. Like the New York ones are great because under federal law, roads and waterways count as continuous. So like in Illinois, you'll have situations where you can open all the doors of your car and be in three different congressional districts at once because the road is a completely separate congressional district than either field on either side of it this little vein right when we get into new york like new york city specifically where i lived for a while the like the waterway counts so there'll be like a pocket up in the bronx and then there'll be a pocket on staten island and it's just this

it's like like fucking tetris of just completely

unrelated communities but they vote republican or they vote Democrat or whatever the fuck they're trying to. Exactly. No,

no, no. In New York City, it's like, all right, well, you know, you have like three places where Republicans live. It's like the ass end of Queens, Staten Island, and then a few places in between. It's so they're just like, all right, let's link those through the narrows. It's like Coney Island to Staten Island, anywhere that you might possibly see a MAGA hat.

Although to get it a little bit weirder on that, like just I would I'm not going to go down a heat and rabbit hole on electoral reform here. But like I would do a lot like New York City itself has a bigger population than 30 U.S. states. Isn't that weird? Isn't that just weird that a city has a bigger population than 38 U.S. states? I'm like, we're due for an overhaul.

Yeah. Is it weird, though? Yes. There's a lot of land. This

is what I would do. And everybody in New York really likes this. I would say Long Island, which includes New York City, becomes its own state. New York City would become a city state. It would be New York City and Long Island. You'd call it Long Island would be the name of the state. And New York City would be its own state. And then upstate New York would probably be purple. And so like, and when I talk to anybody from New York, all the upstate New Yorkers who are pissed off their entire life, that whenever anybody says New York, you're like, oh, New York, I love New York. You live in Manhattan and they're like no i live in albany like they hate that right you're like you think new york city should be separate from your state they're like god yes meanwhile all the new york city people fucking hate the bumpkins up in new york state so like this would please everybody yeah

more states that's what i want certainly for new york state 150 more states Although you would have to just transplant. You have to give the state house to the new city. Like, cause they've screwed that up so bad. Like, like the, the, the, the actual state government of New York is one of the most fucked up corrupt things that I have ever seen in my entire life. And I was born in Florida. Yeah.

My my my old buddy, George, George and I, former governor of Oklahoma, I saw him last summer. He's like 98 now. He's doing great. We had margaritas. And Governor was like, Andy, I'm going to die soon. Make sure I'm buried in Pittsburgh County so I can keep voting.

All right, let's talk about the House, and that is specifically on the Democratic side. Representative Ocasio-Cortez lost her bid for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee to Representative Jerry Connolly of Virginia, who has served on the committee for 16 years. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride for Connolly. He has never chaired a committee in his career. That is up until now, and he still won't chair it, but he will be at least the ranking member. Connolly won with 131 votes to AOC 84 with support from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi ahead of President-elect Trump's term. By the way, Pelosi did this with a broken hip, which she broke while she was in Europe. She fell down a flight of stairs. I heard fucking.