Could House Speaker Kevin McCarthy be in a stronger position than ANYONE (including him) realize?

Politics aside, he is doing a horrible job as Speaker. He can't control a sizable portion of his party. He couldn't even get enough votes to even discuss a defense authorization bill, something that is usually a noncontroversial for Republicans. He tiptoes around the MAGAs, deathly afraid that someone (and it only takes one) to call for a vote to get rid of him.

However... what if it is an empty threat?

I think that if a vote to get rid of him were called, it would fail. If it passed? No one would step forward to replace him. They see it is a tough and thankless job, nearly impossible to get the various Republican factions to move in the same general direction, let alone lockstep. He might even be voted back in.

Given this, it would be in his, his party's, and even our country's best interest to ignore the MAGATs. He could even reach across the aisle for votes on issues that both sides could agree on, like bringing the defense authorization bill to the floor.

Ah, but there's the rub. McCarthy has no spine. He wouldn't dare ask for votes from the Democrats because that would violate the Republican self-imposed rule to only vote on motions that can pass with only Republican votes.

Too bad. It would be better for the country if he had more courage. Then again, maybe not. A flailing Republican party is amusing to watch, and they are limited in the evil they can do. Then again, they are unable to do even the necessary things...

A new hard drive, a question about file transfer.

A hard drive monitoring utility I have (Hard Disk Sentinel Pro) has warned me that my data drive is on its last legs. As usual these days I was able to get a larger one at a cheaper price than what I bought the old one at.

I installed and formatted it with little problem. However, every clone or transfer app I've tried has choked. I think the issue might be related to the failing sectors. I've tried fixing the old drive with chkdsk, but it tells me the drive's in use. I try to boot to the command prompt, and I get a message asking me for the admin password, but the one I enter it says it's wrong. Even after I change it...

Anyway, (sorry for taking the long way to get to my question), since it's not my boot drive, is there any reason why I can't just drag and copy the files to the new drive? I guess I should do only a couple of hundred gigs at a time (going from 2TB to 4TB) to keep things from choking. After I'm satisfied the transfer is successful, I'll remove the old hard drive and give its drive letter to the new one.

Any thoughts?

A disturbing new detail about the photo of the classified documents found in Trump's possession...

It's been more than 15 years since I had to handle cover sheets for classified documents, but the information in this article is 100% correct.

Folks, it's as bad as we had feared. I had suspected that this had been done, but thought there was no way to tell. Fortunately, I was wrong. From Daily Kos:

When I first saw the photo of Exhibit 2A, I blanched. Trump tried to distract by ranting about the papers dumped on his carpet. That was just a feeble attempt at misdirection. What struck me was the document placed front and center, and the ruler.

Those documents aren’t dumped randomly on the carpet. They are being displayed in a very deliberate way. They are physical evidence that somebody committed a very serious crime. The kind of crime that lands people in a Supermax prison.

Look at the Secret//SCI document bounded by the ruler. Why did they put a ruler there? That’s a good question. Everyone knows the size of a standard sheet of paper. You don’t need a ruler to measure it. If you look up towards the left, you will see there are at least two other cover sheets with a similar border. Notice anything different?

In case you missed it, look at the border around the document that is front and center. If that was an original document, there should be no white border. You see the cover sheets for these sort of documents are printed by the US government printing office. They are specifically designed to signal the status of the document they cover. Now it would be nice to know if someone took a document and copied it. Turns out that is part of the design of the cover sheet.

Ok, I give up. I agree that a judge in Texas can overrule the FDA. Therefore...

A judge in California can overrule the FDA's classification of Marijuana and make it legal for recreational use.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reveals What She And Paul Gosar Discussed On House Floor

Source: Huffington Post

When Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Paul Gosar were spotted conversing on the House floor Tuesday afternoon, observers were curious to know what the New York Democrat and Arizona Republican could have to chat about so casually. After all, Gosar was stripped of his committee appointments in 2021 for posting an anime video of himself attacking and killing Ocasio-Cortez.

The topic at hand turned out to be what was playing out in front of them, as the new Republican majority attempted and failed to elect a House speaker. Without a House speaker, none of the representatives could be sworn in, and House business was at a standstill.

Ocasio-Cortez told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner later Tuesday that Gosar had brought up the possibility of Republicans cutting a deal with Democrats that could secure the speakership for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Challenges brought by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and others meant that three rounds of voting on Tuesday failed to reach the necessary total to elect McCarthy.

Ocasio-Cortez said with a laugh: “I think in chaos anything is possible, especially in this era.” But she signaled that the possibility of a deal of any kind was not going to happen.


Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-paul-gosar-house-speaker_n_63b59314e4b0d6f0b9f739c4