Heh.

I does look kinda weird, doesn't it.

It's so funny - in a good way - how we all secretly, ahem, wish for an edit function.

A peace deal is needed, you say? Why not enforce the existing peace deal that’s been in effect since 1994?

That’s when the Budapest Memorandum was signed by Ukraine and Russia, the UK and America guaranteeing Ukraine’s borders in exchange for all the nukes they inherited upon (overwhelmingly) declaring independence.

Russia broke this arrangement in 2014 when it annexed Crimea. How is it not incumbent on the West to honor their agreements?

Also, why would anyone whatsoever trust any deal with Putin? Most experts believe that it would merely allow Putin to build up and then continue the campaign.

I don't consider them a mere gimmick. What you can pass (if anything) with two different majorities for the different parts is likely to be different from what you can pass as one big TINA omnibus bill. Ideally, every legislator would have equal potential to influence policy, with the amount actualized being a function of how persuasive their colleagues find them to be, and how far their constituents trust them to make deals that have good parts and bad parts but are good deals overall from the constituents' point of view -- or rather, from the point of view that the constituents trust that they would have if they had to get close enough to see how the sausage is made.

Theoretically, good legislation isn't what you get when the right people win. It's what you get when no one loses too badly, when the legislative session is taken as a whole. The right to political representation is a right, and the thing about rights is that the bad guys have them too. If they only went to those whom someone deems to be good guys, they would be privileges, not rights.

One big omnibus bill seems more likely to generate overall losers, than if they could pass a dozen bills with different majorities, where everyone gets a reasonable chance to be in the majority at least some of the time.

Johnson calls this a "laddered" approach, although in the end his ladder wound up having only two steps on it.

So it's actually a step stool... suits them.

Originally he had proposed a separate deadline for each of the appropriations bills, one after the other.

Can't meet a single deadline so why not multiply that by a factor of twelve? /sarcasm And that idiotic "reasoning" right there is why these Trumpublican clowns cannot and will not ever be able to govern.

This would probably have resulted in chaos, so he was convinced to dial that idea back to just two deadlines.

Two deadlines they can never and will never meet without help from Democrats... because they cannot govern.

But, Ukraine is living from handout to handout so the situation there is critical through to the end of the year.

Perhaps, it is time for peace negotiations with the problem being that Ukraine probably won't get as good a deal as was in the cards and brokered by Israel of all nations that Z rejected during the early days of this futile war on the advice of ... wait for it ... his American so-called friends.

Hopefully, Ukrainian leaders have learned their lesson, albeit the hardest way possible, not to rely so heavily on the advice of the US which clearly has only its own narrow interests at heart and not those of Ukraine and its people.

As for Israel, annexation of Gaza - the northern half, at least - may be complete by the end of year, without needing more financial support from the US until the new year. Which is so NOT in the national security interests of America and Americans but, what are ya gonna do? ;)