"In a 54-46 vote the Senate approved the bill from the House which cut the funding of the Supreme Court to minimal levels and removed any funding at all for hiring clerks."

Is John Roberts going to whip out his checkbook to cover payroll?

I feel like we're getting a bit silly at this point. But to continue that train of though: SCOTUS clerks are now unpaid, further ensuring that only those already wealthy can afford to take the position.

> what Senate Republicans did

Party politics has become an increasingly tit for tat series of one side violating a norm, followed by the other side one-upping them.

It's basically a war of attrition at this point.

Republicans are going to push through a new court appointee, largely "because fuck you, that's why."

If Democrats win control of either the Presidency or the Senate, expect them to do something similar. Also simply "because fuck you."

At some point it's going to all boil over, and who knows where that will end up.

This is literally the definition of iterated prisoner’s dilemma. The way to break the cycle and see more cooperation is to keep 1 round of memory. Put another way, acknowledge that norm breaking (defection) on round X was caused by norm breaking on round X-1 and allow it (or try to scale it back to an equivalent exception). What doesn’t work is ignoring all the times you defected and then trying to get in one last escalated defection because “fuck you, that’s why”

Unfortunately, that requires adults who can work together and a public that can deal with nuance.

> The way to break the cycle and see more cooperation is to keep 1 round of memory.

And betray on the last round, because that can only help you.

But since that means everyone should betray on the last round, everyone should also betray on the second last round since that won't effect your opponents behavior next round anyways (they're already going to betray).

And the third from last round.

And fourth...

And... actually just always betray.

Simple computer algorithms do not fully capture the real world. And the simple algorithm that happens to have won a single tournament in which players could not see what other players were doing and adjust their strategy is not going to translate well to the real world.

Norms are by mutual consent.

So literally nothing like the prisoner's dilemma, iterated or otherwise.

Bullshit, it just takes one to walk away from the pissing contest. The Republicans are actively contesting, the Democrats are not yet and could still choose to not engage in the pissing contest.