Moses Mike and the Parting of the Red "C"

 

You know, Mike Johnson winning on the first ballot was something so not pre-determined (tho' Matt Gaetz from behind his awkward nose-contouring predicted it) that when it looked like he failed, some folks ran with the story, but he relied on a higher power, I think:

Trump. 

There was an undetermined "C" (the undecided caucus) that didn't want him, but he's Trump's guy. They "stashed the tellers" so the couple of holdouts that needed to be switched had time to be before gavel-bang.

Were they promised anything?

The Gaetz Report

 

We heard that the ethics investigation into Matt Gaetz would show illegal drug use (cocaine, molly), paying for (lots of) sex, including with a minor, and well, yeah. He did that stuff.  He left a pretty considerable trail of payments to women--$90K to various women. It's fairly unsavory:

The report noted that while all the women who testified said the sexual encounters with Gaetz were consensual, one woman told the committee the use of drugs at the parties and events they attended may have "impair[ed their] ability to really know what was going on or fully consent."

Another woman told the committee, "When I look back on certain moments, I feel violated."

For his part, Gaetz had tried (unsuccessfully) to sue to block the report from coming out.  This is because he knew it would look bad--full stop. He's not unaware of his conduct, he's just unclear on why it should have anything to do with how people judge him.

You really do hate to see a person go so wrong from the unfortunate effects of a very comfortable and privileged upbringing. 

Ask Not for Whom the MAGA Bell Tolls

 

When Catturd et als on the Twitter are planning for Speaker Moses to step down or get stepped on, I guess I'm going to be pretty basic to the Asics about it--THE GURLS ARE FIIIIIIYYYIIYIIYITINGGGGG!!!! I am so glad I did my nails for this. Park me in the front row, let me see! I got my fan in my bag because this church is heated. God is GOAT and prayers are heeded. 

But no, actually this is really bad. Somehow, we have stupid little children at the wheel of the shortbus that is GOP-led Congress, because there is no adult running the show or at the wheel. Musk encouraging maximum returns to wealthy shareholders and fucking up plans for actually doing good things for people like funding cancer research and all that IS this administration's actual ethos. Trump the King, and his Regent, Elon, chose this kind of legislative ain;t shitness. Musk lies and tries to manipulate the process because he is a dumbass. This is real work that shouldn't be SPUN.

And they think somehow, some way, Democrats are supposed to get in line and save their pretend-mandate asses to preserve the economy, so Trump gets into office under ideal conditions that he absolutely did not create?

Huh!

Have you seen what happened to the stock market since Trump rang his little bell:

Nancy Mace is not Okay

 

This picture is a screencap from Rep. Mace's own Twitter-feed (I'm still not calling it "X") and this is s few days in to her manic posting about bathrooms and there being a transwoman in Congress now, and this is not okay. I think (I hope) she Photoshopped this, because this is the cap I took from her own feed. What the hell is going on with these angles? 

This is pro-ana ideation, and I am worried about this woman. I get that attention whores and bullies try to do DARVO and present themselves as victims, and Rep. Mace's grown woman response to whether she is bullying soon to be Rep. McBride is very much to claim she is the victim here because she was a former victim of rape and assault. But she also is telling us she lost 30 pounds because of a traumatic event that triggered her PTSD, and I am not going to front that I know what's up with all that. 

She has claimed that she was threatened as a rape victim by even being asked why as a rape victim she supported Trump and other rapist candidates and political figures. And received threats, because I guess that is a thing. 

Rest in Power, Sheila Jackson Lee

 

The time is now to unite behind the President and get to work beating Donald Trump — one last time. https://t.co/d84qoX5n5h

— Sheila Jackson Lee (@SJacksonLee) July 19, 2024

What an admirable career of fighting for others! In that spirit, let's get right, unite, and fight.

Boebert on Top

 

One of the primaries I was interested in this year was Lauren Boebert's primary in CO-4, having moved from CO-3 to get a better chance at keeping a seat. After all, her "theatrics" that got her kicked out of a musical last year weren't going to do her any favors, were they? 

What do you think? She beat out a field that included five others. 

This goes a long way to confirming my suspicion that Republicans want mascots, not serious people. Name recognition because of, not in spite of, her often childish and extreme behavior worked for, not against her. (And Twitter tells me a few people familiar with CO politics don't necessarily think there was a better candidate to get behind.) 

This is a GOP problem--it's just that when people get down to voting for literally anyone with an "R" after their name, well, they will, won't they? They can't get better candidates that way. But then again, they don't seem to want them. 

MTG Doesn't Know the House She Sits In

 

SEE IT FOR YOURSELF: The Uniparty cheers for the man who is actually running the House, Hakeem Jeffries. pic.twitter.com/nQcrRmSTRU

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 9, 2024

 Marjorie Taylor Greene, thinks that she has revealed that there is a "Uniparty" where somehow MAGA Mike Johnson, who is going along with 2020 election denial right this very day, and who vowed to do whatever was in his power to STOP the charges and investigation against Trump, is basically Jamie Raskin in Republican drag. 

OK, Marge at Large. Accept your soggy potato chip. 

MTG would rather have bad attention and be considered a chaos agent, a bad Republican, and so on, than for people to not recognize her at all. 

All very well and good. She is a special one of a kind snowflake in a very unique globe called the planet Earth, existing only this one time in cosmic history. She also isn't helping anyone else but mostly getting attention for herself and helping Donald Trump. Probably because she thinks Donald Trump will in turn do things for her.

The Mayorkas Impeachment was Mercy-Killed

 

JUST IN: The Senate has killed a second article of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ending the House GOP-led efforts to oust him https://t.co/rQYK9hn0cb

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 17, 2024

Republicans can say whatever they like about precedent and whether the vote has an impact on future impeachments (I say this just means they shouldn't be proposed frivolously without an actual crime or misdemeanor--and for a bad precedent, they can look to the two times they failed to convict Trump of things he absolutely did).

Democrats just spared the absolutely backwards dog and pony show that they were going to put on. Honestly, it was a gift. Now very valued House GOP stalwarts can get on with important business like spreading Russian propaganda, talking about "space lasers" and holding "Appliance Week". 

 

TWGB: Impeaching Trump By Accident?

 

We are not at a serious point in this Biden impeachment inquiry--that much is sure. In the spirit of Jim Jordan, who has unseriously referenced random unrelated things like the 1/6 pipe bomb, the bag of coke in the White House, and the leaked Dobbs opinion, to do what other than pretend the Biden Administration is awash in scandal, I don't know, let me get my inappropriate rhetoric on:

You know how we have all these options in the "dairy" section of the supermarket these days? Vegan and lactose-free vegetable-and-nut based milk substitutes showing up on our shelves to give options to people who either can't or prefer not to drink animal milk? Anyway, I see these varieties and am pretty happy that people have choices to fulfil their own unique dietary requirements and tastes. Almond and oat milk both taste pretty good to me. But I see some people complain: How can you milk a soybean? How can you milk a cashew? 

Well, I don't know about that. What I do know is that in this impeachment inquiry, the House Republicans don't have beans and they don't have nuts, so I don't know where they think the milk is coming from, but the cow done died ages ago. 

And that is why in the image above, Rep. Raskin is smiling and Comer looks like his life is flashing before his eyes. 

Biden's Memory and Hur's

 

Memory is a motherfucker. That's something I picked up from Death and Other Details. But also from reality. Grief doesn't fix things into stone, like when you lost someone. You still have them, as a part of you, like a phantom limb, wearing their conversations in your mind. It can be a comfort and not a comfort all at once. You might know facts intellectually, but they don't exist in your lived reality. It's like two things, overlapping--what did happen, and what it feels like. 

Being human, being mortal, is weird. It just is. But the funny old thing is, Joe Biden is actually tracking quite well with reality. He has a lot of life experience. He can tell you about it in great detail. Damn near photographically. He also has had access to classified information and knows very well what to do and not to do with it. And his situation was not one damn thing like former President Trump's. There is no way to determine intentionality with what was retained by Biden, and some of what Hur looked at was diaries that were not a part of the PRA. Hur's characterization of Biden's memory was gratuitous and biased. 

You Know What They Are Going to Do?

 

Reporter: You yourself were part of killing the senate compromise bill. You say there need to be solutions, what are house Republicans doing to get to a solution on the border and on Ukraine? Or are you going to actually do nothing? pic.twitter.com/3CjaN9BCx0

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 14, 2024

The last post, I suggested some things that the House might be doing next, and my goodness! It turns out, the answer is--

Nothing. They are taking off for two weeks.  

You have to ask yourself--can you really say that people are earning their government paycheck if they can't be counted on to work in an election year because actually doing real stuff (as opposed to political stunts) is complicated and might have some kind of political blowback? And what does it say about a person who believes they were called to lead (Mike Johnson) who refuses to bring up a vote even when there are negative consequences?  (His fuckery regarding immigration also has immediate effects.) 

That's not leadership at all.

There is no good reason to vote for Republicans. Ever.

Look, House Republicans Did Something!

 

They managed to get Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas impeached (by one vote) for the high crimes and misdemeanors of not being in a Republican Administration and them not having bugger-all else to show for themselves. This is the very important vote that Rep. Steve Scalise came back from cancer treatment for. This would have been a tie if one Democratic member wasn't out with Covid-19. They rushed to get this in ahead of Tom Suozzi's win in NY-03. 

Oh, Democrats accomplished something, too, last night. They flipped George Santos' seat, making a Republican slim majority that much slimmer. I'm sure that will help reduce the chaos! (No. I am being sarcastic,) Is it unreasonable to suggest, though, that a Democrat got elected in large part because Republican's seem like they can't get things done? 

Is Mayorkas likely to be convicted for the high crime of being a Democrat in the Senate? No. But that isn't the point. It was about sticking up a stubby middle finger at Democrats for any reason. You may ask, isn't it hypocritical after the games Speaker Johnson has been playing regarding the border?

House Republicans Had Some Kind of Day

 

Things aren't great with the House Republicans. For one thing, some of them are big mad at Speaker Mike Johnson for trying to do something useful like make the government still happen, in part because it involves dealing with Democrats and obviously, that's insane. They tanked some rules just from spite because they're salty about it.  And poor Mike Johnson has to make a pilgrimage to Godfather Trump to get his blessing on the whole avoiding a shutdown thing, which is awkward, because we all know Trump wants the economy to crash because he absolutely said so. 

I have some idea of the kind of arguments that have to be made. If House Republicans are responsible for a shutdown--all Republicans could be blamed, including Trump. Whether Trump can hear arguments like that is dicey, though. Ditto (or maybe that should be "MAGA-dittoes") for the mascots some red districts have elected to Congress--they were elected to sow chaos and it really shows. They want a shutdown for the same reason Patriarch Newt Gingrich normalized Republicans causing shutdowns--just burning spite against the idea of doing government at all. 

This is why the House sucked out loud in 2023. They couldn't pass legislation for shit and just did mascot stuff. Retiring Rep. McHenry referred to it as "a very actively stupid political environment" and that sounds exactly right. 

What the Biden Impeachment Inquiry is About

 

Earlier this year, I wrote a blogpost about the House GOP Biden impeachment inquiry back when I agreed with Rep. Raskin that this inquiry has been an impeachment about nothing, but now I'm pretty sure I see exactly what's it's about. Thanks to Rep. Troy Nehls, we can all appreciate what it's for: "Donald J. Trump 2024, Baby!"   (Okay, I lie--I always knew it was exactly about that.) 

I mean, Trump's legal fund money is going to Trump himself and his PAC money is paying his own legal bills, so why not have the taxpayers fund an anti-Biden campaign for him? And that's what he wants, so that's what every little GOP congressperson in the House gave him. 

I mean, here's a snip about what Trump wants from July:

Former president Donald Trump called on congressional Republicans to withhold military support for Ukraine until the Biden administration cooperates with their investigations into the president and his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

The demand, delivered at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, echoed Trump’s conduct at issue during his first impeachment, when Trump withheld aid from Ukraine while pressuring the country’s president to announce an investigation of Biden.

“Congress should refuse to authorize a single additional shipment of our depleted weapons stockpiles … to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden Crime Family’s corrupt business dealings,” Trump said at the rally. He added that any Republican lawmakers who didn’t join the effort should face primary challenges, a tactic he used last year to unseat Republicans who voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

That little bit there? "Echoed Trump's conduct at issue during his first impeachment." It's a great touch because it sure does! The US conditions aid to Ukraine (although the Republicans in congress are playing their fund-denial games with border security) and the pay-off is dirtying up Biden so that Trump can win re-election! See how in those paragraphs, you can understand who is doing what for whom, to get what in return? And what should happen to GOP reps who don't do what Trump wants?

Yeah, well, after all the "inquiring" that Comer, Jordan, and Smith have done so far, we still don't have anything like that for how Hunter Biden paying back his loans equals political favors the senior Biden was going to do for...anybody.  

Now, Hunter Biden showed up yesterday and called out the House GOP over their subpoena shenanigans, letting them know he would give a deposition, but not behind closed doors. Sounds to me like he isn't hiding something, the House GOP are. After all, I remember when they just hated closed door depositions. Then they realized that if they used closed-door depositions, their failures wouldn't be nearly as, um, public.

And then they could keep up the lying. And I while I certainly could expect less from them (I mean, MTG wants to toss around revenge porn again, I just know it), I trust they will continue to limbo under my expectations. 

The House GOP is Not Likely to Improve

 

Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is resigning his seat and will be gone at the end of the month. I can't say anything more than the simple one-line epitaph written here: 

McCarthy is the only speaker in history to be voted out of the job.

He's the only speaker, I believe, who needed 15 votes to get chosen as speaker and did so, in a bit of foreshadowing, having accepted that a simple vote would oust him from that role, which several of his unruly caucus were only too pleased to make. Never had anyone's speakership so underlined the perils of trying to operate with a slim margin when, in addition, you get no respect. 

He does this after another rare occurrence: the expulsion of Rep. George Santos. The drama that was the Congressman from NY's 3rd District went on for entirely too long--it probably shouldn't have even begun if political vetting were still a thing among Republicans. 

Let me help. This is someone who might be running in the special election to replace Santos:

WASHINGTON — A New York man who is running for the congressional seat previously held by George Santos was convicted this week of charges relating to the Jan. 6 riot after he testified at his trial that he didn't know Congress convened inside the Capitol.

Philip Sean Grillo, of Queens, was found guilty Tuesday of the felony charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, along with a series of misdemeanors like entering restricted grounds and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, the Justice Department said in a news release.

See. Should someone go straightaway from allegedly not knowing Congress convened in the Capitol to working there after having illegally entered it? I think that sounds like the kind of sketchy thing the party should worry about.

Anthony DeVolder, We Hardly Knew Ya!

 

CNN's Manu Raju and other reporters try to get a word with George Santos after the House votes to expel him,

He says nothing, jumps into a car, and quickly leaves the scene. pic.twitter.com/7KdiUWrcwW

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 1, 2023

Despite the wishes of the House Gop leadership (such as they are), George Anthony Devolder Santos (and occasionally Zabrovsky) is no longer in congress. This is a damn shame for a nice boy who lost his momma at least two times from 9/11, who definitely won't be trash-talking the hell out of his former colleagues, now. 

The special election is going to be in February. Won't that be fun! 

Somehow I do not think we have seen the last of him, though.... 

UPDATE:  As Santos promised, the Festivus Airing of Grievances is upon us. 

UPDATE: Holy crap, I didn't think they'd be pitching a movie QUITE this FAST! 

GOP GONE WILD!!!

 

What in the hell was up today in Congress? First off, it seems like former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy nailed Tim Burchett in the kidneys so hard that Matt Gaetz had to file a report. That's wild. Apparently, McCarthy isn't settling into his post-Speaker life that great. And I do not know what is up between Gaetz and McCarthy but the mutual disrespect is real. Also, McCarthy has been talking shit about his fellow Republicans and this isn't the first time. 

Sounds very stressful.

Also, in the Senate, Markwayne Mullin thought he'd try to throw down with a Teamster on the floor and it got denied by Senator Bernie Sanders, a damn adult in the room. Mullin later appealed on Twitter like this:

For the benefit of the Comfortably Smugs and probably Catturds of the social mediaverse. Look at those guns and those firearms. At the risk of sounding sexist: this man is benching a lot of male insecurity and supplementing with Daddy issues. Somebody hand him a testosterone wubbie to suck on. 

James Comer got DAGGONE DEFENSIVE when Jared "the Smurf" Moskowitz called him out on his own loan to his brother of $200K--exactly like the Crime Family Bidens' Terrible Secret! Why so tense? I wonder? 

Shit, why is everybody so tense?  Is it because the Christian Nationalist who was supposed to be hardcore MAGA offered a clean CR and isn't a big fan of a Biden impeachment because there's no "there", there? (MTG has already voiced her threats misgivings.)

What's next? Is this just a case of elephant musth? Or can we expect MTG to kneecap Lauren Boebert like she was Nancy Kerrigan? (She been going around calling her a "whore" which is just hours of family entertainment where I come from.) Should we expect Harriet Hageman to finally lasso and hogtie somebody like I truly think she's been fixing to do? 

I don't even want to pretend I know. I only know I want to blame Trump because he made violence feel more like an acceptable thing, but that isn't it exactly, either, is it? 

The Haunting of the House on the Hill

 

The thing that alarms me about the new Speaker of the House is he's explicitly against the separation of church and state in a way that a lot of Republicans just aren't that outspoken about. They very well might well be theocrats to some degree: they just aren't that obviously so. Ted Cruz's dad is Seven Mountains dominionist. We don't talk about it that much. Josh Hawley has some Christian nationalist vibes. 

But Mike Johnson is just a flat-out a denier of the separation of church and state, to the extent that he credits supernaturalism (God's providence, or anointing) for the raising up of leaders (including an embrace of the historical revisionism of David Barton regarding the subject). It's a problem: the halls of Congress really should not be haunted by assorted head spooks like the various religious notions of its members. We elect leaders by popular choice: that means that the people vote for them, not that they are picked by someone's idea of the cosmic creator of all the things. I could suggest an empirical experiment of the success of God doing the things by inviting all the Bible-believers to stay home on election day, and I would probably find myself shocked! by their lack of faith that works aren't actually getting electoral things done IRL. 

Johnson is like the Forrest Gump of theocracy: he took down his podcasts so we wouldn't know how fringe he is. His wife, who is all about the LGBT conversion, took down her website, too.  Almost as if people might be horrified at what their actual beliefs are. But he's been associated with crisis pregnancy centers. His "adoption" of his 14 year old son at age 25 while still unmarried via the troubled Young Life Ministries is suspect as hell. 

The House GOP Found Their Johnson

 

You know, usually I like to make link-heavy blog posts that substantiate all the facts I drop in one of my screeds, but I will leave the research on this one to my readers because I had limited connectivity to the internet this week and have a whole carton of huevos to fry. But here's the funny thing to me: 

Look at the happy-ass motherfuckers in the picture above.  They think they just got their shit together and ended a long national nightmare. They just picked the most problematic of dudes to unify themselves around. He doesn't look like a whole lot, but whoo, this dude right here. 

This is a Christian nationalist of the kind it's been my whole life's business to want to take down. He's anti-science: a young earth creationist who doesn't believe in climate change. That right there is an air raid siren for me: he does not care about facts and doesn't care whether facts are even useful to the betterment of life for other people. He talks in terms of "belief" because empirical knowledge is inconvenient to his worldview. He is a 2020 election denier: that right there--he cares about power, and GOD DAMN the facts. 

He says he finds his proofs in Scripture: people write books all the time, but if you "believe in" God--who do you think put facts in the world? It feels very much to me like people who deny empirical knowledge are the ones really denying a revelation that can be understood and made accessible, and instead support a kind of false-witness bearing of twisting Scripture to one's own ends. 

Jim Jordan--Ineffective Thug (UPDATED)

 

There's a handful of things we know about Jim Jordan, who might have a vote Thursday to once again not be named Speaker of the House--he's Trump's minion (small, yellow, attendant to a real villain, speaks gibberish), he turned a blind eye to sexual abuse when he was a wrestling coach, and he's never actually passed any legislation at all during his congressional career.  Based on his failed votes so far for the gavel, I'm not even sure he can count votes.

But the thing I really am impressed with is that his manner of whipping votes for the speakership is open thuggery. Just right out there--strongarming folks. It's like he realized he could not win people over with his record or his winning personality, so, he just went directly to intimidation tactics. 

So when the wife of a Republican representative gets anonymous messages about her spouse, that's sort of gross, right? It's a bad look. If you want to unite the party behind you--how is threatening people the way to convince them you're looking out for the team?

It seems more like a way to say Team Jordan is a party of one--out for himself.