GOP Stinks Up the House of Representatives
Hoo, Boy! After winning a slim majority in the House of Representatives, Republicans are rolling up the sleeves and getting to work.
Just kidding, folks. But unless you’re paying attention, it might look like the nation is now marching to the beat of the MAGA drums.
On his first day, Speaker McCarthy led his troops through crucial votes, defunding the Internal Revenue Service and saving America from the scourge of late-term abortions.
While the House of Representatives may have passed legislation accomplishing these made up talking points, those actions won’t get consideration by the Senate, and the President won’t be signing them.
Also, the scheme to defund the IRS (the FBI and Homeland Security are also on the nutcase agenda) will increase the deficit by $155 billion over ten years. But that’s ok, because there’s another bill out there to eliminate the income tax, replace it with a 23% national sales tax, and simply stop funding the government if the 16th amendment isn’t repealed shortly thereafter.
This is all hot air, or, as I like to call it after a night of eating high fiber meals, farts. There’s nothing but a bad smell to be had here.
From Bloomberg Opinion:
After a campaign in which culture-war issues took the place of an actual governing agenda—and in which the GOP nominated numerous on-message candidates who were clearly unfit for office—House Republicans have found themselves in power without a plan.
As usual, the GOP is acting on the premise of most people sleeping through the few high school civics courses not yet defunded due to budget cuts and/or fears about Critical Race Theory.
They’re hoping to have yelled loud enough so constituents won’t notice the “much ado about nothing” part of their routine. And if people happen to notice, Republicans are set to blame their failures on the so-called deep state, a phrase that’s code for all the “others” complicit in whatever conspiracy is popular on Facebook.
I don’t know what legislation will come out of the bowels of the inaction faction, but you count on lots of noise over wokeness, especially in the military. The boogie man here is the effeminization of American manhood, i.e., going back to the good old days, when men were men, and sheep were afraid.
Here’s a snip by Paul Waldman from the Washington Post:
When the wokeness panic is aimed at the military, it isn’t about the military at all. In a world where most men are unable to demonstrate that their upper-body strength justifies their superior social status, some are desperate to defend a physical hierarchy wherever it can be found. But if women can do nearly all military jobs just as well as men, then what’s left?
What’s left for many on the right is the feeling of being unmoored from any order that makes sense to them. Government can’t be trusted, the media are corrupt, corporations are against you, and the only appropriate response is rage. That feeling, Republicans also believe, is political gold.
That’s why leading figures on the right are so eager to tell everyone we’re suffering through a “crisis” of manhood. The answers to the supposed crisis range from the banal to the bizarre: Few men are likely to follow Tucker Carlson’s advice to reinvigorate their manliness by tanning their testicles.
The point is the problem, not the solution; it’s to make men more insecure and angry, so they’ll find reassurance in joining the culture war and voting Republican.
Unlike joining the actual military, service in the culture war is easy. You don’t have to suffer through boot camp, or follow orders you don’t like, or risk your life. All you have to do is stay mad.
The crisis du jour among the “anger-tainment” types has to do with gas stoves. Since the additive in natural gas smells kinda “farty,” I suppose it’s appropriate.
Not that it matters, but this ado stems from a single study showing that children in homes with gas stoves have a higher incidence of asthma. The Consumer Product Safety Commission "is researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks," which would seem to be something in line with what taxpayers would expect of an agency with that name.
From The Week:(Emphasis mine)
The idea of a gas stove ban was broached by CPSC commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. in an interview with Bloomberg News published Monday. The indoor pollution from gas stoves "is a hidden hazard," he said. "Any option is on the table. Products that can't be made safe can be banned."
Trumka responded to concerns about his comments on Monday afternoon. "To be clear, CPSC isn't coming for anyone's gas stoves. Regulations apply to new products," he tweeted. "For Americans who CHOOSE to switch from gas to electric," there's a federal rebate of up to $840.
Cue the outrage, via Progress Report:
According to Tucker Carlson, who has made protecting kids his supposed life’s mission on TV, the one sentence quote about gas stoves proved that the government treated opioid addicts better than his put-upon audience.
“It’s totally fine to give fentanyl to addicts, but a gas stove is a threat to your life?” he asked, squinting in outrage. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, now the print mouthpiece of the Murdoch empire for which Carlson sets the tone, said it was all part of the left’s nefarious secret climate agenda. “It’s not enough to force Americans to buy electric cars,” the editorial board wrote as one sad entity. “We must all cook on electric stoves too.”
I think Oliver Willis has it right when he says that facts and doses of reality are of little use when it comes to the GOP these days:
The right thrives on fakery and we must move to acceptance of this fact. It isn’t coming back to reality and it hasn’t been there for over six decades. Their brains are stimulated by the constant bombardment of invented realities offered to them every day. Before one outrage has begun to fade (gay M&M’s!) another one comes along to supplant it (caravans of migrants surging to the border). It all sticks in their minds and their leaders conveniently tell them the bad things will go away if they turn out to vote for Republicans and against Democrats.
This is not a cycle that an application of logic can break. Focus instead on reality and people who believe in and are open to the real world and the real outrages that exist within it, doing harm to millions of people in America and around the world. Life is too short to be consumed with the right’s fakery and fantasy.
Leaving them to stew in their own made-up juices doesn’t feel right and it goes against the liberal compulsion to help someone in distress, but it is for the best. Let them drown in their outrage and instead focus on a real path to address real problems.
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com