I’m so glad to have been on vacation while the GOP squabbled over who would be Speaker of the House. I’ve got a couple hours of down time on Saturday and thought I’d jot down a few thoughts.
While Rep. Kevin McCarthy was auctioning off the last of his pride (and power) to get a job that nobody else in his party really wanted, I was marching in Second Lines, eating food fit for royalty, celebrating Haitian culture, and otherwise enjoying my stay in the Crescent City.
Suffice it to say, I had a great time, visiting with family and mostly staying off the internet. As I write this I have two more days to enjoy.
New Orleans really is a unique place, where the crosscurrents of history meet and culture is considered part of identity. It won’t exist in a couple of decades, either flooded out and/or over gentrified by the apologists for climate change.
Now to the business at hand.
It was easy to laugh at the spectacle occurring within the majority party in the House of Representatives. What a clown show, right? A group of people who’ve already proven they couldn’t pass a high school civics test strutted about like they were divinely endowed with a vision of….something.
Despite all the talk of the former president’s influence fading, it was his phone calls to recalcitrant members that ultimately turned the tide. It didn’t help the GOP’s cause when a near-fist fight broke out on the floor, especially because –according to Politico–several members had been drinking.
Just think. It could have ended up looking like one of those post-last call brawl videos at Waffle Houses around the country making the rounds on YouTube lately.
What did the insurgents want? Nothing and everything. Specific concessions meant little to them (until the donor class dialed up the posers in the group). It was ultimately about process, namely restarting the effort at a coup that began exactly one year to the day prior to the “agreement” being reached.
First order of business? Removing the metal detectors from the member entrances to the House floor. Apparently legislating is more satisfying when those you are debating have to wonder whether you have a rocket in your pocket or are just glad to see them.
We can expect to see an ongoing parade of political stunts capable of accomplishing nothing more than getting approving nods from right wing news media outlets. Mostly it will be just noise. Nobody really cares about Hunter Biden, et.al., or soliloquies about Jewish space lasers and whether Vice President Harris is really Black.
Fortunately, the most damaging things an insurgent-led House can do won’t be realized for another six to nine months when it comes time to bless next year’s budget and/or extend the debt ceiling.
I hope that we–as in the people who will be asked to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of austerity–will have time to get organized. Get your marching footwear ready, because everything non-defense related will be on the chopping block.
And if you think the dollars coming out of your paycheck to fund social security and medicare are safe, think again. The gaslighting of these greedy goblins includes selling the idea that these things are “entitlements.”
The more short term business for the now-revived coup plotters involves re-writing history to make themselves and their enablers out to be patriots while meting out punishments for those who stood up to be counted when democracy was under attack.
“He will have to live the entirety of his speakership in a straitjacket constructed by the rules that we’re working on now,” one of the extremist ring leaders, Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told reporters. Gaetz later explained away his willingness to accept McCarthy after vowing never to support McCarthy by saying “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.”
Congressman Jim Jordan, who nosed around the White House looking for pardons for GOP legislators, is going to be empowered to investigate the intelligence and criminal justice agencies of the federal government. That would be fine by me, since it behooves us to keep an eye on anybody granted extraordinary powers, except that the nihilist faction of the GOP has made it clear its real purpose will be to obstruct justice.
Via Politico:
A proposed subcommittee to investigate “weaponization” of the federal government — a key demand of House conservatives who delivered Speaker Kevin McCarthy the gavel — would be given sweeping investigatory powers that include explicit authority to review “ongoing criminal investigations.”
The language of the proposed “select subcommittee,” which would operate under the Judiciary Committee expected to be chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), also gives the panel power to access any information shared with the House Intelligence Committee. That panel typically receives the highest-level classified intelligence and briefings of any committee in Congress.
The people who tried to overthrow the government want the power to interfere in the investigation of their effort to overthrow the government. Some of what they want through official channels they won’t get, as even Trump-appointed judges acknowledge the existence of a separation of powers.
But if the keys to the storeroom of the House Intelligence committee are available, we can expect a flood of leaks to the media and even direct communication of data helpful to authoritarian allies* of the GOP nihilists, like Vladimir Putin.
* I wish these quislings could or would read a little history. Then they’d know they’ll be first to go should authoritarians have their way.
***
Okay, for those of you who need to laugh, so you don’t cry.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
h/t to @VeniceCurmudge1 for lead graphic