United States Congress of Fail - Part 4

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Yet Grassley won't grow a pair and tell the Orange Menace to knock it off.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The likely next speaker of the House is a mindless sycophant"

Spoiler

On the evidence of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s CNN interview over the weekend, the likely next speaker of the House is a mindless sycophant and a threat to the constitutional order.

Confronted with a simple ethical question — would he condemn demonstrable White House lies in covering up President Trump’s role in drafting his son’s account of the now-infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians — McCarthy, a California Republican, was initially dumbstruck, then shifted into a prerecorded attack on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. It would have been easy enough to say: “The president and his team are hurting themselves with unnecessary falsehoods. Their overall case, however, is strong.” But such is the atmosphere of intimidation in the Republican Party that affirming the Ninth Commandment is seen as an act of disloyalty. When the king is a liar, truth becomes treason.

For all his faults, Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was occasionally capable of showing some ethical outrage. (After Trump attacked U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel as biased because of his ethnicity, Ryan called it “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”) McCarthy seems to be more of a memory-foam Republican — taking the exact shape of presidential pressure. Ryan was clearly uncomfortable when ignoring his principles. McCarthy seems to view surrender to the president as a matter of principle — as part of the tribal code of the partisan. His is the loyalty of the lap dog, the devotion of the dupe.

This is problematic for at least two reasons. First, Trump and his team are testing the limits of executive power in increasingly bold and reckless ways. I have sympathy for an energetic executive but Trump and his lawyers are not just asserting presidential freedom of action, but presidential freedom from accountability. According to Trump and his lawyers, the president’s role as chief law enforcement officer gives him “absolute” power to fire investigators, terminate investigations and pardon himself at any time, for any reason. This means obstruction of justice by the president is a practical impossibility, because his actions are the definition of justice.

Since, in this view, any violation of federal law by the president (including, according to his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the shooting of former FBI director James B. Comey) could be immediately self-pardoned — and any resulting investigation ended on his order — the only relevant legal check during his time in office is impeachment. And since the Constitution makes impeachment so difficult — requiring a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Senate for conviction and removal — any president who retains the loyalty of his party has essentially no practical limits on his power in criminal matters.

This brings us to the second, less obvious reason McCarthy’s sycophancy is alarming: the strength of the economy. A 3.8 percent unemployment rate — the lowest in 18 years — is good for the country. It also creates an atmosphere in which a leader might grab powers with less dissent. This is precisely what happened in Turkey, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s oppressive populism was enabled by strong economic growth. The same might be argued about Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez initially used his nation’s oil wealth to ease the way toward authoritarianism.

American institutions are stronger than those of Turkey or Venezuela. But one reason they are stronger is a balance of institutional power in which the legislature is willing to check the excessive ambitions of the executive branch.

Would McCarthy be willing to play that role as speaker? Consider the scenario in which Republicans narrowly maintain control of the House in November’s midterm elections — which Trump would claim as complete vindication for his approach to governing. Suppose the economy is roaring along, providing a partisan talking point to every elected Republican. In this environment, will the FBI survive as an independent institution? Will all the corruption of Trump’s campaign team, his White House appointments, his family and his own past business and political dealings be washed away in a flood of self-interested pardons? Will Trump be able to harass and intimidate his enemies in politics, business and the media with impunity?

The president has now claimed the entire executive branch as his private fiefdom, and every federal law enforcement official as his personal servant. Would a Speaker McCarthy stand athwart Trumpism yelling “Stop!”? There is no reason to think it. Daniel Webster once described a member of Congress as “a sentinel on the watchtower of liberty.” McCarthy has been a leader in Trump’s troop of enablers. America urgently requires leaders made of sterner stuff.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Hawaii senator: 

 

[47of74]

18 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Yet Grassley won't grow a pair and tell the Orange Menace to knock it off.

Yeah, Grassley is waaaaaaay past his sell by date.  I wish to Christ the voters would retire him and vote someone else in to office.  I've been saying for years now that we need a hard, pipe hitting liberal to run against Grassley.  Someone who will take on him and the Steve King wing of the state.

[formergothardite]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

Hawaii senator: 

 

I don't really understand this. Can someone explain?

[CTRLZero]

9 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

I don't really understand this. Can someone explain?

Someone in the responses said it means the Eagles dis-invitation is a distraction (like so many other things the Administration throws at us), so let's get back to talking about real issues, like health care.  That's my guess, too.

[AmazonGrace]

That's pretty much it, I think... In the same vein, Sam Bee and Roseanne remind us that 4500 people died in Puerto Rico.

It seems every horrible thing that Trump does is a distraction from some other horrible thing that he does.

[AmazonGrace]

You can trust GOP. They're on board with the president pardoning himself.

and this thread by Ted Cruz

 

[candygirl200413]

It's kind of annoying, like we can care/we have to care about multiple things that this administration is doing. 

[Ali]

If Hillary had tried to pardon herself or if Obama had tried to pardon himself, the Republicans would have fit of bigly proportions.

[47of74]

Every time I ask how fucking stupid Republican congress people can get someone comes along to prove they can get even more stupid than I thought.

Quote

A Georgia Congressman tweeted and deleted a D-Day blunder.

Rep. Drew Ferguson, who is running for reelection in Georgia’s Third District, marked the 74th anniversary of the allied invasion of Normandy with an image of soldiers for Nazi Germany and a tank with the Iron Cross, a symbol of the German military.

The tweet also featured a quote from Harry Truman, who was not yet president on June 6, 1944.

“The heroism of our own troops.. Was matched by that of the armed forces of the nations that fought by our side.. They absorbed the blows.. And they shared to the full in the ultimate destruction of our enemy,” reads the Truman quote – which is engraved at the National World War Two Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Fuck YOU Ferguson. 

[fraurosena]

On 6/5/2018 at 12:27 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

the likely next speaker of the House is a mindless sycophant and a threat to the constitutional order.

Not much of a difference with the current one then.

[GreyhoundFan]

Spineless Repugs:

 

[Cartmann99]

17 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Spineless Repugs:

 

I'm not surprised to see that my congresscritter is still a spineless jackass, but this quote from Newt Gingrich really made me snort:

Quote

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the reaction from Congress would be “devastating” if Trump pardoned himself.

“If a president was dumb enough to pardon himself, that would be such an arrogant statement of power that the House would probably impeach him in a week and the Senate would convict him,” Gingrich told CBS.

Oh honey, really? If Trump pardoned himself, you and the Trump sycophants in Congress would be fighting over who gets to fellate him first on Faux. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Steve King is at it again 

 

[Howl]

Mark Sanford is now free to hike the Appalachian Trail for real; he lost his South Carolina primary to someone even more right wing.   Sanford had criticized Trump and (somewhat ironically IMHO) called Trump's affair with Stormy Daniels “deeply troubling”; Trump responded by endorsing his opponent, saying that Sanford would be better off in Argentina (!). 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republican senators lash out at each other inside private luncheon"

Spoiler

Heated confrontations erupted inside a Senate Republican luncheon on Wednesday as lawmakers traded unusually personal and sometimes profane attacks on one another.

At the center of the ruckus was Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who argued separately with Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), according to a person who attended the lunch and another who was briefed on it.

Graham, a traditional Republican hawk, took issue with an amendment Lee was pushing to the annual defense bill. His measure was designed to protect Americans from detention without charge or trial.

According to the person who attended the lunch, Graham accused Lee of pressing for the amendment to raise money, prompting the normally polite and low-key senator to snap back at him.

“Like hell I’m doing that!” Lee responded.

Graham later apologized to Lee, and Lee accepted. The Mormon senator told Graham that if he drank beer, he would take him out for one.

But the fireworks didn’t end there. Later, Graham and Corker got into an expletive-laced exchange, the people familiar with the lunch discussion said.

Graham pointed out that Corker was on his way out, a reference to his coming retirement from the Senate, and he argued that Corker was not helping the Republican Party.

Corker, who has been one of the GOP’s most outspoken Trump critics, vented frustration with his colleagues Tuesday for being afraid to “poke the bear” and challenge the president by voting on an amendment to grant Congress more authority over tariffs.

“It’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?” Corker told reporters Wednesday morning.

Corker told reporters Wednesday afternoon that the conversation at lunch was “very good.”

Before the lunch, Graham said Republicans need to “add value” when they speak out against the president.

“You’ve got to show that if you criticize him, fine. But, you know, be able to add value to his agenda,” he said.

Wednesday’s lunch started with a discussion about rescission — the process of paring back previously allocated government spending — and featured White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

In devolving later into a fight over amendments, the Republican senators were doing what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had urged against.

Representatives for the senators did not comment on the details of the lunch. The people describing the lunch spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk more candidly about a private gathering.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Smackdown of Marco:

 

[AnywhereButHere]

5 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Smackdown of Marco:

 

Is Marco throwing a bit of shade @potus? His statement seems to apply equally to KJU and the orange menace.

(or was that the point and I just stated the obvious...)

 

[CTRLZero]

24 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

His statement seems to apply equally to KJU and the orange menace.

I wondered that, too, and decided it is shade and does apply to both.  Even if he didn't intend it that way, I'll be in a happier place with my delusions.  

[AmazonGrace]

Ryan sees no evil, hears no evil and he likes it that way:

 

[Audrey2]

11 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Ryan sees no evil, hears no evil and he likes it that way:

 

How would Ryan know? His lips are so far up Trump's rump that his entire world is dark and smelly. He hasn't seen daylight in over a year. He has no idea what Pruitt has been doing.