US House of Representatives 4: Day One And The Clown Caucus is Already in Disarray.

[fraurosena]

As long as Liz Truss? Nah, I'm wondering if he'll last as long as Scaramucci.

Seriously though, we should be more worried about the concessions that were made to get 15 of them to flip for him. Many, if not all of them, were part of or in some way connected to the insurrection. How many of McCarthy's puppet strings do they hold? And how much of the store has he given away to them? Which committees has he handed over to them, and what will they do with the power that they now have? How much taxpayer money will be thrown away for frivolous investigations, and how much control have they gotten over the House political agenda? Will they be able to halt the debt ceiling negotiations, or stop the allocation of funds to Ukraine-- or anything else that tickles their fancy?

Kevin may be Speaker, but the political shitshow has only just begun...

Edited January 7, 2023 by fraurosena

[GreyhoundFan]

[Howl]

@fraurosena, I agree with all of your points. Qevin made huge concessions to get the Speakership.   There will be total insanity in the House, just an absolute circle jerking clusterf**k  mega MAGA morass that will continue for at least the next two years.  It will be magnitudes worse than the first two years of the Trump admin.  And I don't necessarily make a direct association with MAGA and Trump anymore -- pretty sure he's toast. 

Gaetz and MTG are chaos agents who will do anything and everything to dismantle safeguards of any kind.  

And on a WTADGF note? The magnetometers have been removed; anyone can come into the House with anything.   Metal detectors removed from outside the House chamber

I truly fear for the health and safety of our representatives, president and vice president and have a very, very bad feeling about what's to come. That bad feeling includes the possibility of assassinations, because it's just that bad. 

Edited January 7, 2023 by Howl

[47of74]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

As long as Liz Truss? Nah, I'm wondering if he'll last as long as Scaramucci.

Seriously though, we should be more worried about the concessions that were made to get 15 of them to flip for him. Many, if not all of them, were part of or in some way connected to the insurrection. How many of McCarthy's puppet strings do they hold? And how much of the store has he given away to them? Which committees has he handed over to them, and what will they do with the power that they now have? How much taxpayer money will be thrown away for frivolous investigations, and how much control have they gotten over the House political agenda? Will they be able to halt the debt ceiling negotiations, or stop the allocation of funds to Ukraine-- or anything else that tickles their fancy?

Kevin may be Speaker, but the political shitshow has only just begun...

Good point about Scaramucci.  We'll have to see if Qevin can last the ten days or not or if he'll beat Scaramucci's record. 

Yeah, the House for the next couple years is going to be worse than a load of liquid manure on a hot summer day.  (I grew up on a farm so I speak from experience when saying liquid manure is the worst kind of manure there is).   

 

[formergothardite]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I see Patrick McHenry and his bow tie that he thinks makes him look unique and quirky is right in the middle of the entire mess. I met him a couple of times and he is a smug asshole. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Dismantling the government is their priority. 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Dismantling the government is their priority. 

Can the House pass such decisions without Senate approval?

[Shrubbery]

I give McCarthy until April. Just a gut feeling.

[fraurosena]

Great thread.

 

The rest is under the spoiler:

Spoiler

 

And yet, despite all the logical arguments not to do any of this, the House GOP under McCarthy will cut off its nose to spite its face anyway.

[Howl]

Defunding Social Security and MediCare/MediCaid is a constant refrain.  They seem to have NO CLUE how many people in this country rely on Social Security as their sole source of income and those who do are probably also on MediCaid.  They rely on cognitive dissonance, i.e., people voting Republican can't (or won't) reconcile that they are voting against their own interests.   

The affluent die-hard MAGA Republicans living in The Villages in FL?  The'd be the first to scream in outrage if they got one cent less on their SS check, even though it's likely just a minor supplement (enough to go on a cruise!)  to their cushy retirement income. 

And this isn't just those over 65 -- disabled people also rely on SS as well as children who have lost a parent.  It's just nuts.  

This just occurred to me though.  There's the crazy and chaos up front -- it's a huge distraction while they open the doors to the vault to start the give away for wealthy donors and corporations.  Literally, they will rob the Treasury to the extent possible.  "Defund IRS" is the code word to telegraph to the wealthy and corporate interests that it's OK to start (or continue) rampant cheating on your taxes now.  So don't be distracted by the Chaos Agent agitprop and pay close attention to what is happening on the ground, especially as relates to election suppression and other fuckery trying to access total control of the reins of power. 

On a more positive note, Biden has been getting Federal judges on the bench at an astounding rate and that is a very positive thing.  

On the plus side, there's flop sweat and desperation to undo all Jan. 6 investigations and stop Jack Smith.  Sadly, Merrick Garland has sat on his hands for so long that any investigations into upper tier of the coup plotters in Congress will be starting way too late. Sadly, I don't think they'll ever be brought to justice. 

Also on the plus side?  Hakeem Jeffries.  

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by Howl

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

So don't be distracted by the Chaos Agent agitprop and pay close attention to what is happening on the ground, especially as relates to election suppression and other fuckery trying to access total control of the reins of power. 

This is so very true. 

 

1 hour ago, Howl said:

On the plus side, there's flop sweat and desperation to undo all Jan. 6 investigations and stop Jack Smith. 

About this:

I don’t believe Garland sat on his hands though. DOJ needs foolproof evidence that will not fail to get convictions in court. They only get one shot at this, so it needs to hit the mark straight away. That means carefully and painstakingly building their cases. That is a slow process, no matter how much anyone would like things to speed up. Looking at what as already been achieved, I believe DOJ has been moving with expeditious speed as much as it can possibly do under the circumstances.

If the process has been held up at all, it is that behind the scenes, Garland has had to weed out all secret allies that were left behind within DOJ by Trump. Just like the secret service had been infiltrated by Trump players (why do you think Biden replaced all secret service members in the WH) so has every other governmental department, and that includes DOJ.

So although things have not progressed anywhere near as fast as anyone would have liked, I don’t think it was because of any reluctance to act on Garland’s part.

[Dandruff]

I don't know what Merrick Garland is or isn't doing but it would be nice if some tangible justice could be served in the foreseeable.  Won't be much use if the process outlives the subject or public memory fades to the point where it seems trivial.

Meanwhile, George Santos was sworn in (no surprise there) and has or will be getting a security clearance.  IMO, he's profoundly unfit to have one and I'm appalled that it's happening.  Hasn't there been enough to worry about after seeing the photos of those documents on TFG's bedroom floor?  I can't think of a single reason why this could be a good idea.  Hope no one agrees to have him on their committee, especially if national security is involved.

[Smash!]

I just went through fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat‘s recent Twitter posts. I shouldn’t have done so, because she paints a pretty bleak picture of the GOP‘s majority in the house. 

Like this 

 

[Audrey2]

40 minutes ago, Smash! said:

I just went through fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat‘s recent Twitter posts. I shouldn’t have done so, because she paints a pretty bleak picture of the GOP‘s majority in the house. 

Like this 

 

Yes, very sadly I think it's time to use the disgust and the angry reactions again. I enjoyed two years of going between WTF and disgust if it was pretty bad.

40 minutes ago, Smash! said:

I just went through fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat‘s recent Twitter posts. I shouldn’t have done so, because she paints a pretty bleak picture of the GOP‘s majority in the house. 

Like this 

 

Yes, very sadly I think it's time to use the disgust and the angry reactions again. I enjoyed two years of going between WTF and disgust if it was pretty bad.

[GreyhoundFan]

A helpful analysis: "The McCarthy concessions that could be flash points"

Quote

As the battle for Kevin McCarthy’s speakership wore on last week, some allies began grumbling about all the concessions he was making to the hard right, and suggested they were approaching a red line of their own. Then he made even more — so many that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) remarked that he was running out of things to ask for. McCarthy’s allies continued to grumble, notably about the fact that they didn’t truly know the full scale of his concessions. But they voted for him anyway in the name of ending the impasse.

Now a debate on those concessions is approaching. And it could be the first test of McCarthy as speaker.

The House returns late Monday to vote on its rules for the incoming Congress, and there are some signs of yet more potential trouble ahead. One McCarthy backer, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), has said he will vote against the package, while another, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), said this weekend that she is on the fence.

As with the speaker’s election and pretty much every other process right now, the package can lose only four GOP votes if all the members vote and Democrats unite to oppose it.

So what could be the sticking points? And what are the key concessions we could be talking about moving forward?

The rules package could be salvaged by the mere fact that many of the key concessions that McCarthy made aren’t reflected in it, because they — including committee positions, for example — took the form of promises to the House Freedom Caucus. But some concessions do take the form of proposed rules, and the rules debate provides the first real venue to deliberate over what McCarthy has given up. Mace, for instance, said she supports the rules package itself but is concerned about the other concessions.

Perhaps the biggest rules change is what’s known as the “motion to vacate the chair.” This effectively allows one member to force a vote to remove McCarthy as speaker at any point. McCarthy allies might not like the leverage this provides McCarthy’s critics, but given that this threshold effectively existed for more than a century before 2019 — it’s simply more of an imminent threat now — it seems unlikely to be a sticking point.

One possible flash point is a potential agreement that could shrink defense spending. McCarthy has reportedly agreed to a vote on a 10-year budget that would cap spending at fiscal year 2022 levels. That would effectively reduce defense spending by about 10 percent, unless the Pentagon is exempted.

This isn’t actually in the rules package itself, and it would seem quite likely that a 10 percent defense cut will never actually come, given that neither the Senate nor enough hawks in the House Republican conference would sign off on it. But both Gonzales and Mace spotlighted it as looming over their votes.

“I want to see it in writing. I want to see what promises were made,” Mace said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” adding: “I don’t want to see defense cuts. Again, we don’t know what deals were made. And that’s something that we should be transparent about. Sunshine is the best medicine.”

That lack of transparency was the source of consternation last week, as McCarthy backers acknowledged they didn’t truly understand the scale of the concessions he had made, even as they were holding strong and voting for him for speaker. But thus far Mace is relatively alone in raising it as an issue when it comes to her vote on the rules package.

Another reported agreement that isn’t fully understood is one that would require spending cuts as part of any increase in the debt ceiling. Hard-right Republicans have occasionally threatened to force spending cuts through this process, but raising the limit is required to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt, and such efforts to freeze the debt ceiling have never been successful.

It’s unclear right now exactly how this will shake out, how severe the theoretical cuts would be, and what the enforcement mechanism would be. But the consequences could be so significant that Mace’s admonition about the lack of firm detail applies.

And one of the deal’s chief negotiators among McCarthy’s holdouts, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), left open the possibility of trying to boot McCarthy out of the job if he didn’t abide by it.

When asked whether he and his allies would file a motion to vacate the chair if McCarthy allowed the House to pass a clean debt-ceiling increase, Roy told CNN on Sunday: “I’m not going to play the what-if games on how we’re going to use the tools of the House to make sure that we enforce the terms of the agreement. But we will use the tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement.”

A rule that is reflected in the package is the creation of a new select committee on “weaponization of the federal government.” This is an outgrowth of the GOP’s criticisms of the investigation of former president Donald Trump and things like the expansion of the IRS. (Some advocates have compared it to the Church Committee, which in the 1970s uncovered many civil liberties abuses by administrations of both parties.)

The idea seems broadly in line with the GOP’s priorities right now, but as Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes, two key provisions stand out: The panel is to be given access to highly sensitive information shared with the House Intelligence Committee, and its purview is to include “ongoing criminal investigations.”

This latter provision raises significant questions about the separation of powers, because the committee could in theory try to subpoena sensitive Justice Department information before charges are ever brought — including information about the DOJ’s probes into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump and Hunter Biden. This is information the Justice Department keeps close to the vest, to protect its investigations and avoid politicizing its processes.

With Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in charge of the committee, it seems quite likely there could be some tense standoffs ahead that will likely include court battles.

But many of the claims about the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government have been hyperbolic and highly speculative, including on Trump and on matters such as the IRS expansion, the federal government purportedly targeting parents who criticize local school boards and the Homeland Security Department’s now-scrapped Disinformation Governance Board. Republicans will need to ask themselves how much they want to empower an effort often pursued by a wing of the party that, for instance, claims the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters were victims.

McCarthy’s team has expressed confidence that the rules package will pass. And if last week showed us anything, it’s that McCarthy’s allies have proved willing to stomach plenty — including a deal they apparently didn’t know much about — in the name of moving past all this.

But as will be the case moving forward, their margin for error is minuscule, and a small number of members can gum things up if they want to raise a fuss. So it’s worth keeping an eye on these flash points as the rules debate — and McCarthy’s speakership — begins.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is depressing: "Kevin McCarthy reveals how the MAGA House will protect Trump"

Quote

Donald Trump has long excelled at the art of blithely revealing his corrupt designs in public, and at a rally in September, he openly signaled that he fully expected Republicans elected to Congress to thwart the ongoing criminal investigations into, well, himself.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, it turns out, seems eager to honor his end of this corrupt bargain. Or at least the California Republican will go through the motions of honoring it — and given the realities of the right-wing information universe, that might do more for the former president than one might expect.

The House is scheduled to vote Monday on a package of rules that hard-right Republicans extracted from McCarthy in exchange for dropping their opposition to his bid to be speaker, which finally succeeded early Saturday after 15 tortured votes.

The rules create a select committee on the “weaponization of the federal government,” to be chaired by Trumpist Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). The committee would have the authority to examine the executive branch’s collection of information on U.S. citizens, including during “ongoing criminal investigations.”

As speaker, McCarthy has already declared that the GOP-controlled House will target the “weaponization of the FBI.” When the FBI executed a lawful search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Republicans treated it as a historic abuse of power, so there’s little doubt the committee will target criminal investigations into Trump.

This will likely entail subpoenas designed to “investigate” the process by which law enforcement sought the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. There will also undoubtedly be subpoenas directed at ongoing criminal investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss, and attempts to haul FBI officials before Congress.

The circuslike intimations of this shouldn’t obscure the genuinely important and complicated issues at play here. For decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the Justice Department has resisted congressional oversight of ongoing criminal investigations.

There are reasons for this. Revealing sensitive information could mean disclosures that are unfair to defendants or tip off targets and others about the direction of investigations, compromising them.

So the GOP push to pry open these investigations could get tied up in litigation, and courts may not let it get far. But that might not matter: Provoking the department into strenuously resisting oversight might be the whole point.

That resistance could serve as grist for Republicans and their allies in the right-wing media to scream “coverup” and paint investigations as corrupt. That could even be used to manufacture a fake rationale for impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland, and for attempts to use an obscure House rule to defund investigations of Trump.

“This is all deliberately planned theater,” former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was aggressively targeted by congressional Republicans during the investigation into Russian electoral interference, told me. Republicans will “play that out for a few months,” Strzok suggests, to dramatize the question that he expects to be screamed 1,000 times on Fox News: “What do they have to hide?”

Republicans will also likely apply this technique to prosecutions of defendants who attacked the Capitol, whose alleged mistreatment is already a far-right cause. While that’s a valid topic of oversight, some Republicans describe them as “political prisoners.” You can anticipate GOP propaganda that will cast law enforcement targeting of Jan. 6, 2021, rioters as inherently illegitimate.

Democrats are also girding for coordination between congressional Republicans and Trump’s lawyers. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the former chair of the Intelligence Committee, notes that during previous investigations into Trump — over Russian interference and the strong-arming of Ukraine — Republicans functioned as “surrogates for the Trump defense team.”

“Whatever we uncovered during those investigations would immediately make its way to Trump and his criminal lawyers,” Schiff told me. “I fear we’re going to see more of the same.”

The new GOP select committee will also be authorized to receive information available to the Intelligence Committee. This, too, could prove insidiously destructive.

Here’s how: While the noise in our politics obscures this, much real government work gets done quietly behind the scenes, such as information sharing between intelligence agencies and lawmakers in both parties conducted voluntarily and in good faith. That could be imperiled by bad GOP actors leaking information to fuel deep state conspiracy theories.

“It’s going to breed distrust between the intelligence community and the Congress,” Schiff told me.

Congressional oversight of law enforcement and intelligence agencies is an essential component of accountable government and the rule of law. Perhaps Republicans will undertake this oversight with nothing but pure, unsullied concern for the public interest.

But the oversight process can also be abused. And Republicans have an actual track record of this: Again and again and again, they’ve wielded that process in bad faith to create all manner of bogus news narratives, many falsely exonerating Trump.

You cannot overstate the importance of spectacle to the MAGA right’s overall political project. Much of what this new committee does will be designed to create mere impressions of coverups, of wrongdoings, of all sorts of shady deep state conspiracies.

That will create immense challenges for the mainstream news media, which could feel obliged to treat these GOP efforts as serious “counter-investigations” into what has already been revealed about Trump. This will give them a sheen of legitimacy even before they’ve earned it. But there’s no reason to grant that presumption, given the long trail of flagrant abuses of the public trust we’ve already seen from them.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Go Katie!

 

[47of74]

Cool 

 

[47of74]

And so what does Major Failure Greene do after she gets back in to her Twitter account ?

Quote

In her statement, Greene said, "While I appreciate the creative chord progression, I would never play your words of violence against women and police officers and your glorification of the thug life and drugs."

That's right.  No apologies or admissions that was in the wrong.  Just this bullshit.

[Howl]

On 1/7/2023 at 9:00 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Dismantling the government is their priority. 

I may have to lay off political twitter (which is all twitter these days, except for RECEPTIOgate and cat videos) for just this reason.  Even Trump's election didn't trigger this much angst and agita for me. 

I'll take this a step further and note that dismantling democracy and gaining unfettered access to power and especially power of the Treasury is the goal. 

JaVanka, Mnuchin, the Trumps, et al., were literally pigs at the trough. They made out like bandits through various means and it's continued unfettered (Jared's 2 billion Saudi hedge fund, anyone?). 

 The Big Prize this time around is privatizing Social Security --  should corporate entities gain access to administering SS, the amount of greed and corruption will put the Robber Barons to shame.  Alternately, allowing vulnerable citizens to opt out of paying for SS by paycheck deductions, they be allowed to opt out and...wait for it...invest in the stock market! 

Currently, MediCare/Medicade fraud is vulnerable to continuing corrupt practices.  Let's take a trip down memory land and review this WIKI entry for Florida Senator Rick Scott (R-Scam): 

Scott co-founded Columbia Hospital Corporation in the 1980s, which became Columbia/HCA, becoming the nation's largest private for-profit health care company. Scott was forced to resigned as chief exec in 1997 because 

 "During his tenure as chief executive, the company defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs. The Department of Justice won 14 felony convictions against the company, which was fined $1.7 billion in what was at the time the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history."

You may be asking yourself, "Self, did Scott serve time for massive fraud?"  No, no he didn't and in a stunning stroke of irony, "in 2009, he founded Conservatives for Patients' Rights."

Floridians rewarded this massive level of corruption by voting him into public office as Governor and Senator.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Welcome to the next two years of sham investigations:

[Audrey2]

1 minute ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Welcome to the next two years of sham investigations:

I'm not entirely surprised. Remember the Republicans have no respect for MDS and even less respect for PhDs.

[Alisamer]

So their strategy under Obama was to stamp their feet like toddlers and say "no" to anything he proposed, no matter how innocuous. Their strategy under Biden is to attack with frivolous investigations to distract from the fact they are doing nothing and many of them are super corrupt themselves. Got it.

[Audrey2]

1 minute ago, Alisamer said:

So their strategy under Obama was to stamp their feet like toddlers and say "no" to anything he proposed, no matter how innocuous. Their strategy under Biden is to attack with frivolous investigations to distract from the fact they are doing nothing and many of them are super corrupt themselves. Got it.

Remember though, to their base they are doing something. In their minds they are investigating a corrupt politician and their fake findings will be their proof that something bad was going on. That's really what their base wants- the "proof" that all their theories of corruption were justified.

[Alisamer]

8 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

Remember though, to their base they are doing something. In their minds they are investigating a corrupt politician and their fake findings will be their proof that something bad was going on. That's really what their base wants- the "proof" that all their theories of corruption were justified.

Yeah, I know. That's what their base wants. I think what their base NEEDS is to go back to school and learn some critical thinking skills. But they'd consider that "indoctrination" or something. 

I'm losing hope, in some ways. I wish I could go back to not knowing just how many incredibly stupid, gullible, willfully ignorant, awful, "I got mine, screw you" people there are.