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

[Dandruff]

On 1/11/2023 at 2:47 PM, CTRLZero said:

I haven’t researched this at all.  Do the bamboozled voters have any recourse (i.e., recall election), or does he just get to serve out his term.  I’m glad the other local officials called him out and claim they won’t work with him, but does the House care as long as he votes Republican.  🤷‍♀️

Exactly.  Qevin can blather all he wants about it being up to the voters, but the election is over.  Santos is now an open stain on the House and our government in general.  I sincerely hope they're not allowed to put this on the back burner. 

Kudos to the Rs in NY who have let Santos know he's not welcome and that they want him to resign.  I imagine they're hearing a lot from folks in Santos' district.  I keep hoping Santos is lying about not being willing to resign.

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh please:

 

[fraurosena]

He seems angry at being confronted with this question.

 

[Ozlsn]

On 1/11/2023 at 1:08 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Sigh:

 

It's like they have literally no idea how any of it works... which they probably don't. Do they do any training on processes etc after being elected, or is it the poorly educated leading the refused to learn?

There really should be a 12 week mandatory training course which they all have to turn up to and pass before being sworn in. Also pass a background check prior to being allowed to stand as a candidate as well as a basic civics exam, and show at minimum five years work in some form of community service (whether local politics, volunteering, whatever). I feel like the quality of candidate might improve if the elections were treated as a public job interview a bit more. 

[Audrey2]

6 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

There really should be a 12 week mandatory training course which they all have to turn up to and pass before being sworn in.

Will they have four chances to pass it like Bobo needs?

(And apologies to Bobo from Finding Bigfoot. I've decided that MTG is now Marge or Margie, and Lauren Bobert is going to be Bobo.)

[Ozlsn]

4 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

Will they have four chances to pass it like Bobo needs?

I feel like four might be optimistic actually. Ideally of course everyone would have gone into it knowing that if they were elected they would need to do this, so wouldn't need more than one shot...

[GreyhoundFan]

They just say it out loud...

 

[Ozlsn]

By that logic why are we convicting and  imprisoning anyone at all? I went to see Hamilton last weekend with my mum (side note: we really needed surtitles for parts, very fast/loud/competing threads) and one thing I came away with was how much we have moved away from "this behaviour will instantly disqualify you as a potential politican" to "eh, everyone lies about everything, we need his vote."

Also where the hell was the Fourth estate in the lead up to the election exactly??

[GreyhoundFan]

You really couldn’t make this up. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh please:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

I mean, he lied about everything else, so can't say I'm surprised.

 

[Shrubbery]

Is it time to ask for George Santos‘ long-form birth certificate?🤔

[Ozlsn]

9 hours ago, Shrubbery said:

Is it time to ask for George Santos‘ long-form birth certificate?🤔

Past time I think. I am really surprised that apparently no one did a background check or some pretty minimal digging on this guy at all before the election, and even more surprised that once elected there is apparently no removal mechanism if the person turns out to be elected under false pretences.

[Dandruff]

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Go Brazil! I agree they'll likely indict Santos first, but I'm wondering whether we should we be concerned about financial aid Brazil may receive from the US.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Ozlsn said:

Past time I think. I am really surprised that apparently no one did a background check or some pretty minimal digging on this guy at all before the election, and even more surprised that once elected there is apparently no removal mechanism if the person turns out to be elected under false pretences.

Par for the course.

[thoughtful]

Quote

The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, tweeted: "George Anthony Devolder Santos has turned Congress into a true crime podcast. What should the title be?"

Suggestions offered by other Twitter users included: "Mr. Myth Goes To Washington," "MAGA Noir," and "Not The Only Liar In The Building."

I love that first suggestion.

https://www.newsweek.com/george-santos-sparks-flurry-jokes-after-anthony-devolder-clip-surfaces-1773806

[Dandruff]

23 hours ago, thoughtful said:

I love that first suggestion.

https://www.newsweek.com/george-santos-sparks-flurry-jokes-after-anthony-devolder-clip-surfaces-1773806

"Louse in the House"?  Not that he'd be alone in that.

[fraurosena]

Love that the Dems are refusing to play along with the MAGAt games.

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by fraurosena

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Homeland Security minus the security:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting article from Molly Jong-Fast: "Keeping Up With the Congressional Kardashians"

Quote

Welcome to the 118th Congress, season one, a taxpayer-funded reality show where, instead of glitzy women battling it out, it’s mostly old white guys jockeying for power, protecting Donald Trump, and targeting Joe Biden. Last week’s episode featured Kevin McCarthy pathetically promising the far right everything from a one-person motion to vacate to a very likely debt-ceiling default debacle. In fact, McCarthy has made so many people so many promises that Republican Nancy Mace wondered Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, “So my question today is what backroom deals were cut?”

Good question! For it certainly seems like McCarthy gave away the store to get the gavel. On Monday, McCarthy kicked off his first week as Speaker by rejecting Dan Crenshaw as chair of the Homeland Security Committee, and instead picking House Freedom Caucus member Mark Green. You may remember the representative from Tennessee: He had to withdraw his nomination for secretary of the Army after his anti-transgender comments surfaced. After getting his plum assignment, Green told reporters Monday he was going to put a permanent staffer on the border. 

We’re still learning more details about the concessions and arm-twisting that apparently went on last week beyond the reach of C-SPAN’s cameras in order to get McCarthy over the finish line on the 15th vote. As Politico’s Olivia Beavers tweeted Tuesday, “At least two Republicans among McCarthy’s 20 holdouts got direct threats from GOP donor Thomas Peterffy last week, per GOP sources I spoke with.” Beavers shared a screenshot of a message purportedly from Peterffy: “What goes on in the house is weakening the party. Unless you vote for Kevin now, we’ll never give you any money, Big Donors.” 

This season seems like it’s going to have lots of twists and turns as the House GOP turns Congress into The Real Housewives of the Longworth Building.

The newly empowered House Republicans took no time getting to work creating false equivalencies and punishing their enemies across the aisle. McCarthy already told Punchbowl that he is going to block Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from serving on the Intelligence Committee. (He’s called for Ilhan Omar to lose her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee.) 

Meanwhile, Arizona’s Paul Gosar told Punchbowl, “They promised me that if I wanted to stay on Natural Resources and Oversight, I could stay.” Gosar, who was stripped of his committee assignments in 2021 for posting an animated video depicting him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and last year spoke at a white nationalist conference, has already promised that he will investigate Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley for being a “treasonous sell out to China.”

 Another lunatic who is planning her return to committees is Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who somehow came off of last week looking like a savvy stateswoman for her pro-McCarthy stance, while fellow far-right zealots Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz remained Never McCarthy. Greene began the first week of the 118th Congress by calling to impeach Biden and Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas because “the border is the most dangerous crisis in America and fentanyl is killing Americans everyday [sic].” As I warned after the November midterms, “The Marjorie Taylor Greene Congress Is Upon Us.” And indeed, her clout was on full display just moments after McCarthy’s victory. 

Speaking of GOP grandstanders who came off last week even more emboldened, Gaetz, who played the lead McCarthy antagonist during the Speaker vote drama, unsurprisingly wants to keep the C-SPAN cameras rolling through the chamber rather than reverting back to the traditionally more static view Americans traditionally get. “Our fellow Americans deserve to know when we are frustrated with one another, kind to one another, present, or absent,” he told CNN. “The current pool view of the Congress is antiquated and boomer-fied.” 

More media access in the chamber would be good for the sake of transparency, and something C-SPAN pushed for long before last week’s Speaker imbroglio. But the risk is that attention-hungry members of Congress, already incentivized to stoke outrage to stay in the spotlight, only dial up the crazy. 

Despite voters rejecting Trumpism yet again in the 2022 midterms, and despite the fact that the Republicans have a razor-thin majority, the lesson they seem to have learned is that crazy is good for the brand. But it’s not just the youngins who are acting like they belong in the Andy Cohen universe, Montana boomer Ryan Zinke got in on the action. Fresh off resigning as secretary of the Interior amid “multiple probes tied to his real estate dealings in his home state of Montana and his conduct in office,” and having narrowly won in a very red state, Zinke gave a floor speech which included the batshit assertion that, “Despite the deep state’s repeatedly attempts to stop me I stand before you as a duly elected member of the United States Congress and tell you that a deep state exists…. They want to wipe out the American cowboy.” I’m sorry, what? 

Elsewhere in ignoring the lessons of the midterms, Republicans are already pushing antiabortion legislation, while playing into conservative persecution fantasies by launching a new subcommittee probing the supposed “weaponization of the federal government.” 

You might think that this GOP leadership is so involved in trying to impeach Biden that they have no time to deal with the serial fabulist in their caucus and you would in fact be right. Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Tuesday morning that the George Santos matter was being handled “internally,” adding: “We’re going to have to sit down and talk to him.” Oh, well, in that case. Maybe the Brazilian authorities will deal with it because the GOP Congress surely won’t.

On Tuesday evening, inside the Capitol, the real intellectual leader and prime-time propagandist for the Republican Party, **Sean Hannity—**fresh off another deposition in the Dominion vs. Fox defamation lawsuit—conducted the first television interview with McCarthy since becoming Speaker. During that sit-down, Hannity previewed some of the things this nine-seat GOP majority has planned. But the interview showed that the House GOP would probably be better off not giving interviews. For one, McCarthy made it pretty clear he doesn’t understand how the debt ceiling works. Meanwhile, Hannity bafflingly and inadvertently hilariously marveled at the party’s diversity as white members of Congress filled the camera frame. 

But perhaps the most telling moment came from the new head of Oversight, James Comer, who expressed concern Tuesday that Biden “has compromised sources and methods” after reports that a small number of classified documents were found in Biden’s old private office at the Penn Biden Center, and were promptly returned. Even though the Biden classified-documents situation looks very different from the revelations about Trump’s Mar-a-Lago stash—which Republicans showed little interest in investigating—the GOP is all in now. After accusing Biden of making “bad decisions” every day, Comer mused on Fox News, “Is this president compromised?” 

So it sounds like the House GOP is going to try and create as many false equivalences as possible for the next couple years. McCarthy may have gotten the gavel, but the GOP has gotten the message that wild claims and accusations get the spotlight, and everything is about to get even stupider.