Category Archives: national news

national news

GOP pols wising up?

Can it be that the Republican congressional caucus is wising up to the “Big Lie” and the party’s refusal to acknowledge the truth?

Two key GOP House members today announced their intention to step down when their current terms expire at the end of 2024: Ken Buck of Colorado and Kay Granger from over yonder in Fort Worth.

Buck’s announcement contained a criticism of GOP officeholders who continue to adhere to the Big Lie, that the 2020 election was stolen and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. He said the GOP’s refusal to concede that President Biden is the real deal has inhibited its ability to advance its legislative agenda.

He’s had enough, Buck said.

Granger said it is time for new leaders to emerge. She is 80 years old and has been a force among GOP House members.

The party needs to be revived, to return to its former self as a serious political organization, not a cult wedded to the dictatorial fantasies of a lying, cheating, philandering business mogul.

Buck and Granger might not signal that the tide is turning against the cult leader. Then again … they might perhaps will trigger more statements of indignation against those who foment the Big Lie.

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Pence drops out … wow!

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to end his 2024 presidential campaign speaks loudly about the state of affairs within what passes for today’s Republican Party.

Think for a moment about this. Of all the members of the previous administration, damn few of them have stood out as believing that their oaths of office were to the Constitution, not to the individual who led the government for four years from 2017 until 2021.

Pence was one of those who stood for the rule of law when Donald Trump and others sought to coerce him into overturning the results of the 2020 election. Pence said he had no authority to do anything other than what he did, which was to certify the election results and declare that Joe Biden had been elected president of the United States.

It is true, in my view, that Pence did little else of note during his term as VP.  But his refusal to disobey the law and the Constitution stands out.

And it cost him among Republican presidential primary voters, as they appear wedded to the propaganda peddled by the former POTUS.

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Hope dashed with speaker pick

My hope all along during the House speaker kerfuffle was that the competing wings within the Republican Party could find a compromise candidate, someone who would pledge to work with all the members of the House.

That’s not what they got in Speaker Mike Johnson. Oh, no. They got a MAGA acolyte who wants to ban abortion nationwide, who continues to challenge the legitimacy of President Biden’s election in 2020, who questions whether we should continue to fund Ukraine’s battle for independence against the Russian aggressors and who seemingly sides with those who want to shut down the government.

The MAGA clowns turned on the lights in the back of the House chamber and found the congressional newbie who fits their description of the near-perfect House speaker.

What a shame. And a sham!

I heard MAGA Mike declare upon taking the oath that he would be the speaker for the entire legislative chamber. Doesn’t that imply he would be willing work with Democrats along with Republicans? It does to me.

Then again, how does that square with the MAGA goons’ stated mission to avoid working with Democrats? That’s what got former Speaker Kevin McCarthy into trouble, right? He locked arms with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown and then — presto! — we had the motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. It came from a single MAGA congressman, Matt Gaetz of Florida.

Ladies and gents, what we have now is a speaker who will serve only a small minority of the majority party in the House. To hell with public opinion of the rest of the country that opposes a national abortion, opposes shutting down the government, wants to continue supporting Ukraine and believes Joe Biden was elected fairly, squarely and legally as president in 2020.

God help us!

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MAGA Mike becomes speaker

What do we call the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives? I think I’ll settle on MAGA Mike.

I should be happy that the People’s House now has a leader. I am not happy. Speaker Mike Johnson moved from the darkest of shadows into the spotlight quite literally overnight.

Today, with the entire GOP House caucus backing him, MAGA Mike emerged from the way-back bench to become the person who is third in line to become president of the United States of America.

What’s more, we have handed the gavel — and all the power it symbolizes — to an individual who continues to challenge the fact that Joe Biden was elected president of the United States in 2020 and that Donald Trump lost.

Yep, this is the nation’s first MAGA speaker of the House. He emerged after yet another embarrassing sequence of failed votes, of party nominees accepting the GOP call only to quit. The MAGA cult continued to make demands on the individuals it would support.

Then came Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana. He was elected to the House in 2016. He’s been re-elected three times. He doesn’t serve as a front-line leader on any committee. He’s just … there! Johnson shows up, given credence to Woody Allen’s credo that “95% of success starts when you just show up.”

Don’t look for Speaker Johnson to get rid of the rule that forced Kevin McCarthy out of the speakership, the one that empowers just a single House member to call for a vote to kick the speaker out of office. It was a MAGA demand that enabled McCarthy to be elected speaker in the first place — and it did him in.

So now we have MAGA Mike calling the shots in the House.

Is this a time to cheer? Hardly.

I’m going to pray for our country.

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Clown show loses another one

The congressional Republican clown show keeps losing its yuksters, apparently because they have had enough of the laughs their show keeps producing.

Get a load of this: Rep. Tom Emmer came out of a closed-door Republican voting session as the party’s latest nominee to become speaker of the U.S. House … only to tell his fellow Republicans — three hours later! — that he doesn’t want the job after all.

What the hell? Oh, but wait. House Republicans nominated Emmer anyway reluctantly after five votes among members of the GOP caucus.

It’s been three weeks since the MAGA cult booted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of his office. Republicans then turned to Rep. Steve Scalise, who then dropped out. Up stepped bomb-thrower Rep. Jim Jordan to seek the speakership; three failed House floor votes ended his bid to become the Man of the House.

Then we saw Rep. Emmer rise … only to take a header.

This is a case of a once-great political party being unable to find its backside with both hands.

Once more with gusto: the Republican Party has been seized by the crazed cult that marches to the cadence called by the immediate past POTUS, the clown who says the 2020 election was rigged.

These bozos cannot govern! They intimidate themselves and seek to bully others. They cannot even nominate one of their fellow Republicans to lead a legislative chamber — in which they hold the slimmest majority.

I have to mention that a boatload of important work needs to get done. Let’s see: How about that government shutdown thing? We’ve only got a few days before the government runs out of money. Will the House of Representatives GOP clown show gather itself in time to find someone — anyone! — who wants to take what looks like the worst job in America?

Doubt is creeping in.

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How do we repair Congress?

The People’s House is in serious disarray, starting with the top of its leadership chain of command … namely because no one is on duty to bark out orders and demand members to do the right thing.

Thanks to intransigence by the MAGA cabal, the House has now gone almost three weeks without a speaker. He or she is responsible for setting the legislative agenda and for keeping the troops in line to enact legislation.

The MAGA gang forced former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to accept too many restrictions. He paid the price by performing the unconscionable act of working with Democrats to forge a deal to prevent a government shutdown.

No can do, Mr. Speaker, said the MAGA goons. One of them filed a motion to remove McCarthy and it worked. He’s out. It’s been a certifiable clusterf*** ever since!

The House of Reps is broken. It has been shattered because the MAGA cult is not interested in governing. It is interested in obstructing, in making headlines, of proving political points.

How do we repair Congress? Here’s an idea: Vote every single one of the MAGA cultists out of office in 2024 and replace them with politicians who know how government is supposed to work and are willing to operate its complicated machinery.

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Partisan fight over aid to fight Russia?

You live  long enough and you’re liable to see all kinds of manifestations of principle you once thought were set in steel-enforced concrete.

Take the U.S. position regarding aggression by Russian armed forces … for example.

Russia invaded Ukraine a year-plus ago. President Biden said this country would stand foursquare against the Russian aggressors. He vowed to stitch together a strong alliance of nations to resist the Russians. He succeeded.

We have helped Ukraine turn back the Russians. Ukrainian armed forces launched a counteroffensive. You’d think the Democratic U.S. president would enjoy the support of long-standing anti-Russian pols who belong to the Republican Party. Right? Guess again, pilgrim.

We now have the MAGA crowd resisting efforts to back Ukraine … for reasons that totally escape me! It has to be that their guy, the former POTUS, thinks the sun rises and sets on Russian goon/strongman Vladimir Putin.

The MAGA cult seemingly doesn’t believe as much in democratic principles as their political forebears — the real Republicans who fought the Russians and the Soviet Union with a passion. Then again, I don’t consider the MAGA morons to be real Republicans. They are political perverts who have twisted longstanding U.S. policy into something unrecognizable.

It is an evolution I never envisioned I would see.

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House GOP in tailspin

Well now … just how dysfunctional can the U.S. House Republican caucus get? Pretty damn dysfunctional as it appears to me.

The House GOP tossed Rep. Jim Jordan’s candidacy for speaker into the crapper today, ending the Ohio fire-breather’s effort to become the latest Man of the House.

Good grief, man. The GOP “controls” the House by an unworkably thin margin. Among those Republicans is the cadre of MAGA loons who call the shots. Jordan is one of them, or so we thought.

Jordan is a 2020 election denier and is a reported architect of the 1/6 frontal assault on our government and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election result that produced a Joe Biden presidency.

He lost the GOP vote initially to Rep. Steve Scalise, who then dropped out. Jordan tried three times to win the speakership, losing greater margins with each vote.

The MAGA goofballs cannot govern! Can’t anyone see how this is playing out?

To be candid, I don’t give a flying crap in a saucer about Jordan. I cannot stand his bullying, his boorishness, his bellicosity.

However, I do care about our government. I want a strong and principled Republican Party to go toe-to-toe with the Democratic Party. Yes, I favor Democratic principles more than Republican ones. However, the failure to elect a permanent speaker puts our very government in jeopardy.

The GOP has installed Rep. Patrick McHenry as “interim” speaker. The chatter now is to grant him a bit more authority, to buy him some time to get his political balance and then, perhaps, elect him speaker for the remainder of the current congressional term.

To do that, though, we need the MAGA clown show to lay down its trick balls and get real.

The Republicans are supposed to lead Congress. They aren’t doing anything of the sort. It looks to me as if they are writing their own political obituary … to be published Election Day 2024!

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House stops governing

It has gotten so bad in the U.S. House of Representatives …

How bad is it? you might ask.

Well, it is so bad that half of the legislative branch of government cannot even consider how to stop a pending fiscal calamity if the U.S. decides — once again — to shut down the federal government.

Ladies and gents, it’s the consequence of electing a cabal of fruitcakes, obstructionists and legislative thrill-seekers known as the MAGA caucus.

The House still has no speaker to run the show. I don’t know how it finds one, given the deep division with the GOP caucus that controls the legislative body by the slimmest of margins.

The MAGA goons ousted Kevin McCarthy from the speakership because he had the gall to work with Democrats on a temporary solution to keep the government functioning. Then they nominated Steve Scalise to be their nominee for speaker, but then Scalise — who counted the votes among House members — realized he couldn’t win the job, so he backed out.

That leaves House GOP members with Jim Jordan, the 1/6 conspiracist and 2020 presidential election denier, as the frontrunner for the task. He isn’t likely to win enough votes to be elected. How might he win enough votes? Hmm. Maybe he could make a concession or two to the moderates in the House caucus.

Oh, wait. That didn’t work for McCarthy.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the closing of the government.

Congress is broken.

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‘Speaker’ Jordan? Hah!

Jim Jordan is mining for votes among his U.S. House colleagues, who he wants to lead as the next speaker of the House.

To say he faces a major fight is to be guilty of gross understatement. Republicans nominated him to run for the speakership, but he got only 130-something votes. He needs 217 votes among House members to take the gavel. Where does he get them?

Jordan is a MAGA minion. He is a no-compromise hardliner. Democrats signing up? Hah! Establishment Republicans? Even more laughter!

The House Republican caucus is deeply divided. We have the MAGA clowns and those who oppose them. If Jordan were to broker a deal with Democrats, that would seem to doom any chance he has to win all the far-right votes he would need to take the gavel.

What’s more, and this is important, the very idea that a man who stood with Donald J. Trump on 1/6 and who has consistently cast aspersions on the results of the 2020 presidential election could then ascend to the third spot in presidential succession simply boggles my noggin.

Does Jim Jordan face a steep hill on his way to the speakership?

You bet he does … and he should.