Category Archives: national news

national news

Why Jim Jordan?

Allow me this semi-confession — given that you might already know how I feel about these matters — but I don’t give a smelly pile of rat poop about the future of today’s Republican Party.

I do want to know, though: Why in the world would the U.S. House GOP turn to a certifiable flamethrower to become speaker of the House? That well might happen if Rep. Jim Jordan emerges to take the gavel and run the affairs in the House of Representatives.

My long-held desire was to see a return of the “old Republican Party.” The one that stuck to principles such as strong defense, low taxes, less government. One can debate those points with level-headed politicians.

Not so with the MAGA crowd that seemingly controls the agenda. Jordan is one of ’em. He is an election denier, a Hunter Biden predator, a Donald J. Trump sycophant.

The House is in disarray. It has an “interim” speaker, a gentleman named Patrick McHenry, who took the gavel after the House removed Kevin McCarthy from his short, but tumultuous tenure as speaker. McHenry has no real power.

House GOP caucus member nominated Steve Scalise to be its nominee for speaker, but Scalise only secured 113 votes; he would need 217 votes in a balloting of their entire House.

Scalise then dropped his speaker bid, sending the House into a frenzy — once more — in search of a new leader.

Jordan wants the job he shouldn’t ever have. You see, the House speaker becomes leader of the entire body, which means moderates within his own party as well as those who belong to the Democratic Party. He must work constructively with all sides to help craft legislation.

Does Rep. Jim Jordan possess that skill, or is he of that temperament? Bwahahaha!

national news

Scalise did what? Dropped out?

Occasionally these things happen under the strangest of circumstances.

Normally, I spend my evenings watching the news and seeking to stay current with policy events. This evening was different, as I was enjoying a nice dinner with a woman I had just met. So … what happens when I got home? I found out that Rep. Steve Scalise dropped out of the race for speaker of the U.S. House.

The decision merely sends the already chaotic Republican House caucus into even disarray. The MAGA wing of the GOP is now getting the kind of chaos and confusion that seemingly makes it fly.

The MAGA crowd got rid of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They rallied behind Jim Jordan to be the next speaker. Scalise, though, emerged as the frontrunner to be the next in line. However, he didn’t have enough GOP votes to guarantee his election as speaker.

Now he’s dropping out of the contest altogether!

The MAGA minions are led by Donald Trump, who today said that Hezbollah is “bright” for considering whether to launch attacks on non-Arab conspirators. Trump also said HAMAS wouldn’t have attacked Israel had he been sitting in the Oval Office. Dude is out of his mind. He’s nuts. Crazy. Not to mention stupid as a sack of hammers.

So here we are. House Republicans still don’t have a candidate to run as speaker, giving more credence than ever that the GOP caucus — led by the MAGA morons — do not know how to govern.

national news

How to pick a House speaker

Do we have another multi-ballot marathon awaiting the U.S. House of Representatives as it seeks to find a new Man of the House?

Two frontrunners have emerged from the House GOP caucus: Bomb-thrower and Donald Trump sycophant Jim Jordan of Ohio and current No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise of Louisiana. I don’t know who has the stroke to be elected. I detest both of them, although Scalise does bring a bit of sympathy to this process by virtue of his being damn near killed when that moron opened fire on the Republican congressional baseball team as it practiced for its annual charity game with the Democratic members.

It took the House 15 ballots to choose Kevin McCarthy as its speaker. His tenure ended recently when one of the MAGA nitwits, Matt Gaetz of Florida, objected to McCarthy striking a deal with Democrats to keep the government running. Gaetz filed a motion to “vacate” the speaker’s chair … and he won!

Well, let’s just hold on with both hands as the GOP-led House seeks to find a way to actually govern. I am not hopeful!

International news, military news, national news

Why does GOP ignore Russian aggression?

Some things you never expect to see up close … such as congressional Republicans turning their backs on Russian aggression in Europe.

Think about this for a moment. Republicans from Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and two presidents named Bush all considered Russians to be our nation’s foremost adversary. Operating under the guise of the Soviet Union, Russia sought to spread its form of autocracy via armed conflict.

Such action was deemed an existential threat to everyone who didn’t adhere to their policy.

The Russians are doing so at this moment in Ukraine. They invaded that sovereign nation in February 2022. Ukraine has pushed back — hard! — with help from the United States, NATO and other freedom-loving nations.

But not, apparently, from this country’s Republican Party. The GOP congressional caucus has approved temporary spending legislation that suspends he military assistance the United States is providing Ukraine in its effort to repel the Russian aggressors.

Where, though, is the Republican Party led by the MAGA cult that is calling the cadence within GOP headquarters?  Is it insisting on diverting that money to domestic programs to help Americans in need? Is it seeking funds to assist veterans, Social Security recipients? Nope. None of that.

It’s just sticking it in President Biden’s ear because of the president’s stated commitment to help the Ukrainians beat back the Russian invaders … and preserve democracy in Ukraine!

Today’s Republican Party is following a foreign-policy script that would make past GOP leaders cringe.

national news

MAGA mugs McCarthy

Kevin McCarthy’s tenure as speaker of the U.S. House came crashing down this week, a brief but still eventful stint as the Man of the House.

It appears that the California Republican will be remembered for brokering a deal that had the twin effect of ensuring his election as speaker and guaranteeing his demise the first time he broke faith with the folks with whom he brokered the deal.

It also appears that McCarthy will go down in the annals of U.S. political history as the worst negotiator ever to ascend to the post that put him third in line to the U.S. presidency. Wow! Stunning, man.

In one sense, McCarthy’s post-expulsion statement makes sense, that a tiny clique of right-wing extremists changed the course of legislative history. These extremists, the MAGA cult, have little support outside the halls of the House, he said. Yet they won the day.

Am I crying over that? No! He brought it all on himself by chipping away at his authority in order to get elected. It took him 15 ballots to win the speakership at the beginning of the year. He got his wish, then lived to regret forging a deal with the legislative devil.

One of the conditions of his being elected speaker was to enable a single House member to call for the “vacating of the chair” if the speaker didn’t do the bidding of the MAGA cult. McCarthy didn’t do the MAGA bidding. His sin was that he teamed with House Democrats to avoid a shutdown of the government.

Big …. deal! The plan he negotiated keeps the lights on for 45 days. Then we’ll face the same crisis all over again. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. We can thank the former speaker for a return to the madness.

Yeah, this guy got precisely what he deserved to get. A boot in the ass from the MAGA cult that is even less trustworthy than those within the Republican Party who hates them and the Democrats on other side of the House chamber.

This is no way to govern.

national news

Why didn’t Dems help?

One might be inclined to ask: If Kevin McCarthy’s loss of the U.S. House speakership was a result of his working with House Democrats to forestall a government shutdown, why didn’t Democrats vote to keep him in office?

I think I know. It is because Democrats don’t trust him any more than the MAGA cult followers who led the charge to oust him.

You see, Kevin McCarthy is a sort of closet MAGA minion. He condemned Donald Trump for his conduct on 1/6, then went immediately to Mar-a-Lago to have his picture taken with the former POTUS, grinning and embracing the leader of the MAGA cult.

How do you work with someone like that?

Moreover, then McCarthy had the MAGA crowd to whom he had to make plenty of promises in order to be elected speaker. It took House members 15 ballots to hand the gavel to McCarthy. One of the stipulations, apparently, was that he shouldn’t work Democrats and that under a new rule, a single House member could call for a motion to vacate the speakership if McCarthy broke any of the rules … to which he agreed!

He broke the rule about working with Democrats and that prompted Rep. Matt Gaetz to file the motion to vacate the speakership.

Democrats sat still and listened to Republicans argue among themselves on the House floor today.

This entire discussion and the resulting vote demonstrated clearly that Kevin McCarthy was no more the Man of the House than the guy who sweeps the floor at the end of the day.

Thus, I won’t feel one little bit of sympathy for this individual.

national news

House makes history!

The U.S. House of Representatives today made history, but you can bet your last buck that it won’t bask in the legacy this current Republican Party majority has created for the legislative body.

The House has booted the speaker out of his office, handing the job on an interim basis to Rep. Patrick McHenry.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been stripped of his title, stripped of what little power he actually possessed and sent to the back bench, possibly to sulk or to plot how he might regain the speakership.

McCarthy fell victim to the MAGA caucus within the Republican majority, which was slim to be sure. His sin? He worked with Democrats on finding a 45-day solution to keep the government running and averting a killer shutdown. The MAGA minions didn’t like that, so they rebelled.

One of them, Matt Gaetz, filed the motion to “vacate” the speaker’s office. And it passed.

To be clear this is not a bipartisan problem. As a Democratic strategist, Cornell Belcher, said, “This is a Republican problem.” And it seems to be one of some standing within the party. The GOP sought to oust Speaker Newt Gingrich, then went after John Boehner.

I’m trying to imagine Democrats trying this kind of thing with, say, Speakers Nancy Pelosi, Tom Foley or Sam Rayburn.

The MAGA crowd has seized control of the Republican Party and today they proved for all the world to see how just how out of control it is and how it is unable to govern one-half of the legislative branch of government.

A friend of mine sent me a text message immediately after McCarthy got the boot that suggests that the GOP could “screw up a two-car funeral.”

Just when you think you’ve seen everything … well, then you get this! Holy crap!

national news

Speaker reaps what he sows?

Part of me is beginning to feel the teeny-tiniest pangs of sympathy for U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the threats he is getting from the MAGA Moron caucus within the Republican Party House conference.

Then again …

The rest of me quashes that sympathy. The man knew what he was doing when he signed the deal with the MAGA devils that allowed him to ascend to the speakership after a 15-ballot effort when the current Congress convened at the start of the year.

The MAGA Morons are upset because McCarthy chose to work with Democrats by crafting a 45-day stopgap spending bill that averted a catastrophic government shutdown … for now! What’s next? One of the MAGA hotheads, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, vows to introduce a motion to vacate the speakership this week. He wants to be the lone House member who will call for the removal of McCarthy from the speaker’s office.

Once again, I would stand by that feeling of pain for McCarthy, except that he agreed to let the MAGA Morons have the authority to call for a vote if any of them grew disaffected by the job McCarthy is doing as speaker. Gaetz would be acting under House rules … to which McCarthy agreed when he was elected speaker.

All of this is providing a textbook study on the MAGA caucus’s real agenda, which has nothing to do with governance. It has everything to do with raising a stink whenever and wherever possible.

The MAGAites were able to keep funding for Ukraine war aid out of the spending bill. That wasn’t good enough. They want to slash more funds from vital domestic spending programs that assist Americans.

Now comes a potential crisis awaiting Speaker McCarthy. Do I want him to emerge from this scuffle? Yes, but only because a possible alternative — someone faithful to the MAGA Morons’ agenda — could emerge as the new Man of the House.

national news

45 days … nothing to cheer

U.S. House members must be high-fiving each other, slappin’ backs and telling themselves that they really know how to negotiate these deals.

It’s all just pure crap!

The House of Representatives has voted on a 45-day stopgap funding measure that reportedly will head off a potentially catastrophic government shutdown. The measure heads to the Senate, where it faces a friendlier audience.

This kind of government funding simply makes me sick!

Good government has no place in a House of Reps dominated by the MAGA-moron-club-of-kooks caucus within the Republican Party that boasts of being able to shut down the government if they don’t get their way on drastic spending cuts.

A much better way to run the federal government would be for all sides to come together and look for compromise. That’s not how Congress functions these days. The GOP majority is hanging by a shoestring. MAGA cultists keep threatening House Speaker Kevin McCarthy with his job if he doesn’t do their bidding.

The threat of a shutdown looms damn near all the time!

So, it appears Congress will set aside enough money to run the government for the next month and a half.

Then what? More of the same stubborn nonsense?

This is no way to govern!

national news

Senator pokes fun at dress code

John Fetterman is making light of the desire among some of his U.S. Senate colleagues to require that our elected senators adhere to a dress code that does not include hoodies, short pants and sandals.

Fetterman is the Pennsylvania Democrat who is the subject of this debate. He doesn’t seem to think it’s important enough to discuss, chiming in with quips and cracks about the attention being paid to the dress code by other members of the deliberative body. He yuks it up.

Well, Sen. Fetterman, some of us out here do think it’s serious enough to warrant discussion and debate. It isn’t a frivolous thing to require members of Congress to respect the legislative body enough to dress appropriately when the government is on duty.

Why is it wrong for the Senate and House to dress respectfully? House members and senators don’t dress to impress. They should respect the office they hold and the institution they are serving. I mean, these men and women do important work on Capitol Hill and to my way of thinking it’s only appropriate that they dress the part of officeholders assigned to doing work on our behalf.

I am aware that a lawmaker’s attire does not dictate the policies he or she follows. But still … if they ‘re going to occupy important offices that help shape the future of our great nation, what is so damn wrong with asking them to dress the part?