Category Archives: national news

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?

 

national news

Liberal ain’t a dirty word

OK, kids, I’ve had enough of the epithets that come from the MAGA side of the great divide aimed at liberals who for too long have cowered under the threat of recrimination if they dare defend their political leanings.

I consider myself a center-left liberal. I am not a flamer the way some of us on the left have become. I want a strong military; I dislike spending more government money than we take in; I stand for the National Anthem; I have no problem with saying “one nation under God” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

But political liberalism has become a whipping boy of the right.

The day that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton got acquitted of those impeachment charges by the Texas Senate, he took a moment to blast “the liberal Texas speaker, Dade Phelan,” who happens to be a Republican from my old haunts in Beaumont.

Paxton meant to tar Phelan with what he considers a four-letter word in the contemporary political lexicon.

One contemporary definition of liberalism goes something like this:

A willingness to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; openness to new ideas; “one of the basic tenets of liberalism is tolerance.”

I have to ask: What is so downright evil about any of those benchmark characteristics of political liberalism? My answer: Not a damn thing!

Yet, the MAGA cult that has perverted Republicanism into something not recognizable to those who followed the policies of Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan, has done an even more thorough job of perversion regarding liberalism.

They conflate liberal policies with “socialism.” They contend that anyone who adheres to liberal principles is somehow not American enough.

What’s equally maddening, though, is that liberal politicians stopped embracing their political benchmark. They gravitated to terms like “progressive,” seeming to avoid saying the word “liberal” out loud.

Well, they shouldn’t have to run like thieves from a noble political philosophy. Nor should those of us who share it with them.

national news

Corruption gets new poster boy

Political corruption has displayed many faces over many decades as politics has been practiced in the United States of America.

The latest face now just might belong to a New Jersey Democratic U.S. senator, Bob Menendez. The federal government has indicted Menendez and his wife, Nadine, on charges that they took bribes.

Here’s what is so astonishing: FBI agents searched the couple’s home and found gold bars and cash-stuffed envelopes hidden in clothing in the couple’s closet. Oh, and get a load of this: Agents discovered that many of the envelopes had Menendez’s name on them … implying strongly that, well, the cash was placed there for nefarious purposes. The loot totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars!

The question that goes far beyond the Menendez scandal deals with just how widespread is this kind of behavior. I won’t believe it is endemic among politicians. Although as it involves a guy who has faced questions such as this before, I am struck by the alleged hubris Sen. Menendez has exhibited.

Pressure is mounting for Menendez to resign. It is coming from Democrats, which tells me that the New Jersey lawmaker has — shall we say — zero friends/allies in the Senate. He cannot continue to work effectively representing New Jersey residents while also voting on laws that affect all of Americans. He needs to go!

There also needs to be some serious soul-searching among pols, along with those who support our pols. This level of corruption simply cannot be allowed to stand.

The problem that awaits? Preventing this kind of bald-faced greed remains arguably the most awesome task awaiting those who remain in office.

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Patrick fills me with regret

Dan Patrick quickly made me regret that I issued a compliment to him over the way he had presided over the impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The lieutenant governor, who presides over the Texas Senate, received a bouquet from me because he seemed to be impartial and unbiased in his handling of the trial in the Senate.

Then came Paxton’s acquittal by 30 senators … and what did Patrick do? He shot off his pie hole by declaring that the Texas House that had impeached Paxton had wasted Texans’ tax money by alleging that Paxton had committed impeachable offenses. Paxton was impeached overwhelmingly, I must add, in a bipartisan vote among House members.

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a fellow Republican, was having none of that, telling Patrick that the lieutenant governor only has revealed his bias. I’ll go with Phelan on this one.

I hate having regrets over what I spew on this blog. But I’ll be damned if I am feeling them now, with Patrick suggesting that he was able to hide his bias.

Oh, and now he wants to conduct an audit of the money spent to impeach the attorney general and then put him on trial. What does he hope to find? That the money went to partisan interests whose mission was to enough evidence to convict the AG?

Sounds as if Patrick has ripped a page out of the congressional GOP caucus’s playbook as it seeks to find a reason — any reason — to impeach a U.S. president.

national news

Keep the dress code!

My old-fashioned streak is beginning to show itself over the debate emerging on the dress code that is being relaxed because one of our 100 senators just doesn’t like to wear a tie, slacks and a sport coat while he’s at work on the Senate floor.

Senate majority leader Charles Schumer wants the code relaxed because Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., doesn’t like the dress code.

I admit to being a fuddy-duddy when it comes to dressing respectably while doing the people’s business. I do not accept that Fetterman’s desire to work in a hoodie, shorts and sneakers must be the new normal for the Senate.

This happens in my mind to be an absurd reaction.

The dress code isn’t codified. There is no punishment under the law if a senator chooses to dress “casually” at work. The rules have been in place for a long time and until right now it rarely has come under examination.

We see some House members occasionally wearing just shirts and a tie while conducting committee business. Here again, why not just throw on a jacket and look the part of a serious lawmaker?

I am having trouble grasping why this is even a discussion topic. To my way of thinking, it all seems just plain silly.

economic news, Joe Biden, national news

Why won’t GOP govern?

Why in the name of sound fiscal management is Congress — led by Republicans in the House of Representatives — unable to approve a long-term budget deal that avoid the catastrophe that awaits us at the end of this month?

The federal government might be headed for another shutdown if Congress doesn’t approve enough money to keep services running. These are the services that you and I pay for with our tax money, services we expect to receive in return for the government demanding our funds.

Is it me or does it appear that these crises always seem to play out when the GOP controls the congressional purse strings while a Democrat sits in the big chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office?

This particular House GOP majority, although it is of an extremely slim margin, is being driven by the impulses that coarse through the veins of the MAGA Moron caucus that has managed to outshout not only Democrats but also the more reasonable members of the once-great Republican Party.

The MAGA minions insist on impeaching President Biden before they consider approving a federal budget. For what? Beats the hell out of me!

The MAGAites even have steamrolled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy into toeing their line. McCarthy went seemingly overnight from being someone who blamed the MAGA mouthpiece in chief for inciting the 1/6 assault on our government to becoming one of the dipsh**’s chief allies in the House. That’s not good enough to satisfy the MAGA morons.

So, here we are. Government could shut down again by Oct. 1. We’ll get to hear nonsensical speeches from GOP House members and perhaps even some senators about the wisdom of shutting it all down.

It is government performed by the cosmically stupid.

national news

Where’s the … beef?

My patience with congressional Republicans is wearing thin, so thin in fact that I feel the need to call them out on all that so-called “evidence” they purport to have on President Biden’s alleged corruption.

Where is it? What is it? From whom are they getting it?

The U.S. House is embarking on that impeachment inquiry sought by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, at the behest of the MAGA morons to pull his strings. The usual gang of loudmouths say the House must actually impeach the president before they act on things such as, oh, a federal budget.

Good grief, man!

Evidence? An actual “high crime or misdemeanor”? Have they developed a pattern? Hell no!

They have concocted a conclusion. Now the House Republican caucus is looking for a trail that will lead them to the conclusion they already have approved.

We hear a lot these days about the “rule of law,” yes? This isn’t how the rules work. They work when you come up with sufficient evidence to investigate; then you investigate and then you reach whatever conclusion your probe leads you … not the other way around!

What we see in this inquiry is more akin to the “rite of revenge.” House Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice after the then-POTUS sought a political favor from a foreign head of state and then exhorted the mob of traitors to storm the Capitol Building on 1/6.

Republicans won’t stand for that, so they’re seeking something to hang round a Democratic president’s neck.

I hear a glimmer of good news out there, which is that many non-MAGA moron Republicans are joining their Democratic colleagues in Congress and warning of the folly of impeaching a president who — if I may be blunt — does not deserve it.