Tag Archives: Kevin McCarthy

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We are headed for catastrophe … seriously!

Excuse my tendency to push the proverbial panic button with regard to the midterm election, but I have to declare my fear that we could be headed for governmental catastrophe if Congress flips from Democratic to Republican control.

Indeed, I am concerned about Mitch McConnell become majority leader if the Senate flips. Today, though, it’s House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy who has earned the bulk of my wrath. McCarthy truly gives me the heebie-jeebies.

McCarthy wants to become speaker. If the House flips to his party, then he stands a good chance — I fear! — of being chosen speaker. What does that mean for those of us who favor good government? It means the House well could launch a torrent of probes designed to embarrass Democrats.

It well could become payback time in the People’s House.

Why do I worry about McCarthy? Because we now have a possibly presumptive speaker who has been recorded on audio saying something he actually well could deny he said, which was that he intended to encourage Donald J. Trump to resign from the presidency in the wake of the 1/6 insurrection.

He said as much to Rep. Liz Cheney. Then he denied saying it — until an audio recording surfaced.

This guy is a coward. So is Mitch McConnell, to be candid. Both of these individuals blamed Donald Trump for “provoking” the Capitol Hill riot on 1/6. Then McCarthy voted against impeaching Trump and McConnell voted to acquit him in the Senate trial that commenced after the second impeachment.

Will any of this occur? The tides are moving toward a GOP blowout on Election Day. That the president’s party would suffer a congressional election setback is not unusual. It is usually the case. Both legislative chambers have razor-thin Democratic majorities, so it won’t take much for the GOP to take control of the legislative branch of government.

I just worry for the sake of good government, though, that the next speaker of the House could be a cowardly liar who backed away from his condemnation of what the world saw occur on 1/6 and then sucked up to the Insurrectionist in Chief.

I don’t want the catastrophe to occur. Nor should anyone who values this democratic process of ours.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Profiles in cowardice

(Photo by Michael Kovac/WireImage)

Watching the congressional Republican leadership tie itself into knots over how to handle its relationship with the immediate past POTUS makes me wonder how on this good Earth these individuals can live with themselves.

I want to single out two of them: one from the Senate and one from the House.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina once declared that he was done with Donald Trump. “Enough is enough,” he said immediately after the 1/6 riot. “Count me out,” he added. He couldn’t stand the thought — allegedly — of associating himself with a president who had incited the riot that stormed onto Capitol Hill.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California once stood on the House floor and declared that Trump was singularly responsible for the attack on our democracy and demanded he be held accountable. He pleaded with Donald Trump during the riot to get the mob to stop inflicting damage on the Capitol, receiving the hideous response from the POTUS that “I guess, Kevin, they care more about the election than you do.”

Both men have turned tail from those remarks.

Graham has all but threatened other GOP senators with retribution if they don’t climb aboard the Trump clown car and back the former Liar in Chief. McCarthy has declared that he won’t submit to questions from the 1/6 House committee seeking answers to the riot and has said he intends to boot Democrats off key committees if he becomes speaker after this year’s midterm election.

Gutlessness, anyone? There it is in full view.

They aren’t the only exhibits of profiles in cowardice. They’re just two of the more notable examples of how members of Congress who swear to protect the Constitution now are pledging craven fealty to a twice-impeached individual.

Cowards. Every damn one of them!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

‘Principle’ has been perverted

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(MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The perversion of a concept long thought to be sacrosanct is disturbing to me in the extreme.

The concept is “principle.” The perversion occurs politically, when politicians say one thing and then act in a fashion that bears no resemblance to the principle they purport to follow.

We are watching this play out on Capitol Hill. Republicans in both the Senate and the House say they stand on certain principles. They in fact stand on a cultish loyalty to one of their own, the former president of the United States. It sickens me greatly.

Two examples come to mind; they relate to 1/6.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell told the world that Donald Trump “provoked” the riot that damn near overran Capitol Hill as terrorists sought to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College tally that resulted in the election of President Biden. He spoke angrily of the former president’s role in that provocation. He laid it all on the former POTUS’s lap. He was responsible solely for the riot.

Ditto for House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who reportedly implored the then-POTUS to stop the riot. He told POTUS 45 that people’s lives were endangered. He pleaded with him to call a halt to it. POTUS’s response: “I guess they care more about the election results than you do, Kevin.”

But what in the name of sanity happened after that? The principles on which these two men stood crumbled under their feet.

They both voted against impeaching the president and then against convicting him in the Senate trial that followed the second impeachment of his term in office. How in the world does a politician excoriate another pol for an obvious breach of faith and then stand behind that individual as if nothing ever happened in the first place to draw his ire?

Where I come from, I would define that as hypocrisy in the extreme.

And yet it infects the political process to a degree that I fear the poison will become endemic to our system of government.

It needs to be purged.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Better get the 1/6 probe done quickly

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(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

If past is prologue as it relates to the 2022 congressional election, then it’s wise to urge the U.S. House select committee to finish its investigation into the 1/6 riot sooner rather than later.

As in … before the 2022 election.

After that, again if history is going to repeat itself, Republicans are going to take control of the House of Representatives; Nancy Pelosi no longer will be speaker and the GOP will likely move rapidly to shove the results of the 1/6 probe into the crapper.

Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has issued subpoenas of several key White House aides who are privy to what occurred the day Donald Trump incited the riotous mob to storm Capitol Hill. I will call the riot what it was: an insurrection. The terrorists sought to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

The panel, chosen by Pelosi, wants answers. So do many millions of Americans. As for who might be speaker if the GOP takes command of the House, he is a 1/6 riot denier. I refer to Kevin McCarthy, also of California.

The reality is that McCarthy has talked out of both sides of his pie hole regarding that terrible event. He scolded the POTUS immediately after the crowd dispersed, but then reverted to form and voted against creation of an independent commission to study the matter.

Thus, it become imperative for the House select panel — which contains two key Republican lawmakers — to finish the job to which it has been tasked.

We cannot — must not — tolerate another cover-up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

That’s only part of it, Rep. McCarthy

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(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

U.S. House of Representatives Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is only partly right about the mission awaiting the House select committee’s probe into the 1/6 insurrection.

McCarthy today said the panel should concern itself only with why the Capitol security was so lacking and “how to prevent” such a riot from recurring.

Wrong, leader McCarthy!

There’s also this thing about what the 45th president knew at the time of the riot, what he didn’t do to call a halt to it and did he really have that conversation with McCarthy in which he told him that the rioters cared more about the Constitution than McCarthy did.

The terrorists who marched onto Capitol Hill on 1/6 to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election committed an insurrection against the government. House members and senators were doing their constitutional duty in certifying the election.

The House select panel is tasked with finding out all there is to learn about what happened, why it happened and, yes, how to prevent it from recurring.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy needs to stop obstructing the panel from doing its job and adhere to the oath he took to “defend and protect the Constitution,” which the insurrectionists sought on 1/6 to destroy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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How do they deny it?

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hell will freeze over, Earth will spin off its axis and the sun will rise in the west long before I ever will understand how some congressional leaders can justify their resistance to investigating the events that lead to 1/6.

I want to mention a couple of them specifically: Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader of the U.S. Senate.

Why those two? Because both of them spoke eloquently in the days immediately after 1/6 about the complicity exhibited by the former president of the United States, the nitwit who incited the insurrection that sought to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

McConnell said POTUS “provoked” the riot that stormed Capitol Hill. McCarthy reportedly was on a phone call with the Numbskull in Chief, who told him that the rioters “care more about the election than you do, Kevin.” They both aimed their rhetorical fire straight at POTUS 45.

Then they turned tail and scampered into the tall grass.

They both against the impeachment and against convicting the president of inciting the insurrection. They have resisted calls to form an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the 1/6 riot. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi nixed two GOP members of the select committee she formed, McCarthy pulled the rest of the Republicans he selected for the panel and then said Pelosi was playing politics with the investigation.

Neither of them will call the events of 1/6 what the rest of us know to be true: that it was an insurrection.

These two men lead the GOP caucuses in their respective legislative chambers. Sadly, too many of their minions agree with them. But not all of them, I am happy to declare. There really are Republican politicians who are able and willing to stand for the Constitution and for the rule of law. Most of them? They appear to be hopeless.

Thus, we have my lack of understanding of what has happened to a once-great political party.

I guess I’ll just wait for hell to freeze over.

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GOP leader skulks away

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

That’ll teach ’em, right, Kevin McCarthy?

The U.S. House Republican leader decided today to pull all GOP members from a select committee chosen by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi objected to the presence of two men McCarthy had added to the panel, Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. They were included on a panel that aims to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

These men are big fans and supporters of the guy who lost that election and voted to deny President Biden certification that he was the winner. Pelosi would have none of that.

McCarthy decided, therefore, to yank all Republicans. The only GOP House member left on the panel is Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach the former president for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 riot. Cheney, though, doesn’t fit the profile of today’s Republican Party, which is to pledge total, blind and unyielding fealty to the disgraced, twice-impeached former POTUS.

Cheney’s loyalty is to the Constitution, which makes her among the more inspired choices that Pelosi made to the select committee.

Here, though, is what really makes me scratch my noggin: How does McCarthy justify abandoning this select committee selection process, leaving this Jan. 6 probe solely up to Democrats, which he contends only will produce a “partisan” finding of culpability by the ex-POTUS and his GOP pals in Congress?

He could have selected five GOP members who aren’t as fervid in their defense of the indefensible, but no-o-o-o. He turned to Jordan and Banks.

Now he has abandoned any pretext of cooperation with Democrats. McCarthy has chosen instead to level accusations of “partisanship” and “politics” at Pelosi who, I feel the need to remind everyone here, has chosen a Republican to serve on this select panel.

Kevin McCarthy, meanwhile, has left the field in a fit of petulance that doesn’t advance the search for the truth into what happened when the mob stormed the Capitol Building and sought to overturn the democratic process.

DC riot

McCarthy makes it clear: He is a Trump toadie

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Kevin “The Snake” McCarthy has thrown in with a Donald Trump sycophant in the intramural fight among Republican caucus members in the U.S. House.

The California lawmaker, the leader of the GOP caucus, said today he is backing Rep. Elise Stefanik in her bid to oust Rep. Liz Cheney from the Republican Caucus chairmanship.

McCarthy says he supports Stefanik for House GOP conference chair | TheHill

What did Cheney do to incur McCarthy’s wrath? All she did was vote to impeach Donald Trump after the ex-POTUS incited the insurrection of The Sixth of January. Cheney had the temerity to stand strongly in favor of the U.S. Constitution, which the terrorists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 threatened directly. And, yes, Donald Trump was the instigator.

This is a disgraceful display from the House GOP leader. He makes me sick.

As for Stefanik, a New York Republican, she makes me sick, too. Her only credential is that she is a Trump toadie, a suck-up, a Kool-Aid swilling member of the Trumpkin Corps of acolytes who believes the election was “stolen” by some mysterious, nefarious cabal.

This internecine war among Republicans isn’t likely to end with Cheney’s expected ouster from the leadership of her party’s House caucus. Nor should it.

As for “leader” McCarthy, well … he makes feel like throwing up.

national news, political news

Who are ‘they,’ Donald?

donald

Donald Trump is taking undeserved credit — imagine that, will you? — for Kevin McCarthy’s stunning withdrawal last week from the contest to become the next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The GOP presidential candidate said “They’re giving me a lot of credit” for McCarthy dropping out of the congressional campaign.

Who said it, Donald?

That’s all part and parcel of Trump’s modus operandi.

He takes credit where none is deserved, along with shuffling blame off on someone else — all while tossing a personal insult or three at various other individuals.

So help me, I never heard anyone giving Trump “credit” for McCarthy backing out of the House leadership race. That is, until Trump said so.

The fact is that McCarthy’s own intemperance got him booted out.

He muttered that amazing fact, er, gaffe about the Benghazi hearing under way in the House, suggesting the committee was formed for the expressed purpose of undercutting HRC’s presidential ambition.

As former Texas Gov. Rick Perry might say …

Oops.

national news, political news

Bring back Newt?

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California in this May 24, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Mark Avery

You’re never too old to learn something.

I found that out today. I did not know, for example, that the U.S. Constitution does not require the speaker of the House of Representatives to be a current member of the House.

Do you know what this means? The Republicans who control the House conceivably could go outside the body to find someone to lead it.

I’ve been watching the federal government for nearly 40 years and I did not know this about the House.

This opens up the list of candidates for the speakership to a remarkable degree.

John Boehner announced his intention to quit the House and the speakership. Kevin McCarthy was supposed to be the heir apparent. Then he dropped out today.

Who’s left? The TEA Party caucus of the GOP is beside itself.

Hey, why not enlist former Speaker Newt Gingrich? He said today he’d be willing if a majority of House wanted him to return to Capitol Hill.

Hey, maybe the GOP could call on former Vice President Dick Cheney, who once served in the House. We’ve got a former Republican president out there, George W. Bush, who’s able to serve; former President George H.W. Bush is in failing health.

How about Donald Trump? He’s running for the GOP presidential nomination and he proclaims he is able to do anything under the sun.

Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is available. Bring him back.

Oh, the possibilities seem endless.