Tag Archives: Kevin McCarthy

economic news, Joe Biden, national news

Why won’t GOP govern?

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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.

Joe Biden

Acting as if he has a ‘mandate’

Kevin McCarthy and his MAGA moron gaggle of back-bench blowhards are likely to learn in due course whether they have the political capital they think they have.

My hunch: They will learn a hard lesson, which is that they have none.

The speaker of the U.S. House has ordered an impeachment inquiry that he hopes will produce an impeachable offense it can toss at President Biden. However, he is acting as if he has a boatload of political capital to spend.

The truth? He doesn’t. He was chosen speaker of the House by the thinnest of margins. He had to make concessions to the MAGA morons to cobble together enough votes to win the speakership.

The MAGA minions want an impeachment now. They are being led by the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert, who won re-election to her Colorado seat by the thinnest of margins. Then we have the likes of Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., telling McCarthy he is in danger of losing his speakership if he doesn’t follow the rules dictated by the MAGA morons.

Meanwhile, other Republicans — those who have retained their brains — are joining their Democratic colleagues in telling the speaker to tread softly. He doesn’t have the goods against Joe Biden.

The GOP controls the House by a single-digit margin. It won’t take much for Democrats to regain control after the 2024 election.

The MAGA morons are acting as if they’re bullet-proof. Let them think it. A day of reckoning might be in their future.

national news

MAGA cabal calls the shots

Kevin McCarthy made it official: He has instructed the relevant U.S. House of Representatives committee chairs to rev up an inquiry into whether to impeach President Biden.

Which begs this question: Is there a clearer demonstration than this of just who is calling the shots within the People’s House? It ain’t the speaker of the body, but rather it’s the MAGA moron cabal that forced him to act in this irresponsible manner.

Speaker McCarthy is in charge by the slimmest of margins in the House. He owes the speakership to the concessions he made to the MAGA cabal that wants this impeachment inquiry.

What are the charges? What high crime and misdemeanor has the president allegedly committed? Where will this inquiry go and how long will it last?

The MAGA morons want it to go through the next election cycle, keeping the heat on the president for as long as humanly possible.

We are about to witness a staggering abuse of power within the House of Representatives that could rival any such abuses we already have witnessed.

And why? For what reason? I believe I know.

It’s revenge for the twin impeachments leveled against Donald Trump … and it is disgraceful.

crime news

Expunge impeachments? Huh?

Allow me this full-frontal criticism of the U.S. speaker of the House: Kevin McCarthy has rocks in his noggin.

McCarthy, a Republican, is considering seeking an expunging of the record that shows Donald J. Trump has been impeached twice by the House.

As if that is going to erase the memories of every living American who witnessed the House impeach the ex-POTUS for (a) trying to get a political favor from a foreign head of state and (b) inciting the mob that attacked the government on 1/6 in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

He was impeached twice, man!

What does McCarthy hope to accomplish? Does an expunging of the record mean that Trump wasn’t impeached? Of course not! The record will stand forever.

McCarthy is certifiably loony.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Sham ‘hearing’ worthy of scorn

You may take this straight to the bank because it is the unvarnished  truth, which is that I could have lived my entire life without hearing about a sham “hearing” conducted by MAGA cult members of Congress that actually saluted the criminals who stormed the Capitol Building on 1/6.

There they were: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar, among others, pretending to conduct a congressional hearing on the events of that terrible day.

All the while, the MAGA cultists insisted that the traitors who stormed the Capitol that day were being treated as political prisoners. The government, they said, wrongfully prosecuted them for crimes against our democracy because the 2020 election indeed was “stolen” from the guy who lost it legitimately.

What’s just as horrifying, of course, is that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — who owes his speakership to these MAGA morons — let it happen in the first place.

None of these yahoos hold chairmanships in any actual House committee. The hearing they conducted today was made up to look like an official event, when in fact it was nothing of the sort. It was a staged propaganda performance designed to denigrate the prosecutions that have put many of the “witnesses” who spoke today behind bars.

And why are the convicted felons? Because they stormed the Capitol, assaulted police officers assigned to protect members of Congress from the frothing mob, they smashed windows, defecated on the floor of the Capitol Building and threatened to execute Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over a congressional hearing to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election.

Oh, did I mention that that the Republican incumbent lost that election to Joe Biden?

The traitors who answered the call to assault the government from the guy who took an oath to “defend and protect” the Constitution do not deserve anything other than the nation’s scorn for the crimes they committed.

That goes as well for the president who incited them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden: big winner on debt deal

I have been reluctant to dish out much praise for the negotiations that produced an increase in the national debt ceiling.

Until now.

I am going to offer a brief word of praise to the Negotiator in Chief, President Joe Biden. The president faced down the MAGA cult among Republicans in Congress and emerged as the big winner in this negotiation that extends the debt ceiling for another two years.

Joe Biden has spent his entire public service career learning how to negotiate with his “friends” in the other party. Thirty-six years in the U.S. Senate, eight years as vice president and now as the head of state/government/commander in chief, he has shown his mettle once again.

I long have understood that good government requires compromise on both sides. President Biden knows it, too. He practices it. He has fine-tuned his compromise skills and he brought them to bear as he haggled with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over a deal that certainly doesn’t please everyone.

You know the saying about the “perfect being the enemy of the good.” The “good” in this case avoids a catastrophe in case the nation were to default on its debt. Perfection for the MAGA gang on the right or the liberal/progressives was out of reach.

Joe Biden knows it. So does Kevin McCarthy.

It just appears to me that President Biden’s skill has won the day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Compromise = good government

All right, folks, we are witnessing in real time the impact that good government can bring us.

One aspect of good government — in a representative democracy — is that compromise is essential. So, with that we have an agreement in principle to fend off the threat of our nation defaulting on payments to which it is obligated.

It came down to two men, President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, haggling, needling, cajoling and compromising to reach this agreement.

“Everybody won’t like what is the end of the agreement … on both sides,” McCarthy said Saturday morning. “But … at the end of the day I think people should see what that product is before people vote on it.”

McCarthy is going to make the details of the agreement available to House members for 72 hours before casting a vote slated for Wednesday.

Progressives are unhappy. So are conservatives. These are the hardliners on both ends who refuse to accept compromise as an essential element of good government.

I haven’t seen the details of the bill, so I won’t comment on the finished product. My focus with this post is on the method that Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy used to reach this point.

Defaulting on our debt obligations is a non-starter. Both men said so. They proceeded from that point. Default would have produced a catastrophe.

The deal that Biden and McCarthy have reached is good for the next two years. It takes this whole issue off the campaign table for 2024. It is an agreement that in a more perfect world should have been reached without the drama that led to this point.

In the end, good government has won the day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Mr. Speaker, for whom do you work?

Kevin McCarthy clearly needs a lesson on public service, because the House speaker is listening to the wrong “bosses” as he digs in against efforts to raise the national debt ceiling.

Mr. House Speaker, you work for the people of south-central California, who sent you to Congress to do their bidding, not the bidding of the MAGA crowd that is pulling your strings.

McCarthy appears to be resisting President Biden’s effort to reach common ground because the MAGA cabal that comprises the vocal minority within the GOP House caucus is demanding it of him.

What will happen, then, if the nation defaults? If it fails to pay its debts by the June 1 drop-dead date established by the Treasury Department?

A lot of folks in McCarthy’s home district are going to go without Social Security or military benefit checks, they will watch their mortgage interest rates skyrocket, they will lose their jobs.

Do you think that will piss a lot of ’em off?

The House once had a Republican leader named Eric Cantor of Virginia who listened too closely to the GOP leadership and didn’t listen enough to those who sent him to Congress. Cantor ended up getting booted out of Congress when the GOP primary voters cast their ballots for someone else. Cantor was deemed out of touch with the home folks.

Mr. Speaker, you had better pay attention to who is going to feel the harm of a national default on our debt.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Why worry about Santos?

For the life of me I cannot fathom easily why I should give a damn about a freshman Republican congressman from New York.

But I kinda do give a damn! Here’s why.

George Santos has been indicted by the Department of Justice on a number of charges related the bucketload of lies Santos told while getting elected to Congress in 2022. They relate to mail fraud and campaign expenses.

Santos has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

Whatever … here’s the deal about this serial liar.

He has become a top target of Democratic Party strategists looking to flip the House district back to their corner after Santos’s surprise victory in 2022.

Santos probably ought to just resign his seat and concentrate on defending himself in court. Were he to do that, it would reduce the GOP’s razor thin House majority even more, giving Speaker Kevin McCarthy even more reason to complain about sleepless nights.

Let me remind you, too, that McCarthy had to make a whole lot of concessions to the MAGA wing of his GOP caucus just to win election as speaker … on the 15th ballot.

Thus, it becomes important that George Santos be held accountable for (a) the lies he told to get elected and (b) the allegations that he misspent campaign money given to him by those who swallowed the baloney he served them.

I suppose I should mention, too, that even his Republican colleagues cannot stand him. Do you recall seeing anyone standing with this liar defending him for the deceitful campaign he waged?

I suppose one of the lessons all voters should take from this loser’s saga is to remain vigilant when someone talks about family members surviving the Holocaust or 9/11. Santos’s lies on those tragedies helped open the door to all the lies he told to win voters’ trust.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

What about those tapes?

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned over about 40,000 hours of video recording of the 1/6 insurrection to Tucker Carlson, the former star of the Fox Propaganda Network.

Fox canned Carlson this past week. My question now is this to the speaker: What about the video recordings you turned over to Fox? Are you going to get them back or is Carlson now free to use them whenever and wherever he pleases?

Carlson edited the video heavily while trying to develop a narrative on Fox that the insurrection wasn’t a violent attack on the government, that it was just a bunch of tourists out for a stroll through the Capitol grounds.

It was all part of The Big Lie that Carlson fomented after the 2020 presidential election.

Well, he’s gone from Fox. Speaker McCarthy must be compelled to get those recordings back … realizing, of course, that Carlson can reproduce them anyway.

The damage is done, but McCarthy needs to cut his losses — and the losses suffered by Americans concerned about what happened on that horrifying day of insurrection.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com