The Needlefish editorial board was thinking about handing Johnson, the GOP Speaker of the House du jour, his very first Gohmert Award, but it didn’t seem to be an appropriate prize under the circumstances. Gomeys, recall, are supposed to be awarded for acts or utterances of spectacularly rank stupidity, and what Mike was saying to the reporters today wasn’t actually stupid. It was duplicitous, disingenuous, mendacious, misleading, and altogether full of shit, but it was also cunning, calculated, and, sadly, politically savvy.
The grade-A baloney this guy dishes out with a straight face, I swear, you almost have to stand back and applaud. He’s way better at the serial lying than poor befuddled Kevin McCarthy ever was, and he’s arguably better even than Donald, who’s coming off these days like a flailing lunatic, whereas Johnson is all smooth, even-tempered plausibility. I can’t think of anyone except maybe Mitch McConnell who shovels it with such calm and measured turns of phrase, as if of course he’d never, dear voters, never ever, stoop to the sort of craven, bad faith partisan gamesmanship that is, in fact, the hallmark of the Libs. Perish the thought! That Mike, he’s just telling it like it is. Why can’t the Dems be reasonable for once?
The thing is, this crap really plays. It works. Thus far, then, nothing blasting out of Mike’s firehose of untruths makes him eligible for the prize named after the dumbest chucklehead ever to soak up a seat in the House. The man’s a goddam bullshit artist, sure, but with the emphasis on artist.
So, we’ve decided instead to anoint him as current undisputed owner of the World’s Most Punchable Face, supplanting incumbent nine-time winner Tucker Carlson (who’s no longer so annoyingly visible, and is thus a little less punchable), and edging out Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, and even Ron DeSantis, all title-holders in the past and sure to be contenders again (Vivek Ramaswamy was disqualified because he’s pulled out of the Republican primary, and for the moment is incapable of inflicting grave damage upon the national interest, though his exclusion wasn’t without controversy and some heated debate here at the Needlefish head office).
All right, so what’s he done this time? Maybe best to first have a shot of something bracing, then see for yourself:
You get that, Joey B? Today’s theme is border border border! Fix the border or Ukraine, which anyway is starting to look like the next Afghanistan, can twist in the wind! Border! Fix the border, I say! Right now, or else! Border BORDER border BORDER BORDER!! Also: BORDER!
Jesus, what a jerk.
I love his characterization of the war in Ukraine. Beginning to look like Afghanistan, good one, Mike. Yes, actually, yes it is – FOR RUSSIA. Last time I looked, you Murricans didn’t have so much as a single pair of boots on the ground over there, and were merely handing out what amounts to pocket money for a country with an 800 billion dollar defence budget, and a fair bit of certain select categories of military gear, the latter often surplus and slated for disposal. In other words, nothing you can’t spare, in return for which the Ukrainians are grinding the Russian war machine down to a nubbin. Sounds more like a modestly-priced golden opportunity than a looming quagmire to me, Mike, old sock. You know what, you need to brush up a bit on your military analytical skills. Read some books. No, not the Bible; other books. Talk to some folks at the Pentagon. Glean some facts and absorb a little educated opinion. After all, you’re the Speaker of the House now. That’s a Big Boy job. You gotta know some stuff. Used to you did, anyhow.
As for your supposed fervour to enact measures to fix the urgent, existential crisis at the border, I begin with the immortal words of Bugs Bunny:
Shaddup, Mike. Put a frickin’ sock in it.
Look, as it stands Mike Johnson has absolutely no intention of doing anything about the situation at the border, and he and his pals in the House GOP caucus never have, not so long as there’s been a Democrat in the White House. Here’s the dead giveaway: a bi-partisan bill giving the Republicans most of what they claim to want on border security is close to being finalized in the Senate, but Mike gives every sign of steadfast unwillingness to bring any such thing to the House floor for a vote, supposing it clears the upper chamber. How come? Duh. Are you maybe short a couple of marbles there, friend? Why on earth would he do anything to move such a thing through the House? A good, solid piece of public policy like that might just pass with hefty bipartisan support, and then it might seem as if the Democrats were actually helping to come up with solutions to one of the GOP’s most useful festering wedge issues. Screw that!
Representative Troy Nehls ( R-Texas) was speaking for the whole Freedom Caucus when he blurted to a group of reporters, all unabashed and matter-of-fact, that Hell no, there’d be no voting on bills to fix the emergency on the border until after the next election, to avoid any risk of making Joe Biden look good. Yes, absolutely, the border crisis threatens to put an end to life as we know it, and you better believe that it needs to be dealt with immediately, right away, right now, yesterday, but you know, there’s the big picture to consider too. Some things, end of the day, have to take priority over everything else.
He was only saying in public what Johnson had already said to caucus during one of their private conference calls:
So much for border-border-border-ASAP-border-border.
Hey, just for fun, get a load of this cigar-chomping asshole Nehls, as he’s egged on by a right wing asshole questioner. Pissing and moaning about the border is this guy’s bread and butter. It’s what he does. It’s damned near all he does. If lawmakers all got together and hammered out a mutually acceptable compromise on immigration and border security, that would be a disaster for our Troy. He’d have to think up another, equally inflammatory schtick, fast, and that ain’t easy:
Did you watch it straight through? It’s a classic of its kind. He even manages to throw in the Big Lie, just for the sake of completeness. Anyway, long story short it’s all Joe Biden’s fault, see, because Biden and the perfidious Dems want all the illegal immigrants to become citizens, vote Democratic, and turn America into a one-party socialist state. I think he must be right about that, I mean, Twitter/X pundit “Salty Texan” thinks so.
It looks pretty bad, but there’s still a chance, maybe not a big one, but a chance, that if the Senate hammers out a deal and passes a bill, the pressure on the House GOP to likewise take it up will be overwhelming, even for a guy like Mike, who considers himself a mere instrument of God’s will, humbly accomplishing down here only what The Supreme Being is telling him to do from up there, somewhere. Whadda-ya-gonna-do? Take issue with God’s instructions? Who said that? Who dares such blasphemy? Yeah, well, count on it, the minute a course change is politically expedient, we’ll find that God just issued a revised set of marching orders to his beloved loyal servant on Earth. Why, even as I write this, Mike is in a meeting at the White House, maybe doing a little horse trading. Maybe he’s hearing something he likes. Hey, it could happen. Maybe he doesn’t really mean all that stuff about never taking a deal on the border, no matter how sweet it is. Maybe when he talks like that he’s just goofin’ around. It’s politics! Nothing’s impossible!
Unless it is.
Meanwhile, where does this leave the beleaguered Ukrainians? I don’t know. In limbo, I guess. You can’t tie funding for Ukraine to a deal on the border if there is no deal on the border. And speaking of funding, isn’t the whole federal government supposed to start running out of money on, um… [checks calendar] yoiks and gadzooks, January 19? That’s less than 48 hours from right now, as I type this, isn’t it? Geez, that’s cutting it a wee bit close. What’s going on with that anyway? Mike’s not really going to shutter the government, is he? Surely not! Nah. It’ll all work out. Somehow. And Ukraine will get its funding, one way or another. There just needs to be a little more performative wailing first, a little more grievance theatre. It’s Washington, right? That’s how they roll.
I don’t actually know how this is going to work out, to be honest, but I sure do hope I’m right, and when has the world ever crushed my fondest hopes?
Meanwhile, here you go, Mike.
Disclaimer: the awarding of this title is in no way an invitation for anyone within arm’s length to haul off and cold-cock Mike Johnson, or subject him to any similar sort of beat-down. The Needlefish is committed to peaceful change, and takes no responsibility for any act of violence against Speaker Johnson or anybody else. It’s important to understand that just because a guy’s eminently punchable, that doesn’t mean the mutt ought to be punched. Delivering, say, a pulverizing right cross to Mike’s head the next time he opens his yip to whine about the border would, unequivocally, be wrong. We repeat: however enticing the opportunity, THIS WOULD BE WRONG. Our advice is DON’T DO IT. Not on our account, anyway. We really can’t tell you what you can do for your own gratification.
the needlefish 