Today, in the House of Representatives…
Other end! C’mon, wrangle that goat proper, darlin’!!
Seems to be a lot going on, yes? Why, it’s just one thing after another, both home and abroad. Wars! Legislative malpractice! Insane politicking! Epochal court decisions! Looming crises! Whoa, Daddy! It’s head-spinning! And crazy-making! Not for me, though. Nossir. Ain’t nobody going crazy around here. Nobody’s going to drive this boy ‘round the bend, no way, no how. Heck, I’m not even angry anymore. I’m beyond angry. Above it. I’ve blown right through it. I’m placid. Bemused, at worst. Sometimes tickled pink, even, because some of this farcical kabuki theatre is so nutty it’s hilarious. Look at the past couple of days. OMG. What a goat rodeo! What a 250 clown car pileup!
You remember how the immigration situation on the border with Mexico was the single most important issue in all of American politics? That’s what the GOP’s been saying for years. For years. There’s not just a problem, there’s an invasion going on! The Dems are trying to overwhelm white folk with dirty, disease-ridden brown people from parts unknown! It isn’t just a crisis, people, it’s frickin’ existential! Why, the very life of the Republic, the fate of the American Experiment, is on the line! Indeed it was such a transcendentally vital issue that the Republicans demanded Draconian legislation to fix things at the border their way as the price for even considering vital aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, matters central to current US foreign policy.
OOPSIE! In response, the Democrats, whose urgent requests for funding to address the border situation have for several years been voted down by those crafty Republicans, did exactly what I wanted them to do, and caved. All right, they said, if it means supporting our allies and saving Ukraine from Russian aggression, tell us what you want, and we’ll give it to you. A process then began in the Senate, championed by a GOP Senator named Lankford, who obviously missed a couple of briefings and thought his party was actually serious about this stuff. Before long, he’d secured the worst possible outcome for Republican strategists: he got a deal. He got just about everything his party had ever claimed to want. Even a resumption of construction on Trump’s goddam border wall.
NOOOOOOOO
Jesus Christ Lankford, you were supposed to tie the Dems in knots and then blame them for the collapse of negotiations, NOT GET A F#$KING DEAL!!
Oh, replied Lankford, looking a little crestfallen and confused, sorry, but the thing is they kept capitulating until I’d put together the legislative package of our wildest dreams, I mean you should see this thing fellas, it’s got everything in there short of “shoot on sight” authorization, you’ve never had the chance to enact such a one-sided bill!
GOP to Lankford: Shut the fuck up.
Now poor Lankford is getting death threats and promises of retribution from MAGA Nation.
See, getting what they demanded laid waste to the Republicans’ whole election strategy. Trump was supposed to ride to victory on the back of the Democrats’ obstinate and unforgivable refusal to do anything about the border. How the hell was that supposed to work, Lankford, if the stinking Dems agreed to do something about the border, and not just anything, but goddam close to everything? Huh? Lankford!? You fool! God damn you!
Doing something constructive was so antithetical to the Republican game plan that down in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson started making it clear he’d never allow a vote on such a thing even before Donald made his wishes known. When he weighed in, Trump, of course, forbade his party from curing the border problem before the election. Now that it was beginning to seep into the popular consciousness that the economy didn’t actually suck just because Fox News said so, it was all he had left to run on. Donald decreed: the bill must be killed!
So the Senate Republicans just killed it. Their own bill. The thing they’d been claiming to crave above all else for years and years. Their Precious. It had to die.
Now, maybe they figure their voters are so stunned and insulated against rational commentary that they won’t notice. It wasn’t like the goofballs at Fox were going to bring it to their attention, right? Yet, the non-legislating dum-dums have been so brazenly transparent about it. They’re lying right, left, and centre about the bill’s provisions, sure, but at the same time they’ve barely tried to hide their true motivation for killing it. Several even went on the record to reporters that they couldn’t solve this or any other problem in an election year, not if it made the Dems look good. Absolutely fucking not. They said that. To reporters. On camera.
They’re displaying such epic cynicism, so openly, that it’s hard to believe they can get away with it, even with the MAGA crowd, some of whom, surely, must hear the odd factual assertion sometimes, maybe only by accident, but still. They’ve been educated to live in terror of the conquest of Real America by the shoeless drug-smuggling terrorist hordes flowing over the open southern border. Why on Earth would their elected champions refuse, now, to protect them? Some of them have got to get wind of it and wonder, don’t they? How much cognitive dissonance can these people sustain, anyway?
I guess we’ll see in November. Based on the past few years, who knows, maybe the GOP really can get away with anything.
Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson and his Merry Mavens of Mayhem keep whiffing on the political curve balls. God damn, they throw ungodly breaking stuff in The Show. Lord, lord, every time, it’s one-two-three and yer out! It’s been that way ever since they took control in the mid-terms, and by now it just has to be getting old to the diehards in the bleachers. Or would be, I guess, if they were watching.
As you’ll all recall, the latest Republican turn as House Majority began with the marathon shit show of Kevin McCarthy’s frantic drive to be elected Speaker, a job he held only until Matt Gaetz decided to have him fired – a first! It continued through the comedic machinations of Jim Jordon’s Weaponization of Government sub-committee, where the assorted idiots, attempting to prove something about the Deep State or some such shit, kept stepping on rakes until they just sort of slinked away, noses bleeding. I don’t know if that sub-committee even exists anymore.
After that came the rather ramshackle impeachment inquiry into the President – which wasn’t an actual, according-to-Hoyle impeachment inquiry because it wasn’t authorized by a vote if the full House – as brilliantly led by James Comer (R)(Tenn.), who, in this caucus, isn’t quite the biggest asshole on campus, but hey, he contends. Ranting and raving about the “Biden Crime Family”, and making wild assertions about something or other that had supposedly gone on between Joe Biden and son Hunter, which was supposed to be impeachable even though on its face the alleged misconduct wasn’t actually misconduct (something about Joe giving Hunter a loan, which was subsequently paid back, I think), and wasn’t even going on when Joe held any sort of office. Comer huffed and he puffed and grew red in the face, but he couldn’t dig up a shred of evidence to substantiate anything at all. He’d grill a witness, hollering shit like “and on that date, Mr. Witness, was President Biden involved in the decision-making?!”, and invariably received answers like “no, not at all”, “no, we never spoke to him even once” and “absolutely not, Hunter’s dad was scrupulous about never getting involved with anything we did”.
After a few months of that, Comer’s inquiry seemed to, well, evaporate. Where’d it go? Who knew? One day it just wasn’t there anymore, and the Republican rank and file were claiming they’d never even heard of it, or Comer either. Who? Tennessee you say? Nope, sorry, never heard of the guy.
In between were the continual budget failures, the relentless bullshit theatre from MTG, Boebert, Gaetz et al. (Boebert’s on-camera sexual hijinks at a performance of Beetlejuice: the Musical were particularly captivating), and the general failure of the House Majority to pass any damned thing at all. It’s the most unproductive Congress in living memory, maybe history, and so astoundingly feckless that Republican Representative Chip Roy stood up in the House chamber a few weeks ago and yelled I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing – one – that I can go campaign on and say we did. One! (I sure hope the Dems turn that into a campaign ad).
It was, then, already a never-ending spectacle of public, unintentionally risible self-sabotage, when Speaker Mike Johnson, still claiming to be God’s own chosen representative on Earth, decided yesterday that dammit, he was going to bring a couple of votes to the floor. That’s what you do as Speaker, isn’t it? You put things out there for a vote? He wasn’t just goofing around, you know. This was his job.
So, the first vote was to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, for – get this – failing to secure the southern border (a policy matter which isn’t actually impeachable). What cajones, impeaching a Cabinet Secretary for failing to cure the problem you’ve worked assiduously to perpetuate yourself! You gotta admire big brass ones like that! It had been something like 150 years since Congress had impeached a member of Cabinet, and the typically farcical inquiry into Mayorkas didn’t seem likely to end the streak, having proved only that nothing even resembling a high crime or misdemeanour was anywhere in evidence, but I guess Mike figured what the hell, the facts didn’t matter, and he might as well get it over with.
The second was a stand-alone aid package for Israel. From his strangely lacklustre efforts to promote it, it’s not clear Johnson even wanted all that much for it to pass.
Within the span of about a hour, he lost both votes.
That’s right. He couldn’t muster his own majority to vote for something. He hadn’t properly whipped the votes. He brought bills to the floor when he knew, or should have known, that he didn’t have the margins to guarantee they’d pass. That’s just not how the job is done. You whip the votes. You double-check your arithmetic. You make sure your assumptions about attendance are correct. If you can’t whip the votes, you don’t bring the frigging thing to the floor. Especially if it’s a vote to impeach, for chrissakes! It’s that fucking simple. That’s why Nancy Pelosi, during her many years as Speaker, never once lost a vote. She’d never embarrass herself or her party by failing to pass one of their own bills, let alone something as monumental as a vote to impeach, and anyway that was rarely an issue because that woman could whip votes like nobody’s business. Yup, by the time Nancy was done with you, you were on the team.
It would seem that little Mike Johnson is no Nancy Pelosi. His error on the impeachment vote was particularly stupid; Johnson had bet the wad on a one vote margin, apparently counting on the non-attendance of Democrat Al Green to offset the absence of Republican Steve Scalise, but damned if Green didn’t show up for the vote after all – word is that he had to rush over from the hospital, and arrived, rather conspicuously, in a wheelchair (nobody noticed? Nobody ran to tell Mike? Nobody but Mike knew that Green’s arrival in the chamber changed everything? Or what?) I guess Mike didn’t do a final head count before taking the plunge. I don’t know about you, but if I was laying everything on the line based on one specific guy being somewhere else, I’d take a look around the chamber, you know, just to make sure I couldn’t spot his beaming mug anywhere. I know there’s no seating plan, so you’d have to scan the whole crowd on the Dem’s side of the chamber, but the dude in the wheelchair was probably tough to miss, wouldn’t you think? Plus, who knows, maybe one of his own morons had wandered off and locked himself in a coat closet or something. When it’s that tight, with that much riding on it, you make sure.
Thus, despite acting purely under the direction of God in Heaven, Johnson somehow managed to demonstrate spectacular incompetence. So much so that there must now be rumblings about firing him, just like they fired Kevin. They say it gets easier once you’ve got that first notch on your belt.
It’s just so very funny, I swear. There haven’t been pratfalls like this since the golden age of silent movies.
Well, mostly it’s funny. There are dismal aspects to this clown show more apt to induce bouts of upchucking than the usual fits of giggles.
First, crucial aid to America’s allies, which was supposed to be tied to the border bill, remains in limbo. Chuck Schumer is going to try to force a vote on a funding bill in the Senate, but even if it gets out of the upper chamber, it still has to be passed through the House, and who knows whether it can. Mike might not allow a vote, for reasons that might remain mystifying, save that we know he’s taking his marching orders from Trump, who in turn seems still to be focussed upon keeping Papa Putin happy. This is becoming dire, especially for Ukraine, which desperately needs resupply of all sorts of weapons and ammunition. It really is possible that Russia will win its war because key Republicans are on Putin’s team, and that would be an incalculably huge disaster, as well as a heartbreak (and the death, methinks, of your faithful correspondent).
Second – you guessed it, you clever boots! – the US Government is yet again about a month away from running out of money, and not only is there no budget on the horizon, it’s by no means clear that Johnson can stick-handle another continuing resolution past his own caucus. The chaos agents might just fire him before he can turn coat and convince the Dems to help him out again. Who knows? And who can guess how long a shutdown would last?
The fact is, not only are the Republicans uninterested in governing, they’re simply incapable. They can’t get enough of a grip on themselves to do anything except block all efforts to enact sound public policy. Yet, as far as we can tell at this point, it’s not losing them any votes, and truly, that’s astonishing. It’s a topsy-turvy, BizarroLand distortion of the former reality. Dour as I am, I still can’t believe that none of this nonsense will have any impact at all in November. If, this time around, the Dems can’t capitalize on the GOP’s deeply unpopular stances on hot-button issues like abortion and voting rights, their craven border duplicity, and their abject inability to govern, well then, I guess that I just don’t know.
Which, come to think of it, seems to have been proved already.
the needlefish 