Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We still have time to mess this up!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

All your base are belong to Tunch.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

No one could have predicted…

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Late Night Open Thread: Fantasizing All the Way Down

Late Night Open Thread: Fantasizing All the Way Down

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Lindsey Graham, avatar of Respectable Republicanism, turning into Norma Desmond is… not a great sign for the GOP Death Cult. He was always a GOP partisan, but he’s survived as a politician in South Carolina by knowing how the legislative rules work and votes are counted.

Could be this is just him acting out for the Fox audience, but as Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Reader Interactions

34Comments

  1. 1.

    RaflW

    Can’t recall who pointed it out, but this would backfire hilariously. Because if every Republican is out of the Senate while in session, then Dems can move bills to the floor with unanimous consent.

  2. 2.

    Llelldorin

    A Senate quorum is 51 senators, but doesn’t someone have to actually make raise the issue that a quorum isn’t present?

  4. 4.

    CaseyL

    Back at the turn of the 20th Century, Thomas Reed (R-Maine) was elected Speaker of the House.  He had a mission: to end the “disappearing quorum.”  You think Congress is bad now; it used to be worse.  The disappearing quorum was when Representatives were present in the House Chamber, but refused to respond to roll call, making them effectively not present, and thereby preventing a quorum.  It was essentially a filibuster mechanism in the House.

    Reed hated it.  He considered the disappearing quorum to be, among other things, a dereliction of duty. So one day, when Representatives refused to respond to roll call, he directed the Clerk to read out the names of the members who were present.  It sounds like a small thing, but it wasn’t.  Members of Congress immediately swarmed to get out of the chamber and be absent in fact, but Reed had had the doors locked. The roll was called, all members were ruled to be present, and Congress actually started to get things done.

    (I highly recommend Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, a nonfiction book about pre-WWI America and Europe.  She’s more famous for her book about WWI, The Guns of August.. But I think The Proud Tower is even better.  She has a whole section devoted to Speaker Reed, and it’s wonderful.)

    I mention this to highlight that Congress has always been pretty dysfunctional, and that sometimes a daring person can make what seems like a small change in procedure that lights a fire under people.

    I doubt Chuck Schumer is that person, but would be delighted if he proved me wrong.  If the GQP walks out of the Senate:  excellent!  The Democrats can get a whole raft of things done.

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    The Foo have been putting on YouTube the tracks from Hail Satin, their tribute album to the disco-era Bee Gees. (That album title is a thing of beauty all by itself, I tells ya.) Here’s Tragedy.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    @Llelldorin

    From the Procedures of the Senate (.pdf):

    A straightforward reading of the Constitution’s quorum requirement would seem to require a simple majority of Senators, or a minimum of 51 if there are no vacancies in the body, to be present on the floor whenever the Senate conducts business. As any observer of the Senate soon notices, typically only a handful of Senators are present during floor debates. It is unusual for as many as 51 Senators to be present on the floor at the same time unless a roll call vote is in progress.

    As a regular practice, however, the Senate presumes that it is complying with the Constitution. Therefore, it presumes that a quorum is always present unless and until the absence of a quorum is suggested or demonstrated:

    The Senate operates on the presumption that a quorum is present at all times, under all circumstances, unless the question to the contrary is raised, or the absence of a quorum is officially shown, or until a point of no quorum is made even though a voice vote is taken and announced in the meantime.

    Under the Senate’s standing rules, if no other Senator has the floor, any Senator (including a Senator who is presiding) may “suggest the absence of a quorum.” The presiding officer may not respond to this statement by counting the number of Senators actually present unless the Senate is operating under cloture. At all other times, when a Senator suggests the absence of a quorum, the presiding officer responds by directing the Clerk to call the roll. Paragraph 3 of Rule VI requires:

    If, at any time during the daily sessions of the Senate, a question shall be raised by any Senator as to the presence of a quorum, the presiding officer shall forthwith direct the Secretary to call the roll and shall announce the result, and these proceedings shall be without debate.

    A quorum call formally begins when the Clerk calls the first name. Once the quorum call has begun, the Senate may not resume the conduct of business until a majority of Senators respond to this call, or unless the Senate agrees by unanimous consent to “dispense with further proceedings under the quorum call.” While the quorum call is in progress, no debate or motion is in order, nor may the Senate act on any unanimous consent request except a request to dispense with the call.
    […]
    Quorum calls in the Senate are usually not intended to secure the presence of Senators on the floor. Instead, they are a useful and essential device by which the Senate can suspend its formal proceedings temporarily. During the course of any session, Senators often “suggest the absence of a quorum.” Later, but before the Clerk has completed the alphabetical call of the roll, the Senate agrees to a unanimous consent request to rescind the quorum call. A quorum call of this kind may last for only moments, or it may continue for an hour or more; the Clerk calls the names of Senators very slowly because it would not serve the Senate’s purposes for the call of the roll to be completed.

    Because most quorum calls are intended to suspend the Senate’s floor proceedings, Senators feel under no obligation to come to the floor to record their presence. So long as the Senate agrees by unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum call before the last Senator’s name is called, the Senate can resume its business, because the absence of a quorum has not actually been demonstrated. The presumption that a majority of Senators is present remains in force unless and until the call of the roll is completed and less than a majority of Senators have responded. Only then would it be demonstrated that the Senator was correct when he or she “suggested” the absence of a quorum.
    […]
    The alternative to the kind of routine quorum calls discussed above is a “live” quorum call in which Senators actually are requested to come to the floor and record their presence.
    […]
    In the case of a live quorum call, the Clerk calls Senators’ names more quickly. At the end of the call, the Senate resumes its business if a majority of Senators have responded. However, if the Clerk finishes calling the roll and the presiding officer announces that a majority of Senators have failed to respond, the Senate cannot resume its business, including debate, nor can it dispense with the quorum call by unanimous consent, because the absence of a quorum has been established.

    In that event, the Senate usually has only two options: to adjourn or to take steps necessary to establish a quorum.…

  15. 15.

    HumboldtBlue

    I wonder what I need to gather a quorum of motherfuckers.

    Then I contemplated on word use.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    turning into Norma Desmond

    “I’m still big. It’s my principles that got small.”

  18. 18.

    Procopius

    @CaseyL: Thanks for the reminder of Tom Reed. He was an interesting guy for many reasons, and he ruled with an iron hand, the same way Mitch McConnell rules the GOP today. By the way, another of Barbara Tuchman’s several books that I think you’d really enjoy is The First Salute, which tells the story of a Dutch town in the Caribbean which fired a salute greeting and welcoming an American rebel ship, thereby becoming the first settlement to recognize the newly independent country, even though the war was just getting started. She goes on to tell a lot about trade among the islands, why the Caribbean was so much more important to England than the Colonies, how it came about that the British fleet wasn’t available to prevent the French from landing in Chesapeake Bay, Washington’s march of the rebel army from New Jersey to Yorktown, how the rebels got their guns and ammunition, wonderful details about the Revolution that schools never teach.

  20. 20.

    JWR

    I was going to mention something stupid our dumbass LA County Sheriff, Alex Villaueva. said last week about the Defund The Police “movement”, but didn’t know he’d repeated it last Friday, along with tidbits of right-wing Covid misinformation. Jeebus. And we’re running a special election to recall Gavin Newsom??! :(

    Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said on Friday that his department would not expend the resources to enforce an indoor mask mandate in the county, adding that the measure was “not backed by science.”

    “Forcing the vaccinated and those who already contracted COVID-19 to wear masks indoors is not backed by science and contradicts the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines,” Villanueva said in a statement.

    He said that while the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) had authority to enforce their mandate, “the underfunded/defunded Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will not expend our limited resources and instead ask for voluntary compliance.”

  21. 21.

    sab

    Big money pac people jumping in for Nina Turner and running horrible ads against Shontel Brown. Unsurprisingly, Intercept  is okay with it.

  22. 22.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Procopius: ​
     

    The First Salute, which tells the story of a Dutch town in the Caribbean which fired a salute greeting and welcoming an American rebel ship, thereby becoming the first settlement to recognize the newly independent country, even though the war was just getting started.

    I didn’t think the Netherlands recognised the Confederacy, did they?

  23. 23.

    Geminid

    @sab: The OH11 primary has been a brawl since January. Now it’s a war.  Some of the attacks on Shontel Brown and supporter Jim Clyburn are appalling, but there is determined pushback.

    Do you follow @SashaBeauloux? She is one of many loyal Democrats who has fought back impressively. Ms. Beauloux does not live in OH11-I think she is a Virginian- but this primary was nationalized early on as a proxy fight between Democrats and lefties.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: There are Democrats on Turner’s side as well as Brown’s. Many members of the House Progressive Caucus are backing Turner, as well as local elected officials. The race revives the reular Democrat v. Bernie fight of 2016 and 2020. But many of Turner’s hate Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership, and see Turner as a Trojan Horse who will take down the Democrats from within. Turner plays a hard woman, whereas Sanders turned out to be a squish, so lefties believe she is a stronger, better leader.

    I don’t know what the Turner-endorsing Democratic Representatives are thinking. I think they are buying trouble, and not the good kind.

  27. 27.

    waspuppet

    So does Lindsey Graham know he just admitted that what the Texas Democrats are doing is for all practical intents and purposes a filibuster (which I’m told is the only reason America is great) or nah?

  28. 28.

    Geminid

    @sab: That’s a good way to approach a campaign. I get good info on Virginia campaigns from local and state radio reporting, and the ads too. Many more voters are influenced by “old media” than “new,” and in ways it’s a better source.

    I live 400 miles from Cleveland, but I can still pull up good reporting on the primary from Ohio’s local TV, newspaper, and internet magazine sites. The letters to the editor are interesting also. But I don’t get the advertising, at least not when and as it is broadcast. Is it a deluge yet?

  29. 29.

    MattF

    I don’t get it. Graham is smarter than that. And there are at least a couple of Republican Senators who wouldn’t go along.

  30. 30.

    laura

    @Amir Khalid: saturday was record store day, and I was planning to get Hail Satin but all copies were gone when I got to the Stereo Advisor. I did get fresh remastered Slits and a John Prine The Oh Boys Years.

    I sure hope Shontel Brown pulls out a win over Nina Turner.

  31. 31.

    Just Chuck

    @Llelldorin:

    A Senate quorum is 51 senators, but doesn’t someone have to actually make raise the issue that a quorum isn’t present?

    Leave it to Manchin or Sinema, I’m sure they’ll pipe up.

  32. 32.

    Constance Reader

    It would be funny, if it weren’t for the liklihood of the attention whores Manchin and Sinema refusing to show up, or showing up and voting it down, to keep the cameras turned on themselves.

  33. 33.

    mellowjohn

    “… Republicans should leave DC…” –Lindsey Graham

    “And not come back.” –mellowjohn

  34. 34.

    J R in WV

    @sab:

    running horrible ads against Shontel Brown.

    We’re making a regular donation to Ms Brown… hope it helps a little. Much prefer an actual Democratic candidate to a neo-wow person!!

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