It was my privilege today to gavel out the end of the 117th Congress — an extraordinarily productive session #ForThePeople.
I look forward to continuing to serve the people of San Francisco in the 118th Congress and will share more on this account. pic.twitter.com/IExmFl2i0H
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) January 3, 2023
Jeffries: We ready. They ain’t. ?? pic.twitter.com/vbRE6ioz49
— Renee (@PettyLupone) January 4, 2023
Powerful: Nancy Pelosi votes Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker of the House and receives a standing ovation. pic.twitter.com/167LctqFE9
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) January 3, 2023
.@RepJeffries: "Today for the first time in 100 years, the House of Representatives failed to organize on opening day. It's a sad day for the House of Representatives as an institution. It's a sad day for democracy. It's a sad day for the American people." #118thCongress pic.twitter.com/vUiowJUde4
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 4, 2023
Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries got more votes for speaker than Republican Kevin McCarthy in Tuesday's historic tally. https://t.co/paMg8iUB2b
— CBS New York (@CBSNewYork) January 4, 2023
It is very apparent that @GOPLeader was cutting class these past few years as @SpeakerPelosi taught her MasterClass on Vote Whipping, Vote Counting, and Leading!
— Jaime Harrison, DNC Chair (@harrisonjaime) January 3, 2023
This is throwing it into relief but in a few years people will regain some historical perspective and understand that what Pelosi did and how she did it in the last Congress is one of the great feats in history.
— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) January 3, 2023
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's legacy lives on. Cheryl Johnson, the woman she assigned Clerk of the House of Representatives, is in charge until reckless #GOP elects insurrection-friendly Kevin McCarthy, or David Duke w/o the baggage, Steve Scalise.#TheReidOut #SpeakerJeffries https://t.co/uVJb1OCREx
— dogonvillage (@dogonvillage) January 4, 2023
What are you supposed to do when one of your country's parties considers a nonfunctional federal government a good thing? https://t.co/6y7o8Bk8GI
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) January 3, 2023
It's not like they intend to govern anyway
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) January 3, 2023
Meanwhile, the MAGAts are furious at Mitch McConnell for… not turning down the money that will repair their tie to the outside world, money the Repubs never tried offering when they had the power:
Biden and McConnell, standing side by side at a dilapidated bridge they are promising to fix, is likely to be a sharp contrast to the @HouseGOP chaos – and just what the Biden admin wants more of in months to come @steveholland1 @TrevorNews https://t.co/DkGmOCkvTc
— Heather Timmons (@HeathaT) January 4, 2023
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
Msb
As the R’s as as stupid as they are evil, I hope the D’s can thwart them in the House.
gee, Kevin, it isn’t as easy as Nancy made it look, huh?
Yutsano
@OzarkHillbilly: Indeed. Now that my nose has (mostly) unclogged I’m gonna doze for about a half hour or so. Then work promises to be busy today! GAK! I want to go to Canada now.
Suzanne
I loved this paragraph by Noah Berlatsky:
Nicole
I spent way too much time yesterday listening to clips of Jake Tapper on CNN, hoping to find one I saw mentioned on Twitter where he, I guess, pointed out to a political analyst that when Newt Gingrich stepped down in disgrace the GOP promptly voted for a child molester as Speaker. No luck, but I listened to a lot of GOP Reps and former Reps and all I came away with is, “Man, these people are not smart.”
Nora
I’m kind of wondering about the people who voted these anarchists into office. What’s the point of voting for someone who promises to do nothing but destroy the office you voted them into?
Feathers
I was seeing people asking why the Dems let the Republicans adjourn so early yesterday. I suspect it was very smart. They know that having a crisis run several days, AKA a few news cycles makes it a bit more real to the media.
Citizen_X
Backwards, and in heels.
OverTwistWillie
@Nicole:
First they tried an adulterer who was last seen lobbying Trump (for interests unknown) to ratfuck Ukraine.
frosty
@Nora: They’re my neighbors. They voted for people like Scott Perry because he has an R after his name. They voted exactly as you want them to, to prevent chaos and save the Republic. Because they’ve been told that nice D lady who ran against him is a Socialist who is out to destroy America.
OzarkHillbilly
@Msb: That’s what he gets for measuring the drapes before the office was his.
Baud
@Feathers: I get that people of good faith are curious, but I grow weary of social media trying to micromanage and pick apart Dem strategy.
lowtechcyclist
@Feathers:
If nothing else, those poor kids needed a break. All those children of Congresspersons that their parents had (rather cluelessly, IMHO) brought along to watch them get sworn in. Watching them as the afternoon wore on was painful.
A lot of them were still there on the second ballot (I didn’t watch much of the third) so the parents apparently didn’t even have a Plan B for what they were going to do with their kids if McCarthy didn’t have the votes.
p.a.
When a significant %age of supporters think the world is 6,000 years old, their elected representatives… well, you know… 😵💫
Soprano2
Good God, this day is off to a shitty start for me. I thought I paid my internet and phone bill last month, but I guess somehow even though I told the AT&T Web site that I wanted to pay my phone/internet bill it instead paid my DirecTV bill, which I already have set up on a direct pay on a credit card! When she told me that and I asked if we could fix it, she said if I didn’t have the 4 digit code for my DirecTV account she can’t do anything. I have to call them from my home phone, say I don’t have the code, so then they can call me back on my home phone to verify that it’s me so we can fix this clusterfuck. I have no idea why their Web site would even think I needed to pay my DirecTV bill since it’s set up as an automatic pay on a credit card!!! Holy fuck, this day sucks. I only hope they don’t shut off my service today before I can call them to get this mess fixed.
MisterDancer
This, pretty much. There’s literal decades — arguably, ever since The Lost Cause jumped off in the late 1800s — of propaganda behind today’s GOP voting patterns, stuff that just never gets talked about in the press. We mistake the late 20th century and it’s politics for the normative, when it took the literal blood of many to make massive reforms in the prior political deadlock happen.
Yes, there was a period where people like Strom Thurmond sounded and acted in a rational, steady manner. That wasn’t him in the 1st half of the 20th century, and the dixiecrats and their desire of Power Thru White Supremacy held a lot of America hostage.
It was just a more…genteel hostage-taking than the bums in the GOP, today. The second time as farce, and all that.
Baud
@Soprano2:
🤞
That’s frustrating.
Geminid
I like how serious Hakeem Jeffries is. He keeps a straight face so the rest of us can safely laugh our asses off.
CarolPW
@Nicole:
The clip is embedded in one of the tweets in the previous post.
jonas
That’s why they relate so well to their base voters. As opposed to someone who, you know, cares and knows stuff ‘n shit.
oldgold
Many are enjoying this debacle. Not me. Long ago these demented dotards took the fun out of dys
functional. This will not end well for the future of our Republic.Like the proverbial camel, these nihilistic knotheads should never have been allowed to place a single nostril in our nation’s political tent.
suzanne
@Nora:
Owning the libz, of course.
OzarkHillbilly
I doubt they would. Back in the day when I was poor, one generally got 3 months of non payment before they shut it* off.
* where it is defined as any utility
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
lowtechcyclist
Washington Times reporter Mica Soellner tweets:
I’m starting to think today might be even crazier than yesterday.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning again. Were you able to get back to sleep?
Geminid
@suzanne: Yeah, just like lemmings think they are owning the lynx as they run off a cliff.
OzarkHillbilly
@Nicole: here you go.
Kay
Wonder if the NYT or the Atlantaic or the legions of full time, anti woke Substackers will tell this story.
OzarkHillbilly
@oldgold: I am. I figure if this is the end of the world, at least it’s entertaining.
jonas
Quite frankly I don’t think most Republicans have much of a problem watching this whole debacle in the House. Perceiving politicians and government institutions as hopelessly dysfunctional, craven, and corrupt is precisely what malevolent little shitstains like Matt Gaetz thrive on. They set fires and then complain about how long it takes the fire department to show up. That’s why I think Hakeem Jeffries is being extremely shrewd in making himself available to the media throughout the day to underscore the Democrats’ organization and unity in contrast to the GOP dumpster fire. Hammer nail after nail after nail into the coffin of the media’s “bothsides” narrative.
Baud
@jonas:
The next GOP presidential nominee will run on “cleaning up this mess in Washington” since he is unlikely to be a current House member.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t wonder that at all.
jonas
JFC. How is any public college or university in FL going to hire new faculty with shit like this going on? If this guy isn’t back out on the job market right now, he should be.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fretting changes nothing.
Geminid
@Baud: One aspect of this spectacle is that people can see in the House Republicans’ division and dysfunction an expression of the division and dysfunction in the party nationwide.
The same could be said about the unity of the House Democrats.
jonas
At this point, I think George Santos has a good shot at the nomination. Lying about your entire biography and career, living off income from shady businesses, and (eventually) being forced to resign from Congress in disgrace gives you a lot of outsider cred these days with Republicans.
ETA: if it comes out that he’s also paid for numerous secret abortions, he could rocket to the top of the polls almost overnight.
frosty
@lowtechcyclist: I’m starting to think today might be even crazier than yesterday.
Oh please no! There’s things I need to get done today!
Michael Bersin
The republican have plenty more in the pipeline.
In Missouri an associate of disgraced former Governor Eric Greitens (r-duct tape) just contributed $500,000.00 to his own campaign for “statewide office”.
His announcement included:
“…’Our freedoms, liberty, and constitutional rights are in peril, now more than ever before in our lifetimes,’ Scharf said in the release. ‘Now is not the time to compromise or cut deals with the woke left. Missourians deserve leadership that will stand up for them against federal overreach, special interests, and political insiders.’
When asked to be specific about where the peril is coming from, Scharf said he meant “radical overreach by the Biden administration’ and ‘an increasingly take-no-prisoners attitude toward ordinary Americans by liberals.’…”
He should do really well in Missouri.
Campaign Finance: go round in circles
WereBear
@jonas: He’s got a family and looking at tenure. But it’s not like Florida would ever go to bat for him.
College enrollment in such states has dropped. I don’t blame him for making the change. But that college doesn’t have the same future to offer, it’s true.
suzanne
@Geminid: 100%.
I think that if we remember that, before it is anything else, the GOP exists to give form to the various grievances of under-educated white dudes. All of their behavior makes perfect sense if one keeps that at top of mind.
TriassicSands
@lowtechcyclist:
I found it difficult to tell the children from their kids.
Hey, GOP voters — You elect clowns, you get a clown show.
lowtechcyclist
@jonas:
Even after eight years on college faculties, I’m hardly an expert on how this stuff works. But my anecdata-based observation is that it seems to be easier to be hired by another university as a tenured professor if you already have tenure at the college you’re at.
If you don’t already have tenure, you may not be starting from zero at your new institution, but you’re going to have to start from pretty close to zero in applying for tenure, as I understand it. (Longtime academics, please correct me as appropriate.)
So I don’t blame him for hanging in there, hopefully getting tenure where he is, getting a few more publications on his c.v., then putting out feelers to see if he can get a tenured position at a university in a state that hasn’t gone off the deep end.
jonas
@Michael Bersin:
Greitens? That guy just won’t go away. Like whatshisname, that rightwing douche in Kansas who keeps trying to run for statewide office despite losing like five times in a row.
Sigh. But of course screaming about liberal commie-nazi groomers while firing an assault rifle into the air is about all you need to do to have a shot at public office in Missouri these days.
Michael Bersin
@WereBear: Now my 36th year in higher education I am really glad I’m not just starting out.
Qrop Non Sequitur
The Republican party welcomes asshole tendencies of all sorts. These tendencies just express themselves most loudly in under-educated white men because of the expectations many white men carry due to the legacy of white patriarchal hegemony; now, hopefully, in decline.
oldgoldthe perils of
@OzarkHillbilly:
There is a sobering book, Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman, that examines what happens when politics, news, history and everything else is reduced to entertainment. The answer: the damnable mess we have now and its dire consequences.
Michael Bersin
@jonas: Kansas. Chris Kobach (r). And his name came up in the January 6th Committee. Go figure.
jonas
@suzanne:
Republicans are like the female Kryptonian villain Ursa in Superman II who sees Superman trying to save people amid the chaos she and her companions have created and thereby discovers his true weakness: “He cares about these earth people! He actually cares about them!” So yeah, creating chaos and undermining public institutions is the very definition of owning the libz. Our weakness — to them — is that we give a shit at all.
Kay
I would like to see Democrats create a distinct campaign/messaging group for Florida. Permanent. Paid. Florida has some excellent local newspapers who do real reporting on DeSantis and Co so they could just use that.
It’s the equlivalent of buying stock at a historic low. They just can’t give up on Florida because Democrats can win without Florida but Republicans probably can’t.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@lowtechcyclist: What you describe matches my experience. Also, it matters where you have tenure. Universities are very conscious of their ranking and are more dismissive of institutions they regard as less prestigious.
Baud
@Kay: We’ll call it The Betty Cracker Project!
Kay
@Baud:
If DeSantis is the R nominee it won’t pay off in 2024 but it serves the purpose of dinging the R brand in Florida/nationally and DeSantis so it’s worth it. As usual, they’d have to screen out grifters.
Let’s do what they say they intend to do. Take DeSantis’ Florida national. WE roll it out. You know he already has some big, stupid plan with “arrest people falsely in August, be cruel to immigrants in September…” Throw him off that.
Soprano2
@Kay: The people who support laws like this got exactly what they wanted here – the course was scrapped, so the subject won’t be taught to students in Florida. We all know they aren’t for “free speech” or the vigorous exchange of ideas, because if they were for those things they wouldn’t pass laws like this one.
Nicole
@CarolPW: Hooray; thank you for letting me know! Imma go watch it now.
Nicole
@OzarkHillbilly: Yay! Full service blog. Thank you.
ETA: Just watched. That was hilarious. Oh, Dana Bash. You tried.
jonas
@lowtechcyclist:
Major R1 and Ivy League-level universities will often hire someone tenured or promoted at another institution if they’ve become exceptionally prominent in their field. But once you’re tenured but have not become an internationally famous superstar, it can actually be a lot more difficult to move. Colleges and universities generally prefer to fill or replace tenure lines with new/recent Ph.Ds rather than more established researchers. Most candidates I’ve worked with will go out on the market around the time they go up for tenure just to have some options in case things don’t work out. And yeah, that may mean starting on a new tenure clock at a different institution, but if you’re dealing with crap like this poor guy in FL, you need to do it for your career and your sanity. You can’t be a productive teacher or scholar with this censorious nonsense hanging over you.
oldgoldthe perils of
@suzanne:
“I think that if we remember that, before it is anything else, the GOP exists to give form to the various grievances of under-educated white dudes. All of their behavior makes perfect sense if one keeps that at top of mind.”
That is not their purpose. It is one method they exploit to secure a sufficient number of votes to retain power.
Their purpose is to establish and maintain a regulatory regime favorable to individuals with capital.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@OzarkHillbilly: Trigger warning: Dana Bash, Jake Tapper
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: Florida has — or had — a good public university system. Building it was the work of generations. DeSantis, who left the state to get his fancy degrees at Harvard and Yale, is deliberately destroying the system, and even if the citizens come to their senses after he’s gone (not bloody likely) and elect people who don’t depend on ignorance to hold power, it will take years to rebuild it. It’s one of the saddest acts of sabotage I’ve ever seen.
Ken
@Feathers: Also, the Democrats got to go home and have a nice dinner, relax in front of the television, get to bed at a decent hour. The Republicans got to huddle in conference rooms over delivery pizza, screaming at one another until two in the morning.
(Though maybe they all went home too, figuring it’s someone else’s problem to fix — probably a Democrat’s.)
Ken
Straight face often works very well for comedy. Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black is hilarious, despite never cracking a smile or telling an actual joke. (Well, except for the restaurant scene where he’s recruiting Will Smith’s character.)
Matt McIrvin
@Nora: A large minority of the US population wants the country to disintegrate into violent chaos, and they believe that with their guns and superior testicular fortitude they will come out on top and be kings of the post-collapse order. They identify as “conservative” or “independent thinkers” but they are actually fascist revolutionaries and they are fools.
Qrop Non Sequitur
Facts not in evidence.
Reboot
@Matt McIrvin: Curious about this–what percentage of the population would you say this large minority is?
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Reboot: 15 to 27 percent would be a good estimate. Some significant portion of the crazification factor.
I know one such person, convinced of their skills with their gun and ability to turn their large rurally situated estate into a fortress.
Elizabelle
@Qrop Non Sequitur: I despise Dana Bash. She is too often a tool. No wonder she was trying to “nothing to see here” the GOP situation.
Access Dana.
Jeffro
And the press will probably praise her/him for an “all-time turnaround of the GOP” when it’s really just her/his only, incredibly cynical, option: “Elect me to clean up this disaster my party created”
Elizabelle
@oldgoldthe perils of: Excellent point. Overlook that at one’s peril.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Elizabelle: I never watched the 24 hour network news until Youtube finally put it in front of my face enough to give in.
I still scrupulously screen for Tapper and Bash to avoid their videos.
Betty Cracker
According to TPM, House Republicans did manage to get one thing done yesterday — they removed the metal detectors at entries to the House floor. I’m sure that’ll work out fine. It’s not like there are lots of gun-toting lunatics in that caucus. Oh wait…
Matt McIrvin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: That sounds about right.
On my bad days I believe it could be as high as ~50 percent, but I suspect the rest of that is people who ally with them for other reasons: they just want lower taxes or they’ve swallowed the accusations that liberals are baby-killers and child molesters, etc.
Miss Bianca
@Kay:
If they do, they’ll be gloating over it. They’ve already shown their colors, Kay – it’s only “cancel culture” when it applies to THEM and THEIR views and THEIR livelihoods.
ETA: Either gloating or shaking their heads sadly saying, “who could possibly have imagined…”
geg6
@jonas:
Anecdotally, I get the Chronicle of Higher Education as a job benefit and I can tell you that he should hurry up and start looking. The majority of job listings there that I’ve seen are at colleges and universities in red states. Same at my professional organization’s weekly email for jobs available in financial aid. There is a huge brain drain happening.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I went to trade school for an associates in a specific technical skill and then two years at a “commuter” public university where I had to cram in random liberal arts courses to get out of there. It was not until third year of law school that I got what I consider a decent and rigorous course on civil rights in the US. I could have gone all the way through without it. Easy. No one cared. These people are just wrong. You have to seek out courses like his, especially if you’re not focused on liberal arts.
I submit you cannot understand the United States withought understanding the role slavery/ race plays. It can’t be done.
Ken
@Qrop Non Sequitur: There was a possibly-related statistic circulating sometime last year, on the distribution of gun ownership. The US has a huge number of guns in private hands, but as I’m recalling over 90% of the guns are owned by less than 10% of the population — though I may be confusing that with the numbers for wealth. But it was definitely that kind of lopsided distribution.
Baud
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
And then what? Doesn’t sound like it’s located on strategic ground.
Tom Levenson
@jonas: @lowtechcyclist: Was going to reply but Jonas beat me to it.
Can’t speak for other universities, or even all the departments at mine, but senior (as in, from and to tenure) are tricky and not that frequent. Jonas is right to say that most places with an open line want to hire junior scholars. There are a couple of reasons: cynically, it’s because they’re much cheaper than an already tenured prof. Less cynically, each new line is a chance to build your department, and you want folks who are trained in the newest stuff, doing work at the leading edge of a field etc. Hiring someone who ploughs their furrow–even very well–is not necessarily as useful.
Senior hires do occur–when there’s a chance to pick up a star (whatever that means–it’s a very dubious claim IMHO); when you’re building a group in a given area (thinking STEM, mostly here, but some of the social sciences as well) and there’s a senior person who may not be “star” stuff, but has specific virtues for the work being planned…that sort of thing. One of the most common motivations, though, for making a senior hire is when there’s an administrative need that the existing faculty can’t fill. You have a messed up music department, and you hire an outsider to chair and fix it. That kind of thing. (That’s a real example, not at MIT.)
So, yeah–going on the job market now for the UCF guy would make sense, though it’s tricky if he’s also preparing his tenure package. Often in that scenario, if someone does leave for somewhere else on the verge of tenure, they don’t start a whole new clock–the new institution makes a commitment to bring them up within a year or two.
Anonymous At Work
I was thinking that the AOC incidents (TWO!) yesterday didn’t get enough analysis as they presage what will transpire for the next 2 years. Two different hard-right reps were saying, “We’ve shit our pants. Can you bail us out like usual?”
The extremists expect Kev-kev to be weak and do what they tell him to do, and then get Democratic votes to do the things that need doing [but won’t play well on FOX “News”].
mrmoshpotato
We hope there are enough special elections coming up to bitchslap the bastards out of the power they obviously don’t want.
No One You Know
@Soprano2: I hear you. Mortgage company double-billed, Chase paid it, and I’m overdrawn until Friday. The only good thing is I won’t get an overdrawn fee. (Thank you, Elizabeth Warren. )
Baud
@Anonymous At Work: Yeah, I thought it was weird how the radicals in the Freedom Caucus approached AOC of all people.
Another Scott
@Baud: They thought that she was Great. Same result.
Cheers,
Scott.
mali muso
@geg6: Can concur, from my corner of higher ed. Incidentally, as a mid-career professional, I have fielded several calls from search companies looking to fill good positions in colleges/unis in red states, and I always tell them that there isn’t any way I would even entertain the thought of moving there. I don’t care how good the salary might be.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I think these people maybe actually COULD turn America into a meat grinder, if they worked at it. Of course the endpoint would be that they end up either ruled or killed by mobsters, one way or another. But I probably wouldn’t be around any more to point and laugh.
Baud
@Another Scott: Like Tony the Tiger Great?
Betty Cracker
The point is moot because DeSantis and his wrecking crew aren’t trying to improve education in Florida — just the opposite. But it seems like even normies who pay little attention to this stuff should agree that examining arguments about “color-blind” systems is appropriate for a college-level sociology class.
Where’s the academic freedom and marketplace of ideas if discussions can only take place within a rigid framework established by the governor? It’s truly outrageous. Most Floridians will probably never hear of it, and the majority seem to agree with it, but it makes me sick to see this happen.
WaterGirl
@Anonymous At Work: I heard about Gaetz, what was the second incident?
mrmoshpotato
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
LOL!
Suzanne
@mali muso:
It’s not just academia. Professional firms and recruiting and experiencing the same thing. I get contacted with some frequency for these amazing positions, that I am in no way qualified for, and I have heard that they just cannot fill them.
Old School
@WaterGirl:
Paul Gosar chatted with AOC as well.
sab
@Soprano2: I got away from AT&T back when we had such a hard time cancelling our land line. We eventually stopped paying and they kept it on for another year and dunned us.
Every experience with them since has been worse. I would never have automatic withdrawal with them.
My parents had AT&T also. With automatic bank withdrawal. I signed up for some extra online services back when I was staying up at their house before the nursing home. Easy to add services with just a phone call. Later when I tried to cancel it they wouldn’t let me because not in my name (no problem letting me add services). At that point the house had been demolished, but I still had to produce a death certificate for Mom. Thank God the service had been in her name not Dad’s because 11 years later he is still alive with dementia.
One of my bosses got persuaded to switch from his old AT&T plan to a better deal with a different AT&T plan and they turned around and charged him a substantial cancellation fee for cancelling the old plan. He argued that the salesman was their guy. They said nope, independent contractor our selling our plans.
Good luck straightening it out.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Stop making me wish I had a box of Frosted Flakes (even some knock off brand) in the house.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Would it help?
AM in NC
@suzanne: Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
MattF
Rumor has it that Rs will move for adjournment before any vote today. Ds will oppose.
Dorothy A. Winsor
You have to laugh. From Raw Story
piratedan
@Anonymous At Work: she was on the Alex Wagner show last night and stated that Gosar approached her to ask if the Dems were staying for each vote and if The Squad intended to keep voting for Jeffries…. she replied in the affirmative… Gosar spilled that McCarthy claimed that the Dems would hold together for a single vote and then relent and start peeling off with voting present or even leaving.
One, it felt like Gosar approached AOC for confirmation in Dem plans and because she has gone against the Dem party on certain policy issues and voted against the party line.
so perhaps he felt like she and the squad would be the most likely to defect and wanted to know what the plans of The Squad were going to be.
so he confirmed the McCarthy lie and naturally, he didn’t apologize for his hateful video that shows him assaulting her. That indication that McCarthy has no clue as to what the Dems are doing looks like its helping the HFC types hold firm and use against that info against KM.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
There’s a long history of hostility in the NY Dem party between Jeffries and Justice Dem types. I forget how Chris Hayes described it last night, but it made me laugh out loud
Kay
@Suzanne:
My middle son has a really funny story about how he was hired to “troubleshoot” this giant state of the art French -made machine for a manufacturing company when all he had was a one year electrical certificate from a community college. By the second week the foreman knew he was in over hs head and said “you have no fucking idea what you’re doing, do you?”
They parted on really good terms because my son correctly pointed out that mistakes were made on both sides- he took the job but overworked and desperate manager gave it to him.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I watched Hayes last night for the first time in a while, but I turned it off before I got to that.
Baud
I don’t see how any Dem goes off on their own without getting a ton of blowback. Are there any Manchin or Sinema types left in the House?
rikyrah
@Baud:
For a couple of hours
Another Scott
@Baud: Bah!
Greta!!
Rassin’, Frassin’, autocorrect…
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
Nothing depresses me more than how little US voters care about corruption. Democrats are better than Republicans but it’s hard to get any voter to pay atention to crooks. I think it’s gotten worse, too. In 2006 Democrats ran successfully on a “culture of corruption”. The corruption on the Right is more deep seated now and people care less.
I think it’s unsustainable.
Anonymous At Work
@piratedan: I was thinking it might be a rumor mill thing, either to confirm or start one. But I think the simpler answer is that the GOP and media has baked in the idea that Democrats don’t worship chaos and would be the first to crack.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@piratedan: Apparently that’s typical McCarthy. Completely untrustworthy
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Likewise!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
how far off on their own? there are a handful I could see joining up with what people are calling the Sokrin-esque solutions (I’ve never seen the show, TBH). Fred Upton seems to be openly campaigning for the Sorkin speakership (via Bill Kristol, maybe they’ll drag Joe Klein out of mothballs to chime in). I can imagine Golden, Gottheimer or Cuellar going along with it, maybe a few others, but I can’t imagine enough Rs going along. Upton or Fantasy Elder Statesman #6 would realistically need a good 75% of the R caucus, I would think
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Baud
@Kay:
IMHO, the failure of corruption as an issue stems in part from strategic mistakes made in the fight against Citizens United. Too many people defined “corruption” as accepting political donations from any source linked to a corporation, which erased any distinction to be drawn between Dems and Republicans and made ordinary people think nothing could be done.
Of course, the other part of it is that that racists realized that only the corrupt would advance their agenda, so they made that deal with the devil.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Interesting. I’d imagine something like that would be done with the blessing of the Dem leadership though.
Alison Rose
Michelle Obama was on Colbert last night to do the Questionert and it was of course funny, but my favorite part was her answer to “What do you think happens when we die?”
Michelle: “We go to heaven!…….or I do.” LOLOL
Eolirin
@Baud: It would have to be. I think it’s incredibly unlikely, but if they can’t agree on anyone, maybe there’s a chance of something like that happening. If so it’d be a massive self-own on the part of those 20 Rs, as the only way I can see something like that happening is if Dems get a say in the rules making process, and I can’t see them standing for the gutting of Oversight that Kevin’s already agreed to
An alternative is for enough Rs to simply not show up that 212 becomes the majority and Jeffries becomes Speaker.
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist quotes Bill Kristol:
Fixed that for you, Bill.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I suspect implicit in that promise of equally balanced committees is a pledge to put the kibosh on Hunter’s laptop, impeaching Fauci, and investigating that guy who was found in a tiger cage at National Zoo in 1995, etc., and that would be a collective non-starter
cain
@jonas: He’ll have a new book called “How I did it: The George Santos Story”
Chapter 1:
“I am not george santos”
cain
@jonas: She’d make a great Republican strategist.
Eolirin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Only need to flip 5-10 Rs to cut a deal with the Democrats.
Still think it’s unlikely, Kevin going down doesn’t mean they can’t agree on anyone, and they’d need to be unable to agree on anyone for this kind of ploy to work.
Frankensteinbeck
@Nora:
They’re not anarchists. They love a good fascist state, for example. They’re just assholes. The Republican primary process has selected for more and more extreme assholes, and now they can’t even hold it in long enough to stick it to the libs.
@oldgoldthe perils of:
Nope. Not this. Plutocracy is a side dish. White grievance is the main course. Where white grievance and plutocracy conflict, white grievance wins. Case in point: The shit show we’re seeing now. An organized bargaining group with strong leadership best serves the plutocrats’ interests, to fight back against the Democrats come budget time. A pack of squabbling assholes calling each other RINOs serves white grievance, because it’s a primal scream emotion, highly performative and dysfunctional.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can imagine that Hakeem Jeffries does not suffer fools.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I wonder… Could the Dems in the House negotiate a shared power arrangement similar to what we had in the Senate?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Anything can be negotiated. The question is enforceability. The Dems would need to make a judgment about who they can trust, since the GOP can always outvote them if they are unified.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
strictly by the numbers, sure, but I would think that any Rs would want big numbers as cover, hang together or hang separately
I’m looking at this like I looked at the R primary in 2016, every outcome– Jeb!, trump, Kasich then, McCarthy, Scalise, McHenry now– looks equally unlikely, but Speaker Upton seems way out in left field
Ken
I personally will think the fix is in if at the next vote Jordan’s support suddenly doubles, or more — enough that he can (oh so reluctantly) agree to serve.
Though the
rumorsreports above that the Republicans cancelled their morning meeting, and want to adjourn without holding another vote, throw cold water on my (admittedly ridiculous) idea that the Republicans are working to some master plan.Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: right, the Rs that any Dems could hypothetically make a deal with (Don Bacon, and…?) are too weak numerically and politically to be counted on, even giving their good faith the benefit of the doubt
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I suspect the Dems have a better idea than we do about who they can trust and to what extent. That’s how Cheney and Kitzinger ended up on the Jan 6 committee, despite our apprehensions.
Another Scott
@Baud: I assume that Team D will not help the GQPers until/unless a substantial number of GQPers come out first and say that they’re breaking with the crazies and will work to get things done (things other than breaking the government and having show trials 24/7).
That’s always possible (the definition of possible, of course, means that it will happen given infinite time), but not likely before the heat death of the universe.
The GQPers have to change first. Nobody being sworn in until there’s a Speaker is Team D’s best leverage.
Democrats should just keep showing up, keep voting 100% for Jeffries, and let the monsters eat themselves in the meantime.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think if the Democrats make any deal with Bacon and company it will be months from now, as a last resort to avoid a default or to resolve some other critical matter. They want Republicans to demonstrate their incompetence for months, not just days.
Because of constraints in the Senate, Democrats will not be able to pass very groundbreaking legislation anyway, no matter how the House is organized. If there is not much credit to be gained, House Democrats can at least let Republicans get all the blame. If it takes electing a Speaker Upton to rescue the nation’s credit Democrats should do it reluctantly, “for the good of the country,” in a way that keeps expectations low and Republican unfitness centered.
They need to “shape the battlefield” so to speak, so that by Election Day 2024 Americans are so fed up with radical Republicanism they never want to see a Republican Congress for the rest of their lives.
Paul in KY
@frosty: Your neighbors, like alot of mine, are really stupid.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Best wishes on it getting alot better soon!
Paul in KY
@jonas: They get those sweet, sweet campaign contributions from dumbasses.
Paul in KY
@No One You Know: I do not do any automatic payments. Cut a check for everything.
I may need to stiff somebody some day, if I need extra cash for an extraordinary situation and they can’t do the double billing thing on me, either.
Hoppie
@Soprano2: We abandoned ATT after a six-hour phone support fluster-cuck when they kept demanding a security code I had no idea existed. I don’t know whether to hate the internet criminals that caused it or the spectacularly incompetent corporate response more
Also: Qevin McQarthy is an idiot, thank all deities.