Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Republicans in disarray!

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

“woke” is the new caravan.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: The GOP’s Hunter Sideshow

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: The GOP’s Hunter Sideshow

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: The GOP's Hunter Sideshow

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

Best summary I’ve seen so far of the GOP’s latest media-seeking circle-jerk: Philip Bump, for the Washington Post — “Weighing action against Hunter Biden, GOP resorts to falsehoods ” [unpaywalled]:

… Hunter Biden was subpoenaed for a deposition but through his attorney said he would appear before Oversight in an open hearing instead. (His attorney, in a letter to Comer, pointed to the chairman’s statement during a podcast that he would welcome either public or private testimony.) The date of the deposition came and went, and Republicans moved forward with approving a contempt-of-Congress referral.

What Hunter Biden no doubt knows is that a closed-door deposition allows Comer and other Republicans to cherry-pick claims much more easily — if they release the transcript of the deposition at all. (Most of the depositions that have taken place, Oversight Democrats note, have not been made public.)

During the meeting, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) was pointed on this subject.

“Let me tell you why no one wants to talk to y’all behind closed doors,” she said to her Republican colleagues. “Because y’all lie.”

This is demonstrably true, including when considering the Archer testimony itself. It is fair to question the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s failure to participate in the subpoenaed deposition, certainly, but it is indisputably justifiable for him to be wary of doing so.

When it was his turn to speak, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Tex.) raised a related, valid point: If Republicans were so desperate to hear from Hunter Biden, why didn’t they just go ahead and hold the open hearing anyway? The younger Biden had unexpectedly appeared in the hearing room, allowing Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) to ask for a show of hands from the committee members about their willingness to swear Hunter Biden in for questions right then and there. None took him up on the offer…

“We were here for a year,” [ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin] noted at one point. “You guys did not lay a glove on Joe Biden. You don’t have a single credible piece of evidence, not one iota, showing any crime by Joe Biden.”…

A bit later, Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) offered a response to that claim. This wasn’t an impeachment itself but, instead, an inquiry into filing articles to impeach Biden.

“An inquiry is different than an impeachment,” he said. “It is a search for [a] document.”

A bit later, Raskin jumped in, noting that the inquiry has ostensibly been underway since September.

“What’s been found since then?” he asked.

“Once again, there’s stuff there,” Gosar said. “There is stuff there.”

“There’s stuff there?” Raskin replied. “Can you share it with us?”…

This was answered in a closed-door deposition six months ago. It is obvious once you consider the actual function of the LLCs, as The Post did in August. Both of which predate the September impeachment inquiry. An inquiry, mind you, that’s had only one public hearing — one featuring witnesses who were meant to demonstrate the sketchiness of Hunter Biden’s work but ended up pointing out that they had no direct evidence implicating Joe Biden.

After that hearing, a presumably embarrassed Comer told reporters that he didn’t like public hearings and might not hold any more. It’s much easier to bolster your narrative when you get to choose what parts of it people see.

Mr. Pierce, at Esquire, on holding people in contempt:

… [Nancy Mace] then called for the younger Biden to be arrested on the spot. And, of all people, Rep. Andy Biggs called for a return to decorum. One of his colleagues then accused Biggs—Andy Freaking Biggs!—of “interrupting a woman. “Don’t act like a bunch of…nimrods,” Biggs said. And the world turned upside down. “I believe,” Mace concluded, “that Hunter Biden should be hauled off to jail right now.”

A timeline is helpful here. Comer, who couldn’t run a two-car funeral if you spotted him the hearse, repeatedly said in various television appearances that Hunter Biden could choose to testify in public, or to sit for a secret deposition. Biden accepted the former option, at which point Comer pulled the clumsiest and most obvious bait-and-switch one could imagine, insisting on the private—and easily manipulated—deposition, and then proposing to hold Biden in contempt of Congress for refusing to sit for the deposition. We continue.

Biden thereupon completed his coup de main by ostentatiously walking out when it was time for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to use up five minutes of otherwise valuable oxygen, Considering that the MTG had used a previous hearing to display dick pics of Biden while Comer sat there like a lump of goo, I’d say Biden acted with considerable restraint in leaving the hearing without flipping the congresswoman off, but she got to call him a coward for the cameras, so her work for the day was done. I left the proceedings when Trumpist Rep. Byron Donalds defended the former president*’s profiteering by talking about how luxurious his hotels are, and by waving off the Emoluments clause of the Constitution as though it were an ancient Blue Law forbidding public entertainments of the Sabbath. The committee is going to vote to hold Hunter Biden in contempt, and the entire House will endorse the decision, and Nancy Mace, I guess, will get several additional opportunities to talk about his balls. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for Louie Gohmert.

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: The GOP's Hunter Sideshow 1

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  3. 3.

    brantl

    I see he walked right into the lion’s den, and walked out, unscathed. What a gutless bunch of sacks of shit the Rethuglicans on that committee are. They fit right in with the rest of the party.

  4. 4.

    Rusty

    And yet everyone of those crazies will be easily reelected,  and half the population thinks this is all good theater amd wants more.  I laugh but I really am working to avoid crying.  There is no mythical past where the country didn’t have its share of the nutty, but they are so much in ascendancy now.

  5. 5.

    Geminid

    @Rusty: I must question that estimate that half the country thinks this is good theatre and wants more. Most Americans did not pay any attention at all to yesterday’s hearing.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    @Rusty:

    Those are the people who upset me.  The people who upset me are those who are not them but still refuse to join us in fighting them.

  10. 10.

    Geminid

    South Africa has brought a case accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice. The 15 judges appointed by the UN General Assembly began hearing the charges 90 minutes ago, in the Netherlands city of The Hague. British barrister Malcolm Shaw, K.C. will present Israel’s defense tomorrow.

  13. 13.

    HinTN

    @AlaskaReader: He seems like a wonderful and well grounded gentleman.

    “So I’m so grateful that I get the opportunity standing on those giants,” Scott told the crowd. “And want y’all to, when you see me in the room, understand I carry all of y’all with me.

    ETA – Thanks for that link.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: ​ I’ve been awake since 12:30 when Percy woke me up to take him out. Tried to go back to sleep for 2 hours, after which I gave up.

    I see a nap in my near future.

  19. 19.

    Rusty

    The other thing is this circus drowned out the revelation that Trump told Europe the US wouldn’t show up to defend them.  For 75 years the US policy is to defend Europe, it’s the whole reason for NATO.  They share democracy and our values, if we won’t defend them then who would we defend?  If it was anyone else this would be headline news for weeks, but it will barely get a few op-eds from second tier pundits.  Trump is devoid of any moral center, every person and every country merely exists for his benefit.

  20. 20.

    prostratedragon

    Jacqueline Alemany reporting:

    @RepMTG just asked to enter unverified evidence into the record during the Hunter Biden Oversight contempt hearing.

    @RepRaskin replied that she can’t show pornography.

    “It’s not pornography,” said MTG.

    “You’re the expert,” Raskin responded.

    Really a banner day in the House.

  24. 24.

    sab

    @2liberal: A friend of ours got Covid last week, went off to the hospital in an ambulance, and then spent 26 hours on a bed in rhe hall of the Covid ward because they didn’t have a room for him. And I am not hearing a peep oit of local news that cases are soaring.

  26. 26.

    satby

    @Rusty: And that may have been the point. “Look, squirrel” by the GQP to distract from the leader of the party now unable to even dissemble about his future plans to betray our Constitution and international treaties.

  28. 28.

    Manyakitty

    @MagdaInBlack: must have been the night for insomnia. Waiting at the gate for my flight home from a visit to my parents and I didn’t fall asleep until just before my dad woke me up, which was moments before my alarm. Sigh.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m starting to suspect Comer isn’t very good at his job. The Democrats are, however.

    One way the national party is going after the so-called “moderate” Repubs in swing districts is to calculate and publicize the percentage of time they voted with Greene. It’s usually in the high 90s.

    Making Greene the face of House Repubs is smart on a couple of levels. On policy and in terms of personal behavior, she’s a kook who repels normal people.

    She also happens to be unattractive, which for many is forgivable in a man but not a woman. I don’t like the double standard, but it’s real.

  36. 36.

    Tony Jay

    @Betty Cracker:

    To be fair she was drop dead gorgeous in Angel Heart, but all the drinking and that bizarre lunge into professional boxing knocked the pretty right off her face.

  38. 38.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Same here. Physically she is just another woman, but then she opens her mouth and all that bile spills out.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I think people ask to be on committees, but I’m sure the Dems had some idea of the talent that was needed in each type of committee. Like Oversight is going to be highly partisan compared to, say, agriculture.

  43. 43.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
     

    Well, they’re not atypical.

    One thing that’s struck me over the last dozen or so years is just how sharp most Congressional Dems seem to be. I’d like to think it’s not me simply viewing them thru a partisan lens. But in hearings, they coordinate the messaging, questioning, etc., with cogent, thoughtful questions and statements. Whereas the GOP is, well, the GOP.

    And I can’t say that was the case oh, back in the 70s and 80s. I might have disagreed with the GOP back then but at least they weren’t typically an embarrassment of ignorance in such settings.

    Oh, and you taught at Iowa State. I went to Ames for years for work, was just out there a couple of months ago before I retired. I still miss Olde Main Brewing.

  44. 44.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Baud: Oh, so you know how I looked up what the Ds were doing in Iowa this year? And I found that they were using post cards for a mail-in vote? Well, an Iowa friend got asked to work at the “caucus” on “Tuesday.” I have no idea what that’s about. I guess party business always gets conducted at caucus. Maybe it’s that.

  45. 45.

    JML

    @OzarkHillbilly: hate isn’t attractive. Physically, MTG isn’t unattractive, but the hate and insanity she spews out and the cruelty she supports overwhelms everything else.

  48. 48.

    Geminid

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: The Oversight Committee members are fairly typical, except they probably skew towards first and second term Representatives. It’s not one of the “Big Five” Committees like Energy and Commerce or Appropriations that attract members with more seniority. Reps. Crockett, Casar, Moscowitz and Goldman are all freshmen.

    Democrats did an interesting thing this year by putting  Jaime Raskin in charge. Gerry Connolly apparently waived seniority knowing that there would be a lot of hearings like this. Connolly is a good legislator, but Raskin has “star” power.

  49. 49.

    lowtechcyclist

    MTG, via Nitter:

    Hunter Biden traffics women for sex but ran away when I was recognized to speak to him. The only women Hunter Biden likes to deal with are the women he hires for sex, flies across the country, films and photos his disgusting porn with, and post his nasty videos on porn sites…

    OK, suppose he does?  Why is this a matter for a Congressional committee?

  54. 54.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Betty Cracker

    She also happens to be unattractive, which for many is forgivable in a man but not a woman. I don’t like the double standard, but it’s real.

    She has an ugly soul

     

    ETA: I see many of you beat me to the punch

    ETA2: Probably because I’m just now getting up from a night of insomnia. Which apparently a lot of you also beat me to the punch on.

  55. 55.

    Neal

    I had just assumed that MTG’s “look” was the result of steroid and/or HGH usage. The very square jaw being but one feature.

    I am far too old to place much stock in one’s looks, but as Aerosmith sang “Dude looks like s lady,” I suspect that her goal is the converse in “Lady looks like a dude.”

    Her choice of course, I just think she strove/strives to look like that.

    An interesting study in physiology to be sure…

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