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So, yeah, third post here about President Musk’s decision to shut down the government via a tweet, but I’m going to focus on the challenges facing possible next Speaker Rev. Mike Johnson, purity ball and masturbation monitoring aficionado, and the rest of Congress.

Let’s begin with the fact that Mike has only one vote to lose on the Speaker vote next January (or February, or March, depends on how it goes).  He’s lost Stefanik to the UN and Gaetz to teenage girls, so he’s got a two-vote majority, and one of those votes is already a no from Tom Massey.  So he’s on an even hotter seat than he was in the last Congress, where, let’s remember, the Republicans were unable to pass a budget and instead just did Continuing Resolutions (CRs) on the Democratic budget.  Because all the salty nutbars in the Freedum Caca won’t vote for anything except poison pill shit, and because MyKevin stacked the committees with them in a useless effort to kiss up, they won’t even let a CR out of committee.  Instead, they have to be passed under suspension of the rules with a supermajority–iow with a lot of Democrats’ votes.  (This is a great thread on Bluesky explaining it all.)

The most likely outcome here is that Elongated Muskrat learns (slowly, as he tends to) that shutting down the government might affect his ability to jet around, since unpaid ATC controllers might not issue takeoff clearances to the shithead who took away their Xmas paycheck.  (Memo to Mayor Pete:  order the FCC FAA to only clear commercial and medevac traffic because of the budget emergency, and see how fast Elon and the other billionaires pay attention.)  This will lead to a vote on, say, Christmas Eve, after a good long session of everyone pointing out to Trump that he’s Elon’s weak little playtoy.   Let’s take a quick moment to consider the Senate’s role in this, specifically the oldsters and the travelers.  Chuck Grassley, a spry 91, is going to have his Christmas plans with family ruined.  Lisa Murkowski will face the prospect of a long-ass flight to Alaska on the busiest travel day of the year.  They’re going to be hella pissed.

When Musk and Trump finally tell Mike to make a deal, what deal will he be able to make?  Will the Democrats say, well, OK, since you went back on the last deal, we’ll just take the same thing again?  Maybe, but I think not.  It’s amazing how quickly the aura of invincibility can be broken by the intrusion of cold, hard facts.  Clearly, most Congressional Dems were going through a mourning period of silence, but once it was clear that Musk and Trump stepped on a rake, some of them seem to be remembering that Trump’s first Presidency consisted of a lot of rakes to the face.   It also helps that this is an easy one — basically, Hakeem Jeffries just needs to do what he did, which is to say not just “no” but “hell no” to a clean CR at the 11th hour.

So let’s review the bidding:  weak Speaker made weaker, mad Senators mad madder, Democrats made more resilient.  What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours.

Anyway, I’ll close with a comment attributed to one of Mitch McConnell’s staffers when he heard about the stupidity of another Senator:  “You’ve shit the bed.  Are you going to roll around in it, or are you going to clean it up?”  My prediction:  a few more days of rolling around, at a minimum.

Muskdown, You Better Take CarePost + Comments (231)

Reading Anne Laurie’s overnight thread about Musk blowing up the House spending bill, it occurred to me that elected Democrats could not hope for a slower, fatter pitch right over the plate to kick off their role as opposition party in the second Trump Error.

Yesterday, the World’s Richest Man™️, who was not elected to any office, demanded that the U.S. government shut down for weeks, which will cause great hardship for regular people. And every elected Republican, from the alleged president-elect to the lowliest House backbencher, scurried to carry out the decree.

House Minority Leader Jeffries seems to understand the opportunity this presents. (The Hill)

“House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government. And hurt the working class Americans they claim to support,” Jeffries posted on social platform X. “You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow.”

That’s the spirit! Also, it’s a very low bar, but maybe Trump and Vance understand how the government works better than Musk does.

“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling,” Trump and Vance said. “Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”

Emphasis mine. Trump wants the debt ceiling raised before he takes office so he can blame it on Biden. Fuck that. Unelected oligarchs are already running the country through a Nazi-infested social media platform even before Trump is sworn in. Let those fuckers figure it out.

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It’s important to keep in mind that the average voter doesn’t see Musk as an unelected oligarch who is determined to destroy the social safety net so he can add even more to his unimaginable wealth. Lots of folks buy the hype about Musk, just as they bought the bullshit The Apprentice sold about Donald Trump. Hell, even some elected Dems who should fucking know better talk about Musk as if he’s not the comically obvious Bond villain that he is (looking at you, Senators Fetterman and Blumenthal).

That needs to stop. Musk needs to be “rebranded” to reflect what he actually is. The good news is those efforts are getting a big assist from Musk himself. It’s a softball the size of Mars.

Open thread.

A Slow, Fat Pitch Over The PlatePost + Comments (337)