U.S. Politics January 2023: Kevin McCarthy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life

https://i.imgur.com/IFgeVGo.png

any predictions on how long he'll last?

will die in office in 2024. will have an off the cuff conversation at his favorite Steak 'n Shake about how health code violations are stupid, will die a year later from a tainted Frisco melt

or if he'll "win" in the first place?

as part of his negotiations with the freedom caucus (excuse me --- *barfs violently*), mccarthy has agreed to make it much easier to bring Motions to Vacate to the floor. up until now, at least half of the GOP would have to agree to bring the motion to the floor. it's rarely if ever used. Mark Meadows was the last one to try, in 2015, against Boehner. the motion didn't work, but it was indicative of how overly tanned Boehner's balls had become, and soon he was out of a job, high as fuck and rich. what a sad story for Boehner!! before that, it was last tried in 1910.

until now...

A parliamentary rule in the House of Representatives called the "motion to vacate the chair" is playing a major role in Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) bid to become speaker of the House.

A motion to vacate is a parliamentary procedure similar to a vote of no confidence in which members of the body can submit a request for the presiding officer to step down. McCarthy reportedly told his conservative naysayers this week that he would lower the number of members needed to bring forth a motion to vacate and force a vote on the House floor.

As the rule currently stands, half of the House GOP would have to vote to bring forward a motion to remove a leader. McCarthy has apparently agreed to lower that number to "less than five," according to CNN. This may not be enough to appease his most ardent critics, who reportedly want just one member to be able to force a vote on the speaker's suitability. However, the centrist wing of the GOP has suggested they don't want to lower the threshold to less than 50.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/what-is-motion-to-vacate-kevin-mccarthy
https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/When_was_the_%22motion_to_vacate_the_chair%22_rule_last_used_in_Congress

but hey, what are the chances that a handful of freedom caucus members would try to bring McCarthy down. this is a Young Gun!

i think he will become the speaker because there's no one else, and then i think he'll go down sometime this summer

He may not have enough votes for a straight win on the first ballot, but nobody else is even close to having enough, right? So eventually it's kinda gotta become him? The question is how much humiliation the crazies are gonna put him through before that happens...

no matter who gets the seat, it's going to be a terrible person. it's just are they a 5 or an 8 on the evil scale

we're going to see a lot of pointless investigations into things Biden/other liberals did (or didn't do), and it's going to be 0% about actually taking any punitive action, 100% to influence the 2024 election and get dumb voters outraged.

probably the smart thing will be not to take the bait each time

normal stuff pic.twitter.com/ixAjSBPzXB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2023

it's a good thing Clarence Thomas doesn't believe such things, no sir. glad to have such a pure, non-corrupted justice on the bench.

Clarence Thomas believes in the Constitution.

Y'all should read The New Yorker story on McCarthy.

fuck mccarthy, obviously, but the troubling thing is that there doesn't appear to be a limit on how far he will go to appease the freedom caucus. they prevented him from being speaker last time around, and the lesson he learned was that he needed to kiss some more ass.

McCarthy already pledged to reinstate Greene to her committee positions, right? it's hard to remember with everything going on, but the reason she lost those positions, in early 2021, was because she is a white supremacist. when she was finally, FINALLY just barely held accountable for that, by suffering the indignity of no longer being required to do anything on committees she never should have been close to in the first place, she claimed that she had been hoodwinked:

Greene spoke on the House floor ahead of the vote and said her past comments "do not represent me."

Calling herself a "very regular American," Greene said she "stumbled across" the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory at the end of 2017 but stopped believing in it a year later when she "started finding misinformation." But Greene has continued to spread false, QAnon-fueled theories since then, telling a local news reporter in July 2020 that she was "concerned about a deep state."

"I was allowed to believe things that weren't true," she said on the House floor Thursday. "I would ask questions about them and talk about them and that is absolutely what I regret."

somehow, since then she has repeatedly been fooled by these bad people! she's so unlucky! in feb 2022, she was fooled into appearing at white supremacist Nick Fuentes' white supremacy convention. when criticized about that, she described the conference as “1,200 people gathered to declare that Christ is King.” now she's probably McCarthy's most important ally. lol

xps all tolled I guess we should just be glad that all Thomas wants to do is re-criminalize gay sex

(and the pill)

can you imagine living in a boring-ass rich person suburban neighborhood and a group of your peers is going completely unhinged, led by Ginni Thomas, who believes all this shit and drags everyone along because they think she has an inside line to the workings of government? I mean, I wouldn't be living there, but what a trip. just getting high off your own supply

Love'em, such good people

the fundie church we went to in the 90s is long gone (well, it's a new church, really), but my mother has a lot of FB friends from that era, and at least three or four of them have gone down the Q rabbit-hole, and used to harass my mother over anything she posted that was pro-Democrat, but she still won't block them (so I showed her how to adjust audience settings).

and the scary thing about it is how lucidly they recall every little molecular detail of shit that they've read, like...perhaps if they'd applied the same energy to learning how things actually work, they wouldn't be so insane. like I can't even remember facts/details as vividly as these nutbars seem to be able to.

Privately, McCarthy remains defiant, keeping some final tactics available as he intends to stay on the floor Tuesday as long as it may take to get elected, according to several lawmakers who, like others for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private and ongoing deliberations.

“To use his words, if they’re playing a game of chicken, he’s ripped the steering wheel out of the dashboard and he’s got his foot to the floor,” one Republican lawmaker said, paraphrasing a recent quip by McCarthy.

...Without a speaker in place, basic House functions such as swearing in members and voting on a package dictating House rules would be delayed indefinitely. It’s a warning that McCarthy allies have routinely given their Freedom Caucus counterparts, and have emphasized that without McCarthy, a consensus candidate would have to emerge between the GOP and Democrats, ruining Republican chances of influencing anything in the next Congress.

the novel thing about this negotiation is that the people preventing him from being being speaker would, i think, be fine with congress being completely shut down. he's playing chicken with people who are totally fine with his worst case scenario. there's not really much more he can give them that he hasn't already done. he's already pledged to let the white supremacists run the show. he can narrow down the number of people needed to challenge his speakership from 5 to 1, which is absurd, because if you can't even get 5 of the worst fucking people on earth to agree with you that there should be a different speaker, maybe you shouldn't waste everyone's time in holding a vote on it. and he can accede to dipshits like Ralph Norman, whose said this afternoon that " he is still going to vote against him unless McCarthy adopts a seven-year balanced budget amendment." (ooooooooooook?) maybe he can give committee positions to a few more white supremacists, that might sweeten the deal

i'm guessing

The lunacy of House republicans appears to be incurable. Governance at the national level is going to be a train wreck. Again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/us/politics/trump-desantis-hispanic-evangelicals.html

Mr. Báez, the pastor of a network of churches, avoided any mention of politics for years when his pulpit was in Philadelphia. He thought of his role at the time, he said, as being above politics. He rarely even voted.

But since moving to Florida in 2019 and starting a new congregation that meets in a former nightclub in downtown Miami, he rarely hesitates to speak about political issues.

Mr. Báez has told congregants about his decision to stop allowing his young children to watch Disney movies. He said the company had gone too far in its support for transgender rights, and he applauded the law passed last year by Mr. DeSantis and state Republicans that restricts classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Mr. Báez has also been outspoken in opposing schools that educate children about gender identity.

“No teacher should be talking to young children about sexuality — let me as a parent do that,” he said, adding that he first became aware of the issue during the so-called bathroom bill debates years ago. “We have moved into the extreme views on this. We have to respect parents, not impose one view.”

Mr. Gracia, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a young man and is now 57, described himself as “old-fashioned” in his ideas about leadership, spending time reading about emperors and famous generals. That informed his views of Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump, he said.

“I have always been a great admirer of guts and being aggressive, and they both have this behavior of a true leader,” he said, musing aloud whether the two Republican rivals could run on a joint ticket. “I see in both of these men a drive and a strain that is extremely needed in the kind of world we live in today.”

GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told his conference he has given his all ahead of the crucial speaker vote. In a closed-door session, McCarthy made clear that there is no more to negotiate, according to people in the room. One person emphasized just how strongly McCarthy came out against detractors, scorning them for moving the goal posts again. As he was wrapping up, a lawmaker shouted, “Preach it, baby!” Members applauded and gave him a standing ovation. A defiant McCarthy yelled into the microphone, “I’ve earned this job,” and added an expletive.

just report the fucking expletive

Can't wait till Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has to meet with Biden and Speaker Jeffries next week.

“I’ve earned this job,” and added an expletive.

"fuckbois."

all of their worst members are expressing outrage this morning, I won't link because they are obnoxious af, but it is amusing to see them tear each other apart.

yeah it's looking like jeffries might have the most votes at the end of round 1, lol.

to counterbalance all this, i'm reminding myself that almost no one in this country is paying attention or will care, even if a series of really hilarious and humiliating events occur for mccarthy. but i'm warmed by the thought that it is going to be almost impossible for a GOP-led house to get anything done at all. i assume they'll unite on hunter biden and things of that nature, but otherwise you couldn't count on them to organize a barn wedding at this point

if only 8 GOP members could be convinced to vote for jeffries, "as a goof"

from yesterday:

This is very interesting. DON BACON tells us if McCarthy ends up bowing out, he may run a candidate against SCALISE if he runs. He said the candidate he has in mind is currently serving in congress, but won’t be in the next congress.

He declined to say whether it was fred upton

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 2, 2023

going to be totally unsurprised when the "nothing's changed, I will not vote for him" crowd eventually votes for him and he agrees to do things behind closed doors and pretends publicly that they caved.

I frankly can't predict what will happen. These ghouls are so adamant about strategy being a symptom of selling out that I can't see them bowing.

Congress will kickoff in March

Andy Biggs still saying he doesn't have the votes, before launching into a stirring rendition of "Dadow Shancing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az5dzXRRh4E

Elise Stefanik manages to be in the background of so many of these pictures. She's someone who will say or do anything to advance her own career.

Lots of "bend the knee" talk

These people wanna be on TV and publish ghost-written books.

Aguilar deploying Biggie quotes in nominating speech

Gosar nominating Andy Biggs

What a fucking shitshow. They seem bound and determined to find the lowest common denominator.

Good title, A+

About to go to the House Floor. pic.twitter.com/81QVxmbHBb

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 3, 2023

Already up to 4 non-McCarthy votes from Republicans

this thing where he has like 10 people who won't vote for him, and his trick to get them to vote for him was to tell them that 5 members can initiate a vote of no confidence if he wins. doesn't seem like a good trick!

You know what I think of Beschloss but you must admit this is rather good. https://t.co/bgBetTTIeF

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) January 3, 2023

Catie Edmondson
Jan. 3, 2023, 12:56 p.m. ET7 minutes ago
7 minutes ago
Catie Edmondson

Some light guffawing from Democrats as two Republicans vote against McCarthy before the House clerk even gets to the “C” surnames.

now there are 7 votes-- so McCarthy can only lose 3 more?

“I earned this job,” Mr. McCarthy said.

“Bullshit!” came the response from Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, one of the hard-right Republicans opposing him. (She later told a reporter she did not shout anything during the meeting, but would not say whether she had spoken up.)

Gaetz votes for Biggs.

He would habitually overpromise on Trump-Russia evidence on MSNBC

I will concede that he's yet one more politician who looks like a deep sea creature.

one of those cases where trump's insults ('pencil neck') was sadly OTM

not that that is a reason not to vote for him

He would habitually overpromise on Trump-Russia evidence on MSNBC

but this is a reason not to support him. he's forever twinned with Mueller now in my mind.

Conservatives also rank three cases involving privacy and LGBT rights as among the Court’s worst decisions: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965, our number 6), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, number 10), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015, number 5). The first two rulings invalidated statutes prohibiting the use of contraceptives and homosexual sodomy, and the third required legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Some of our respondents are surely opponents of same-sex marriage; few would wish to criminalize anyone’s sexual activity; fewer still (perhaps none) would seek to restore the prohibition of contraceptives. We surmise that our respondents’ criticism of these decisions probably has less to do with the outcomes and far more to do with the fanciful legal reasoning used by the justices who reached them.

Funny how the only cases where innovative legal theory bothers these creeps are ones where said theory works to enshrine the rights of people they despise.

They made a video together.

Look, the opponents suing to stop my plan are the only thing standing between millions of Americans’ crushing student debt and relief. It’s frustrating, and I won’t stop fighting to get it done in the courts.

Allow me and my friend to explain. pic.twitter.com/h1mvaZPCwU

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 27, 2023

Sleepy Joe feat. the Bern

Gov. Ron DeSantis expanded his drive to steer Florida’s public colleges and universities to the political right Tuesday, outlining plans to dismantle campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs and making it easier for his mostly hand-picked boards of trustees to hire and fire tenured professors.

DeSantis rolled out his higher-education proposals just miles from New College of Florida, a liberal-leaning public honors college that he has targeted for change after appointing a roster of conservative trustees.

The new board is set to meet Tuesday for the first time. But it was evident that DeSantis’ appearance at the nearby State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota was intended to reaffirm his drive to overhaul the state’s higher education system.

“There are some people that think you have a right to have some taxpayer institutions with no accountability. That they should just be able to do whatever they want,” DeSantis said. “That is not happening in the state of Florida.”

Without offering specifics, DeSantis accused colleges and universities of advancing programs based on liberal politics and requiring that staff, students and initiatives meet an “ideological litmus test.”

The Republican governor, a Yale and Harvard graduate widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination next year, vowed to change the atmosphere which he said exists.

“The more we’re centering higher education on the integrity of the academics, excellence, pursuit of truth, teaching kids to think for themselves and not try to impose an orthodoxy, you are going to see people flooding into these institutions,” DeSantis said. “Academia, writ large, across the country has really lost its way.”

https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/31/desantis-targets-florida-college-university-diversity-programs-tenure/69858501007/

Amazing that these fuckers want to change everything about college but the cost

what, if any, steps can even be taken to fight this?

major Florida colleges won't see any hit to enrollment, and people fleeing New College probably would only be a short-lived phenomenon, plus allow him to proceed further.

so fucking disheartening living here.

First Amendment grounds, federal courts.

Is this is part of his plan to run nationwide? Most Americans don't like this kind of shit

It won't work, no. But it's hell on us in the state with the prettiest name.

they've also flipped the reasoning on reading in public schools in FL: everything is fine as long as it's a book that the fascists pre-approve. there's nearly 800 of them!

Students arrived in some Florida public school classrooms this month to find their teachers’ bookshelves wrapped in paper — or entirely barren of books — after district officials launched a review of the texts’ appropriateness under a new state law.

School officials in at least two counties, Manatee and Duval, have directed teachers this month to remove or wrap up their classroom libraries, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. The removals come in response to fresh guidance issued by the Florida Department of Education in mid-January, after the State Board of Education ruled that a law restricting the books a district may possess applies not only to schoolwide libraries but to teachers’ classroom collections, too.

House Bill 1467, which took effect as law in July, mandates that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and “suited to student needs.” Books must be approved by a qualified school media specialist, who must undergo a state retraining on book collection. The Education Department did not publish that training until January, leaving school librarians across Florida unable to order books for more than a year.

Breaking the law is a third-degree felony, meaning that a teacher could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for displaying or giving students a disallowed book.

...A spokeswoman for Duval County Public Schools wrote in a statement Monday that “we are taking the steps required to comply with Florida law,” adding that “there are almost 800 titles currently approved, and the list grows each day as books are reviewed.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/31/florida-hide-books-stop-woke-manatee-county-duval-county-desantis/

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/01/florida-desantis-universities/672898/
he seems nice

alfred, you're teaching college in FL now, no? I'm sorry.

Most Americans don't like this kind of shit

but do a plurality of conservative voters like this?

will fahrenheit 451 be allowed or banned in FL? i'm leaning banned

I guess the Stop WOKE act is still largely blocked by an injunction for most parts of it.

but he fairly clearly violated it recently and a judge didn't agree.

plus what he's doing at New College of Florida has nothing to do w/ said act

Florida’s Soviet Commissars

https://media.tenor.com/ufd9dOqNr4UAAAAM/peepshow-jerking.gif

don't turn around

really expecting that unless we miraculously finally get a Democratic governor in office (for the first time since I was a fucking teenager) in this state, no matter what laws are struck down by a court, we'll basically see the predictable flight of quality professors leaving for other universities, as well as diversity shrinking significantly at all Florida colleges.

at this point would see the only chance of that happening is a George Santos-esque left wing character who runs as a Republican and then reveals he was kidding after he gets elected.

i just remembered that ben sasse resigned so that he could have the honor of being a figurehead in this movement. fucking horrible person

Who knows. None of these guys wear masks and the woke mind virus is spreading fast.

the term "woke", like "fake news", has been so thoroughly subverted by conservatives that i don't even know what "the woke mind virus is spreading fast" means anymore, tbh

but the stuff in FL is spreading

NEW: Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves urged lawmakers to pass a "Parents Bill of Rights," allowing parents to inspect and opt their children out of education materials in school.

The @ParentsCampaign calls it "anti-teacher." From @KayodeCrown: https://t.co/7vTfi4AeOQ

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) January 31, 2023

If you don't know what the WMV is then you probably already have it.

Mississippi also banned teaching one of the bedrocks of higher-tier Algebra, invisible numbers, quite a few decades ago. They’ve always been dead last in nationwide educational outcomes for a reason, but the state next to them which is shaped like a urinal is plummeting, too

I have no fucking doubt that DeSantis will become POTUS in 2024, especially if Biden dies/steps down and Harris won’t move aside

I have a lot of doubts he'll become president – and I live in Florida.

yeah, his appeal is, uh, 'limited'

I really think this book-banning stuff doesn't go over well. It doesn't make people feel good, appeals to a fairly small group. All of the anti-woke stuff I think they're just way overplaying. Lots of people do not give much of a shit about it.

yeah this culture war shit won't get him very far on the national stage. really his anti-education agenda is just an admission that Republicans want their constituents to be stupid and hateful

will enough people see it that way?

Yeah a lot of people are normal

The Democrats, as I've learned, no longer need the state with the prettiest name.

If DeSantis really understands the prototype established by Trump, once he enters the primaries he'll expand his crazy shit to include more than just pandering to dominionists and neo-fascists, and start promising a return to some pre-civil rights era White Person Eden, including fabulous health care for Good People Like You, high-paying jobs, and show trials for the Democrat Commies held at NASCAR rallies.

Mississippi also banned teaching one of the bedrocks of higher-tier Algebra, invisible numbers, quite a few decades ago.

wait what?

do you mean imaginary numbers? numbers that are not easily understood, like infinitesimals, zero, and imaginary numbers have a long history of being banned by various authorities, like the catholic church. zeno's paradox is ungodly!

Believe they are based on square roots, as in rootless cosmopolitans, so yeah.

i just remembered that ben sasse resigned so that he could have the honor of being a figurehead in this movement. fucking horrible person

I live in Iowa and have had to deal with associated bullshit forever but the idea of a Nebraskan ideologue is a thought beyond. Good luck with that, Sasse

I thought he was just in for the money (better salary than a senator, although you’d think fewer opportunities for $ via corruption (?)) but he must have been drawn to the more direct opportinity for ignorant cruelty? Or maybe it’s some sort of stepping stone? If desantis succeeds in national
office he’ll be rewarded? Again, just a horrible person

Nikki Haley is running for president.

Lucky us. Maybe when the February thread starts tomorrow we can not follow up on that and let it sit here like a lump in a demolished outhouse.

Nikki Haley has always and never been running for president

Maxine Waters taking no malarkey from this weirdo

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) just formally testified to the Republican-led House Rules Committee that the real threat to democracy is House Republicans.

😂

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) February 1, 2023

Time for a new month of political nattering. Who who's brave enough to bell the cat?

US Politics, February 2023: No classified documents found in Justice Department search of ILX

farewell, kevin, you miserable bastard