I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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Bedbug Loon of course, used Diamond once again to get himself noticed. Nothing and no one he won't milk for an opportunity to get himself in some limelight, or so he thinks. Then again one could say that both deserved the other.
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No investigations save for the Reps. ones. Revenge exercises.
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Couldn't be happier about this.
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January 6: Two Years After Trying to Overturn an Election, MAGA Republicans Still Disrespecting Democracy
by Ed Kilgore, January 6th, 2023 8:38 PM EST
Listening as I did to the House Speaker's election saga, I heard a lot of rhetoric that brought back very bad memories, and I wrote about them at New York:
One of the more interesting things about the weeklong right-wing revolt against Kevin McCarthy's ascent to the Speakership that has paralyzed the U.S. House has been the rebels' conceit that they, rather than the other 414 members of the chamber, exclusively represent the "will of the American people." They have passionately and redundantly appealed to this self-designed mandate during their remarks on the floor. A good example was Thursday's speech by Virginia congressman Bob Good in nominating his obscure Oklahoma colleague Kevin Hern for the Speakership:
"The greatest reflection of where the people of this country are is the House of Representatives. The people spoke back on November 8 and gave the majority by some 3 or 4 million votes to the Republican Party. It's not the White House; it's not the Senate. It's the People's House that reflects where the American people are, and they trusted us on this side of the aisle with the leadership of this House. And we have a window of opportunity to validate that trust, to do whatever we can to save this Republic."
That salvation, Good continues at some length to assert, requires "transformational change" in the Republican Party and in the Congress, meaning above all no more cooperation with the White House, with House Democrats, or with either party's leadership in the Senate, as they all represent the despised "swamp" in the MAGA imagination.
When you deconstruct this train of thought, its arrogance is pretty breathtaking. The notion that the House majority holds an exclusive popular mandate is not one that Good or any of the rebels would have embraced during the eight years that Nancy Pelosi was Speaker. As for 2022, the more than 54 million Americans who voted for House Democratic candidates are given no voice at all. And the idea that Republicans carried the House out of some frantic cry from the electorate for "transformational change" is less compelling than the entirely commonplace metronomic trend against the party controlling the White House — a trend that was, in fact, weaker than any we have seen since 2002 and among the weakest ever. And the anti-McCarthy rebels had little or nothing to do with preventing a completely catastrophic midterms outcome for Republicans. As FiveThirtyEight notes, most of them barely had to run in the 2022 general election:
"Unlike the Democrats who voted against former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019 — who hailed exclusively from competitive districts — McCarthy's foes tend to come from solidly red turf. Only three of the 20 were elected in districts with FiveThirtyEight partisan leans bluer than R+15 [districts 15 points more Republican than the country as a whole]."
Yes, arch-rebel Lauren Boebert won the closest House race in the country. But that's because she very nearly lost reelection in an R+7 district, not because she was identified with "the swamp" or with Kevin McCarthy. Conversely, it's hard to blame GOP underperformance on RINO squishes. Republicans lost the Senate thanks to unimpressive results posted by MAGA stalwarts like Blake Masters, Don Bolduc, Herschel Walker, and Adam Laxalt. If Mitch McConnell (the object of nearly as much rebel spleen as McCarthy this week) still stands athwart the Senate Republican conference like an ancient colossus, it's because candidates who share the worldview of Bob Good and Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs bombed at the ballot box. Closer to home, notable House flops included right-wing insurgents Joe Kent of Washington, J.R. Majewski of Ohio, and John Gibbs of Michigan.
Listening to the anti-McCarthy hardliners, you get the sense that they believe themselves to represent the popular will independently of mere elections. And that makes sense when you plumb the depths of their conspiracy-theory-laden points of view. Most of them are 2020 election deniers who are willing to discount a sizable number of votes as putatively fraudulent. Many believe leaders in both parties (along with the news media and social-media platforms) are complicit in preventing many millions of voters from making informed candidate choices. And at a time when they and other Republicans routinely accuse Democrats of socialist extremism, conservative hardliners counterintuitively continue to assert (as they have done during the Speakership fight) that there is too little difference between the two parties.
In this, the fringe characters of the political right resemble their counterparts on the left; both tend to assume there is a hidden majority for their points of view that somehow never breaks through in actual elections thanks to the perfidy of the Establishment. But let's be clear: There's zero equivalence in conduct. The fringe elements of the left, to the extent they exist in Congress, aren't holding the chamber hostage; they have joined their Establishment colleagues in supporting Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker, though many consider him too "centrist." And it's not the left that spawned an assault on the Capitol just two years ago or whose votes to overturn the 2020 election results represented an endorsement of the rioters' motives, if not their violent excesses. (All of the anti-McCarthy rebels then in Congress, along with McCarthy himself and a majority of House Republicans, voted against counting state-certified Biden electors.) In a very real sense, the men and women who have prevented the swearing in of the 118th Congress for so long represent not "the American people" but an anti-democratic faction that recognizes no authority but its own will to power.An easy read since it was about the smug convictions of many on the other side that they are the CHOSEN. That they and McCarthy or any of them are especially chosen is totally assine. They barely got a majority -- it was what, about four and yet you'd think they had massive numbers. The attitudes along with the greedy un-caring picture they will be presenting to the public and a lot of their constituents I hope will give us a much stouter edge in two yrs. I also hope it will undermine any Reps. presidential candidate.
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Hmmm, I have something of a question here. It is not something that I've seen much happen before and now I'm wondering if it is going to be standard practice. For a couple of nights now I've seen Reps. being brought on some of the MSNBC programs. One late night on Stephanie Ruhle and just now on Joy Reed. The one on the Reed program really stood out to me. It was Byron Donalds who was entered in the vote for SOTH.
I was amazed at how rude Mr. Donalds was. He seemed to take everything Joy asked as an offensive question or remark. He talked loud and fast and constantly interrupted to force Joy to allow him total control over what was said (mostly by him) and for as long as it took. She was not allowed the same courtesies he demanded. So, now I'm left trying to understand just why we are giving them a platform. I'm not adverse but many of them are pushy and somewhat out of control and that doesn't even get to some of the conspiratorial aspects. Dh told me that Donalds is one of the people that wants to see Social Security privatized. That in my book disqualifies him from having much useful that I would want or feel the need to know.
If anyone has some ideas or enlightenment I would appreciate hearing it.
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Jackie, I only saw the interview with Joy tonight. I agree that Donalds was very hostile and rude. But Joy can take that s**t, and she handed his arse right back to him. Still I would say the guy is pretty smart. He knows all the rightwing lies by heart and can argue them. I think what's going on with MSNBC is an attempt to appear unbiased. I don't agree with that policy (mainly because I hate listening to those creeps), and am hoping this trend fades away soon, or some viewers may.
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Thanks pupmom.
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Spookie -- great memes.
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Real courage is a bold adventure in walking forward without looking back. With courage you welcome each new experience as an opportunity to exercise your positive energy in a productive, purposeful direction. You are not afraid of what you do not know; you become eager to learn it. You do not hesitate to extend your efforts into unfamiliar areas because unfamiliar does not mean unfriendly. Real courage is an exercise in facing the truth and allowing it to change your life for the better even when that requires loosening the shackles of habit and responding to old situations in new ways. -Renee Okon
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Real courage is a bold adventure in walking forward without looking back. With courage you welcome each new experience as an opportunity to exercise your positive energy in a productive, purposeful direction. You are not afraid of what you do not know; you become eager to learn it. You do not hesitate to extend your efforts into unfamiliar areas because unfamiliar does not mean unfriendly. Real courage is an exercise in facing the truth and allowing it to change your life for the better even when that requires loosening the shackles of habit and responding to old situations in new ways. -Renee Okon
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Been highly disgusted with this person for as long as I can remember -- since he first won election.
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Good for the Reps. - Nassau but the pressure has to be put on and KEPT on till there are results.
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I would call the first an ugly fiasco.
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He won't have to sign or not sign -- the Senate will kill it on arrival there.
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Something to remember:
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Jackie, I absolutely love your last post. Here here!
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love it, Ruth.0 -
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Reps. through and through. They backed and worshiped a liar this man can't hold a candle to as yet, but I must say his efforts are quite valiant. Oh, but the pretense of having integrity. It's not going to fly well, Orville !
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