Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition, Con't

Turns out GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy still doesn't have the votes to pass anything at all as far as keeping the government open as a second attempt to pass a Pentagon funding bill had to be pulled from the House floor, and with the House now in recess, it looks like a GOP-caused shutdown is all but guaranteed.

 

For the second time this week, House Republicans on Thursday failed to start debate on a key military funding bill after five conservative rebels blocked the measure over demands for additional spending cuts.

The defeat marked yet another public embarrassment for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans as Washington barrels toward a government shutdown. Then, they left town for the week.

"We are very dysfunctional right now," Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said, adding that the failure proves that GOP leaders "obviously can't count" votes, unlike Democrats. "Speaker Pelosi, love her or hate her, she put something out there and they'd rally around it."

McCarthy had vowed that the House would work through the weekend to find a solution to the crisis, with votes expected through Saturday. Now, they've canceled votes for Friday and the weekend, telling members they'll get "ample notice" if any votes are scheduled.

Moderate Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., who is facing a tough re-election bid next year, has been describing the GOP dysfunction as a "clown show" and warned that pragmatists would work with Democrats to keep the government funded.

 

Even House Republicans themselves are calling this clown show a clown show! 

"For my colleagues, they have to come to a realization: If they are unable or unwilling to govern, others will. And in a divided government where you have Democrats controlling the Senate, a Democrat controlling the White House, there needs to be a realization that you're not going to get everything you want," he said.

"And just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet, frankly not only is it wrong — it's pathetic," Lawler added.

The House paralysis bodes ill for preventing a government shutdown at the end of September, as Republicans remain unable to pass messaging bills that would represent their opening bid and have no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate. The infighting could only escalate when they have to make policy compromises to accept a bill that President Joe Biden can sign into law.

“At the end of the day, any final bill is going to be bipartisan. And if somebody doesn’t realize that they’re truly clueless,” Lawler said.

Thursday's vote failed 212-216. The Republicans who voted no were Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; Dan Bishop of North Carolina; Matt Rosendale of Montana; and Andy Biggs and Eli Crane, both of Arizona. Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., later switched his vote to no, a procedural move that will allow him to bring the bill up again.

“The problem is, we’ve been doing CRs for 25 years or longer. And that works the same way. Lather, rinse, repeat. The Washington wash cycle,” Bishop said. “So there’s another CR and they get to a few days before Christmas and they pass on monstrous omnibus. That’s exactly the path. We all see it, we all recognize it. The only way to change it is to change it.”

 

But of course Republicans don't have the votes to change it, and they could have passed spending bills months ago without a single Democratic vote. They chose not to. 

Republicans are clowns, period. We're all here to watch the Big Top burn down with them -- and America -- in it.

And when the Villagers are openly asking if Kevin McCarthy is even still in charge and worse, answering that question with "No, Matt Gaetz is running the circus now" then yeah, I don't see how McCarthy seriously survives the next few weeks as Speaker. More than ever it feels like the Clown Town kids table is going to have to eat what the adults in the Senate give them, and that McCarthy's going to spend the holidays shooting hoops in his driveway in sweatpants and muttering about how he was A Contenda™.

His only hope is that Matt Gaetz would be so much worse as Speaker that the thought alone might keep him in the office as whipping boy, and in that scenario, McCarthy's just a puppet.

We'll see.

The Greene Monster Gets Her Due

Once again, Republican Congressmonster Marjorie Taylor Greene is openly calling for secession from the US.

 

IN FEBRUARY, GEORGIA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Now, she’s taking her call for a schism even further by encouraging states to outright “consider seceding from the union.”

On Monday, Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “if the Biden admin refuses to stop the invasion of cartel led human and drug trafficking into our country, states should consider seceding from the union.”

“From Texas to New York City to every town in America, we are drowning from Biden’s traitorous America last border policies,” Greene added.

Months ago, Greene suggested that a “national divorce,” rather than, say, a democratic form of governance, was needed to remedy the disputes between Republican and Democratic states. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done,” Greene said at the time.

 

Once again, the problem isn't Greene. The problem is the party she represents allows her to stay in the House., and there's no reason to believe they will change that, nor the voters in her district. She is allowed to make statements like that as a sitting member of Congress because she is enabled to by the House GOP and the people of Georgia.

And Greene is more than happy to take credit for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's decision on Tuesday to bring an impeachment inquiry into President Biden to a vote on the House floor. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants it to be known that she was the first to push for impeaching President Joe Biden, chiding fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz for trying to steal some of the credit.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday announced that he was directing his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over allegations that the now-president profited off of the business activities of his son, Hunter Biden.

The decision comes as the California Republican has faced mounting pressure over the issue from many members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, who hold immense sway in the narrow Republican House majority. Greene, a Georgia Republican and key McCarthy ally, was previously ousted from the caucus.

Just minutes before McCarthy made his announcement on Capitol Hill, Gaetz remarked on the Biden impeachment inquiry debate, writing on X that he "pushed" for the Speaker to act on the issue. The Florida Republican is close with the caucus, but he is not a member.

"When @SpeakerMcCarthy makes his announcement in moments, remember that as I pushed him for weeks, @kilmeade said I was: 'Speaking into the wind' on impeachment. Turns out, the wind may be listening!," he said.

But Greene, who has pushed for Biden's impeachment since he first took office, countered Gaetz's argument on X by accusing the lawmaker of being late to the game in seeking going after the president and his son.

"Correction my friend. I introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden for his corrupt business dealings in Ukraine & China while he was Vice President on his very first day in office," she said. "You wouldn't cosponsor those and I had to drag you kicking and screaming to get you to cosponsor my articles on the border. Who's really been making the push?

—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 12, 2023

Earlier on Tuesday, Greene said that the impeachment inquiry "isn't a tall order," contending that the House Oversight Committee has "uncovered mountains of evidence of crimes and corruption committed by the Biden family."

The White House on Tuesday immediately pushed back against GOP efforts to start an impeachment inquiry.

"McCarthy is being told by Marjorie Taylor Greene to do impeachment, or else she'll shut down the government," Ian Sams, the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, wrote on X.

"Opening impeachment despite zero evidence of wrongdoing by POTUS is simply red meat for the extreme rightwing so they can keep baselessly attacking him," he added.

Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, on Sunday told MSNBC's Jen Psaki that the "time for impeachment is the time when there's evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor."

"That doesn't exist right now," he said.

Greene in a recent CNN interview slammed Buck over his stance, remarking that there was an "unbelievable" degree of frustration with the former prosecutor.

"This is the same guy that wrote a book called 'Drain the Swamp', who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry," she told the network. "I really don't see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach. … It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?"

 

The White House has the right of this, and they're ready to play defense while pointing out the GOP is willing to wreck the economy over nonsense like this, reminding everyone exactly why Trump lost in 2020 and why the GOP lost the Senate...and needs to lose the House again.

Greene wants to take credit? Let her, as loudly and as often as possible.

Last Call For Greene Washing January 6th

Suddenly, GOP professional clown Marjorie Taylor Greene is extremely concerned about the release of thousands of hours of January 6th security footage to the media, claiming now that it's a security risk for the US Capitol building.

 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has changed her position on the public release of the tapes documenting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, warning Friday that their release could “put the security of the Capitol at risk.”

Greene said in an interview on the right-wing channel Real America’s Voice that releasing the video footage publicly would jeopardize the Capitol’s security and endanger those who were present at the Capitol grounds but did not enter the Capitol nor commit crimes.

“And this is our real concern with the video tapes. If we released these video tapes just widely for the public — number one, we put the security of the Capitol at risk, because there’s over 1,700 video cameras,” she said.

“Number two, we also endanger many Americans that were simply standing on the Capitol grounds, maybe never even walked through the Capitol or committed any crimes, but they could have just walked further than where the barrier was simply because the barrier was torn down by the time they got there,” Greene continued.

She said she is concerned about left-wing groups that would use facial-recognition technology to identify those seen in the videos to “hand them over” to the FBI and Justice Department. She said that some people committed violence and broke the law and should be held accountable but many others did not commit crimes.

“Sedition Hunters would spend every second of every day analyzing the videos in order to hunt innocent people that just stood on Capitol grounds on J6,” Greene later tweeted.

 

Now, Greene had no problem with releasing the security footage to Tucker Carlson months ago when Kevin McCarthy did so. And groups like Sedition Hunters have been poring over J6 security footage and identifying uncharged January 6th criminals for years now.

But it's this week that Greene now has a major problem with both, far more worried about the footage being used to identify unprosecuted January 6th suspects.

Unprosecuted January 6th suspect like maybe Greene herself?

Just saying.

Timing is suspicious.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions™, Con't

 Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

 

Despite her role, Marjorie Taylor Greene backs ‘national divorce’

As Marjorie Taylor Greene endorses the dissolution of the United States, the question is whether House GOP leaders will bother to care.

 

Short answer, no.

 

That’s not a rhetorical question. GOP leaders should let the public know whether they’re comfortable with such a dynamic — and what they’re prepared to do in response if they’re not comfortable with such a dynamic.

Indeed, that’s ultimately what matters most in response to so many of the controversies Greene creates. Her extremism is routine to the point that’s become background noise. Basic American patriotism generally prevents elected officials from endorsing the dissolution of the United States, but we’ve reached the point in our collective history at which members of Congress can publish such messages — which would’ve sparked a genuine scandal in the not-too-distant past — and much of the political world shrugs, seeing it as somehow routine.

 

Long answer: It's routine because they are the party of insurrection. Sending MTG to prison would be the right things to do, but doing the right thing is hard, especially if you're an entire country.

This has been another edition of In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions™.

The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

Ringmaster of Hell Kevin McCarthy handed out committee assignments this week for his troupe of clowns, and the show is about to begin.

Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona have been given committee assignments for the new Congress, after being booted from their committees by Democrats and some Republicans for their incendiary remarks, sources told CNN.

The House GOP Steering Committee on Tuesday agreed to place Greene on the House Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction over the border and will likely play a role in potentially impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

And Gosar got a seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, where he previously served.

Both decisions were made unanimously by the steering panel, sources told CNN, which is stocked with members who are close to and a part of House GOP leadership. The committee rosters will still need to be ratified by the entire House GOP, but typically the conference approves whatever the Steering Committee recommends.

Greene and Gosar were also among several GOP hardliners – which also included Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania – added to the House Oversight Committee, according to Republican sources.

The addition of Greene is notable since she had lobbied for that spot and was a prominent defender of Kevin McCarthy’s during the speaker’s race. Gosar, who like Greene lost committee spots in the last Congress as Democratic retaliation for incendiary remarks, voted against McCarthy but later flipped to him.

McCarthy has long vowed to put Greene and Gosar back on committees, while he has pledged to kick some House Democrats off of theirs.

Perry also ultimately supported McCarthy after opposing him. Boebert helped McCarthy win by voting “present.”

The addition of the hardliners will give them the ability to shape some of the most aggressive investigations into the Biden administration.

Both chambers of Congress are out of session for the week, but the Steering Committee is meeting Tuesday to nail down committee assignments for members of the Republican Conference. Capitol Hill observers have been waiting to see which lawmakers will end up on which committees in the new GOP-controlled House, given the role those panels will play in investigating the Biden administration.

Rep. Roger Williams, a Texas Republican who is chairing the Small Business Committee, told CNN that embattled freshman Rep. George Santos of New York will be named to his panel. Santos has faced calls for his resignation, including from Republicans, following revelations that he repeatedly lied about his resume and identity.

“I don’t condone what he said, what he’s done,” Williams told CNN. “I don’t think anybody does. But that’s not my role. He was elected. He represents a million people.”

Santos was also awarded a seat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, according to multiple GOP sources.

 

A 9/11 Truther and January 6th insurrectionist will be on the Homeland Security Committee, an avowed white supremacist will be making laws on environmental racism, and a known con man with multiple aliases will be on both the Small Business and Space and Tech committees. McCarthy knows what kind of people he wants in his circus, and we're all going to be paying the ticket price in the years ahead.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

I understand that the Southern Poverty Law Center can be hyperbolic at times, but bird-dogging the Manhattan chapter of the NY Young Republicans Club's gala where white nationalist club president Gavin Wax declared "We want total war" is absolutely notable.

 

A collection of radical right figures including white nationalists and ultranationalist European leaders gathered in Manhattan for the New York Young Republicans Club’s (NYYRC) annual gala Saturday night, where that group’s president declared “total war” on perceived enemies.

“We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets,” NYYRC president Gavin Wax declared to a room full of supporters at 538 Park Ave., an event venue on New York’s Upper East side.

“This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power,” Wax added.

At the five-hour event, which Hatewatch reporters attended, white nationalists Peter and Lydia Brimelow of VDARE hobnobbed with Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and White House official. Donald Trump Jr. was also in attendance.

Republicans publicly lauded members of an Austrian political party founded by World War II-era German Nazi party members. Racist political operative Jack Posobiec shared jokes across a table with Josh Hammer, the opinion editor of Newsweek. Multiple recently elected GOP congresspeople applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told the NYYRC crowd in the event’s closing remarks that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol would have succeeded if she had planned it and that the insurrectionists would have been armed.

“Then Jan. 6 happened. And next thing you know, I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon,” Greene said, referring to allegations that she had led reconnaissance tours of the Capitol for soon-to-be insurrectionists in the days prior to the violence.

“I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I organized that, we would have won,” she said, as attendees erupted in cheers and applause. “Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”

 

Sitting Republican members of Congress are not only in attendance of this who's who of hate crimes, but calling for more armed revolution and sedition against the United States. 

 

We fended them off in November, but they still have a lot of power and eventually they're going to find a way to use it to set off a war that might not be stopped in my lifetime. 

And I don't know what else to do but say "They want a war, and they want to kill those who they see as enemies, and that means millions of Americans. maybe tens of millions" and we as a collective country continue to go back to arguing about the NFL instant replay rules.

Maybe it's safer that way, but not for much longer.  Eventually the violence is going to come full stop, instead of just random attacks, and we're going to have to find a way to stop it.

And even after all that's happened in the last six, seven years now, we're still not ready as a country to even begin the conversation we need to have.

Turkey Time: Orange Meltdown

At this point, Donald Trump is trying to "I don't know these guys" on inviting known antisemitic clowns Ye and Nick Fuentes to dine at Mar-a-Lago, and nobody on earth is buying it.

 

Former President Donald Trump distanced himself Friday from a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, claiming he didn’t know the identity of the far-right activist who was unexpectedly brought along with the rapper.

“This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about,” Trump said Friday in a statement on his Truth Social platform.


“We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful,” Trump said. “They then left for the airport.”

A person familiar with the dinner conversation who is not involved in Trump's presidential campaign and two Trump advisers briefed on the dinner corroborated Trump's claim that he didn't know Fuentes' identity when they dined together. The three sources spoke on condition on anonymity given the nature of the controversy.

But despite Trump suggesting that the event was “uneventful,” the fallout over his dinner with Fuentes appears to have thrown Trump’s campaign into damage control mode. The former president took hours to respond publicly after multiple media outlets reported that Fuentes was present at the dinner.

Even the two Trump advisers winced at how a Holocaust denier like Fuentes was able to wind up with Trump at dinner — even if it was by mistake — along with the rapper, who had just had his Twitter account restored but lost major endorsement deals for making antisemitic remarks.

 

I'd like to say that Trump will suffer damage, but the tens of millions who will support him into 2024 and byond don't care about the fact he's openly hosting holocaust deniers like Fuentes. It's not like the pile of other GOP racist bigots care about being seen with Fuentes either. Let's recall that GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar both went to speak at Fuentes's little holocaust denier shindig last year and nobody gave a damn, least of all House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy.

This is who the GOP are, folks. And for tens of millions, holocaust denial, antisemitism, racism, bigotry and hate aren't dealbreakers.

Last Call For Coitus Rodentia, Con't

The rattus rattus are humpin' humpin' this weekend, as there's a concerted effort by the media to declare Tuesday's election as a massive Republican red wave win before Election Day actually happens, starting with The New Yorker's Benjamin Wallace-Wells.

On Wednesday afternoon, I spoke with a leading Republican political consultant about the Senate campaign in Georgia. That race is strategically significant for both parties, but it has a special symbolic importance for Democrats. The incumbent, Raphael Warnock, who for many years has occupied Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta, is seen as a potential national leader of the Democratic Party—and he may still lose to a scandal-ridden ex-football star, the Republican Herschel Walker. The Republican consultant told me that Warnock’s prospects were even bleaker than many recent public polls suggest. “There isn’t a single private poll in America that has Herschel Walker anything but ahead,” the Republican consultant told me. “Not one.”

The consensus among a number of G.O.P. pollsters and operatives I spoke to this week is that in the Senate races that are thought to be competitive, Republican candidates are heading for a clean sweep: Mehmet Oz will beat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and not just by a point or two; Adam Laxalt looks pretty certain to defeat the incumbent Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada; even less regarded candidates such as Blake Masters in Arizona will be carried into office by a predicted wave. “He won’t deserve it, but I think at this point he falls into a Senate seat,” one Republican strategist told me. To these Republican insiders, certain high-profile races in which G.O.P. candidates were already favored now look like potential blowouts—Kari Lake’s campaign for governor in Arizona, J. D. Vance’s for Senate in Ohio. And some races that seemed out of reach, such as the Senate campaign, in New Hampshire, of the election denier Don Bolduc, now look like possible wins. The word that kept coming up in these conversations was “bloodbath.”

Well holy crap guys, "Republican operatives predict massive Republican gains in election" has certainly never happened before, we should just give up now!  Hell, the New York Post is literally trying to start a fight in New York between NYC Democratic Mayor Eric Adams and Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul for God's sake.

 

An Election Day loss for Gov. Hochul might be a win for Mayor Adams.

Adams is actively campaigning for Hochul and not openly supporting her GOP rival Rep. Lee Zeldin, but multiple insiders told The Post that the mayor sees more opportunity to advance his initiatives on crime and public safety if the Republican wins the neck-and-neck governor’s race on Tuesday.

“He doesn’t even have to lobby the Republicans. They are all on his side when it comes to crime and bail reform, NYPD and all this stuff,” said one close Adams ally. “The two or three times he went up to Albany he had no issues with the Republicans. They’re all with him. The only issues he has are with these people who want to defund to the police.”

The insider added that Adams had a good working relationship with GOPer Zeldin after their time together in the state Senate.

Hochul’s people “are pressuring him that he should do more [campaigning]. “If this [story] comes out, they are going to make him [campaign more]” the insider lamented. 

And over at the Times, MoDo the Red is running around with her firey locks on fire.

Are we ready for our new Republican overlords?

Are we ready for an empowered Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Are we ready for a pumped-up, pistol-packing Lauren Boebert?

“How many AR-15s do you think Jesus would have had?” Boebert asked a crowd at a Christian campaign event in June. I’m going with none, honestly, but her answer was, “Well, he didn’t have enough to keep his government from killing him.”

The Denver Post pleaded: “We beg voters in western and southern Colorado not to give Rep. Lauren Boebert their vote.”

The freshman representative has recently been predicting happily that we’re in the end times, “the last of the last days.” If Lauren Boebert is in charge, we may want to be in the end times. I’m feeling not so Rapturous about the prospect.

And then there’s the future first female president, Kari Lake, who lulls you into believing, with her mellifluous voice, statements that seem to emanate from Lucifer. She’s dangerous because, like Donald Trump, she has real skills from her years in TV. And she really believes this stuff, unlike Trump and Kevin McCarthy, who are faking it.

As Cecily Strong said on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, embodying Lake, “If the people of Arizona elect me, I’ll make sure they never have to vote ever again.”

 

DOOM! CATASTROPHE! OBLITERATION! ANNIHILATION! 

Or, you know, we can go vote.

While we still can.

Pardon The Insurrection, Con't

The big legal issue for Trump's inner circle continues to be the slates of fraudulent electors. But the additional problem for Republican in Congress who went all in on Trump's coup is that several of them asked Trump for blanket pardons of their imminent criminal actions, those requests themselves being illegal as all hell.

In the days after Jan. 6, several of Mr. Trump’s political allies on Capitol Hill, who had helped stoke the false election claims and efforts to overturn the results, sought pardons from Mr. Trump, who considered granting them, according to testimony on Thursday.

Among those looking for a pardon was Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida. Mr. Gaetz was seeking a blanket pardon that would have essentially covered any crime he had committed in his entire life. Although it was not known publicly at the time, Mr. Gaetz was under Justice Department investigation for paying a 17-year-old girl for sex.

“The general tone was, ‘We may get prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the president’s positions on these things,’” Mr. Herschmann, the White House lawyer, said in a video clip of his testimony. “The pardon that he was requesting was as broad as you could describe. I remember he said ‘from the beginning of time up until today. For any and all things.’”

“Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad,” Mr. Herschmann recalled saying at the time in response to the request.

A slew of other allies asked for them. Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, sent an email to the White House seeking so called pre-emptive pardons for all House and Senate members who had voted to reject the Electoral College vote certifications of Mr. Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

A former aide to Mr. Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that several other Republican House members expressed interest in pardons, including Mr. Perry and Representatives Louie Gohmert of Texas and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Ms. Hutchinson said she had also heard that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia had reached out to the White House Counsel’s Office about a pardon.

Mr. Trump “had hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” Mr. Trump’s former head of presidential personnel, John McEntee, testified.

Mr. Kinzinger suggested that the pardon requests were evidence that Mr. Trump’s allies had consciousness of guilt.

“The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime,” he said.

One of the other Republican crooks to request a pardon was Sen. Mo Brooks, who lost his primary on Tuesday  

Brooks, who this week lost a primary runoff for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, defended his pardon request. Brooks told CNN there was "a concern Democrats would abuse the judicial system by prosecuting and jailing Republicans."

I mean, he's right. Brooks deserves to be prosecuted and jailed. And he'll be out of the Senate very soon... 

You'll have to pardon him, you see.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Remember that the seditious conspiracy that Donald Trump formulated in order to overturn President Biden's election didn't just involve white supremacist domestic terrorism groups like the Proud Boys, it involved still-sitting GOP members of Congress that should be tossed from office and into prison. One of those members is GOP Rep Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Rioters who smashed their way into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, succeeded — at least temporarily — in delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s election to the White House.

Hours before, Rep. Jim Jordan had been trying to achieve the same thing.

Texting with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a close ally and friend, at nearly midnight on Jan. 5, Jordan offered a legal rationale for what President Donald Trump was publicly demanding — that Vice President Mike Pence, in his ceremonial role presiding over the electoral count, somehow assert the authority to reject electors from Biden-won states.

Pence “should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all,” Jordan wrote.

“I have pushed for this,” Meadows replied. “Not sure it is going to happen.”

The text exchange, in an April 22 court filing from the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot, is in a batch of startling evidence that shows the deep involvement of some House Republicans in Trump’s desperate attempt to stay in power. A review of the evidence finds new details about how, long before the attack on the Capitol unfolded, several GOP lawmakers were participating directly in Trump’s campaign to reverse the results of a free and fair election.

It’s a connection that members of the House Jan. 6 committee are making explicit as they prepare to launch public hearings in June. The Republicans plotting with Trump and the rioters who attacked the Capitol were aligned in their goals, if not the mob’s violent tactics, creating a convergence that nearly upended the nation’s peaceful transfer of power.

“It appears that a significant number of House members and a few senators had more than just a passing role in what went on,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, told The Associated Press last week.

Since launching its investigation last summer, the Jan. 6 panel has been slowly gaining new details about what lawmakers said and did in the weeks before the insurrection. Members have asked three GOP lawmakers — Jordan of Ohio, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California — to testify voluntarily. All have refused. Other lawmakers could be called in the coming days.

So far, the Jan. 6 committee has refrained from issuing subpoenas to lawmakers, fearing the repercussions of such an extraordinary step. But the lack of cooperation from lawmakers hasn’t prevented the panel from obtaining new information about their actions.

The latest court document, submitted in response to a lawsuit from Meadows, contained excerpts from just a handful of the more than 930 interviews the Jan. 6 panel has conducted. It includes information on several high-level meetings nearly a dozen House Republicans attended where Trump’s allies flirted with ways to give him another term.

Among the ideas: naming fake slates of electors in seven swing states, declaring martial law and seizing voting machines.

The efforts started in the weeks after The Associated Press declared Biden president-elect.

In early December 2020, several lawmakers attended a meeting in the White House counsel’s office where attorneys for the president advised them that a plan to put up an alternate slate of electors declaring Trump the winner was not “legally sound.” One lawmaker, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, pushed back on that position. So did GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Louie Gohmert of Texas, according to testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant in the Trump White House.

Despite the warning from the counsel’s office, Trump’s allies moved forward. On Dec. 14, 2020, as rightly chosen Democratic electors in seven states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — met at their seat of state government to cast their votes, the fake electors gathered as well.

They declared themselves the rightful electors and submitted false Electoral College certificates declaring Trump the true winner of the presidential election in their states.

Those certificates from the “alternate electors” were then sent to Congress, where they were ignored.

The majority of the lawmakers have since denied their involvement in these efforts.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia testified in a hearing in April that she does not recall conversations she had with the White House or the texts she sent to Meadows about Trump invoking martial law.

Gohmert told AP he also does not recall being involved and that he is not sure he could be helpful to the committee’s investigation. Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia played down his actions, saying it is routine for members of the president’s party to be going in and out of the White House to speak about a number of topics. Hice is now running for secretary of state in Georgia, a position responsible for the state’s elections.

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona didn’t deny his public efforts to challenge the election results but called recent reports about his deep involvement untrue.

In a statement Saturday, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona reiterated his “serious” concerns about the 2020 election. “Discussions about the Electoral Count Act were appropriate, necessary and warranted,” he added.

Requests for comment from the other lawmakers were not immediately returned.

 

Understand that these fraudulent electors were in violation of the law, and understand that multiple GOP lawmakers were in contact with these crooks in a conspiracy to use their fraudulent slate of electors to elect Trump.

 

Understand this only failed because VP Mike Pence wouldn't go along with it.  If Pence had chosen to cooperate, we'd still have a Constitutional crisis on our hands, but Trump would still be in the WHite House most likely.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Yesterday I mentioned how Marcus Flowers, the Democrat running against Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia in November, had outraised Greene last quarter and I questioned what the point was in a R+28 district. I'm here in KY-4 and it's bad enough being in an R+20 district with Thomas Massie. Cook's PVI number for 2022 estimates that Greene's district is "only" just R+22 now since the redraw. The point is, getting MTG out of Congress isn't going to happen by election.

But what if she was no longer eligible to hold office because of her actions on January 6th, 2020?

A federal judge cleared the way on Monday for a group of Georgia voters to move forward with legal efforts seeking to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for re-election to Congress, citing her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The disqualification effort is based on a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War that barred members of the Confederacy from holding office. It mirrors several other cases involving Republican members of Congress, whose roles leading up to and during the deadly riot have drawn intense criticism.

The judge, Amy Totenberg, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by President Barack Obama, denied Ms. Greene’s request for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order in the high-profile legal feud.

Ms. Greene, 47, who is known for her unflinching loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump and for her clashes with Democrats, has steadfastly denied that she aided and engaged in the attack on the Capitol.

In the 73-page ruling, Judge Totenberg wrote that Ms. Greene had failed to meet the “burden of persuasion” in her request for injunctive relief, which she called an extraordinary and drastic remedy.

“This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import,” Judge Totenberg wrote. “The novelty of the factual and historical posture of this case — especially when assessed in the context of a preliminary injunction motion reviewed on a fast track — has made resolution of the complex legal issues at stake here particularly demanding.”

James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for Ms. Greene, said on Monday night that the ruling was flawed and minimized the adverse effect that the disqualification effort was having on Ms. Greene’s right to run for office.

“This is fundamentally antidemocratic,” Mr. Bopp said, maintaining that Ms. Greene had “publicly and vigorously condemned the attack on the Capitol.”

He called the effort to remove her from the ballot part of a well-funded nationwide effort to strip voters of their right to vote for candidates of their choice, with elections determined by “bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and clever legal arguments.”

In her request for an injunction, Ms. Greene argued that it would be impossible to fully resolve the case before Georgia holds its primary elections on May 24. Absentee ballots will start to be mailed on April 25, Ms. Greene’s motion said.

In the ruling, Judge Totenberg determined that Ms. Greene had failed to prove that there was a strong likelihood that she would prevail on the merits of her legal claims. A state administrative judge is scheduled to hear the case on Friday.

 

It's hard to see how Flowers would win still, but getting rid of Greene is still important. I know these days it's not hard to imagine her getting replaced by an even worse Republican, but maybe she gets replaced by a much better Democrat if she can't run at all.

We'll see.

Greene Versus Green

Don't look now, but Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who exists only to piss off people in America, is discovering that her racist tirades are only empowering her challenger.

Friday’s deadline to report fundraising for the first three months of 2022 has given us more information to sift through in some of Georgia’s most contested federal races.

We have a bigger story on the Senate contest here, along with a takeout on the growing wave of spending. A closer look at the spending revealed a few other highlights:

• Democratic challenger Marcus Flowers outraised U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. He raised $2.4 million in the first three months of 2022. compared to her $1.1 million. And Greene spent about $300,000 more than she raised during the quarter. Still, she has $3 million in cash on hand, compared to Flowers’ $1.9 million. She has raised a total of $8.4 million for her reelection bid, while he’s raised about $7.1 million.
• Republican frontrunner Herschel Walker’s report included about $20,000 in small-dollar “anonymous” donations. The poultry company founder also reported collecting a $10,000 contribution from a Kentucky Fried Chicken political organization a few weeks after he delivered a speech at the group’s March convention.
• Walker’s got other plenty of other financial support beyond his first-quarter haul. The 34N22 PAC raised $3.25 million in the first three months of the year, spent about $440,000 and ended with about $3.3 million in its account.
• U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath continues to outfundraise fellow incumbent U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in the 7th District. McBath reported $804,497.21 in receipts during the quarter, ending it with $2.9 million in the bank. Bourdeaux raised $592,579 and had $2.1 million in cash on hand. The third Democrat in the race, state Rep. Donna McLeod, reported that she didn’t raise or spend anything -- not a penny -- during the first three months of 2022.
• We had early word last week that Rich McCormick raised more than $600,000 during the quarter and ended it with $1.1 million in the bank. Now we can say that he continues to lead the GOP candidates in the 6th District. Jake Evans raised $411,163.18 during the period, including a $200,000 loan from the candidate to the campaign. He does have a bit more than McCormick in cash on hand: $1.2 million. Former state Rep. Meagan Hanson collected $117,109.00 during the period, including the $50,000 she loaned to her campaign. She has $299,432 in cash on hand.

Among the campaign expenses U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reported for the last quarter was $10,000 to controversial California attorney John Eastman’s Constitutional Counsel Group, the Business Insider reports.

Eastman was at the center of efforts by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election results, pushing the idea that former Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to block Joe Biden’s certification as president.

The Business Insider reached out to Greene’s campaign about the payment, which was listed as unspecified “legal expenses.”

“Dr. Eastman is one of the leading constitutional attorneys in the country. When we need advice on significant constitutional issues, we have occasionally sought his counsel,” a campaign spokesperson said. “The particular issues for which we sought his advice are protected by attorney-client privilege, however.”

 

Here's the cold, hard reality of this race however:  

GA-14 is a R+28 district.

This is like Republicans raising funds to beat AOC in the Bronx or Yvette Clark in Brooklyn, and frankly, I'm upset that Marcus Flowers is raising this much money only to lose by 30 or 40 points in November. It's the same problem with Charles Booker here in KY running against Rand Paul.

 

Our vote matters, we can still win, but campaign money is not what's going to make the difference.

See, we didn't learn our lesson with Amy McGrath or Jaime Harrison or Sara Gideon. Throwing millions, sometimes tens of millions, at a race and outraising the Republican pain in the ass incumbent doesn't mean you'll win, and that money is better used to help out more winnable races. We were extremely lucky that we got a second shot at both of Georgia's Senate races and even luckier still to win them both.

And we won in Georgia because of Stacey Abrams and the best Democratic ground game in the country.

That is where the money needs to go, not to campaign coffers.

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

The GOP Grift Actually Stopped For Once

 Nebraska Congressman and now convicted felon Jeff Fortenberry is resigning from the House.

 

Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska on Saturday resigned from office after a California jury convicted him of lying to federal authorities about an illegal campaign donation from a foreign national.

In a letter to the House, Fortenberry said he was resigning from Congress, effective March 31.

Fortenberry’s announcement followed concerted pressure from political leaders in Nebraska and Washington for him to step down. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday urged Fortenberry to resign. Nebraska Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts said Fortenberry should “do the right thing for his constituents” and leave the office he has held since 2005.

Fortenberry’s withdrawal from the primary leaves state Sen. Mike Flood as the likely GOP nominee. The former speaker of the Nebraska Legislature, who has won endorsements from Ricketts and former Gov. Dave Heineman, has a strong advantage in the Republican-leaning 1st Congressional District. State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks, a Democrat from Lincoln, is also running for the seat.

Pansing Brooks said Fortenberry’s conviction is a “wake-up call” that the district needs a change.

 

We'll see if Brooks can convince voters that Mike Flood is as bad or worse than Fortenberry, but I suspect Fortenberry's going to have much bigger problems come June and his sentencing hearing.

 

Of course, this means I was extremely wrong about Fortenberry remaining in office in a Trump-like stand that would last months, and I don't honestly know why the party ejected Fortenberry for his felony conviction, but continues to tolerate racists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar.

 

Oh, wait, we all know why.

 

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

A week after I told you GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar would get away with being featured speakers at last month's white supremacist domestic terrorism conference put together by known domestic terrorist Nick Fuentes, it seems that Ukraine has given the both of them cover to completely ditch what should be a career-ending scandal. Steve Benen:

For a brief moment, it appeared Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar had pushed their luck. The pair were already recognized as two of Congress’ most radical members, but when they appeared at a white nationalist event nine days ago, it created a challenge for GOP leaders: Was the party prepared to do something?

A week ago this morning, the possibility of action seemed almost plausible. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told CNN and Punchbowl News that it was “appalling and wrong” for Gosar and Greene to attend the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC).

“There’s no place in our party for any of this,” the House GOP leader said. “The party should not be associated any time, any place with somebody who is anti-Semitic.... This is unacceptable.” McCarthy added that he planned to discuss the “appalling“ matter with the right-wing duo.

 

Of course, your readers knew this was laughably wishful thinking.

A week later, there’s reason to believe Republican leaders are prepared to accept that which they saw as unacceptable. Politico reported this morning:

It’s not yet clear when Kevin McCarthy will have his promised conversation with two divisive House conservatives who spoke at a white nationalist event — and whenever he does, the talk likely won’t amount to much.... McCarthy’s office confirmed to POLITICO that he hasn’t yet spoken to the two but still plans to.

As we discussed last week, the party has some options. McCarthy & Co. could, for example, kick Gosar and Greene out of the GOP conference. The party could also announce that it will not support the members’ re-election campaigns — akin to what the party has already done to Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, because of their efforts to help lead the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack. Republicans could also agree to censure the duo.

The minority leader, who vowed in November to reward Greene and Gosar with new committee assignments in the next Congress, could even announce that he’s changed his mind about what he said four months ago, and he will no longer support giving Greene and Gosar committee assignments in the next Congress.

None of this has happened, and by all appearances, it seems unlikely that GOP leaders will do much of anything.

 

With Ukraine, inflation, and a new COVID variant loose in Europe, nobody cares about white supremacist Republicans being white supremacists.

It's been normalized with a big hand from both Trump and Putin.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has provided all the political cover that Republicans need in order to sweep the raging racism, antisemitism, and bigotry of GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar under the congressional rug.

It’s not yet clear when Kevin McCarthy will have his promised conversation with two divisive House conservatives who spoke at a white nationalist event — and whenever he does, the talk likely won’t amount to much.

The House minority leader called it “appalling” that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) would speak at a conference organized by far-right fringe figure Nick Fuentes, who before introducing Greene asked for a “round of applause for Russia.” McCarthy also said that he’d speak with the two about their decision to ally with the fringe group, though a long list of other huge events soon drowned out the furor.

There was Russia’s war on Ukraine, a State of the Union address and Texas primary elections where McCarthy’s candidate of choice in one race handily trounced Greene’s. McCarthy reiterated later last week that he still plans to speak with the two members, whose divisive rhetoric has already repeatedly bogged down a GOP that wants to spend its time unifying against President Joe Biden — not splintering over a far-right activist.

But Greene and Gosar have little to lose. They were already stripped of their committees by Democrats last year, leaving McCarthy with few options to punish them even if he chose to. And some House Republicans argued that their leader has more pressing considerations.

“Dealing with dumb, stupid things people do in Congress should probably go down — and go pretty far down — on the list when you’ve got peacekeeping tanks rolling into a country that was not in conflict, when you’ve got record inflation, when you’ve got all of these things,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.).

“When Kevin figures out the time to deal with that, I’m sure he will,” Armstrong added. “But he’s got significantly more important things for the American people to focus on at this point right now.”

McCarthy’s office confirmed to POLITICO that he hasn’t yet spoken to the two but still plans to.

At the end of last week, multiple House Republicans shrugged off questions about the timing of McCarthy’s meeting with Greene and Gosar. It was not because they didn’t detest the duo’s decision to associate with Fuentes, who attended 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., has called for the U.S. to remain majority-white and compared Jews killed in concentration camps to cookies in an oven.

On the other hand, some have privately wondered if Democrats’ move to boot Greene and Gosar from committees was designed to create future headaches for Republicans by taking away their major recourse to punish two of their biggest conservative gadflies. A few Republicans privately even credit Speaker Nancy Pelosi — without evidence she acted that purposefully — for a smart political maneuver against Greene and Gosar.

 

As much as I would like to believe that this was Nancy Pelosi outsmarting another dumbass Republican House caucus leader as she's done continually for the last decade plus, the reality is that Republicans in Congress, Republican voters, and the media no longer care about Gosar and Greene. They were always going to get away with it, and be handily reelected in November.

Worse, the ineffective McCarthy will almost certainly be replaced by Republicans in 2023, and if Republicans retake the House -- a pretty safe bet, frankly -- McCarthy will be jettisoned for someone like, well, Greene or Gosar.

Republican voters want someone who will make House Democrats and their voters suffer every day of House GOP control, and they will light up the phone lines and social media making sure McCarthy's replacement is just as vindictive as Trump.

Hell, there's a pretty good chance that the person will be Trump himself.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

A reminder that while there are several white supremacist domestic terrorism groups out there, by far the largest, most powerful, and most dangerous of those groups, is the Republican Party.

A Republican state senator fawned over the leader of a white nationalist movement on Friday and told his followers that she fantasizes about hanging her perceived enemies from gallows.

“I’ve said we need to build more gallows. If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country,” Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said Feb. 25 in her speech to the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference in Florida.

Rogers told the white nationalists who were assembled in the ballroom at the Orlando World Center Marriott that they were “patriots.”

She addressed the AFPAC crowd remotely, speaking from Arizona, where she said she was busy pushing legislation. Rogers effusively praised Nick Fuentes, the event’s racist organizer, who she said had been “de-platformed everywhere” because he says things that upset “the media and the far left.”

“I truly respect Nick because he’s the most persecuted man in America,” she said to loud cheers, adding later that he was “standing up to tyranny” by creating AFPAC.

Fuentes, an advocate of turning America into a nation only for white Christians, is one of the leaders of the so-called “groyper” movement — along with the founder of American Identity Movement, a white nationalist group formerly known as Identity Ervopa — and Rogers is one of its emerging icons. The groyper movement is a collection of white nationalists who seek to normalize racism and make it a part of mainstream conservative political ideology.

AFPAC opened with Fuentes soliciting a round of applause from the crowd for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The white nationalists chanted in response, “Putin! Putin! Putin!”

In his closing speech, Fuentes said “the United States is the evil empire in the world.”

“Now, they’re going and saying,’’Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler,’ as if that isn’t a good thing,” he said, before nervously laughing and adding, “Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Rogers lamented that there was no longer freedom of speech, and said “we can’t even laugh at comedy any more” for fear of being banned from social media platforms. (The First Amendment protects people from being punished by the government for their speech, but it does not apply to businesses or exempt people from facing consequences for their speech.) She pined for the 1980s and 1990s, when “we could say the craziest stuff and people would just laugh and not take offense, because it was simply light-hearted.”

“Now, they deplatform and debank people like Nick Fuentes, and even President (Donald) Trump,” she said. “This is like the USSR, but worse.”

The crowd at AFPAC included prominent members of America’s white nationalist movement, among them Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow. Taylor garnered a following as the editor of a now-defunct pseudo-academic magazine that published pieces from open racists, and he hosts an annual conference that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a place “where racist intellectuals rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.” Brimelow publishes a popular white nationalist website and has said “the U.S. is a white nation.”

One speaker at the event was Vincent James Foxx, a stalwart white nationalist who said he wanted to “criminalize” LGBTQ Americans and warned of the “Great Replacement.” That idea, popular among white supremacists, holds that white Americans are being replaced by non-white immigrants.

It has also inspired violence. Fears of immigrants undermining his vision of a white Christian Europe motivated Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage in 2011 at a Norwegian youth summer camp. In the U.S., the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018 was the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in United States history. Just before it took place, the killer took to right-wing social media site Gab to say he believed that immigrants were being brought in to replace and “kill our people.” The next year in New Zealand, 51 people would be killed and 40 injured but not before the shooter would post a 74-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement.”

After Foxx spoke, Rogers gushed over him on Telegram: “Vincent James run for office.”

 

Also at this white nationalist confab in Florida this weekend, sitting House Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, who gave the keynote address at this same event last year.

 

Greene and Gosar are a problem, Wendy Rogers is a problem, but the larger one is the fact that the vast majority of Republican politicians and voters agree with them.

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Marjorie Taylor Greene is openly calling for the murder of Democrats again.

 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday floated resorting to using the "Second Amendment" to deal with Democrats who are imposing what she described as a "tyrannical" government.

While speaking with right-wing media personality Sebastian Gorka, Greene slammed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams for her policies regarding both vaccines and gun rights.

Greene then pivoted to talking about how Americans are guaranteed the right to bear arms to resist such supposed tyranny.

"Ultimately the truth is it’s our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, that protects Americans and give us the ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government," she said. "And I hate to use this language but Democrats, they’re exactly -- they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.”

 

"Sitting member of Congress calls for political enemies to be shot" is a regular feature of House Republican politics, and seemingly nobody cares. In the last week or so she's caught a permanent ban from Twitter, and accused the Biden Administration and doctors across the country of murdering thousands of COVID patients by refusing to allow horse dewormer Ivermectin as a treatment.

Now she's once again calling for Democrats to get shot and killed.

I guess it's going to take for that to happen for her to face consequences. Maybe multiple murders.

I wonder how Republican Rep. Steve Scalise feels about this?

Turkey Week: Turkey Of The Year Award

Was there ever really any doubt as to which obnoxious, performative, narcissistic, vile little chode would end up as the biggest Thanksgiving Turkey in 2021?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has introduced a bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal — the legislative branch’s highest honor — to Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who last week was found not guilty of homicide and other charges related to his fatal shooting of two men during a protest against police violence last year.

Greene introduced a bill Tuesday to give Rittenhouse the award. While the bill’s full text was not immediately available, a summary states that the measure would “award a Congressional Gold Medal to Kyle H. Rittenhouse, who protected the community of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a Black Lives Matter (BLM) riot.”

The likelihood that Greene’s effort will be successful is low. A bill requesting a Congressional Gold Medal must be co-sponsored by two-thirds of the House and the Senate, both now controlled by Democrats, before it is considered by the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. After it is passed in Congress, the measure must be authorized by the president.

 

Nominating Kyle Rittenhouse for the Congressional Gold Medal is so transparently stupid that it actually causes me physical pain. To give to a young man famous for killing two protesters an award is the height of ludicrousness, and Greene is doing it on purpose to make decent people angry because she thinks it's hysterical, and she won't pay a price for it at all.

 

Yes, let's give a guy a Congressional medal for killing race traitors! It's just cruelty. That's what passes as Republican in 2021.

 

A turkey, indeed.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The 13 House Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill last week have to be crucified and left by Trump for others to see, or Trump risks losing his power heading into 2022.

 

Republican Rep. Fred Upton on Monday shared a threatening voicemail he had received after voting for the bipartisan infrastructure bill last week. 

In the voicemail, which Upton played during an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on "AC360," a caller told the Michigan Republican: "I hope you die. I hope everybody in your f**king family dies," while labeling him a "f**king piece of sh*t traitor." 

Upton was one of just 13 House Republicans who voted with Democrats on Friday to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill after hours of delays and debating among Democrats. The legislation, which passed the Senate in August, will deliver $550 billion in new federal investments in America's infrastructure over five years, including roads, bridges, mass transit, rail, airports, ports and waterways. 

Following the Friday vote, Upton tweeted in part, "I regret that this good, bipartisan bill became a political football in recent weeks. Our country can't afford this partisan dysfunction any longer." 

On Monday evening, he told Cooper, "I'll tell you it's a terrible way -- we have seen civility really downslide here. I'm concerned about my staff. They are taking these calls."
"These are very disturbing, adult language," he added. "To say the least, that truly is frightening." 

Upton's office said the voicemail was not an isolated incident. The calls came after GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted the phone numbers of those who had voted for the bill and later called them traitors.

 

Trump's already claimed the careers of GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Anthony Gonzalez, who have already announced their respective retirements. Both of them would be facing redistricting eliminations anyway, as Ohio and New York are each losing a House seat in 2022. There will be more.

Note Greene wants to be Trump's director of political assassination. She wants Trump to see her help put these "traitors" down. That's the problem with being a tyrant, however. You can't have any enemies in your own camp, because they are a direct threat to your power.

 

Greene and her goons are almost certainly going to mount a campaign to strip the 13 Republicans of their committee assignments, which Democrats should happily accept.

Expect Upton to announce his retirement soon, or to be trounced in a primary in the spring.

Meanwhile, Trump's cultists continue to terrorize election officials around the country and they're proud of it.

In Arizona, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Lyft driver told the state’s chief election officer she would hang for treason. In Utah, a youth treatment center staffer warned Colorado’s election chief that he knew where she lived and watched her as she slept.

In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die.

“This might be a good time to put a f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pistol in your f‑‑‑‑‑‑ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f‑‑‑‑‑‑ numbered.”

The three had much in common. All described themselves as patriots fighting a conspiracy that robbed Donald Trump of the 2020 election. They are regular consumers of far-right websites that embrace Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods. And none have been charged with a crime by the law enforcement agencies alerted to their threats.

They were among nine people who told Reuters in interviews that they made threats or left other hostile messages to election workers. In all, they are responsible for nearly two dozen harassing communications to six election officials in four states. Seven made threats explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the U.S. federal standard for criminal prosecution, according to four legal experts who reviewed their messages at Reuters’ request.

These cases provide a unique perspective into how people with everyday jobs and lives have become radicalized to the point of terrorizing public officials. They are part of a broader campaign of fear waged against frontline workers of American democracy chronicled by Reuters this year. The news organization has documented nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.

The examination of the threats also highlights the paralysis of law enforcement in responding to this extraordinary assault on the nation’s electoral machinery. After Reuters reported the widespread intimidation in June, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a task force to investigate threats against election staff and said it would aggressively pursue such cases. But law enforcement agencies have made almost no arrests and won no convictions.

 

Expect terrorism and violence against election officials to increase dramatically the closer we get to November 2022 and especially November 2024.

 

Who's going to want to administer a free and fair election in America when the Republican losing that contest means you and your family are stalked, threatened, or even hurt?

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Republicans really can't help themselves with disgusting, anti-Semitic comparisons of vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, because they know they can get away with it.

On Friday, John Bennett, the chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, made a striking comparison on the group’s Facebook page: Private companies requiring employees to get the coronavirus vaccine, he said, are just as bad as the Nazis forcing Jews to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes.

“Those who don’t KNOW history, are DOOMED to repeat it,” read the caption, below an image of a Star of David patch with “Unvaccinated” written across the top.

The post triggered swift condemnations from top state Republicans and Jewish organizations in Oklahoma. But on Sunday, Bennett doubled down on his comments in a nearly seven-minute video he shared to the party’s Facebook page.

The Nazis “gave [Jews] a star to put on, and they couldn’t go to the grocery store, they couldn’t go out in public, they couldn’t do anything without having that star on their shirt,” Bennett said. “Take away the star and add a vaccine passport.”

Bennett, a Marine Corps veteran who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was elected chairman of the Oklahoma GOP in April. The former state lawmaker has a history of making hateful comments, specifically about Muslims, according to the Oklahoman.

In a town hall meeting in 2014, Bennett said Islam “is a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out.” In 2017, he drafted an 18-question survey for Muslims in Oklahoma to fill out before he agreed to meet with them in his legislative office. One of the questions asked was “Do you beat your wife?” A senior imam of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City told the Oklahoman that Bennett threatened to demolish all the mosques in town.

Bennett is the latest GOP official to equate the persecution of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to mandates related to the coronavirus. In March, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) compared vaccine passports to Nazis forcing Jews to wear the yellow Star of David. In June, Washington state Rep. Jim Walsh (R) wore a yellow Star of David during a live stream, stating that it conveyed how “denying people their rights … can lead to terrible outcomes.”

Also in June, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) apologized after she repeatedly compared mask mandates to the Star of David. But she evoked the Holocaust again in July, this time calling those leading a vaccine push from the Biden administration “brownshirts.” The term refers to a paramilitary group that helped Hitler and the Nazis gain power in Germany.

The image of the yellow Star of David patch that Bennett posted on the Oklahoma Republican Party’s Facebook page on Friday included what appeared to be identification numbers and a chip.

The post also said: “Limited access to travel within their State, Province or Territory. The bearer may not fly, cannot enter a pub, restaurant, club or theatre. … WAKE UP PEOPLE — Is this sounding familiar?”

 

It won't end, because Republican voters will continue to elect anti-Semite jackasses like Bennett and Greene and Cawthorn, who will have lifetime terms in Congress as performative hate junkies. Take from a guy in KY-4 with clown Thomas Massie, who still has yet to get a single piece of legislation out of committee.

And voters are fine with this. They will send these jackasses back to Congress for decades just to pick fights, because "Congress is useless anyway".

So these are the electeds we get.