Doing "Something" About Trump

Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty suggests that while the impeachment debate rages on, the Trump/Ukraine perfidy is worth an unprecedented and historic House censure resolution by Democrats.

This argument will continue, with new fuel being added by the administration’s refusal to turn over a whistleblower’s complaint regarding the Trump-Zelensky conversation. It is hard to see how it could possibly be resolved before we are well into the 2020 campaign season. But there is something the House could do right now, an idea that I have raised before: censure the president. 

The procedure for doing so is pretty straightforward, as spelled out in a recent report by the Congressional Research Service: 

Should a House committee report a non-Member censure resolution, the full House may consider it by unanimous consent, under the Suspension of the Rules procedure, or under the terms of a special rule reported by the Committee on Rules and adopted by the House. 17 If widespread support exists for the censure resolution, unanimous consent or the Suspension of the Rules procedure may be used. Otherwise, the resolution could be brought to the floor under a special rule reported by the Committee on Rules. All three of these parliamentary mechanisms require, at a minimum, the support of the majority party leadership in order to be entertained. 

In other words, a censure resolution could be brought to the House floor with support from Democrats alone, and it would not require any action on the part of the Senate. 

This would not sate the appetite of the pro-impeachment forces, or end the debate over whether that step is warranted. But it could be done quickly, with the evidence at hand, and would have the benefit of forcing Republican members to go on record stating whether they do or do not find this behavior on the part of the president acceptable. While many would argue that censure is a symbolic gesture, it is a disgrace that Trump would share with only one other president in American history — his purported idol, Andrew Jackson. Jackson was censured by the Senate in 1834 as the result of a little-remembered dispute over the Second Bank of the United States; it was expunged a few years later when his pro-Jackson Democrats gained a majority in the chamber, which showed that they regarded a censure as more than a slap on the wrist. 

None of this would end the argument over impeachment, but it would prove to the American people that at least part of their government sets a higher standard of behavior than our current president does. It also, finally, would force Republicans to answer a question that they have been dodging: Is there anything this president does that you will not tolerate?

 Censure of Trump and five bucks will get you a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks.

Look, at this point Pelosi doesn't have the votes for censure, let alone impeachment. Tumulty admits it won't accomplish anything even if it did happen.  And Trump will simply say -- correctly for once because no Republican would risk getting Amashed over voting for it -- that there's a purely political Democratic "witch hunt" going on against him.

Not even Paul Ryan and John Boehner censured Barack Obama.  Censure resolutions were introduced against Nixon but he resigned, and the censure resolution against Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky failed because Newt Gingrich didn't have the votes for it.

House Democrats did vote to condemn Trump over his racist remarks against Reps. Omar, Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley earlier this year, but it fell short of official censure.

And like the condemnation vote, censure is not going to fix a damn thing, and Tumulty should know better.  If censure was a real option, it would have been used already for precisely the reasons Tumulty laid out.

But that of course leaves us in the same position we've been in since January: Democrats control the House, and Nancy Pelosi controls House Democrats, but so far the votes aren't anywhere close to being there in order to be able to impeach Trump.

The Ukraine situation may change all that in the near future, however.

With Pelosi unwilling to impeach Trump, Democratic rank-and-file members are frantically looking for something to fortify their investigations. On Friday, Judiciary members pressed Nadler to invoke Congress’s long-dormant inherent contempt authority that would allow Congress to jail or fine people for defying subpoenas.
The power hasn’t been used in more than 100 years. Pelosi, leadership and other House lawyers were dismissive of the idea when investigators first floated it last spring. But Judiciary members are once again trying to force the issue.

“Our side says it's ‘legally questionable,’ ‘it hasn't been used in forever,’ and ‘blah, blah, blah,’ ” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a member of the panel, who argues Trump’s legal team frequently has used last-ditch efforts and bogus explanations to block testimony — and the House should do the same. 

“I say do it,” he continued. “Let them argue in court that they take the position that it's legally questionable. We back off of everything! We’ve been very weak.” 

The frustration with the Democratic approach extends to members of Pelosi’s leadership team. 

“We need to develop other tools because our tools are not working,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a Judiciary panel member who is co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. “We cannot allow the administration to simply continuously stonewall Congress with no consequences.” 

Lieu is pushing for the use of inherent contempt. 

Even Schiff, who came to Congress in part by defeating a Republican who voted for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, said on Sunday that relying on the courts may not work for Trump, Ukraine and the undisclosed whistleblower complaint.

“We cannot afford to play rope-a-dope in the court for weeks or months on end,” Schiff said. “We need an answer if there’s a fire burning it needs to be put out, and that's why we're going to have to look at every remedy . . . we're going to have to consider impeachment, as well, as a remedy here.”

Ostensibly the next step in this drama is Thursday, when Acting DNI Joseph Maguire goes before the House Intelligence Committee. This whole mess started because Maguire refused to turn over the transcript of Trump's call and the whistleblower complaint as required by law. Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff then issued a subpoena for Maguire to do so, and that showdown comes later this week.

If Maguire doesn't comply, Pelosi has hinted that the resulting "grave new chapter of lawlessness" would lead to a "whole new stage of investigation" into the Trump regime.  That gives me some small measure of hope at least, but there's not a reason to believe that Trump won't try to call that bluff between now and Thursday.

And if it is a bluff by Pelosi, well, like I've been saying, if Democrats keep walking down the middle of the road on impeachment, they're going to get hit by the bus in the 2020 elections and it won't be a question any longer, because Trump will be re-elected.

Your Even A Stopped Clock Can Be Right Alert

For the first time in years, Dana "Dickwhisperer" Milbank actually wrote something that I didn't want to use a wrapping paper for fish and chips as he notes that Orange Julius's "hell no" 2010 speech on Obamacare warning the Dems what was coming is where Mitch McConnell and the GOP are now as the blue wave roars towards them.

Now I think I know how Boehner felt in 2010. We see Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowing to ram through the Senate the confirmation of the decisive fifth hard-right justice on the Supreme Court, quite likely signaling the end of legal abortion in much of the United States and possibly same-sex marriage and other rights Americans embrace, in far greater number, than they ever did Obamacare.

One wants to cry out: Hell no, you can’t! But Republicans can. They have the votes. Democrats can and should fight, but the GOP controls the schedule, sets the rules and already eliminated the procedures that gave the minority a say in Supreme Court confirmations.

If anything, the fury should be far more intense on the Democratic side right now than it was for Boehner in 2010. The Affordable Care Act was the signature proposal of a president elected with a large popular mandate, it had the support of a plurality of the public, and it was passed by a party that had large majorities in both chambers of Congress and had attempted to solicit the participation of the minority.

Now we have a Supreme Court nomination — the second in as many years — from an unpopular president who lost the popular vote by 2.8 million. The nominee will be forced through by also-unpopular Senate Republicans, who, like House Republicans, did not win a majority of the vote in 2016.

Compounding the outrage, each of the prospective nominees is all but certain, after joining the court, to support the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, which has held the nation together in a tenuous compromise on abortion for 45 years and is supported by two-thirds of Americans . For good measure, the new justice may well join the other four conservative justices in revoking same-sex marriage, which also has the support of two-thirds of Americans. And this comes after the Republicans essentially stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.

You can only ignore the will of the people for so long and get away with it.

In a way Milbank is right, but frankly the Republicans have been getting away with it through incrementally tightening the screws on Democrats and making it harder and harder to resist them at the ballot box that voting alone isn't going to stop the GOP at this point.

We're going to be in the streets this summer, and long after I suspect as the Mueller investigation reaches its conclusion.  This is the part where we have to step in and do things, guys.

The conflict is coming.  It's been coming for years, but at this point it's time to admit that it's finally here.

 

Speaker Of Bedeviled And He Shall Appear

Republicans are beginning to voice their displeasure with their leadership, and while Mitch McConnell may have scored a win with Neil Gorsuch's confirmation to the Supreme Court, House Speaker Paul Ryan has nothing but failure on his scorecard in 2017, and his own party isn't letting him forget the fact.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) on Monday suggested that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) may need to be replaced to deal with the dysfunction in Washington. 

"We need either a change in direction from this Speaker, or we need a new speaker," Amash said during a town hall on Monday in response to a question about gridlock in Washington, according to CNN. 

He said Ryan should be replaced with someone who is "nonpartisan." 

The comments come after a top White House aide earlier this month sent a tweet calling for a primary challenge to Amash, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who opposed the House GOP's healthcare bill last month.

".@realDonaldTrump is bringing auto plants & jobs back to Michigan. @justinamash is a big liability.#TrumpTrain, defeat him in primary," Dan Scavino tweeted. 

Amash responded to the tweet, saying the Trump administration and establishment have "merged into #Trumpstablishment." 

"Same old agenda: Attack conservatives, libertarians & independent thinkers," Amash tweeted earlier this month.

Twitter beef between Republicans aside, the GOP is devolving (even further than they have with Trump now in charge) from smug frat boys plotting hazing rituals for Americans into whiny high school kids screaming over student council meetings.  I'm not sure how Paul Ryan ever got the moniker of policy wonk, but the guy's a fraud, and now that Boehner's enjoying his retirement puttering around the many golf courses in the Cincinnati area, Ryan's ineptness is showing daily.

Should safe Republican House seats start falling to Team Blue in upcoming special elections, then expect another revolt on the Hill.

Meanwhile In Gunmerica...

The issue of gun violence isn't going away, as much as Republicans would like to use the power of "Thoughtsnprayers" to make the issue vanish.  It's not, not with Donald Trump remaining an albatross around the necks of every Republican running in November.  It looks like we're moving into the deal-making stage ahead of the convention recess.

House Democrats and Republicans seem just as destined for an election-season clash over guns as they did before a Democratic sit-in on the chamber's floor ushered in lawmakers' July 4 recess two weeks ago. 

Nearly a month after the Orlando mass-shooting catapulted the issue back onto the nation's radar, the two parties were meeting separately Wednesday to map strategy. 

Republicans have incorporated some gun curbs into a broader bill aimed at addressing domestic terrorism that the House has planned to debate this week, though their plans seemed less certain late Tuesday. Democrats are insisting on amendments tightening gun restrictions far further, which House Speaker Paul Ryan seemed to nix Tuesday, and each party says the other's proposals are defective. 

Ryan, R-Wis., met Tuesday evening with two leaders of the sit-in, Reps. John Lewis of Georgia and John Larson of Connecticut. The Democrats said Ryan listened respectfully and mentioned his party's concerns about protecting gun owners' rights, but made no promise to allow votes on the Democrats' proposals. 

Asked what Democrats would do if they are denied votes, Lewis, the civil rights hero, wasn't specific but said: "There will be action. We will not be silent." 

Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the two parties "have different views on how to achieve a shared goal of preventing gun deaths," especially over protecting gun owners' rights. She said the next steps on anti-terror legislation "will be discussed and determined by the majority in the coming days." 

That seemed less assured than earlier comments from Ryan that the House would vote on the GOP legislation this week. Late Tuesday, Republicans were working to line up GOP support for their own measure, with some having questions about the bill's procedural protections for gun owners and other concerns. 

Despite the uncertainty, GOP leaders' hopes of staging a vote on their proposal underscored the pressure they've felt since the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, that left 49 victims dead. Since the 2012 slaying of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, Republicans have not brought any legislation broadly restricting guns to the House floor.

Ryan wants this vote over and done with so it becomes the Senate's problem, which is what John Boshner would have done a month ago.  Sadly, Ryan is even worse at this whole Speaker thing than Orange Julius was, and that's really saying something.

Still, Ryan should be able to say that he kept his promise of holding a vote, and then watch the measure die.

Well, unless the House revolts again.  You never know.

Orange Julius Enjoys His Retirement

So what's former GOP House Speaker John Boehner up to these days? Jeremy Fugelberg of the Cincinnati Enquirer catches up to him and finds out that ol' Orange Julius can't stay away from the game he's played nearly all of his adult life.

West Chester's own John Boehner may be out of the House, but he's certainly staying out of the house (It's a joke, folks!). 

The former House speaker plans to barnstorm across the country in late July and early August, campaigning and raising money for House Republicans, Politico reported this morning. 

He'll travel the country on his bus, Freedom One – an annual practice while he was in office.

That's right, he'll be hitting the Midwest on bus tours to help Republicans.

I wonder if that will include Don Man the Con Man?

He still has a small war chest to power his work. Our USA Today Network reporter Deirdre Shesgreen reported earlier this month that Boehner has more than $1.6 million in his House re-election account and just shy of $1 million in a leadership PAC account at the end of March, according to campaign finance disclosures. 

The bus tour news is the latest showing Boehner has no intention of staying out of the limelight. Boehner made a cameo in a skit video featuring President Barack Obama, aired at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30.

This should be fun.  Considering Boehner was basically the second major casualty of the Trump GOP (the first being GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor, remember him? Even I missed the call that he would get primaried out in 2014, and it's one of the reasons I kept saying Trump was for real back last year!) I can't see how he's going to be of much help to Trump.

But hey, if he wants to wreck his credibility backing The Donald, let his juice get squeezed.

The Orange-American Vote

Orange Julius is back, folks!

Former Speaker John Boehner said Paul Ryan should be the Republican nominee for president if the party fails to choose a candidate on the first ballot. 

"If we don't have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I'm for none of the above," Boehner said at the Futures Industry Association conference here. "They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I'm for none of the above. I'm for Paul Ryan to be our nominee."

The Republican Garbage Fire keeps getting worse. Ryan tried to "Aww, shucks!" his way into "Well, if I'm forced to be the nominee..."

Ryan will chair the Republican convention, and would become a leading prospect if delegates decided to turn to someone outside the current field.

"I don't see that happening," he said in the interview. "I'm not thinking about it. I'm happy where I am, so no."

But at a moment of increasing urgency for the efforts by Romney and other prominent Republicans to block Trump, Ryan declined to categorically rule it out.

In which case Ryan got his orders from the guy who really runs Bartertown, Trump.

Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview there is "no situation" in which he will accept the Republican Party's presidential nomination this year, his firmest rejection of the fanciful notion that he'd be drafted during a contested GOP convention. 

"I've been really clear about this," Ryan told POLITICO Wednesday. "If you want to be president, you should run for president. We should select our nominee from among the people who are running for president. Clear and simple. So no, I am not going to be the president. I am not going to be the nominee."

And so it goes, as the GOP clown car now barrels down the road towards obliteration.

Orange Julius Plays Let's Make A Deal

The Tea Party loses again when it comes to the tentative budget deal worked out over the weekend, and it looks like Orange Julius is giving President Obama everything he wanted as he exists, stage left.

GOP leaders from both ends of the Capitol met privately with their rank-and-file Monday evening to outline the general contours of the emerging agreement between Congress and the White House. It would boost defense and domestic spending over the next two years, and lift the nation’s debt limit through March 2017 — thereby eliminating the twin threats of a government shutdown and a debt default until after the November 2016 elections.

But conservative lawmakers, eager to keep the strict spending caps from a 2011 budget agreement intact, were very skeptical of the deal after they emerged from close-door briefings with their leaders on Monday night.

Asked about the tentative agreement after the briefing, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions replied: “My knees quiver at the sound.”

In an interview, Sessions expressed frustration that outgoing Speaker John Boehner was hammering out the deal just days before he plans to give up the gavel for good. “What does Boehner got to do with it?” said an exasperated Sessions, the former top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. “I’m worried about how fast it’s moving. I see no reason for that. Based on what I know now, it appears the president got whatever he wanted.”

Suckers.  You lose again.  And you always will...and it prevents major cuts to Social Security in the future.

Not only will the increased spending levels make for heartburn with conservatives, but many of the offsets touch on political hot buttons.

Those pay-fors include a repeal of a piece of Obamacare, according to congressional sources. It would repeal Obamacare’s requirement that large employers automatically enroll employees in their health plans. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a different bill to repeal that provision would save the federal government $7.9 billion over a decade.

The plan would also prevent a 20 percent across-the-board benefit cut to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, resulting in $168 billion in long-term savings. The tentative deal would also be paid for by extending the Medicare sequester that was approved in the Budget Control Act for another year and setting up additional cuts to hospitals.

The tentative agreement would also impose policy changes to disability insurance, tax compliance, crop insurance, spectrum and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Lawmakers and aides cautioned that the negotiations were not completed, and some details could change before details are made public — likely by later Monday night.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas dryly acknowledged: “I don’t think you’ll hear anybody popping any champagne corks.”

Indeed, conservatives across the country have been watching for months to see how GOP leaders handle the spending caps that many on the right view as a major victory. Many conservatives are likely to interpret the budget deal, even with some new spending paid for with cuts and new revenues, as a retreat from the blunt spending restrictions of the Budget Control Act that was enacted into law in 2011.

So yes, a big reversal of sequestration cuts that have been hurting the economy for years now.  No wonder the Republicans are furious.

Will the deal pass?  We'll find out.

Any Juice Left In This Orange?

There's only a couple of weeks before the US government hits the debt ceiling and while a lot of digital ink has been spilled on John Boehner's replacement, it's safe to say that he'll still be Speaker of the House when the bill comes due in early November. The GOP-controlled Congress still has to raise the debt ceiling or risk a catastrophic debt default, and that means the worst Speaker in recent history has to get the GOP to actually govern.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has his work cut out for him in passing a bill to raise the $18.1 trillion debt ceiling. 

The lame-duck Speaker needs to win 30 Republican votes to lift the government’s borrowing limit, even if the entire House Democratic Caucus votes with him.

Boehner was only able to pull 28 votes the last time the House approved a clean debt-ceiling increase — and one-third of those lawmakers have since left Congress. 

Now Boehner is even weaker politically, and he has little time to act. 

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has urged Congress to raise the debt limit before Nov. 3, when his team will have exhausted its powers to remain under the cap. 

After that date, the government would be left with just cash on hand to pay its bills, which analysts believe could run dry as soon as Nov. 10. 

The White House has refused to negotiate on raising the debt ceiling, and talks on funding the government appear to be on a separate track — giving Boehner little leverage. 

Most observers see a clean hike by the House as the only way out, and they think Boehner’s decision to resign as Speaker was a sign of his intentions. 

“Boehner took the bullet for the good of the party,” said Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Senate GOP staffer. 

Bell also thinks Boehner could win more votes to raise the debt ceiling than the 18 members who stuck with him in 2014. 

“I think he’s got at least 50 to 70 members who will really go with him,” Bell said.

If Bell is correct, then a clean debt ceiling hike will pass easily.  The question is how much of a hike, and whether or not the four Senate Republicans all floundering in the 2016 GOP nomination polls are going to try to blow up our economy in order to make political points with the base.

But if Bell is wrong, and a clean debt ceiling hike can't pass at all, then the country will suffer greatly, and so help me the fact that I'm not sure if it will pass truly scares me.  The combination of toxic Tea Party politics heading into 2016 plus Boehner's massive weakness makes me really wonder if we'll get through this without tremendous damage.

After all, the pundits have spent that last several months being completely wrong about the GOP.

House GOP, Hat In Hand

With no real way forward on replacing John Boehner as Speaker themselves, Republicans are now openly admitting that they will need Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats to get them out of this mess.

“It's a very simple question of math,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who first floated the idea of Republicans and Democrats joining together on a Speaker candidate last week.

“If there are not 218 Republican votes on the House floor, then by necessity the Democrats will have a say in who the next Speaker will be,” he said. “I still think it's a possibility.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time that's something we don't want — it's not good,” King said of working with Democrats to elect a Speaker. “On the other hand, we can't go on forever without a Speaker.”

Such a scenario remains unlikely, even with the House GOP in apparent disarray ever since Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) decision to abruptly drop out of the race to succeed Boehner.

There have been no formal discussions between the parties about the possibility of a coalition Speaker, and some Democrats have dismissed the notion out of hand.

“It'll never happen,” Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said after McCarthy's announcement.

Since then, Democrats have generally played coy.

They've distanced themselves from the controversy, insisting the leadership shake-up is a GOP problem for the Republicans to solve on their own.

“Hopefully the Republicans will come to terms as to who their recommendation will be for Speaker,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last Friday. “But that's really up to them.”

And while that's true, it's leverage that Pelosi has over the GOP, and both sides know it.  The question is what will her price be at this point, because as we've seen over the last several years, in the end, the Republicans always fold.

BREAKING: McCarthy Drops Out Of House Speaker Race

GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Californi, the current House majority leader and number two to outgoing House Speaker Orange Julius (R-Orange) didn't have the votes to replace ol' John Boehner and has dropped out of the running for the job,

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has dropped out of the race for House Speaker, shocking Capitol Hill and raising questions about who will lead the House Republican Conference.

Republicans were to meet Thursday at noon to elect a new Speaker. Instead, they received the surprising news from McCarthy.

"I think I shocked some of you," McCarthy joked to reporters after his bombshell. 

He said he would stay on as majority leader, but believed Republicans needed to unify around a "new face." 

"I feel good about the decision. I think we're only going to be stronger," he said.

McCarthy suggested it was unclear whether he could have won the 218 votes on the floor needed to be elected Speaker.

"I don't want to go to the floor and win with 220 votes," said McCarthy, who cast his decision as putting his conference first. "I think best think for our party is to win with 247 votes." 

McCarthy told his colleagues of his decision as they were preparing to cast ballots for Speaker. The election was immediately postponed.

If anyone somehow still needed proof that Republicans are incapable of governance, well there you go.  They can't even pick a leader in the House.

It would be sad if it wasn't directly the fault of voters in 2010 and 2014 for giving the House to Republicans in the first place.  These guys are idiots, folks.  We can change that in 2016, ya know.

Last Call For Turtle, Shelled?

First Orange Julius got squeezed, now will Mitch the Turtle get shell shocked?  Probably not, but it should be fun to watch him squirm.

Now that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has announced that he will step down, some conservatives in the Republican party are turning their attention to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Roger Villere, the chairman of the Louisiana GOP, urged McConnell to resign in a Saturday Facebook post.

In an interview with the Washington Times published on Sunday, Villere said that McConnell is hurting the Republican party.

"Mitch is a good and honorable guy, but the base is leaving our party," Villere said. "I’m out in the field all the time and we have all our elections this year for state offices, and it’s hurting us tremendously with our elections."

He said that the majority leader should have pushed harder against President Obama's agenda while leading the Senate.

"Mr. McConnell could have suspended consideration of confirmations for all presidential appointees, except for those who are essential to national security, until the president rescinded his unconstitutional executive action on amnesty," he said.

Villere suggested that McConnell did not fight hard enough to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood. He said that McConnell's support for a temporary funding bill that provides funding for Planned Parenthood will hurt the Republican party.

"If we lose the battle, we will never win the presidency again in my lifetime," he said. "I've worked for 12 years as chairman to build this party, and I just don’t want to see it all go down the drain because they aren’t willing to fight for what we believe in. Our base is demanding we do something or they’re going to leave us."

Well, here's hoping you're right, Roger.  I certainly don't want to see another Republican president in my lifetime. Amusing then that the Senate easily passed a funding bill on Monday to avoid a government shutdown Wednesday night, and the presumed new Speaker following Boehner also wants to surrender (and is sadly trying to pretend that the Democrats are the ones shutting the government down when the Republicans control both chambers of Congress.)

Nope.  Tea Party Republicans are about to lose again.  You got Boehner's head for your wall, but once again you've accomplished nothing.

Last Call For Podcast Versus The Stupid

With all that went on this week with Orange Julius and Pope Francis, we had to do a show.  Give a listen to this week's episode, Orange Julius And The Miracles.

Check Out Blogs Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on BlogTalkRadio

BREAKING: Orange Julius Squeezed Out

John Boehner is out, folks. The NY Times:

Speaker John A. Boehner will resign from Congress and give up his House seat at the end of October, according to aides in his office. 

Mr. Boehner was under extreme pressure from the right wing of his conference over whether or not to defund Planned Parenthood in a bill to keep the government open.

Holy hell.

National Journal's Alex Rogers with this home run tweet:

Yesterday Boehner's office said: http://t.co/sYx9VXPaLVpic.twitter.com/4kGeZ224Qo

— Alex Rogers (@arogDC) September 25, 2015

Bwahahahaha.  And yeah, Imani is right, I've been waiting to write this headline for years.

Last Call For Shutdown Countdown, Con't.

With just over a week left before October 1, Forbes's Stan Collender upped his odds over the weekend of a GOP government shutdown to 75% as Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have all but completely lost control of the Republican rank and file.

In the face of the House and Senate leadership’s effort to come up with a compromise, many primarily Republican anti-abortion groups intensified their demand for a shutdown aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood, even if it ultimately won’t be successful. 

House GOP leaders offered to provide ways other than through a continuing resolution for members to demonstrate their opposition to Planned Parenthood, but the Freedom Caucus and its supporters rejected those options as meaningless gestures. The prospect of voting on these alternatives (one of the votes happened in the House last Friday) didn’t stop the shutdown talk and may have further infuriated those opposing funding for Planned Parenthood. 

Meanwhile, the threat to John Boehner continuing as speaker became so real that senior members of the House Republican caucus began to campaign to move up in the leadership ranks if there’s an election. The three top members of the GOP House leadership after Boehner – Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and House Republican Conference Chairman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) – reportedly were all openly jockeying for position. 

The campaigning then pushed McCarthy and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) to announce that they supported Boehner even though having to make such an announcement demonstrated the true weakness of the speaker’s position. 

Adding to the forces working against a CR, Texas Senator and GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz vocally and vociferously supported a shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding during last week’s Republican presidential debate while the three other Republican senators also running for president – Lindsay Graham (SC), Marco Rubio (FL) and Rand Paul (KY) – either said nothing or were far less strident about it. Cruz’s position put significant added pressure on the other three either to support a shutdown or cede ground in the GOP presidential nomination with a key group of Republican voters. If, as is likely because of Cruz, all four oppose a CR, McConnell’s position on the issue will become untenable.

Now, House Republicans trying to depose Boehner has been a loser bet for years because literally nobody else wants the job, and the mess the GOP is in, a mess of their own creation, is exactly why. But the Planned Parenthood garbage, getting completely beaten on the Iran nuclear deal, and 2016 primaries being right around the corner makes it far more likely that the GOP in the House or Senate will do something monstrously stupid and shut down the government for a while, and as Collender says, Boehner's position is too weak to stop it.  Nancy Pelosi's price to bail his ass out will rightfully be high and she'll win.

The wild card remains the Senate.  Cruz already shut the place down once before.  Voters refused to punish this behavior and effectively rewarded the Republicans with more House seats and the Senate as a result.  Marco Rubio may still try to be the voice of "moderate "reason, but Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham are running in the low single digits and have to do something to stay in the 2016 race, and that "something" is likely going to make for a very long October for America.

Even Collender admits that the 75% prediction is optimistic.  I think the odds at this point are close to 95% if not 99%.

But as Greg Sargent points out, it's a massive con job by the GOP.

Their argument that Democrats will take the blame for a shutdown isn’t actually about somehow spooking Dems into fearing this fight or persuading GOP leaders to adopt this shutdown strategy and stick to it. They know GOP leaders won’t actually do that. Rather, their argument is targeted to conservatives voters: it’s designed to keep alive the illusion that there was indeed a way to win the battle if only GOP leaders had the stomach to see it through to the end.

Enhancing the hall of mirrors effect in play here, this is exactly what makes it possible to simply repeat the same argument two years later. The fact that Republicans lost previous government shutdown fights, which should ideally cast doubt on that argument and strategy, is — poof! — easily transformed into more fodder for the idea that Republicans only lose these fights due to a failure of will. Republican Congressional leaders have become the preferred pummeling dummies for presidential candidates who want to persuade conservative primary voters that they have cracked the code that has tormented them for years: Why can’t the GOP succeed in rolling back the Obama agenda?

Shutdowns cannot fail, they can only be failed by "weak Republican leaders" who aren't strong like the Republican senators running for the White House.  So yes, absolutely expect a repeat from 2013 starting next week.

Iran Out Of Orange Julius

John Boehner continues to be the most incompetent House Speaker in decades, as now the House vote on the Iran nuclear has completely collapsed because he can't control his own little monsters in the GOP caucus.

GOP leaders had to change course after hearing an earful from rank-and-file members during a morning conference meeting.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are demanding that the Obama administration send side deals between Iran and international nuclear inspectors to Congress as part of the Iran deal now under consideration. Opponents of the deal have argued that the clock on congressional consideration of the deal has not even begun until these side deals are submitted.

Under legislation approved earlier this year, Congress has 60 days to review the deal before the White House can begin lifting sanctions on Tehran, as required under the nuclear deal.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) has offered a resolution that would prevent a vote on the Iran deal until all of the documents of the international agreement — including the deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are provided to Congress for review.

“We had a very healthy conversation with our members this morning. There is some interest in the idea offered by Mr. [Mike] Pompeo, Mr. Roskam. We're going to continue to have those conversations,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said after a GOP conference meeting.

I don't blame them.  Orange Julius really did sell them out, like he always does, and yet House Republicans continue to let him take the blame because none of the rest of them want the job.

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) predicted that the procedural vote on the rule would fail if it were held Wednesday. But neither he nor other members of the House Freedom Caucus who believe Congress lacks all the information it needs to vote on the deal would commit to voting against the rule on the floor.

“If we take a vote prematurely, then we’re saying it doesn’t matter. And again, that’s another form of approval. Why do we want to approve anything here when it’s a bad deal and we don’t even know the worst part of it?” Fleming said.

Fleming suggested that allowing lawmakers to review the side agreements between Iran and the IAEA could even flip some Democrats to oppose the deal.

“Let’s say that something comes out that’s so hideous and so egregious that even Democrats wouldn’t dare go along with this deal,” Fleming said. “You don’t know what you don’t know. We didn’t know that the NSA was doing bulk collection of emails until we found about it.”

But other Republicans say it's too late to try to stall the vote when Congress's 60-day review period will close on Sept. 17.

“You know what, I think it’s pretty clear that a month and a half ago we understood that Sept. 17 would be the drop-dead date. And the week we’re doing it is a little bit late to bring up the argument,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas).

It's too late the change the rules of the game, kids. You lost, and there's no way out of this mess.  After the sixty days are up, Republican lose regardless.

And they know it.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Here in Cincy the talk over the weekend involved a "victory over those evil Mooslem types" up in John Boehner country as students at a high school up in Mason were bullied out of an exercise in religious tolerance, mainly because the religion in question wasn't Christianity.

A group of Muslim students organized a one day challenge to their fellow students to wear a hijab to school for a day in order to promote religious understanding of Muslim culture, and if you know anything about the northern suburbs of Cincinnati (which is John Boehner's district up all the way up to Dayton), you know damn well "religious understanding of Muslim anything" sure as hell doesn't exist there.

What started out as a cultural awareness effort by Mason High School Muslim students this week morphed into a fierce 48-hour debate about prejudice, freedom and religion in public schools.

By the end, Mason High School canceled the "Covered Girl Challenge," and principal Mindy McCarty-Stewart sent an apology to district families. The challenge was student-sponsored and voluntary, meant to combat stereotypes students may face when wearing head coverings, McCarty-Stewart wrote.

"As word spread beyond our school community ... we received many strong messages that made me reconsider the event's ability to meet its objectives," she wrote. "I now realize that as adults we should have given our students better guidance."

Even afterward, though, the episode and arguments illustrate the fault lines in Greater Cincinnati - and the U.S. - over where cultural awareness ends and promoting a religion begins. And where avoiding controversy ends and turns into bigotry.

When the right-wing hatemongers got wind of this, the students found themselves as targets, with the blogs claiming that the school was "forcing all female students to wear hijabs" and attacking the student group for perpetuating human rights violations against Muslim women. By Thursday, the principal had canceled the April planned event completely.

Intense criticism has prompted an Ohio high school's principal to cancel a student event in which girls would celebrate diversity by spending a day wearing a Muslim headscarf.

Mason High School Mindy McCarty-Stewart also issued an apology in an email Thursday to district families, saying the intent of the April 23 student-led event was meant to be positive, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

"I now realize that as adults we should have given our students better guidance. After much consideration and after talking with the student event organizers, we have canceled the event," she said.

The reality is that this event happened  without too much trouble at other schools and universities in the US, and again it wasn't a problem even when it happened at high schools in the Midwest.

Somehow, Mason, Ohio became a firestorm.

I wonder why.

The New Benghazi

After completely losing his tantrum fight on shutting down the Department of Homeland Security, House Speaker John Boehner needs to get the Tea Party back on his side by going after somebody they hate more then himself, namely Hillary Clinton.

House Speaker John Boehner is expected to announce this week a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices as Secretary of State, including her admission that more than 31,000 emails were destroyed because she determined them to be personal, top House Republicans told ABC News today.

During a news conference last week, Clinton did not go into the details of how the review of her email was conducted, but said it was “thorough” and that she went “above and beyond” what she was required to do in turning over many of her emails to the State Department.

"We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails and deliver them to the State Department," she said, adding that all other emails were personal and pertained to matters such as "yoga routines," "family vacations," and "planning Chelsea's wedding."

So for the next year and a half, expect this to be on FOX News daily.  Except the part where House Republicans admit they were unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing after wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.  You'll never see that on Roger Ailes' network.

Sadly, Orange Julius is going to find out that this won't be enough red meat for the 2016 campaign.  Voters will start to tune this out long before November of next year.  But it sure gets him off the hook for caving on immigration, huh?

Captain Cave, Man!

And the DHS defunding shutdown game ends with a whimper as John Boehner and the GOP House cave to President Obama.  Again.

In a major victory for President Barack Obama, the Republican-led House relented on Tuesday and will back legislation to fund the Homeland Security Department through the end of the budget year, without restrictions on immigration.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, outlined the dwindling options for his deeply divided GOP caucus on Tuesday morning after the Senate left the House with little choice. Boehner pointed out that the issue is now in the hands of the courts.

"I am as outraged and frustrated as you at the lawless and unconstitutional actions of this president," Boehner told his caucus, according to aides. "I believe this decision — considering where we are — is the right one for this team, and the right one for this country."

A vote was expected later Tuesday to send the bill to Obama for his signature. Short-term funding for the department expires on Friday at midnight.

Conservatives had demanded that the funding bill roll back Obama's immigration directives from last fall that spared millions of immigrants from deportation. Democrats had insisted on legislation to fund the department, which shares responsibility for anti-terrorism operations, without any conditions.

The GOP leadership's decision to bow to Democratic demands angered several conservatives.

"This is the signal of capitulation," said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. "The mood of this thing is such that to bring it back from the abyss is very difficult."

But more pragmatic Republicans welcomed Boehner's move.

"Sanity is prevailing. I do give John Boehner credit," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

You did good, Fredo.

And so, the story ends for now.  We'll see what the GOP will do next to try and fail to destroy America.

Boehner's Week Hand

So late last night Democrats rescued the incompetent John Boehner with a one week extension of Homeland Security funding after Boehner's own three-week plan failed completely.

Republicans vowing to govern effectively as a congressional majority failed a fundamental test Friday, when House leaders only narrowly managed to avert a partial shutdown of theDepartment of Homeland Security after an embarrassing defeat earlier in the day.

The seven-day funding extension, approved by a vote of 357 to 60, came just hours before money for the department was to run out at midnight. The accord was reached after a stunning and humiliating setback for Speaker John A. Boehner and his leadership team earlier Friday, when the House voted against their original plan to extend funding for the department for three weeks — a position that Mr. Boehner had considered a fail-safe. More than 50 House Republicans defected, voting against the bill.

The speaker was rescued by Democrats, who supported his offer of a weeklong extension because they believed it would lead to a vote next week on full funding for the department through the fiscal year, without any provisions related to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration included in the House’s original legislation. A spokesman for Mr. Boehner said the speaker had made no promises or deals with House Democrats to guarantee such a vote.

And curiously, a one-week extension passed the Senate last night with no problem. Republicans are jumping ship as fast as possible.

“We should have never fought this battle,” said Senator Mark S. Kirk, Republican of Illinois. “In my view, in the long run, if you are blessed with the majority, you are blessed with the power to govern. If you’re going to govern, you have to act responsibly.”

Just two months into the new Congress, Republicans were sounding a grim note, far removed from their triumphant election victories in November. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Friday that “2015 is about us.”

“There’s nobody to blame but us now when it comes to the appropriations process,” Mr. Graham said. “If we can run the place more traditional, like a business, so to speak, I think we flourish. If we self-inflict on the budget, and the appropriations process, and we can’t get the government managed well, then I think we’re in trouble.”

 Now the question is will the tea party blow up the country again like the terrorists they are.  We'll find out in a week.

Shutdown Countdown: DHS Edition

With days left before 85% of Department of Homeland Security employees will have to start reporting to work without pay (because that will make them really want to protect America) Republicans finally have a plan for moving forward by caving on immigration, but a GOP partial shutdown is looking all but assured as there's no way the House will play ball.

Congress approved a full year’s funding for the rest of the federal government in December, but Republicans held back funding for DHS in reaction to Obama’s immigration actions, giving the agency budget authority only through midnight Feb. 27. 

Now, with four days before the security agency’s budget lapses, senior Republicans are pushing for a new strategy that does not directly link Obama’s actions on immigration to funding for DHS. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had previously acknowledged that the chamber was in stalemate over the issue, set up votes later this week on separate legislation that would repeal one of Obama’s immigration actions.

Those actions, announced in December, would grant temporary relief from deportation to more than 4 million illegal immigrants. McConnell’s hope is that moving the immigration issue onto a separate bill may create a path for the DHS funding bill to go through. 

“It’s another way to get the Senate unstuck,” McConnell said.

But getting a clean bill past the House once again comes down to Boehner selling it to a base that wants to obliterate Democrats from the country.

Outside conservative groups, including Heritage Action, have been pushing Republicans not to not approve a “clean” funding plan, demanding that any DHS budget include the immigration provisions that would reverse Obama’s actions. 

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has sided with Heritage Action and other conservatives, even after the judge’s ruling last week that could tie up the issue for many months in the courts. 

“The House has passed a bill to fund the Homeland Security Department, but Senate Democrats are blocking debate on it — and, with just days left before the deadline, President Obama is doing nothing to help,” Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman, said Monday in a statement.

So even if a clean bill passes the Senate, it's not passing the House.  And time is running out.