We apparently need a new amendment to the Constitution

 

They're alive!

 Meanwhile, the House is stuck with Mike Ass Kisser Johnson as Speaker, and the Republicans are on indefinite vacation.

The House is not working

 Although they ARE getting paid.

Good, I guess

I don' know. Somehow, I don't think that will be a problem.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Willfull ignorance

It must be frustrating for an educated man in a room full of cliché peddlers.

Santos' seat in the House got filled by a Democrat

With a little schadenfreude from Adam Kinzinger...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Understatement of the year

The only problem - and it's not much of one - is that Trump/MGAG GOP supporters won't listen to anything from Liz Cheney.

So long, Kevin

Kevin says he's taking his ball and going home.

Click the pic above to hear Raskin's assessment of Kevin McCarthy.  (It's good to see Jamie Raskin with hair again!  I hope his cancer is in permanent remission.)

FLIP THE HOUSE

And, finally, I wouldn't bet that McCarthy actually exits when the time comes.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/08/2023 03:19 pm:

Pretty sure that's why Republican politicians are Republicans.  For the perks.

UPDATE 12/14/2023:

UPDATE 12/20/2023:

Better to have scum and criminals than to lose power

Welp, there goes McCarthy

216-210  (With 8 Republican votes to oust him.)

And good riddance.  All he wanted was to be Speaker.  He sold his soul to get it.  What soul he had.  He can leave in ignominy.

They're going to have to vote in a new Speaker.  Let's hope it's not the fiasco electing McCarthy was.  But don't hold your breath.

He CAN claim a first.  No other Speaker in history has been voted out, and this is the first time the office has been declared vacant.

And Nancy Pelosi wasn't there for the vote.  Where's Nancy?

UPDATE 04:01 pm:

North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry has taken over as House speaker pro tempore following Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the leadership role in Congress’s lower chamber moments ago.

Per House rules, McCarthy submitted to the chamber’s clerk a list of lawmakers who would take over if his seat becomes vacant, of which McHenry was apparently first.

McHenry is the chair of the financial services committee.

  Guardian

He knew this could happen, and he chose to wear that bow tie anyway.

UPDATE 10/04/2023:

LOL.  Pathetic and desperate. 

As one of his first acts as the acting speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry ordered former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to vacate her Capitol hideaway office by Wednesday, according to an email sent to her office viewed by POLITICO.

“Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed,” wrote a top aide on the Republican-controlled House Administration Committee. The room was being reassigned by the acting speaker “for speaker office use,” the email said.

[...]

Pelosi had missed the vote to boot McCarthy to stay in San Francisco to attend memorial services for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime friend of the former speaker.

“Sadly, because I am in California to mourn the loss of and pay tribute to my dear friend Dianne Feinstein, I am unable to retrieve my belongings at this time,” she said.

[...]

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ staff helped Pelosi’s office make the move, according to a spokesperson for the former speaker.

  Politico

"Hideaway office"?

Moderate House GOPers find their voice

The Retribution Caucus may not be as strong as it sometimes seem.

Twenty House Republicans joined Democrats on Wednesday in voting to table a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), breaking from the majority of the GOP conference on a measure that was backed by leadership.

The House voted 225-196-7 to effectively kill the measure, which was spearheaded by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.). It called for censuring and condemning Schiff “for conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not befitting an elected Member of the House of Representatives.”

It also would have directed the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation into Schiff’s “lies, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

Twenty Republicans voted with Democrats in favor of the motion to table: Reps. Kelly Armstrong (N.D.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), Juan Ciscomani (Ariz.), Tom Cole (Okla.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Kay Granger (Texas), Garret Graves (La.), Thomas Kean Jr. (N.J.), Kevin Kiley (Calif.), Young Kim (Calif.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Mark Molinaro (N.Y.), Jay Obernolte (Calif.), Mike Simpson (Idaho), Mike Turner (Ohio), David Valadao (Calif.) and Steve Womack (Ark.).

  The Hill

UPDATE :

UPDATE 06/16/2023:

UPDATE 06/22/2023:  Turns out the moderates' objection was only to the proposed $16 million (!) fine in Luna's resolution.  Once she took that out, they all voted in favor of censure.

Trouble in paradise

Frustrations reached a boiling point during a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday morning. There, in the basement of the Capitol, a handful of moderate Republicans aired their grievances over last week’s revolt directly at the conservatives who orchestrated it.

[...]

“Ninety-five percent of us were pissed about it,” [Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.)] said of the nearly weeklong deadlock in the House. “It wasn’t right, it hurt the team.”

[...]

[Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.)] expressed frustration that the caps set out in the debt limit compromise are “being rejected by people in our conference that chose last week to demonstrate their angst by denying us an opportunity to have votes.”

[...]

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the 11 GOP rabble-rousers, warned the rebels could revive their floor blockade if McCarthy fails to meet their still-undefined requests.

The combination of last week’s revolt and the threat of another has infuriated the moderates.

[...]

The growing frustrations come as Congress suits up for high-stakes legislative undertakings that will require bipartisan cooperation — including funding the government, which tops the list.

[...]

Tuesday morning’s conference meeting came hours after House conservatives said they would retreat from their days-long revolt — at least temporarily — and allow legislative business to move forward on the floor as they continue discussions with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about reining in deficit spending.

  The Hill

So what important legislation did they pass in their temporary truce?

The House on Tuesday voted in favor of preventing the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning gas stoves and also limiting the safety agency’s ability to regulate the products.

[...]

The gas stove vote comes after the suggestion of a ban sparked a firestorm in Washington. Republicans have sought to draw attention to the issue.

The legislation is unlikely to be taken up by the Democratically-led Senate. The White House said that it opposes the legislation, but has stopped short of a veto threat.

[...]

The House on Tuesday also approved an amendment from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) that expanded the legislation beyond stoves, making the restrictions apply to commission bans on any type of appliance based on its fuel source.

[...]

Generally, left-wing groups have expressed concerns about gas stoves because they have been linked to childhood asthma and have been found to leak chemicals like the carcinogen benzene.

[...]

The bill approved by the House on Tuesday not only says that the Consumer Product Safety Commission cannot ban the products, it also bars the agency from imposing other safety standards that increase their costs.

  The Hill

By all means. We certainly don't want to pay more for safety.

After last week’s revolt — and with a high-profile agenda on the horizon — some moderates are considering cutting conservatives out of the process and working with Democrats instead.

“I’m of the position that at some point we gotta just do coalition government with the Democrats and cut these guys out,” Bacon said of the conservatives. “If they continue to do that, we got to make them irrelevant.”

He said he is “not yet” at the moment of needing to box out conservatives — ”hopefully they’ll wisen up” — but said, “At some point, we just gotta work across the aisle and tune these guys out.”

  The Hill

Better late than never, I guess, but they should have thought about that a long time ago. We can only hope that the time for that hasn't passed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The shitshow continues

The floor of the House was paralyzed for a second day on Wednesday amid an uproar from conservatives blocking party-line Republican measures, amounting to the biggest blockade since the Speaker’s election five months ago.

In an effort to break the impasse, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his top deputies huddled in the Speaker’s office for long meetings throughout the day. A group of conservatives — including several of those who had orchestrated the blockade — also met with McCarthy.

Discussions did not yield any breakthroughs, and leaders kept the House in recess for the bulk of the day before canceling floor votes for the rest of the week altogether.

“What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna come back on Monday, work through it and be back working for the American public,” McCarthy told reporters Wednesday evening.

[...]

“I’ve gone all day today, and I’ve not had any communication at all from leadership,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) told reporters.

“You’ve got the tail wagging the dog. You got a small group of people who are pissed off, that are keeping the House of Representatives from functioning today. And I think the American people are not gonna take too kindly to that,” Womack said.

  The Hill

One can only hope.

Stop electing Republicans.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another McCarthy major fuckup?

I have a feeling the party most affected by this will be the GOP, making this a goof on par with refusing to seat Republicans on the January 6 Committee.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They can't win if they don't cheat

Because they have such regressive attitudes.

House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), have promised to investigate some of the largest U.S. companies over their so-called woke politics, referring to support of the Black Lives Matter movement; environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG, investing and abortion access, among other hot-button issues.

[...]

“Companies like Disney, Coke and Delta should be focusing on their customers, not engaging in political fights,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has also threatened retribution against “woke” companies, tweeted last year.

[...]

Seventy-one percent of voters oppose Congress punishing companies that “speak out against discrimination,” including two-thirds of GOP respondents, according to [a Morning Consult poll commissioned by the tech industry-backed Chamber of Progress and released on Monday].

  The Hill

Republicans have long had their finger on the pulse of America. The trouble is, they've been standing in the morgue.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Anybody know the answer?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Your Republican House at work

No one has banned - or has even tried to ban - gas stoves.  

If you think they have, please "do your own research."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Hakeem is in the house

“Our Republican colleagues, you promised to come to Washington to fight for the American people,” Jeffries said. “But have spent a lot of time fighting each other on politics, power, and personality, not working on issues related to the public interests. That’s what the last few days have indicated, an extreme MAGA Republican agenda.”

[...]

“Now that you are getting into substance, on Monday, you passed a bill designed to allow the wealthy, the well-off, and the well-connected to cheat on their taxes, to subsidize the lifestyles of the rich and shameless benefit millionaires and billionaires,” Hakeem Jeffries continued. “Not working-class families, not middle-class families, not low-income families, not veterans, not everyday Americans, the wealthy, the well-off, and the well-connected. That was on Monday.”

“And on Tuesday, you come to the floor, and you pass a select committee on insurrection protection,” Jeffries continued. “A committee that is clearly designed, in the words of some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, to obstruct justice as part of your evident desire, as many of you have said, to eventually defund the FBI. That was Tuesday.”

“And now, on Wednesday, you come to the floor,” Jeffries said. “Nothing on inflation, nothing on quality of life issues for the American people, nothing even on public safety. But you come to the floor as part of your march to criminalize abortion care, to impose a nationwide ban, to set into motion government-mandated pregnancies. So that’s the distinction for today.”

  Daily Kos

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I would expect a lawsuit over this

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Out here doing the nutsy stuff

Isn't one of their major whines the deficit?  How are they going to pay the nation's bills?  Their own salaries?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

After six years of failed efforts by the IRS, Justice Department and lawmakers, new legislation is expected to prevent the worst abuses of a tax-avoidance scheme that has cost the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars.

Tucked into the massive, $1.7 trillion government spending bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Dec. 29, a provision in the law seems poised to accomplish what thousands of audits, threats of hefty penalties and criminal prosecutions could not: shutting down a booming business in “syndicated conservation easements,” which exploit a charitable tax break that Congress established to preserve open land.

Under standard conservation easements, landowners give up development rights for their acreage, often an appealing, bucolic space. In return, they receive a charitable deduction equal to the property’s development value, and the public benefits by the preservation of the land, which in some cases is made available as a park.

But as ProPublica first described in 2017, aggressive promoters built a lucrative industry through “syndicated” deals. These promoters snatched up idle land (a long-vacant golf course near a trailer park, in one example examined by ProPublica) and hired an appraiser willing to claim that it had huge, previously unrecognized development value.

  Post News