Saturday, January 7, 2023

unfortunately this is our circus and our monkeys


Well, that particular clown show is finally over with Republicans acting like they achieved a great victory after four days of hurling insults and cursing at each other and nearly came to blows at the end with one republican restraining another who was lunging at Gaetz. McCarthy finally prevailed after 15 votes and only because he convinced enough republicans to vote present lowering the bar to a number he could attain and now has the title Speaker of the House. He has the title, empty though it is, but not the power which he traded away to the 20 far right insurrectionists (of which he is one himself, make no mistake) for puppet strings. If he fails to dance to their tune, all it takes is for one representative to call for his ouster, another of his concessions.

Fifteen votes to finally elect a Speaker and not even a full majority of 218, he won with 216 votes, and he's up there claiming that 'the people' have spoken and Republicans have a mandate to force their unpopular policies on America. McCarthy only beat Jeffries by four votes, their majority comes with only 10 representatives. I could be wrong but I don't think that slim of a majority constitutes a 'mandate'.

Apparently now that we have a functioning House, sort of, if you can call the GOP functioning, one of the first things they will do is vote to undo the new funding for the IRS which is woefully understaffed right now. If you have ever tried to speak with an IRS agent on the phone or meet with one in person you know how impossible that is and how badly the funding and new agents are needed. A phone call gets you put on hold for hours and then finally dropped, a visit to an office is worse.

We fell behind on our taxes a decade or so ago and it took a long time to get it straightened out. To meet with an agent, Marc would have to get to the office as close to opening time as possible and sign in; agents called you on a first come first serve basis and there was no guarantee you would get in that day just because you showed up. I forget how many days it took. Fortunately we were self employed and he could take those days off without penalty.

The good thing is that the Senate won't go along with it and neither will Biden, which will be the end result of whatever legislation they manage to pass in the House. Unfortunately, there's no way to stop them from their bogus and retaliatory investigations which will turn up nothing and will be another clown show so the next two years will be full of faux outrages, baseless accusations, and zero proof. Probably the only real power they have besides obstruction is their stated refusal to raise the debt ceiling when it comes around again thereby causing the government to fall into default, which will impact not only the US but world economies as well, unless they get heavy reductions in spending and the reductions they want are Social Security and Medicare. This will be a game of chicken since Biden has said he will not cut SS or Medicare.

If they want to cut spending how about stop subsidizing the oil industry or any subsidized industry making record profits. We could stop bailing out companies failing through their own malpractice like the billions we gave SW Airlines who used over $5B of the money to buy back their stock and give their CEO a big raise or stop increasing the defense budget. Seriously, we spend more on the military than the 10 next highest military budgets combined. In 2021 our defense budget accounted for 39% of the world's military spending and Biden increased the budget for 2023.

Well, I didn't mean to engage in another political essay when I started writing but here it is anyway.

No additional old post today. I think maybe I'll just do it once a week since it takes a lot of time to select one and you'll probably quickly tire of a second post every time.



15 comments:

  1. These people are just asshats pure and simple. I loved it when McCarthy said after four days of voting on Speaker, that they'd learned how to govern. Please.

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  2. Replies
    1. and a six year old shoots his teacher..... a six year old....this country is well and truly fucked.

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  3. An unbelievable shit-show is in progress. We're going to be watching this crap for the next two years.

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  4. And we thought it was over when TЯ☭mp left the White House.

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  5. Our politicians and now this???????

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    1. Didn't mean to comment as Anonymous.... need to sign in.. :/

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  6. From afar it appears as an anarchic reality show what with the scuffles and fisticuffs, the outlandish promises of some kind or another and the way people cling to whatever they think power is. We will continue to watch this freak show of a party, with the interesting plot and characters incl. gun enthusiasts, climate change deniers, at least one con man, and so on. All free on tv, imagine.

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  7. It was quite a spectacle to watch it all going on, and it left me wondering how much one man can humiliate himself, but he is a Five Star Trump Ring-Kisser after all, so what did we expect? We can only hope that he will never again be re-elected.

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  8. Again- all I can say is- WTF? This is not government as the founding fathers imagined, no matter how much these constitutional republicans cling to their second amendment. Or at least their interpretation of it. This is indeed a clown show and the day I woke up and Trump had been elected I knew things were going to be horrible but to be honest, I am not sure even I could imagine the depths into the sewers the man would take us.

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  9. Oh dear, I remember the astonishing tRump years...so can imagine we're in for another circus...who said that? The real circuses that used to be such fun now are diminished, so I guess the politicians have decided to entertain us...not my cup of tea. I'm glad I can turn off the news.

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  10. You've said it well, Ellen. What a mess!

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  11. Yeah, definitely not what I would call a mandate. And McCarthy is now in an incredibly precarious position, likely to be deposed as speaker at the drop of a hat.

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  12. It was just crazypants all around. I was glad to see that it looked like the Democrats were the adults in the room - and that speech by Jeffries was FIRE.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.