Kevin McCarthy, Gen X Elder

Kevin McCarthy, who is the same age as I am and thus represents the pinnacle of Generation X elder wisdom, is like some of those annoying kids I knew in high school back in the early eighties.  You know the sort - the kids who walked around like the Fonz, in their Journey T-shirts, and thought they were so cool because they bought Escape the first week it came out and quoted numerous lines from Fast Times at Ridgemont High when in fact they were as lame as f**k! 

McCarthy, who is so disrespected by Nancy Pelosi that she wouldn't even refer to him by his name, has announced he is leaving the House of Representatives at the end of the year.  He talked about his major accomplishments as Speaker, both of which died in the Senate, and he added, "No matter the odds, or personal cost, we did the right thing. That may seem out of fashion in Washington these days, but delivering results for the American people is still celebrated across the country."

"Kevin," I kept thinking, "I beg you to stop!" 

Charlie Sheen.  Brooke Shields.  Jesse Jackson, Jr.  And Kevin McCarthy.  Gosh darn it, are these the best elders my generation can offer?

I am also confident that McCarthy considers Loverboy's Get Lucky to be one of the greatest albums of all time.

McCarthy, the shortest-serving and least powerful Speaker in history, isn't just lame as f**k, he's lamer than f**k.  After selling his soul to Donald Trump and getting nothing in return, he promises to campaign vigorously for Trump and "help" continue to build the Republican Party.  

McCarthy is going out with a smile on his face, proud of everything he has not accomplished.  But as with the Cheshire Cat, the more he smiles, the more you realize there's nothing there. 

In his farewell address to the House, McCarthy said that if doing the right thing costs you your career you should do it anyway.  I have a perfect title for a book McCarthy could write containing such pearls of wisdom . . . 

. . . but it's already been taken.

The McCarthy Era Ends

Kevin McCarthy thought he could ride the tiger, but he just got eaten by it, having been ousted from the position of Speaker of the House.

U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), angered by McCarthy's deal with the Democrats to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open, made a motion to vacate the speakership, and while only a handful of hard-right Republicans voted with Gaetz, every Democrat voted the hardliners to throw McCarthy out - despite the possibility that his successor might be Jim Jordan.

Ironically, Gaetz had gotten the right to make a motion to vacate as part of the deal that made McCarthy Speaker in the first place.

A lot of commentators, including Michael Smerconish, thought the Democrats should have voted to save McCarthy in order to keep the House operating so that it can produce a permanent budget for the 2024 fiscal year.  Vote to save a guy who rightfully blamed Donald Trump for the January 6 insurrection and then turned around and embraced Trump to get his help for Republican support?   Vote to save a guy who named trouble-makers to the January 6 House committee to stymie the investigation?  Vote to save a guy who chose to save George Santos?  Vote to save a guy who said he wouldn't start an impeachment inquiry against President Biden and then started one?  Vote to save a guy whom they just . . . couldn't . . . trust?

What happens next is anyone's guess.  The chaos the Republicans find themselves in may put them at a disadvantage, but it doesn't mean they will regroup and cause even more havoc.  McCarthy, as Speaker, did no more than try to appease the hardliners in the House Republican conference, but he gave them so much power in his agreement with them to become Speaker that all he had to do was fail to live up to 0.5 percent of their agreement and he would be out on his rear. That's precisely what happened.

And it couldn't have happened to a guy who deserved it more.

Ceiling Dealing

Everyone lost, and everyone won.

President Biden thanked Congress for sending him a debt-ceiling increase with compromises on spending, which he then promptly vetoed because it didn't contain enough funding for Amtrak.  (Just kidding!)

Okay, the deal is done and the country won't default, and now comes the part where pundits on MSNBC are saying that Biden averted the deepest and nastiest cuts to the federal social safety net, pundits on Fox News said that the Republicans in the House got one over on Biden for increasing military spending and relaxing environmental reviews for a long fossil-fuel pipeline, and CNN pundits are saying both things - sometimes the same CNN pundit is saying both things, mindful of CNN honcho Chris Licht's laughable strategy of being all things to all people.  (Michael Smerconish preferred not to talk about the debt ceiling increase at all on his CNN Saturday show yesterday morning, preferring instead to discuss Pride Month.)  

The President thanked Speaker Kevin McCarthy for his strong leadership - I can't believe I just typed that - and McCarthy was genuinely relaxed and happy about having mastered the art of dealmaking and being in complete control of the process (I can't believe I just typed that, either!).  Now there's new hope for biparistan ship on similar big issues . . . at least until immigration is brought up again.

The good news is that Washington politicians will look for bipartisanship where they can. The bad news is that some of the most obvious policy positions in Congress - like ignoring Amtrak - are bipartisan.

Hitting The Ceiling

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's ability to get just enough votes to pass a federal-budget reduction resolution that cuts domestic spending while raising the debt ceiling has been seen as an empty victory that will never be endorsed by the Democratic Senate and will never get anywhere, and Speaker McCarthy won't be able to score any victories against President Biden.  Don't you believe it.  

Now that the resolution has passed, McCarthy can now say he has a plan to cut the debt and the deficit, and he can now challenge - and has challenged - the President into offering a proposal that both sides can negotiate over.  Biden says he will negotiate on the budget but he refuses to negotiate over the debt ceiling.  Biden doesn't get it.   Now that McCarthy has united House Republicans behind the resolution, he is never going to decouple the budget from the debt ceiling, and he can frame the argument by saying that he has taken a step toward resolving the issue while the President remains obstinate over it.  The optics will be terrible for the White House.  McCarthy knows how to manipulate things to get his way and advance his party's priorities.  

How do you think he got to be Speaker of the House?

Default is coming.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid. 

Trawling For Tropes

Ilhan Omar, the most famous woman of Somali descent whose name isn't Iman Abdulmajid, was booted off the House Foreign Affairs Committee for saying that Americans suck up to the Israelis and disregard their inhumane policies toward the Palestinians because it's all about money.  That's showing her!  Kevin McCarthy is absolutely right to advocate for punishing House members who spew out anti-Semitic tropes.

Now when is he going to punish Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Watch out for those Jewish space lasers, Marge!

Omar has charged Republicans for singling her out because she is an immigrant, a woman and a Muslim.  Republicans dislike her for all of those things, but I think the real reason they're punishing her is for wearing a terrapin on her head.  Agreed - we can't have that in the House of Representatives.

Hold it just a minute, I've been corrected.  Omar wears a turban on her head - not a terrapin.  Oh, well, that's all right.  Jut as long was she doesn't have a terrapin on her head.  As far as I am concerned, any House member who wears a terrapin on his head should be expelled from the House completely.

Guess that makes Steve Scalise House Speaker.

Wait!  What's that chocolate syrup on his head?  There ought to be a law against members of Congress serving with chocolate syrup on their heads!  Anyone with chocolate syrup on their heads should be removed from Congress immediately!  It should be a capital crime!  Off with his head!  Off with his chocolate syrup!

Seriously, Omar was removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee because of statements critical of her own government and its transgressions against weaker countries in the developing world, and she has vowed to speak out more loudly and forcefully.  Good for her.  Unfortunately, Republicans were already anticipating that. 

I think someone saw Lauren Boebert buying a pair of these at the Pennsylvania Avenue CVS.  There ought to be a run on this product there soon.

Oh yeah, I didn't want to bring it up, but McCarthy once accused  George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg of trying to buy the 2018 midterm elections.  Now, what do these fellows have in common - aside from being billionaires? 

Maybe, as punishment, we should dip Kevin McCarthy in chocolate syrup.

The New McCarthy Era

Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House overnight on the fifteenth ballot.  Whenever something happens over and over, my mother uses an expression, always saying it's happened fifteen times whether it' only five or as much as twenty.  As for how many times it took the House to vote before choosing a Speaker, my mother can now use that expression literally.

I may have said that Kevin McCarthy, by giving away so much power to the stupidly named House Freedom Caucus (and selling his soul to the devil - also known as Matt Gaetz) will only cut ribbons a Speaker, but he's already cut something else - his throat.  By giving so much power to the reactionaries to run roughshod over everyone else - especially Democrats - McCarthy has made it impossible to negotiate with anyone in good faith because he has no good faith left.  The default of the federal government later this year must now be seen as inevitable.

In the meantime, the House of Representatives will firs t consider a bill designed to keep President Biden from taking the initiative to hire additional IRS agents over a ten-year period.

"I know the night is late," McCarthy said before adjourning the House for the weekend, "but when we come back our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.  You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you."  In fact, the Internal Revenue Service has the ability  to hire 86,852 full-time employees over the next decade, only a few of which would be enforcement agents.

Also, when was the last time Republican governance helped anyone?

So, I assume that impeaching President Biden and his entire Cabinet (Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's high crime must be urging people to give up their Chevrolet Tahoes for public transit and electric vehicles) will be second item on the GOP's agenda.

We survived the first McCarthy era in the 1950s.  I'm not so sure we'll survive the second. 

The House Republican Caucus

Ladies and gentlemen, meet your new Republican U.S. House majority!

After vilifying the Democrats for daring to give Americans nice things like child care, the right to organize, and paid family leave, the Republicans placed the name of one Kevin McCarthy in nomination for Speaker of the House.  After one ballot, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries got the most votes - 212 votes from the Democrats to McCarthy's 203 and 19 Republican votes against McCarthy.  On the second ballot, the result was the same except that the 19 anti-McCarthy Republican votes were cast for the same man, the same "white knight" candidate that MAGA Republicans presented as a consensus choice - Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who had ironically nominated McCarthy for the second ballot.

That was the MAGA Republicans' secret consensus candidate?  

Then 20 Republicans voted against McCarthy on the third ballot.  House Clerk and de facto Speaker Cheryl Johnson - a black woman chosen by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019 - adjourned the House until noon today.

Kevin McCarthy looked forward to becoming Speaker and moving forward on having President Biden, his family, and his Cabinet investigated to death, but until a Speaker is chosen, the Republicans can't get anything done, they can't set their agenda . . . honey, they and their Democratic counterparts can't even get sworn in.

The Republicans might have to dump McCarthy and find a new candidate.  Theoretically , any American citizen 25 or older can be Speaker of the House - it doesn't have to be a sitting House member.  In that case . . . why not me?

Hey, I could use the work.

And I could meet a lot of members of Congress, like this Republican gentlewoman from Iowa!

The Democrats in the House clearly enjoyed watching the Republicans implode, but Nancy Pelosi must have been especially pleased to see Kevin McCarthy, a man she has absolutely no respect for, be embarrassed over and over.  I may have said that Tim Ryan's ambition likely got him into trouble with Pelosi when he challenged her for the position of House Democratic leader in 2016, leading to his political career's untimely demise when he left the House for an unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat from Ohio, but as humiliating as it must have been for Tim Ryan to go through what he went through . . . at least he can be glad he didn't endure what McCarthy is enduring right now. 

KEVIN!

Ooh, the opening of the U.S. House of Representatives in the new Congress today is going to be fun.

Kevin McCarthy is in line to become Speaker of the House, but he has a bare majority of Republicans and enough of them are so dead set against voting for McCarthy to be Speaker because of his past efforts at compromising and his Washington insider status that it could take more than one ballot to elect a Speaker.  The last time that happened was a hundred years ago - 1923 - in which Speaker Frederick Gillett (R-MA) had to go through multiple ballots to win a third term to the office.

McCarthy has made so many concessions to far-right Republicans that would weaken his own powers and give much more control over the agenda to the pro-Trump wing that he he would have almost no power at all.  But his concessions have satisfied no one among the Trumpist crowd.  Any more concessions from him, and as Speaker he'll end up doing nothing but cutting ribbons.

Democrats, who will be voting for Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, won't have to do anything to worsen the predicament Republicans are in.  They'll simply sit back and watch the tenuous ties between the so-called moderates and the Trump Republicans unravel faster than the threads on a cheap sweater.

As I said, this is going to be fun.

Nancy's Out

Nancy Pelosi saw the writing on the wall - and not graffiti from January 6.  The Republicans will  control of the House of Representatives in January, and the outgoing Speaker of the House decided not to stand for a position in House Democratic leadership. (She will serve one final term representing her San Francisco district.)  She thanked everyone in the House chamber for allowing her to serve and marveled at how wonderfully geographically and ethnically diverse These States had become . . . and how democracy survived the 2022 election.

Few of those in the chamber were Republicans, and none of them cheered.  Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy couldn't be bothered to attend - he was too busy outlining the Republican House's agenda, which includes investigating Joe Biden, investigating Hunter Biden, investigating Anthony Fauci, investigating Justice Department for investigating Trump, and investigating some other stuff that Marjorie Taylor Greene wants him to investigate.

And, I assume, naming post offices.

The relentless investigations House Republicans plan at the expense of actually getting anything done could weaken and diminish Joe Biden as he looks toward running for a second term in 2024.  Even if there's no there there with regards to wrongdoing, it could be enough to ruin Biden's re-election hopes.  In response to those who disagree, I offer three little words from 2016 - "But her e-mails!" 

And if Biden does not seek re-election, the Democrats can always nominate someone else. 

I got yer someone else right here.  😉 

No More Political Endorsements

We're a week away from Election Day, and I encourage you to vote, either early or on November 8.  However, I have decided that I, as the author of this blog, will no longer endorse political candidates effective immediately, though I could endorse a specific candidate in future elections . . . and I just might.  

Why am I suspending endorsements of political campaigns?  Two reasons.  First, my endorsements in the past have increasingly skewed Democratic so reliably and issues have become so nationalized that, given my Humphreyesque liberal politics (I have more in common with HHH than AOC), I can just give a blanket endorsement to all Democratic candidates and all independent candidates endorsed by Democrats, which is a very lazy action.  I'd rather not say that I endorse Democrat Candidate X because he/she endorses Policy Y and Z while his/her Republican opponent supports Policy F and then fill in the blanks for the offices I choose to focus on.  You know who I'm going to vote for already based on my opinions on this blog, so why bother going through an endorsement charade?

The second reason is what happened in California.  Last week, Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul was attacked in the Pelosis' home in San Francisco by a right-wing assailant who was hoping to assassinate or at least severely maim the Speaker of the House.  Soon after that a Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to threatening to kill another California House Democrat, Representative Eric Swalwell, and members of his staff.  This all should make us focus our energies on going out to vote if only to show the democracy still works and that we can resolve our differences without having to resort to violence.  If House members and the Speaker's husband are both fair game for right-wingers, what can we expect in a Republican House come January 2023?   Will some leftist militant like the one who shot House Republican Whip Steve Scalise in 2017 attack Judy McCarthy at her home in Bakersfield in the hope of getting to her husband Kevin?  And by the way, why has Kevin McCarthy never been held accountable for his own August 2021 statement that "it'd be hard not to hit Nancy Pelosi with a gavel" - and while he did condemn the man who hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer, why didn't he make a statement disavowing all forms of violence against Democrats and progressives?

In light of all this, handing out political endorsements on this blog like Halloween candy doesn't make sense anymore.  So I'm going to stop, just as I stopped publishing end-of-year winners and losers lists that were just as meaningless, if not more so. 

Now go and vote, like I did.

See you 'round the clubs.

The New McCarthyism

The new McCarthyism is defined by the new McCarthy - Kevin McCarthy.

The philosophy of Kevin McCarthy, U.S. House Republican leader from California, is simple.  Do what it takes to attain power.  Use your power to satisfy your political base according to their demands, no mater how foolish or inconsistent they may be.  Punish your opponents.  If they maligned your political benefactor or are simply women of color (like the Squad), that last point goes double. And when you get the chance, demoralize your opposition by bestowing power onto the scariest person in your inner circle.

A Republican House under Speaker Kevin McCarthy, like a Hillary Clinton Presidency has been called inevitable.  With one key difference; McCarthy's speakership actually is inevitable.  The Greedy Old Potentates have at least a 70 percent chance of winning the House, and Kev Mac has already put out his policy list for 2023. One is that there will be no blank check for aid to Ukraine anymore; given that the U.S. House of Representatives had the power of the purse, the Ukrainians will have to rely on someone else to supply them arms, like France, a country not known for political instability in this century.   McCarthy also plans to cut speeding domestically and he has not said he will rule out drastic cuts to or five-year reauthorizations for Medicare and Social Security, although Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has already ruled them in if the GOP takes over the Senate.  And the California Kid has one other task on his mind - throw Democratic members of the soon-to-disband January 6 select committee off their regular committees for investigating Trump with no hope of being reassigned to other committees.  Folks like Adam Schiff will have nothing to do in the House unless they substitute once in awhile for the sergeant-at-arms.  

And once McCarthy is Speaker, he will most likely to delegate authority to the one Republican House member who can push for the passage of the Trump agenda in order to "Save America" (or SA, which also stands for Sturmabteilung, i.e., Storm Troopers) and pave the way for Trump's triumphant return to the Presidency in January 2025.

That would be Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Prepare for the fateful moment when you hear the click of goose-stepping boots down Pennsylvania Avenue.

It's inevitable.

The McCarthy Tapes - PAH!

Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin's book "This Will Not Pass," which chronicles the pandemonium over the January 6 insurrection, has some revealing information.  House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has been caught on tape saying that he wanted to ask Trump to resign the Presidency as a result of the insurrection, and he wanted to try to silence the far-right members of the House who were stirring things up and possibly inspiring violence against congressional members of both parties - by taking these far-right House members off social media.

To those of you who hoped that this would discombobulate McCarthy's bid for the House speakership should the Republicans win back the House (now very likely) and possibly trip up the GOP itself, think again, sucka.  McCarthy said that his comments about Trump and far-right House members were merely speculative (though he's clearly lying), and in a meeting of the House Republican caucus yesterday, he received a standing ovation.  Trump himself says his relationship with McCarthy is still good.

In other words, McCarthy - like every other member of the Republican Party - is totally shameless.  These tapes will have no detrimental effect on his ambitions.   The same sort of utter shamelessness that made icons out of Madonna, Michael Jackson and other MTV pop stars back in the eighties now permeates in Washington.  The Republicans will ride that shamelessness to power in 2022 and 2024.

But then, being shameless to achieve power isn't anything new, as anyone who's studied the history of the Third Reich should know.

Banks of the Jordan

So U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (below) looked over the five Republicans the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy nominated for the select committee January 6 insurrection and accepted three of them but not those two Midwestern morons named Jim - Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana.  McCarthy demanded that Speaker Pelosi accept all five of his choices, and when she refused, he pulled them all and left the committee with only the eight members Speaker Pelosi appointed, including Republican Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

McCarthy sought to improve his chances to help the Republicans regain the House in 2022 and make him Speaker by pulling this stunt, but Speaker Pelosi is letting the select committee go ahead, since it has a quorum and all.  McCarthy doesn't want the truth of the insurrection to get out and diminish the GOP's chances in the 2022 midterms, but the select committee will be moving forward this coming week to get the truth out, and it may have some help.  At this writing, Speaker Pelosi is considering expanding the committee and adding two Republicans - including Adam Kinzinger of Illinois - making it an even ten members and also more bipartisan than it currently is.  The House has the votes to do that. 

The hearings begin this coming week.  They could end up being more fun to watch than the Tokyo Olympics!

Select THIS!

Fed up with efforts to get Republicans in Congress to authorize an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going ahead and pushinga resolution creating a select committee to investigate it.  Though the committee will be bipartisan, it will not be free of partisan politics.  But it's the only way to get to the truth about what happened.

Speaker Pelosi said that the committee will be comprised of thirteen members. She will appoint eight of them, with the other five to be chosen  in consultation with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.  There's just one thing wrong with that - McCarthy opposes an investigation of any sort, and he could try some trick to sabotage the select committee.  Mainly because McCarthy himself would likely be subpoenaed to testify before the select committee.  McCarthy, who wants to be Speaker, had to deal with Donald Trump on the day of the insurrection and begged him to call it off.  If he testified before a committee, he might not get the Speaker's gavel - even if the Republicans retake the House her in 2022.

Speaker Pelosi has let it be known that she is seriously considering one or two Republicans among eight choices for the committee.  This would make the committee truly bipartisan and give any of its findings more credibility.  And it could help the Democrats in the 2022 midterms.  I don't think there's been anyone in Washington like Pelosi who has been able to pull off the impossible so magically since then-Secretary of State Martin Van Buren defused a sex scandal in President Andrew Jackson's Cabinet by resigning, allowing Jackson to ask the rest of the Cabinet for their resignation.  

Meanwhile, Trump himself could be indicted this week - not for the insurrection but for his company's shady business practices.  The select committee could end up being just another nail in an already-completed coffin.