Pass the Popcorn

 

     So, this is Republican governance, huh?

     This is why hundreds of millions were spent on these House races, this is how they're going to impeach Joe Biden and persecute Hunter Biden, investigate the investigators on the J6 Committee, eh? These idiots can't even get out of the starting blocks. While it was a pox and a black stain on humanity, at least it can be said there wasn't any of this assclownery when the Nazis took over the German government in 1933.

     As of this writing, Kevin McCarthy has just lost the third of the first three ballots for House Speaker. The Speaker election is always expected to go smoothly on the first ballot. Today, after the third failed ballot, the House abruptly adjourned for the day. In fact, something like this hasn't happened since 1923, when Harding was president, and only the second time since the Civil War

     The first ballot had McCarthy falling short by 15 votes. In an amazing but not unforeseen twist, new Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, got nine more votes, or 212 votes to McCarthy's 203. McCarthy couldn't afford to lose more than four votes. By the third ballot, he'd lost lost 19.

     Jim Clyburn, the Minority Whip, is already licking his chops and rubbing his hands at the thought of corraling six more Republicans to the left side of the aisle to make Hakeem Jeffries the next House Speaker even in the short term, which is certainly a possibility.

     McCarthy officially hit the wall the first time in a closed door conference early this morning when he said he'd finally had enough with the concessions and pitched a shit fit by saying that he'd "earned" the Speaker's gavel, prompting Bobo to scream, "Bullshit!"

     Of course, so-called McCarthy loyalists like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Jim Jordan, who'd already heard what they wanted, are taking pot shots at their own caucus because, without McCarthy, Greene doesn't get her committee assignments back, Jordan doesn't become chair of the House Judiciary Committee, etc. Dan Crenshaw (Argh-Barbary Coast) is threatening to scuttle the Republican Pirate Ship of State by ramming it into the Freedom Casucus, where the National Socialist Party went to die.

     The House Republican Party is essentially a careening clown car, only no one's at the wheel.

     And, yeah, if you're a Democrat, especially a liberal Democrat, of course this is all very amusing stuff. They want to take down Biden's administration but these blithering fucking idiots can't even get out of their own way.

     How much schadenfreude are we allowed here? I mean, it's enormously amusing to see the Republicans in the House displaying such dysfunction but the government's business can't proceed without a speaker. And, whether anyone realizes it or not, any revenue-making or spending measures must, according to the Constitution, originate in the House.

     We have a farm bill that's due for a vote. Committee chairs and ranking members, things that are already squared away in advance, have to be named. In short, the House of Representatives and the entire federal government by extension, has just come to a screeching, smoking halt just so a small minority of power-mad psychopaths can continue posturing and posing in defense of principles they plainly don't have.

     And when the Republican caucus puts Marjorie Taylor-Greene anywhere near the right side of an issue, something's really rotten in the state.

     Nearly two years ago to the day, the GOP's shock troops, the rioters, nearly shut down the government with their help. This time around, the GOP doesn't need any help shutting down the government. They did that today all on their own.