The Awful Rowing Toward Satan

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Over the last 22 days, this is what we've been seeing:

     We're watching arsonists setting fire to the Peoples' House so they can lobby against the existence of houses. There's really no other way to look at it, no other theory that even promises to hold the glimmer of common sense or logic. And, ironically, Donald Trump isn't even at the center of this clown show. He's the ringmaster pushed outside the three rings and is standing in the elephant shit that he's still riotously flinging to little or no effect.

   Both became self-evident in the first four plus days of the rolling dumpster fire that's been masquerading as the 118th Congress. The Neo Nazi dysfunction began rearing its hideous head in the opening minutes on January 3rd which was the start of Kevin McCarthy's long slog toward the Speakership after which he's lusted like George Santos does sailor twinks.

   It was his awful rowing toward Satan, to paraphrase Anne Sexton, that led to an almost unprecedented 15 ballots until the Speaker's gavel was placed in his grasping little hands. By the second day of the clown show, Trump briefly weighed in on Truth Social and halfheartedly lobbied for McCarthy's election from the Hinterkaifeck of his post political life. And, of course, by then they'd stopped listening.

   That was, of course, because Trump had already killed off all the Republicans he'd deemed as insufficiently loyal and any Republican that got elected or reelected last year did so independently of Trump. The Kinzingers, Cheneys, Uptons, they're all gone and the survivors have nothing to fear from Trump.

     And any Republican still sucking at Trump's withered orange teat is only doing so to get the sloppy leftovers of the MAGA crowd, at least, the part that hasn't had their voting rights stripped away after their attempts to overthrow the government two years ago.

     That would be the same Kevin McCarthy who, a week after the riot, laid the blame for it squarely at Trump's front door at Mar a Lago, only for him to scurry back to that same Mar a Lago 15 days later to kiss Trump's Godfather ring and Lord only knows what else.

Faust Now Serves Many Masters

So, let's take stock of some of the evils the GOP is fully prepared to unleash on America:

     Even though McCarthy's not on board with his party's tax plan, which amounts to little more than allowing wealthy scumbags like them to continue dodging taxes, he's still going to allow it to come to a floor vote. Somehow, this comes under the dodgy excuse of fiscal responsibility, even though the tax bill, even if it survives the Senate and if Biden signs it into law, will just further starve the government of tax revenue.

     Republicans that are now suddenly alarmed over a debt and deficit completely of their devising have a solution to that, though-Cut Social Security and Medicare, even though there's a federal law in place that prevents either program from adding a penny to the national debt. Republicans have been planning on putting this giant poison pill into the debt ceiling debate and, as far as they're concerned, they'd be tickled pink in either event-

     If the Democrats capitulate like they usually do and agree to social safety net cuts, Republicans will be one step closer to achieving their wet dream of doing away with Social Security, something they've been lusting after for 85 years. And, if the Democrats don't capitulate and play chicken with the GOP, the debt ceiling won't be raised, we'll default on our loans for the first time ever, lose our bond rating and the dollar will get seriously devalued.

     If that happens, well, it'll trigger a global recession if not a global depression and then Republicans plan on pointing to that as an example of why government doesn't work. Republicans don't care about depressions or recessions, unless there's a Democrat in the White House on whom they can blame it.

     Of course, few if any of these mad schemes have a prayer of succeeding because there is a Democrat in the White House plus Democrats had widened their lead in the Senate ever so slightly so that we don't need Vice President Harris to cast so many tie-breaking votes. But the untenable insanity reigning supreme in the lower chamber will at the very least guarantee Congressional gridlock for the next two years.

And in the Center Ring...

 

Stands the Queen of the assclowns, George Anthony Devolder Santos, or whatever iteration or combination thereof he's going by today. It's hard to imagine a more prolific liar than Donald Trump getting into our government through legitimate means but here we are.

    Here's a guy who'd admitted in one of his few forthcoming moments that he'd broken into the home of his mother's dying patient and stole his checkbook so he could write bad checks to buy himself fancy clothes, for which he's now a wanted felon back in Brazil. Here's a guy who stole another $3000 from a  veteran's dying service dog. Here's a guy who'd stolen so many of his dying mother's paychecks that he'd forced her eviction.

     And then he'd shamelessly used her death to create a narrative that was easily debunked, namely that she died in the North Tower on 9/11 only years later, even though immigration records showed she was still in Brazil and didn't come to America until 2006. Here's a guy who went to a Stop the Steal rally with a scarf draped around his neck worth $500 that he stole from his roommate.

   Here's a guy who'd appropriated with equal shamelessness the religion of a people who perished 6,000,000 times over in the Holocaust (It's unclear if he would've been so forthcoming 80 years ago about being Jewish with the Nazis). 

    Here's a guy who's recently told the FEC in an "amended" filing that the $500,000 he loaned his campaign from his personal funds wasn't actually from his personal funds, which begs the question of where did the money come from and did it come from a foreign entity.

     Here's a guy who's tirelessly manned a firehose of bullshit that makes it impossible for any one fact  checker to hold his feet to the fire. His entire campaign autobiography was a complete fiction yet no one wanted to do any due diligence and do any meaningful opposition research on him.

    This clown was given two committee assignments by Kevin McCarthy, a drag queen that, until Santos came along, the right wing has been bitterly waging war against and smearing as groomers and pedophiles. And the right wing is now in such an ideological pretzel, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Congresswoman Jewish Space Lasers, now represents the mainstream of the GOP.