145 Comments

The Steep Date gonna get tired of this pretty soon. Seriously. Part of the Gland Old Party's unwritten platform – that is, the only platform they have - is to diminish the efficiency of the whole gummint, to demoralize the workforce, and to drive decent, effective people out. Once done, the only people left who will still hunt for gummint jobs will be grifter/grafters, 2-bit hustlers and shameless coat-tailers. Imagine an entire 2.8 million person workforce of George(?)Santos(?).

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Georges Santoses?

George Santoii?

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When they gather in herds, it's called The Great Santini.

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I'd like to upvote this twice, but Substack won't let me.

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Santosmess!

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We know a place off Long Island where the Santoses gather in great shoals.

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The Santos Shallows.

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The Wide Santogasso Sea

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I'm that (retired) Fed who keeps pointing out the Pendleton Act of 1883 (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act) and how and why it became possible.

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Anyone else here lust after a Pendleton in 8th grade? All the cool kids had one...

Edit to add: the very coolest of the cool had a girlfriend to give the Pendleton to.

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They are so prolific in their criminality that multiple Georges Santos require multiple Attorneys General.

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Although I should be inured to it by now, I find this type of McArdle-style pundit response to be the most galling. It’s not even Both Sides. They cast the Democrats in vaguely the same role as the mother in the grocery store who is on her phone while her toddler rips items from the shelves: “can’t you DO something about him?”

No one quite addresses why The Party of Personal Responsibility seems to need the Democrats to give them a juice box and tell them it’s nap time.

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Hearted for the juice box (no straws, please!)

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Hey, I speak from personal experience when I say there is no nightmare worse than packing a juice box for a trip with your toddler, only to discover the straw is missing come snack time. Armageddon in a minivan.

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Now you’re being crazy. The whole idea of the juice box is you need that damn straw. Get your facts straight!....:)

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Seconded! No straw, you're in deep shit.

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Fun(?) fact:

Juice box straw wrappers, along with cigaret butts, are by far the most-found trash items on the nation's beaches. Straws will be the downfall of all biota in this solar system.

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Straws will kill us all!?!?! Well, that sucks!

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Straw...MAN!

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Yeah, it was simpler back in the olden days when the hazard was those detachable tabs from the soda pop cans. You could get all sorts of crescent shaped wounds on your feet, but at least it wasn't plastic.

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I started to build a suit of ring mail out of poptops just before they disappeared forever.

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3 words: split ring washers.

My brother did a complete trousseau of that. Madness, obv.

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I subscribe to the WP. There are certain propagandists, I mean opinion writers that I call the three stooges; and not in a complementary way. Olson, Hewitt and Theissen; Larry, Moe and Curly. However, there was a fourth stooge: Uncle Shemp. So McCardle definitely fits the bill and welcome her to the club.

The mere fact these charlatans can blame democrats when they control the house and can pass anything they like is rich. Next thing you know, they’ll be blaming democrats for the Biden impeachment hearing. “Pelosi and AOC manipulated Comer and Jordan into starting these investigations.

And it wasn’t republicans that removed Schiff and Swalwell for their intelligence committees, it was Hakeem Jeffries.

Those damn democrats! They are so devious, that they singlehandedly divided the Republican Party. It’s not our fault we don’t know how to govern; all this chaos is the democrats fault....yada, yada, yada!

They sound like Trump. When COVID hit and the market tanked, it was Obama’s fault.

However, when Trump claimed that he masterminded the longest and great economic expansion in US history (he also inherited the worst economic crisis in US history), 10 years 6 months, he forgets he was only in office for 3 years and 1 month when the economy tanked (the record prior was 120 months or ten years under Bush 1 and Clinton).

So did Trump inherit the worst economic crisis in US history, while presiding over the longest economic expansion in US history? This would require a bit of mathematical gymnastics and a suspension of disbelief; however, you get the point.

And all successes our the purview of Trump and his republican sycophants, while all their failures rest solely with.....wait for it.....wait for it..........The Democrats!!!!!!!.....:)

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What, no love for Gary Abernathy and Henry Olsen, both of whom want to be Hugh Hewitt when they grow up?

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You missed it. I have Olsen in there, but missed Abernathy, who’s tame compared to the others...:)

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Oops. I shouldn’t browse the comments before I’ve had my coffee.

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Ewww, there's a life-destroying choice that nobody should be allowed to take.

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My tolerance only goes so far.

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Pole, plus or minus 10ft?

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Funny how "high tolerance" in machining means the tolerances are really small? And that's my Seinfeldian observation for the day, I'm sure it would absolutely kill if I could get myself booked at a machinists convention.

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It's the modern GOP's refrain: there is no possible manner in which they can fuck up and drop the ball that cannot be traced back to nefarious provocation or scheming by the Democrats. In today's GOP the Democrats would be blamed for Dennis Hastert's pedophilia and accused of seducing him into that lifestyle, as Dems are all pedophiles themselves.

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Agreed...:)

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“Pelosi and AOC manipulated Comer and Jordan into starting these investigations" is something I expect to hear again.

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I agree, and I have to say I will find humor in it when it happens. I've heard Pelosi and AOC called many things, but hearing them likened to Brer Rabbit will be a first: "please don't throw us in that impeachment patch!"

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Let's just cut to the chase and say that when the Republicans lose the House next November, that will be ALL THE DEMOCRATS FAULT too.

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Is it too early to start blaming the Democrats for the re-election of Joe Biden?

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Remember how mean we were to Mitt Romney? It caused all the Pubs to go radical.

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And were pwned by only 47%!

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Well, well have to take the blame for that one.

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Right, I'll just have to grit my teeth and accept it.

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Even in districts nowhere near them you'll see campaign ads going "Stop The Liberal Democrats Like AOC And Pelosi!!" So yeah, this will happen again.

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"These <sob> Democrats divide our party by being reasonable & trying to legislate, which makes some <mumbled imprecation> GOP congresspeople not want to stand over by the shit-throwing gibbons..."

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The GOP never sins, it can only be sinned against

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Sin, cerely.

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The GOP: it has its political cake eats it too!

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And if the Dems had been stupid enough to do what she's asking for, it wouldn't be "Well done, Democrats!" just [crickets} while she desperately searches for something else to blame the Democrats for.

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"we (for some value of we)"

Awaiting confirmation from MathsGuy that this is a 2-marker.

"McArdlean misdirection"

gets 2 marks no matter what MathsGuy sez.

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we are a variable, but don't call us x, that's been taken. Also, that milk has McCurdled.

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I'm just a humble LiteraturesGurl, but I did take enough calculus & algebra in HS to appreciate this

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That settles it!

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Governing a country that doesn't believe in civics classes is proving to be a real challenge.

I really enjoy it when you do the relatively straight political reporting. You're good at it! Would that the New York Times featured your column rather than something from a skink dick motherfucker like Brett Stephens.*

* We had a couple guys in to work on our forklifts. We have a lot of forklifts so these guys are like a regular fixture back on the dock. One day last week I was crossing through the dock and I heard one of the guys say to the other" Like that skink dick motherfucker knows how to fix a forklift-"

Ever since then I've been looking for an excuse to call somebody a "skink dick motherfucker" .Now, I'm not exactly sure what a skink dick motherfucker is- I'm pretty sure that Brett Stephens qualifies.

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The wisdom of the common folk and also forklift repairmen.

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"Governing a country that doesn't believe in civics classes is proving to be a real challenge." And that there is the whole ball of wax.

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Remember civics classes? That's where we learned it wasn't possible anymore for a president to be elected without winning the popular vote. Or if they did, they would have to govern in the most neutral way possible.

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Ha ha, I remember "The Supreme Court doesn't MAKE the laws, it just reviews them for constitutionality." Needs to be updated to "The world's smallest legislature."

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"I really enjoy it when you do the relatively straight political reporting. You're good at it!"

Not only good at it, but he's a much better writer than most if not all of them, and infinitely more entertaining to read.

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Well!

Likely the most obscene media fantasy is the variants on the requirement of the Dems to support the RepubliQans not just by submitting to them but to also help them act better when they misbehave (a/k/a the GOP’s new normal).

As for the Dems (rudely!) screwing Kraven Kevin, well, that would still end up with McCarthy kicked out. He’d be seen as a Dem tool and lose the clinically insane caucus. Then, getting Dem support would prove difficult given the conflict between what each party wants.

But before that, thanks to Kraven Kevin’s submission to crazies, he’d still get booted, and the Dems would still want to fuck back.

That said, in the great scheme, this doesn’t matter. The Rs in the House will just keep acting insanely, alienating ever more voters (🤞🏻). And the media will a new shiny object to focus instead of, providing fact-based reporting and honest framing.

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It's all part of the cunning plan, that cannot fail...

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We're talking "not even as good as one of Baldrick's cunning plans" level here.

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Another candidate for speaker, add him to the list.

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A Giant Turnip is currently Speaker Pro Tem; try again. . .

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[a drunken Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry stumble in wearing novelty breasts]

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Really tho, are breasts a novelty per se anymore?

Enquiring minds, an' all 'at...

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The fact that the media is completely buying into the narrative that McCarthy's defenestration is the DEMOCRATS' fault fills me with despair. As does the notion that if Democrats would just let Republicans exercise power, everything would be just fine. But casting our minds back a mere 7 years ago when Republicans had the House, the Senate, and the White House (and a slim Supreme Court majority), we find that when Republicans had ALL the power they accomplished . . .

. . . one massive round of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

That's it. That is all they accomplished. They couldn't even get rid of ObamaCare, the one issue they all ran on.

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If the media want to be a little teensy bit more accurate they could rightly say "The Democrats are to blame for the demise of Smilin' Kev...to their credit."

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" Good taste Republicans "? As opposed to " less filling Republicans "?

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That was a fun read, maybe you need to add some kind of "Classic Edroso" feature here?

This stuff never gets old, because these motherfuckers NEVER CHANGE.

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I envision a MAGA version of that old chestnut, that counts on the mondo glorioso brown shirts that love 'em some gummint-administered electroshockin', plus the down-home, backwoodsy sorts, who eschew socialized medicine:

"Taze great!" "Less fillings!"

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"Don't taste me, bro!"

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It's "less fillings" because they have less teeth?

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This all could have been avoided if only 5 Republicans voted for Jeffries back in January. You know, to keep things functional. Don't they read McArdle?

BTW, McHenry is a piece of shit from way back. Not surprised he would start to exhibit his shittiness at first opportunity.

See: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2005/10/01/getting-ahead-in-the-gop/

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If we're going back to previous votes, I wonder if it would be in bad taste to point out that on the rule that it should only take one Representative to trigger a vote to vacate, all the Democrats voted no.

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Yes.

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I'ma be Little Miss Sunshine here and point out that there's this idea, been around about 30 years, that you could force massive concessions out of the Democrats, either by shutting down the government or maybe even just threatening to shut down the government. Originated with Newt Gingrich, tried most recently by Donald Trump, who shut the government down to try to force some funding for his stupid wall.

And this thing has NEVER worked. Didn't get Trump money for his stupid wall, didn't get Gingrich whatever the fuck he was after at the time. And the bit o' sunshine is that there seems to be actual learning going on, and many Republicans - after ONLY 30 YEARS of trying - have figured out this is a stupid thing to do and it doesn't get you anything anyway. Why, I've even heard Republican members of Congress say as much, standing right in front of a TV camera! I thing I once thought I would never live to see. Turns out they are educable, if a bit slow.

And that, as far as I can tell, is what the fight is about (I think? Who knows?) It's a fight between the slow-learners and the no-learners. "C'mon, let's shut it all down, it'll be GREAT!" shout the no-learners, and the slow-learners fume and call the no-learners stupid, even though they're not so bright themselves.

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Liked for "no-learners" and "slow-learners". Describes the Republican side of the aisle quite nicely.

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Did y'all read that when Matt Haetz started his coup-let, the Reps threw him outta their side of the chamber so he did it from the Dems' side? Obv. their fault – the Dems, I mean.

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The prospect of being politically irrelevant in the morning focuses the mind wonderfully.

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"I've even heard Republican members of Congress say as much, standing right in front of a TV camera! I thing I once thought I would never live to see. Turns out they are educable, if a bit slow."

Alt. version: They lied that time, too.

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Shutting the government down is bad for peoples' investments. Lots of people have investments. But the people who have the most investments are also (coincidence?) people with a lot of clout. They may hate Pelosi and AOC and the Dems for all the culture war reasons, but not as much as they love their investments. At least some of the GOP has sussed this out.

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Shut down the airports and the Repubs will find a way to fix things really fast. When the important people are inconvenienced in their business travel, they start to notice.

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Yes, they have sussed it out, and after only four shutdowns [puts a "You're Special!" sticker on Republicans' notebooks]

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Roy this is so good, so insightful and so fucking A hilarious. The Republican meltdown, tragic as it is for the state of the nation, is also satire of the highest caliber, freaky-weird WTF is happening as Lost and gut-bustingly sardonically funny as Avenue 5 (if you haven't seen it, you should - a brilliant Armando Iannucci joint). As usual, we are laughing through the tears. Between you, Jeff Tiedrich and Heather Cox Richardson, I don't feel like I'm OD'g on The Crazy Pills (most days). x

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Yes! That actress is incredible in Rain Dogs, by the way - a must see.

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Ari Fleischer is still around? Is he a zombie? Yet I hate McGardle even more.

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Maybe HE got to become a zombie yesterday. I did not, and I am unhappy.

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Yeah, me neither. I guess our vax-delivered microchips are defective.

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Typical Microsoft.

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Guess we'll just have to wait for the update to finish downloading.

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It looks like it just turned him into an evil egg.

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Evil, really? Misunderstood, surely. A Loser As A Human Being, perhaps. But evil? A bit harsh, is all I'm sayin'...

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All true, but it took the national media about 4 attoseconds* to pivot to “Here are the issues Dems lose to Reps: crime, immigrants and schools.” Also too, inflation.

*an attosecond is one-thousands of a femtosecond and there are as many attoseconds in a second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe, according to the Nobel Committee. It is useful in measuring the movement of electrons and the attention span of the average American.

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How the flipping French flying fuck is the GOP "better on schools"?

Also - transfemtosecond: the time it takes a TERF to whine about "same-sex spaces"

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Didn't you get the memo? The definition of "schools" has been narrowed to "shit Glenn Youngkin talks about."

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Burning down public schools is the other Great Republican Unstated National Thing. Started with private schools and home schooling following Brown v. Board, continued with charters and enforced public funding of private schools to include religious institutions (yes, your taxes pay churches to indoctrinate their young), and have branched out to include the war on children via mass shootings and organized swattings, etc as ways to ensure no parent ever wants their kid in a school again...

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As in "let's not have them for those people, who would be happier cleaning up after us and stuff like that." Remember, slavery was edifying, or so I'm told.

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So many valuable blacksmithing and being-raped skills learned.

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It's a wonder the Democrats ever win ANYTHING! Who even votes for them? Tis a great mystery, all of our diner-investigators have failed to find an answer.

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That is to me a Nobel surPrize.

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4 attoseconds to pivot to "Attaboy, Republicans!".

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The idea that Republicans would do anything to save anyone, even themselves, is really hard to swallow.

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Is this the place where we insert the scorpion and the frog story?

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With the republicans it’s more of “the scorpion, the scorpion, the third scorpion, a bunch of other scorpions and the small jar” story

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The idea that if the situation were reversed, and the House GOP would come to the rescue if AOC, Jamie Raskin, Barbara Lee, Pramyla Jayapal and Ilhan Omar had tied Nancy Pelosi to the railroad tracks is sort of charming, if wildly implausible.

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I wanna see Snidely Whiplash's mustache on Ilhan Omar. Lacking that, I remain unconvinced.

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We had a parakeet named Snidely Whiplash. Followed by Snidely II.

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Charlie Sykes (I know, I know) published this list yesterday of why it was absurd to suppose the Dems would come to Kevin's aid. As Theda Skocpol says in a good Politco interview today, in the end nobody trusted McCarthy.

After the 2020 election, McCarthy rushed to secure his right-flank by joining with election denialists, endorsing a bogus legal challenge to the outcome. Even after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he voted against certifying the election.

McCarthy initially said that Trump was responsible for the riot, but days later rushed to pay obeisance in Mar-a-Lago, giving the seditionist former president a thumbs up and a political lifeline.

When Liz Cheney appealed to the conscience of her fellow Republicans, McCarthy purged her from leadership and then orchestrated her primary defeat.

He repeatedly tried to undermine and sabotage attempts to investigate the January 6 Insurrection, reversing his support for a bipartisan commission under pressure from MAL.

During his 15-vote bid for the speakership, McCarthy laid the seeds of his ouster, as he made one concession after another to the radicals in his caucus. He publicly embraced and empowered fringe figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Maybe he thought that would buy him protection from the fever swamps. He was wrong.

McCarthy aggressively courted right-wing media types like Tucker Carlson, and gave 1/6 security footage exclusively to the soon-to-be-fired Fox News host.

In his dealing with Democrats, he repeatedly reversed course and broke his word. He backed the microchips manufacturing bill last year but then whipped his party to vote against it.

As The Wapo reported yesterday: “McCarthy backed out of a spending agreement he made with President Biden as part of a deal to lift the debt limit less than two weeks after Biden signed the law in an attempt to placate the furious conservatives in his conference. Democrats on the House floor on Saturday chanted, ‘Keep your word!’”

As he sought to appease the radicals, he opened an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, without holding the floor vote he promised. The result has been a deplorable clown show.

And, while he finally worked with Democrats to keep the government open, he enraged them by refusing to give them 72 hours to read the short-term spending bill. “Democrats were given just minutes to read it and vote on it despite asking Republican leadership for more time. (Democrats deployed stalling tactics to get about two hours to read and discuss the bill.)”

“On Sunday, McCarthy went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and charged Democrats with wanting a shutdown. That infuriated Democrats, who voted nearly unanimously for the government spending bill when fewer than half of Republicans did.” At their caucus meeting Tuesday, Democrats played a tape of McCarthy’s remarks, which clearly helped to seal his fate.

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The executive summary of the above is that McCarthy made an alliance to gain power with the Freedom Caucus, a group who thinks believing 6 impossible things before breakfast means you're not really trying. And when McCarthy failed to deliver 7 impossible things tied with a ribbon, they turned on him. Since they gave him that power, they could also take it away, and they did. He did himself no favors by turning up the heat at the last minute, but I prefer to think of that as a last desperate cry for help from a man incapable of asking for help. If he wasn't begging Democrats to vote him out I have no idea what he was thinking.

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Say, anybody know what this empty suit is doing here?

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Oh sure, that's all true--but look on the positive side, Kevin is (barely) not Matt Gaetz.

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That's it, his one and only redeeming quality. It's not enough.

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Not by half.

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The thought of Liz Cheney appealing to anyone’s conscience produced peals of horrific laughter from Cthulhu and the Elder Gods.

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So, Dad and his Bush The Lesser cohort then?

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Rummy, Kissinger, Rhenquist—ghouls of that nature.

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McArdle, McLaughlin, McCarthy: A sinister pattern emerges.

But seriously, re Baseball jerk: Yes, if there's one constant in American politics, it's that Republicans never get to exercise political power. That's why everything--wealth distribution, SCOTUS, voting rights--is so fucking great.

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I believe an 'Oof' is appropriate here.

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It's not fair! Not fair not fair not fair!

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".... but we don't want the Irish!"

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Beam me down, Scotties!

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"McArdle, McLaughlin, McCarthy: A sinister pattern emerges."

It's all in the Protocols of the Elders of McGillicuddy

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Given my current hobby of Wondering What The Fuck The Republican Party Is Doing this roundup of reaction shots is interesting. Not a whisper of a hint that the Republican Party has some agency here too, pally. For example, did you know that no one has a right to be a member of a political party (other than maybe protected classes defined by law, but even they don't have carte blanch to set fire to the furniture) and yet yobbos like Trump and Gaetz determined to turn the Party into a cult classic beloved by thousands of people remain members in good standing? The Party has been clear for over a century that their policy is government should do and control as little as possible. It seems to have been adopted by the Party bureaucracy for their own bylaws as well.

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RIP Republican Leadership, drowned in the bathtub when no one was looking.

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Oo.

Bathtubs be all (crossin' clawfoots and shrugging, with a little grin) "Ah, 'tweren't nuthin'..."

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"The Party has been clear for over a century that their policy is government should do and control as little as possible."

The Party *Is* The Government, And When It's Not It Must Be Destroyed, A Continuing Series

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Yeah, but the Party is about The Power, not The Government. The Republican Party has wanted to drown The Governmemt in a bathtub for a long, long time. They have always wanted regulation, oversight, and taxes Gone. That's "The Government" they want to drown, what's left after that's gone is The Power. Power to dispense contracts, appointments, mineral and timber rights. The real work of Government.

Republicans have been making slow but steady progress since Reagan showed them a promised land where they could do all that and still retain Power. They've been working on that dream ever since. What's new is the Children of Reagan want the world and they want it now, and Pied Piper Trump has convinced them they can get it if they're willing to move fast and break things. They understand that message and are executing the plan. The Old Republican plan was a death by a thousand paper cuts, but the New plan is to rip the stitches out and pour Ivermectin down America's throat. That's what the war is about, how to kill democracy, not whether to. The new kids are willing to take MUCH bigger risks than the Old Guard, and since the Old Guard is powerless to stop them they'll just keep going. Or they just said fuck it: "I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them show the way", as Newt Gingrich sang on his hit single, The Greatest Love Of All.

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So charmingly. quaint, the timber and mineral rights...

You gotta be kidding. Everyone alive and cogent right now is looking to just take what they want and let the gummint whine about it later. Musk took space. Nobody did shit. We can't see the universe thru Musk's haze of space junk. When the killer asteroid sneaks up on us we'll probly think 'gee, woulda been nice to have a warning...but whaddya gonna do? "

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actually, I don't want any warning, and as far as that sneaking goes, the sooner the better.

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Hey, there's a lot of money locked up in those national forests and parks. Not to mention removal of the bootheel of regulation on places like West, Texas. Anyway, the asteroid won't hit us because Musk is going to fill the sky with so many low-orbit satellites that nothing gets through without paying Musk a fee.

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Oh, the money's there, sure. But the idea that Reps wanna 'dispense' it is aside from the dream of simply 'taking' it.

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It'd be different if this was 1920, and the government didn't do much. Then you could be a Reasonable Conservative saying "Well, we can let the government do a LEETLE bit more, but not TOO MUCH more, OK?"

But it's 2023 and the government is more than a third of the economy. If you want it to be significantly less than that, you're a loon who belongs in another century (or Somalia.) And this they can never adjust to, it drives them mad (OK, madder).

What would be the role of a Reasonable Conservative in today's world? Fuck if I know, not really my problem, is it?

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Republicans see 1920 as a Golden Age, the problem they see today is that the Government is a third of the economy, a third that belongs in private hands. That's the dismantling of the Government that.Old School and MAGA Republicans completely agree on.

It's a good question, what would a Reasonable Conservative today look like. The problem I have is any argument that Government should not be involved in a given area has been so poisoned by the Republican Party over the last 30+ years that it's almost impossible to hear it as offered in good faith. It's a shame, because a philosophy that is never questioned is one that can go off the rails before anyone notices.

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"any argument that Government should not be involved in a given area has been so poisoned by the Republican Party over the last 30+ years that it's almost impossible to hear it as offered in good faith." Oh, plenty of people still think it's Gospel, and for the same reason they believe the other Gospel.

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