Given the utterly pathetic performance by everyone in the Republican party—from their inability to get to a nominee for Speaker even in a secret vote, to the superseding indictment of George Santos on 23 federal felony counts, to Ron DeSantis’ loser campaign, to the incessant whining by Cadet Bonespurs in and out of the courts—I think today’s earworm just has to be Warren Zevon’s “Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me.”
Crank up the volume.
Got my annual flu shot yesterday. Last week it was the COVID booster, which clearly will also become an annual affair.
And on Monday the heating guy came to check out
the furnace.
I am ready for Winter.
I voted yesterday in the Virginia state and local election.
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On my way in, the local Democrats handed me a “sample
ballot”, on blue paper, with their list of whom to check off in each category,
from soil and water conservation board to Delegate and State Senator. The
volunteer could have got less up my nose if he hadn’t mansplained the
blindingly obvious as though I’d driven up on a turnip truck on my way to a
matinée of Barbie, but that’s the Old Dominion for you.
(The Republicans were there, too, but since I
was wearing my Force for Science tee shirt from the 2017 March for Science,
they might have judged me not worth the effort. Interestingly, their “sample
ballot” was also printed on blue paper.)
What I find interesting about the process is that the sidewalk to the polling place is chockablock with campaign signs; multiple signs for each candidate.
This makes me wonder—does anyone coming to
vote in an election find themselves deciding on the candidate for them based on
one of those signs? Like, “I was really unclear about whom to pick for Sheriff,
but now that I’ve seen his signs, I am totally behind Foghorn P. Leghorn. Yep—he’s
the man for the job!”
Well—that’s the Old Dominion for you.
Lawd-a-mercy, after declaring definitively last Tuesday that, having been ousted as Speaker of the House (a historic first), he would not run again for the job…yesterday Kevin McCarthy announced a few times that he’s available for his old job, if his (Republican) colleagues want to put him back in it.
It’s absolutely true what they say: you can’t
believe a single thing Kev says.
I don’t know how this would work, or how he
imagines it would work. If you recall, back in January (having already moved
his crap into the Speaker’s office the weekend before Congress was in session),
McCarthy suffered through 15 ballot (another first!), successively giving up
more and more power to the RWNJ caucus run by Matt “Rapey McForehead” Gaetz
before he finally achieved the apotheosis of his ambitions. That was with
McCarthy actively campaigning, actively begging for votes, actively
surrendering swathes of the speakership just to hold the gavel.
He lasted 23.7 Scaramuccis.
How does he imagine it would go with two rabid
cons (Gym Jordan and Steve Scalise) already in contention and not one voice
saying, “Hey—what about Kevin?” Is he hoping they’ll cancel each other out and
an exhausted Republican caucus will turn to him to save the day? Is he thinking
they might actually kill each other and he’ll be there to pick up the pieces?
I’m not seeing it. Since his very hard-won
election, he hasn’t been able to get much of anything done in the House,
because—despite holding a numeric majority—those RWNJs don’t play well with
anyone and it’s strenglich verboten that any R work with Democrats to
actually, you know, legislate. Every bill was laden with Tea Party appeasement crap
to the point that anything that made it through the House was nixed in the
Senate.
This no-Dems-allowed thing is a policy McCarthy
is actually down with. The problem is that he doesn’t have enough Rs who are not
RWNJs to pass anything without Democratic help. But any whiff of him talking
across the aisle gets him beaten up and losing his lunch money on the way to
school.
That situation, by the way, has not changed. If
the Archangel Gabriel descended to the House floor and scattered pixie dust
upon its denizens long enough to get a majority to cast their votes for the
fro-yo mogul from Bakersfield, he’d still be faced with the Gaetz gang’s antics
and he still wouldn’t be able to govern.
But obviously, Kev just can’t stop the
yearning. He’s like the spotty dweeb in high school who nonetheless dreams of
showing up at the prom with the hot blonde cheerleader and basking in the resplendent
glory of showing everyone up.
It’s like he’s a political incel, which would
be pathetic if the consequences of his incompetence weren’t so staggering.
I think the word I'm looking for, actually, is...pathetic.
What to be grateful for today—two days after the assault by the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas, on Israel; that’s the question.
We’ve had two and a half years of Vladimir
Putin’s three-day “military exercise” in Ukraine, with the arrogant atrocities
and war crimes by Russian forces. I’d just digested reports on the village of
Hroza, where a missile strike deliberately targeted a funeral service, killing
52 civilians and requiring that they use excavators to enlarge their small
cemetery to accommodate the new burials. And then, Saturday morning, I woke up
to video of the coordinated attack from Gaza into Israel, with the invaders
murdering civilians and taking hostages.
Honestly—do the rules of war mean nothing
anymore? /s
Naturally, according to Republicans (who never
met a crisis they couldn’t spin into a bizarre, utterly false, talking point),
Biden is somehow responsible for this.
Israel has retaliated, as was probably the
point of the Hamas exercise, and we’re in for quite the shitshow. It will be
ugly—metastatic ugly. I can’t stop thinking of something Gandhi said: an eye
for an eye will make the whole world blind.
And it feels to me like we’re getting there at
a rate of knots.
So, for gratitude today, I’m reaching out to nature. I’m grateful that—unlike millions in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza and Lebanon (at time of writing)—I can turn off the images and sounds of war, step out into my (so-far) peaceful neighborhood and see on an entirely different kind of show, where the fire is in the leaves and in the sunrise on the clouds.
You ever get a song stuck in your brain and just can’t get rid of it?
Yeah—this week for me it’s the “In the Tiki,
Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room” from one of my favorite attractions, The Enchanted Tiki
Room, in Disney theme parks.
Maybe if I share it with you I can get it out
of my head.
The actual music starts at 4:37.
Strange week in these United States.
The best efforts of right-wing Republican nut jobs
in the House of Representatives were not enough to shut down the government,
even though they stamped their feet, held their breath and tossed their toys
out of the pram.
As a consequence, the first invertebrate to
hold the office of Speaker of the House (after 15 votes) also became the first
Speaker to be voted out of the office (after 270 days—shortest tenure since
1878).
It was rather amusing to watch Kevin McCarthy go
on CBS Face the Nation on Sunday and bald-facedly lie to Margaret Brennan to
blame Democrats for the Continuing Resolution drama; she laughed at him.
Ahead of today's vote on an effort to oust @SpeakerMcCarthy, the House Democratic Caucus watched McCarthy's interview with @margbrennan on Sunday, where he attempted to blame House Democrats for the near-government shutdown.
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 3, 2023
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/IwwnMYZitK
Aaaand then on Tuesday he reached out to those
same Democrats to try to save his speakership when Matt Gaetz came gunning for
him for the high crime of…working with the Democrats to get the CR passed.
People—these morons have driver’s licenses.
They’re loose on the streets.
Well, McCarthy’s out as Speaker, bow-tied twit
Patrick McHenry of North Carolina is interim Speaker. His first action
(prompted by McCarthy) was to order former (and highly-effective Speaker) Nancy
Pelosi to move out of her current office; his second was to order Steny Hoyer
(former Majority Leader) out of his office.
Never let it be said that there is any act too
petty for Republicans to perform.
Li'l Kev subsequently announced that he will never run for Speaker again. Evidently there is a limit to the amount of humiliation he'll undergo.
Having thus exhausted themselves, Republicans
ordered the House into recess until next Wednesday, notwithstanding the fact that the clock is ticking on legislation to fund the federal government beyond mid-November. Hissy fits are hard, man.
And in courtroom news, the (twice-impeached,
four-times indicted, never-won-the-popular-vote) former president, Cadet
Bonespurs, got a gag order from Justice Arthur Engoron in New York District
Court. The tipping point was a burp on the Kleptocrat’s imitation Twitter
platform attacking Engoron’s law clerk—posted while he was actually in court on
Tuesday, but you could tell he was working his way up to projectile verbal vomiting,
starting with his arrival in the Manhattan courthouse Monday morning. (One of his
whines is the fact that this is a bench trial—“there’s no jury!” Well, doofus,
that’s because one of your lawyers couldn’t be arsed to file the paperwork
requesting a jury trial. James’s team requested no jury; Orangina’s team didn’t
file, so voilà. Yet he’s still moaning about it. At any moment I expect him to
exclaim, “It’s a tapestry of justice!”) His rants have become more and more
unhinged in the past couple of weeks, and he barged into the courthouse visibly
steaming about the fraud case filed by NY Attorney General Letitia James.
(Engoron ruled last week that James has proved the fraud; this trial is to
determine the amount of damages Bonespurs and his business entities have to
cough up.)
Tuesday afternoon, Engoron met in private with
TFG, his lawyers and the prosecutors. Evidently the post had been brought to
his attention and he bitch-slapped Bonespurs thoroughly, demanding that it be
deleted. It was, but he’d already used it for fundraising appeals; the goobers
do like that kind of thing. The deal currently seems to be that none of the
parties—looking at you, short-fingered vulgarian—may make public
statements about any member of the court staff; violations will bring
consequences. (Not sure what those might be, though.)
(Also on Tuesday, Forbes dropped the Kleptocrat from their 400 richest people list. That's gotta bite his gold-plated ego.)
TBH, I’m surprised we haven’t had more
outbursts from the head of the Republican party. Having to sit for hours in a
room where you’re not allowed to speak and aren’t even the focus of attention
has to be agony for a malignant narcissist. Then there are the physical issues—the
girdle and adult diaper can’t be comfortable at all. Must be a little tricky
changing the latter in a public toilet, too.
Also, TBH—I’m surprised that Bonespurs hasn’t
violated the gag order. I didn’t think he’d make it out of the courthouse
without spewing something sanctionable. But evidently he’s planning on
testifying at some point in this trial, so I’m pretty sure he’ll make it over
the line.
At time of writing, TFG has packed it in, courtwise, and is headed to Florida. He has, after all, been unable to golf for three days; understandable.
And it is no wonder that the world is watching this
and slowly backing away.
I saw this SUV on the regular in the parking lot outside my physical therapy facility.
I found it fascinating as a variant on the *RUMP
2024/Confederate flag/Fuck Joe Biden display. Perhaps more restrained, but
still deep into dipshittery.
But that’s America for you.
I was on my way to get my 2023 COVID booster shot and noticed some sparrows were having a happy Monday.
Okay, House Republicans finally hawked up a Continuing Resolution bill late Saturday that the Senate approved. That means that the United States government will be funded for the next 44 days.
Yay.
And I’m grateful for that, although it means 44 days of more performative theatre instead of actual legislating.
Those rat bastards did not include aid to
Ukraine, but they did manage to include a pay raise for themselves. Since they’re
already grotesquely overpaid for the value they give, I am incensed about that.
I’ll just focus on people who actually do their
jobs getting paid, I guess. Odd that I need to think about that in what’s meant
to be the global pinnacle of democracy and governance.
