#from matt gaetz

[mudwerks]

(via Matt Gaetz’s Wife Decries 'Disappointingly Low T From Ken' in Barbie Movie)

being Matt Gaetz’s wife (her name is GINGER) she is likely an expert on “Low T”

#Disappointingly Low T From Ken #she knows low t #matt gaetz is the low t poster boy #gaetz #wife #ginger

[princesssarcastia]

is my federal government going to shut down next week? almost certainly. is it going to be anywhere from horribly inconvenient to devastating for tens of millions of american citizens? absolutely. and I feel horrible about that part.

but goddamn if it isn't satisfying to watch the republican party eat itself alive like the wreckage of a fire ant colony

#gonna go watch that government shutdown episode of the west wing to commemorate it #plus it's suuuuper funny to watch republicans go to the press every ten minutes #telling them how stupid and weak they think kevin mccarthy is #pro tip pal: if the best political calculus everyone in your party can make #from the hardliners to the moderates #is that it benefits them to smear your name in public? #you're finished #he's almost certainly going to get voted out #matt gaetz is going to try and serve him up to the far right on a platter #especially after he put ukraine funding back on the table #god i feel like i need popcorn

[wilwheaton]

But even if Speaker Johnson proves more moderate and pragmatic early on, the fact remains that the new Republican leader was an architect of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. In a sane world, this would disqualify him from becoming second in line to the presidency.

Mike Johnson Got Elected, But Matt Gaetz Is Big Winner of GOP’s House Speaker Battle

[cleolinda]

January 7, 2023

It’s finally over. After days of negotiations and 14 failed ballots—the most since 1860—Republican Kevin McCarthy was officially elected speaker of the House early Saturday morning. In exchange for the necessary votes to get him elected, the congressman had to beg, barter, and plead with a group of hardline Republicans who held out for a litany of concessions.

Since Wednesday, McCarthy and his supporters have been negotiating with several far-right GOPers, including some who have been implicated in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as my colleague Dan Friedman previously reported. House members like Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) all held out on their votes, until McCarthy eventually won them over.

According to CNN, here’s what the holdouts got from McCarthy in exchange for the speakership:

Any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair

October 3, 2023

#politics #us politics #they specifically put that clause in eight months ago so they could do this #dance with the devil and see what happens #do you know why I had that link ready? #because they’re Chekhov’s assholes

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Out Representative-elect Robert Garcia (D-CA) may not have been able to get sworn in yesterday due to Republicans’ inability to elect a Speaker of the House, but he has plans for when he finally can be sworn in.

When he takes his oath of office, he’ll swear on a copy of the Constitution, and, beneath that, an original Superman #1 comic from 1939, a photo of his parents, and a copy of his citizenship certificate.

Garcia came to the U.S. from Peru with his family when he was five-years-old and has said that naturalization was “his proudest moment” and the reason he started a career in politics. His parents died in 2020 of COVID-19.

He was the youngest and first out LGBTQ+ person elected as mayor of Long Beach, California (a position he served in from 2014 to 2022). During his time as mayor, he worked with businesses to reduce their environmental impacts, filled vacancies on citizen commissions with diverse and female members, and worked to improve local infrastructure as well as financial opportunities for local artists and home-based business owners.

He’s also an avid comic book fan.

In November, he tweeted a photo of the Superman #1 comic along with Amazing Fantasy #15, in which Spider-Man first appeared, saying he didn’t know which one he would first check out from the Library of Congress.

While many members of Congress will be sworn in on Bibles, they are not legally required to do so. Former Rep. – and current Minnesota attorney general – Keith Ellison (D-MN), who was the first Muslim person elected to Congress in 2007, was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t sworn in with any object after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. And in 2014 Suzi LeVine was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein on a Kindle with a copy of the Constitution open.

“I wanted to use a copy that is from the twenty-first century and that reflects my passion for technology and my hope for the future,” she said at the time.

New members of the House can’t be sworn in until a speaker is elected. Yesterday, after three votes, no candidate for Speaker was able to get a majority of votes because of a faction of Republicans voting against Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The Democrats’ candidate – Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) – got the most votes in each round of voting, and around 20 Republicans – including anti-LGBTQ+ Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Bob Good (R-VA), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) – voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Jordan himself nominated and voted for McCarthy.

The House adjourned without a new Speaker elected.

#us politics #news #2023 #twitter #tweet #Democrats #lgbtq nation #robert garcia #us house of representatives #118th congress #detective comics #us constitution #library of congress #lgbtqia+ #lgbtqia+ representation #lgbtqia+ pride #us history #President Theodore Roosevelt #Suzi LeVine #Keith Ellison #superman #California

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

the Floridian caller who has called into C-Span who is apologizing for Matt Gaetz is the sweetest old lady and I love her. And she’s also right in everything she is saying. 

Also I really appreciate that she’s able to say “I voted for Gaetz in 2016 and I now recognize that was a mistake and he’s horrible and the GOP has turned into a party of odious people etc. etc.” 

It takes some serious guts and moral courage to call into C-Sapn, which everyone is watching right now, and say that publicly. Good on Beth from Florida. 

#I love her #speakergate 2023 #the insurrectionists are in the House and we have no legislative body and our government can't work #<-- Beth from Florida #she is right #us politics #politics

[odinsblog]

False Equivalence

Why does the mainstream media keep depicting lunatic-right Republicans and normal Democrats as equidistant from the center?

With the final passage of the debt ceiling deal, Democrats got off easier than one might have expected, given that it was a deal between a mainstream Democratic president and a Republican House in thrall to the lunatic far right. In drastic contrast to the scorched-earth budget bill initially passed by the Republican-controlled House, the cuts were about par for the course in a divided government; and they spare the country a repeat of this debt-hostage ordeal for two years.

However, much of the media played the agreement as a compromise between two equal extremes. The New York Times story about the House passage of the deal included this astonishing sentence: "With both far-right and hard-left lawmakers in revolt over the deal, it fell to a bipartisan coalition powered by Democrats to push the bill over the finish line, throwing their support behind the compromise in an effort to break the fiscal stalemate that had gripped Washington for weeks."

Think about that for a moment. There is no doubt that Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar et al. are far-right by any definition, as white supremacists, Christian nationalists, election deniers, and nihilists on fiscal policy.

But no Democrats in the House can fairly be described as hard left. Those who voted against the deal included moderate liberals such as Joaquin Castro, mainstream progressives like Rosa DeLauro and Jan Schakowsky, as well as self-described democratic socialists including Cori Bush and AOC. But none of them are "hard left," which suggests anti-democratic, any more than Franklin Roosevelt was hard left.

The Times coverage reinforces a narrative of false equivalence that the media keeps repeating, with lazy catchphrases like "partisan bickering." It also plays into the hands of corrupt No Labels and Third Way types, who promote the idea that the best course for the republic is to split the difference between neofascists and a normal mainstream Democratic Party and president.

Big media, obsessed as it is with the appearance of fair and balanced coverage, took years to give itself permission to accurately describe Donald Trump with the impolite word "liar." But its treatment of the two parties as in any sense symmetrical is far more insidious than using euphemisms to characterize Trump’s lies.

Our friend Peter Dreier, whose observations inspired this post, points out that by any reasonable definition, "even the most left-oriented Democrats (AOC, Bush, Bowman, Raskin, Jayapal) are not extremists. They are shades of social democrats. They are pro-union, pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-LGBT equality, pro-Green New Deal, pro-progressive taxation. But the most right-wing Republicans are extremists and reactionaries."

(continue reading)

#politics #false equivalencies #false narratives #media bias #both sides journalism #republicans #the media is complicit #false neutrality #third way #no labels #3rd way

[lokiinmediasideblog]

FISA 702 HAS PASSED THE HOUSED. WE MUST STOP IT!

Fax your legislators! TELL THEM YOU WON'T VOTE FOR THEM IF THEY VOTE YES ON FISA (Fy-zah) 702!

You can also fax your legislators for FREE at:

From Edward Snowden's Twitter:

If you were mad about your House rep voting to let the government spy on you without a warrant ("FISA 702" - fy-za seven-oh-two), we may have one last shot. CALL YOUR REP @ [phone] and say "𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝟳𝟬𝟮, 𝗜 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗿𝗶𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂."

From the article link:

House lawmakers voted on Friday to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, including a key measure that allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans. The controversial law allows for far-reaching monitoring of foreign communications, but has also led to the collection of US citizens’ messages and phone calls.

Lawmakers voted 273–147 to approve the law, which the Biden administration has for years backed as an important counterterrorism tool. An amendment that would have required authorities seek a warrant failed, in a tied 212-212 vote across party lines.

Donald Trump opposed the reauthorization of the bill, posting to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday: “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”

The law, which gives the government expansive powers to view emails, calls and texts, has long been divisive and resulted in allegations from civil liberties groups that it violates privacy rights. House Republicans were split in the lead-up to vote over whether to reauthorize section 702, the most contentious aspect of the bill, with Mike Johnson, the House speaker, struggling to unify them around a revised version of the pre-existing law.

Republicans shot down a procedural vote on Wednesday that would have allowed Johnson to put the bill to a floor vote, in a further blow to the speaker’s ability to find compromise within his party. Following the defeat, the bill was changed from a five-year extension to a two-year extension of section 702 – an effort to appease far-right Republicans who believe Trump will be president by the time it expires.

Section 702 allows for government agencies such as the National Security Administration to collect data and monitor the communications of foreign citizens outside of US territory without the need for a warrant, with authorities touting it as a key tool in targeting cybercrime, international drug trafficking and terrorist plots. Since the collection of foreign data can also gather communications between people abroad and those in the US, however, the result of section 702 is that federal law enforcement can also monitor American citizens’ communications.

Section 702 has faced opposition before, but it became especially fraught in the past year after court documents revealed that the FBI had improperly used it almost 300,000 times – targeting racial justice protesters, January 6 suspects and others. That overreach emboldened resistance to the law, especially among far-right Republicans who view intelligence services like the FBI as their opponent.

Trump’s all-caps post further weakened Johnson’s position. Trump’s online remarks appeared to refer to an FBI investigation into a former campaign adviser of his, which was unrelated to section 702. Other far-right Republicans such as Matt Gaetz similarly vowed to derail the legislation, putting its passage in peril.

Meanwhile, the Ohio congressman Mike Turner, Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told lawmakers on Friday that failing to reauthorize the bill would be a gift to China’s government spying programs, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah.

“We will be blind as they try to recruit people for terrorist attacks in the United States,” Turner said on Friday on the House floor.

The California Democratic representative and former speaker Nancy Pelosi also gave a statement in support of passing section 702 with its warrantless surveillance abilities intact, urging lawmakers to vote against an amendment that would weaken its reach.

“I don’t have the time right now, but if members want to know I’ll tell you how we could have been saved from 9/11 if we didn’t have to have the additional warrants,” Pelosi said.

Debate over Section 702 pitted Republicans who alleged that the law was a tool for spying on American citizens against others in the GOP who sided with intelligence officials and deemed it a necessary measure to stop foreign terrorist groups. One proposed amendment called for requiring authorities to secure a warrant before using section 702 to view US citizens’ communications, an idea that intelligence officials oppose as limiting their ability to act quickly. Another sticking point in the debate was whether law enforcement should be prohibited from buying information on American citizens from data broker firms, which amass and sell personal data on tens of millions of people, including phone numbers and email addresses.

Section 702 dates back to the George W Bush administration, which secretly ran warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. In 2008, Congress passed section 702 as part of the Fisa Amendments Act and put foreign surveillance under more formal government oversight. Lawmakers have renewed the law twice since, including in 2018 when they rejected an amendment that would have required authorities to get warrants for US citizens’ data.

Last year Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, sent a letter to congressional leaders telling them to reauthorize section 702. They claimed that intelligence gained from it resulted in numerous plots against the US being foiled, and that it was partly responsible for facilitating the drone strike that killed the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2022.

#us politics #internet #mass surveillance #censorship #lgbtqia #palestine #islamophobia #FISA 702 #KOSA

[tomorrowusa]

There is a lot of emphasis in the news media on Biden's age while almost nothing about Trump's fitness. This needs to change and we should be more active about holding news organizations to account.

In a four day period in September, the cable news stations mentioned Biden’s age 193 times while Trump’s age was mentioned just 56 times. (MediaMatters.org on September 29, 2023.) After this one sided coverage, these same media outlets then polled the voters about Biden’s age and found (surprise!) that voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s age. It’s garbage in and garbage out.

There's just a 3.5 year difference between Biden and Trump. But Trump is not the fitter of the two. Being an epic blowhard and blabbermouth is not a measure of fitness.

After Biden concluded his debt ceiling deal with McCarthy in June, the extremist so-called House “Freedom” Caucus members complained that Biden “outsmarted” McCarthy in the negotiations. The House GOP’s most extreme members hate Biden and have zero incentive to tell the truth about Biden’s good state of health.

So even the most extreme Republicans had to admit that they were outfoxed by Biden.

On October 2, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) took to the floor of the House to denounce the deal that funded the government for forty five days Gaetz said: “It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money in every negotiation.”

As for Trump's health, mental health in particular, the evidence of his debility is on full display.

Meanwhile, the mainstream press has largely ignored and downplayed Trump’s declining mental condition and increasing tendency to threaten violence. Probably the only mainstream media piece that accurately described the respective health of Biden and Trump was in the New York Times on June 4, 2023. The pertinent excerpts are as follows: “While in office, Mr. Trump generated concerns about his mental acuity and physical condition. He did not exercise, his diet leaned heavily on cheeseburgers and steak and he officially tipped the scales at 244 pounds, a weight formally deemed obese for his height. After complaining that he was overscheduled with morning meetings, Mr. Trump stopped showing up at the Oval Office until 11 or 11:30 a.m. each day, staying in the residence to watch television, make phone calls or send out incendiary tweets. During an appearance at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he had trouble lifting a glass of water and seemed to have trouble making his way down a modest ramp. Most striking was Mr. Trump’s cognitive performance. He was erratic and tended to ramble; experts have found that he had grown less articulate and that his vocabulary had shrunk since his younger days. Aides said privately that Mr. Trump had trouble processing information and distinguishing fact from fiction. His second chief of staff, John F. Kelly, bought a book analyzing Mr. Trump’s psychological health to understand him better, and several cabinet secretaries concerned that he might be mentally unfit discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him.”

He's gotten worse rather than better since leaving office.

These aren’t isolated statements. The highlights (or lowlights) of Trump’s deteriorating condition are as follows. Trump forgot who is currently president, and claimed “the Obama administration” recorded the length of his “border wall.” He even claimed **Jeb Bush** invaded Afghanistan and Iraq! Trump appeared confused when he said Jeb Bush was president during the Iraq War. “You know he was a mili — he got us into the, uh, he got us into the Middle East … Right?” In September, Trump mixed up Biden and Obama, and claimed Biden might start World War TWO. Trump even said you need a government photo ID to buy a loaf of bread. At the same time, Trump’s remarks have taken a dark turn and he has repeatedly threatened violence. Trump suggested that General Mark Milley should be executed. If anybody else had said that, they would be getting a visit from the FBI. The fact that this isn’t being treated as major front-page news is astonishing to me.

Trump makes threats to media moguls and they go easy on reporting his delirium.

The run away front runner for the GOP presidential nomination said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year. Why does the press continue to cover up Trump’s poor health when he has promised to go after them? How can they be so stupid? It’s pretty wild that, of the two leading presidential candidates, the guy found liable for rape and who is facing ninety one criminal indictments isn’t the one who is facing calls to step aside for someone else to run. The mainstream media has lost all sense of scale and proportion. The media fixation with Biden as opposed to this clearly impaired guy is journalistic malpractice.

Psychologist Mary Trump, Donald's niece, called her uncle a "dangerous presence" on Australia's ABC earlier this year. She also said he was essentially "an insecure little boy who seeks attention".

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Ask your news providers why they are seldom mentioning Trump's mental health in their coverage. They should not be normalizing his threats against people and his bizarre erratic comments.

#donald trump #trump's deteriorating mental health #trump is unfit for office #mary trump #republicans #2024 gop presidential nomination #election 2024

[soberscientistlife]

Reporters drop bombshell, reveal the names of the 10 House Republicans who attended a secret meeting in which they tried to pressure Mike Pence into helping Trump steal Biden’s win by refusing the certify the Electoral College vote on January 6.

Their names are:

Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) Scott Perry (R-Pa.) Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) Brian Babin (R-Texas) Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) Andy Harris (R-Md.) Jody Hice (R-Ga.)

This new revelation spells DISASTER for everyone in that list — putting them in the cross hairs of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal investigation into Trump for trying to criminally overturn the 2022 presidential election.

But it gets even worse for them, because several of them requested a pardon from Trump, which can help prove their criminal guilt if Special Counsel Jack Smith decides to charge them as Trump’s co-conspirators.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Sooner rather than later.

#matt gaetz #republican assholes #republican hypocrisy #republican values #kevin mccarthy

[spacelazarwolf]

I think "why GenZ went puritan" is a mix of factors, one is algorithm, we have a whole generation with just a very small number of social media, vs the millennials we grew up on message boards we had to find ourselves, GenZ started off with twitter, etc and an algorithm that fed them content, with little to no skills to find their own experience so this is in part a way to impose their taste on a world that they feel like they have little control over "why don't people make...." I guarantee they do, but people don't have the skills to find a book not being pushed by a TikTok influencer who landed in their feed through algorithm

another factor I think is that people are being pushed by the Trump/post-Trump zeitgeist to be responsible while also being disempowered. They're told that our system is broken, Republicans and Democrats are the same, no one is doing ANYTHING! and barring "The Revolution" nothing will ever get better, but also you, yes you have a personal responsibility to stand against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. This leads to a lot of posting

also we live in an age, MeToo etc where a lot of gross powerful men have been slayed like dragons by people speaking out. Now if you're 14 in Des Moines you're unlikely to have the dirt to bring down a rich powerful and gross figure in the world, but you can also get that dragon slaying thrill from a call out post about a slightly more popular figure in your fandom

finally, bullying, its not really fun to attack someone if they don't give a shit. So I can post all day about how Matt Gaetz has sex with underaged girls for money. But he's never gonna reply or care. But Yiffy the fan artist will reply in tears begging me to take down my post where I say they support incest and child abuse, and I can feel powerful, righteous and important..

also I guess, just if you grow up in a right wing house where the TV, the Church you go/went to, and your parents endlessly bang on about the gross Queers and Qanon style paranoia about pedoes controlling the world etc etc that shit isn't as easy to get rid of as you think and people carry those mindsets over into their "fuck you mom and dad!" progressive/leftist/socialist politics.

nothing to add, 10/10 analysis

#ask avishai

[contemplatingoutlander]

Some excerpts from this column by Michelle Cottle:

A healthy democracy needs its participants to accept a basic will-of-the-majority model. Fringe factions have rights, but they do not run the show. For years, the Republican Party has been shifting toward an anti-majoritarian, burn-down-the-system ethos. Time after time, the preferences and well-being of the many are abandoned in pursuit of the desires of the extremist few. Nowhere has this become more evident than in the House, where various slivers of hard-liners delight in holding the entire chamber — and on occasion the entire country — hostage. The Freedom Caucusers want this or that unpopular policy stuffed into a spending bill. Matt Gaetz’s rebels clamor for this or that procedural change. In some cases, the Venn diagram circles of demands overlap; in others, different gangs dig in on different priorities. Forget compromise or collaboration or collective governance within the conference. It is not even a question of might makes right so much as a contest to see who can grab the most attention for throwing the most disruptive tantrum.

Below is a graphic from the column that shows just how fart to the right Jim Jordan is compared to his fellow Republicans in the House.

#jim jordan #speaker of the house #republicans #dysfunction #extreme right-wing republicans #michelle cottle #the new york times

[qqueenofhades]

I was wondering if you think things would have gone differently for McCarthy if he had immediately shut down the Biden impeachment idea, what with no evidence and all? Personally if I was in congress and saw someone willing to go to such lengths to try to court just a few extremists/crazies in their own party, I’d be super worried about what they would demand next from him

No, because he was 100% in a no-win situation of his own making. He bent over backward to appease the crazies by bringing the "impeachment" investigation, which instantly proved to be a total disaster exposing the complete absence of any actual evidence and was seen as such by everyone, including Fox. Because McCarthy sold his soul to get the job in the first place by pandering to the most extremist elements of the GOP House caucus, he willingly agreed to the situation where just one loony would be able to introduce a motion to vacate him -- which, uh, is exactly what just happened. This was a ticking time bomb, and it's extremely hard to feel bad that it went off. Chekhov's Matt Gaetz, or something.

Basically, Kevin was damned-if-he-did, damned-if-he-didn't. He enraged Democrats by bringing the sham impeachment and by going on TV and blaming them (as he continues to do even now) for "not wanting to pass" the budget deal, when they were the only reason the government didn't shut down. He had repeatedly lied to them, kissed up to Trump, and otherwise been profoundly untrustworthy. He didn't have enough spine or character to shut down the impeachment business, and even if he had, he would have been even more compromised in the eyes of the far-right lunatics (blah blah "Hiding The Truth About Biden's Crimez And Working With Democrats To Stop It!"). Who indeed would have tried to remove him on that alone. This was all completely predictable and unavoidable from the moment he sold every single scrap of principle or customary House rule just to futilely attempt to appease the worst people alive, get his paws on the gavel for barely 9 months, and accomplish literally nothing, thus to go down in flames as a literal first-in-history laughingstock. Hope it was worth it, Kev!

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #the thing about extremists is: you will never be extremist enough for them #pandering to them will always backfire #and you will be deserted by everyone else #but because it's a tenet of political logic in america that the republicans are free to behave badly #and the democrats are Obliged to save them from it and then get blamed if they don't #here we are #le shrug

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 22, 2023

The Senate has confirmed three top defense leaders. Last night it confirmed Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. to replace Army General Mark A. Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he retires at the end of the month. Today, it confirmed General Randy A. George as Army chief of staff and General Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant.

The Senate filled the positions at the top of our military by working around the hold extremist senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put on more than 300 military promotions, allegedly because he objects to the government’s policy of providing leave and travel allowance for service members who have to travel to obtain abortions. 

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post focused on the House Republicans today, though, when she wrote: “The GOP completely gone off its rocker—incapable of passing House spending, ranting and raving at AG, cooking up ludicrous and baseless impeachment, unable to greet Zelensky with joint session. This is not normal. This is egregious. You'd think the reporting would reflect it.”

Indeed, the House Republicans remain unable even to agree to talk about funding the government, let alone actually passing the appropriations bills Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to four months ago. Today, right-wing extremists in the House blocked a procedural vote over a Pentagon funding bill, keeping what is normally an easily passed bipartisan bill from even reaching the floor for debate. McCarthy acknowledged to reporters that he is frustrated. “This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn’t work.”

The extremists do indeed appear unconcerned about the effects of their refusal to fund the government, and since they have the five or six votes they need to sink the measures McCarthy wants to pass with only Republican votes, this handful of representatives are the ones deciding whether the government will shut down. 

McCarthy could pass clean funding bills through the House whenever he wishes, but he refuses. To do so would mean working with Democrats, and that would spark a vote to throw him out of the speakership. And so, rather than keep the members in Washington, D.C., to work on the appropriations bills over the weekend, McCarthy recognized he did not have the votes he needs and sent them home.

The extremists are bolstered by former president Donald Trump, who posted on his social media platform today that the Republicans in Congress “can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government…. This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” 

Experts say shutting down the government would not, in fact, end the former president’s legal troubles, but he is actually doing more than that here: he is trying to assert dominance over the country. As Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “Let’s be clear about what the former president is saying here. House Republicans should shut down the government unless the prosecutions against him are shut down. He would deny paychecks to millions of working families & devastate the US economy, all in the service of himself.”

Extremist leader Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) responded to Trump’s statement with his own: “Trump Opposes the Continuing Resolution” to fund the government,” he wrote. “Hold the line.” Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch noted: “House Republicans refuse to fund the government to protect Donald Trump.” 

Trump’s accusation that President Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department against him and others who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election is the opposite of what has really happened. Not only has Biden stayed scrupulously out of the Justice Department’s business—leaving in place the Trump-appointed leader of the investigation into Biden’s son Hunter, for example—but also we received more proof yesterday that it was Trump, not Biden, who weaponized the Justice Department against his enemies. 

Nora Dennehy, who abruptly resigned from former special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, explained in her confirmation hearing to Connecticut’s state supreme court yesterday that she quit because Trump’s Department of Justice was tainted by politics. Before joining the probe, she said, “I had been taught and spent my entire career at [the] Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner.” 

But Trump and his loyalists expected Durham’s investigation to prove that there was a “deep state” conspiracy against him, and then–attorney general William Barr seemed to be working to support that fantasy, even though there was no evidence of it (as shown by the fact the investigation ultimately fizzled). Barr was, she thought, violating DOJ guidelines in his public comments about the investigation and in his consideration of releasing an interim report before the 2020 election.

“I simply couldn’t be part of it,” Dannehy said. “So I resigned.”

The resistance of the extremists to McCarthy’s leadership is spilling over into foreign affairs as well. Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington, D.C., where he met with President Biden at the White House and with leaders at the Pentagon, and spoke to a closed-door session for the Senate. But he did not speak to the House of Representatives. While McCarthy met with him privately, the speaker maintained that “we just didn’t have time” for him to address the House. 

As part of their demands, House extremists want to cut funding for Ukraine’s defense. This would, of course, work to strengthen Russian president Vladimir Putin’s hand in his war against Ukraine. Earlier this month, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan told MSNBC that it is “absolutely essential” to Putin that Trump win back the White House in 2024. “I think it is Putin's main lifeline in order to find some way to salvage what has been a debacle in Ukraine for him," Brennan said. "If Trump is able to return to the White House...Putin could have a like-minded individual that he can work with, detrimental to U.S. interests certainly and detrimental to Western interests overall.” The intelligence community assesses that Putin worked to help Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and is pushing pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine propaganda now.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assured Zelensky that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine and work with allies and partners to make sure it has the weapons it needs. Lara Seligman of Politico reported today that the Pentagon will continue to fund Ukraine operations even if there is a government shutdown. Military activities deemed crucial to national security can be exempted from being shuttered during a government shutdown.

And finally, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced today that he will be stepping down as chair of his media empire, including both Fox Corporation, which includes the Fox News Channel (FNC), and News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, among other newspapers. In 1996 the Australian-born mogul launched the Fox News Channel with media specialist Roger Ailes, who had packaged Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in 1968 by presenting him to audiences in highly scripted television appearances. 

The Fox News Channel initially presented news from a conservative viewpoint, but over time its opinion shows, delivered as if they were news, came to dominate the channel. Those shows presented a simple narrative in which Americans—overwhelmingly white and rural—wanted the government to leave them alone but “socialists” who wanted social welfare programs demanded their tax dollars. Isolated in the fantasy world of FNC, its viewers became such fanatic adherents to right-wing politics that FNC wholeheartedly trumpeted Trump’s Big Lie after he lost the 2020 presidential election because viewers turned away from FNC when some of its personalities acknowledged that Biden had won..

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, said today that “Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.”  Margaret Sullivan, formerly the Washington Post’s media critic, wrote in The Guardian that FNC was “a shameless propaganda outfit, reaping massive profits even as it attacked core democratic values such as tolerance, truth and fair elections.” Murdoch, she wrote, wreaked “untold havoc on American democracy.”

Murdoch sees it differently. In his resignation letter, he attacked “bureaucracies” who wanted to “silence those who would question their provenance and purpose” and “elites” who “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.” “Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he wrote. 

Forbes estimates that their media empire has enabled Murdoch and his family to amass a fortune of more than $17 billion.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #Media Matters #corrupt GOP #anti-democratic GOP #Big Lie #government shutdown

[socialjusticeinamerica]

In a complete act of hypocrisy, Pedo Matt is calling on Republican Chair (spouse of Mom 4 Liberty three-way bitch) to step down.

Curiously Matt himself won’t step down despite his pedophilia, human trafficking, and insurrection crimes.