The International Far Right Denial of Democracy

So there I am trying to edit the non-fiction book of blog articles when news comes down the pipe that Brazil - which had just rejected Jair Bolsonaro, a bullying trump-lite President in last year's election - suffered their own insurrection riot of that SOB's supporters. Government buildings - especially the Presidential Palace and the nation's Supreme Court - raided and destroyed. I jumped to the Guardian's coverage for more details (via Tom Phillips and Andrew Downie):

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has ordered the federal government to take control of policing in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, after hundreds of hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court.

The massed attack was a stunning security breach that was immediately compared to the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump in 2021.

“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television network as word of the upheaval spread. “The three buildings have been invaded by coup-mongering terrorists.”

Shocking video footage showed the pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalizing the nearby supreme court, whose windows had been smashed.

Lula, a veteran leftist, was sworn in as Brazil’s new president last Sunday in celebrations attended by hundreds of thousands of Brazilians.

But thousands of pro-Bolsonaro extremists have refused to accept Lula’s narrow victory in October’s election, spending recent weeks camping outside army bases across the country and calling for a military coup.

Lula was not in Brasília on Sunday but he gave an angry speech blaming Bolsonaro for the chaos and promising that “anyone involved will be punished”.

It's interesting the rioters waited for Lula to be outside of the capitol - he was in Sao Paulo - to pull off this coup attempt. Also interesting that the organizers did not get any military support in this, relying instead on the state police to guide the protestors instead of stopping them. There's been calls to arrest a security official who may have aided in the staging, who has ties to Bolsonaro and was reportedly seen in Orlando where the ex-President fled to exile (via Adriano Machado with Reuters):

By 6:30 p.m. local time (2130 GMT), some three hours after initial reports of the invasion, security forces had managed to retake the capital's most iconic three buildings.

Brasilia Governor Ibaneis Rocha, a longtime Bolsonaro ally facing tough questions after Sunday's security lapses, said on Twitter more than 400 people had been arrested and authorities were working to identify more...

Rocha, the Brasilia governor, said he had fired his top security official, Anderson Torres, previously Bolsonaro's justice minister. The solicitor general's office said it had filed a request for the arrest of Torres.

Torres told website UOL he was with his family on holiday in the United States and had not met with Bolsonaro. UOL reported he was in Orlando, where Bolsonaro is now staying...

It's too much of a coincidence for Torres and Bolsonaro to be in the same city when all of this went down.

Bolsonaro may be denouncing the violence in public, but he's spent the last months since losing the election acting out the trumpian playbook of refusing to accept electoral defeat, claiming rigged elections, and stomping off in a snit before the changing of the guard to discredit the traditional display of peaceful transfers of power.

Much like how it played out here in the US with trump's MAGA believers, Bolsonaro's supporters - overwhelmed by years of pro-authoritarian Far Right bleating - bought into the lies and reacted with violence.

We now have a January 8th Insurrection to bookend with the January 6th Insurrection.

We shouldn't have been surprised by this. The links between these acts of violence - separated between two nations - made this inevitable. As mentioned before, Bolsonaro and trump consider each other allies, trump in particular happy that a fellow dictator wanna-be won Brazil's election back in 2018. Of course, trump made an open pitch for his buddy in this election cycle. Of course, trumpian handlers like Jason Miller and Steve Bannon were claiming the winning results for Lula were false, and worked with Bolsonaro behind the scenes for whatever purpose. 

This riot in Brazil is part of the overall attempt by the Far Right forces interlinked across the globe - from Russia to Hungary to Iran to Syria to trump in the United States and now Bolsonaro with Brazil - to discredit democratic institutions - installed as liberal methods of forming governments answerable to the people and the law - as weak, broken, and deserving of overthrow.

It's to those wingnuts' discredit that the democratic institutions are pushing back now, defending the system of fair elections against these rioters who are protesting out of fear - that they've been told to fear and hate by their instigators - instead of justice.

Justice should come soon for those (trump and his allies) who stirred up violence here in Washington DC, and justice should come soon for those (Bolsonaro and his allies) who stirred up violence in Brasilia.

The Weakest Speaker

It took fifteen tries.

Kevin McCarthy lost the Speakership vote 14 times, equaling the 0-14 futility of the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Even after a long delay Friday afternoon where he and his allies offered the Freedom Caucus holdouts everything under the sun, he still failed to get over the 218 hurdle of claiming the Speaker's job overseeing the US House of Representatives.

It took one more round of open begging to Matt Gaetz - that he's not under indictment yet after the revelations of the Greenberg scandal still angers me - before McCarthy edged out the count due to several Freedom Caucus holdouts to switch to "Present" to lower that threshold to 216. 

Whatever deal McCarthy offered also triggered an incident where another congresscritter had to be restrained from punching Gaetz in the face. It turned out Rep. Mike Rogers (AL) found out that a committee chair he was set to take was getting offered to Gaetz as a buyoff.

Rogers shouldn't be surprised. In the pursuit of the job title and the glory that comes with it, McCarthy was willing to sacrifice and trade away everything else - including his pride and honor - just so he could wield the gavel. 

So what exactly did McCarthy sacrifice? Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo passes along what he gleaned from CNN: 

• A McCarthy-aligned super PAC agreed to not play in open Republican primaries in safe seats.
• The House will hold votes on key conservative bills, including a balanced budget amendment, congressional term limits and border security.
• Efforts to raise the nation’s debt ceiling must be paired with spending cuts. This could become a major issue in the future when it is time to raise the debt limit to avoid a catastrophic default because Democrats in the Senate and the White House would likely oppose demands for spending cuts. (Personal note: Those spending cuts more than likely attempts to gut Social Security and Medicare)
• Move 12 appropriations bills individually. Instead of passing separate bills to fund government operations, Congress frequently passes a massive year-end spending package known as an “omnibus” that rolls everything into one bill. Conservatives rail against this, arguing that it evades oversight and allows lawmakers to stick in extraneous pet projects.
• More Freedom Caucus representation on committees, including the powerful House Rules Committee.
• Cap discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels, which would amount to lower levels for defense and domestic programs.
• Seventy-two hours to review bills before they come to floor.
• Give members the ability to offer more amendments on the House floor.
• Create an investigative committee to probe the “weaponization” of the federal government. (Personal note: This is the committee the MAGA wingnuts want to start to harass the Justice Department and FBI for their investigations of trump and other Far Right leaders)
• Restore the Holman rule, which can be used to reduce the salary of government officials.

To be fair, a handful of these concessions - like the 72 hour review time on bills heading to a floor vote - are reasonable. Others, such as the power to amend bills when they reach the floor and forcing appropriation bills to face separate votes, are likely to slow down the House's operations if not kill legislation outright. The 'Separate Appropriation' requirement is a likely move to cut Food Stamps funding away from Farm Bills, something that's been bugging the hard-line GOP for decades.

Something not mentioned in Sullivan's list but a key element of the powers that McCarthy traded away: The Motion to Vacate requirement dropping all the way down to a single member of Congress able to call that motion to remove a sitting Speaker - which is now McCarthy himself - on any whim. Granted, it would take a full House vote to complete the motion and remove a Speaker, but we're talking about a process that would openly kneecap the leader of the House - and technically the leader of the majority party - without consequence or limit. The one time it had been used back in 2015, it didn't succeed but it undercut the authority of then-Speaker John Boehner and led to his eventual resignation. 

McCarthy is essentially giving the Freedom Caucus a veto power over anything a Speaker brings to the floor of the House, and the means to delay everything and harass everyone as they go on an ideological warpath.

If there's any good news, a lot of the deals McCarthy made are things that will never survive outside the House. The planned Balanced Budget Amendment vote - which would insanely cap annual spending to force draconian spending cuts - requires a two-thirds vote in the House to begin with, and there's no way the Democrats will back it. The US Senate - currently under Democratic control - will never agree to term limits or any House bill demanding harsher immigration policies (or funding that Godless trump Wall). The Senate will block - or at least reduce the damage of - any attempt by the House to undo Biden's infrastructure and budget victories from 2021-22, including the wingnuts' open calls to defund the IRS. The threat of capping discretionary spending - even defense spending at a time the Pentagon wants to support Ukraine's defense against Russia - would raise howls among pro-military supporters even among the GOP House ranks.

The bad news: The Far Right wingnut circus we just endured this past week to vote on a Speaker will now turn into the Far Right wingnut circus recklessly investigating sham conspiracy theories surrounding Hunter Biden's Russian-tampered laptop. Another circus will recklessly investigate the FBI for doing their damn jobs investigating trump, yet another circus will recklessly investigate sham claims of voter fraud in 2020, and I wouldn't be surprised if McCarthy allows Jim Jordan to reopen Benghazi and recklessly investigate Hillary's emails just for nostalgia. 

We will see within the first week of Congressional activity the Freedom Caucus freaks drumming up any excuse to file impeachment against both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Any excuse - from unproven voter fraud of 2020, to anything Biden (didn't) do for his son Hunter, even the excuse of Biden being too old (and Harris too ethnic) - will do.

Any chance of sanity will depend on any number of disgruntled "sane" Republicans - I doubt any moderates have survived - saying "fuck it" and turning on the wingnuts that turned their House into a clown car. Problem is, the "sane" Republicans have yet to lift a finger to stop this madness since the 1990s, and I doubt any of them have grown a spine strong enough to push back against the downward spiral into madness.

There won't be any sanity coming from McCarthy. He's sold that along with any integrity or pride he ever had. And he sold all that on the cheap. He's going to be the weakest Speaker of the House in modern memory - possibly in U.S. history - and he's going to be too busy holding onto the backside of the monster he's unleashed for dear life.

When the Cougar-Eating-People's-Faces Party Starts Eating Their Own

There is an article by Jonathan Chait at New York's Intelligencer, it is behind a paywall, but it is considered already one of the best insights into the self-destruction of the House Republicans as they repeatedly vote (and fail) on the Speakership well into the third day: 

Reporters attempting to discern the conflict have taken to describing the competing factions as “conservatives” (the far-right members opposed to Kevin McCarthy’s bid for Speaker of the House) and “moderates” (the much larger faction of Republicans loyal to him). But these labels do very little to clarify the strange mania devouring the House Republican caucus. If you define conservative in traditional terms — meaning loyal to the conservative movement of Goldwater and Reagan and opposed, in principle, to any new taxation or social-welfare benefits — the entire Republican caucus is composed of conservatives. McCarthy’s loyalists aren’t moderates and don’t describe themselves as such.

Indeed, the division has barely any real ideological content at all. What Republicans are fighting over is whether to accept the limits of sharing power.

One of the key differences between the two major parties is that Democrats accept the reality that their agenda is not going to move forward when the opposing party occupies the White House. Democratic partisans might grow angry at their leaders for failing to stop it, but members of Congress generally understand that there are limits to the power of the opposition, and even the most unrealistic Democratic rank-and-file voters don’t expect their leaders to actively advance liberal policy in the face of a Republican president. Progressive Democrats wanted to defend Obamacare from Donald Trump’s repeal attempt. They weren’t demanding that Nancy Pelosi somehow force Trump to enact Medicare for All.

Republican voters, by contrast, expect and demand that the conservative agenda be advanced even — perhaps especially — under Democratic presidents. The Republican caucus is routinely gripped by frenzied efforts to compel Democratic presidents to roll back the welfare state. Newt Gingrich shut down the government to pressure Bill Clinton to sign a capital-gains tax cut and reductions to Medicaid and Medicare. Republicans used both shutdowns and the debt ceiling to try to blackmail Barack Obama into repealing his signature health-care plan...

Do note that in 2017 when Republicans had enough control to repeal Obamacare, they fought amongst themselves so viciously that in the end they couldn't agree to any replacement for it, and the whole effort collapsed on itself. The only thing the Republicans could do was the one thing they all agreed on: massive tax cuts for the rich.

Half the reason why Republicans want Democrats to do their dirty work for them is because in some respects they know they're too incompetent to do it properly. The other half of the reason is that Republicans are sadistic freaks looking to force Democrats to kill their own ideals. It drives Republicans crazy when Democrats refuse to break themselves, and it makes the Far Right believe they need to become even crazier about "Owning The Libs" when there are better things they can do with their time. Back to Chait:

This is why Democrats tend to splinter when they hold power but unify in opposition while the reverse holds true for Republicans. Democratic demands expand when the party holds full control of government and contract in opposition. Republican aspirations paradoxically become more grandiose during Democratic presidencies, which draw Republican minds deeper into the fever swamps of hysteria, making them more insistent on demands for maximal confrontation. These demands are inevitably impossible, causing Republicans to turn, again and again, against their own leaders...

Because this anger has no productive channel, it returns again and again in the form of internal recriminations. The House caucus during Democratic presidencies for the last quarter-century has been an endless procession of coup attempts. Gingrich was deposed for failing in his holy mission of forcing Clinton to slash government. John Boehner and Paul Ryan were driven into retirement. The House Republican caucus will be a cauldron of rage, because the party, at its core, does not believe it should be forced to share power...

What the Freedom Caucus is doing right now - the three straight days of foiled voting for McCarthy to the Speakership - is for multiple reasons. Above all, the insurgents genuinely do not trust McCarthy as he is the Establishment figure they fear would compromise with Liberal Dems on any issue. They are 20 nihilists in the face of 200 other Republicans who actually do want government to work (because it would help their rich business allies the most). The Freedom Caucus wants to squeeze every last bit of power - with none of the accountability - they can get from McCarthy and the other Republicans so that the Freedom Caucus holds all veto power to punish everyone - even the eventual Speaker - for infidelity to the Far Right dogma. 

One more reason they're doing this: This vote standoff is preventing the US House from doing anything else. They are delaying their rules getting voted on, they are delaying committee assignments, they are delaying any legislation getting passed quickly to the floor to send to the Senate and thence to the White House for signing. The Freedom Caucus is getting the government shutdown of their dreams, and they barely have to lift any finger to do so.

The terrifying thing is that this was the perfect year for the extremists to hold the entire House hostage. If the Republicans HAD won the midterms with a massive Red Wave takeover - with 30 or more seats as projected - the overwhelming number of Republicans would have crossed the 218 threshold for McCarthy to win without conceding a thing to his haters. Because the Republicans hold a meager 5-seat advantage, there are enough Far Right wingnuts willing and able to block McCarthy from winning outright.

This is now a purity test by the Freedom Caucus on the rest of the House Republicans. If McCarthy tries to break the impasse by making a deal with Democrats to let him win - either by supporting him or by voting "Present" to lower the 218 threshold - the Far Right MAGA voting base will crucify him and primary his ass in 2024. If any other Republicans break the deadlock by voting "Present" to let the Democratic leader Jeffries win a plurality count, those Republicans will be the ones crucified and ousted in 2024 primaries as well. There aren't enough promises McCarthy can make to flip enough wingnuts, so that's not an option. The only other end is for McCarthy to drop out and let another - someone only the Freedom Caucus can trust to be their puppet - more extremist candidate win, with the implied threat to "moderate" Republicans not to oppose.

There is an option out: There are at least 14 Republican representatives who come from districts that voted for Biden instead of trump. Several of their districts went for Biden by double digits, to where if they did flip first to the Democratic party they would avoid the threat of 2024 primary removal and win over enough Democratic voters to stay in office. That would shift majority control to the Democrats, letting Jeffries win the Speaker spot, and negate everything the Freedom Caucus is trying to impose.

The Freedom Caucus - and their media allies, when they wake up from sleeping through the intraparty fighting - will raise holy hell if that happens, and those congresspeople will be under severe harassment by MAGA voters declaring them traitors to America the party. But it will break the deadlock.

It will also break the Republican Party, with a fracturing that would spread not only to the Senate but to the state legislatures and to the lobbyist SuperPACs forced to take sides.

It all depends on if there's enough Republicans sitting on the Centrist/Moderate fence to grow a collective spine and make a move against the wingnuts. This is a fight that has been long in the making, ever since the 1990s Culture War shifting of the GOP to further conservative extremism. 

This is going to depend on who rusts first.

Chaos in Congress: Conservatives Caught Cluelessly Conflicted

(Looks at the article title) Does that make ANY sense...? 

Anyways, as mentioned yesterday, the House Republicans were all set to implode today when they opened the 2023 congressional session and were supposed to vote in a Speaker of the House.

And they failed.

Three times. Via Deirdre Walsh and Dustin Jones at NPR:

Leadership of the House of Representatives remains in limbo as California GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy faces internal opposition to his bid for speaker.

On the first day of the new Congress, McCarthy failed to secure the 218 votes necessary to become speaker of the House in three rounds of voting. The House cannot conduct any business, including swearing in new members, until a speaker is chosen.

Tuesday's vote was the first time in a century that the election of a House speaker took multiple ballots to complete. The longest vote in U.S. history took place in 1855, lasting 133 rounds over two months, from December 1855 to February 1856.

McCarthy faces a Republican bloc of critics who want changes to the way the House operates. Although he's given in to many of their demands, he remains short of the votes needed.

Instead of celebrating their return to the majority on the first day, McCarthy and other GOP leaders were sorting out how to respond to an open rebellion that showcased division and cast doubt on their ability to govern.

As expected, the Freedom Caucus - the Far Right members who genuinely want to shutdown government in order to gut every social net and deregulate every industry and send us all back to the 1850s - refused to accept any deal from McCarthy, essentially putting the burden on the majority of other Republicans to figure out a way to break the impasse. Even with the clear evidence that 203 other Republicans won't side with them, these handful of extremists are going to double down on withholding their votes - backing Jim Jordan, an extremist wingnut - because they know they've got the rest of the GOP in a bind.

This is even after McCarthy is willing to give them committee chairs, willing to give them the Motion to Vacate power, willing to let them "investigate" - in truth, to harass and defame - the FBI and DOJ for daring to investigate Republican misdeeds (such as insurrection), and willing to let them gut their own congressional Ethics office so they can break even more rules.

You can't make deals with extremists, Republicans. The Freedom Caucus group will keep moving the goalposts and demand more, they will take more hostages and demand more. They will keep insisting the point, to where they will have all the power to abuse everyone else with none of the accountability our constitutional system requires. Even this block on the vote plays into the Caucus' interests: They are holding up the entire House of Representatives to where nothing can get done (just the way they like it).

To be honest Republicans, you need to make the hard decision now and kick the Freedom Caucus to the curbside. Take away all the promises you made to them because obviously they didn't work as incentives. McCarthy, you're going to have to make a deal with the House Democrats. You can make a deal, because at least the Dems want government to work.

The House Democrats shouldn't make too many demands other than: 

• Ensure the 'Motion to Vacate' is back to how Pelosi had it in 2019 (Only the party leaders can request that motion), so that the few members of the Freedom Caucus can't veto a thing; 
• Put a majority of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee and any other committees that could be used to harass the Justice Department while they investigate trump for his misdeeds;
• Agree that the Hunter Biden laptop is compromised, and not worthy of congressional investigation (this will be a problem, because even mainstream Republicans want to embarrass Biden's family for political points);
• Promise not to file impeachment charges against Biden and Harris unless credible allegations of official misconduct is uncovered (this will also be a problem);
• Deny every congressperson - 20 of them - who voted against McCarthy any committee assignment as their punishment;
• Reinstall the electronic security gates to ensure the gun nuts don't waltz into the House chamber with freaking firearms;
• Less talk and more rock. Oh c'mon, every deal should include this as a clause.

You can even throw in the Sanity Clause while you're at it.

Either McCarthy and the rest of the sane members of the House Republicans make a deal with the House Dems that both parties can agree to, or McCarthy and the sane members of the House Republicans have to deal with the insanity of repeating the same roll call vote over and over while the Freedom Caucus holds up the entire system.

Insanity is repeating the same mistake expecting a better result. Well, there are no better results dealing with goddamn wingnuts, Republicans. It's about goddamn time you all learned what the rest of the nation learned since 2010, and stop dealing with Jim Jordan and the rest of those lunatics.

Drama In the Rotunda Involving No Llama. Bumma.

You know, when a political party wins control of the House Of Representatives, they tend to already have their ducks in a row when it comes time to vote for the Speakership. Usually it's the guy (or gal) who'd been leading the gang of congresscritters while in minority opposition, so it ought to be a no-brainer.

So here we are in 2023 with the Republicans regaining control of the House and proving they got no brains at all. Via Brad Dress at the Hill:

Nine House conservatives expressed doubts about electing Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the next Speaker of the House, calling for a “radical departure from the status quo” ahead of the Tuesday floor vote.

In a Sunday letter obtained by The Hill, Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) led seven other hard-line Republican House members and members-elect in calling McCarthy’s responses to their pre-election demands “insufficient...”

McCarthy won a Republican conference vote for the Speakership last month but must garner the support of a majority of the House on the floor Tuesday to secure the position...

Under other circumstances, a small number (nine among 435 congresscritters) like this would be easily ignored while the Speaker-to-be makes arrangements to secure the 218-vote minimum to clear the hurdle. Unfortunately, the Red Wave Ebbtide the Republicans suffered this midterm gave the Republicans a mere 5-seat majority (and that's with a guy in George Santos who's going to get extradited to Brazil sooner than they thought). It's one of the narrowest party majorities in House history, and it's the narrowest during the most partisan division between factions since the Civil War.

It's kind of an open secret - hell, I blogged about it years ago - that the ever-ambitious McCarthy was an embarrassment of a leader, committing faux pas in a way that denied him a Speakership back then, and he was only Minority Leader during the 2018-22 Democratic cycle because nobody else wanted the job and he still had some favors to call in. 

Well, now McCarthy is trying to win over the more extremist, pro-trump members of the GOP, and he's finding out the Freedom Caucus and other rabble-rousers are hungrier for power than he realized.

Tengrain noted this back in December, when the insurgents were issuing demands that McCarthy cannot or dare not deliver:

The letter from HFC Chair SCOTT PERRY (R-Pa.), Republican Reps. CHIP ROY (Texas), DAN BISHOP (N.C.), ANDREW CLYDE (Ga.), PAUL GOSAR(Ariz.) and Reps.-Elect ELI CRANE (Ariz.) and ANDY OGLES (Tenn.) makes several demands of any would-be Republican speaker, including that they:

Reinstate the “motion to vacate” — basically, allowing any member of the House to force a vote to oust the sitting speaker. The letter notes that the rule was “in place for a reason from 1801 to 2018”;

Provide the House with 72 hours of notice on every bill and grant members the ability to amend legislative text;

Promise that Republican leadership and associated outside entities (like the McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leader Fund) will not wade into primaries;

Give conservatives more representation on so-called “A” committees, including the House Rules panel;

Use must-pass bills to try to secure a number of policy wins, including: (1) leveraging the annual defense authorization to reinstate service members who were dismissed due to their refusal to get the Covid vaccine, (2)forcing any debt ceiling increase to be accompanied by spending cuts, and (3)requiring the farm bill to include cuts to food stamps.

So demand #1 is a culture war item that serves as a MAGA get out of jail card in the military, #2 is to assure that there will be a forced recession if the gubmint cannot stimulate the economy (and don’t kid ourselves, “spending cuts” is the dog whistle for Social Security and Medicare) and #3 is just about cruelty...

This was something I noticed back in the early 2010s, when the "Tea Party" Republicans - made up of the Freedom Caucus leaders of today - were insistent on gutting the federal government during their shutdowns to impose the most amount of cruelty on the poor and working classes as much as possible. THAT hadn't changed. What they're doing now is making sure McCarthy can't pull a Boehner stunt to pass legislation to compromise with a Democratic Senate and White House.

That "Motion to Vacate" is also a kind of "No Confidence" vote that was in the rules for hundreds of years - part of the Jefferson Rules of Order passed down from session to session - that got used several times to undercut Boehner and Paul Ryan during those budget fights, leading to Pelosi and the Dems refusing to set that rule when they retook power in 2018. It's a license to let the backbenchers throw bombs at the party leadership without penalty, and McCarthy was reluctant to bring it back... until this weekend, when he caved on that issue.

Funny thing was, the insurgents - represented by Matt Gaetz at that conference meeting - refused to support McCarthy with that move, insisting on further power. 

Something something, "Moving the Goalposts," victory for wingnuts, repeat.

So we're looking at an eventful Tuesday on Capitol Hill one way or another.

Either McCarthy surrenders on every issue his own party extremists want - which runs the slight risk of irking the remaining moderate caucus members (and yes, there are about 30 of them left) - or he fails to make the Speakership on the first ballot, which makes him look weak before he can do anything about it.

It's something that hasn't happened often, in fact not since 1923 (via Ronald G. Shafer at Stars and Stripes (paywalled)):

Today, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is struggling to win enough votes to be elected speaker when Republicans take narrow control of the House, as he faces opposition from some right-wing members of his party. As a result, it may take more than one ballot for anyone to gain the 218 votes, or the majority of votes cast for candidates, needed to win the speakership. McCarthy has warned fellow Republicans against a floor fight, saying, "If we play games on the floor, Democrats could end up picking who the speaker is."

The last time a speaker election took more than one ballot was in 1923, when Speaker Frederick Gillett (R-Mass.) was reelected on the ninth ballot.

But the longest speaker vote began on Dec. 3, 1855, when the 34th Congress convened. Democrats controlled the Senate, but no party controlled the House after the disintegration of the Whig Party. About a third of House members were Democrats. The rest belonged to a mix of parties, including the new Republican Party. Many were members of the secretive American Party, also known as the Know Nothing party...

Finally, on Feb. 1, 1856, Democrats adopted a new strategy. First, they backed a new speaker candidate, proslavery Rep. William Aiken Jr. (D-S.C.), the 50-year-old son of railroad magnate William Aiken Sr., after whom Aiken, S.C., was named. Second, Democratic leaders announced that they would propose the next day a previously rejected resolution to elect a speaker with only a plurality vote. Under this plan, if a majority of members failed to elect a speaker in three consecutive votes, the candidate who got the most votes on a fourth tally would win.

Aiken was sure to win over enough Southern House members to gain a plurality and the speakership, newspapers reported. "We think we can count 109 votes for Mr. Aiken, if jealousy or something else does not defeat him," a Washington Star correspondent wrote. That night, Democratic President Franklin Pierce congratulated Aiken in advance on his victory...

Talk about counting chickens before they hatched.

The fourth, plurality vote began. As the clerk tallied the total, "the excited crowd on the floor and in the galleries looked on in silence," the Picayune reported. "The suspense at this crisis was agonizing. Every eye turned and every ear inclined with intense interest towards the clerk's desk to hear the result."

Just before 7 p.m., the clerk announced the total: 103 votes for Banks, 100 for Aiken. Some lawmakers who had been expected to switch to Aiken had not come through. "As the result was announced, the audience in the galleries manifest their joy by peal after peal of deafening cheers," the Picayune wrote. "The ladies waved their handkerchiefs wildly and clapped, and [anti-Banks] gentlemen stamped and raved, and swore."

So the lesson here is, Have a Solid Majority That Outnumbers Your Extremist Caucus in the House First.

The speculation about what will happen to McCarthy circles around the uncertainty of where the insurgent votes could go. There is an official challenger in Andy Biggs (AZ), but there's still a possibility the Freedom Caucus members or other factions waiting in the shadows backing the likes of Jim Jordan (OH). There is even the possibility that if not enough House Republicans show up to actually vote, a united effort from the Democratic House members backing newly chosen leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) can place Jeffries in minority control as Speaker.

The Speakership is a powerful office: It sets the committee members (meaning Jeffries could exile the pro-trump Republicans to minor duties that won't affect policies or push for impeachments), oversees floor debates (Jeffries can limit when and how long Republicans can scream for the cameras), and disciplines the House if someone (hint: anybody from the Freedom caucus) gets out of line. Even with the Republicans controlling a slim majority of actual votes, A Speaker Jeffries can limit the amount of damage the Republicans can do.

If this happens - if the Republicans collapse in disarray in failure to control the Speaker's office - things can get very nasty very quick within their own ranks. Accusations of betrayals between the factions could lead to genuine schism, a possible end to the Republican Party itself at the national level.

That's too far to speculate, though. There is often enough self-control among the party leaders to pull back from the brink of their own implosion. It's all about power, and the House Republicans would be foolish to blow apart at the moment of seizing that power for themselves.

Then again, the Freedom Caucus is made up of wingnuts who want to watch the world burn.

Wouldn't hurt to warm up the popcorn.

Input For Another Round of Blog Award Submissions for 2023

In what is now becoming an annual tradition involving this blog:

Well, it's a new year started and already I gotta think about what to submit to the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards for their Non-Fiction / Blogging category.

Last year, I had looked at submitting five articles from this blog to contend, but found out that FWA was capping ALL submissions to five total. Meaning if I wanted to submit to any of the Short Story categories, I need to limit my Blog submissions to make room.

Well, I do have at least one short I'd like to submit - maybe have something novel-wise to submit in the unpublished categories as well - so I do need to make some hard choices here and weed down aggressively to maybe three blog articles. It doesn't help me that this 2022 was in my personal opinion one of my better blogging years: Unlike previous years where I could easily narrow down to ten or so articles to consider, I have a ton of articles this time I feel are quality work. 

I need a lot more input than usual on this.

So to the nine regular followers to this blog, lemme know which of these articles I ought to submit to the FWA judges:

Deep Scars

The Darkest Habit That Could End trump's Reign of Error

Say It Florida, Gays Exist

Ukrainian Paradox

War Crimes - I do like this personally, it's one of my more heartfelt essays

Grooming Hypocrisy

The Day When Women Become Second-Class Citizens

Dreading the Oncoming Storm - This is the one I submitted to Batocchio for the annual Jon Swift Memorial

DeSantis vs The Right to Think

What Did the Secret Service Know...?

Who's Dat Knocking at Mar-A-Lago? It's the Feds With a Warrant, Go Figure

Emperor Norton versus The Madman - I have a personal fondness for this one, but doubt it will appeal to others

Hoping for trump's Last Chapter - arguably the longest blog article I've ever written, but also one that's all over the place in projection and prediction, it might be too much

All Which Wicked Designs - maybe a more concise anti-trump blog article than the previous one, arguably more poetic

Picture This: trump Is Toast 

Radioactive 

Mississippi Stealing

DeSantis' Cruelty, and Florida's Ruin

The Great Russian Skedaddle

What the Hell We Waiting For

The Mindset of My Schizoid Generation

Escalation and Evasion

The Revolutions Will Not Be Localized

Let the Guilty Verdicts Be Read...

The Hypocrisy of Pickpockets in Florida

Thoughts About the 2022 Midterms

Russia's Dying Dreams

Damn, that's a lot - 27! - to whittle down. Last year, I easily knocked the considerations down to a simple top ten, but this 2022 well it demanded a lot to comment on. Looking back, there was a lot to say about the Russian-Ukrainian war, and a lot more to say about donald trump as his legal woes - and exposure to documents theft and espionage charges! - kicked into high gear around August 2022.

I am thinking "War Crimes" is a lock, I am partial to "Oncoming Storm," but I am keen on a good third essay to submit. Maybe a fourth.

Let me know what you think, please. Comment here if you can, email me your suggestions, make sure there's a subject line in the email so my spam filter won't catch it by mistake, thanks.

Happy new year, peeps!

Update 1/29/23: I've thought it over, my current preferences are "War Crimes," "Day When Women...," "Oncoming Storm," "All Which Wicked Designs," "Great Russian Skedaddle," and "Schizoid Generation." Thing is, I still need to wheedle it down to four of those (the fifth RPLA submission will be my published short story "The Brides of WiFi.").

Update 7/25/23: It's about time for the judging to wrap up for the Semi-finalist grades, and... I just got emails back that "War Crimes" and "Schizoid Generation" did not achieve Semi-finalist status. The first is a bit of a stunner: I consider "War Crimes" one of my more passionate writings I've done. There are no guarantees on how the other submissions are going: some delays can occur if a particular judge is not making deadlines, and it can depend on the volume of submissions they're reading.

Update 7/29/23: I did receive word a few days ago that both "Dreading the Oncoming Storm" and "All Which Wicked Designs" blog articles DID achieve Semi-Finalist status, so I'm feeling better about that. 

Alas, I just got the email today for my published short story "The Brides of WiFi" and that DID NOT achieve Semi-Finalist. I know, I know, short stories are insanely competitive, everybody in FWA has at least one short every year and they all probably submit theirs for judging. It's just... Sigh, being a fiction writer is a dream for me, whereas the blogging is me getting some anger issues off my chest. If I'd gotten even a Semi-Finalist for a work of fiction I submitted for judging, I'd be over the moon.

Update 8/31/23: Heard back from the judges about the remaining two articles in competition. "Dreading the Oncoming Storm" did NOT reach Finalist status. 

That means "All Which Wicked Designs" DID reach Finalist status and that I can be up for another Top Three prize for the Royal Palm Literary Award in Non-Fiction / Published Blog or Article category! We will find out this October at the dinner ceremony how it goes.

Update 10/22/23: Reasonably thrilled to return from the Royal Palms awards banquet as a GOLD winner in the Non-Fiction / Published Blog or Article category! Hopefully they'll email me the digital award thumbnail as soon as the conference ends today.

Here is the award icon! 

Will 2023 Be The Year trump's Bills Come Due?

China has an animal zodiac for each year on the calendar. I know for example that the European/Christian calendar corresponded 1970 to The Year of the Dog.

China is going to need to update their zodiac, because 2023 is going to be the Year of the Shitgibbon. This is the year a number of pundits and legal experts are claiming donald trump will finally face direct criminal charges for the crimes he's committed both before and during office as President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice).

Over at MSNBC, columnist Jordan Rubin - who has a legal background working as prosecutor for the Manhattan's District Attorney's office (insert Law & Order ding-ding cue here) - makes the case that several ongoing investigations into trump's alleged misdeeds are set to wrap up soon with a lot of credible evidence the Justice Department can use to indict him:

On the one hand, it’s unremarkable to prophesy that a man who’s facing several probes by federal and state prosecutors for conduct that looks pretty unlawful will be charged with crimes.

On the other hand, it’s Trump, whose name hasn’t been synonymous with accountability.

There’s reason to think that will change...

...If anything, the feds’ search and seizure of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer felt like a watershed moment: federal law enforcement action against a former president who had seemingly lived a consequence-free life and might have continued to do so. Even an incremental step toward potential prosecution from the branch of government that can actually bring charges seems more significant than the legislative branch’s asserting Trump’s guilt by way of criminal referrals (both things, of course, can be and are significant).

Plus, the Mar-a-Lago case appears to be more straightforward than the sordid legal maze of January 6 and its tentacles. As former federal prosecutors said in a November memo analyzing the documents case, published at Just Security, “there is a strong basis to charge Trump.” With his special master detour officially crushed — by Trump-appointed judges, no less — he looks a step closer to charges related to his apparent mishandling of classified documents and obstruction.

Rubin does also note the state-level legal trouble trump is facing, but Jacob Shamsian over at Business Insider has more details on that:

Fulton County's district attorney, Fani Willis, launched her investigation shortly after Trump made an infamous call to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, asking him to "find" enough votes to reverse Trump's 2020 electoral loss to now-President Joe Biden.

Court filings indicate the DA's investigation expanded to include Trump's allies who plotted to send fake electors to Congress on January 6, 2021, and hand Trump a second term.

Willis has swiftly moved the investigation forward. Over the past year, she empaneled a grand jury and fought court battles to ensure testimony from Gov. Brian Kemp; the state's Republican Party chairman, David Shafer; Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and more than a dozen others who spoke with Trump at the time. Two other high-profile witnesses who fought grand jury subpoenas, Mark Meadows and Newt Gingrich, have their cases before appeals courts.

Trump and the fake electors could face charges of election fraud, improperly trying to influence government officials, and criminal solicitation, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution.

As of December, Willis has gotten testimony from most of the main players in Trump's plot to overturn election results in Georgia. According to CNN, her office has been negotiating plea deals with participants in the fake-elector scheme.

If she's going to bring indictments, they could come soon...

Even without testimony from the likes of Meadows - who's facing his own legal woes to the point where pleading out is the only way he'll avoid hard time in prison - DA Willis reportedly has enough evidence to indict trump and others. It's just the niceties of getting the smaller fish (the fake electors who don't want jail time on their resumes) to plead out in order to catch the bigger fish (trump) with direct testimony that's slowing up the inevitable announcement.

The grand jury Willis is using now is only an investigatory one, which has to make referrals to a regular grand jury that can actually bring the charges for the DA to use. So there is another step to go through, but according to Georgia rules that regular grand jury has a two-month window to work in. Once the special grand jury is finished (likely February) the regular grand jury should be done late April.

Meaning I get a nice birthday gift in May when Willis issues the arrest warrants.

trump is still facing other legal woes such as the state civil case in New York over tax fraud is set for October 2023. The civil trial between trump and E. Jean Carroll - who accused him of rape and brought defamation charges when he mocked her - is set to begin April 17 (any settlement deal has to be done April 10, I think) this year. Both of these trials are likely to hit trump's wallets in ways that could well bankrupt him forever, as well as paint him a loser before the primary voters in 2024.

In 2016, trump bullied all the other Republican candidates while his opponents had nothing to hit him with - they couldn't attack his business failings because he shamelessly gaslight the public about them - and so they floundered. In 2024, anybody campaigning against trump will have proof on the debate stage that trump is a loser, a tax fraud, breaking laws he was sworn to uphold, and can force trump to be on the defensive instead of offensively attacking everyone else.

trump will be a broken man, one way or another, by the time 2024 rolls around.

Here's hoping trump will be broken sitting in a darkened jail cell for next New Year's.

Russia's Dying Dreams

As the year (2022) ends, people get into the mood to make predictions for how the coming year (2023) will go.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, one of Putin's more loyal lackeys, laid out a bunch of doozies on Twitter a few days ago. If I can refer to the Reuters article that reported on it:

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an arch loyalist of Vladimir Putin given a new job this week, predicted war between Germany and France next year and a civil war in the United States that would lead to Elon Musk becoming president.

That noise you hear in the distance is me headdesking into infinity. Just on those two predictions alone, I'm asking the universe "who the FUCK spiked Dmitry's vodka with LSD?"

Okay. Okay. Taking a step back. Let's just see what else Medvedev predicted for the coming year:

In his list of predictions for 2023, published on his personal Telegram and Twitter accounts, he also foresaw Britain rejoining the EU, which would in turn collapse.

Musk, the Tesla boss who now owns Twitter, responded to the suggestion he would emerge as U.S. president by tweeting back "Epic thread!!", although he also criticised some of Medvedev's predictions. Medvedev has praised Musk in the past for proposing Ukraine cede territory to Russia in a peace deal...

Musk, it should be noted, needs all the ego-stroking in the universe right now because his mismanagement of both Twitter and Tesla has tanked Tesla stock to where Musk has officially lost $200 billion of value in 2022, the most a billionaire has ever lost in that timeframe.

Other things Medvedev predicted:

• The cost of oil will go up to $150.00 a barrel, which would reverse Russia's pending economic collapse.
• Russia will win its war against Ukraine, seizing the eastern regions that Putin's tried to annex.
• Poland and Hungary will join forces to partition western Ukraine.
• Germany will react to Poland and Hungary's annexation of western Ukraine by annexing Poland and Hungary, forming a Fourth Reich. This will essentially shatter NATO.
• France will go to war against the German Fourth Reich.
• Northern Ireland - even with Britain rejoining the EU, causing its collapse (yeah, go ahead and figure that one out) - will quit the UK and reunite with Ireland. Even though their border issues with Ireland were likely resolved with the Rejoin in the first place. (This is the point where I went cross-eyed)
• That US Civil War will lead to Texas and California forming their independent states, with Texas forming an alliance with Mexico. THIS is the point where I couldn't stop laughing for fifteen minutes straight.

Okay, that's as far as I'll go - he also predicted the end of the Bretton Woods economic agreements and the collapse of the US Dollar - before breaking down how EACH one of Medvedev's predictions are batshit crazy.

Medvedev's prediction of oil prices going up is a likely reaction to how global sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine are crimping their economy now and for the foreseeable future. He's hoping that demand for oil goes up so high that other nations will quit their sanctions to get some of that sweet Russian crude.

His prediction that England will drop their Brexit stance and rejoin the European Union ignores the political dynamics in the UK, where the Conservatives still in charge of government have no intention of quitting their Brexit agenda. There would have to be a massive schism in Tory ranks to force an emergency election, and for the Labour party to win out. Even then, if the UK does rejoin the EU, there's no sign it will force the EU to split apart: After all, it would signal the EU's power to bring a nation that broke with them back into its ranks. It's not like Spain or Italy will quit if Britain reclaims a seat at the table.

There's not even any reason for the EU to let the UK back into their organization: Why trust a nation that would re-exit the minute the Tories got back in control? At best, the EU would compromise on a trade agreement that would turn the current No-Deal Brexit into a Soft Brexit that could alleviate England's current economic woes. And it'll be a deal that won't break the EU.

His follow-up suggestion that Northern Ireland will break with the UK to merge with the Irish Republic seems based on the current woes Northern Ireland has with the Irish border, which is a conflict born from Brexit. If Brexit ends, the border crisis ends: the Protestant half of Ireland would then stay with the UK. There's too much socio-political separation between Ireland and N. Ireland for any other issue to bring them together.

Medvedev gets crazier when he starts predicting how NATO will blow itself apart. He's convinced that when Russia defeats Ukraine, they'll take full control of the eastern provinces that they illegally annexed - including the Crimea - leaving the western sections vulnerable to the likes of Poland. Never mind that Poland would rather provide more military aid to Ukraine to ensure Ukraine never falls to Russia. Because the last thing Poland wants is a return of a Russian/Soviet empire at their own border. He's also ignoring the reality that Poland - having been divided itself between invading armies in World War II - is not about to inflict the same destructive annexation on another European nation. This is mostly Russian projection that other nations will be empire-building like they are.

This is leading into the fearmongering that Medvedev promotes when he claims Germany will forge a new Reich to dominate Eastern Europe as soon as Poland and Hungary move against Ukraine. Just invoking the Reich as a concept is his way to play to the dark memories of the Third Reich, when the Nazis blitzed in World War II and killed millions of Russians. 

One, Germany itself has been aggressive in shutting down ANY sign of Far Right fascist behavior, suffering through two straight world wars have been enough for them. Rebuilding a Reich is a pipe dream even for them: Just look at how the German government held mass arrests of extremists plotting to bring back the Kaiser and start a Far Right regime (a coup plot which was, by the by, backed by Russia).

Two, Germany is more likely to support Poland against Russia - which is supporting Ukraine - than annex it if Russia ever succeeded invading Ukraine. The thing about NATO, one of its key positive effects has been the treaty's ability to unite European nations to defend each other rather than split into competing factions the way it was when both world wars broke out. I can't speak for Hungary, which is under the control of a Russia-friendly regime: However, Hungary is still strongly tied to the EU and NATO, and they can't really go against either organization the way Russia wants to. 

This is the biggest reason why Putin and the other Russian elites want NATO gone: NATO's very existence prevents Russia from rebuilding its glory years of empire. This is why Medvedev predicts half of Europe turning on itself, with a German Reich triggering a French military response like it was 1877 (or 1914) all over again.

It's also feeding Medvedev's fantasy that the United States will break apart in Civil War. Granted, I'm a little worried that the U.S. already is in a low-grade civil war thanks to donald trump's insurrection attempt on January 6th, and thanks to the ongoing threats of violence coming from the likes of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. But I've reviewed this situation before and there's little reason for even Texas - a Far Right state in opposition to a Democratic-held federal government - to break away from the Union. The hassles of nation-building - with few other nations to aid them, loss of supply chains with the rest of America, economic disruption, what have you - just aren't worth it to make the libruls look bad.

There's currently no reason for California to secede at all: a solid Blue State that would likely do everything to support Biden and the Democrats in DC. Most other states don't have the resources to actively secede, even with all the Far Right fantasies of pulling it off (most wingnut militias will fall quickly to even the National Guard units before the US military even steps in).

And Medvedev's idea that an independent Texas would ally itself to Mexico goes against everything we know about Texas' racist rage towards Mexico. The Republicans controlling Texas - hi, evildoer Abbott! - are livid about Mexican migrants, and screaming about "defending the border" by building a useless wall. These are not people who would suddenly want to work WITH Mexico in any way. Hell, that border becomes a flashpoint with Mexico declaring the border with Texas isn't the Rio Grande anymore (because that was a treaty made with the US at the end of the Mexican-American War). There's a whole Trope for it - Mexico Called They Want Texas Back - to where if Texas does secede their biggest problem will be an angry Mexican army marching to the Nueces River.

Oh, and that stuff about Elon Musk becoming President? Under the US Constitution, Musk can't qualify, he's not a natural-born citizen. If Medvedev thinks a divided United States is going to find the time to rewrite a brand new constitution that would grant Musk the chance to get elected, and that either Texas or California would be that idiotic to elect him, he's really drunk off his ass.

So with all that said, did you notice the common thread between every single one of Medvedev's predictions?

Every single prediction is a Russian elitist's wish fulfillment. Every prediction is about how the rest of the world - especially the United States and Europe - has to fall apart in order for Russia to succeed.

In particular, Medvedev's fantasy that the US will collapse into civil war with different states forming their own nations echoes similar predictions I saw Russians make back in 2009. It's a recurring dream apparently of the Russian mindset, having endured their own breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 that has them wishing their rival the United States would do the same.

Russia - having lost its global standing when the USSR fell apart - is both angry and terrified about the NATO treaty that encompasses most of a European continent allied against outside forces (of which Russia is one). It's a self-defeating situation for Russia: The Russians need NATO out of the way to achieve Putin's dreams of rebuilding their imperial glory days of Peter the Great; but NATO stuck together partly because they feared in a post-Soviet world the rise of a Russian dictator (like Putin) who would conquer and divide Eastern Europe, in ways that led to two destructive world wars that Europe never wants to endure again. It's a Russian dream that - to nations like Germany and France and England and Poland - dare not come true.

Russia as a nation/people suffers from either a weird case of Imposter Syndrome or a self-punishing inferiority complex. Putin and other high-ranking Russians on the one hand see Western Civilization as weak and corrupt (and in Putin's homophobic world-view, sexually deviant). On the other hand, they are absolutely terrified that these weak nations will attack and destroy Russia. It doesn't help their psyche that they've been this way for centuries - Peter the Great himself was envious of European improvements and sought to emulate them - both coveting a dominant role in Europe and dismissing European cultural norms and political beliefs.

Russia has always been an outsider force in Western politics, even when they were allies to the remaining democracies during World War II. It's both rankled their pride and left them wondering what they've done wrong to be so slighted. It has a lot to do with how corrupt the ruling forces in Russia have been - either under the Tsars, or under the Soviets, now under Putin - to where the other major powers have been and still are wary of dealing with Russia in any way.

Thing is, Russia's corruption - not just economic greed but political brutality - has been so constant, so prevalent that they've failed repeatedly to reform themselves to where the Western nations can ever feel safe. Hence the ongoing existence of NATO and the EU, both of which enrage Russia into staying violent and corrupt, and nothing improves.

It's that same corruption now eating away at Russia as 2022 rolls into 2023. The political elites - the oligarchs that own everything to Russia's ruin - dare not turn against or reject the violent dictatorship of Putin that has pushed the nation into an unwinnable ground war in Ukraine.

The only way to end their nightmare is to dream of a world that collapses before Russia does.

But that dream is a lie, just like every self-delusion Russians have been feeding themselves for ages.

It's more of a nightmare for Ukraine and Europe and the United States and the world, that's not going to end until Putin is gone.

Gods help us.

May the new year see an end to this corrupt Russian madness.

One Sentence Statement about the Passing of Pope Benedict XVI

There is a Circle of Hell dedicated to those who betrayed their position of office, there is a Circle of Hell for priests and bishops and Popes who allowed pedophiles and rapists to attack the children and families of their own parishes, there is a Circle of Hell for those who lied against the victims, there is a Circle of Hell for those who covered up crimes for the sake of power and money, and so there is a Circle of Hell tonight for Pope Benedict XVI who died knowing full well that thousands of young women and men of his own Catholic Church had their lives broken or destroyed all so he could be Pope.

The Day a Young Woman Nuked a Misogynist From Orbit (w/ Update)

Normally I don't double-blog on a day, but this story is both disturbing and hilarious that it deserves attention.

It seems earlier this week, a social pariah named Andrew Tate - former kickboxer, open misogynist, and unrepentant cigar smoker - was allowed back on Twitter under Elon Musk's umbrella policy of letting wingnut assholes back online, and Tate immediately tried to insult/flirt with known environmental activist Greta Thunberg, taunting her with declarations about all the gas-guzzling cars he owns. Referring to Rodlyn-Mae Banting at Jezebel for more:

The self-identified misogynist, 36, tweeted at 19-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg for some reason about the 33 cars he owns. “Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions,” he wrote, attaching a photo of himself filling up one of his aforementioned many cars presumably to prove his immense wealth and unmatched masculinity...

Thunberg provided the only sane response:

yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 28, 2022

The rest of the Internet pretty much cheered Greta for her putdown, and declared her Queen of the Mic Drops for the month of December.

The celebrations of Greta's victory were kind of like this

It gets sicker/funnier from here:

A badly burned Tate responded to Thunberg’s tweet with only, “How dare you!?,” and then started furiously retweeting the few fans of his insisting he won the battle he started for no reason...

The former professional kickboxer and 2016 Big Brother contestant has been raising eyebrows for some time for spewing a seemingly endless stream of sexist hatred, but things reached a head earlier this year when his online misogyny was seeping into classrooms and affecting young boys’ behavior all over the world. Since then, Tate has been banned from most social media platforms, including Twitter. In late November, Elon “Free Speech Absolutist” Musk reinstated Tate’s Twitter account shortly after taking over the company, which seemed at the time to be a horrific move. But it turns out Musk did the internet a favor, because we all got to witness this sad excuse of a man get the dragging he deserves in real time before the year’s end...

Well, Tate did follow up with a few more mocking tweets. One of those tweets was a video of him sitting in a kitchen, eating pizza and lighting up a cigar like he was the lord of his dominion.

Turns out, that video turned into a huge self-own when the Romanian police - looking for Tate on allegations he committed human sex trafficking - used that photo to realize he was in their country at that very moment, and descended on his residence with arrest warrants in hand. Back to Jezebel, this time with Laura Bassett:

A Twitter spat that misogynist social media personality Andrew Tate started with 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg over his masculinity led Romanian authorities to arrest him and his brother, Tristan, for human trafficking and rape on Thursday, according to local media and police.

Tate had taunted Thunberg on Twitter about his 33 cars, to which Thunberg replied with a joke about “small dick energy” that racked up millions of likes. Tate then posted a humiliating two-minute video of himself smoking a cigar in a robe and insisting that he was not owned at all by teen girl. But he seems to have really fucked up there: A local pizza shop listed on the box in the video reportedly tipped off authorities as to his whereabouts.

As a side note: They have pizza chains in Romania??? 

Police raided his villa and detained the Tates on suspicions of sex trafficking. Semafor reports that the suspects “allegedly used a ‘loverboy method’ to lure victims into marriages and then sexually and mentally abused them to perform in exploitative videos, authorities said.”

If Tate ends up in prison because Greta Thunberg bodied him on Twitter with a small dick joke, it will be the most chef’s kiss ending to his story the world has ever seen...

This story starts off creepy, with a known misogynist (33 years old) sending tweets to a woman almost half his age (Greta is now 19, but still way too young for him) in one of those "oh god, he's being a perv towards her" kind of vibes. She gets her revenge in public by labeling his faux Alpha Male BS as "small dick energy," which clearly knee-groined Tate in his pride, angering him enough to respond... only to have that response condemn himself with arrest on rape and trafficking charges. 

The schadenfreude is too delicious, more tasty than pizza. 

Yes, I went there.

It's turning out Tate shouldn't have.

BWHAHAHAHA.

Update: I just want to make sure that the reports on Tate's arrest are credible. The Guardian is covering the story, and they're very reliable. 

Where the Grifting Takes the GOP

You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you.
-- Lester Freamon, The Wire

In a followup to last week's bombshell that a New York Republican Representative-Elect was a gaslighting fraud, I need to note that the authorities are finally paying attention to George Santos and opening criminal investigations on him. O the irony of grifting your way into elected office letting prosecutors find out you were grifting in the first place.

While the mainstream media is busy assigning blame on who's responsible for Santos getting as far as he has - blaming Democrats for not doing enough Oppo Research, blaming local press for not digging into Santos' bogus resume - the most blame should be aimed at Santos himself for setting himself up for this exposure and ridicule (if not future jail time). After that, most of the blame should be aimed at a Republican Party that is not only vulnerable to con artists buying their way into their ranks, but happily defending the grifters even when their scandals threatens to expose all the other corrupt sins hiding in the GOP closets.

As Jill Dennison notes at her blog:

I could point to so many, such as Marge Greene who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives despite being a follower of QAnon, despite believing that Jewish space lasers (hint, in case any Republicans are reading this, there ain’t no such thing as Jewish space lasers) started the California wildfires.  Or the pistol-totin’ barhop, Lauren Boebert who proudly put a photo of all her children holding big guns on her Christmas cards.  And then, there’s Kevin McCarthy, vying to be the next Speaker of the House, whose only platform is revenge against any and all liberal democratic policies and those of us who support those policies.  But for now, I want to focus on one incoming member of the House, a person who will be seated in the House of Representatives next Tuesday, a person who has broken the boundaries of dishonesty:  George Santos...

This is a new low even for the Republican Party and if, in fact, they allow him to be seated in the House on Tuesday, it will be the most definitive statement yet that there is no conscience, no morals, no values, and no integrity within the Republican Party.  One lie of any substance would have disqualified any Democratic candidate, but Mr. Santos told lies about every single aspect of his entire 34 years!!!  I imagine there are some Republicans who are wishing they could crawl under a rock right about now – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney – but the rest seem to be scratching their heads and wondering how to get this out of the news, how to make it disappear.  Not a single word from the otherwise garrulous Kevin McCarthy… funny that.

This is, for the Republicans, as bad a nightmare as the former guy, an egomaniac, planning to run for the Oval Office again.  I would pity the Republicans, but … they brought this mess on themselves when they first began letting unqualified circus clowns run for office.  It seems to me that a person who cannot even be relied upon to tell the truth about where he went to college (he didn’t), property he claims to own (but doesn’t), where he has worked, his ancestry, his criminal past, where he lives, cannot possibly be trusted to be an honest lawmaker!  I thought Herschel Walker told some mighty big lies, but Santos even makes him look like an amateur.  Santos is right up there with the former guy, who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it smacked him upside the head!  This is NOT what this nation needs … lawmakers who cannot ever be trusted, whose words and actions must always, always be fact-checked!  But alas, this is the new GOP – which, by the way, no longer stands for “Grand Old Party”, but rather for “Gaslight Or Perjure...”

Dennison - and others - are calling on the Republican leadership to do the right thing, the ethical thing, but the likes of Kevin McCarthy cannot afford to kick Santos to the curb because their control of the US House is on a precarious - 5-seat margin - footing already. McCarthy himself is facing an unheard-of fight of his life for the Speakership, and he needs all the grifters he can find to save his own ass in this moment. Even though Santos will condemn McCarthy - and the rest of the GOP - down the road.

This scandal with Santos is exposing the reality that the Republican Party for all historic purposes is no longer a political party, it's an ongoing criminal conspiracy. As Amanda Marcotte points out at Salon, entire decades of lusting after power has turned a once-proud Party into a haven for grifters: 

One thing was dead certain within moments of the New York Times publishing its exposé on the many lies of George Santos: There was zero chance that this brand new Republican congressman-elect from New York would be shamed into giving up his seat. Perhaps that didn't seem obvious to everyone at first, especially those with lingering memories of the pre-Trump era, when we all pretended to believe that Republican voters cared about hypocrisy, lying, overt racism, sexual abuse or any of the other personal or professional scandals that used to take politicians down routinely. But I never doubted for a moment that Santos would move onward toward being seated and that the incoming Republican House majority would allow it...

Despite all this, the only way he doesn't join Congress as an esteemed member of the Republican caucus is if New York prosecutors can nail him for something first. I believe this in the way I believe that chocolate is delicious and cats are cute. After all, what is the modern GOP, if not a holding station for every two-bit criminal and grifter who wants the job security that can only come with exploiting the endlessly credulous Republican base? The party can no more start kicking out the fraudsters than it can stop trying to cut taxes for the rich. This is just who they are and what they do. George Santos is in no sense an anomaly. He is the Republican present and, even more to the point, the Republican future...

This is what gets delicately described as "negative partisanship" in mainstream media and political science textbooks, and all too often treated as an equal problem on both sides. Of course it's true that both parties include some voters who are more motivated by dislike of the opposing party than by support for their own. But with Democrats, that at least has some basis in real-world concerns, given that Republicans are the party of abortion bans and the Jan. 6 insurrection. But on the other side, Republican voters mostly coast on hyperbolic vitriol about the evils of Democrats, which are at best vague insinuations of corruption, and at worst outright lies and QAnon-style conspiracy theories. 

Convincing Republican voters to believe that Democrats are literally the worst people imaginable certainly helps Republicans win elections. But it's also destabilizing the party from within, because shady characters of all flavors now understand that no sin or crime is so great that it cannot be wiped away by running for office as a Republican. The result is a party full of cranks, chronic liars and petty criminals, a situation that gets worse every election cycle, as demonstrated by the Santos fiasco...

We still don't know where George Santos got the money that allowed him to run and win a congressional election in a pivotal swing district. But he's still likely to be seated next week with no serious impediment, offering America's swindler class another reason to believe that going into Republican politics is like getting a license to commit fraud. There's no real chance of political backlash in a situation like this, with the GOP voter base heavily dosed up on Fox News hate. Worse yet, it seems increasingly clear that federal law enforcement is too afraid of looking "partisan" to prosecute Republican politicians over anything, so there are no serious legal consequences either. Sam Bankman-Fried may be kicking himself for getting into cryptocurrency instead of GOP politics, if what he wanted was the ability to defraud whoever you like with impunity...

I wrote in 2015 that the Republican Party was dead in spirit, with only a decaying body shambling about going through the motions of politics in order to keep all the money and power in their undead uncaring hands. With the 2016 election of donald trump, the Republicans were stuck with the reality that he paved the way for all the other grifters to yell and scream enough on Far Right media outlets to win offices in safe gerrymandered districts (or safe Red states full of Culture War angst). 

With these political offices in their hands, they can con their way to put more government funds in their own pockets. They can then campaign and fundraise to their hearts' desires, sucking up every last penny from the suckers who buy their vitriol and eat it like caviar. This is the new con game, where the liars can make money even if they lose by declaring themselves victims and fundraising off of that.

This is where the modern GOP is. A party filling up with George Santos and a hundred other grifters. Now literally "trumps all the way down." 

trump can't go to jail for his crimes fast enough. Here's hoping he shares a cell block with Santos sooner rather than later. Along with the other Republican grifters thriving off of fear and hate and greed.

The Document of trump's Atrocities

Here's some light reading for this Christmas weekend, everybody.

The Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

At a whopping 845 pages in PDF format.

Dunno if the Republicans will keep it up after they take control of the House in January, so download it while you can!

Don't worry, I made sure my library ordered a print copy for checkout!

If only the professor who taught me Government Documents Librarianship could see me now!

I'm already seeing photos of Giuliani's failed press conference at the Four Seasons Landscaping store front. It's now a matter of official public record. BWHAHAHAHAHA.

'Course, the rest of it is not as funny...

Who IS This Guy?

So a rather bizarre scandal reared its head this week - in a month, nay a life cycle of utter madness ever since 2016 Gods help us, so this being cray-cray is saying something - when the New York Times started looking at the newly elected people from this midterms cycle, and discovered this George Santos who won a US Congressional seat in the Long Island part of New York was, well, lying about his entire goddamn resume and parts of his personal biography.

Since the Times is definitely behind a firewall for me, I'm pilfering much of the info from Raw Story so do help a blog out and donate or subscribe to Raw Story please and thanks. Oh, the report via Travis Gettys (I can't see who the Times reporters are, my bad):

George Santos, a son of Brazilian immigrants who presented himself as a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor" who owned 13 properties and operated an animal rescue charity, became the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, but a New York Times review of public documents and court filings called into question his résumé.

Both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs told the newspaper they had no record of Santos working there, as he had claimed, and Baruch College found no record that he had graduated in 2010, also as he claimed.

The Internal Revenue Service also found little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friend of Pets United, was a tax-exempt organization.

It gets crazier.

Santos loaned more than $700,000 to his campaign and donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the past two years, but his company, the Devolder Organization, has virtually no online presence and his financial disclosures don't reveal any clients -- which election law experts say could be a problem if those clients actually exist.

The Times also could not find any records of the properties his family allegedly owns.

This part of the story quickly raises a ton of red flags. If Santos doesn't have a verified source of employment or income (if he's not earning money from the properties he claims to have, for example), then where the hell did that $700,000 he "loaned" to his own campaign come from? This reeks of money laundering. I mean, for all of the fakery surrounding trump's questionable finances, at least he actually owns stuff he can use as collateral to get loans. 

All anyone can confirm at the moment is that George Santos was caught committing checking fraud in Brazil back in 2010, and that Santos had been evicted from residences several times for missing rent payments. 

With a hot scandal to follow, there's been denials and recriminations and further exposure of Santos' falsehoods. He claimed he lost employees in the tragic Orlando Pulse mass shooting, but nobody can tie any of the fallen to his alleged businesses.  The latest report is that Santos may be lying about his family's Jewish background that they fled due to the coming Second World War and Holocaust. 

There's open questions now if Santos is really gay. After all, he's lied about everything else about himself. (Update: Santos was married to a woman before divorcing in 2019. It could just mean he was bi/closeted and came out afterward. It happens. But he never mentioned the marriage when he campaigned, so... Lie of Omission.)

This story is exposing a lot of sins right now, and not just Santos'. 

The Republican Party at the New York level has to deal with the reality one of their bright new stars is a goddamn fake, not to mention the thousands of campaign dollars they've gotten from this guy puts everyone's ledgers under scrutiny. The entire GOP party in that state has a lot of answering to do.

The Democratic Party at the New York level is also getting yelled at. In this day and age of extreme partisan politics, Oppo Research should be Campaigning 101. This wasn't Santos' first attempt at elected office, and one thing you're supposed to do is go through your opponent's work history and background to find ANY questionable acts and weak spots in their narratives to exploit. While Santos' opponent reportedly did some digging, and then tried to get the papers to follow up, nobody really paid attention until he'd actually won (and ironically getting the attention as a "future GOP star" in a mostly-Dem state). There's a growing push to remove the current party head in New York - who's floundered at keeping the party organized already, this is one more faux pas on him - and this could get ugly.

This is also a massive indictment of our electoral process, especially for the Congressional and state legislative offices. I've complained about this before, that our choices for candidates are barely - if ever - vetted for qualifications to the jobs we're supposed to elect them to. The parties are so desperate to draft celeb candidates - or too beholden to the religious and cultural extremists to allow the more unhinged and vulgar - that they don't care about actual QUALITY of that candidate until it's too late. You would think a stronger background check would be run on these candidates - especially to make sure you don't get anyone like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott embezzling from your own party's funds - to guarantee you're presenting the Best and the Brightest to reflect your party's ethos. Guess what Republicans, someone like Santos - and so many others - are proving your party has no ethics at all.

It does not help that the only ones who can even put their names on the ballots for consideration are the only ones who can AFFORD - by clean money or laundered - to run in the first place. It costs money to file for an election primary, it costs thousands of dollars to run any kind of campaign. You can see it with Santos working to buy a win with $700,000 that nobody can confirm came from honest business. Elections have turned into a racket, a billion dollar industry that buys you a lot of political influence that can siphon even more taxpayer money into your own pockets later on. Gods help us with that open scandal.

Everything about Santos demands a full criminal investigation.

Hell, we need to run a criminal investigation to find out who George Santos really IS.