Anniversary: Saturday Night's Alright For Obstructing

Update: Thank you driftglass for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-up! Stick around everybody, enjoy the cheesecake! (whispering noises) Wait, WHO ate all the cheesecake?! Dammit, man! Quick! To the nearest Cheesecake Factory!!!

Get a little action in
- "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," by Bernie Taupin / Elton John

With all the current political craziness happening in the U.S. - the House Republicans stuck in a corner punching themselves in the face over who gets to lose the Speakership vote next, donald trump's Big Lie attempts to overturn the 2020 elections starting to see his co-conspirators plead out - it's high time to remember one of the biggest plot twist moments in political scandal history.

October 20, 1973 is when Richard Nixon committed the Saturday Night Massacre (via History Channel):

On October 20, 1973, solicitor General Robert Bork dismisses Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox; Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General Ruckelshaus resign in protest. 

Cox had conducted a detailed investigation of the Watergate break-in that revealed that the burglary was just one of many possible abuses of power by the Nixon White House. Nixon had ordered Richardson to fire Cox, but he refused and resigned, as did Ruckelshaus when Nixon then asked him to dismiss the special prosecutor. Bork agreed to fire Cox and an immediate uproar ensued...

Just as a refresher: By early 1973, more details about the Watergate break-in of June 1972 ensnared more of President Nixon's aides to where AG Richardson - having replaced John Mitchell, one of Watergate's main participants - promised the House Judiciary Committee of an independent counsel in order to avoid any taint from a potentially compromised Justice Department.

Cox took the duties of the special prosecutor seriously, and dug into a lot of the rot inside Nixon's administration. When it got out that Nixon taped his Oval Office conversations, Cox issued subpoenas to get the tapes and transcripts. Nixon refused, citing Executive Privilege. A legal battle ensued to where the Courts sided with Cox, denying Nixon's privilege claims.

Nixon then tried a compromise deal to have Senator John Stennis - not only a hard-line Southern conservative but also hard of hearing - to listen and transcribe what he heard on those tapes, but Cox refused such an obvious diversion.

That offer was made and rejected by October 19th, which was a Friday that year. Everyone expected the weekend to pass and the legal battles to continue that Monday.

Thing was, also that Friday in another courtroom, John Dean was pleading guilty to obstruction in his role during the Watergate coverup. As Nixon's legal counsel following the administration's shakeup following the break-in, Dean was privy to a lot of discussions - plotting, would be another word for it - regarding the handling of the affair and any ties between the campaign, the West Wing, and the federal agencies investigating the scandal.

The likelihood Dean had to share what he knew to Cox, combined with the likelihood that Cox was going to get those tapes sooner or later, had to trigger a fight-or-flight response in the increasingly paranoid Nixon.

And so that Saturday, Nixon pulled the trigger to fight.

Richardson, having promised Congress under oath not to interfere, refused and resigned. Ruckelhaus had made the same promise under oath and when Nixon tried to pressure him to do it, Ruckelhaus also went out the door. As the next in line at Justice, Bork found himself promoted up to Acting Attorney General and - because nobody thought he would ever be asked to interfere - having made no promise under oath he was fully capable of "doing my job" and firing Cox.

I dunno what Nixon was thinking, committing so open an act of obstruction. The only thing within reason was his fear that Dean knew too much, that his recordings exposed too much - not just what he knew of Watergate, but many other illicit and illegal topics Nixon would rather the public not know - and that Cox was getting too close to proving criminal acts.

Nixon may not have gauged how widespread the condemnation would be. Telegrams - this was before Twitter, DAMN YOU ELON MUSK - flooded the White House in outrage, and polling a week after the incident revealed the public flipped their views supporting impeaching Nixon over his actions. The House Judiciary was noticeably livid, and they continued their hearings while crafting articles of impeachment they would approve nine months later.

Rather than saving his ass, the Massacre accelerated the race towards Nixon's doom.

From what I've read of the moment - although I was living at the time, I was three and barely even watching cartoon shows on the telly - this was one of those pivotal moments in American history where the public mood shifted, as chaos undermined the national faith - built up by decades of New Deal policy, the great War Effort of World War II, and the ongoing Cold War fight against Global Communism - in the honesty and devotion of our institutions.

We witness the fallout of Nixon's actions to this day. The sins of Reagan's administration culminating in the Iran-Contra scandals. The failures of Dubya's War on Terror including a horrifying torture regime. Above all, we see the legacy of Nixon in trump's own criminality: Ranging from firing FBI Director Comey; obstructing his ties to Russia; extorting Ukraine to use Hunter Biden as scandal to harm Joe Biden's campaign; and above all trump's election denials that led to violent insurrection in the halls of the Capitol.

It was this event - this open act of obstruction - that led to all of the chaos we're seeing today.

Damn you, Tricky Dick. We are never going to forget nor forgive you for this.

The trump Façade Krakens In Georgia

It's been awhile since I've checked in on donald trump's status as an alleged criminal racketeer. While there's been slow going in South Florida over the stolen documents case, and furious legal battles waged in Washington DC over his role in the January 6th Insurrection, in Georgia the Fulton County case is racing ahead on six cylinders as a number of the 19 indicted alleged co-conspirators are close to facing their courtroom dates with destiny.

In one such matter, a major player in trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results decided to play ball with DA Fani Willis' team and took a plea. Via Kate Brumback at AP News:

Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia, becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors.

Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also recorded a statement for prosecutors and agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials...

That last part is important, because Sidney Powell is one of the major actors in trump's planning and staging to disrupt the Electoral Count in Congress that January 6th 2021. As Jeremy Stahl notes over at Slate (paywalled):

...This is awful news for Donald Trump, as Powell also immediately becomes the highest-level known cooperating witness against him. Given what we know about Powell’s role in the days surrounding Jan. 6 and the very lenient terms of her plea deal, she appears poised to offer damning testimony against the former president...

Powell is only the second domino to fall among Trump’s alleged co-conspirators agreeing publicly to cooperate against Trump. So far, she is the most damaging for Trump, but she is likely to be joined by others who were targeted in the 19-person RICO conspiracy case filed in August by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and her cooperation places further pressure on others to agree to testify against Trump...

Under the terms of Powell’s agreement, she will receive a small monetary fine and a six-year sentence of probation, and she will have to write an apology letter to the people of Georgia. This may seem like a slap on the wrist for one of the top figures implicated in the Jan. 6 cases, but it could mean she gave up a significant amount of evidence against even higher-level figures as part of her deal. Indeed, the agreement included a pledge to turn over all documents, testify against all of her co-defendants, and offer a recorded statement to prosecutors. She’s already done the last part.

That testimony against her co-defendants could start as soon as next month, when the trial of Chesebro is projected to begin. While Powell is not obligated by the agreement to testify against Trump as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution, scheduled for March, any testimony she gives in the Chesebro trial could potentially be used by Smith’s team. If Powell refuses to testify in the federal case, Judge Tanya Chutkan could decide to admit any Georgia testimony. “Her testimony will be on the record and potentially admissible,” in the federal case, said Eisen...

What’s more important, for the purposes of the prosecutions against Trump, though, is that the House Jan. 6 committee revealed that she was an active participant during a critical White House meeting in the weeks before Jan. 6, during which Trump allegedly sought to have her appointed as special counsel in order to seize voting machines. Eisen called that the “the Oval Office meeting that has been described as one of the craziest of the Trump administration,” and said testimony on it is likely to be critical to the overall conspiracy charge...

Powell was literally in the room when it happened. She was going to play whatever role trump wanted her to do in order to disrupt the vote counts and overturn the results to favor himself.

This was a trumpian supporter who jumped from state to state, filing legal motion after legal motion to delay, overrule, and eliminate any election results that went to Biden. Rallying to a battlecry of "Release the Kraken!" Powell blundered through every case with poor and ill-informed legal challenges lacking credible witnesses or documentation, and that pretty much got herself laughed out of each and every courtroom.

With Powell flipped, she becomes an eyewitness to most of everything trump's inner circle of election deniers - Bannon, Stone, Giuliani, and many others - planned and committed before, during, and even after January 6th blew up.

I doubt any of the marquee names are going to flip - not yet - because their own grifting and personal fortunes are on the line to where fighting it out in court is the only path they can take (and still make money from MAGA believers).

But the lower-tier people in the plots and schemes don't have such options. They're facing serious jail time, and in Georgia there's no chance for parole until AFTER they've served in prison.

We're all just waiting for the rest of the Fulton County 19 to flip to save their own hides.

Get kraken, you fools. The ones who make the quickest deals get the best deals.

Just a Quick Observation or Five About the Current House Situation

Well, since last I blogged, the situation with the House Republicans have gotten crazier and with 87 percent more schadenfreude, so let's go to the hits:

Jim "Scandals Aplenty" Jordan's second attempt at a floor vote lost him two more supporters, indicating how any further attempts to push him through the caucus will worsen. Realizing that every vote won't make him a martyr - more of a clownish loser - Jordan is now trying to avoid future votes with his name on the ballot. But he might not be able to, since the only thing the House can do right now is hold votes for Speakerships.

Meanwhile, reports got out how the Republican representatives who voted against Jordan - and their families - are getting harassed with texts and phone calls, highlighting the brute-force tactics of the Freedom Caucus and their media followers. Jordan apparently told his backers to stop the bullying, but enough congresscritters are upset about the abusive tactics that they're not going to deal with Jordan at all.

At one point, a suggestion that various Democratic congresspersons made to make the Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry a "temporary Speaker" with enough authority to manage the House to conduct select business got some support from Jordan and other Republicans, but the deal fell through when nobody could be certain how it would work, and enough Democrats became concerned that Jordan would undermine McHenry as "Speaker Designate" (whatever the hell that is) to rule from the shadows.

Stories got out about the in-fighting going on behind closed doors between the more exasperated Republican leaders, especially fun stories about ex-Speaker McCarthy screaming at Matt Gaetz (you know, the moran who started this whole mess) while another congresscritter threatened to punch the shiznit out of Gaetz.

Per a source in the room, McCarthy screamed at Matt Gaetz to sit down when he went to the mics, with the source saying Rep. Bost “almost lunging at him.”

— Juliegrace Brufke (@juliegraceb) October 19, 2023

Brufke by the by is a Capitol Hill reporter for Axios. 

This is where the popcorn GIFs would be real helpful. Especially with the current reports that McHenry is threatening to quit the Pro Tem job and throw the entire House into chaos.

SCOOP w/@RebeccaRKaplan:

In private meeting, McHENRY said he might RESIGN as speaker pro tem if Rs push him to move legislation without a formal vote to expand his powers, multiple lawmakers in the room said. https://t.co/rBUwe6W12x

— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) October 19, 2023

Wong reports for NBC, by the by.

There's more reports McCarthy is trying to negotiate for the Speakership again, bolstered by the reality that the Republicans are now embarassed to hell and beyond by this clown show and would desire going back to how it was.

But there is no going back. The wingnuts wanted this breakdown of functional government and now they're going to make the rest of us suffer with them.

This is not going to end until enough Rational members of the House Republicans realize the only way forward is to deal with the Democrats and kick the Freedom Caucus bomb-throwers out of power.

And that's not going to happen because all the House Republicans are cowards, too terrified of their MAGA voting base to make that move.

If there's any joy to be had, it's that trump is facing multiple civil and criminal trials and suffering at each one.

Speaking of... (FORESHADOWING next blog article)

Here Comes Speaker Nothing (w/Update)

In spite of the warnings, even as the House Republicans rejected backing a solid conservative figure in Scalise, that GOP Caucus allowed Jim "Scandal-Plagued" Jordan to re-up his nomination over the weekend. Even with a last-minute nominee from a virtual nobody from the back benches in Scott Austin trying to rally the more rational factions to prevent Jordan from winning outright, it's looking as though Jordan and his Freedom Caucus allies are bullying enough of the holdouts into ceding their choice.

This description from Matthew Cooper over at the Washington Monthly spells out what the House is going to get if Jordan becomes Speaker:

Jordan is MAGA rage in a tie. According to the January 6 report, Jordan aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, participating in meetings with Rudy Giuliani and Trump, arguing for delaying the January 6 election certification, and spewing lies on Fox and at “Stop the Steal” rallies. The nine-term veteran defied the January 6 committee’s subpoena to get to the bottom of his role, which would, I suppose, make him the first House speaker to defy a House subpoena. Jordan’s longtime Ohio colleague, former House Speaker John Boehner, called him a “political terrorist,” telling CBS’s John Dickerson, “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart ― never building anything, never putting anything together.” Jordan and Trump as the face of the party next year? Along with an ossified Mitch McConnell? Probably not the best way for Republicans to win back the White House, flip the Senate, and keep the House. 

Plus, Jordan has a certain Greco-Roman-Denny Hastert problem... Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at The Ohio State University from 1986 to 1994 when the team’s physician, Richard Strauss, who died in 2005, engaged in sexual predation against dozens of wrestlers. Jordan has maintained he knew nothing of the abuse, but wrestlers have said it was common knowledge and that Jordan surely knew of it and is unfit for office. Even if you assume that “Gym” Jordan, known for rarely donning a jacket, knew nothing of the assaults, is that really something you want to make an issue? 

Then there’s the fact that he’s not very good at the basics, like passing legislation. Regarding agenda and messaging—something the GOP House surely needs, his attempts to undermine the FBI probe into the 2016 Russia-Trump campaign relationship were a bust, and his efforts to fan Hunter Biden’s legal morass have been pretty weak...

All things considered, Jordan and his ilk are not good at the basic elements of running a government. Above all, the Far Right refuses to accept compromise or bipartisanship as a functional tool.

Even with fellow Republicans. Jordan and his allies are applying a "pressure campaign" to get the 55 or so holdouts among their GOP ranks to end their opposition to someone as potentially reckless in high office as Jordan will be. Considering how the vacated Speaker Kevin McCarthy traded away every little tidbit of power a Speaker is supposed to wield, there's literally nothing Jordan and his Freedom Caucus can use to broker a compromise with the more rational Republican factions.

Just think of what a Speaker Jordan would do when it comes time to broker bipartisan deals with a Democratic-controlled Senate, or get past vetoes with a Democratic President Biden.

And that's just it: There is NOTHING to think of because a Speaker Jordan won't even go there.

Jordan is one of the original Tea Party Republicans elected back in 2010, who happily pursued an obstructionist campaign against Obama's administration and pushed for various federal shutdowns to appease his anti-government supporters.

This is a guy who's never co-signed any legislation that reached a floor vote, this is a guy who arguably doesn't even work on legislation of any kind. This is a guy who shows up for the cameras to scream at people he considers too liberal or too woke. 

To Jordan, everything must conform to the Far Right's world-view or not at all. Which means everything outside of that world-view is nothing to him. Everyone else has nothing to offer him except their servitude and their silence.

So what will a Speaker Jordan do in office?

Most likely Jordan will cancel the Continuing Resolution on a federal budget if he can, and if not just let the current one expire sometime this November. Oh, he may play a game for the Beltway media to "negotiate" with Democratic leaders, but when the time comes nothing will be agreed to and he will let it die.

This means Jordan and his Tea Party MAGA Freedom Caucus allies get the federal shutdown they've always wanted. And unlike previous times when the Republican leadership backed down and agreed to bipartisan deals with Dems, Jordan won't even consider it. He gains nothing - and loses his reputation - with any deal.

The other thing to expect is Jordan fulfilling the Far Right agenda of attacking Democrats whenever and however possible in order to break their party before the next election cycle, so all those questionable "impeachment inquiries" into Joe Biden's "crimes" - which those inquiries never proved because there was nothing there to begin with - will likely go to a floor vote regardless of procedure as soon possible so that Jordan - and trump, who eagerly needs to drag Biden down into the mud pit - can hammer Biden on Fox Not-News and whittle away at Biden's public support.

Given the situation with Democrats in control of the Senate, any attempt to remove Biden via impeachment won't work, but that doesn't matter to Jordan or the Far Right. What matters is the appearance of Biden getting impeached - and getting attacked, and getting accused - without spending any actual political capital in the process.

In the meantime, nothing else will get done. Anything that can be done will be culture war flufferies that ignore the issues and needs for the public at large: Acts of vice signaling to the MAGA voting base who want their daily appetite of lies, fearmongering, and hatred served on silver platters.

The only thing saving this nation from that near future would be any number of Rational Republicans who can see long-term how a Do-Nothing Speaker will damage their party's brand for everyone outside of the wingnut circles. It also depends on how many of them are aware if Jordan is close to getting indicted by the special counsel grand jury still investigating the January 6th Insurrection.

All it would take is four or five or six or 18 of them to vote someone other than an angry, incompetent anti-government huckster, and going with someone else who will get some things done instead of letting it all burn to the ground.

Update 10/17: Well, it looks like Jordan and his allies couldn't bully 20 of their fellow Republicans into accepting the Tea Party rager as the next Speaker. This is even after ousted Speaker McCarthy, spineless as always, voted for Jordan as a gesture of "unity" that came across as a surrender.

It would be pretty to think that Jordan would retreat, but the Far Right refuse to surrender (until they run out of money or free invites to speak on Fox). They're scheduling another vote later tonight, before which I'm sure Jordan and the other wingnuts will try to punish the 20 holdouts with more beatings until morale improves.

Chaos Agents In the House

Steve Scalise didn't even have one day of pretending he was going to be a Real Boy uh Speaker of the House. Via Lisa Mascaro, Farnoush Amiri, and Stephen Groves with AP News:

Republican Steve Scalise ended his bid to become House speaker late Thursday after hardline holdouts refused to back the party’s nominee, throwing the GOP majority into deeper chaos with the chamber unable to function.

Scalise told GOP colleagues at a closed-door meeting late Thursday of his decision and pointedly declined to announce backing for anyone else, including his chief rival, Rep. Jim Jordan, the hardline Judiciary Committee chairman backed by Donald Trump who had already told colleagues he no longer would seek the job.

Next steps are uncertain as the House is essentially closed while the Republican majority tries to elect a speaker after ousting Kevin McCarthy from the job.

As noted yesterday, Scalise already had enough No votes among Republicans that he wasn't going to clear the 217 total threshold to secure a majority of Representatives.

There wasn't much hope for his Speakership if he had gotten it, as the rules that Vacated McCarthy were still in place and likely in use to get Scalise removed down the line.

What happened here was that the demagogues / bomb-throwers among the extremist factions still wanted to hold Congress hostage to prevent any budget deals or further continuing resolutions that a replacement Speaker would be compelled to support. Instead of rallying to unite their party in a moment of public division, those "Freedom Caucus" / "Gym Jordan Or Bust" congresscritters insisted that either they Rule or they Ruin the rest of the nation. 

There is some schadenfreude to be had here as we watch a political party that's risen to power through partisan bullshit tears itself apart applying that partisan bullshit to themselves. However, there is little joy to savor. This is all happening as the planet faces multiple global crises - not just the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East but also increasing climate change disasters and also economic instability with China - that creates an urgency to fill the Speaker's role so that our government can function and respond to these crises.

Which is exactly what the Freedom Caucus / "Government Is Bad" / pro-Russian / racist-sexist bastards want to prevent. They WANT government to fall so they can build their Utopia on the ashes.

An argument could be made that Jordan's supporters now have no opposition to assume the Speakership nomination for the House Republicans... except for the facts that A) he wasn't their first (or second or even third) choice, B) that he's still wildly unpopular outside of his own faction, C) that the party is fully aware Jordan is covered with fleas scandals, and D) that Jordan can easily be denied the nomination the same way Scalise was by those Congresspersons still loyal to McCarthy or Scalise AND still livid at the naysayers for making them look bad.

If the anti-Jordan (Rationalist) factions decide to roll over/surrender to the bomb-throwers now, they have to realize that Jordan will push for a government shutdown anyway, crippling the nation at a moment we should be working. They have to know they'll regret putting that ignorant demagogue in the high chair sooner instead of later. And they'll have to know that if they surrender now, they'll surrender to even more insane demands by the wingnuts to the point the Rationalists will have no power in their own party.

None of this looks good. The chaos is not going to go away because there are too many GOP wingnuts who profit from that chaos.

That all said: We need to change the animal motifs of our major parties. It's turning out that the Republicans are the party made up of asses.

House GOP Still One Big NO

So, the Republican House Caucus voting is done, and Steve Scalise may have the nomination. But he doesn't have the Speakership. (via Susan Davis, Deirdre Walsh, and Lexie Schapitl at NPR):

Scalise defeated Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, by a vote of 113-99. That gave Scalise a narrow majority of the Republicans' 221 votes in the chamber, but he has yet to lock up the 217 votes necessary to win on the House floor. A source with direct knowledge of the matter said Jordan plans to vote for Scalise on the floor of the House and is encouraging his colleagues to do the same.

Ha. There's already reports of House Republicans refusing to back Scalise for the necessary votes to clear the full House, as Democrats are in lockstep behind Hakeem Jeffries and it will take 4 votes - depending on who shows up - to deny Scalise similar to how Kevin McCarthy was denied fifteen times this past January.

Haley Talbot with CNN is keeping tally on the NO votes:

If he had the votes, they’d be voting

House adjourns until NOON tomorrow pic.twitter.com/oTFbzgDyvQ

— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) October 11, 2023

Unless Scalise panders to those naysayers - without alienating the people who backed him this far - he's not going to win.

Unless six or more Rational Republicans realize they won't get anywhere with these lunatics and flip to the Democratic caucus - either as independents or full party flip - we as a nation are going to be stuck with this traffic jam for a long time.

Welcome to a new Long October: The Long October Of Party Chaos.

Who Dares to Be the Next Speaker of the Asylum?

So with the GOP House lunatics having successfully purged their own party's Speaker last week, who would even consider the self-immolation of taking on that hot seat?

For the most part, the Beltway media is seeing it as a two-person contest. Ben Jacobs over at the New York Intelligencer has the weigh-in reports (paywalled): 

Though it will decide who is second in line for the presidency, this week’s battle for the Speaker’s gavel among House Republicans won’t be like a normal election...

Instead, the competition for support among the 224 members of the House Republican conference will play out more like a student-government election. While the final vote on the House floor will take place in full public view like much of the political dysfunction on Capitol Hill has over the past year, the vote to pick the Republican standard-bearer will take place behind closed doors via secret ballot. The candidates are campaigning as much on personal ties as ideology and form coalitions based on far more idiosyncratic factors than the factionalism on display in Washington of late.

The process also will take place with real uncertainty over what the rules will be. Although rules of the House Republican Conference currently require the party’s nominee to be Speaker to receive a simple majority, they can always be changed by a two-thirds vote, and there is the likelihood that they will be changed in order to minimize the chance of a revolt like the one Kevin McCarthy faced in January when he needed 15 ballots to become Speaker.

Here’s an overview of top candidates Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, their unique strengths and weaknesses — as well as the long-shot contenders should everything somehow go haywire.

The Louisiana Republican is a longtime member of House leadership. Scalise, a conservative from the white-flight suburbs of New Orleans, was first elected to be whip, the No. 3 position in the House majority, in 2014 after beating out then-Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois in a ferocious intraparty race. He has since risen to post of majority leader under McCarthy and is hoping to take the next step up the ladder.

...Scalise has since faced a new health challenge with a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. Though he has been undergoing chemotherapy, Scalise has described his ailment as “very treatable” and no obstacle to a leadership bid...

Scalise will benefit from long-standing relationships across the Republican conference and his strong track record as a fundraiser. However, he does not have the best relationship with McCarthy and allies of the former Speaker have reportedly been making calls discouraging Republican members from backing Scalise...

...Infamously branded a “legislative terrorist” by then-Speaker John Boehner, Jordan was one of the ringleaders of the right-wing clique (which eventually became the Freedom Caucus) that constantly stymied Boehner in the nearly half-decade he held the Speaker’s gavel and eventually forced him to step down.

With Trump’s rise to power, Jordan has since transformed himself into a key ally of the former president and was rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the days after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Not only was the Ohio Republican a top defender of Trump around the Russia probe and the first impeachment; he has continued to do so since then overseeing a select committee on “the weaponization of government” and playing a key role in the impeachment inquiry recently opened against Joe Biden...

Prior to serving in Congress, Jordan was a champion wrestler in high school and college, a record that Trump emphasized in his late-night endorsement of the Ohio Republican on Thursday. This fact also comes with some baggage. While Jordan was the assistant coach of the Ohio State wrestling team, a team doctor was sexually abusing members of the team. Jordan has denied knowing of the abuse, while some of those on the team have said he knew...

Neither of major contenders should be viewed as sane or respectable options for the Speakership.

Jim Jordan in particular is a vile piece of work, a grandstanding bomb-thrower whose destructive actions in Congress tended to kneecap his own leadership in a mad pursuit of party purity (or his own rise to power at the expense of everyone else's). He shares a lot of behavior and self-righteousness hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich, but lacking the intelligence and the long-term planning. Jordan is impulsive and reckless, jumping into one manufactured scandal and staged attack on liberals without care to the facts or to the lives he ruins in the process. That Ohio State scandal can well blow wide open if he becomes Speaker and it becomes newsworthy - and enough victims raise a stink in the courts - to compel Jordan out of that office.

It doesn't help Jordan that he's a major player in the January 6th insurrection planning, and he can well be weeks away from a grand jury indictment for his role in that.

With Scalise you're getting a guy from the Southern Conservative brand, which is obsessed with re-establishing Jim Crow rules and ending every civil rights gain from the 1960s. Despite his apologies and disavowals, he's been routinely tied to the Klan and other White Supremacist organizations, and he would definitely push for Culture War objectives that would sink the Far Right rot deeper into our national soil.

That these are the two most prominent figures to challenge for the Speakership now that McCarthy has been cast aside - and considering that McCarthy is offering himself back up as though he's the only sane option in a chaotic moment (again) in spite of the rejection he just suffered - tells you how devoid of genuine leadership the House Republicans are at right now.

If there were any other Rational choices for the Speaker's job, I'm guessing that those candidates are rational enough to understand the job is a death trap. Whatever ambitions and desire for making the history books they may have, they have to see the reality that the current ease of making Motions to Vacate creates weakness for a Republican Speaker. The second that Speaker falls out of favor with a wingnut, WHAMMO they will depart from that seat and the caucus goes right back to choosing another sucker to take the job.

Even an extremist like Jordan will be vulnerable. He could well grant the Far Right / Freedom Caucus / Tea Party / MAGA factions everything they wish, but if they're still not satisfied one of them will Motion and then the vote of No Confidence will happen and that career will be toast. Jordan could well gain the ire of one of the Rational factions saying "to hell with it, I will risk the primarying" and see himself vacated by six to nine of those members voting against him like the wingnuts voted against McCarthy.

It might even be funny to watch. Jordan winning the Speakership, and then a week later he does something blatantly sexist / racist / stupid - or worse, makes an anti-Semitic remark concerning Israel especially given the circumstances - to where the GOP Congresscritters decide to Vacate him and make Jordan's tenure as Speaker shorter than that guy who died from tuberculosis.

It would only add to the chaos, however, if the House Republicans can't decide on a proper Speaker to lead government. Other than the reality that the House Republicans WANT THAT CHAOS because they want to force that government shutdown on Biden and the Dems and make everyone suffer so they can lie to voters about who's really responsible for this mess and lie their way to electoral victory in 2024.

The best option for America is that sanity prevails, that the Far Right agenda of making Congress into an insane asylum get overturned by a number of Rational Republicans bucking the party and caucusing with the Democrats to make Jeffries the Speaker of a plurality House.

But that will never happen. House Republicans are a group of cowards, willing to surrender their pride and responsibility to constituents to let the Far Right Irrational players drive the bus over those cliffs.

This will be a messy week of watching a bad actor get promoted to a high seat of office, and then a messy month of watching that bad actor press for a shutdown at the worst possible time as the world gets engulfed in the madness of war.

Returning to the Cycle of Violence

Today wasn't a good day. (via Juliette Kayyem at The Atlantic)

The attacks by Hamas against Israel beginning early this morning, some of which are ongoing, will be met by Israel with force. How all of this will unfold, and its impact on domestic and global politics, is not clear, but a simple answer may suffice for now: It will not go well. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already warned his citizens that they are at war; civil reservists have been called up; videos are showing hand battles on the streets. The country is on lockdown, with the potential for future strikes in the south by Hamas and new ones by Hezbollah in the north...

To focus on Israel’s preparedness in no way excuses the Hamas attacks and is not meant to blame the victim. Some on social media are carelessly suggesting that the failures can be explained only as some evil “wag the dog” effort by Netanyahu to unify the country by going to war. Israel has been attacked, and civilians are dead. As in any nation that encounters such a horror, it is essential for the government to determine—without the interference of politics or religion—why. Otherwise, enemies will take advantage of this devastating day for Israel’s counterterrorism strategy...

...Just a few days ago, the Gaza border seemed to have been stabilized after some unrest, and nearly 20,000 workers were able to travel across it again. Today, thousands of rockets, which must have been obtained and hidden, were launched by Hamas. It did not end there. Hamas used drones to strike at Israeli targets. It sent its fighters on foot, by boat, and by air on motorized paragliders. Images have emerged of Hamas attackers on the streets of Israeli towns terrorizing citizens, and worse. This is as much a physical attack as a performative one: Watch us, Hamas seems to be saying. Hamas surely planned for the attack to take place on the Jewish holy day of Simchat Torah and on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War...

How the Hamas group was able to pull this off - and to subvert a lot of the technological advances the Israelis have and to deploy a multi-pronged attack with military precision - points to an even larger effort by other forces opposed to Israel - like Iran - or opposed to Israel's allies - like Russia - in order to escalate instability and violence in the Middle East for their own twisted ends.

Hamas' actions are coming after decades of open conflict between Israelis and Palestinians for control of that tiny corner of the globe, spurred on by political ambitions and policy failures of both the imperial powers of previous centuries and then the failures of post-world war agendas to create equitable and peaceful homelands for both nations. Ever since the end of the Cold War, it's fallen to a dominant Israeli government to govern the region, with what outside observers like the Human Rights Watch compared to an apartheid state. It didn't help that Netanyahu's government refused to stop illegal settlements in areas that should have gone to Palestinian control. And yet Israel needed to maintain that system because nothing had succeeded - not the Oslo Accords, not any attempts to achieve peace with neighboring Arab/Muslim nations, not the underwhelming efforts by western allies to check Hamas' corrupt and violent control of Gaza - to curtail the threats to their own civilians.

This is all coming as Europe (NATO) is trying to refocus their efforts on keeping Ukraine armed and trained to continue fighting against Russia's invasion, with Israel attempting to settle a peace deal with Saudi Arabia that could have undercut the regional extremists, and the United States currently embroiled in a political crisis with the Republican-controlled House - and intentional sabotage by Republican Senators to block needed leadership appointments at State and Defense - that threatens to shut down our funding support - for Ukraine specifically, but it could affect our direct allies like Israel - and military readiness abroad.

For now, the best we know is that hundreds of Israeli civilians are dead and hundreds more held hostage. Further strikes by Hamas are possible, depending on how well-stocked they are (and how the hell did they get so many rockets and drones for their strikes?). The likelihood of Israel's army to go storming into Gaza - and flattening everything including Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages - within the next 48 hours is pretty much a given: This is open war now against Hamas, and Israel has to fight back - in as punishing a method as possible - just to survive.

Whether this escalates into a broader war - bringing in Syria and Iran directly; dragging Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia if they want war or not; depending on whatever benefits Putin sees in the coming fight - depends on wiser diplomacy and any rationality among the regional leaders to avoid their own losses.

Things that have sadly been missing every fucking time we all had a chance to make peace in the Middle East and instead let the crazies blow it all up again. Too many global powers are profiting from all this. Goddamn us all.

Update: I just want to add this Twitter post from friend Emily - a member of the TNC Horde - who's lived in Israel, has written about Israel, and is constantly moved by the violence there that never ends.

I don't even rly know what I feel, a kind of numb horror, the cellular-level awareness that things will only get worse but that I don't even rly know what that means, a shattered, mourning, terrified heart, trying to hold space for my people & the Palestinians. I'm devastated.

— Emily L. Hauser @emilylhauser.bsky.social (@emilylhauser) October 7, 2023

It Begins: The Gaetz Folly to Vacate

Welp, there I was getting onto the underground version of City Of Heroes to try and form a Shardtober task force - I'll explain later - when I get word that the wingnut madness in the GOP House upgraded to Defcon Nutty:

BREAKING: Matt Gaetz has officially introduced a resolution to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 2, 2023

(insert ALL the popcorn GIFs here)

Lemme find a link to a news site for better details. Here we go, AP News has it with Farnoush Amiri and Kevin Freking reporting:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is facing an extraordinary referendum on his leadership of the House of Representatives after a conservative member of his own conference, a longtime critic, moved to trigger a vote on whether he should remain at the helm.

“I have enough Republicans where at this point next week, one of two things will happen: Kevin McCarthy won’t be the speaker of the House or he’ll be the speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats,” GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz told reporters after he filed the motion. “I’m at peace with either result because the American people deserve to know who governs them.”

McCarthy responded minutes later on social media, “Bring it on.”

This is all stemming from the ongoing power struggle - both in public and behind doors - involving Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus faction that never truly respected McCarthy, tried to deny him the office in humiliating fashion in order to squeeze out major concessions, and sought to undercut any authority he has as Speaker in order to ensure a dysfunctional Congress.

The tipping point was the recent fight over yet another looming Shutdown that the Far Right wanted to impose but that McCarthy avoided through deals with the Democratic caucus because McCarthy - for all his slavish devotion to the Far Right ideology already - knew his legacy in the history books as Speaker was at risk. Thing was, Gaetz and his allies were going to pull this Motion to Vacate no matter what McCarthy did because he hadn't given them everything - even things that were out of his power to grant - they desired.

So now we get the circus most observers knew was coming: The power struggle not between Moderates and the Far Right - because there ARE NO MORE Moderates in the GOP, they are all fevered Conservatives - but between the Rational and Irrational factions of the Republican Party.

The Rationalists are likely going to stick with McCarthy because the long-term health of their party requires them to actually do things in office to ensure their constituents - the deep-pocket lobbyists - get their piece of the federal largesse. The Irrationalists are going to stage their coup attempt on McCarthy not to get one of their own into the Speakership but to create enough chaos that the House can't pass anything, and thus force future shutdowns to appease their trumpian voter base.

There's no certainty that Gaetz has the votes to pull off the motion. He can't honestly have every Republican congresscritter aligned to his side (otherwise McCarthy's back-room allies would be signaling alarm) and he can't honestly expect the Democrats to knee-jerk a vote against McCarthy out of partisan spite (there seems to be serious debate among the Democratic congresscritters to not commit either way and let the GOP punch themselves).

What Gaetz does have is the Irrationalist belief that he can stage this coup attempt without punishment or consequence: That he can compel his fellow GOP congresscritters to vacate McCarthy through threat of primary challenges and boycotts from the Far Right financial backers they need to fund their 2024 campaigns. 

He's not entirely wrong: The entire RINO purge of the past 25 years revolved around the removal of more rational party leaders - Cantor, Boehner, Ryan - through successful primary ousters or the threats of them.

But it all depends on how many incumbent Republicans can be threatened by such challenges. If McCarthy can rally enough of the sitting GOP to his side - say, all but the 20 die-hard wingnuts aligned to Gaetz - the threat to primary them all can fall flat. And it could impress the deep-pocket PACs to avoid a party split, and let the Rationalists stay on the ballots to improve the odds of keeping the House after 2024.

Gaetz faces the possibility of expulsion for committing this coup - he is facing a House ethics inquiry that could hurt him where the earlier FBI investigations couldn't - but is gambling on the belief that McCarthy would not dare risk the slim party majority in the House the Republicans control at the moment. Thing is, McCarthy does have some wriggle room with at least a 5-seat lead over the Dems. He can happily afford to kick Gaetz out of Congress - along with a scandal-plagued Matt Santos - and live with the remaining wingnuts who might realize such public stunts can backfire. Given the gerrymandered nature of congressional districts, McCarthy could well get those seats refilled by Republicans anyway during the rest of this congressional session, so the risk for him lessens.

I'm not predicting anything: Last time I tried - the looming Shutdown last week - I whiffed.

We're going to have to see if the House Republicans will stand with their Speaker or fall into infighting and chaos.

In the meantime, the popcorn should be ready and hot.

(Update 10/3): I'm seeing reports on Twitter the Motion to Vacate vote is scheduled this afternoon. Reuters has verified it, noting that McCarthy has not gone to the Democrats to see about making a deal to avoid getting kicked out. That means the Dems may vote as a bloc to vacate, even though they know this could lead to utter chaos. The Democrats are reportedly telling reporters that they won't help McCarthy because he's broken several promises earlier this term (and an unspoken level of anger that McCarthy rolled over for the extremists to start that clown show of an impeachment inquiry).

That means whatever it takes to Vacate, it's all on the Republicans to do. I'm seeing the number needed around 20 Republicans to do so, and it's a question if Gaetz truly has that in his pocket. If he does, hoo boy, this all goes nuclear. And then it becomes a question of which idiot volunteers to be the next GOP Speaker.

(Further Update): Motion to Vacate was tabled and 11 Republicans sided with Democrats to let the vote proceed. Apparently I am STILL wrong on the math: Gaetz doesn't need 20 he needs 6, and if those 11 Republicans carry through on the motion that would mean the end of McCarthy's Speakership.

(Follow-up to the Further Update): As of 4:45 PM EDT, the House voted to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a historic first. McCarthy lost the support of I believe nine Republicans in a 216-210 final (several Democrats and Republicans were absent for various reasons).

Once again, this isn't the fault of Democrats. It was up to the Republicans to stay united, and they couldn't. This chaos is on them. It's been on them the last 30 years.

(Final Update On This): The House is apparently adjourning until next Tuesday, meaning the Republicans are going to stretch this out on the calendar as much as they can.

Without a full Speaker, nothing in the House will get done until that's resolved. So Gaetz and his allies get the shutdown they want for the next few weeks (and if they can extend out past the 45-day CR, the shutdown will turn real).

It now becomes a question of what the various GOP factions will do, if they will rally around one decisive figure or else split into factions between candidates. It will be obvious whoever does replace McCarthy, that person will inherit the same broken model of leadership and face the same fate sooner rather than later during this term.

It's now a matter of history to look at McCarthy's tenure as Speaker - one of the shortest, and the first to suffer at the hands of his own party like this - and judge how badly he did at it.

As Minority Leader during the last days of the trump Presidency, he failed to hold trump accountable for what happened on January 6th. Instead, McCarthy played to trump's ego, posing and preening so that the MAGA voter base would accept him as a dutiful acolyte to trump's hostility and fearmongering. It still didn't save him.

When he tried for the Speakership, McCarthy pandered to the worst factions among the Republicans, trading off every favor he could just so he could claim the high office. And it still didn't save him.

McCarthy played to the fears and rage of the Fox News audiences, offered them every lie, provided every justification, just so he could stay Speaker for a little while longer. He still fell from power in one of the most humiliating events in American history.

It wasn't worth it, Kevin. Selling your soul to the worst people of your party wasn't worth it.

And the Republicans still have far to fall.

Let The Dominoes Fall on trump

While donald trump is facing multiple criminal indictments across various jurisdictions, he's not facing them alone. There are others brought into the various conspiratorial actions who are caught between staying loyal to a crime boss like trump and deciding what's best for themselves and their families.

This is most apparent in the Georgia racketeering charges involving 19 people, facing indictments over various schemes tied together in an attempt to force Georgia officials to flip election results to trump. One of the things you see in a large-scale criminal trial is how any of the lower-level suspects jump at plea deal arrangements to avoid serious jail time. It's a truism in the legal system (known as the Prisoner's Dilemma): The ones who flip first tend to get the best plea deals. But what also happens is that others along the chain of racketeering charges feel the pressure to flip to get the next-best deals. So one of the things people were watching as matters move quickly to trial (I'm hearing late October for some of the defendants) was who flips first in Georgia and how it would affect the others to get them to flip.

This past weekend, those dominoes began tipping over. One of the lower-rung defendants Scott Hall agreed in court to a deal that would involve his testimony (via Charlie Gile, Dareh Gregorian, Blayne Alexander and Katie S. Phang at NBC News):

Hall is the first defendant to enter a plea in the case.

Under the terms of an agreement with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office, Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges and will be sentenced to five years' probation, if he abides by the terms of the deal. He also agreed to testify in related court hearings and trials stemming from the sprawling 41-count indictment that was unsealed in August.

Hall, 59, is a bail bondsman who was hit with charges relating to a voting system breach in Georgia’s Coffee County in early 2021. He was also the first of the 19 defendants charged in the case to surrender last month.

Also named in the indictment as participating in the Coffee County conspiracy was former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who is scheduled to stand trial on those charges in late October. Powell has pleaded not guilty.

The speculation quickly turned on how quickly Powell - one of trump's most enthusiastic defenders in the "Stolen Votes" Big Lie - will turn. As David Badash posts over at Raw Story:

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and frequent MSNBC contributor, says Hall "was in the thick of things with Sidney Powell on Jan 7 for the Coffee County scheme involving voting machines. If he's cooperating, it's a bad sign for her."

Hall's plea deal "spells bad news for, among others, Sidney Powell," says former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU Law professor of law. Goodman posted a graphic showing the overlap in charges against Hall and Powell, which he called "alleged joint actions."

It may not be speculation. The Fulton County DA dropped hints they have further plea deals in the works, conveniently done at a preliminary hearing involving Powell's upcoming trial (via Hannah Rabinowitz at CNN):

The revelation came during a procedural hearing for former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the fake elector scheme. They are the first defendants in the case set to go on trial on October 23 on charges related to alleged plots to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state.

Trial dates for former President Donald Trump and the other 16 co-defendants have not been set.

Prosecutor Nathan Wade said during the hearing that while the district attorney’s office has not yet offered a plea deal to Powell or Chesebro, it may soon.

“We have not, at this point, made an offer,” Wade said during the hearing.

“Is the state in a position to make one in the near future?” Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, asked.

“Judge, I believe that we can,” Wade said. “We’ll sit down and kind of put some things together, and we’ll reach out to defense counsel individually to extend an offer...”

Prosecutors usually don't advertise even a hint of deals getting done unless they're certain they've got the defendants on the ropes begging "no mas."

There may not be a lot connecting Scott Hall to donald trump in terms of conspiring to overturn legal election results, but there is a lot connecting Powell to trump. She was all over the map, filing numerous legal stunts to deny election results in vain attempts to steal the 2020 election for trump. She was in the room when the plans were laid out to interfere with the January 6th congressional confirmation of the Electoral College results.

If the DA is this close to getting Powell to plead out is a sign that they've got more than enough evidence to convict, and she's reconsidering whether to stay loyal enough to a crime boss like trump to take a 10-to-20 year stint in a Georgia penitentiary. 

Getting Powell to flip on a plea deal would have to involve her agreeing to testify to everything she discussed and planned with her fellow co-conspirators, which would have to include trump himself.

Keep sweating, trump. You're not going to have anybody putting themselves on the line for you when shit gets real.

The GOP Shutdown Gambit (w/ Update)

(Update not more than six hours later): Goddammit I suck at predicting. Just as I figure the House Republicans would refuse to let even a Continuing Resolution pass, they get a Continuing Resolution passed and sent to the Senate for their vote. I swear, the GOP is doing this out of spite at me.

About half of what I wrote below isn't worth the paper it's printed on (...wait a second...) and the other half depends on how screwy the 45-day delay the CR bill is going to grant the Republicans another try at a Shutdown.

There may still be a Motion To Vacate next week, as Gaetz and his Freedom Caucus allies are going to look at ways to hurt McCarthy and stir the chaos they need to collapse the federal government. I have no idea now if they have a decent chance of pulling it off. I honestly shouldn't hazard any more guesses on that since after all I couldn't get this part right. This is why I've never won the Powerball lotto.

Read the below part to get a good laugh, thank you:

Several observations to make about the now-unavoidable Far Right Shutdown of the federal government as we head into yet another Long October of Republican destruction. 

This may be the clear effort of a small faction of hard-liners among the House Republicans, but you will notice the rest of House Republicans refuse to do anything to hold those extremists accountable. Whatever "moderate" factions there are among Republicans, forget it they are not really moderate. They are merely pursuing the same objectives - massive tax cuts for the wealthy, massive deregulation of business to make corporations richer at the expense of both workers and consumers, massive gutting of the social safety net (Social Security, Medicare, Food for poor families) to make the poor poorer - but would prefer doing so in more subtle fashion.

If you look closer - examine the game plan of the "Freedom Caucus" and the more radical elements of the GOP - you might notice what is actually at play here.

The Shutdown itself is merely the Far Right enjoying the cruelty of breaking the federal government, creating the self-fulfilling narrative that "government is bad" while ignoring the fact it's THEIR bad actions AND bad faith causing all this. Everything they're doing and plan to do is merely perpetuation of this primary objective.

At the next level of the wingnut game plan is their objective to make the House ungovernable no matter what, not only with their open effort to oust Speaker McCarthy - who had issues even getting that seat of power - but creating the kind of chaos that would make it impossible to allow a Republican Speaker a chance to lead. Jim Newell over at Slate can see part of what's happening and how messy it will get:

...Barring a quickie last-minute agreement between the House and Senate, by late Saturday night, to keep the government open for a week or a few days, the federal government will shut down at midnight. This is all happening because a small group of House Republicans, most notably Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, want to make McCarthy look bad and then attempt to overthrow him. If he keeps the government open with Democratic votes, they’ll try to oust him for that; if he lets the government shut down, they’ll try to oust him for failing to pass spending bills, which they didn’t support, in time. It’s a shell game, and Gaetz et al. are already putting out feelers for whom they’d like to nominate to replace McCarthy. The House has finally reached, if not exceeded, the level of ungovernability predicted when Republicans failed to get their “red wave” in the midterms and were left with a bare-bones majority. And it is an absolute sight.

Newell highlights the Damned Do/Don't scenario: McCarthy can't craft a deal with bipartisan Democratic support - something the Senate has done because they're playing the game differently - without risking his career (and place in the history books) as Speaker; and even if the government shuts down those same Freedom Caucus bomb-throwers will attempt to force him out anyway (and if he stays in office due to the sympathy of Democratic support, he'll be doomed as a "traitor" to the GOP and likely lose his congressional seat this 2024 primary/election).

Those extremists don't even really have a replacement Speaker in mind, because they have to know their own party is fractured enough to where no one plausible replacement will get enough votes to win it. Look what happened in January when none of the alternatives to McCarthy could even summon more than 20 votes to gain momentum. If McCarthy does get ousted, there is an expectation that he will still have enough supporters angry from the betrayal to block any Freedom Caucus candidate.

If the Freedom Caucus does prevail and put one of their own in the Speaker's seat, do expect that scapegoat to quickly understand how fucked he/she is. That replacement Speaker is not going to have his/her own power, as the Caucus can and will pull the trigger on them if they get out of line. So expect not only the harshest, most extremist ideology - stuff that would make MAGA squeal and the Beltway Media squirm - to get shoveled out of the Speaker's office on an hourly basis, but we should expect the clown show of fraudulent "Biden impeachment trials" to expand along with the push for an extremist - anti-abortion, anti-Social Security/Medicare, anti-Ukraine, anti-immigrant, anti-Woke - agenda that would even alienate most of the Republican Senators who can't support that shit.

In other words: A new Speaker - anointed by the GOP House wingnuts - will still have a shutdown going because the Senate (and Biden with his Veto stamp) will never agree to the wingnut budget proposals the GOP House insists on pushing. And so that primary objective - Shutdown - remains in play.

There's another level of the game to consider as well. IF McCarthy is able to survive the Vacate vote, or IF the remaining "Rational" (not "Moderate") factions of the House Republicans refuse to back the Freedom Caucus' replacement candidate, the Freedom Caucus will be able to play "the victim" of McCarthy's (or the Rational factions') "betrayal." After all, all TRUE Republicans want to see the federal government broken and shuttered. If there are factions opposed to THAT agenda, time to call them traitors and use the upcoming election cycle to either remove them through primarying or through a rogue "third-party" conservative agitator in November 2024.

This is all part of the ongoing "purity purge" of driving out RINOs - any Republican who dares deviate from the dogma of God, Guns, and Grover's Bathtub - so that the PURE Far Right Republican party can rule, thanks to gerrymandering and voter suppression even as they purge themselves into demographic minority status. 

Another possibility at this level of the game is that enough sitting House Republicans - especially the eight or so who are representing districts that heavily voted for Biden as President - would break ranks to get the Democratic bipartisan deal done to save their hides. But it won't save McCarthy's Speakership, as we could be looking at an open fracture where that faction of Republicans are publicly excommunicated from the party. It could create either a flip in House control to the Democrats outright - which would put Jeffries in as Speaker - or create a temporary "third party" (the No Labels organizers have to be salivating at the prospect) that would create a plurality-based "coalition" with Democratic control of the House.

This is where the Far Right would actually celebrate, because to them this "loss" will be for them a victory for their narrative of "libruls are stealing your power" fearmongering. It should be noted that the loss of political control will free them from the burdens of doing any (boring) legislative work and let them do what they truly enjoy doing (shouting at and demonizing other people).

The GOP House wingnuts can then sell their fantasy on their Fox Not-News talk-show invites that "they" were betrayed, and that this was all the fault of Biden (Hillary/Obama/Slick Willie/LBJ/JFK/FDR/insert other accused pinko commies here) manipulating the weak to his will.

You can see that narrative coming from how the House Republicans rushed their "impeachment inquiry" into Hunter Biden without credible witnesses or verified evidence this past Thursday. As much as the rest of the world - even fellow Republicans - saw that congressional inquiry as a disaster, there was a method to the wingnut madness that pushed that clown show into the spotlight.

This is the Freedom Caucus' fall-back plan: If their attempt at a Shutdown breaks their control of the House - if the Democrats or a Coalition government takes over the House - they have this "impeachment inquiry" sitting there like a chicken bone in the next leadership's throat. If the Democrats gain control and try to shut that inquiry down - even for the obvious reason that there's no impeachable crime proven - the Freedom Caucus and their wingnut media allies can scream "COVER-UP" and hurt Biden's re-election bid. If the Democrats gain control and then allow the Freedom Caucus to continue that inquiry in spite of the lack of evidence in order to avoid the appearance of "interfering", the wingnuts can then continue to use the cover of "inquiry" to repeat and spread baseless and outright false claims about Hunter Biden (and his father) in order to depress Democratic voter turnout the way their attacks on Hillary's emails/private server did in 2016.

There's a reason why donald trump is backing this shutdown. No matter what, he profits from it, even as the Republican Party pays the price.

These games after all do carry a lot of risk. The Freedom Caucus thinks they have a win-win scenario, but they are gambling on what the Democrats would do if they regain control of the House. For example, the Dems could retain that "impeachment inquiry" into Hunter Biden but then expand it to include all the impeachable things trump and his family - especially Jared Kushner - did violating the Emoluments Clause and other acts of profiteering from political nepotism. Instead of impeaching President Biden for what Hunter did, the Dem-controlled House could impeach trump a third time for what Jared did (and possibly open criminal investigations into Jared).

A fully Democratic Congress - considering the limits that rogue Senators like Manchin and Sinema could throw up as logjams - could also work with Biden to pass more aggressive reforms and inflation-cutting moves in spite of Republican outcry - such as bringing back the successful Child Tax Credits that reduced child poverty - that could bolster Biden's re-election chances and hurt Republican chances in battleground states like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and others.

This isn't going to be an easy win for the Freedom Caucus wingnuts, not like they thought. Then again, there's not a lot of thought to begin with. We're talking about a group so self-serving and conspiracy-driven and willfully ignorant that they believed they had a checkmate in 3D chess before the whole standing board collapses on them.

Even so, this Long October isn't going to be a lot of fun. Be ready for the wingnut game plan to get worse if they realize they're getting out-gambitted.

And trump Keeps Losing Like the Drunken Gambler He Is

The news broke earlier tonight, and I've been feasting on the schadenfreude ever since. The judge overseeing the New York case vs. donald trump and his Trump Org issued a summary judgment that apparently nukes his corporate empire from orbit (via Michael R Sisak at AP News): 

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations...

Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

trump is, obviously, railing on social media that the ruling is "unfair" and "un-American," but the judge isn't going by trump's words he's going by trump's actions, and trump kept acting fraudulent enough to earn this summary judgment (link to court papers).

There's still a trial: This ruling covered a portion of AG James' case against trump. The imposition of more penalties - to the tune of $250 million - is up to a jury to decide, and it's looking like that part of the case starts this October 2nd.

(breaks out the celebratory whiskey) Wait, I don't drink. Anybody else like whiskey...?

From what I gather, this ruling - and whatever comes of the penalty phase - means trump and his sons - Ivanka somehow avoided getting meshed into this civil case - will be blocked from any and all business dealings in the state of New York. An inability to maintain a financial corporate empire would/should/could undercut any attempt by trump and his lackeys to perpetuate any grifts and con games. I'm not fully versed on the law, so obviously I will follow up with someone - likely Emptywheel - who is.

In the meantime, trump once again lost a major judicial matter. He's not made of Teflon when it comes to the law, and his failings will continue to pile up as his sins are an affront to all of Heaven and Humanity.

More whiskey?

Roma Invicta

Apparently it's a guy thing. Maybe it's a Euro-White Caucasian thing because I don't know how many Asian and Latino and Black guys think it, but apparently at least here in the United States a lot of men admit to thinking often about Ancient Rome.

It seems this matter came to the fore a few weeks back when women on Tik Tok and Instagram began quizzing their husbands and boyfriends how often they think about the Glory That Was Rome. It became unavoidable on social media where men began openly confessing - or bragging - that yeah Caesar and sea-proof concrete and movies about gladiators are oft on their minds.

I saw an IG Reel that said something along the lines of “women have no idea how often the men in their lives think about the Roman Empire.”

So I asked my husband: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

And without missing a beat he said “Every day.”

YALL! Why!?

— Rev. Kelsey Lewis Vincent (@KelseyMLoo) September 6, 2023

The pontificating came later, like this from Caroline Mimbs Nyce in the Atlantic: 

All roads lead to Rome—and apparently so do all male thoughts. Across social media, women have been encouraged to ask the men in their life how often they think about the Roman empire and to record the answer. To their surprise (recounted in videos posted all over TikTok, Instagram, and more), many men purport to think about the Roman empire quite a bit. One reveals that his iPhone background is Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii, a painting depicting a Roman legend. “Men Are Thinking About the Roman Empire All the Time” has quickly become a meme of its own. Even those who don’t cop to this behavior still sometimes do it. “Probably not a lot, why?” one confused man replies when asked, before admitting that he thinks about the Romans three or four times a month. “The Roman empire was a very big part of history,” he says defensively.

Presumably some of this is performative, an attempt to project oneself as the sort of history bro who can mansplain Catullus. These men could surely learn something from Cullen Murphy. An Atlantic editor at large and the author of the 2007 book Are We Rome?, Murphy has spent decades thinking about the Roman empire. His work focuses on all of the analogies between ancient Rome and the modern United States, and what, if anything, the analogies portend. “The comparisons, of course, can be facile,” he wrote in a 2021 magazine story reopening the question. “Still, I am not immune to preoccupation with the Roman past.”

Murphy's interview has a few interesting tidbits:

Nyce: What do you think the appropriate amount of time one should spend thinking about Rome is?

Murphy: Well …

Nyce: Are you a biased source on this question?

Murphy: Yes, I’m probably not a good person to ask. Personally, I can’t get enough of it. It’s just such a fascinating topic. One of the great things about having a bit of a fixation on this topic is that it makes me very easy to buy for...

Nyce: Are you surprised by how many men purport to think about the Roman empire all the time?

Murphy: I am a little bit surprised. I’m not surprised that men are more likely to think about it than women, if that reporting is true.

Over time, this subject has been presented as gendered, though it is not inherently gendered. A lot of the best recent work about Rome has to do with diverse cultures and about women. But if you look at the broad sweep of historical writing, from ancient times onwards, most of it was done by men. Most of it is about men. And much of the subject matter is about military affairs, which has also historically been something that men have gravitated to more than women...

There are in truth a number of women who also think about Rome as much as the men, but it seems as though the cultural and historical norms of that ancient civilization - the militarization, the obsession with personal honor, the ability to party in togas - retain great appeal for men across the social spectrum. As Sarah Bond and Stephanie Wong note at MSNBC:

“Men, to our core, I think are warriors,” some guy called Adam Woolard once stated to his betrothed on video. As it turns out, his fiancée is former “Bachelorette” star Hannah Brown, who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok. In his next breath, he then claimed that the Roman Empire was all about being ready for battle — as are modern men. But is the measure of a man really based on ancient Rome...?

Rome has a long history that served particularly aggressive men, and in the late Republic there were little to no consequences for public discussion of imperialism, colonialism and misogyny. Imperialism was rewarded with triumphal processions, and ancient literature written for elite audiences celebrated expansion and subjugation. Caesar paid the price for longing for a monarchy, not for committing genocide in Gaul. Roman “freedom” of speech was extended especially to free men who served as heads of their family (a status called the pater familias). The patriarchy was legally codified and came with the power to punish children, wives and enslaved persons who stepped out of line in the household. It is this inherent male power, combined with distorted pop culture portrayals of Rome in television and film, that have conjured a new nostalgia culture for a Rome that never truly existed for 99% of the populace...

A white man who dreams of grisly showdowns on the battlefield might believe that, in some lifetime 2,000 years ago, he would have been born into a noble family somewhere in the Roman Empire. He would have had a British accent. It would have been possible to rise through the ranks to become a despotic war hero, earning his name-check in the annals of history. Perhaps he would even be part of an inbred political dynasty and take on the mantle of his warlord father, destroying barbaric legions and marrying his first cousin in order to further the family line. After a day of slaughter, he would decamp to his swanky villa on a Capri-like coast, where he would get sloshed on natural wines and engage in unspeakable — but very debauched — sex acts. Then he would wake up the next day and do it all over again. 

But humor us historians, and let’s talk statistics. In all likelihood, he would have come from much humbler origins. Around 1 in 4 people in Roman Italy during the Roman imperial period was enslaved. Most others, if they were free, were rural peasants, artisans or people manumitted from slavery. Harsh climates, ambient warfare and decimating plagues dictated the life of many, which is possibly the furthest thing from a cinematically sexy storyline that ends in a blaze of blood, guts and glory...

It can well be that the male obsession over Rome is to fantasize about the power and patriarchy that Rome as both Republic and Empire came to represent through our studies of history. That a number of men admit to such thoughts could seem a dark sign about how we handle gender roles in our modern society.

The thoughts about how things were back in Roman times echo the fantasies men have about being superheroes, or athletic savants, or artistic geniuses, or badasses of any manly code, or anything other than an office manager or work drone in the real world.

We should note that American history, our American culture as defined by the Euro immigrants (conquerors), our political and social constructs owe a lot to what our constitutional Founders wanted to base a national identity upon. The basic principles of checks and balances between the three branches of federal government - and then the balances between the federal and the states - hark back to how the Romans set up their bureaucracy between the Senate (hereditary), the Consuls (no singular king), the elected assemblies (freedmen only could vote), and the various offices like the Tribunes that could hold the powers of the others in check. It mostly worked until internal and external crises led to the rise of dictators and imperators (what we would call Emperors). The historical mirror of our current crises - the rise of a would-be dictator in trump - has been noted already by pundits and historians.

Rome's influence on modern Western civilization is unescapable. It reaches through the European languages - French, Spanish, even some Germanic and Slavic, and especially English - that came to American shores. Art and music, theater and literature, what's popular culture today all have ties in some ways to what became popular in Rome. The American love of sports? Chariot races (the Nika Riots almost destroyed the Roman Byzantium Empire). The American love of toga parties? That would be obvious.

As an American Eurowhite Male, I cannot hide from this question. Yes. Yes, I do think often - not that I count the times - about Ancient Rome and its modern influences. Part of it can't be helped because I studied Latin in high school and college (Alas, my language skills have faded over time: I can barely translate the written word anymore). Part of it can't be helped because I studied European history, and Rome was kind of unavoidable as a topic. Part of it can't be helped because my political diatribes here on this very blog often require me to think of the republican model of checks and balances I hope to see regain value in our government currently torn apart by partisan misrule.

Any regular reader of this blog can note the near-annual remembrances of the Ides of March and my personal advocacy versus the Far Right's War On Saturnalia.

Regarding guys who think often about the Roman Empire, I woke up this morning with an insane urge to hold a chariot race with my worst enemy. pic.twitter.com/UrSYaLakhB

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) September 15, 2023

I'm not really kidding, people.

I would like to think my thoughts about Rome are benign, that I focus on the positive aspects of what Roman civilization brought to human history. I am aware of the dangers of patriarchy, slavery, and military violence that were built into that ancient fallen empire: I speak to the hope that the American venture into republicanism evolved over the decades by ending slavery and empowering citizenship to women as political and cultural equals. Yeah I know, the letter of the law is there but the spirit of it? Still working on it. Our nation's militarism, the cultural obsession with manhood, the racism ingrained into our system, and the ongoing mistreatment of women are serious issues. But our American republic - I hope - is aware of these problems and working on solutions, as opposed to how Rome handled it by devolving into Empire and perpetuating the decay a few more centuries until it collapsed on itself.

Just as long as we American men (and women) who vote understand that the would-be Caesars offering themselves to lead us - the likes of donald trump and his Far Right sycophants - are nothing like the Romans of old. trump is no Augustus who moderated his own wants and built a city of marble that stood for centuries: trump is more Nero, spoiled and destructive, who fiddled while Rome burned.

Think to the Rome that gave us wine, the engineering feats of the aqueducts, the exile of kings, Cincinnatus, and the paved roads that connected a world (the roads go without saying!). Think of what Monty Python - the descendants of Roman-occupied Britons - pointed out what the Romans ever done for us. (bloody 'ell, I can't embed YouTube videos at the moment)

"Brought peace?"

"Peace? SHUT IT!"

And IO SATURNALIA.

So They Can Rule Over Ash

I have said this many a time over the years: There is a sizable faction within the Republican Party ranks that simply do not want the federal government to function in any way. They will force shutdown after shutdown all in the attempt to destroy the existing system so they can rebuild their own twisted Utopia on its ashes.

And now, I'm not the only one. Even the GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy has gone public with the not-so-secret revelation (via Tatyana Tandapolie at Salon) about his own damn caucus:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., appears to have had enough of his hardline Republican colleagues after they defeated a procedural vote on a Pentagon funding bill for the second time this week.

On Thursday, six Republicans — Reps. Dan Bishop, N.C., Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ga., Matt Rosendale, Mont., Andy Biggs, Ariz., Eli Crane, Ariz., and Tom Cole, Okla. — joined Democrats in voting against the rule for the Pentagon appropriations bill 212-216, preventing the legislation from moving forward in the chamber. As The Hill reports, votes on rules, which dictate debate for legislation, are partisan and predictable matters as, usually, the majority votes in its favor and the minority votes against it. The rule's failure to pass in votes on both Tuesday and Thursday of this week is rare, marking an embarrassing jab at the Speaker.

With the Sept. 30 government funding deadline looming, McCarthy voiced his frustrations with his colleagues' blockages after Thursday's failure. The rule's defeat is "frustrating in the sense that I don't understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate," McCarthy told reporters in the hallway outside the House chamber, adding, "This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn't work."

To be fair, the House defense appropriations bill was a big eyesore. It was going to gut "diversity" training in order to play to the anti-Woke crowd, it was going to cut defense spending by 8 percent across the military branches, it was going to waste money on restarting construction on trump's goddamned border wall, and it was going to stop financial and supply aid to Ukraine.

It was a bill that was never going to get past a Democratic-controlled Senate, and definitely not get past President Biden's veto stamp. And yet, the House Republicans are extremist enough - even among their moderate rational factions - to where they should have passed the vote to even bring this to the floor for a regular vote.

That they couldn't underscores the schism among the competing groups looking to impose their own fanaticism upon their own party as much as the federal government. Not so much that there are "moderates" anymore among the Republicans, but that there are congresscritters from districts relying on military funding who don't want to cross that line.

But those aren't the congresscritters who matter, are they? No, the ones who matter among the House Republicans are the arsonists looking to force a shutdown to achieve their goals.

Matt Gaetz in particular is itching to use the removal tools the extremists negotiated out of McCarthy back in January. And it's not really over Gaetz's argument that McCarthy is not pursuing impeachment on Biden the way the hardliners want. It's barely over Gaetz's fantasy that he could take over the Speakership position himself (even he has to know his scandalous background alienates fellow Republicans).

It all has to do with the reality that a No Confidence vote to remove McCarthy would cause the ultimate chaos. There's no other leader among the Republican ranks that could appeal to the entire caucus to take over that top spot. Jim Jordan? There are other Republicans who hate him as a grandstander with scandal baggage. Steve Scalise - the other possibility back in January - is currently getting treatment for a rare blood cancer, and also doesn't have a lot of party support. Every other ambitious wannabe won't get enough votes to clear the 218-vote hurdle because enough congresscritters still favoring McCarthy will vote against the replacement out of spite.

Even with the reality they need to stand united against the Democrats sitting on the sidelines waiting for defections to rally to them, these Republicans would end up knee-capping each other in the rush to become the next Speaker.

Which still fulfills the Freedom Caucus' fantasy of a perpetual government shutdown: Without a functioning House, there will be no spending bills passed. Nothing will get done. Outside of risking defections from House Republicans in Biden-friendly districts, the Republicans could enjoy a broken divided government all the way through to the 2024 general elections.

And thanks to massive gerrymandering and voter suppression back in Red States, the House GOP can well avoid any accountability from the voters for their sabotage.

This could get uglier than usual. A shutdown is pretty much a given at this point. It would have to take 8-12 Republicans to cross the aisle on their own to deal with Democrats, shift the Speakership to the Dems, and avoid the damage the wingnuts want to impose. However, there is no such courage among House Republicans to make that move. It would doom their political careers (unless they flip Democratic outright in a Dem-friendly district).

There are no brave souls among Republicans. They pander to their rabid voting base and they whine to their media allies, but they are cowards hiding in their safe spaces unwilling to commit to the hard work that governing requires.

Get ready for another shutdown brought to you by a broken, reactionary, cowardly Republican Party. They will not rule, so they will straight-up ruin.

Gods help us.