Government Shutdown

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Trump postponed the start of what was to have been a 16-day golfing vacation at his private resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday and remained in Washington instead. It is unclear whether he will stay at the White House until he signs a new spending bill or fly down to Mar-a-Lago in the coming days regardless.

The shutdown will have little effect through the weekend and even on Monday, Christmas Eve, and Tuesday, Christmas Day, which are both federal holidays. But non-essential employees at the affected departments will be furloughed starting Wednesday, while employees considered essential ― including Trump’s Secret Service detail and many tens of thousands of workers in the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Coast Guard ― will be required to work without pay until the shutdown ends.

Maybe his Secret Service detail will elect to walk off the job.

This time around, a shutdown is looking pretty likely.

Why?  Nobody benefits.

I'll tell you why.  It's being driven by the House Freedom Caucus (Greene, Bohbert, Gaetz, Gosar) which is the same buncha loonies who cheered on the insurrection.

If you can't overthrow democracy, just defund it.

Does anyone else smell Putin? Remember, Trump said "If you come after me, I'll go after you" and we all know who Trump works for.

Congress, of course, has carved out an exception for themselves so while the military, the TSA, the air traffic controllers et al will lose their paychecks (and not get reimbursed), congress itself sees no interruption in their own pay.

If it was up to me, it would be different.

You want congressional responsibility? You want the public to factor in? Make it so that for every DAY the government is unfunded, Congressmen lose ONE YEAR of pay.

Shutdown averted (probably) with 99.5% Democratic support and 58% Republican support.

Which means 42% of Republicans voted to shut the government down.  Let that resonate during the upcoming elections.

Speaker McCarthy could have had this agreement MONTHS ago, but instead he chose to play footsie with the Insurrection Caucus.  Matt Gaetz has promised to call for McCarthy's overthrow, which would be interesting since there is no candidate to replace him.  We'll see how that little fart in the bathtub plays out.

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The lone Democrat to vote against the House’s recently passed short-term spending bill to fund the federal government was Rep. Mike Quigley (Ill.). The 45-day continuing resolution does not include Ukraine aid. Quigley represents one of the largest Ukrainian communities in Illinois and is co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus.

Matt Gaetz wrote:

If we have to begin every single day in Congress with the prayer, the pledge and the motion to vacate then so be it.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Matt Gaetz has promised to call for McCarthy's overthrow, which would be interesting since there is no candidate to replace him.

One name I heard floated yesterday was Jim Jordan, which surprised me.  He wouldn't get more than seven votes.

I have my own candidate to put forward, as the perfect representative of this Congress: George Santos.

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“No one can stand him at this point. A smart guy without morals,” one member said, according to Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-gaetz-ouster-republicans_n_651a924ee4b00eb6fb386ed9

Now that McCarthy has been voted out of the speakership, I have two suggested possible replacements.  And this is not an impossible choice, nor is it offered in jest.

• Nancy Pelosi.  She's proven she can get things done in the House, in a bipartisan way
  
• Hakeem Jeffries.  He's the minority leader, again very bipartisan, well respected by both sides of the aisle, and has leadership skills Kev-Kev can only dream about.
  

Let's face facts, there's NOBODY in the GOP superslim majority with anywhere NEAR the skillset of these two.

And in a little over a year from now, the House will be in Democratic hands again anyway, so why not.

Next up in the circular firing squad: Matt Gaetz.

Lauren and Marjorie must be cackling in their beers.

Three candidates have announced their intention to run for the speakership.  All three are far-right MAGA Freedom Caucus loonies.

• Jim Jordan
  
• Steve Scalise
  
• Elise Stefanik
  

Because the Freedom Caucus is a couple more members than the size of the Republican majority, they've been able to punch above their weight and control the House by siding with Democrats against the Republican majority. However the speakership must be voted on by the whole House, and the Crazy Caucus is not as powerful as they believe themselves to be.  I don't think any of these three has a snowball's chance.

And isn't it ironic, I was thinking to myself this morning, that Speaker McCarthy lost his job for working with Democrats, for reaching across the aisle for a bipartisan deal on keeping the government open.  What's the very next thing that happened?  Every single Democrat voted to oust him, along with the Crazy Caucus.

What a dysfunctional institution.

What a bunch of sixth-graders.  Speaker pro-tempore Patrick McHenry's first action has been to kick Nancy Pelosi out of her office. Apparently her office is in a plum location, right off the House floor, usually reserved for ex-speakers. So McHenry has given her until tomorrow to vacate, so Kevdog can move in.

Pelosi's in San Francisco, attending to Diane Feinstein's funeral and burial arrangements.

Nobody is scheduled to take over Kevin's current office, reserved for the Speaker, for probably months.

But petty retaliation is the highest bar Republicans can strive for. And Nancy didn't even vote.

Quote :

McCarthy and his allies had argued that Democrats would preserve the institution of the House by helping avoid an unprecedented ouster and potentially opening the door to a GOP speaker they may like even less.

But Democrats saw no reason to bail out someone who coddled those on the hard right — including Donald Trump mere days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that aimed to keep him in the White House — and empowered the most extreme members of the GOP caucus, while also making no appeals or gestures to Democrats in exchange for their support.

Stupid is as stupid does, my mama always said.

Gaetz said yesterday that Jordan or Scalise would be an improvement over McCarthy.

But here's the thing he doesn't understand: the job of the SOH involves a lot more than holding a gavel.

Looking down the road apiece, let's say the Crazy Caucus is somehow about to install one of their own. Rather rapidly, Republican fundraising would crater, and downballot races would be lost across the board.

Is this a bad thing? Let me think on that for a moment.

But whatever they do, they have about 40 days to get their shit together. The next government shutdown is already scheduled, and if the House can't function enough to prevent it, the harm will come to everyone not just the GOP.

Seth Meyers raised another issue.  SOH is 3rd in line to the presidency.  Let's hope nothing happens to Joe and Kamala in the next six months.

It all makes sense now.

Trump is proposing himself, or others are proposing him, as the Speaker of the House (legally, it doesn't have to be a House member).

The SOH is 3rd in line to the presidency.

Once Trump is sworn in, Sleepy Joe and Nasty Kamala will "fall down a flight of stairs."

Trump becomes President BEFORE the 2024 elections.  He doesn't have to worry about "winning" any elections, he just ascends to the throne.

This happens fairly quickly.  Before his 91 criminal charges are decided in court.

First order of business, pardon himself.

Second order of business, cancel the 2024 election -- and every election after.

You don't think Vladimir Putin has this all mapped out?

With such a closely-divided House, it would take only five Republicans voting for Hakeen Jeffries to make him the new Speaker.

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Jordan had told HuffPost before the secret ballot among Republicans on Friday that he intended to keep trying to win his colleagues over. He said he had lost his most recent House floor vote by a smaller margin than some people expected.

That's the new Republican strategy. They never LOSE elections... they just come up short in votes.

Jordan forced to withdraw, Tom Emmer put forward as next candidate.  But his candidacy is doomed too, he lost 26 votes and can only afford to lose 5.

The House is broken.  Government shutdown is likely.

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“We’re moving on to the next phase,” Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) told reporters as Republicans began the search for a fourth speaker candidate in four weeks.

"The next phase" being what?  Can utter dysfunction and chaos get any worse?

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“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors. RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them,” Trump posted on social media, using an acronym for “Republican in name only.”

This is rich, coming from Trump, who was a lifelong Democrat until he ran for president.

Mike Johnson is the fifth Speaker nominee to be put forward (including Kevdog).

He was instrumental in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Do you suppose--possibly, maybe, hopefully--this will be the impetus FINALLY for five rational Republicans to vote for Hakeem Jeffries?

Alas, unfortunately no. Republicans united behind the insurrectionist.

Now... can Democrats call for vacating the seat with a single vote?

Don't look for any climate change protection legislation or health care rights out of the new Speaker.

He talks pretty but he's as anti-science as they come.