Democracy gone Astray: GOP

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

House Dem Takes Down Marjorie Taylor Greene's 'Pathetic' Chamber Floor Lecture

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) blasted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Wednesday after the far-right lawmaker went on a lengthy tirade about Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who pulled a fire alarm in a Capitol Hill building earlier this year.

The House voted to censure Bowman on Thursday over the September incident, which he has said was an accident.

A House committee is considering legislation introduced by Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert that could leave taxpayers on the hook for up to $17.7 billion in costs associated with cleaning up oil and gas wells abandoned on public lands by fracking companies and other polluters, according to a new report from the watchdog group Public Citizen.

Oil and gas industry lobbyists and their allies on Capitol Hill are working to defeat a Biden administration proposal that would strengthen federal requirements designed to force fossil fuel companies to plug wells and clean up drilling sites on federal lands after extraction. Boebert’s bill would direct the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to withdraw its proposal, and the House Natural Resources Committee considered the bill for markup on Wednesday.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is leaving Congress at the end of the month, he announced Wednesday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The announcement comes weeks after McCarthy was thrown out of the speakership in a historic vote led by hard-right members of his own party, abruptly ending his steady rise in the House.

“No matter the odds, or personal cost, we did the right thing. That may seem out of fashion in Washington these days, but delivering results for the American people is still celebrated across the country,” McCarthy wrote of his time in the House.

Henry Kissinger, America’s Most Notorious War Criminal, Dies At 100

Henry Kissinger — who as a top American foreign policy official oversaw, overlooked and at times actively perpetrated some of the most grotesque war crimes the United States and its allies have committed — died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut. He was 100 years old.

Kissinger’s death was announced by his consulting firm on Wednesday evening. No cause of death was immediately given.

Kissinger served as secretary of state and national security adviser under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, positions that allowed him to direct the Vietnam War and the broader Cold War with the Soviet Union, and to implement a stridently “realist” approach that prioritized U.S. interests and domestic political success over any potential atrocity that might occur.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that it is “totally unnecessary” for Israel to abide by U.S. standards regarding conditions for military aid ― offering a rare high-level acknowledgment that the United States does not apply the law to Israel as it does to other countries.

Asked about conversations among Democratic senators about putting additional conditions on aid to Israel amid its devastating offensive in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, the Kentucky Republican told reporters: “I think it’s ridiculous.”

George Santos Won't Seek Reelection After Scathing Ethics Report

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) said Thursday that he will not seek reelection, after a House watchdog found “substantial evidence” that he committed fraud, violated ethics rules and illegally used campaign funds for personal purposes.

The scathing report, released earlier that day by the House ethics committee, details what it describes as “a complex web of unlawful activity involving Representative Santos’ campaign, personal, and business finances.”

On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson cleared his first major hurdle as the chamber’s new leader: passing a temporary spending bill to avert a shutdown and keep the government funded through the beginning of next year.

The so-called laddered continuing resolution — which passed the House with bipartisan support Tuesday and is likely to pass the Senate later this week — delivered Johnson a much-needed legislative win, averting a politically costly shutdown and buying Republicans a few more months to hammer out full-year spending bills. Under the “laddered” plan, roughly half the government is funded through Jan. 19 and the other half is funded through Feb. 2.

The New York Times sent a letter to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Friday condemning him for suggesting that its employees were involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel last month, calling him out for “parroting disinformation.”

The message came in response to a letter that Cotton sent to Times leadership Thursday citing “reports” that the newspaper’s journalists were “embedded with Hamas, knew about the attack, and ... accompanied members of Hamas as they carried out the attack.”

GOP Representative Denies Existence of “Innocent Palestinian Civilians” and Tries to Hobble Aid to Gaza

Congress is considering a bill that would significantly slow down humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip amid ongoing airstrikes and a ground invasion by Israel that have left at least 8,000 dead and strained critical resources in the already besieged Palestinian territory.

The debate over the bill comes two weeks after its sponsor said U.S. officials should make all efforts to slow down any humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and suggested that there is no distinction between civilians — including children — and the militant group Hamas that massacred some 1,300 Israelis in an October 7 surprise attack.

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) appears to be brazenly continuing to blend fact with fiction.

The notorious congressman ― who fabricated details of his past before his election in 2022 and currently faces 23 criminal charges ― has been caught in yet another apparent tall tale, suggesting that people affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party briefly kidnapped his 5-year-old niece.

In Ohio, a GOP-controlled agency rewrote language for a ballot measure that would guarantee access to abortion in the state constitution, swapping in new wording that opponents said was designed to confuse voters. In Missouri, a Republican official launched legal challenges that have stalled a citizen-led effort to pass a law guaranteeing reproductive health care. And in Michigan, a Republican lawmaker went one step further, introducing a bill that would undo a popular new access law.

Trump Says He's Staying Out Of House Republican Speaker Mess

Some things are apparently even too messy for former President Donald Trump.

Trump told reporters Friday he was staying out of the nine-way race among House Republicans to become speaker and replace the deposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The search for a successor will enter its fourth week on Tuesday as Republicans went back to the drawing board Friday after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) ignominiously exited the race after his fellow House Republicans voted to rescind their nomination of him.

Republican infighting showed no sign of abating over the weekend as Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) issued a blistering letter to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and seven others in the conference who voted to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The sarcastic missive, shared online by several congressional reporters, was in response to a Friday letter from Gaetz and six of the seven others to their colleagues.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday weighed in on why he has not endorsed former President Donald Trump as his preferred Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election.

“Well, the campaign is still going,” McCarthy told NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “There’s a very good chance I would endorse President Trump.”

WASHINGTON — Republicans announced Friday that they had uncovered a “direct payment” to President Joe Biden — exactly the kind of evidence they’ve sought linking Biden to his family’s foreign business deals.

But the March 2018 payment came from Joe Biden’s brother James, not a Ukrainian oligarch or Chinese tycoon, and the check was marked as a “loan repayment.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) slammed her own conference on Thursday as the House descended further into chaos.

“Our conference has a responsibility to the American people, to our districts, to work together and unify, and this conference is absolutely broken,” she said.

US House in chaos as Jordan schedules third vote and interim speaker plan fails

The leaderless House was plunged deeper into chaos on Thursday after Republicans refused to coalesce around a speaker and a plan to empower an interim speaker collapsed.

The party’s embattled candidate for speaker, congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, vowed to press ahead, scheduling a long-delayed third vote on his nomination for Friday morning.

But angry and exhausted, the House Republican conference ended the day of fiery closed-door sessions no closer to breaking the impasse that has immobilized the chamber for a 17th day.

In the classic film “Modern Times,” Charlie Chaplin tried to impress a woman by roller-skating while blindfolded. Again and again, the unwitting Chaplain skates perilously close to a cavernous hole. Only by happenstance does he avoid a fatal plunge.

Keep this image in mind if you’re tempted to send up a cheer or a sigh of relief that Jim Jordan has — for now — been denied the speakership of the House. If it’s a cause for celebration, it should be decidedly muted, because it’s another example of just how close America has repeatedly come to an all-out political catastrophe. It’s also a reminder that the more close calls there are, the more likely it is that at some point, the worst will indeed happen.

Jim Jordan’s improbable rise to the cusp of Capitol Hill’s top job has delighted many conservatives, who see an accomplished infighter bent on impeaching President Joe Biden.

He’s a model presence on Fox News during an era in which success for many Republicans is measured in cable news hits, instead of old-fashioned legislating. His installation as speaker would mark the first time the GOP’s top lawmaker hailed from the party’s growing hard-right contingent. He’s in good standing when it comes to one of the GOP’s most important yardsticks — his relationship with former President Donald Trump.

There’s a reason why House Republicans can’t settle on a speaker.

It’s the same reason there are effectively parallel GOP presidential primaries. One is between a series of candidates embarked on all the usual rituals vying for support from about half the party’s voters, while the other half has long ago made up its mind about who its preferred nominee is. His name may ring a bell.

There is no longer a cohesive Republican Party. There’s a pre-Trump GOP and a post-Trump GOP, living together uneasily. They may be roommates but they’re not married.

Democracy gone Astray