Republicans: continued

[Tero]

Republican logic: bring the whole government (not supreme court) on its knees:
Guardian:
“It’s hard to grasp the complete derangement of this moment,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who serves as the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, told the New York Times. “Three days before they’re set to shut down the United States government, Republicans launch a baseless impeachment drive against President Biden. No one can figure out the logic of either course of action.”

[Tero]

Never mind the lack of budget to run the USA

Thursday’s hearing is just the first hearing for the GOP-led impeachment inquiry, and more are likely to follow.

Republicans have vowed not to stop the probe even if the government shuts down at the end of the month.

The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to interview Justice Department officials connected to the federal investigation into Hunter Biden, while the Oversight Committee still plans to issue subpoenas to Hunter and James Biden, the president’s brother, for their personal and business records, CNN reported this week.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/28/politics ... index.html

[Tero]

(DEMOCRAT RESPONSE TO CLOWN SHOW)

[Tero]

In response to that motion to vacate, McCarthy said, "I’ll survive."

"This is personal with Matt," McCarthy said, according to ABC producer and reporter Ben Siegel. "Let’s get over it, let’s start governing."

But on CNN, Gaetz insisted he was not pursuing McCarthy's ouster over personal matters.

Now: House GOP members seek to expel Gaetz amid renewed threat to vacate House Speaker McCarthy

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house- ... r-mccarthy

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-02/ ... /102923492

After days of tense debate where a US government shutdown looked all but inevitable, Congress has passed a stopgap funding bill to keep government doors open through to mid-November.

While the last-minute bill has saved the pay cheques of millions of government employees, an oversight has left crucial Ukraine aid out in the cold.

Here's what the snub means for the war effort and what could happen next:

Why was the US facing a government shutdown?

It all started when a group of hardline Republicans refused to support funding legislation until they could make dramatic cuts across all government agencies and impose stricter border provisions.

House Freedom Caucus conservatives — as well as a score of Republicans who opposed Kevin McCarthy's bid to become speaker — took combative stands to disrupt business as usual in Washington.

They criticised the US government as being "woke and weaponised", with some even contending a shutdown could be a benefit.

Many believe it is the first worrying indication of war fatigue.

Some Republicans have argued the Biden administration should divert Ukraine funding to border security and other domestic priorities.

The US has been a major supporter of Ukraine after Russia invaded it last year, and President Joe Biden has rallied support around the world.

However, some US officials have moved increasingly towards isolationism in the almost 20 months since the war began.

They oppose handing "blank cheques" to Ukraine.

How much is Putin paying to the Republican arseholes?

Or is it just that they worship his antagonism to anything even vaguely liberal?

[Sean Hayden]

—deja vu

—//—

To be fair Jim, the US may have cried wolf one or two times too many, certainly enough to lose the trust of a lot of Americans…

[L'Emmerdeur]

All hail combover Caesar.

'"Red Caesarism" is rightwing code – and some Republicans are listening'

In June, rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end.

Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy, the military, the media, and government-sponsored corporations”.

In a discussion of possible responses to this conspiracy theory, he wrote that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people”.

For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.

Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.

Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.

The idea that the US might be redeemed by a Caesar – an authoritarian, rightwing leader – was first broached explicitly by Michael Anton, a Claremont senior fellow and Trump presidential adviser.

Anton has been an influential rightwing intellectual since in 2016 penning The Flight 93 Election, a rightwing essay in which he told conservatives who were squeamish about Trump “charge the cockpit or you die”, referencing one of the hijacked flights of 9/11.

He gave Caesarism a passing mention in that essay, but developed it further in his 2020 book, The Stakes, defining it as a “form of one-man rule: halfway … between monarchy and tyranny”.

[Sean Hayden]

—again with the grandiosity, what is it with these types?

[JimC]

The extreme right has often embraced a strongman grandiosity, think Mussolini...

[Brian Peacock]

Where-ever therefore any number of Men are so united into one Society, as to quit every one his Executive Power of the Law of Nature, and to resign it to the publick, there and there only is a Political, or Civil Society. And this is done where-ever any number of Men, in the state of Nature, enter into Society to make one People, one Body Politick under one Supreme Government, or else when any one joyns himself to, and incorporates with any Government already made. For hereby he authorizes the Society, or which is all one, the Legislative thereof to make Laws for him as the publick good of the Society shall require; to the Execution whereof, his own assistance (as to his own Decrees) is due. And this puts Men out of a State of Nature into that of a Commonwealth, by setting up a Judge on Earth, with Authority to determine all the Controversies, and redress the Injuries, that may happen to any Member of the Commonwealth; which Judge is the Legislative, or Magistrates appointed by it. And where-ever there are any number of Men, however associated, that have no such decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of Nature.

Hence it is evident, that Absolute Monarchy, which by some Men is counted the only Government in the World, is indeed inconsistent with Civil Society, and so can be no Form of Civil Government at all. For the end of Civil Society, being to avoid, and remedy those inconveniencies of the State of Nature, which necessarily follow from every Man's being Judge in his own Case, by setting up a known Authority, to which every one of that Society may Appeal upon any Injury received, or Controversie that may arise, and which every one of the Society ought to obey; where-ever any persons are, who have not such an Authority to Appeal to, for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are still in the state of Nature. And so is every Absolute Prince in respect of those who are under his Dominion.

-- John Locke, Second Treatise, 1689. §§ 89-90

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-04/ ... /102931772

For the first time in American history, members of congress have voted to dump the speaker in the House of Representatives.

Kevin McCarthy was removed from the powerful position – and his party's leadership – after Democrats sided with breakaway Republicans in an extraordinary house vote.

It's unclear who will replace him. North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry will serve as interim speaker.

It followed a weekend when the US government came within hours of a crippling shutdown that would have halted services and furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers.

A congressman moved against his leader, sparking a Republican civil war

The Republican Party's right wing rarely co-operates with Democrats. But today, the two worked together to tear down the speaker in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy.

The speaker had been warned that members of his party were coming for him at the weekend, after he co-operated with Democrats to pass a stopgap budget bill to prevent a government shutdown.

McCarthy's chief antagonist on the Republican side of the house, Matt Gaetz, followed through on a threat to force a vote on McCarthy's speakership. He had been among Republicans who wanted to use the threat of a shutdown to force major budget cuts, including for a range of government programs and for military support for Ukraine.

After Gaetz's Republican colleague Tom Cole warned that ousting McCarthy would cause chaos, Gaetz said: "Chaos is Speaker McCarthy. Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word."

A fiery debate in the chamber saw Republicans accuse each other of craving attention and questioning one another's fundraising practices.

Many Republicans spoke in support of McCarthy, praising him as the best speaker they'd served under and the reason Republicans had the majority of house seats.

Others warned they would be punished by voters for sacking the speaker and causing disorder in congress.

"The Democrats will revel in Republican dysfunction and the public will be repulsed," Republican Tom McClintock said ahead of the vote.

"There are only minutes left to come to our senses and realise the grave danger our country is in at this time."

Earlier in the day, Democrats had made clear they would not vote to protect McCarthy.

Outside the chamber, Democrat Pramila Jayapal said "nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy".

Referring to the Republicans, she said: "Let them wallow in their pigsty of incompetence."

As expected, the Democrats were united in voting to remove McCarthy. Eight Republicans also supported the motion, resulting in a 216-210 vote to remove the speaker – and forcing McCarthy to announce his own sacking.

"The resolution is adopted," McCarthy told the house.

"The office of the Speaker of the House of the United State House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant."

[Joe]

Gee, I wonder if he regrets joking about hitting Nancy Pelosi with the Speaker's gavel that time.

[Tero]

Who knew? they have a guitar solo named after them.

[Tero]

[Tero]

We will be happy for Boebert to return to private life in 2025. Smoking here with her ex at Colorado Wal Mart.