[ Posted Wednesday, January 4th, 2023 – 17:01 UTC ]
As the sun sinks slowly in the west... as the stormclouds continue to gather... welcome to another episode of As The House Turns....
Sorry if I'm a little loopy, but watching six consecutive roll-call votes in the House of Representatives has done that to me. The clown parade continues, with no real end in sight, although the Republicans have now introduced a twist to the story by only agreeing to adjourn the chamber for a few hours. They will reconvene at 8:00 tonight, which is odd -- I mean, do they really want this to be on primetime television? For what possible purpose? Self-flagellation? Straight-up masochism? But then trying to figure out Republican motivations at this point is no more than a fool's game, so we'll just have to see what happens.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023 – 15:58 UTC ]
I knew that Kevin McCarthy would be weak, but I have to admit I didn't expect he'd prove to be this weak, this soon. As I write this, the third vote for speaker is in progress [note: while editing this, the House adjourned until noon tomorrow...]. McCarthy will lose this one, just like he lost the first two. So far, the votes have been functionally identical: 212 votes for Hakeem Jeffries (the Democratic leader), 203 votes for McCarthy, and 19 votes for other Republicans. On the first vote the "other" was split, but in the second round and (so far) the third, the GOP opposition has lined up behind Jim Jordan. Who actually voted for McCarthy. In other words, the three-ring GOP House of Representatives has opened with a clown parade.
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[ Posted Friday, December 23rd, 2022 – 19:51 UTC ]
Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.
As always, this is long. Horrendously long. Insanely long. It takes a lot of stamina to read all the way to the end. You have been duly warned! But because it is so long, we certainly don't want to add any more here at the start, so let's just dive in, shall we?
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[ Posted Friday, December 16th, 2022 – 18:45 UTC ]
Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!
As always, we must begin with a stern warning: this is an incredibly long article. So long you likely won't make it to the end, at least not in one sitting. It is, as it always is, a marathon not a sprint.
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[ Posted Monday, December 12th, 2022 – 16:02 UTC ]
We're about to see a rather dramatic change in the leadership of the United States House of Representatives, and I am not merely referring to the change in political control which will happen when the new Congress is seated in January -- because the more dramatic shift is going to be from one of the strongest speakers in living memory to one of the weakest. And that's only if Kevin McCarthy wins the vote to become speaker at all (which is currently in doubt -- a rather salient measure of his weakness, in fact).
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[ Posted Friday, December 9th, 2022 – 18:55 UTC ]
We had fully intended to begin today's column with the news from Georgia, to celebrate Senator Raphael Warnock's re-election. At some point, we would have gotten around to some snark directed at Joe Manchin, since he wouldn't be such a pivotal vote any more, given the 51-seat majority Democrats will now enjoy. And as an afterthought, we would have tossed in Kyrsten Sinema's name as well, since she deserves a heaping helping of snark as well.
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 7th, 2022 – 16:38 UTC ]
There were two main lessons to be learned from last night's Senate runoff election in Georgia: electability matters, and Donald Trump is still a loser. These are really just two sides of the same coin, in this particular case. The big question left unanswered is whether Republican primary voters will learn these interrelated lessons before the next election cycle comes around in 2024 or not. To state the painfully obvious: if they do, they'll stand a much better chance of electoral success than if they don't.
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[ Posted Friday, December 2nd, 2022 – 18:18 UTC ]
This week, there was a massive toxic explosion of hot air and noxious fumes, which caused many to flee in terror from the spectacle. Also, in Hawai'i, the volcano Mauna Loa erupted.
Sorry for being so sarcastic, but we couldn't resist.
But we'll get to all of the White supremacy and Nazism and Donald Trump in a bit, instead let's start off with some positive news.
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[ Posted Wednesday, November 30th, 2022 – 16:56 UTC ]
There was a historic passing of the torch today, as Hakeem Jeffries was unanimously voted leader of the House Democrats in the next Congress. He will become the first Black leader of a political party in either chamber of Congress, which is an enormous milestone to achieve. Meanwhile, over on the Republican side, Kevin McCarthy is still scrambling to get enough votes from his caucus to achieve his goal of becoming the next speaker. This should all be seen as a harbinger of things to come, for both political parties. So let's take a look at where both of them are and what we might expect to see in the 118th Congress.
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[ Posted Tuesday, November 29th, 2022 – 16:40 UTC ]
A lot of people work on America's railroads. Some of them are ready to go on strike. This could, as early as this weekend, cause major disruptions in the supply chains of just about everything. And we all remember last year's holiday shopping season, when supply chain problems were so acute. So President Joe Biden and Congress are about to step into the fray and derail the possibility of a strike (so to speak). They could do so in a variety of ways, but whatever happens is likely to happen quite quickly (given the deadlines involved).
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