Knowing When to Leave 🌻 🌻 🌻

Promises, Promises: The word is that Kevin McCarthy made a lot of promises to the most extreme members of his own caucus to secure his speakership.  Of course, the party line is that he didn’t and that there were no “secret” side agreements but the assignments to some of the most important House committees tell another story.  Arizona’s Paul Gosar, Georgia’s Margie Q, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, and Ohio’s Jim Jordan, who also will also be serving as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have all been rewarded with seats on the House Oversight Committee. That’s a huge step up for Gosar and Margie Q who had both been removed from committee assignments during Nancy Pelosi’s reign, Gosar for threatening the life of Democratic Congresswoman AOC and Margie Q for her anti-Semitic rants.  Both also spoke at a conference hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes’s America First PAC, an event so toxic that even most right-wing Republicans generally avoid it.  Fuentes is the charming chap that Kanye brought to Mar a Lago for his “Guess who’s Coming to Dinner” date with Trump. Margie Q also secured a spot on the Homeland Security Committee, particularly galling given that Homeland was created in response to the events of 9.11, and she’s a 9.11 denier who questions that there’s proof that a plane ever struck the Pentagon. For his part, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry was so committed to blocking Joe Biden’s ascent to the presidency that he is under DOJ investigation for being the matchmaker who arranged the shidduch between Trump and DOJ environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark who Trump then installed for a New York minute as Attorney General as part of his attempted coup. A few of the so-called normies, a group of Republicans who aren’t as nuts as the others but probably aren’t all that normal either, are starting to grouse a bit about being pushed aside.  That group includes 71-year-old Florida Congressman Vern Buchanan who thought he was next in line to chair the Ways and Means Committee but instead lost out to 42-year-old Jason Smith of Missouri, one of McCarthy’s pets.  Buchanan, who had previously said he’d resign if he didn’t get the chairmanship spot is not a happy camper.  He was overheard yelling at McCarthy “you f-cked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me.”  It’s not clear that Buchanan will resign but if he does, that will shrink McCarthy’s House margin down to three, or maybe even two as another Republican, Florida’s Greg Steube, fell off a roof yesterday, is currently hospitalized and, at least for now, can’t make it for any now mandatory in person voting.  And though no one is suggesting that either of them is going anywhere, apparently Margie Q and Boebert remain on the outs, they’ve been overheard fighting in the House Ladies Room.  

Birds of a Feather: Then there’s George Santos, who probably wouldn’t mind it if Buchanan left or if Stuebe remained hospitalized because every time Kevin loses a vote Santos’ gains job security.  The many named fabulist didn’t get any plum committee assignments, but he did manage to secure two appointments to lesser committees; he’ll be sitting on the Small Business Committee and the Science, Space and Technology Committee, totally appropriate since he’s good at fraud and on record claiming to have invented carbon capture technology. We keep learning more about George, none of it good.  Using his Anthony Devolder identity, Santos scammed a disabled veteran and his dog out of $3,000 raised through GoFundMe.  The money was to be used to pay for the removal of a large tumor on the dog’s abdomen but instead disappeared down the Santos money hole.  That story ended with the untreated dog dying.  Less sad and not illegal but crazy and hypocritical given his party’s stance on such things, using still another nom de guerre, Santos performed under the name of Kitara in drag shows in Brazil.  Also, it turns out that George Anthony Kitara Devolder Santos’ mother who he first claimed died during 9.11 before then saying that she died later as the result of harm caused by the attack, well she wasn’t even in NYC on 9.11.  As far as we know she is still dead, but immigration records indicate that she was in Brazil on 9.11. 

Switching Places: About the only thing positive that you can say about Santos at this point is that at least so far, he’s not as dangerous as Solomon Pena, the defeated Republican candidate arrested in New Mexico for shooting and plotting to shoot a handful of the Democrats who he held responsible for his loss. Santos, et al, is also not as dangerous as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the presidential wannabee, who could be the Republican Party’s next nominee if its members ever get over their Trump infatuation.  In addition to re-upping his fight with Disney, this week DeSantis doubled down on his dangerous anti-COVID vaccine rhetoric and now he’s asking state universities for the number and ages of their transgender students who sought the schools’ help with hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery. That’s not questioning the appropriate age for transgender children to start puberty blockers, that’s going after adults old enough to vote and join the Army for making personal health decisions because what better way to own the libs and appeal to the religious right than to be seen as an anti-trans champion? DeSantis isn’t just going after LGBTQ folks, he’s also quadrupling down on dissing African American history.  His administration has rejected an African American Advanced Placement Studies course on the grounds that it violates Florida’s Stope W.O.K.E Act.  Regarding that other Florida man, Trump, he outperformed DeSantis by 17 points in a recent Morning Consult Poll of potential Republican candidates.  That performance is partially attributable to DeSantis’ charm deficit.  A bigly problem that DeSantis is working on because how bad do you have to be to lose out to a guy who is on record saying that he grabs crotches and couldn’t possibly have assaulted E Jean Carroll, the former Elle Magazine columnist who is currently suing him, because she was too ugly to rape.  That statement is now coming back to haunt Trump because during a deposition taken for the case, he identified a 1990s era picture of Carroll as a picture of wife number two, blondette Marla Maples. To be fair, the two looked alike back in the day. So maybe E Jean was his type after all? On the subject of crotch grabs, the still anonymous Herschel Walker staffer who accused CPAC head Matt Schlapp of grabbing his is now suing Schlapp and his wife Mercedes for $9 million.  Though we still don’t know the staffer’s name, the Schlapps do and they’ve been making the rounds saying not so nice things about him that will probably come back to bite.