I’ve been asked a few times whether I like reality TV or soap operas, and I don’t. Mainly because I get enough of both watching Congress.
And this past week has ramped up both with the election of a new Speaker of the House. For a time, House Republicans couldn’t seem to figure out who got to be the honorary whipping boy (or girl because I ain’t sexist) of House Democrats who want to get more of Puddin’ Head Joe’s brilliant agenda passed. At this point, the method of choosing a new Pope seems a lot more logical and a lot less dramatic.
Leftists, being the helpful sort they are, keep the drama ramped up to 11 (because it’s one higher), claiming the lack of a Speaker of the House is a national security issue. Even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is attempting to dunk on House Republicans, citing (of all things) dignity.
While we wait for our irony meters to get back from the repair shop, let’s take a closer look at the House of Representatives.
the House of Representatives
What the Left thinks it means – a vital legislative body being disgraced by House Republicans’ inability to elect a new Speaker
What it really means – a reflection of what America is right now
First, a bit of history and civics. Our Legislative Branch is modeled at least in part on England’s Parliament. While our British brethren have the House of Commons and the House of Lords, we have the House of Representatives and the Senate. This is by design in both cases, but I’m going to focus on the American version, which like the American version of “The Office” is great, but lacks some of the elements that make the British version better.
Although, I’m willing to die on the hill that Dwight Schrute is the superior character.
Anyway, the House of Representatives is supposed to be “the people’s house,” in that it requires Dwayne Johnson to own it…wait, that’s not it. It’s that way because the House is supposed to be more accountable to the electorate and are up for reelection every 2 years instead of every 6 years like in the Senate.
This accountability is underscored by the sheer number of Representatives. There is one for each District, including the District of Columbia, resulting in a grand total of 435 Representatives. As censuses and redistricting/gerrymandering occur, the size and shape of these Districts will change, but the number doesn’t. So, that means at any given time, there may be 435 complete asshats in Congress.
I know, right! It seems like more!
Meanwhile back at the subject matter at hand, the requirements to serve in the House are pretty simple.
– at least 25 years old
– a US citizen for at least seven years
– an inhabitant of the state he/she represents
That’s it. Notice breathing and thinking aren’t on the list, which explains a lot about how dead people and idiots wind up winning elections…
If you think about it, that’s a pretty wide net. And it doesn’t exactly mean we’re getting the best and brightest, either. It just means we’re getting people who can lie convincingly enough to win elections.
Which brings us to the House of Representatives as it currently works, which is to say it doesn’t. In between the people looking to turn their House election into election to a higher office and the people perfectly happy to take up space where they are, it’s clear the bulk of the House is lazy, often doesn’t show up for work for bullshit reasons, develops huge egos unrelated to actual achievement, starts Twitter spats with one another, gets nothing done, and spends a lot of money and wastes a lot of time doing it.
In other words, America in 2023.
That’s why I find it so hysterical former Speaker Pelosi talks about the dignity of the House of Representatives as it relates to the current Speaker fight. (Plus, it gives me a chance to really rub it in that she’s not the Speaker of the House anymore.) It’s really not all that dignified, and it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the legislative body that responds to the folks back at home and represents their interests.
And right now, their interests have little to do with what’s best for the country. If anything, they’re loving the shitshow and popping more popcorn and ordering more pizza. Sure, Leftists are upset no important bills are getting passed, but it’s more based on self-interest than concern for Americans. After all, the House is part of the legislative body that spends the money, per Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution. And if we’ve learned anything from recent history, Congress loves to spend our money.
Of course, if there’s no Speaker elected, there’s no leadership. (Granted, that’s been standard operating procedure for decades, but work with me here.) If there isn’t a Speaker, no bills can come out to the floor to be voted on. And that means nothing gets done and no tax money gets spent.
Wait. I’m trying to find a down side here…Nope! Coming up empty!
But to the Left, government inaction that prevents them from spending money or passing laws is bad because it prevents them from getting more power over our lives. That is, except when it’s their actions causing gridlock. When they do it, it’s justified because…reasons. For me, anything that mucks up the wheels of authoritarian malfeasance is fine.
But, let’s say for the sake of argument I wanted to fix the House of Representatives. I would start by adding a few more requirements to serve in the House. The requirements we have are lower than a snake’s cock ring, but yet candidates still find a way to limbo under them and still get elected. Here’s a few I’ve put together.
– Parental locks on a Representative’s Twitter account, allowing him/her only 1 hour a day to tweet
– An emotional age of at least 25
– Actually living in the District instead of having a “paper residence” for election purposes
– Work from home requirement for at least 6 months
– Since they’ll be home, mandatory town hall meetings where the public can appear, not just a hand-picked asskissers
– A regular State of the District Address with opportunity for a rebuttal
– At least a B+ grade on a civics test. And since I’m the one who came up with the idea, I suppose I could be persuaded to come up with the test because, dammit, I care!
By the way, if there’s an Academy Award for bloggers, I humbly submit that last point for consideration. Thank you. Moving on…
– Signing and agreeing upon the government version of a “non-compete clause” meaning they aren’t allowed to join any insider think tanks or media outlets for at least 10 years. And going along with this…
– Former Representatives have to get gainful employment within their former Districts within 30 days of the start of the new House session or they lose their government pensions, because nothing would be funnier to me than seeing a defeated Representative having to spritz vegetables at a local grocery store for minimum wage after living the high life in Congress
I have a few more ideas, but some of them involve tar, feathers, pitchforks, and torches…I’ve said too much. Let’s just say I’m not at a loss for ways to improve things. You know, if I wanted to pull a “This Old House” on the House, that is.
Instead, I’m going to kick back with steak and some adult beverages and watch the proceedings for the shitshow they are, and I suggest you do the same. At least until we see white smoke coming from Capitol Hill. Then, either we’ll have a new Speaker of the House, a new Pope, or Adam Schiff is trying to destroy as many incriminating documents as he can find.
Tag: nancy pelosi
No One Is Above the Law…Except Us
After Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago had the FBI visit and look for alleged classified documents in his possession, the Left had a field day. Between jokes at the former President’s expense, memes recounting times when Trump made statements that now applied to him, and hoping this would finally be the thing that landed Trump in prison, Leftists were full of more hope than a Barack Obama rally.
There was also a common theme among the talking heads in the media and politics: no one is above the law. Although I’m happy to see Leftists embracing law and order for a change, let’s just say I’m not convinced they’re genuine and/or consistent in that sentiment.
Leftists being hypocrites? Heaven forbid!
Now, what I’m about to go over will likely get dismissed as “whataboutism” and there’s certainly an element of that in play. Having said that, these examples are necessary to lay out the groundwork for my argument.
For as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as I can get, we need to go back to May 2002 when former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger took classified documents out of the National Archive in his pants. (And I wish I were kidding about that last part.) After calling it an “honest mistake,” he eventually plead guilty in 2005. His punishment? Two years of probation, surrendering his law license, a loss of his security clearance for 3 years, and a promise to cooperate with investigators.
No FBI raids on his home. No wall-to-wall media coverage detailing every sorted detail of his crimes on a 25/8 continuous loop (because 24/7 isn’t enough, or because Common Core math took over telling time). Just an acknowledgement of the sentence, a hand-wave of the severity of the crime, and glowing obituaries upon the event of his passing.
Granted, Donald Trump hasn’t gone to the Great Mar-a-Lago in the Sky yet, but there is a decided difference in how the Berger and Trump document situations are being handled. Aside from a handful of balanced analyses from pundits like Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley, the rule has been to assume Trump is guilty and deserves the treatment he’s gotten. Some even point to the Berger situation as precedent in the court of public opinion as a means to condemn Trump.
But there’s a bit more at play here outside of the “whataboutism.” Leftists believe in their superiority (just ask them), and try to shape the world to affirm it. When someone on the Left violates the law or acts inappropriately, it’s circle the wagons time! Only after it’s a done deal will Leftists acknowledge the actual crime, and usually as a means to dismiss it as old news.
That is if Leftists admit there was wrong-doing in the first place. Anyone remember Lois Lerner? If not, she was one of the people behind the IRS targeting political groups with connections to the TEA Party. After blaming the scandal on “low level employees,” the Department of Justice closed their investigation without Lerner being charged. Oh, sure, the DOJ report references mismanagement at all levels, but they allegedly didn’t find any laws being broken.
Unfortunately for them, there were. Lerner admitted to singling out applications for tax exempt status with the words “TEA Party” or “Patriot,” but argued those actions weren’t politically motivated. Yeah, and I’m the first Lutheran Pope. Where the legal violations come into play is when she turned over tax documents from the aforementioned groups to the DOJ.
Yeah. That’s illegal, not to mention unconstitutional. Remember, kids, Leftists say Roe v. Wade was based on a Constitutional right to privacy (that really isn’t in the Constitution, but play along with me here for a minute). That means the IRS violated the right to privacy of TEA Party groups. Oops.
But did the Leftists cheering the raid on Mar-a-Lago say much of anything about Lerner’s criminal and Constitutional missteps? Nope. They went along with the “low level employees” line, which was bullshit from the word go.
With Berger, Lerner, and any number of other Leftists (I’m looking at you, Eric Swalwell), no crime is too grave to excuse, or in most cases ignore, because they’re on the right side. And by “right side” I mean Left side. Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Hunter Biden, and the whole Hee Haw Gang on the Left are a handful of examples of people who get to be above the law by virtue of being Leftists and having media Leftists (a redundancy, I know) cover for them by not covering them committing crimes.
Republicans, conservatives, and anyone else who falls outside the Leftist hivemind don’t get that treatment. If anything, they’re more heavily scrutinized to find every micron of dirt they can find to make the target of scorn look even more like Al Capone, only less honest. Speaking personally, I’m afraid opposition research will find I had an overdue library book in elementary school, which would certainly derail any hopes I had of becoming President. Or even County Supervisor of Creating Busy Work for Government Employees So They Don’t Actually Try to Do Real Work.
Why…it’s almost as if the Left’s version of law and order only goes one way!
Which, of course, to them it does. Since they are superior to us plebs, they write their own rules and excuse their own mistakes. But that’s not really justice; it’s rigging the system to one’s own benefit. Leftists will argue (without irony) this has been going on for quite some time and only through their efforts will everyone get a fair shake in the legal system. Yet, their efforts to give everyone a fair shake only reinforce the existing power structure where some people are treated better than others.
That’s called a self-own, kids.
Regardless of how you feel about Donald Trump, he was absolutely right about ideology trumping (see what I did there) justice. As more details come about about the Mar-a-Lago raid, I think we’ll see the former President proven right yet again.
And without having to lie to the FISA court, no less!
No Communion for You
Back in May, the Archbishop of San Francisco, the Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone, issued a public statement concerning a prominent member of his archdiocese; Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
After making numerous attempts to have a private meeting with The Speaker and being denied at every turn. The Archbishop did the only sensible and correct thing under Canon Law. He denied communion to her within his archdiocese.
This is a simple corrective measure used by the Church to bring attention to the matter to a wayward member. This isn’t political or the weaponizing of the Church. It has been used for centuries to correct errors.
Nancy Pelosi claims to be a devout Catholic in public, as do many other politicians. But she doesn’t follow Church teachings and doctrine when it comes to abortion and other sins. And her refusing to have a meeting with her own Archbishop clearly shows she is unrepentant in this matter.
Some say that communion or the Eucharist is for everyone. This is not true at all. It is for the body of believers not to the ungodly. And even within a Catholic Mass, communion is offered only to other Catholics, not to Protestants who may be attending.
At the end of June, The Speaker was traveling abroad and she attended Mass at the Vatican. There she received communion from the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis himself.
This snub against one of the Pope’s archbishops doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I have written many times about Pope Francis and his Marxist roots. He is a full blown serpent in the heart of the Garden of Christendom. A false teacher, an anti-Christ, and a Leftist.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
To say the Left took the recent election results badly is an understatement of proportions so immense it makes Rosie O’Donnell look like Kate Moss on a meth binge. One of the more stunning results came from New Jersey, where Republican Edward Durr unseated Democrat state Senate President Steve Sweeney after running a primary campaign that cost around $150 and a total expenditure of around $2200. Talk about bang for the buck!
Well, the Left has decided Durr is unfit to serve in the public sector because of an answer he gave during an interview recently. When asked what he would do as Senate leader, he said he didn’t know. That got Leftist and self-professed expert Tom Nichols to lament about how the lack of experience in politics is a bad thing.
But what does the Left mean by experience? Good question, since I got nothing else for a Lexicon entry.
experience
What the Left thinks it means – the basic information necessary to speak intelligently on a topic
What it really means – the Left’s excuse for dumb people making poor decisions and to discredit smart people making astute observations
I know I’ve talked about appeals to authority before, but for the new people reading this, an appeal to authority is the rhetorical equivalent of “because an expert said so.” Although this does work with some subjects (i.e. talking to a cardiologist about heart issues), it doesn’t always bear good fruit (i.e. talking to a YouTube creator about, well, just about anything). Even people we think would have the credentials to give good advice can be wrong or deceiving. I’m looking right at you, Dr. Fauci. So, it’s important we show a reasonable amount of skepticism when we see someone appealing to authority.
Especially when that authority is derived from whether an expert has a college degree. The Left loves to deflect criticism of the Socialist Socialite’s dumb ideas about economics because she has an economics degree. I ran into this recently on Facebook when a Leftist posting on a thread by The Atlas Society mocked the Socialist Socialite’s lack of knowledge of economics. The meme they posted was of a tiny handbag with the caption “AOC carrying around everything she knows about economics.” Funny, yet accurate!
Ah, but a Leftist took exception to it by suggesting the Socialist Socialite was smarter than Ayn Rand on economics because the former had a degree in the subject and Rand didn’t. Never mind the fact Rand lived through what the Socialist Socialite thinks would make America great and realized it absolutely sucks, it was the degree that tipped the scale in the Leftist’s mind.
That’s when I dropped the metaphorical hammer and pointed out Ronald Reagan also had an economics degree.
The Left seem to be impressed with college degrees, mainly because they’re often the result of Leftist indoctrina…I mean teaching. But the degree itself is just a piece of paper signifying that the recipient has completed the necessary coursework to graduate and, thus, can start paying back the student loans they’ve amassed. Yes, nothing says you’re an adult like crippling debt! Between grade inflation and meaningless majors, the value of a college degree is quickly becoming as valuable as an expired K-Mart coupon without imparting the most important reason to go to college.
Partying.
Seriously, the most important reason to go to college is to develop the ability to process and apply knowledge. And that’s where the Left and to some extent the Right fail. If I have to sit through another video of clueless Congresscritters trying to get a representative from a social media executive to explain how Twitter works, I’m liable to send a tersely-worded email that some low level intern is going to have to respond to with a stock answer ensuring me my elected official “cares about your opinion.” And we don’t want that, do we?
Although there is some merit to the notion public officials should have experience in politics to hold office, sometimes it’s the experts who are the problem in the first place. But the Left never thinks Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, or Maxine Waters (who have all been in office for at least half of my life, by the way) are the problem. Instead, it’s people like Chuck Grassley, who has been in office for, well, most of my life, who are the real troublemakers. You see, the Left loves experience via age when it’s coming from a fellow Leftist. If it’s anyone else, it’s “Get out of the way of progress!” Yet, in my experience with the aforementioned politicians, I would take Grassley over Schumer, Pelosi, and Waters not because he’s one of my Senators. It’s because he knows what he’s doing most of the time, and he knows when he’s out of his depth.
That’s what real experience does for a person. It’s knowing what you know and what you don’t know. For all of the talk of Grassley being a “dumb farmer” (as a former Democrat Senate candidate said and later regretted after being stomped like a narc at a drug deal), he has a deeper understanding of issues that matter to people, not because he has a fancy degree on his resume, but because he actually does the legwork to talk to people. I swear he’s in Iowa more often than I am, and I live here!
However, a lack of experience isn’t a deal-breaker when it comes to politics. After working in Corporate America for a number of decades, sometimes the best ideas come from people who are just starting a job because their minds haven’t been infected with “the way we’ve always done it.” Either that or their souls haven’t been crushed…
Anyway, a new perspective may be what is needed to solve problems. By definition, a desire for change is liberal, but liberals aren’t the same as Leftists. Leftists call for change without actually meaning it. Remember Flint’s water problem? Still there, but Leftists aren’t. You’re more likely to find Bigfoot working on a screenplay at a Starbucks than find any of the Leftists who trumpeted how Flint’s water problems are because of Republicans (if you discount all the Democrats who were and are in charge, of course.) Here’s an idea, Flintites. Next time there’s an election, why not…you know…vote for someone other than the Leftists who screwed up the city in the first place? It’s not like Republicans are going to make the water any worse, right?
To Nichols’ point (aside from the one on his head), dismissing someone because of a lack of experience only serves to maintain the status quo, which by definition is what a conservative wants. He does have a good point that the Right doesn’t tend to support new left-leaning officials, but he botched the reasons why. First off, Leftists do the same thing with new right-leaning officials like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, albeit with more claims they’re insane. (In the spirit of bipartisanship, I’m willing to concede the point about MTG.) Second, it’s not a lack of experience the Right objects to with the Socialist Socialite; it’s the fact she’s an empty pant-suit, as demonstrated throughout her tenure as a Representative. I wouldn’t trust her to run my car though a car wash, let alone run any significant office in America. And if you’ve tried to run an office through a car wash, you know what I mean.
While Edward Durr may not have any real experience in governing, he’s admitted he’s willing to learn the ropes. That bit of refreshing honesty makes me a fan of his and I look forward to seeing what he’s able to do.
That, and the fact the only reason he ran for office is because of government bureaucracy and duplicity around New Jersey’s concealed carry permits. Thanks Leftists!