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It’s gotta be true.

I didn’t get the email until 5:00 so damn, too late for me.

And wouldn’t you just know it, I got the new Pfizer vaccine last week.

As everyone likely already knows, Matt Gaetz’s power play to get Kevin McCarthy ousted as speaker worked. McCarthy is no longer speaker. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina is the temporary speaker. What powers does he have? I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head. This has literally never happened before. A speaker of the house has never been ousted during a legislative session. Congratulations Kevin, I guess you’ve made history.

Some of my friends on the left are celebrating today. I can’t celebrate. Yes, the Republican party is a mess. Yes, this throws everything they are doing into chaos. Who the heck knows what happens to all of those sham investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden? Who knows how this might impact their oversight of things like the Justice Department and FBI? I literally cannot tell you if they are able to do anything at all.

When McCarthy went through all of those ballots to become speaker we were repeatedly told that no business could take place until a speaker was elected. Now, there is no speaker. So, do we go back to that state where we are waiting for a new speaker to be elected? Can McHenry conduct business until a new speaker is elected? How long is this all going to take?

These are questions I can’t answer. They are very basic questions. I was a political science major. I taught high school government for several years. These are the things my wife and daughter ask me when they don’t know the answer. These are the things I could tell them before. I can’t now. I honestly don’t know the answer. That by itself is frightening.

It might seem at first glance that the Republican party eating itself from the inside is a good moment for people on the left. I’d remind everyone that like that nothing ever happens in isolation. A dying animal lashes out all around them before they succumb to whatever is attacking them. It might be an actual law of physics or maybe Murphy’s Law, but these things are never completely isolated to themselves.

The House is done for the week. So, we won’t have a speaker until at least Monday. That means we have frittered more than a week away when the deal McCarthy brokered gave us 45 days. So far, we are talking pure mechanics and not even anything remotely political. I don’t have answers. Beyond the political ramifications, I can’t even address the basic ones. Sure, there are people that study this. There are people that probably know more than the folks actually doing it. It’s not like I am the Grand Pubha of all things political. It’s just disjarring not to know the answers.

Of course, the political ramifications are next level in terms of anxiety. Who will be the next speaker? Will it be someone more moderate or will the Freedom Caucus somehow take the entire chamber hostage? Are we looking at a speaker like Jim Jordan? These are things no one can answer right now. Even if we could we couldn’t tell you what it would all mean for everything happening over the next year and a half. This is why I’m not celebrating this. I literally do not know what’s happening next and no one else does either. Kevin McCarthy was a lying scumbag and he did not have a discernable backbone. Yet, I can’t even begin to guess on whether the next guy (assuming it is a man and not Marjorie Taylor Greene) will be better or worse. Put the popcorn away folks. This is no time to celebrate.

Keep your eye on this one.  This is a strong case with all kinds of cubby holes, sharp right turns, and enough gall to strangle Miss Manners.  It will fascinate you as it unfolds.

And you might want to get over there as quickly as you can before it “disappears.”

You can read it all but here’s the background …

This story tells you all the gritty and the actual lawsuit is at the bottom of the story or you can click here.

Mark is answering questions on Twitter (X) right now.

UPDATE:

Starts at 1:04:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04STEVT-WUI

Sam Seder interview

As you are reading this, you know that we have somehow avoided a shutdown until November. We know how this will go. The jackasses in Congress will do nothing for 40 or 41 days and then will make up a new crisis to explain why they are holding a gun to the country’s head. It’s as infuriating as it is predictable. I get the fatigue. I really do.

I’ve been called a number of things here. Neville Chamberlain is one of them. You can call me whatever name you want. I really don’t care all that much. The pushback is not on that level. People have been calling me names since I was in first grade. It really is nothing new and the intellectual level of namecalling is not really much beyond that of the first grader.

The question at hand was essentially how we should handle these brinkmanship moments we always seem to find ourselves in. It has been suggested that we play matador and let them win a round. Then, the people would see what a shutdown or default would do to the economy and those folks would never win another election again. If it only it were that easy.

This is very simple. There are three reasons why I disagree with this tactic. First, I know people that would be affected by furloughs. Sure, they end up getting paid following a shutdown, but that doesn’t ease their pain during the furlough. They are often scared and depending on how long they’ve been a civil servant they may not have enough of a nest egg to keep them afloat if a shutdown lasts more than a few weeks.

Real people will get hurt. This point can’t be repeated often enough. Of course, none of us are literally in position to prevent that or not, but from a collective point of view I don’t want to have that on my conscience. I don’t want to watch people suffer and think, “I could have prevented that, but chose not to.” To me that’s not really a choice at all.

We could call that two different reasons. There are the people you know that will suffer and also the people you don’t know. However, that may not be the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the whole strategy rests on the belief that people will see who did this and remember on election day. Yet, the same assholes that did this back in 2018 are still there. They are the ones doing it again and they are the ones that conservative voters are cheering for.

Again, this can be one or two reasons based on how you interpret it. There are people now that simply will not see who is responsible even when it is plain in front of their face. There are others that will be angry in the moment and still somehow still vote for those sons of bitches anyway. So, in effect you are letting them burn it down for nothing. Some of these irrational voters will vote for the irrational actors that lie the match. These irrational voters will watch them throw gasoline on the fire and still think it is the fire fighter’s fault. In that world you have to keep fighting. You hope you sway just enough voters to keep fighting. It’s incredibly depressing. It’s incredibly exhausting. It’s incredibly frustrating. Unfortunately, the alternative is really no alternative at all.