Nancy Mace, Republican Rep of South Carolina is a prime example of what’s wrong with the GOP House. She has the occasional good idea, but she is basically too slow witted to actually accomplish anything, and she just isn’t capable of following anything through to a reasonable conclusion. She was on Face the Nationlast weekend and told Margret Brennan that she didn’t much care what any of her contemporaries thought about anything, as long as they would work with her. It didn’t seem to matter to her what people like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, or Jim Jordan thought or did, or whether they were driven by a moral compass or greed, as long as they were willing to play with her, she would play with them, and that my friends, is the problem with our current GOP.
*****
Watched a Giants/Seahawks game that I taped Monday night while we were in London, and ESPN gave us a unique, but not thrilling surprise, the Manning brothers doing their version of a failed comedy team talking sports. Peyton and Eli are two of the greatest quarterbacks, ever to have played in the NFL. Why would they want to tarnish their legend by taking on a stupid show like this?
At least Eli had the good grace to occasionally look embarrassed by the senseless nonsense in which they were indulging. But Peyton seemed to revel in it, diving into one silly routine after another, shouting out play calls that had no meaning for his audience while running through play sequences in front of a giant TV screen. It appears that Peyton might have been hit just a little too much while he was playing and maybe the hits were just a little too hard.
The Manning’s should respect their legacy and retire gracefully to watching games from the front porches of their respective mansions.
*****
Kevin McCarthy was so hungry for the job of Speaker of the House that he put his life and his job in the hands of a small group of cowardly, devious, criminal degenerates, and they reacted exactly as would be expected, throwing him out on his ass the minute it was no longer convenient to have him around. McCarthy accomplished nothing in 9 months in office and subsequently the government accomplished nothing. This is called “Republican governance,” and it’s time we threw them all out. We will have our chance in about a year, but that won’t happen if we allow the know nothings to have their way.
If you like what happened during the first two years of the Biden administration when Joe was able to make his moves unencumbered by the non-functioning House GOP, as opposed to the last year when we had a GOP House screwing up the works, then you should know how to vote on 11/4/24.
*****
I have been fairly vocal about the Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians and the land grab on the West Bank, but nothing excuses the inhuman slaughter of babies and the rape of women perpetrated on the Jewish nation by the band of sub-human monsters from Hamas. If this is what the Muslim world sees as just retaliation for the sins of the Israeli government, then we must reconsider the ways we see and deal with that entire segment of the Muslim world. Hamas is not a legitimate entity but a mad-dog outlier that is bound by no human rules and operates only on its own gruesome floorplan. What’s truly bizarre is that they seem to have no regard for their own people, denying human living conditions to their own supporters in Gaza so that they can build a war machine to kill Jews.
None of this is acceptable, neither from the Hamas sub-humans nor from those excusing their inhuman approach to war.
I don’t know what we are teaching in our colleges now-a-days, but the fact that we are experiencing multiple demonstrations in support of Hamas at some of our most prestigious institutions is to me, completely unacceptable.
You can try to equate what the Jews have been doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank all you want but it is in no way equivalent. The barbarity of the Hamas invasion hasn’t been equaled since the days of Khengis Khan. People, including those in our universities, who feel the need to support such monstrous behavior are obviously lacking in any kind of kind of supportable moral structure. Does that mean we refuse the right to their opinions, wrong as they may be? No! It means we reference them for their lack of intelligent discourse and use their current inanity as part of our future frame of reference to measure all future opinions.
*****
The war in Israel only brings other problems around the world to a head. One of those principal problems is the mess in our own House where everything has stopped dead without a speaker to give orders.
It looked for a moment as if Steve Scalise would take over, but he has now stepped aside, citing a belief that he could not get a majority. The ever loud and abrasive Jim Jordan was standing by, ready to jump in, but there is a majority of members that stand adamantly against him, and it seems like we’ve seen the last of his grab. No one seems to be taking the lead and nothing appears to be getting done. We all understand that this is a normal GOP stance but those of us who have already rejected Trump as our leader are not ready to accept this situation as normal. The GOP must stand up on its hind legs and get its ass in gear. There must be someone besides Matt Gaetz who wants this job. If there isn’t, the only solution now that Jordan has given up the ghost, is for the voters to replace the entire GOP contingent in the next election. This bunch of incompetent fuckups has done way too much damage to our nation already.
*****
Margret Brennan interviewed Ron DeSantis this week and even though everyone knows how I feel about DeSantis I must say he did an admirable job making a case for keeping Palestinian refugees out of the US. I’m not sure he was right, but he was certainly reasonable and precise. It was one of the first times I have heard DeSantis make any sense. His point was that bringing in such refugees would be opening our borders to a group of religiously educated, antisemitic, (yes, I know that Palestinians are Semites), people who do not believe in our values, and who should for the benefit of all, go to some nation that is more open to their belief package. The fact that almost no one in the world wants these people only complicates matters.
We should be clear that the Palestinians fleeing Gaza are not necessarily Hamas, a point that has been worked to death, but we must also recognize that Hamas did not get complete control of Gaza without Palestinian cooperation. The Palestinians may now regret giving Hamas control, but they did have a strong hand in that decision. It’s the same old story, the Fascist’s may look good in their shiny uniforms, but they aren’t so easy to live with once you’re in bed with them.
Brennan does her best to lead him into a couple of traps but in this one instance, DeSantis presented a strong case. She almost gets him when she turns the discussion to our southern border and a statement, he made about shooting border crossers with back packs, but he manages to make a shaky escape from that one too.