Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Gaetz, who is under investigation by both the FBI and a House committee, carried out his threat to file a motion to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives today and the Democrats backed the Republicans who wanted him out, resulting in Kev getting punted on a 216-210 vote with eight Republicans joining the Dems to oust him.

This is going to be interesting. It took a very unusual fifteen rounds to get Kev elected Speaker, and he had to make a lot of compromises to the hard-core fringe of his party. One of those compromises is what cost him his gavel - the ability for ANYONE to call for his removal. No one knows who will be the next Speaker, it'll certainly not be Gaetz. The Speaker is #2 in line to replace the President should he be incapacitated or otherwise removed from office and something were to happen to the Veep. It is entirely possible that the Democratic Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, could become Leader with only a few Republicans getting tired of the fringe of their party jerking the House around.

Thus far, this is THE WORST House for passing legislation. Despite all the posturing, they are not passing bills. Which happens to be their job.

And they have fewer than 45 days until they must get a budget or continuing funding bill passed or the government will shut down and the possibility of the nation's credit rating taking yet another ding happens.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kevin-mccarthy-voted-out-house-speaker-1234838540/

Currently we have The Senate screaming that it is established that a President in his last year cannot nominate a Supreme Court Justice. This is complete bullshit.

So let's postulate that they actually hold true to this.

And then in November Trump gets elected President.

What would the Senate do? The Republican establishment hates Trump with a blind, raging, purple passion. So what would happen?

Could be quite interesting.

Lockheed has been amazingly smart: they've strategically selected subcontractors and subassembly facilities in 45 states! That means it's in the best interest of 90% of the entirety of Congress to continue production as stopping production would give ammunition to 90% of their opponents in either primary or general elections. Not an enviable position to be in.

The latest debacle of the F-35 was initially reported as an engine fire, but as it turned out, the plane strew parts along the length of the runway, which sounds like a casing failure or some sort of engine failure that ultimately produced a fire.

I was going to say that this once again proves that we have the best congress that money can buy, but in this case, the contractors didn't have to directly buy the congress by seeing to it that maximum damage would be done if the program is cut.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-22/flawed-f-35-fighter-too-big-to-kill-as-lockheed-hooks-45-states.html

It's entirely possible that because of Congressional (i.e. House) inaction we could be facing $7 for a gallon of milk, if we could find it. The problem? The House has not passed the Farm Bill, and if they don't pass it by the end of the year, the legislation will roll back to something called Permanent Law passed in 1949 which will require the Feds to buy huge quantities of dairy product to bolster the industry.

The purpose was to help the industry when it was small and the country was growing rapidly. Now, if it happens, the US Department of Agriculture will be buying hundredweights of product for $38, compared to the normal market price of $18-19 a hundredweight. I wonder to whom the dairy producers will be selling?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/12/04/248648797/why-7-per-gallon-milk-looms-once-again

Meanwhile, John Boehner thinks the House has been tremendously productive. They've passed 140 bills, so he thinks they're terrifically productive compared to the Senate, which has passed only 39. Obama has signed only 56 pieces of legislation, I'm not quite sure how that math works out. The difference is that the House will pass laws that stand little or no chance of being passed by the Senate, much less get signed in to law, while the Senate won't waste their time considering legislation that won't be considered by the House.


Thus again proving the aphorism that if Pro is the opposite of Con, Congress is....


http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/12/03/248565341/lawmakers-in-name-only-congress-reaches-productivity-lows?sc=17&f=1001

I don't find that the least surprising. It's going to take lawsuits and new elections to shut it down, and even then, can we be sure? This started over a decade ago with things like the Total Information Awareness program, and when those were screamed down, quietly got broken in to little unnoticeable pieces and became things like PRISM.

The interesting thing about this particular article is that Wired hired a research agency to break down votes by how much money each representative receives from defense and intelligence contractors. Not terribly surprising, those who received the most money voted against the amendment. Only one person in the top 10 money recipients voted for the amendment.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/money-nsa-vote/

And I would suggest that you not bother wasting your time with the comments, they rapidly devolved in to 'a new civil war is coming' and it's all white against black. Where race entered in to this problem I do not know, it's more of a poor vs uber-rich.

"I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by a rape."
— State Senator Chuck Winder, sponsor of Idaho's mandatory ultrasound bill

I'm really curious how many seats in Congress are going to change genders come the next election.