Dispatches From the Cave of Crazy: These People Are Trash

Hoo boy. This week a vengeful GOP House - puffed up with power and paranoia, led by "jock asshole" Gym Jordan, screechy "Taliban Barbie" and "Tonya Harding in a fur coat" - thrashed through lots of grievance-laden claptrap on corruption, collusion, and the "weaponization" of government in a grim exercise of projection as they toiled to prove Dems commit the same abuses of power they do. It was a circus of "chutzpah on top of audacity on top of delusion." It was not pretty.

Having abandoned the notion of governance or policies for what one critic calls "the jackass antics of trolls and creeps," the GOP clearly earned this week's "Lindsey Grahammys," an annual award given out alongside the Grammys by Born To Run the Numbers for "the most epic displays of Republican hypocrisy, disingenuous posturing, unawareness of irony, and moments of well-deserved unintended consequences." Citing a "post-factual Trump Party (that's) become a confab of contortionists (and) unhinged insurrectionists," they note that in 2023, “'Republican hypocrisy'” has become a redundancy...It is what Republicans do." Still, there are standouts: John Roberts' "legally blind" SCOTUS, a "farce of judicial legislation, political overreach, and overt deception"; Kevin McCarthy for going "full-poodle" about Jan 6. until "now all we can see are the tire marks on the back of his head (from) saying yes to everybody and everything," earning him a lifetime achievement award for hypocrisy "truly on a Biblical scale"; Bill Barr, Trump's Roy Cohn, who recently, suddenly, said out loud "all the brave stuff he was too frightened to say when we really needed to know it"; and of course George Santos, "the logical endpoint for a party" whose only organizing idea is "power by any possible means." They hope Santos will put his award next to his Oscar, Emmy, Pulitzer and Nobel prizes.

From the chaotic get-go, House dimwits have also more than earned the hashtags #GQPClownShow and #GOPCircus by ceaselessly stoking paranoia about fictional dangers - vaccines will kill you, immigrants will drug you, (Dem) lawmakers will lie to you, teachers will poison the minds of your children - without offering any solutions to real problems. Last month, in its first legislative action, they voted to rescind over $70 billion in funding for a sinister IRS aimed at spying oops improving customer service at the agency; this week, they raged about poor customer service, with James Comer; new head of Oversight, whining "the American people have suffered (waiting) for months for their tax refunds.” One of McCarthy's first stops on his revenge tour was brazenly firing Ilhan Omar for "anti-Semitic" remarks; Eric Swalwell furiously suggested the party of bigotry and Islamophobia "look in your own damn mirror." And after a poll found three-quarters of Americans want them to stop playing spiteful games and get something done, they pivoted to red-baiting with a measure condemning “the horrors of socialism” - from Lenin, Stalin, Mao to Pol Pot's killing fields to Putin and evidently Sleepy Joe Biden; wailed one frantic GOPer, “God have mercy on our country!” But Maxine Waters wasn't having it: If these guys want to root out totalitarian abuse and excess, she snapped, "Talk to your leader, Donald Trump."

Or maybe just get a clue. In a beyond-tone-deaf, "absolutely repulsive" move, several GOP House members chose to mark Gun Violence Survivors' Awareness Week - highlighting a national fetish with guns that's seen 54 mass shootings in this new year and 647 mass shootings, or 1.77 a day, last year - by sporting a mini-AR-15 assault weapon lapel pin or tie clip in some inane "owning the libs" prank and/or threat. They were handed out by Georgia Rep, gun dealer and "steaming pile of fetid human excrement" Andrew 'Whiskey, Steak, Guns & Freedom' Clyde, who sued the House to abolish metal detectors,
likened TV footage of Jan. 6 rioters to "a normal tourist visit," and was then famously photographed quaking in terror at the mob at the door. In a short, smirking video, Clyde gloated he'd heard his pins were "triggering some of my Democrat colleagues," but he had "plenty more to give out." Dem Rep. Jimmy Gomez noted even Anna Pauline Luna, the new George Santos, wore a pin despite a mass shooting in her state of Florida 48 hours before: "You can't make this shit up." Ditto Lauren Boebert, of the gun-toting-spawn Christmas card, sneering about a report that said Americans (5% of the world's population) own 46% of the guns: "We need to get our numbers up, boys and girls." It's "always the biggest assholes" with the guns, notes one critic. And, adds Rashida Tlaib, "It's freaking sick."

The clown show seemed to ramp up after Biden's SOTU speech, when he slyly cornered a squawking GOP on Social Security/Medicare - "We've got unanimity!" - and proceeded to "mop the House floor with the howling, discombobulated remains of the Republican Party...They ran at him like a pack of lemmings, (and) he politely directed them to the cliff." Beforehand, trashy Klan Mom Marjorie Taylor Greene paraded around the Capitol with a white balloon - like the Chinese one, get it? - because she's eight years old; during the speech, draped in a white fur Cruella de Vil coat - "sighting of the rare albino shitgibbon!" - the "biggest Karen to have ever Karened" brayed, leered, refused to STFU; after it, she squealed her own "dumb-as-an-illiterate platypus" rebuttal - liar, China, weak, doesn't know anything: "Hard to say the State of the Union is 'strong' when our commander-in-chief lets a Chinese spy balloon fly across our entire country before doing anything about it." Then again, "Hard to say the state of the union is strong when lawmakers are stomping around in obstructionist clown shoes." Trump also gave a brief, bitter rebuttal on Newsmax: "Millions and millions of illegal aliens" have "stormed" across the border, "savage killers and rapists," "war on free speech," "indoctrinate and mutilate our children," "brink of World War lll," "the most corrupt president in American history." (Biden, not him.) Yada, yada, WTF.

The actual GOP rebuttal from a Satanic Sarah Huckabee Sanders was so dark and weird it was deemed "full dystopian nutballs," "nihilistic fascist gaslighting," "mass shooter manifesto vibes," and per George Bush to Hillary after Trump's inaugural rant, "some weird shit." Summoning a hellscape of carnage using largely "right-wing insider jargon," she described a "woke mob" that "lights your hard-earned money on fire," "empty grocery shelves," kids in nice white schools "taught to hate one another on account of their race," a fentanyl-ravaged "beautiful border" as "violent criminals roam free (and) law-abiding families live in fear," a "left-wing culture war (where) we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols." Say what? The multitude of lies - "Biblical" kids in cages! - ended with a vainglorious story about a Christmas visit to Iraq, “an absolutely perfect picture of what makes our country great” when every single soldier "erupted" in joy to see the malignant guy who called them "suckers and losers." OK, Sarah. Her hometown paper ripped her "signature surliness," her "word salad of talking points and name-calling...heavy on menace." But oblivious to the end - give this woman a Lindsey Grahammy - she righteously declared, "The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left - the choice is between normal or crazy," seemingly with no clue what side she falls on.

Then came the week's House hearings: All "angry torpor, red herrings and goose chases," they loudly backfired, exposing GOPers for the hacks they are. Opening their much-hyped probe of Twitter briefly suppressing a 2020 story about Hunter Biden's laptop (finally!!), Comer ranted about "national security" and "a coordinated campaign" by them, media and FBI to "monitor the protected speech" of MAGA-ites and throw the election to Biden - exciting, except everyone involved says it's "a factually unsupported narrative," aka a lie, and there was "no collusion." But irony still lives: Twitter execs did say that while Biden's never interfered with content, Trump regularly did, molding, misinforming, using Russian bots - "It was normal" - and once infamously demanding they remove Chrissy Teigen dubbing him "a pussy-ass bitch." (They declined.) Constitutional scholar Jamie Raskin called it all “an authentically trivial pursuit” - a private company, Twitter can do/say what it wants - but blasted them for "facilitating Trump's spread of disinformation," or what "Bill Barr would come to call bullshit." Because "Hell hath no fury like a white Christian nationalist woman with a suspended Twitter account," MTG raved to the Twitter folks about being banned, referenced herself 30 times, and sneered, "By the way, I'm a member of Congress and you're not." Her frenemy Lauren Boebert, fresh from praying per Biden, "Let his days be few," shrilly asked them if they'd approved banning her; they all said no. "So the answer is YES YOU DID!" she shrieked. "Who the hell do you think you are?" One comment: "I want my money back - this movie sucks."

Finally, Rep. Gym Jordan's flopsweat hearing into the "weaponization" of government suggests how it would have gone if Joe McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee was run by "a bumpkin assistant wrestling coach" from a "comically gerrymandered district" once dubbed "a legislative terrorist" and best known for ignoring decades-long sexual abuse and slavishly leading Trump's "go-to misdirection squad." Gym and his cronies recited a long list of batshit "concerns" and conspiracies: "Armies" of FBI whistleblowers charging they were censored, pressured, run out of the agency by the "deep state," years of politically tainted law enforcement by a cartoonishly evil government out to get them, cabals blocking Hunter Biden's laptop and don't forget her emails! Dem Rep. Gerry Connolly nicely summed up the "train wreck" as "a rousing presentation from two old guys (Grassley/Johnson) who apparently wanted to vent every grievance real and imagined they've experienced over the last 20 to 30 years to (suggest) the FBI is filled with a bunch of lefties who want to go after right-wing elements in America. Boy, that would be news to the FBI." Raskin (again, despite chemotherapy) recalled the countless times Trump abused his power to settle scores, reward friends, punish enemies to note, "If weaponization of the Department of Justice has any meaning, this is it...Weaponization is (this committee's) purpose."

There was more malarkey. Brazenly contradicting their own ostensible belief in local and states' rights, the House voted to overturn two newly passed bills by D.C.'s City Council - a sweeping, 450-page, decade-in-the-making overhaul of a century-old criminal code and a measure allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections - decrying them as "radical" soft-on-crime actions by an "out-of control" council, because how can anyone believe the representatives of 700,000 largely black and brown people could govern themselves? Screeched Lauren Boebert, “Giving this right to illegal aliens as if our government is The Oprah Winfrey Show - ‘You get a vote, you get a vote, you get a vote!''' A cogent Raskin, again: "They're not interested in scrutinizing actual criminal justice policy. They just want to kick the people of D.C. around...to lord it over them.” Also: In ongoing proof he doesn't want to touch Social Security, Ron Johnson called it "a legal Ponzi scheme"; in his own ongoing, equally dubious defense, George Santos assured Newsmax $750,000 in campaign funds came from the legit company he started when he was 12 and he just wants to "represent simple-minded people like myself"; Josh Hawley is back terrorizing trans patients, families and treatment centers; in a closed-door briefing on the Chinese balloon, MTG was back boasting she "tore 'em to pieces." Said one lawmaker, "She was yelling out, saying 'bullshit' and 'I don't believe you.'" We believe it. The idiocy is strong in them.