So it’s been quite a week for the Democrats with the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the real possibility of the larger social spending bill. The unemployment numbers last week were great news, and for those who have money in the stock market, the Dow hit a new record high.
This/these Democratic legislative victory/victories were the work of the greatest Speaker of the House of all time, Nancy Pelosi, and her best student, Pramila Jayapal. With sticks, carrots, logic, reason, and a little pressure they put together a bipartisan coalition to complement the bipartisan vote in the Senate.
By the way, I did not have Jayapal on my short list for next SOTH should the Democrats hold the House in 2022, but I absolutely do now. She’s great–she doesn’t get flustered, she sticks firmly to the point she wants to make, she’s upbeat, and she is committed to getting things done.
Once the bipartisan infrastructure bill gets implemented it’s going to be a daily cavalcade of ribbon cuttings and ground breakings in towns and cities across the nation. And 13 House Republicans are going to be able to take part in the festivities without being called out for lying about taking credit for something they actually voted against.
And with those votes those 13 House Republicans helped their party in the mid-terms by taking away an issue their Democratic opponents would have used against them. Given that we don’t know what’s going to happen next November, you would think that Kevin McCarthy would be happy with these representatives. Well, he’s not.
Being a Republican these days is about doing whatever you can to hurt Joe Biden and the Democrats so those 13 reps are in a lot of trouble with McCarthy, and with all of the most deranged members of the GOP. The calls immediately came out to punish the traitors and to strip them of any power in the House. And the knives are out for McCarthy and the GOP whip Steve Scalise for not being able to keep their caucus together.
That just seems like such a weird reaction from people are…politicians. It was a good political move for those 13 reps to vote with the Democrats, and now they’re going to be punished for it. I suppose I should feel a little sorry for them, but I’m not. I like schadenfreude as much as the next person.
The Republicans had their hands full too, but not with historic legislation. First Josh Hawley made masculinity the central value of the party with a weird statement about how video games and pornography were making men effete. I don’t even know what to say about it apart from assuming a lot of elected Republican seem to need a lot of therapy.
Then Paul Gosar tweeted out an awful video in which he attacked Biden with knives and killed Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. And the Republicans were completely fine with that because that’s also what they are also all about: being truly, and unapologetically, awful.
And that’s not the end of the stuff coming from Gosar’s unhinged mind. There were other offensive and murderous videos in the pipeline:
An account claiming to be the creator of the video shared an unfinished video in which Gosar is seen as a character from another anime called “Death Note” in which the main character has the power to kill people by writing their names in a journal. Gosar is seen killing Biden, Osacio-Cortez and Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. Gosar’s congressional Twitter account follows the supposed “team” member account.
I wasn’t kidding when I said that a lot of these Republicans need a therapist.
Given the battle of the sexes that undergirds this post, I’ll give Bryan Ferry the last word:
