Wednesday, January 4: A House Divided Makes for a Broken Home
Someone please bestow upon this man the blessed gavel and sacred garments
Republicans couldn’t decide which fraud prep school scammer should have the honor of serving as the next speaker of the house. But they somehow managed to provide Kevin McCarthy a healthy handful of L’s in the process of figuring out who NOT to nominate.
The new House of Representative republican majority is engaged in what’s being called “a chaotic once-in-a-century fight” to determine who’s gonna follow in Nancy “the Dirty Dustpan” Pelosi’s footsteps as speaker. In order to nominate a new speaker, a majority of the house (218 members) needs to unite behind nominating a candidate. Typically they do this on their first try, not because the candidates are so rock steady, but because Washington DC is a bottomless cesspool of party politics showing lockstep obedience to maintain their dubious grasp of power. But yesterday, for the first time in 100 years, the House failed to elect a speaker on their first ballot. Or their second…or third.
Kevin McCarthy was and remains in the lead for the role, but he hasn’t managed to get the crucial 218 supporting votes. Kev failed to secure the necessary support to win in three separate, painstaking rounds of voting yesterday. The embarrassed trust fund brigade eventually chose to adjourn for the evening in humiliation and resume trying to find a path forward later today.
Apparently, in a closed-door meeting of republicans on Capitol Hill things got awkward and heated yesterday morning as a growing sense of uncertainty set in over McCarthy’s fate. At one point he definitely may have raised his voice and become animated as he railed against his opponents and detailed compromises he had made. “I’ve earned this job,” he may have screeched. Like a spoiled child demanding a new gaming system for the holidays because they weren’t satisfied with the toy train and remote controlled car combo. Dammit those toys are so superior to a gaming system! Poor guy just wants to be third in line for the throne/presidency.
Side Items
12 Years A Cucumber Bennington: The family of actor Benedict Cumberbatch could face legal pressure from the island nation of Barbados to pay reparations due to his ancestors running a slave plantation of 250 people. Cucumberton has been open about his slave owning ancestors, telling The Telegraph in 2018: "We have our past – you don't have to look far to see the slave-owning past. We were part of the whole sugar industry, which is a shocker." Honestly, I almost respect the commitment to pretending to be surprised at the extent of your ancestors’ war crimes. Abolition of slavery in Barbados resulted in his family receiving compensation from the UK government back in the 1830’s — about £1 million in today’s money. Naturally the good folks down in Barbados are less than pleased
Child Stars Sue Paramount: The stars of “Romeo and Juliet”, a classic film from 1968 shown in many a middle school/high school English class, have accused Paramount of manipulating and pressuring them to do nude/topless scenes when they were 15 and 16 years old. There are also claims that the director lied about whether the nudity would be included in the final film. Yikeseroni