33 thoughts on “O Boredom, Where Art Thou?”

  3. wonkette

    2023, The Year Congress Did Jack Shit

    Pitiful, just pitiful.

    The 118th Congress, which subjected us to a MAGA-controlled House of Representatives, was the least productive in modern history. Sure, if we defined “productivity” by the number of amusing “Saturday Night Live sketches” or “Daily Show” segments, this Congress would have its fair share of achievements. However, based on the actual business of government, this Congress has failed utterly.

    Here’s a handy visual aide from the folks at Axios. It tracks bills signed into law from 1989, the holy year that gave us Elizabeth Olsen, to 2023, the year that George Santos won his first Olympic gold medal in fencing.

    This is some sad shit. The 118th Congress must feel like Ted Cruz when he’s changing in the Senate locker room.

    It’s only fair and balanced to point out that we currently have a divided government. Republicans control the House but Democrats hold the Senate and the presidency. There’s not much on their lengthy wish list of evil that House Republicans could achieve. (The Democrat-led Senate, on the other hand, invites you to peruse these 99 pages of judicial confirmations.) However, the most productive Congress since Elizabeth Olsen’s birth was the 106th, when Republicans controlled the House and Senate and Bill Clinton was still president (no thanks to the Republicans who’d just tried to remove him from office). Nonetheless, they still passed an impressive number of bills, even with a confessed child molester as speaker.

    The Democratic-controlled 117th Congress, with a razor-thin majority and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema-shaped anchors, passed exponentially more bills that actually benefitted people. (No joke: It was 284 to 22.) The MAGA mad Republicans in the House couldn’t even stop fighting each other long enough to torment us with stupid bills like one that would’ve saved patriotic gas stoves from the drag queen Left. The nihilist wing blocked that bill and some other dumb ones as petty revenge for Temp Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiating a critical deal with Democrats to avoid a global recession. Then they just sent everyone home. When Matt Gaetz ousted McCarthy as speaker, the House ground to a halt for three weeks.

    Poor Republican Rep. Chip Roy from Texas — so eager to slash social programs and drop kick the poor through the goalposts of life — screamed at his own party on the House floor last month over all their wasted opportunities. He was furious that Republicans had worked with cootie-having Democrats to keep the government from defaulting on its debts. He also lamented that Republicans hadn’t forced Biden to build a border wall with his bare hands. (I’m kidding — although Roy’s rant wasn’t noticeably more rational.)

    One thing!” he shouted, helpfully contributing to Democratic campaign ads. “I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did. One!”

    If you’re a stupid person, you might boast about how House Republicans finally brought Hunter Biden to justice. No, right now, we’re talking about any serious legislation that the House passed this year, even by accident, while Republicans were otherwise occupied with Hunter Biden revenge porn or attacking trans children.

    Most of the 22 bills that made it out of that horror show with minimal opposition were relatively uncontroversial measures. This very brief highlight reel would include renaming Veteran Affairs clinics and approving a coin that will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.

    Those are bills that someone’s mother would definitely put up on their refrigerator. So, let’s close out 2023 with a snarky round of applause for the 118th Congress. Next year will probably be worse.

  4. Ivy, hmmm. Looks like the sun may be rising today. ( Know of any good offensive center prospects in the transfer portal?)

  5. Yes, I used to laugh at the obligatory “this-is-the-most-important-election-ever” line for candidates who really meant most important for them. But now it’s really real for all of us!

    “Donald Trump is president right now…He’s in charge of the military.”

    I’m starting to think we’re not dealing with rational people… 

    https://t.co/9dVeqFzQF0

  6. Even some Baptists get it:

    “We must band together to defeat this antichrist. Yes, that’s right: Everything Donald Trump stands for is against the teachings of Jesus Christ. His narcissism, his greed, his arrogance, his lying, his meanness, his disdain for people who are “less” than him, his bullying, his dictatorial desires, his desire for revenge and retribution. There is no conservative political agenda worth sacrificing truth to obtain.”
    — Texas preacher Mark Wingfield, Baptist News Global

  7. I can’t figure out why but today’s USA Today poll adds to the overwhelming pile in recent months showing Biden’s slippage among Black, Hispanic and young voters since 2020 is the reason he and Trump are so close.

    USA TODAY: “Biden now claims the support of just 63% of Black voters, a precipitous decline from the 87% he carried in 2020. He trails among Hispanic voters by 5 percentage points, 39%-34%; in 2020 he had swamped Trump among that demographic group 2 to 1, 65%-32%. And among voters under 35, a generation largely at odds with the GOP on issues such as abortion access and climate change, Trump now leads 37%-33%. Younger voters overwhelmingly backed Biden in 2020.”

    A possibly encouraging note is most of that slippage is drifting to third party candidates, not to Trump. So maybe those voters come back if candidates like RFK Jr. aren’t even on the ballot, which is a tall order for him.

  8. A tiny little Earth shimmy last night/early this morning was enough to get my dog and me up.  She spent some time outside looking for something, I could not sleep.  She came in and took my side of the bed and I did the old people thing of sitting and staying awake for hours.  I never heard or felt Earth, but good old doggy did.

  10. Ivy… thanks so much for that white fruit cake recipe.  From southern living….   my Aunt live in a suburb of Halifax Nova Scotia.  But ya never know… it could be the same one.
     
    Ivy… Pogo…  I watched the game.  It was very exciting… sorry for the outcome.

  11. It’s only 7 am here. Must get out for 8 am dentist. Should’ve known better than to schedule that. Some of my Bama friends are no doubt staying under the covers all day today. 

    Renee, there are several white fruit cake recipes online, some look interesting. I plan to research, thanks for that memory of your Aunt Gussie. I visited Halifax last summer, loved it, wonderful people.

  15. “All we can do now is learn from the lessons that failings sometimes bring to us.” – Coach Saban 

     

  19. Coach Saban is a humble and self-effacing man and, guessing, an introvert. Although you can’t tell that by his hissy-fits on the sidelines. 

  22.

  23. sad commentary of our times wrapped up in this sentence from pres. gay’s letter:

    “… it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

  24. the guardian

    Claudine Gay has reportedly resigned as Harvard president.

    Harvard president Claudine Gay resigns ‘with heavy heart’ amid antisemitism furor and plagiarism claims – live
    In a letter posted on the university’s website, Gay says ‘it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign’
    […]
    House Republicans are taking a victory lap after Claudine Gay’s resignation as president of Harvard University.

  27. Craig – Do you recollect what Biden’s numbers were with black voters before Jim Clyburn went to bat for him?  We also have the benefit of  the Obamas, when the time comes.   Too early, right now.   More time, is more opportunity for the GQP to wind up their white nationalist MAGAts.
     
    Hopefully, LP has some good ad buys during the Super Bowl.   Nothing will matter to the basest of the GQP base, but the sit-on-your-hands bunch might be motivated to help save democracy.    This is a big moment in history.

  28. Folks, I don’t know if you have picked up the warning signs yet, but COVID is coming back, along with the RSV.  Not nice stuff.  I put it into the watch out WH for ways to handle this come March and April.
     
     

  29. BB, it’s definitely on the rise along with RSV.  There are some other nasties out there too, more like your general run-of-the-mill respiratory viruses and such – 3 of the 4 women in our office have something along those lines and sound like death warmed over. Of the 5 of us in the office only Mrs. P and I have escaped so far.  Of course we were out of the office last week, so that could explain that.  Reported cases have been rising since September.  I’m vaxed against everything they have a vax for (I’m in the 11.2% that have the bivalent vaccine) and am still burrowing in my office until the crud being passed around here is out of here. As far as Covid goes, WV is listed as having very low vulnerability level, but then again, population density or lack thereof accounts for that for the most part.

  30. BB:
     

    A small-magnitude earthquake shook the Washington, D.C. suburb of Rockville, Maryland, early Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. 
    A 2.3 magnitude earthquake happened shortly before 1 a.m. at a depth of about 9.5 miles about 2 miles west of Rockville. 

     
     

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