comment: >
  
  Republican Circus.
context: Only 128 more failed votes till they break the record! >
  
  One hundred twenty-eight bottles of beer on the wall. 
  128 bottles of beer!
  You take one down,
  Kavanaugh comes around, 
  127 bottles of beer on the wall. >
  
  He only drank one? That doesn't seem right. He's more of a "6 beers to get buzzed" kinda guy >
  
  Have to start with something. >
  
  Always remember one of our Supreme Court justices consumed alcohol through his anus >
  
  And described the Devil's Triangle as a drinking game >
  
  Republicans can't govern.  Theatrics and extremism catching up with them. >
  
  The MAGA babies want to get rid of any ethics or oversight committees so Lauren can carry a shotgun around. >
  
  Well January 6 is one more day away >
  
  Was it really two years ago to the date? Good lord has time flown by. Its disgusting that after all this time we havent had a single MAGA conspirator jailed for orchestrating the riot. >
  
  Hasn’t that been the GOP’s plan all this time? Do fuck-all in the House, cause a government shutdown, blame everything on the Dems, rinse & repeat until 2024 elections. >
  
  They don't get to have their 80000 hour long Hunter Biden hearing though. >
  
  Now they get to say they were barred by the Democrats (somehow) from being able to conduct said hearings. >
  
  The problem is that the Republican base want these toothless investigations, this infighting delays the right’s effort to show the “truth and corruption” behind the lefts agenda. Their base can’t pin blame on Biden when House Republicans are too busy eating themselves alive >
  
  
  Their base can’t pin blame on Biden when House Republicans are too busy eating themselves alive
  
  Their base will pin it on Biden; not because of the merit, but the pundits will tell them to. We just have to make sure that those sentiments are fact-checked in real-time. >
  
  It’s almost as if Republicans are clueless when it comes to governing? I also find it hilarious that Trumpism has come back to bite these tools in the arse. >
  
  
  Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, joined Lieu in suggesting that Republicans are neglecting their duties and putting the country in a dangerous position.
  “If God forbid there was a crisis we couldn’t respond to it in any way,” Nadler said. “Either [Republicans] do and they don’t care or they don’t understand it.”
  
  The Republicans are clueless,  and when told so and pointed out, they don't care. >
  
  That's because they actively want this country to be unsafe and for the government to be dismantled.  That's where all their propaganda talking points derive from. >
  
  The propaganda usually originates from enemies like Russia and China, but these useful idiots don't realize they're being used to destroy America. >
  
  They gotta realize it and just don't care. >
  
  Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." >
  
  My razor is that it’s entirely possible that stupid and malice are not mutually exclusive and can present/result in the same outcome. >
  
  More like their stupidity is being used by others as tools of malice >
  
  To be fair, a Republican led House is a national security risk anyways. >
  
  No it isn't. Mother Russia will be fine with the US under GOP control. >
  
  
  "We can’t even do basic things,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Cal.) told The Bulwark. “We can’t conduct any oversight. You can’t have an entire branch of government simply not function. And we don’t have a House right now because no one’s even sworn in.”
  “And the chaos on the Republican side is having real consequences for the country and it’s going to get very serious very fast,” he added. “Imagine if there’s some unexpected crisis either domestically or somewhere in the world and you needed Congress to act. We couldn’t right now because we don’t have a speaker.” >
  
  Legislators aren't supposed to act in a crisis. That would be a self defeating design since a committee is inevitably frozen in a crisis. The executive acts in crisis. Legislator = law maker. Executive = doer. The different roles are spelled out in the plain language even of the name. >
  
  There's also this to consider:
  
  “With January 6th coming up, we should be reminded not only of their horrendous attack on our Capitol, but why the former president picked that day. It was to stop the certification of the Electoral College results. And so thank goodness we don’t have to certify any Electoral College results this week because we wouldn’t be able to,” Lieu said. “The American people should be asking themselves, two years from now, would you actually want a Republican House majority again.” >
  
  Again that's unprecedented, but not a national security disaster. The President Pro Tempore of the Senate would temporarily step in as head of the executive branch should the office of the Speaker be vacant. >
  
  Wasn't Chuck Grassley the President Pro Tempore of the Senate when January 6 happened? and wasn't he going along with all the election deniers? Sounds like that could still be a security disaster. >
  
  Sure, but then we had Pelosi as speaker, so she would have become POTUS.
  At the end of the day, both were elected by the American people. No worse than Trump. >
  
  Republicans once again putting the country and our lives in danger. >
  
  We're quickly seeing a split between people who know how serious this is and those who think it's funny, "working as intended," or much ado about nothing
  If you think this country is in slow decline like I do, this is another red flag. No, I don't expect any disastrous fallout, but it just looks bad >
  
  It does feel like another small step down the darkest possible path. >
  
  It gets way darker than this. Jan 6 could have succeeded, for example. >
  
  I get the humor but frankly this is terrifying. Our government is broken while the elite wipe their asses with tax payer money. >
  
  America First!…except not when is not politically valuable >
  
  *This offer not available at all locations. >
  
  *This offer not available in America. >
  
  It will be solved no later than Jan 13th or they won't be able to pay themselves. >
  
  Thats ok they are mostly on the dole with dark money. They are too well financed to not have a plan (for themselves). >
  
  iv seen preschool student governments run better then this. >
  
  I bet if McCarthy promised free chocolate milk for all who voted for him, he'd wrap this up now. >
  
  Funny story: in my high school class a kid won class president based on nothing other than promising a free cake day for everyone. One other candidate cried as she gave her speech because she actually cared about the issues and all the people wanted was some free cake. >
  
  The important question is, is did the people eat cake? >
  
  Promises made, promises kept >
  
  It has been [0] days since Republican's last national embarrassment. >
  
  Might have to change that scale to minutes, chief >
  
  It used to be Moochies, but even that timescale was too long. >
  
  Yeah well, it sucks having an entire national political party that makes doing their job* priority number #14.
  *= Running the country and improving things. Instead of, you know, letting it fall apart so they can point at it and say “look! It doesn’t work!” >
  
  Pretty frightening that pieces of shit like Lauren Bobert, Rapey Mcforhead, Gym Jordan and Chip Roy have this much power. >
  
  And that so many voters wanted them to >
  
  how are they planning to make america great again with this clownshow? >
  
  The House, and as much as possible the rest of government, being nonfunctional is precisely the utopia they're striving for. The premise is that government can do no good. And with them at the wheel becomes a truism. >
  
  yea, they have a thing for shutting down the government. I thought Hunter's junk would be enticing enough for them to huddle together, but I was wrong. >
  
  This just gives Biden more authority to exercise his executive powers, no?  He can handle all the national security issues himself like he's done for past 2 yrs. >
  
  It would be a little…. Extraconstitutional. Honestly I am not versed enough in constitutional law to know if we have any contingencies in the government’s structure to account for the House being out of commission. >
  
  Well, I don't think he'd abuse it unless Russia took this opportunity to drastically escalate things in Ukraine. >
  
  That I do agree with and I think Bid— wait how many of the Q nuts do we know are Russian stooges? Uh oh. >
  
  I can only imagine what Gaetz is saying, "Listen bro she came on to me. I didn't know she was your staffer. I know her sister from a high school." >
  
  “A” high school. Nice touch. >
  
  I just picked up on your comment from another angle. Nice touch is a good jab at Matt since he is a pedo >
  
  They don’t get paid or money for office expenses and staff until they are sworn in, right? >
  
  I think the deadline is Jan 13. >
  
  That's when they miss their first pay day. There's no hard deadline. >
  
  Given how traitorous the Republicans are, it might be the goal. >
  
  Oh no we've delayed the crucial national debate on Hunter Biden's penis. >
  
  Do Nothing GOP! Thought they hated paying people who didn't want to work. >
  
  I'm waiting for McCarthy to show up with a conch shell and declare himself speaker. >
  
  I’m beginning to think that is the entire point of all this. >
  
  Same thing they're doing with the infrastructure and the schools. Refuse to approve budgets to maintain, upgrade or expand infrastructure because of something easy to twist into something that sounds big if you don't read the bill. People who use that infrastructure see it crumbling, see it becoming unsafe, and they see nothing being done about it. Most people won't realize it's because of a handful of bad actors. Those actors have  a greater agenda to dismantle the departments and budgets so it'll seem like privatizing it is the most obvious way to fix it. 
  As for schools? demand parents have more of a hand in the curriculum by convincing them things are being taught that aren't. Despite the curriculum for public schools is completely available online and from the admin, most teachers don't have a lot of room to alter it without consequences. You do all of this knowing that the people who will be most likely to go all in are the religious and poorly educated. Gas them up to run for previously apolitical positions like superintendant and school board. Eventually you'll have enough hands on enough levers to start reforming the system to the point that it becomes an obvious and abject failure. Privatize it, and subsidize religious schools with taxpayer money by making the "free" secular schools offered bad enough that even non christians will send their kids. All it's going to do is make segregated schools with extra steps, but most of the poor religious parents that are falling for this shit don't realize their kids will end up in the poor school too. >
  
  I’m convinced that this is at least partially the plan. Republicans can spin the government grinding to a halt on Biden and their rabid base of idiots will slurp it up like baby birds. 
  They can afford to take their time because governing simply isn’t on their agenda. >
  
  Maybe some Republicans should compromise and vote with the Dems then lol >
  
  If you voted for even one of the idiots then too be honest you are partial at fault. GOP is not a political party but an angertainment grievance machine set on continuous sowing anger among their base. >
  
  The Republican party has made it their platform to never compromise, never cooperate, and never give an inch. Their voters have selected the people least likely to cooperate with any "others" ... including those with a slightly different flavor of conservatism.
  And to choose a speaker they need to do exactly that. >
  
  It's not that Republicans don't know, they don't care. >
  
  As much as I hate the GOP - I am not rejoicing in any of this because it has some grave real life consequences. >
  
  Claim to be the party of 'small government.'
  Turns out, they're the party of no government. >
  
  The funny part is that it would be no different with a Speaker. That's what Republican control gets you. >
  
  The Doom-n-Gloom in this article really begs the question:
  Why does one member of the House have so much power?
  Seriously, they can't do their jobs because they don't have a Speaker? Dang, we need to update our stupid government already. Times have clearly changed. >
  
  Because the House needs a way to generate an agenda from submitted proposals by it's members so that those members know when they need to be in the chambers to vote and when they have time to work on new proposals.   
  There are two ways such an agenda can be generated. By a person in charge and their staff(Human intelligence decision system) or by a rigid set of rules (Algorithmic decision making system).
  ​
  Humans need to be put in charge by some mechanism and an election is the best one we have been able to come up with.
  As the internet has shown algorithms can be manipulated the simpler they are the easier they are to break. There are people elected to congress regularly that just want to see government burn. Therefore you need to make the algorithm so complicated that it is almost impossible to break which will make it almost impossible to navigate and hand a huge amount of power to unelected career staff and lobbyist who can spend all day for years studying the system.
  You choose which you like better. >
  
  Right, but when a situation arises where the election fails to elect, we need to have a plan in place to address that. >
  
  True an amazing amount of government functions in the US function of the idea that generally elected officials will be intelligent and cooperative with a similar goal in mind. And if you look at the people that wrote most of them you understand why. >
  
  Couldn't have happened to a more deserving, fucked up group of traitors.@gop >
  
  They shouldn't get paid until they elect a speaker >
  
  Trump created national security risks and an insurrection and republicans supported him.  I don't think they care. >
  
  This has been the goal of a certain nation…filling the US with massive propaganda, disinformation, crazy conspiracy theories, assets in government and election management, assets in congress under the GOP…etc there’s soo much more (getting trump elected) invading countries under every president over the last 20+ years except trump (coincidence?) now trying to bring down the government to a grinding halt, patrolling the Atlantic with a Soo armed with hypersonic missiles at such an unhinged moment where our government can’t even act. Everything that has been said and investigated over the last half dozen years are true. >
  
  GOP = domestic terrorists >
  
  Gaetz is a pedo.  Gaetz is a pedo….pass it on. >
  
  Whaddya know Republicans put our nation in yet another national security fiasco... It's almost like it's intentional. Maybe someone should be looking into this... >
  
  All those Republicans, ready to make life worse for millions and make money for their donors but they can't choose anyone to lead the charge. >
  
  It’s theatre. Once it affects their pay they’ll fall in line. >
  
  Exactly what Trump wants. >
  
  Eh I wouldn't take it that far.
  If push comes to shove and the country is in immediate crisis they will elect a speaker to deal with it. This circus can continue a few weeks without issue really. >
  
  Republicans couldn't even get their shit together to deal with covid. I have no faith they have the maturity necessary to do this. >
  
  they could watch a nuke go off in real time and still call it fake news blaming dems/libs >
  
  It certainly seems like the GOP doesn’t have the majority. >
  
  That is their plan?! >
  
  It’s about 2 am est rn. I wonder if Kevin is crying himself to sleep or just making an insane amount of calls trying to kiss everyone’s ass and beg for their support lmao. Fuck that asshole. >
  
  Shadow Shutdown has a hell of a ring to it. >
  
  Part of me thinks this is the plan. >
  
  As intended I suppose? >
  
  And in two years, Republicans will continue to vote for these clowns. >
  
  Oh look, the pedo leads them all >
  
  I really hope they can get this resolved soon so they can get back to Hunter Biden’s laptop /s >
  
  Then 6 GOPers should switch to Hakeem Jeffiries >
  
  Republicans feel like they will face no consequences. Without consequences their strategies for running the government have nothing to do with running the government and everything to do with exploiting each As a means to an end >
  
  National security risks? Are you kidding me?
  America is far SAFER with these fascist trolls in disarray and unable to target and undermine their own citizens, while continuing to ignore their own party's raping Democracy and working to enrich the already super wealthy at every one else's expense. >
  
  So this delays what…Hunter and Joe investigations over nothing? Republicans can’t govern even when they agree. >
  
  I would have to guess there are at least some Republican members who don't want to waste time on that bullshit. Not getting anything worthwhile done for the average voter does nothing to help their standing with voters >
  
  Maybe Putin has been too busy to direct his party on how to vote >
  
  Please, Democrats, do not compromise with Republicans by electing a speaker of their choice.
  They would never compromise with you. >
  
  I think this is a good thing.
  Watch how the country moves on, functioning just fine, with congress blocked.  Maybe, just maybe, some folks will realize their lives and the success and safety of the country aren't completely dependent on Congress. 
  Some things will be inconvenienced sure, but wake up people like this author. Its not the end of the country if Congress is hampered. >
  
  This situation has been planned out for a long time!  Putin's puppets are doing his bidding to create chaos. >
  
  Don’t pay them until they sort it out !