Top: Rep. Ellmers; bottom: former Rep. LungrenDaily Caller, the gay-hating, climate-changedenying website published by Swanson Foods heir Tucker Carlson, conducted a non-scientific (naturally) survey of House members asking if whether they would be willing to forgo their salaries while the government was shut down.
Result were skewed to make Democrats look feckless (naturally!), even though no Democrats voted to shut down the government. The Daily Calling reporting also produced a couple of unintentional bloopers, however — one that made a North Carolina tea bagger look like a wanton hypocrite and another that exposed the Daily Caller’s apparently casual approach to fact checking and out-of-date knowledge of who actually serves in the 113th Congress.
Watch a young California liberal go off on GOP Rep. Dan Lungren during a town hall meeting in his district last week. Lungren, a former state attorney general, is widely unpopular in the state, and was one of the few Republican House members who had a tough reelection in 2010, only managing to pull out a win after Karl Rove came in with a big ad buy at the end.
Hey, yelling at congressmen eventually put the tea party in charge of the government, so you can’t say it doesn’t work.
Garbage dump in metro D.C. area; inset: Rep. "Styrofoam Dan" Lungren, R-Calif
It has only been about three months since Republicans took control of the House and there are already signs that voter remorse is setting in.
“This is a case of the Republicans being spiteful and stupid,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)
The reason for this is clear. Republicans won the House by promising to focus on fixing the economy and produce “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Not only have they broken those promises — they haven’t even bothered to schedule a hearing on employment — they passed $61 billion in budget cuts that conservative economic experts predict would kill about 1 million jobs and stall or reverse recovery from the Bush recession.
Otherwise, all the GOP has done is waste time on the taxpayers’ dime with a series of gimmicks. They read the Constitution out loud (and bungled even that). They voted to repeal of health-care reform even though they knew it had no chance of becoming law and have yet to utter a peep about the replacement bill they promised. And they passed a resolution to encourage placing “In God We Trust” signs on all 9,000 federal buildings.
Add to that list of gimmicks their cynical decision to reverse part of the Democrats’ program to make the Capitol Building more energy efficient:
Now that Ron DeSantis is a “rage-hampered homunculus,”
You have to wonder, What’s his political calculus?
Will he wage his “war on woke”
On us poor Florida folk,
And spend the rest of his term just fuckin’ with us?
“Donald Trump has risen in the polls the more the people have reacted negatively to his treatment in the courtroom. And if the judge had gone ahead with this, it could have easily been the October surprise.”
— Karl Rove told Fox News that allowing sentencing to proceed in Donald Trump’s New York hush money case could have given Trump a boost in the polls.
“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”
— Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in a statement explaining that he’ll vote for Kamala Harris.
“… it doesn’t even matter if it’s active or not terribly active, it’s really what hits us or doesn’t hit us. … I mean, that’s what we’re concerned about. So you can have a very active season. Maybe we don’t get impacted or you can have a mild season, but if we get impacted by just one big one, it does that. So knock on wood. We’re in the high season right now,” he said at the JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes, in Central Florida.
“I don’t believe we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states. As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
— Former Rep. Liz Cheney, the once high-ranking Republican from Wyoming who torpedoed her political career by breaking forcefully with former President Donald Trump, said on Wednesday she would be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, the New York Times reports.
“The IRS has collected $1.3 billion from high wealth tax dodgers since last fall, the agency announced Friday, crediting spending that has ramped up collection enforcement through President Joe Biden’s signature climate, health care and tax package signed into law in 2022,” the AP reports.
A new The Hill/Emerson College poll in Florida finds Sen. Rick Scott (R) barely ahead of challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D), 46% to 45% with another 9% still undecided.
A new USA Today/Suffolk poll finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump nationally among likely voters, 48% to 43%. Also interesting: In June, 73% of Biden supporters predicted he would win; now 87% of Harris voters say she will, a jump of 14 points. Also in June, 88% of Trump supporters said he would win. Now 76% do ? a majority, but still, a drop of a dozen points.
“Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee plan to transfer nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democratic candidates in state and federal races this year, a significant boost to those efforts following record fundraising for her campaign this summer,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump Media, the company majority-owned by former President Donald Trump, fell below $20 per share for the first time since the Truth Social maker started publicly trading,” CNBC reports. “Trump’s stake of DJT stock is still worth more than $2.2 billion — more than half of his on-paper net worth, according to Forbes.”
