Chaos in Congress

[RoseMorninStar]

Seriously. What is it with these people? They couldn't make it on Broadway so they become politicians?

[Inanna]

Getting on Broadway is harder.

[RoseMorninStar]

Getting on Broadway is harder.

I believe you are correct, but there's more money as a political 'actor'. More is the pity.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I doubt that this will have much impact, but at least it is something.

NY Republican leaders call on GOP Rep. George Santos to resign over campaign lies

[RoseMorninStar]

HA! Do you know what is really going on there? The GOP were fine with Santos lying to his constituents but they found out he lied to a bunch of McCarthy's biggest donors. Santos broke the only rule in D.C.: Don't scam rich people.
‘We were duped’: How George Santos raised money from wealthy GOP donors while lying about his resume

[N.E. Brigand]

I doubt that this will have much impact, but at least it is something.

NY Republican leaders call on GOP Rep. George Santos to resign over campaign lies

"Inside George Santos' Madcap Campaign: 'Things Were Not on the Up and Up'" (Talking Points Memo)

The major concerns continue to involve financial matters. There's a campaign worker who quit because he feared being implicated in illegal activity and a campagin contractor who predicts Santos will soon be in a "perp walk," and in both cases the concern is fraudulent fundraising and accounting. But on the weird lying side, read the tale of Toby Gotesman, a painter and sometime campaign consultant:

Santos’ extraordinary embellishments included apparently false claims that he had Jewish ancestry and that his family survived the Holocaust. Gotesman’s family survived the Holocaust and many of her paintings focus on related themes. When she saw news reports about Santos’ Holocaust claims, Gotesman began to suspect he got the idea from her.

“I come from Holocaust survivors, rest in peace both of them. I sat with him, not one time did he mention anything to me about being Jewish or part of the Holocaust,” Gotesman said. “I had no idea. He told me he was Catholic.”

Once the story broke, Gotesman saw videos of Santos claiming to be Jewish and descended from survivors. She was stunned.

“I saw that on YouTube and I was like, holy shit. That’s when I thought he was a sociopath. It occurs to me now, I think that he got that idea from me. … He knew I was a Holocaust painter. He knew it very well. How do you sit down with a very famous Holocaust artist and not say a word about your own family?”

Overall, Gotesman said the experience left her “a little scared” for her own safety and unsure what Santos is capable of.

(This article also prompted me to finally find out who or what Salt Bae is. I've seen the name referenced several times over the past few years but never looked it up. He's a Turkish chef with a pricey steakhouse chain. I realized that I've seen him used as a meme without knowing his identity.)

[Frelga]

Debating the house rules on the floor today, and the first amendment offered by a Republican is about making stricter the rules of what women have to wear in here.


Yep, the caucus that lost their minds over the suggestion that they should wear masks during a pandemic to respect the safety of others is now spending its time focusing on the fine details of what women have to wear (specifically how to cover their arms) to show respect here

How do you say WTF in Quenya? It may be time to rename Lasto.

[Inanna]

Eff.

[elengil]

Debating the house rules on the floor today, and the first amendment offered by a Republican is about making stricter the rules of what women have to wear in here.


Yep, the caucus that lost their minds over the suggestion that they should wear masks during a pandemic to respect the safety of others is now spending its time focusing on the fine details of what women have to wear (specifically how to cover their arms) to show respect here

How do you say WTF in Quenya? It may be time to rename Lasto.

I dunno but may I propose

Yelwa! Naire! Nortor!

Which means, apparently, Loathing! Lament! Horrors!

I think that is a remarkably appropriate expression at this point.

[Frelga]

Case in point.

Nassau County Republican Party Chair Joseph Cairo says Rep. George Santos (R-NY) claimed he had been a volleyball "star" at Baruch College — which he did not attend — and led his team to a "league championship."

[narya]

Debating the house rules on the floor today, and the first amendment offered by a Republican is about making stricter the rules of what women have to wear in here.


Yep, the caucus that lost their minds over the suggestion that they should wear masks during a pandemic to respect the safety of others is now spending its time focusing on the fine details of what women have to wear (specifically how to cover their arms) to show respect here

How do you say WTF in Quenya? It may be time to rename Lasto.

How about Sind-lish, "What the del??!"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm sure that more and more stuff like this is going to come out in the coming days.

McCarthy made an agreement to release all J6 security cam footage to win the Speaker vote: Matt Gaetz

[elengil]

So... all the camera footage that would show... where lawmakers sheltered, their route out of the building, etc? That kind of footage?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Presumably.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Washington Post is now reporting that the House Republicans who were holding out on the speakership vote last week got Kevin McCarthy to agree that if their conditions for raising the debt ceiling aren't met, then they will pass a bill to (temporarily) shut down most domestic spending, the details of which are apparently still being worked out but are likely to include the FBI, the national parks, Medicaid, school lunch funding, and the FAA. So all the Republicans now complaining that it's Pete Buttigieg's fault that there was a few hours of all planes have been grounded the other day (due to a software issue) are themselves in fact planning to deliberately ground all the nations' planes. And starve children and let poor people die.

(I hope that Matt Yglesias is right that if push comes to shove, the Biden administration is just going to declare that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional and therefore can be ignored. And once that happens, maybe we'll never hear about the debt ceiling again.)

[River]

So, if I'm following, if a certain wing doesn't get its way regarding the debt ceiling, they will pass a bill that has no chance of making it to Biden's desk? I say raise the debt ceiling, let them pass their bonkers bill, and let the Dems use what they protected the rest of us from in their Senate campaigns.

[N.E. Brigand]

So, if I'm following, if a certain wing doesn't get its way regarding the debt ceiling, they will pass a bill that has no chance of making it to Biden's desk? I say raise the debt ceiling, let them pass their bonkers bill, and let the Dems use what they protected the rest of us from in their Senate campaigns.

The problem is the provision in the new House rules that allows any one Republican to bring a new vote on the Speakership to the floor: at any point they don't get their way, we'll have a replay of last week's vote and as we saw, as few as four extreme Republicans can force McCarthy out.

- - - - - - - - - -
A fun quote from the Post article, after it notes that other items Republicans would defund include "food safety inspections" and "border control" but would continue payments to bondholders: "Democrats are also likely to accuse Republicans of prioritizing payments to U.S. bondholders -- which include Chinese banks -- over American citizens." I am so ready for Democrats to charge Republicans with being pro-communist.

[N.E. Brigand]

One dumb little thing House Republicans have done is to allow smoking inside members' offices again. Here you can watch Fox News's Tucker Carlson chortle about what imagines are liberals aghast at, I kid you not, "the smell of freedom."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

SMH

[N.E. Brigand]

HA! Do you know what is really going on there? The GOP were fine with Santos lying to his constituents but they found out he lied to a bunch of McCarthy's biggest donors. Santos broke the only rule in D.C.: Don't scam rich people. "‘We were duped’: How George Santos raised money from wealthy GOP donors while lying about his resume"

More George Santos news in the past two days:

1. Although Santos voted consistently for Kevin McCarthy on the speakership ballots, now that multiple mainstream Republican members of Congress from New York have called for Santos to resign, he's apparently befriended the group that opposed McCarthy's victory for so long. Yesterday he was interviewed on a podcast by Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was subbing in for the show's regular host, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Bannon was out due to an appearance in a New York court, where he faces charges of defrauding investors in a border wall initiative; you may remember that Bannon was charged for the same crimes on the federal level in 2020 but was pardoned by Donald Trump before the case went to trial, on the last day of Trump's presidency. As Voronwë notes in the Russia investigations thread, yesterday, Bannon's lawyer, David Schoen -- who defended then former-President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial -- asked to be replaced because he says Bannon refuses to speak with him.

2. Writing in Slate, Alexander Sammon describes his efforts to figure out how Santos repeatedly spent exactly $199.99 at one New York restaurant (one cent short of the amount that requires receipts -- and an amount that Santos reported spending on many different purchases) -- to the tune of more than $25,000 in campaign expenditures over the past three years despite the restaurant having been shut down for some of that period and despite having lost its liquor license for a while due to violation of Covid protocols* (i.e., it wasn't pricey drinks that boosted the expenses) -- owned by a campaign donor whose brother, also a Santos donor, has been mixed up with human trafficking. Santos's campaign spent another $18,000 there for its victory party two months ago, and Santos's sister spent another $4,000 there, apparently also as part of the campaign.

*Specifically a local Republican club held a party there in December 2020 that appears to have been a superspreader event.

3. CNN reported that Santos was told in 2020 that Harbor City Capital Corp., where he almost certainly did really work (but who knows?), was running a Ponzi scheme, and he responded that the firm's work was "100% legitimate" -- but later, when the firm was implicated in a fraud investigation, he claimed he'd never heard of the possibility of any wrongdoing there. CNN also has video of Santos referring to himself as the company's "head guy" in New York, supposedly managing a $1.5 billion portfolio producing "record returns."

Edited to add:

4. As recently as 2019, Santos publicly said his name was "Anthony Devolder." And while it's true that he now says his full name is George Anthony Devolder Santos, it's weird that he would use two different names in public just a year apart: he was "George Santos" when working for Harbor City.