James Comer, who has promised us investigations of the “Biden crime family” has changed the name of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
This means he means business.
Today we learned who will join him in doing this important work and it’s a rogues gallery of whackadoodles.
Kelly Armstrong
Lauren Boebert
Tim Burchett
Eric Burlison
Byron Donalds
Chuck Edwards
Russell Fry
Paul Gosar
Marjorie Taylor Green
Nick Langworthy
Jake LaTurner
Anna Paulina Luna
Lisa McClain
Gary Palmer
Scott Perry
Pete Sessions
William Timmons
We have five of the 20 who made K-Mac’s life hell in the speaker election.
We have two of the six pardon seekers.
We have Congressperson-1 from the Parnas/Furman indictment.
We have Jewish space laser lady.
And the one who earned her nomination in the Republican primary before she earned her GED.
Plus I don’t know a bunch of these folks, but I guess I will because we have two years of trying to get the perfect sound bite in a hearing so that Sean Hannity will invite them on his show.
This thread will follow along as this crew puts their heads together to do the work of the American people. It’s going to be a wild ride.
Gaetz is on the Judiciary Committee with his buddy Gym Jordan. That committee will also be a shit show, but they might actually do some real work from time to time.
Oversight will be purely performative.
Gaetz is also on the Armed Services Committee for all those sweet defense contractor perks.
Kevin might deserve some credit if that was on purpose. Put all the kids in a room together so they keep themselves occupied and give the grownups some time to get some actual work done.
At least he’s aware that the “investigations” aren’t going to lead anywhere, any more than Trump’s “investigation” of vote fraud in the 2016 election came up with anything.
But it’s still useful to Republicans. Because they’re doing something! They’re really trying to get to the bottom of all the crime! And all of their favorite characters are there, like some weird made-for-TV movie combining all of the stars from unrelated TV shows in a badly-conceived ensemble film that only exists because of the cast. Like a We Are The World for right wing conspiracy nutjob politicians.
While they play amateur sleuth and posture, he tries to… Well, I don’t think he expects that he can actually get any changes made, but he can do all he can to ensure the Democrats don’t either.
This post has been bouncing around in my brain for a little while and I can’t shake the idea that you might be on to something.
If he thought Biden really had done anything wrong, this is not the squad he’d assemble to get to the bottom of it. So maybe their purpose, in McCarthy’s view anyway, is solely to make noise. Maybe they’ll even provide a smokescreen for whatever nefarious shit he actually wants to accomplish.
E.g. When Scott Perry calls whoever made the Italian satellite conspiracy video* to testify before congress, cable news will be all over that lunacy and not watching Kevin.
Richard Donoghue, deputy attorney general under Bill Barr, called this video, and the accompanying conspiracy theory, “Pure insanity.” Scott Perry, on the other hand, was apparently sending this video to everyone in his address book and wanted the White House to ask the Italian government to get to the bottom of it.
Wasn’t the membership of and perks accruing from House Committees a high value target for those preaching the drainy swampy electoral platform or did I not get that memo?
McCarthy sold his soul to not one devil but several. Gosar, MTG and Bobert are the best they could do? How the hell can they put Santos on anything? This is going to be a shit show for the foreseeable future. The country will be more divided than ever. The Republican leadership has zero principles, other than remaining in power at all costs.
I really want some witness to answer the inevitable hundredth-in-a-row bone-stupid question with a smart-ass answer and a resigned sigh and, when some CongressYahoo gets up and grandstands that the witness should be held in contempt of Congress, say “I’m not in contempt of Congress but I’m definitely in contempt of this kangaroo court committee!”
As far as I can tell, the membership of this committee from both sides is still not official besides the chair (Comer) and the ranking member (Raskin).
That, however, is not going to stop Comer from getting to the bottom of the thing that is certainly at the forefront of the concerns of the American people…
… Hunter Biden’s art sales.
While this is definitely an example of Hunter cashing in on the family name, which some may find distasteful, it is pretty clearly not a crime for private citizen Hunter Biden to sell his art to anyone for any price.
The first meeting of this esteemed committee was earlier today.
It featured Marjorie Taylor Greene taking a moment to points out that the Police Officers that killed Tyre Nichols are black, and Lauren Boebert standing up to shake Ashli Babbitt’s mother’s hand while another Congressperson was speaking.
They also disbanded the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
The dems on the committee are doing a pretty good job in this hearing of showing that Twitter had bias that was favorable to the right wing even before Elon took over.
AOC shows that Twitter changed its policies to allow Trump’s racism.
Jimmy Gomez makes sure to get it in the record Twitter gave MTG more chances than the average Joe would get before she was suspended by Twitter.
Maxwell Frost (and others) show that the Trump White House directly ask Twitter to remove a Chrissy Teigen Tweet that made fun Trump. This might actually be a 1st Amendment violation unlike private citizen Joe Biden’s campaign asking for Hunter dick picks to be taken down.
