Third time's a charm

 

SPEAKER: THERE WILL BE 3RD IMPEACHMENT IF DEMS TAKE HOUSE...

 

 

Harvey Weinstein to be tried for third time in New York...

 

GOP U. S. House of Representatives decides to . . .

Not sure what they're smokin' over there at CNBC this afternoon: 

House speaker starts August recess early to avoid Jeffrey Epstein votes

 

... On Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said he was speaking with Maxwell’s defense lawyer to see if Maxwell “would be willing to speak with prosecutors” to see if she “has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims.” ...

... Blanche previously served as a criminal defense lawyer for Trump when the president was indicted in four separate cases after ending his first White House term in January 2017. ...

$30 billion is not jet fuel for the economy

 

‘Big beautiful bill’ may help some seniors on Social Security. But it doesn’t eliminate taxes on benefits 

... The new additional senior deduction and other changes in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” may reduce taxation of Social Security benefits by approximately $30 billion per year, estimates the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ...               

$30 billion is 0.10 percent of current GDP of $29,962.00 billion.

House Speaker Mike Johnson wants you to know this is jet fuel for the economy. 

 

 

If it hasn't been jet fuel since 2017, it won't be now

Real GDP has been 2.43% compound annual 1Q2017 through 1Q2025. And that includes all the obscene pandemic spending.

This isn't even close to the 2.8% Trump cheerleaders are promising, let alone the 3% The Speaker touts.

 

Speaker Johnson: We've Given Everybody A Tax Cut, That Will Be Jet Fuel For The Economy

 

There's no new tax cut. The Trump tax reform from his first term simply continues. There's no injection of new money on a permanent basis involving tax bracket changes, nothing substantively different for the average taxpayer.

 

There are short-term gimmicks for seniors, earners of tip income, earners of overtime pay, car-buyers, etc., but most of these are scattershot and most importantly, most of them expire in 2028.

 

The incremental adjustments which occur naturally to standard deduction amounts would occur anyway. 

More above average income filers will be able to itemize than previously, but only until 2030.

 

 

 

House Speaker Mike Johnson's spending bill is in big trouble with the US Senate's Ron Johnson

 

Sen. Ron Johnson: Spending Cuts In House GOP's Budget "Basically A Rounding Error," Adds $22 Trillion In Debt

... You have heard people talk about zero-based budgeting. I'm talking about a budget of $5.5 trillion to $6.5 trillion. Those are options from Clinton, Obama, and Trump (first term), where you just take their actual outlays, plus them up by population growth and inflation, leaving Social Security, Medicare, and interest untouched. That would leave you somewhere between $5.5 trillion and $6.5 trillion. So you start there, but you have to do the work, and you need the time to do the work. ... I think we have enough [senators] to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit.

Andrew Sullivan today: The GOP Congress has long since become the equivalent of Putin’s Duma — a rubber-stamp body designed solely to support the executive branch

 Here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(shadow banned by Elon Musk)

Democrats united under Hakeem Jeffries in the US House are the only ones in American politics above water right now

 US House Democrats voted unanimously against the Republicans' continuing spending resolution under -4.2 underwater Republican Speaker Mike Johnson (except for Democrat Jared Golden [ME-2], a Blue Dog Democrat who under ranked choice voting in Maine wins by being the second choice of people who voted for someone else).

Senate Minority Leader Democrat Chucky Schumer (-19.6) led eight other Democrats in the US Senate to pass the continuing spending resolution. 

Republicans are jumping the shark. Opposing that is popular. 

Democrats, are you listening?

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson wants to straight up demolish an entire US federal district court in retaliation against judges who issue rulings he doesn't like, just because he can

 

... "We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things." ...

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said eliminating a district court would create "massive, massive backlogs". ... 

Reported here.

Impeaching judges turns into big headache for Speaker Mike Johnson lol

 Hill Republicans already hated the ‘idiotic’ call to impeach judges. Then Trump jumped in. 

... Impeachment proceedings, even when they don’t involve presidents, can be time- and resource-intensive affairs. ... privately there is dread inside Johnson’s leadership circle about the prospect of having to pursue messy, certain-to-fail impeachments that could ultimately backfire on the GOP’s razor-thin majority.

“It’s never going to happen,” said a senior House Republican aide. “There aren’t the votes.”

“It would be such a heavy lift and we’ve got too many heavy lifts coming up,” said another top GOP aide. “What is the endgame here?”

A third said GOP leaders and even some conservative House members are “rolling their eyes” at the impeachment filings that “aren’t going to go anywhere.” ...

The do-nothing US Senate under John Thune has passed 0 of 5 appropriation bills passed by the US House under Mike Johnson who still hasn't passed the other 7 and now they all want to pass Biden's spending instead through FY2025 to please phony Republican Donald Trump

 

Kinda like a libertarian convention

 

Trump’s tax cuts are ‘stuck in the mud’ as Republicans split over spending 

 

. . . fiscal hawks said they could not support the massive package without more spending cuts. ...

This is just BS from Speaker Mike Johnson about LNG exports and Joe Biden's memory

 Whatever may be said about Joe Biden's memory, he didn't have a memory lapse in this instance as alleged by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. It's troubling that Mike Johnson would misrepresent this in this way. 

Joe Biden doesn't have a monopoly on "fake shit".

Sir, why did you [President Biden] pause LNG exports to Europe? Like, I don't understand. Liquefied natural gas is in great demand by our allies. Why would you do that? You understand -- we just talked about Ukraine -- you’re fueling Vladimir Putin’s war machine because they’ve got to get their gas from him."

He looks at me, stunned, and says, "I didn’t, I didn’t do that."

I said, "Mr. President, yes, you did. It was an executive order, like, three weeks ago."

He says, "No, I didn’t do that." He’s arguing with me.

-- The Moment Speaker Mike Johnson Knew Biden Wasn't "In Charge" Anymore 

LNG exports to Europe were not paused. And demand in Europe dropped in 2024. Biden signed a temporary pause for pending approvals of LNG exports, not for existing approvals of LNG exports. This and Mike's other comments in the story indicate that he is not exactly reliable on the subject. But he could have easily just looked it up.

Jan 26, 2024:

FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Temporary Pause on Pending Approvals of Liquefied Natural Gas Exports

Sep 4, 2024:

US LNG export dominance tested as Europe's demand wilts

Meanwhile, Mike Johnson didn't tell anybody about this until now? Seems like a dereliction of duty for the man in line right behind the VP to become president in the event of incapacity or death.

And, oh yeah, US LNG export tanker loads hit a seven-month high in January 2025 at 71, through yesterday:

 

 

 

Speaker Mike Johnson and Senators Tom Cotton and Pete Ricketts say Chicom's TikTok is toast

 

“The law is very precise, and the only way to extend that is if there is an actual deal in the works,” Johnson added. “I think President Trump is probably intrigued by all this and he likes to make deals, as you know. So we’re very hopeful that that can happen, and that 270 million American people who enjoy the platform can enjoy it, but enjoy it safely and not have their data being mined by our nation’s enemy.”

More.

The powers that be had a little talk with Norman and Self, who changed their votes to Mike Johnson, making him Speaker of the House 218-215-1

 Hard turd Thomas Massie can't be flushed.

 

Chip Roy (TX-21) was silent for Mike Johnson, then 13 minutes later voted for him because he did not want to be "that guy" lol

Matt Gaetz is not in the House today, that's why we have 434 not 435. He resigned after winning re-election.

That vote could have come in real handy right about now, but no, FL-1 had to have a prima donna in the House.

Others not voting for Mike Johnson:

Keith Self (TX-3)

Ralph Norman (SC-5)

Thomas Massie (KY-4).

 

 

This would be quite the payback to Trump for Jan 6, 2021 lol

 The House Speaker election is January 3, 2025.

You've got 34 Republicans pissed off at passage of the American Relief Act on December 20th by Mike Johnson and 170 Republicans.

Hakeem Jeffries has already told everyone Democrats will not help elect Mike Johnson speaker again because he stiffed them on the continuing spending resolution. Democrats are pissed off, too, although 196 did vote Yea on the bill.

So Republicans absolutely need those 34 to re-elect Johnson to speaker on Jan 3rd.

But let's say they don't, and the process drags out like it did with Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The 2024 election results go to Congress in joint session for casting of the electoral college votes on January 6th, but that wouldn't happen without a speaker to swear-in the new House.

Jan 6, 2025 could be disrupted for Trump.

Very amusing.

Discussed here.

Hakeem Jeffries repays GOP for pulling original continuing spending resolution last week: Mike Johnson's House speakership won't be saved by Democrat votes in January

 

Jeffries: There Will Be No Democratic Votes To Save Speaker Johnson Or MAGA Republicans From Themselves

 

. . . there will be no Democrats available to save him or the extreme MAGA Republicans from themselves based on the breaching of a bipartisan agreement that reflected priorities good for the American people.

Do you think these guys even once sat down together to discuss the continuing spending resolution before this week's fiasco?

 Maybe James Braid, new Director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, knows lol.

 

Is this James Braid?

Trump's first defeat lol: You might say the two billionaires were shown who's boss

 Second continuing spending resolution goes down in flames, after Elon Musk and Donald Trump said Nay to the first one, which never even came to a vote. Speaker Johnson and the Democrats had worked on that compromise deal for three months.

The roll call vote is here.

CNBC story here.

Extremely amusing.

 

The Republicans Who Said Nay

House Speaker Mike Johnson rings the poaching alarm

 

 "But I've told President Trump, enough already, give me some relief. I have to maintain this majority. And he understands that, of course, we've been talking about it almost hourly every day," he said, adding that the Republicans "will have a majority." ...

According to the Washington Post, North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx and Florida Representative Byron Donalds are potential candidates for secretary of Education. Foxx won her district by 19 points, and Donalds won his by 33 points.

Meanwhile, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie has hinted that he is open to becoming the secretary of Agriculture.

More.