We can apparently expect more clown shows in the House today, so that should be fun. They do say laughing is good for your health.
🤡 Apparently we’re going to go ahead and start off with Kevin McCarthy losing yet another vote for Speaker of the House. This is the fourth round of voting, and the fourth time he’s lost. You can watch the voting and House shenanigans here on YouTube.
📰 Before we get too caught up in all that drama, a couple of bits of non-Speaker of the House news:
- Some good news on the abortion rights front: 1) Pharmacies can now offer abortion drugs like mifepristone over the counter, and 2) the US Postal Service is okayed to deliver abortion drugs through the mail.
- Wakanda Forever will hit Disney+ on Feb. 1. As someone who’s still refusing to marinate in the plague at a movie theater, I’m particularly pleased to hear this.
- Deadpool 3 is definitely happening. The rest of the article is basically a rumor round-up.
- Here’s a round-up of all the new state and federal laws that kick in in 2023. There’s some new anti-vaping laws kicking in in California, FYI. If you kicked smoking in favor of vaping, 2023 is looking like a good year to kick vaping, too.
- Stephen Amell is coming back as Green Arrow in the final season of The Flash. I haven’t seen the last couple of seasons of The Flash because that whole Forces of Nature/Iris in Mirror World thing got exceedingly tedious exceedingly fast. Please don’t make me catch up just to watch the team up.
- And here’s a listicle that’s basically a round-up of healthy-eating tips and fad nutrition debunkings. This is the year I’m kicking diet culture to the curb, but I am looking to eat healthier, so this is handy.
🤡 And it’s official: McCarthy just lost his fourth vote. A fifth is expected.
💭 I keep seeing things like the above tweet about how House Democrats should make a deal with McCarthy to get him elected Speaker and like, why would you do that. No deal will be honored. McCarthy will screw you the hot second he gets the gavel. Obviously. OBVIOUSLY. You can’t trust these GOP loons for anything. WHAT FUCKING FOOLS THINK THIS WEST WING BULLSHIT WILL WORK. Ohmigawd, this idiocy is embarrassing.
🤡 And McCarthy just lost a fifth vote. OMG.
🤡 They’re going to try a sixth time, lol, lmao. Update: Sixth vote also failed to produce a Speaker.
🤡 The House is taking a break until 8pm ET, presumably so the Republicans can go yell at each other some more.
🍊 Meanwhile, yesterday, Trump called House members to try to get them to vote for McCarthy and not only did it not work, like, at all, but those House members spent part of their mornings ragging on Trump while they voted for even trying.
🤡 I figured this would happen – the House came back into session at 8pm and immediately voted to adjourn for the day. (Barely.) They’ll be back in tomorrow at noon. If you’re curious, Vox has a run-down of the ways this phenomenal mess could end. McCarthy could come up with some sort of deal that gets him the votes he needs, they hit a stalemate and nothing moves forward (which is not exactly an end, per se, I mean they have to get a Congress together at some point, some way), McCarthy gives up and these idgits manage to rally behind some other jackass (probably most likely, I think), or the Democrats make a deal with “moderate” Republicans and manage to elect some kind of “unity candidate” that no one really wants.
-fin-
Photo Credit: Kevin McCarthy at a Trump rally in 2020, by Gage Skidmore. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Notes & Thoughts 