Second verse, same as the first

Luther M. Siler

Ten Republicans.

This man incited a mob to storm the Capitol, where they called for his own Vice President to be hung. There’s no doubt about this. There’s no alternate explanation. This is a thing that happened. And only ten Republicans in the House thought that was reason to remove him from office.

Not included among the ten: Greg Pence, Mike Pence’s brother. That crowd was seeking to murder his own brother and he still can’t turn on the worst president America has ever had. Hell, Mike Pence can’t bring himself to impose any consequences.

I do not understand these people. I’m still trying to play this game over here where I’m doing my damnedest to understand them, to treat them like they’re people, and I just can’t do it. I can’t.

I am terrified that they’re all going to end up just … skating. I mean, sure, only president to be impeached twice and all, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they did end up convicting him in the Senate, because I think McConnell is done with him and that’s all that really matters. It won’t be done soon enough to matter, though.

But there’s a whole lot of people in office who need to not be in office any longer. A whole lot of people. Lay aside, for the moment, the notion that these people saw all this happen, had to run and hide and barricade themselves inside secure rooms as people outside bayed for their blood and murdered police officers, that these same people then came out of hiding and still voted to overturn the election. Let’s actually forget about that for a moment.

Today, several House members were deliberately evading metal detectors so that they could bring who the fuck knows what onto the House floor, at least two of them have claimed that they have brought guns onto the House floor, and three of them may have literally escorted some of the seditionists through the halls of the Capitol building to make sure they knew where to go during the riot. One of them tweeted out the location of the Speaker during the riot. And we’ve heard today of House members who didn’t secure themselves with certain Republican members because they didn’t think they could be trusted.

These people have got to be expelled from our legislature. And if some of these allegations are true they’ve got to be jailed for a long, long time.

And in the longer term, the Republican Party absolutely must be torn up by the roots and left to rot. They’ve done nothing for my entire lifetime but get worse. This has got to stop.

But it won’t.

A very brief Congressional explainer

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

I’ve seen a fair number of people who are confused about what the hell the House is doing right now. To be clear, I am very very far from being an expert, and it’s possible that I’m going to get some details incorrect in this, but I think I’ve got the basic gist, and if anybody sees any outright errors, please put them in comments and I’ll amend the post.

My current understanding is that Pelosi has brought the House back into session today and has already asked for unanimous consent to bring a bill to the floor calling on the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. That unanimous consent has been denied, and therefore there will be a vote by the House on the bill tomorrow. Pence will be given 24 hours to do the right thing and then impeachment proceedings will begin.

I’ve seen a lot of people asking why they have to wait so long, and why they can’t vote on the bill today. That is, in fact, exactly what they asked for unanimous consent on. You cannot introduce a bill and vote on it on the same day; that’s been a rule for several years now, and it’s a rule that makes good sense– remember, a lot of the bills passed can be hundreds of pages long and complicated, so it makes sense to give people enough time to read the final version of the bill before they vote on it. Now, of course, you don’t need a full day to read a two-page resolution, but the rule still stands. The House can break their own rules with unanimous consent— in other words, if no House member disagrees with breaking the rule, a rule can be broken. But since they didn’t get that unanimous consent– the Republicans blocked it– they have to go to a full vote, and therefore have to wait until tomorrow, when the resolution will most assuredly pass.

Now, in theory, and at least as far as I know, they could also formally introduce the impeachment article or articles (more than one Congressperson has announced that they’re working on them, and I’m not sure who wrote the final text) today, and then again, in theory and as far as I know, they could vote on them or at least get the process started on Tuesday. They’re waiting an extra day to give Pence his 24 hours basically as a strategic measure, which … well, you can decide on your own whether that’s a good idea or not, given that Mitch McConnell has refused to bring the Senate back into session before the 19th. The resolution on Pence is something the House can do on its own. Impeachment is not. The only way to get that done any faster is if, oh, say, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski were to agree to caucus with the Democrats for a while, giving them the majority immediately and making Chuck Schumer the Majority Leader. Otherwise, the Dem majority doesn’t actually kick in until Kamala Harris is Vice-President.

(EDIT: It does look like the impeachment articles have been formally introduced.)

(Don’t ask me what happens if Pence does invoke the 25th. I don’t even know if there are rules for that, or whether Pence is for-real President or acting President or what if the Beast is removed via that method. I have no idea who casts tie breaking votes in the Senate under those circumstances, but it definitely wouldn’t be Harris before the 20th, so it probably doesn’t actually matter.)

(I’m also not sure exactly how the 14th Amendment applies to all of this– I know the Senate and the House can expel their own members, and they’ve used this power in the past, but I have no idea how the law works regarding declaring that someone cannot run for office again. I’ll look into it.)

Anyway, hopefully this is helpful, and again– I’m not an expert, so if you see something I’m wrong about, let me know.

Y’all cain’t kill me, Chapter 16

Luther M. Siler

How many years have I taught for again? Is this sixteen? Seventeen? I think it’s sixteen. At any rate: I have certainly had harder Last Days Before Winter Break, and I survived this one without any real stress or even any particular stories to tell.(*) My main problem at the moment is that I keep forgetting that, yes, I do have to go to work tomorrow for the teacher record day even if my grades are all already finished. I’ve got some stuff to finalize, some redecorating to do, and a classroom to rearrange as I’ve grown tired of my current layout. That should keep me busy through the district-mandated half day; I was already planning on leaving early as I currently work in a building whose principal isn’t going to be watching us, but they’ve officially announced that anyone who showed up for Parent-Teacher conferences can go home at lunchtime if we want.

And I do, and I will.

I have, as per usual, all sorts of plans for shit I want to accomplish over the next two weeks; we will see if I get around to any of it, and whether I’m much inclined to care about what I didn’t get around to at the end of the break. I’d like to get at least a little fiction written; I’ve been off of that particular horse for far too long and I need to either start writing again or start removing any references to being an author around here. It’s time, damn it.

Then again, maybe I’ll spend a week playing video games and sleep for an entire day at some point. That wouldn’t be bad either! Not bad at all.

(*) This is not quite true, as I distinctly remember at least one conversation with a student that led to me thinking remember this and blog about it later and as I sit here I swear to you that I can’t even remember the gender of the student I was talking to much less any actual content of the conversation. Perhaps it’ll come to me tomorrow, who knows.

PS: I am as startled as you are that I appear to have nothing to say about the impeachment of the piece of shit in the White House. It may be that I will have something to say about it soon, or this may fall into the same hole that the piece about Kamala Harris dropping out of the Presidential race fell into. We’ll see.

Okay. It’s on now.

Luther M. Siler

middle-finger-poster-flag-6185-pEverybody call your representatives in Congress– all of them, I don’t give a fuck what party they belong to– and demand a special prosecutor and an independent commission to investigate James Comey’s firing and the shitgibbon’s connections to Russia.  Otherwise the Russians are going to own the FBI soon.  This is as immediately impeachable as anything Nixon ever did.  We have to get this fucker out of office and we have to do it now.