The Republicans Have Turned Congress Into Arkham Asylum

[Zorro]

Not only is the Congress full of loons, many grossly unfit for office, but even those who are qualified on paper are now behaving in grossly irrational or unethical ways.

The Congress of the United States is not Arkham Asylum, the psychiatric hospital and prison in Batman’s Gotham City.

Though if you watched the mad ranting of Minority “Leader” Kevin McCarthy, who spoke on the House floor for eight and a half hours from Thursday night until early Friday morning, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. For most of his speech there was almost no audience. For all of his speech he made no sense. His marathon babblefest achieved nothing whatsoever. But he blatherbustered on and on, full of, as Shakespeare would say, sound and fury, signifying nothing.

For a few hours during the address, McCarthy was surrounded by some other notable characters who seemed to wander in from a summer stock production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was Louie Gohmert, who once suggested we consider moving the moon as a way of controlling rising sea levels. Also there for a bit was North Carolina nitwit and serial liar Madison Cawthorn, the man who once said James Madison signed the Declaration of Independence and who urged conservative mothers to raise their boys to be “monsters,” spitting his chaw juice into a paper cup. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who once compared the Jan. 6 riot to a “normal tourist visit,” sat next to Greg Pence, the MAGA-loving brother of the vice president Trump’s mob of normal tourists sought to hang.

Days earlier, McCarthy had been talkifying from that same lectern in an effort to protect Paul Gosar from consequences for posting an anime video depicting him killing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden. Gosar is also noted for his ties to extreme right-wing groups, his support of insane conspiracy theories, and the fact that his siblings banded together to campaign against him because they felt he was unfit for office. Gosar is also a dentist, which makes things clearer. And worse.

Gosar, despite McCarthy chin-wagging, was ultimately censured by the members of the House who are actually willing to take a stand against murdering each other. Notably, that included only two Republicans. Similarly, hours after McCarthy’s nocturnal emissions came to an end, the bill he stood in opposition to—Biden’s Build Back Better initiative—was approved by the House of Representatives. (Yes, that’s right, McCarthy made the calculation that he should break the House record for the longest speech ever delivered from its floor by standing in opposition to providing hearing aids for the elderly, pre-K for children, home care for those who needed it, help for the environment, and more jobs for Americans.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-republicans-and-kevin-mccarthy-have-turned-congress-into-arkham-asylum