McCarthy, K REP 4%

Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, has represented the Twenty-second Congressional District of California in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2007. (map)

 bak 1119

see lie gaslight tucker video

whip under cantor?  rmc //  current gig?

picking sides in post trump gop civil war?

html Emken

capt mccarthy1121

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https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/kevin-mccarthy

13* 4%

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DING DONG PENSION PLAN? LOBBYIST? FUNDRAISER?

December 6, 2023

• Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: Kevin McCarthy Ends Career, Announces Will Retire At the End of The Month.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced on Wednesday he will leave Congress at the end of December.

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~ biggs

https://www.alternet.org/kevin-mccarthy-total-bargaining-mode/

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an 7 22 go benghazi on yr ass

A long list of House Republicans — from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio to House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik — deeply resent Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 select committee, which Stefanik has denounced as an “illegitimate partisan sham.” But that “sham” has presented a mountain of damning evidence against former President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, including former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony, on June 28, that Trump knew some of his supporters were armed on January 6, 2021 and wanted to march with them to the U.S. Capitol Building anyway.

Regardless of what else the committee’s hearings reveal,many House Republicans are angry that the committee exists in the first place. Journalists Alayna Treene and Jonathan Swan, in a report published by Axios on July 6, describe some ways in which House Republicans are hoping to take revenge against the January 6 committee if they regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.

“Key House Republicans are threatening to subpoena records of the January 6 committee if the GOP retakes the majority next year — an escalation of the party's effort to undercut the investigation's findings,” Treene and Swan explain. “Why it matters: Fresh talk of 2023 subpoenas, following last week's vivid testimony by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, means the committee's ‘final report,’ expected this fall, may be far from the last word on the Capitol attack.”

READ MORE:Texas GOP Lieutenant Governor: 'We are being invaded' by immigrants 'just like Pearl Harbor'

McCarthy and Jordan, the Axios reporters note, “have been threatening unspecified subpoenas in retaliation.” And Rep. Rodney Jones of Illinois, on June 9, promised to make a “full investigation” of the committee a top priority in 2023 if Republicans retake the House in November. But Jones lost a GOP congressional primary to Trump-backed candidate, Rep. Mary Miller.

Interviewed on condition of anonymity, a Republican source described by Treene and Swan as a “senior GOP staffer on the House Administration Committee” told Axios, “When Republicans retake the majority, we will exercise our oversight responsibilities, including subpoena authority to review all transcripts and information that the committee has access to in order to identify the truth.”

Axios also interviewed an anonymous House Republican aide, who told the publication, “The base is out for blood on subpoenas. A lot of it will just depend on how far McCarthy wants to go.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/critics-blast-republican-climate-agenda/

no lnx many no twt

'Poisoning our communities and cooking our planet': Critics blast 'destructive' Republican climate agenda

Matthew Rozsa.

Brett Wilkins and Common DreamsJune 02, 2022

Climate campaigners and progressive U.S. lawmakers reacted with disdain and derision Thursday to news that House Republicans would put forth a purported climate strategy that calls for increased fossil fuel production and sets no targets for reducing planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

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Politico reports the "energy, climate, and conservation task force" created last year byHouse Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will release a six-point strategy that recommends increasing all types of energy production with the goal of reducing record-high fuel and other energy costs, and with an eye on the 2022 midterm elections.

The plan—which would also boost gas exports while easing the permitting process for fossil fuel infrastructure—contains six elements: "Unlock America's Resources," "Beat China and Russia," "Let America Build," "Build Resilient Communities," "American Innovation," and "Conservation with a Purpose."

While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce welcomed the proposal, Jamal Raad, executive director at the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, blasted it as "little more than a how-to guide for accelerating the climate crisis."

Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that "this climate plan sounds like it was concocted by a comic book supervillain."

"Republicans have managed to devise a scheme that would make climate change even more destructive," Hartl added. "It's an oil industry wish list that would throw future generations under the bus to make a buck."

The advocacy group Food & Water Action called the plan a "climate farce" and a "pro-fossil fuels road map to climate chaos."

"Over a dozen years ago, no one would have mistaken 'Drill, Baby, Drill' for serious climate policy," the group's managing director of policy Mitch Jones said in a statement referring to 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's infamous campaign slogan.

"The fact that Republicans have not changed course in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and cascading climate-fueled disasters speaks volumes," Jones continued. "What's needed now are serious plans that meet the monumental scale of the crisis, and also deliver the economic benefits and job opportunities that are so desperately needed."

"We need to elect climate champions this year who will prioritize shifting off of dirty fossil fuels that poison communities and enrich corporate polluters," he added.

Those corporate polluters contribute tremendous amounts of campaign cash to congressional lawmakers and candidates. The House Oversight Committee noted last October that just four fossil fuel giants—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell—plus the industry group American Petroleum Institute spent a combined $452.6 million lobbying the federal government since 2011.

According to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, McCarthy has received nearly $2.1 in career oil and gas industry contributions. GOP task force chair Rep. Garret Graves—whose Louisiana district is one of the most fossil fuel infrastructure-intense in the nation and is experiencing climate-driven sea level rise and increased illness—has taken nearly $700,000 in Big Oil donations.

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With $414,824 in campaign contributions during the 2022 election cycle alone, McCarthy is the House's leading beneficiary of oil and gas contributions, according to data from the watchdog group OpenSecrets.

In return, the government lavishes the fossil fuel industry with around $20 billion in annual subsidies,which Joe Biden promised to end while campaigning for president.

However, doing so would require congressional approval, and even members of his own party—notably Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Congress' number one recipient of fossil fuel contributions during the 2022 election cycle and the seven-figure beneficiary of a family coal business—are fighting to protect subsidies.

"Lining the pockets of fossil fuel companies is not a long-term fix; it puts American families' health and the future of the planet at risk," tweeted Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "The cost of climate-fueled extreme weather events in the most recent year for which we have data was $100 billion."

"The solution is blindingly obvious: clean energy," he added. "The more we are able to shift to clean energy, the better it will be for our health, and the less dependent we will be on fossil fuels, and the less susceptible our economy and American families will be to oil price swings."

Raad of Evergreen Action asserted that "real and effective climate solutions are at our fingertips, but McCarthy and his caucus are so beholden to their donors in the fossil fuel industry that they'd rather double down on the technologies of the past that are poisoning our communities and cooking our planet."

"Every election year, Republicans in Congress try to greenwash their records to mislead voters who overwhelmingly support common-sense climate action—and every time they seize power, they stand in the way of real solutions and subsidize the industries that are fueling this crisis," he added. "This stunt is a not-even-thinly veiled attempt to bullshit the press and the public. It's time to stop falling for it."

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says many things, mostly because he desperately wants to become Speaker of the House. He recently promised that he's going to have a talk with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA.) and and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) about their "appalling" decision to speak at a conference organized by a far-right fringe figure and self-proclaimed white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

Greene smiled and waved to the crowd right after Fuentes asked for a “round of applause for Russia” as Vladimir Putin rained down missiles and mortars on Ukraine. It's not clear exactly what McCarthy plans to say to Greene and Gosar or when, but as Politico reports he might be postponing "the talk" because there's really nothing he can do to control their behavior.

The two already have been stripped of committee assignments and any move to censure the pair only would draw attention to the far right faction of the GOP. One House Republican, Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), says the wanna-be speaker should focus on issues much more important than Greene and Gosar.

“Dealing with dumb, stupid things people do in Congress should probably go down — and go pretty far down — on the list when you’ve got peacekeeping tanks rolling into a country that was not in conflict, when you’ve got record inflation, when you’ve got all of these things,” Armstrong said.

One centrist Republican, who spoke about the flap on the condition of anonymity, observed that the GOP leader has few options with which to threaten Greene and Gosar because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats have “fired all our shots” by stripping their panel assignments.

“I want them to shut up. Just stop it,” this Republican said. “[But] there’s nothing else. What else can Kevin do officially through the conference?”

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john s salon an 1/22

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who recently bowed out of a much-anticipated U.S. Senate bid, revealed that he was "bothered" after conversations with dozens of Republican Senators, who apparently wanted him to be a "roadblock" until the GOP retakes the White House.Sununu told The Washington Examiner this month that he was initially "pretty close" to running, explaining: "I wasn't ready to make an announcement, but I was like, 'OK, this makes sense. I think I could be a voice nationally.'" But after chatting with "most" of the GOP Senate caucus, Sununu reportedly soured on the role once it became apparent that they wanted him to be a legislative mule.

"They were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren't doing anything. It was very clear that we just have to hold the line for two years," he told the Examiner. "OK, so I'm just going to be a roadblock for two years. That's not what I do."

"It bothered me that they were OK with that," the governor added.

Sununu's comments come in the wake of an intense legislative standoff between Democrats and Republicans over voting rights, an issue which became the focus of President Biden's agenda after negotiations on the "Build Back Better Act" – the president's $2.2 trillion social safety net plan – fell apart.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans successfully filibustered Biden's sweeping voting rights overhaul – known as the "Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act" – which would standardize voting laws across all 50 states and clamp down on voter suppression. Not a single Republican backed the measure, even though the bill is supported by nearly 70% of Americans, according to a Navigator poll from November.

With Republicans having dashed Biden's hopes of passing the party's two signature pieces of legislation – the "Build Back Better Act" and the "Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act" – Democrats now question whether their colleagues believe in anything other than mindless obstructionism.

During a press conference on Wednesday, Biden echoed the spirit of Sununu's remarks, asking reporters, "What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they're for."

That same day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sidestepped questioning when asked to lay out GOP's official agenda. "That's a very good question," McConnell said. "And I'll let you know when we take it back."

According to a recent Axios report, the Kentucky Republican has privately told colleagues and donors that the Republicans have no legislative agenda and are more interested in picking apart Democrats'.

Meanwhile, the House GOP caucus appears to be adopting the opposite strategy, according to The Washington Post, with its leadership drumming up a "list of policy pledges" designed to buoy support for the party in 2022.

Among those helming this effort are House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and House Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., both of whom ardently supported Donald Trump's election fraud conspiracy and voted to overturn the 2020 election.

Playing an advisory role to McCarthy is former Republican House SpeakerNewt Gingrich, who crafted the "Contract with America," a legislative platform widely linked to the GOP's successful campaign to flip both chambers in 1994.

Gingrich told the Post that McCarthy doesn't believe an anti-Biden agenda is sufficient for 2022, saying, "We need a positive message."

"I think that's clearly what McCarthy wants to do and I've offered to look at stuff and offer advice," Gingrich added. "There's lots of people in the House working on it. It will be a widespread commitment."

While the exact details of McCarthy's agenda remain hazy, the broad contours of the plan are clear.

So-called "parental rights" are expected to be front and center as Republican state officials continue to decry the alleged instruction of "critical race theory" – whose prevalence appears to be vastly overstated. For remedy, McCarthy has already released an informal "Parents Bill of Rights," which includes such provisions as the "right to be heard" and the "right to know what's being taught in schools and see reading material."

The House Speaker is also expected to assemble seven "issue-specific task forces" that will tackle a variety of other policy objectives, such as countering China's economic prowess, combating the recent crime wave, securing the nation's borders, regulating Big Tech,cutting corporate taxes, bulldozing environmental regulations, and curtailing inflation.

The soaring cost of consumer goods has proven an evergreen source of whataboutism for Republicans, even as the year-end jobs numbers indicate that Biden has steered the economy through an unprecedented economic recovery since he took office. Fox News called inflation a "top weapon" for the GOP to wield against Democrats in the upcoming midterms.

Throughout 2021, the consumer prices index rose 6.8% – the highest increase it has seen since 1982.

But when it comes to actually tackling inflation, lawmakers have historically had to walk a tightrope, said Brian Riedl, who served as an aide to Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

"There is nothing that messages well, significantly reduces inflation and is painless," Riedl told the Post. "It's easier to criticize inflation than to map out an actual solution going forward, and that's the box Republicans are currently in."

Fox News star Tucker Carlson ramps up Jan. 6 lies with ...

PBS

https://www.pbs.org › newshour › politics › fox-news-s...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fox-news-star-tucker-carlson-ramps-up-jan-6-lies-with-footage-provided-by-house-republicans)

Mar 7, 2023 — The Republicans are trying to claw back the findings of the House Jan. 6 investigation, which painstakingly documented, with testimony and video ...

Fox News star Tucker Carlson ramps up Jan. 6 lies with footage provided by House Republicans | PBS News

Fox News star Tucker Carlson ramps up Jan. 6 lies with footage provided by House Republicans

Politics Mar 7, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Handed some 41,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson has launched an impassioned new effort to explain away the deadly Capitol attack, linking the Republican Party ever more closely to pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2021 riot.

The conservative commentator aired the first installment to millions of viewers on his prime-time show, working to bend perceptions of the violent, grueling siege that played out for the world to see into a narrative favorable to Donald Trump.

READ MORE:** Speaker McCarthy grants Tucker Carlson access to Jan. 6 surveillance footage

He promised more Tuesday night.

The undertaking by Fox News comes as Trump is again running for president, and executives at the highest levels of the cable news giant have admitted in unrelated court proceedings that it spread the former president’s false claims about the 2020 election despite dismissing Trump’s assertions privately.

The effort dovetails with the work of Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who turned over the security footage to Fox. The Republicans are trying to claw back the findings of the House Jan. 6 investigation, which painstakingly documented, with testimony and video evidence, how Trump rallied his supporters to head to the Capitol and “fight like hell” as Congress was certifying his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump on Tuesday contended that Carlson’s presentation was “irrefutable” evidence that rioters have been wrongly accused of crimes and he thanked the host and the speaker for their work. Carlson praised McCarthy as having “rectified” the official record.

Trump called anew for the release from custody of people who have been convicted or have pleaded guilty to charges from the attack.

At the same time, criticism poured in from Democrats — and some top Republicans, too — over the GOP’s attempt to amplify falsehoods about the attack that was seen around the world as Trump supporters laid siege to the seat of U.S. democracy.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, the Democrat who chaired the House Jan. 6 Committee investigating the riot, called McCarthy’s decision to selectively release the security footage “a dereliction of duty.”

“Despite repeated warnings as to the sensitive nature of this footage, the speaker decided it was more important to give in to a Fox host who spews lies and propaganda than to protect the Capitol,” Thompson said in a statement. He called Jan. 6 “one of the darkest days in the history of our democracy.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the Monday night Fox News episode from Carlson “one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on television.”

The show’s portrayal was “an insult to every single police officer,” Schumer said, especially the family of Brian Sicknick, who died later after fighting the mob. “Nonviolent? Ask his family.”

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said it was a mistake for Fox News to depict the footage as it did — at odds with what he and others witnessed first hand at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

WATCH:** McCarthy drawing criticism for giving Carlson exclusive access to video of Jan. 6 attack

In the roughly 30-minute segment, Fox distilled the thousands of hours of footage of the gruesome scenes at the Capitol that day and did show some of the hand-to-hand combat as rioters laid siege to the building, broke windows and kicked down doors to gain entry.

But Carlson also emphasized imagery of the invaders, some in combat gear and wielding flagpoles, merely milling about the gilded halls, taking pictures of the surroundings during pauses in the hours-long attack.

“These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers,” Carlson said.

The footage he aired focused on one of the highest-profile rioters, Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman,” garbed in his horned hat and bare chested, as he poked around the building, officers standing by or opening doors. Chansley pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding and was sentenced to 41 months in prison.

Carlson denounced the Jan. 6 committee led by Democrats in the past Congress, and called out Trump’s chief Republican critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as liars on the panel.

He said most of rioters were “not destroying the Capitol, they obviously revere the Capitol.”

Carlson is reviving the falsehoods launched by Trump and his allies, including Republicans in Congress, that the attackers were peaceful protesters and acted like tourists, despite the well-documented carnage of the day and the deaths of five people in the riot and its aftermath. It’s part of an effort to reverse criminal charges for those being prosecuted in the attack, many of whom have pleaded guilty and said they regretted their actions on Jan. 6.

Capitol Police officers who were defending against the mob have testified to their harrowing experiences — one said she was slipping in other people’s blood, while another told of being crushed in the mob — as they worked and ultimately failed to block the rioters from storming the Capitol.

Among those who died in the riot and its aftermath were Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt who was shot by police and Capitol Police officer Sicknick who died after fighting the mob.

Carlson aired footage of Sicknick inside the Capitol picking up posters and politely ushering protesters out the door, portraying that as evidence the officer was not killed in the crush.

That last was denounced by Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger as “the most disturbing accusation from last night.”

“The Department maintains, as anyone with common sense would, that had Officer Sicknick not fought valiantly for hours on the day he was violently assaulted, Officer Sicknick would not have died the next day,” Chief Manger said in a memo to his police force.

He said the program “cherry-picked” from calmer moments of the day, ignoring “the chaos and violence that happened before or during.”

The Sicknick family said in a statement that the footage simply showed that Brian Sicknick bravely resumed his duties for a time after he had been attacked by a chemical agent.

Ken Sicknick, Brian Sicknick’s brother, said in an interview that the family is “at a loss” about how to fight back against a network with millions of viewers and the speaker of the House who gave access to the footage.

Law enforcement failures on Jan. 6 have been investigated in Congress and acknowledged: Police failed to heed signs of a looming attack and were slow to provide an adequate response, including reinforcement from the National Guard stationed nearby.

WATCH:** Brooks and Capehart on Tucker Carlson’s access to Jan. 6 video, war in Ukraine

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the siege, with members of the extremist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups facing rare charges of sedition for their roles at the front of the assault. Several members of the Oath Keepers have been found guilty of sedition

Most of the defendants face lesser misdemeanor charges for having been on hand during the siege.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are mounting an effort to retell the history of Jan. 6 through the House Administration Committee, which has opened an online portal for submissions from the public.

Some GOP leaders, however, appeared uncomfortable with McCarthy’s move and the way the footage was being used.

Senate Republican leader McConnell quickly distanced himself from the endeavor, saying he wanted to “associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol Police about what happened.”

McConnell said, “Clearly the chief of the Capitol Police correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on Jan. 6.”

Pressed about Jan. 6, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2. Republican, said, “It was an attack on the Capitol.”

*AP reporters Rick Gentilo and Michael Balsamo contributed to this story.

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8 hr (standing?) filibuster of BBB, fail

gas price,  border? etc etc but the baby carrots

aoc heckle?  https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/kevin-mccarthy-aoc/

no one elected biden to be fdr

an 11 21

congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among those who shouted backed overnight during the historic and "unhinged" marathon speech by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy when the Republican from California stated that there was no person in the country who voted for President Joe Biden last year who did so because they hoped he would act like former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who ushered through the 20th century New Deal.

Quoting a recent comment from Rep. Abigail Spannberger (D-Va.) during his speech in order to argue that Democrats are misguided to make sweeping social investments as part of their Build Back Better Act—which received a final vote in the House on Friday morning—McCarthy stated, "Nobody elected Joe Biden to be FDR."

From the gallery in response, a voice can be heard responding, "I did." Later it was confirmed that this was Ocasio-Cortez.[2 ppl did]

tried to silence me!

victim:  https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/aoc-kevin-mccarthy/

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hayes: Kevin McCarthy understands Republicans like him are not the future of the party.

The troll caucus—Gosar, Greene, Gaetz, Boebert—"they are where the Republican Party is headed

to apologize is unmanly, admitting defeat, esp to trump/istas for whom loyal tribal solidarity litmus is all; played inevitable victim card?  gop minority in both houses explicit aim is obstructionist, gerry maintain minority power yet he bemoan/threatens this will be weapon in future?

aha: polarization --> demonization--> death threat --> death squad  pinochet helo rides did nothing wrong Kyle

mantra of demonization can make name eg pelosi into a devil term; she was actively hunted 1/6 shoot bitch in the brain? AOC = commie?

landed here pol cartoon accidentally but interesting analogy? pirate creshaw action here, gosar flies? defeats evil? scott perry chr freedom cocks we must destroy dems/nazis

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/ocasio-cortez-gosar/

put in context of huge surge in death threats and 1/6 attack; gabby scalise shot; how signif is that this is pix? cartoon? anime genre? trump WWF vs CNN?

gosar censored for aoc kill anime, also biden; tired to blame staff? alt rt ploy  just kidding? shooting bills in ads cliche so he just escalated to claiming that he was killing a rep/symbol of their policies [that are destroying am // scott perry freedom cock?]; prev border patrol agent vid rape aoc? threw burritos?

pretty good speech:

Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, a far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist who has never been shy about making inflammatory remarks, has been drawing vehement criticism from Democrats for posting a cartoon that depicts him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and inflicting harm on President Joe Biden. He has previously been criticized for appearing at a conference organized by white supremacists.

Many House Republicans, however, have been silent about the controversies. And Ocasio-Cortez, during a speech on the House floor this week, called them out them out for it.

The congresswoman, during her speech, made it clear that amuch more vehement response from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders is needed.

AOC: "It's a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong, and instead decides to venture off into a tangent about gas prices and inflation"pic.twitter.com/fi13Jb396s

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178021

AOC: "Does anyone in this chamber find this behavior acceptable? Would you allow depictions of violence against women, against colleagues? Would you allow that in your home? ... And if it\u2019s not acceptable there, why should it be accepted here?!"pic.twitter.com/Bas9dS5dfo

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178312

Ocasio-Cortez told fellow House members, "What I believe is unprecedented is for a member of House leadership of either party to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body. It is sad, it is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong…. What is so hard, what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?"

READ:**A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it**

The Democratic congresswoman added, "This is not about me. This is not about Rep. Gosar. But this is about what we are willing to accept."

Gosar has maintained that the anti-AOC cartoon was meant to be a joke, but Ocasio-Cortez stressed that depictions of murder should never be taken lightly.

"This nihilism runs deep," Ocasio-Cortez explained. "It conveys and betrays a certain contempt for the meaning and importance of our work here — that what we do, so long as we claim it is a joke, doesn't matter."

jihad squad: https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rep-ilhan-omar-torches-lauren-boebert-following-bizarre-rant-on-house-floor/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/rep-kevin-mccarthy/

5 lies in 7 min?

dems made repeat concessions, gave gop = eg subpoena power, NP dumps 2 worst, not qual, mcc sez get rid on NP as spkr [refers to her only by last name, demon term?]

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/mccarthy-pelosi/

1/6 comm

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/social-media-explodes-with-reactions-to-kevins-mccarthys-jan-6-committee-picks/

before House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made his selections for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's select committee on the January 6 insurrection, Democrats on Capitol Hill were hoping to God that he wouldn't have the bad taste to pick the buffoonish Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. But sure enough, Jordan is one of the five House Republicans McCarthy has picked — along with Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois and Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas. Jordan has been an unapologetic promoter of the Big Lie, the false and debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump because of widespread voter fraud. 

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And Jordan, Nehls and Banks all voted against certifying now-President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory on January 6, although Davis and Armstrong were among the House Republicans who did vote to certify Biden's win.

Twitter has been exploding with reactions to McCarthy's picks. Journalist Seth Abramson devoted an entire thread to the subject:...

an 121 kinda squishy ~?

QAnon Congresswoman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) caused quite an uproar when she revealed her plan to file articles of impeachment against newly-elected President Joe Biden just one day after his inauguration. Many of Biden's Democratic supporters have pushed back against Greene's efforts, but they are not the only ones who disapprove.

According to The Hill, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has also made it clear he does not agree with Greene's stance or her effort to move forward with articles of impeachment against Biden.

On Friday, Jan. 23, McCarthy conducted an interview with Greta Van Susteren where he weighed in with his opinion on the newly-elected lawmaker's plan. While he admitted that he does not agree with her, he also noted that she does have a right to move forward with her agenda.

"I called her. I disagree with that. That's exactly what the Democrats did with President Trump, and why we disagreed with when they wanted to come after him for purely political reasons," McCarthy said. "I think Republicans are better than that. That this is one of the arguments we used against the Democrats, and I don't think we should use it either."

"She has a right to, as an elected member of Congress to submit those," he added, "I just don't think the timing and the case is right at this time, in this moment."

McCarthy's remarks come just days after Greene released a statement arguing that Biden is "unfit to hold the office of the presidency." Less than one day after Biden was elected Greene also charged that Biden displayed a pattern of abusing his powers when he served as Vice President from 2008 to 2016.

"President Joe Biden is unfit to hold the office of the presidency. His pattern of abuse of power as President Obama's Vice President is lengthy and disturbing," Greene said in a statement on Thursday, Jan 21. "President Biden has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to bail out his son, Hunter, and line his family's pockets with cash from corrupt foreign energy companies."...

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/capitol-riot-2649960031

ME

It's no secret that President Donald Trump's angry supporters were seen storming the U.S. Capitol but the president's Kremlin-controlled Russian state broadcasts are still circulating lies the series of events that erupted on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. According to Russian media, members of Antifa were seen storming the Capitol—not Trump supporters.

According to The Daily Beast, Russian media outletsclaimed "the pro-Trump insurrectionists were merely "peaceful demonstrators" and blamed "Antifa" for the violence that took place in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021."

Although the (FBI) has announced a series of developments regarding the Capitol riots, including the arrests of more than 100 Trump supporters, Russian media has focused on featuring clips from conservative news networks like Fox News in addition to remarks from widely known conservative public figures including Tucker Carlson, a number of Republican lawmakers, and other Trump allies and apologists.

But the truth never stopped the Kremlin's propaganda networks from continuing to disseminate a convenient fable. Russian-speaking eyewitnesses were shown intermittently—or some might argue interchangeably—with clips from Fox News, featuring Tucker Carlson, Marco Rubio, and other Trump apologists. Appearing on state TV channel Rossiya-24, two Russian-speakers living in the United States were identified as "those who participated in the events" on Capitol Hill and later took part in numerous shows on Russian state television.

Despite Russian-controlled media propagandists' attempts to control the narrative regarding what happened amid the Electoral College certification, the publication notes that even Republican lawmakers are now distancing from that false narrative.

In fact,Rep. Kevin McCarthyeven addressed the rumors when he spoke on the House floor during the hearing for Trump's second impeachment. "Some say the riots were caused by Antifa," McCarthy said, adding, "There is absolutely no evidence of that."

More disturbing is that despite the Electoral College certification, and Trump finally admitting that a new administration will be taking the White House on Jan. 20, he has still convinced many of his supporters that the presidential election was stolen from them. Yet, he still has no proof to back his claims.

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did he not support stop the steal BS?

an 121

While Americans all over the United States watched in horror as angry Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, President Donald Trump reportedly continues to place blame elsewhere. And when the president claimed antifa was to blame for the deadly rioted he, himself, incited, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) pushed back on Trump's claim, Axios report. Now, details are emerging about the Republican lawmaker's heated call with the president.

According to Axios, McCarthy spoke with Trump on Monday, Jan. 12, where he reportedly stood his ground and reminded the president that the 2020 election is "over."

During the 30-minute call, Trump allegedly deflected and peddled conspiracy theories about the election and what transpired at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. As Trump continued his claims of widespread voter fraud, McCarthy is said to have grown "exasperated" with the president.

According to one White House official, "the call was tense and aggressive at times, with Trump ranting about election fraud and an exasperated McCarthy cutting in to say, 'Stop it. It's over. The election is over.'"

When he claimed antifa caused the civil unrest at the U.S. Capitol, one White House official claimed McCarthy reached his breaking point. "It's not antifa — it's MAGA," McCarthy told Trump, according to two Axios sources. "I know. I was there."

McCarthy also reportedly urged the president to "call Joe Biden, meet with the president-elect and follow tradition and leave a welcome letter in the Resolute Desk for his successor."

However, Trump has made his stance clear. He does not agree with the outcome of the election. Despite calls for impeachment and resignation, Trump also has no plan to concede the election or resign from office. The president also has no plan to attend President-elect Joe Biden's Inauguration on Jan. 20.

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brk w/ mcconn?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/kevin-mccarthy-2649876891/

house GOP leader Kevin McCarthy under fire after newly elected Republican dies from COVID-19

Travis Gettys Raw Story

 December 30, 2020

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was blasted with criticism after he offered thoughts and prayers to a Republican congressman-elect who died from COVID-19 just days before being sworn in.

Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-LA) died Tuesday of

top Republican's pathetic reply to Nancy Pelosi shows how the GOP got caught in her trap

Cody Fenwick

December 24, 2020

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote a letter to his colleagues on Wednesday trying to outmaneuver Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the ongoing fight over the omnibus government spending bill. But his attempt to counter the speaker's moves appear unlikely...

mccarthy has 180'd

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trumps-limp-coup-is-falling-apart-but-right-wing-media-and-certain-gop-politicians-dont-know-when-to-cut-bait/

amanda

Most still-rational Americans, watching Donald Trump's atrocity of a press conference on Thursday night, had two simultaneous reactions: Wow, that man really is the worst living American, and also, yeah, this is all over except for the paperwork.

It was an odd mix of emotions. There was the disgust of watching the actual president of the actual United States demand that legal votes be thrown out insinuating that millions of American voters were somehow fakes. But there was also the relief of seeing Trump's facade of bravado collapsing, exposing the loser that was always hiding behind that wall of bluster. Even many Trump voters knew, at that moment, that it was over. Trump's attempted coup is collapsing under the weight of his own incompetence and laziness.

We are now at the portion of the right-wing cycle of failure where the supporters of the corrupt and failed Republican president slink away and pretend that they were never that into him in the first place. (See: Nixon, Richard M., and Bush, George W.) But for whatever reason, a decent number of rats are clinging fiercely to the side of the sinking ship, insisting, as the water starts lapping against their skinny tails, that Captain Bleach-Injector can still somehow save himself.

Thursday night, a frantic Sean Hannity was on Fox News, baselessly claiming that Philadelphia election officials counting Pennsylvania ballots are "violating the law" and suggesting, apparently not as a joke, "a do-over in that state." On his radio show, Hannity begged for state-appointed electors who'll vote for Trump, defying the actual voters of Pennsylvania. (State GOP leaders have declined.)

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show and falsely claimed that "Trump won this election," demanding, "Everyone who's listening, do not be quiet." He then tweeted out the video clip, in case there was any doubt he was trying to rile up Republican voters with these lies. Twitter put a content warning on the video.

Ingraham went along with McCarthy's antics, demanding that other Republican politicians "better stand and fight" for Trump and claiming that "we have huge amounts of money from Mark Zuckerberg and George Soros and others flooding" into "canvassing, you know, states like Pennsylvania." This claim is not only untrue but also nonsensical: The apparent implication is that, while Republicans are allowed to canvass and organize, Democrats have no such right.

Tucker Carlson was relatively limp, trying to boost Trump's conspiracy theories and complaining about "the media" calling the election. The latter is a particularly shameless play, as Trump's entire coup plot — which he has laid out in great detail over the past couple of months— was to seize on the appearance that he was ahead in early media reports on Tuesday night as evidence he had "won," even though all votes hadn't counted.

On Hannity's show, South Carolina's Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham let loose with baseless accusations, which carried a strong whiff of racism, that Philadelphia's elections are "crooked as a snake" while Arizona's are to be trusted. (News flash: Trump will probably lose that state too.)

Even former football coach Tommy Tuberville, having defeated Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama, decided that one of his first acts as a senator-elect was to declare that "the game is over" but "the referees are suddenly adding touchdowns to the other team's side of the scoreboard." It's a false analogy that elides the fact that votes are always counted after the polls close.

Salon's Sophia Tesfaye has an astounding list of other examples from GOP politicians, so readers can get the full scale of how bad this is.

Right-wing media whining has already drifted toward violent fantasies. Newt Gingrich, after letting loose with a racist rant about the "Philadelphia machine," the "Atlanta machine" and the "machine in Detroit," demanded on Fox News that Attorney General Bill Barr arrest election workers and menacingly declared that "federal agents can carry guns in the pursuit of people who are breaking the law."

While interviewing Rudy Giuliani on his radio show, Trumpian pseudo-fascist crackpot Sebastian Gorka declaredthat "we should just force our way in" to voting centers to keep votes from being counted. This was a bridge too far even for Giuliani, who suggested "that would require a fistfight, which I guess our people don't want to get involved in."

After falsely announcing that"Trump won an overwhelming victory" and was already "in his second term" in a Fox Business interview, disgraced former Trump adviser Steve Bannon went on his own radio show and fantasized about killing Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

"I'd put the heads on pikes," Bannon said, "as a warning to federal bureaucrats."

All of this, it should go without saying, is deeply evil. These people aren't just undermining democracy and telling outragous lies, they're often trying to incite violence against their fellow Americans. But evil is, sadly, to be expected. That's what has become of the Republican Party after decades of dehumanizing propaganda and five years of Trumpism.

But what's more puzzling is how irrational this behavior is. All these pundits and politicians are out there, flailing around and lying for Trump, and for what? He's a dead man walking, and they know it. The lawsuits Trump's team are filing are unbelievably feeble, so much so that it's clear they're less meant as a serious effort to rescue Trump from electoral defeat than to bolster his delusions that he's being unfairly victimized.

There's no point in defending Trump now, especially not in the stick-your-neck-out way we're seeing from Fox News hosts and politicians like Graham or McCarthy. It's certainly not going to make it more likely there's some miracle where Trump pulls himself out of a nosedive.

The only purpose of all this nonsense is to soothe Trump's injured ego with pretty lies about how he should have won and it's all rigged and he's the real winner here and not the massive loser he looks like to the whole world right now.

And I have to ask: To what end? It's one thing to flatter Trump when he's the president — it's gross and cynical, but entirely rational, to want the power of having a president on your side. It's another thing entirely to keep at it when he's on his way out. It's especially weird to demonstrate loyalty to Trump, a man who will never return it and would sell out all his bootlickers to black-market organ salesmen if he thought that might save his sorry ass.

I'm forced to conclude that these people merely stunned and falling back on bad habits. After four years of relentless lying and toadying to this reality-TV villain who sleazed his way into the Oval Office, the Trump apologists don't know how to quit him. Even as the building collapses around them, they're carrying on as if Trump will somehow find a way to survive this, because that's what they've been conditioned to believe.

The saddest part? Their audiences and supporters will forget all this when Trump finally leaves office. That's when the right will move seamlessly into Phase II: Forget This Ever Happened.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/livid-republicans-consider-ousting-house-gop-leader-kevin-mccarthy-for-tying-their-fortunes-to-trump-report/

no lnx

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story August 14, 2020

According to a report from the Washington Post, disgruntled Republican House members have been privately discussing whether they should oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as House Minority Leader should Donald Trump be defeated in November.

The report notes that there are a number of complaints that have been made against the California Republican, who saw the House change hands on his watch as a result of the “Blue wave” 2018 election, with many of the problems attributed to McCarthy’s close affiliation with Trump.

The Post reports that at least ten Republicans are looking at leading a revolt against McCarthy after the election, with the talk ramping up because he stood by and allowed Marjorie Taylor Greene, “a fringe House candidate in Georgia who espouses the QAnon conspiracy theory” to win in a recent primary which has embarrassed many Republicans.

According to the report, fellow House Republicans are unhappy that McCarthy refused to throw the party’s full support behind her opponent and then phoned her “in an apparent peace accord before the primary, while Trump embraced her on Twitter this week as a ‘future Republican Star.’”

Add to that, is McCarthy’s full-throated support of the president whose unpopularity is dragging the whole party down.

“A cluster of GOP lawmakers is starting to privately question whether the California Republican is putting loyalty to the president over the good of the conference,” the report states. “According to interviews with more than 10 House Republicans — all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to be frank — some GOP lawmakers are worried that McCarthy has tied the conference too much to Trump, refusing to stand up to the president or act as a buffer to distinguish the conference from him.”

One specific point that has rankled GOP House members was McCarthy’s failure to protect them from a demand from Trump’s campaign that they “donate to the president’s reelection effort.”

According to Doug Heye, a former House GOP leadership aide, “There’s no doubt that McCarthy is a Trump loyalist, through and through. I think the challenge for everyone in the Republican conference is, at some point there will be a post-Trump world — whether that’s coming in three months or later. What direction does the party go?”

One House member, who asked to remain anonymous was a bit more blunt, saying of McCarthy, “He does nothing but lick Trump’s boots. That’s all he cares about — so no, it’s not helpful.”

McCarthy’s fate is not only tied to Trump’s, but also to whether Republicans lose more House seats, with one Republican saying, “He becomes damaged goods [if Trump loses], but it could be offset if he is successful in helping the GOP conference win back a bunch of seats. But if we lose . . . the Republican conference is probably going to be looking for something different in leadership.”

One House Republican expressed confusion over McCarthy’s close embrace of Trump.

“He changed and became fully committed on the Trump train,” they explained. “Kevin has never been a conservative guy; he’s one of the most moderate guys in the House if you look at his voting record. But all of a sudden there was this metamorphosis where it was ‘Everything Trump.’ And look, there’s high-risk, high-reward with that.”

“In May, despite Trump’s massive war chest breaking records, McCarthy worked with the Trump campaign on a plan to get House Republicans to donate to the president’s reelection. A few weeks later, news broke that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s 42 most vulnerable members had an average 5-to-1 cash advantage over their GOP opponents, while 30 Democratic challengers outraised their Republican opponents in the second quarter of 2020 — putting Democrats in a prime position to grow their majority,” the Post reports. “Some GOP members were livid, wondering why they were called on to help fund the well-oiled Trump money machine when some of their own were in trouble.”

You can read more here.

==

aha wow omg:

cfg big lobbyist on climate vs CoC? enforcer drives polarization, RINO hunters

Climate science skeptics grasp for power in changing GOP

Nick Sobczyk, E&E News reporter

Published: Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Skeptics of mainstream climate science and hard-line conservatives think they still have a hold on the GOP, despite a recent rhetorical evolution among congressional Republicans.

Climate science skeptics grasp for power in changing GOP

MARCH 10, 2020

As originally published in E&E News.

By: Nick Sobczyk

March 10, 2020

Skeptics of mainstream climate science and hard-line conservatives think they still have a hold on the GOP, despite a recent rhetorical evolution among congressional Republicans.

It’s part of a battle for the soul of the party between hard-right organizations, such as the Club for Growth, and the newfangled and well-funded ecosystem of conservative clean energy groups, led most prominently by ClearPath and Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.

There are abundant signs on Capitol Hill that people who question climate science are losing clout with Republicans. But they are insistent that not much has changed, particularly with President Trump still in the White House.

“I don’t think we’re losing much ground,” said Myron Ebell, a prominent energy advocate with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a longtime opponent of the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are warming the planet. Ebell helped lead Trump’s EPA transition team.

“I do think that there’s been more hand waving,” he added, “but I don’t think Republican voters have been influenced very much by the hand waving and the shouting.”

Party leadership on Capitol Hill would beg to differ. And even some Trump-loyal Republicans are happy to distance themselves from the climate science denial movement, even if they’re not willing to offer the kind of policies many experts say will be necessary to reduce the use of fossil fuels — the primary driver of climate change.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his top energy deputies rolled out a package of small-ball climate change bills last month, pointing to polls that show younger voters increasingly worried about the issue.

None would reduce fossil fuel use, but they would aim to reduce emissions through carbon capture and sequestration(Greenwire, Feb. 12).

Meanwhile, Republicans on powerful committees such as Energy and Commerce have largely dropped outright climate denial for the kind of “energy innovation” talking points favored by CRES and ClearPath.

“Both sides now recognize climate is changing, temperature is increasing we need to do something about it,” said Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.). “We’re just speaking out and making our own views known better, and there is more evidence.”

Policywise, what they’re doing is phenomenal and unbelievable and beyond anything we could have hoped. It truly is.

Marc Morano, director of communications at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow]

The fact remains, however, that the Republican president frequently denies climate change and for a time employed a man — William Happer — tasked with performing a critical review of federal climate science.

For skeptics and libertarian ideologues alike who want to see the federal regulatory regime torn down, that’s an important audience.

“Policywise, what Andrew Wheeler is doing is phenomenal. Policywise, what Donald Trump is doing is phenomenal,” said Marc Morano, director of communications at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, who has questioned climate science for years.

“Policywise, what they’re doing is phenomenal and unbelievable and beyond anything we could have hoped,” he said. “It truly is.”

Fighting over the details

There’s no meaningful debate among climate scientists about whether temperatures are rising because of man’s industrial activity.

A host of peer-reviewed studies warn of potentially catastrophic economic and environmental effects, many of which are readily apparent today, without dramatic changes to global greenhouse gas emissions. Most objections to the science have virtually zero credibility in the world’s scientific community.

Still, politically, Ebell doesn’t think it’s useful for conservatives to cede the debate because he said McCarthy’s efforts won’t convince voters who want the federal government to address climate change to vote Republican.

“If local environmental groups or local media in their districts start looking into these bills and start giving them publicity in the local media, they’re going to have a hard time explaining themselves because we’ve conceded that global warming’s a problem, and we’ve got a plan which will do nothing to address it,” Ebell said.

“So I think it’s not a well-thought-out way to proceed on this issue, and I doubt that they’re going to get very much positive spin out of it with voters,” he said.

Prominent conservative organizations, meanwhile, are making similar arguments with more subtle references to the science of climate change.

After McCarthy, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves and other Republicans came out with their package of bills last month, the Club for Growth promptly blasted it, threatening to withhold endorsements from supporters.

“When you give an inch on principle, you concede a negotiating posture that has also led to devastating bipartisan agreements on bailouts, spending and regulation,” Scott Parkinson, vice president of government affairs for the Club for Growth, wrote in a subsequent letter to the editor in The Washington Post last month.

“Club for Growth will continue to work with principled conservatives who reject climate alarmism and fight for energy and environmental policies based on sound economic principles,” he wrote.

Despite those disagreements, the Republican efforts on climate aren’t actually all that new, and they’re generally more focused on repackaging GOP-backed policies through a climate change lens.

One of the bills they rolled out last month, for instance, would make permanent the 45Q tax break for carbon capture and sequestration, which a Republican-led Congress expanded in 2018.

Graves, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis’ ranking member, is also leading a letter to National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, to be sent in the coming weeks, urging the White House to promote fossil fuel exports as a way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Top Republicans, including Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, are expected to sign.

The Trump administration, of course, is already gung-ho about exporting fossil fuels, but Republicans argue that it can help the fight against climate change because U.S. exports have lower life-cycle emissions than sources in the developing world.

The current backdrop, however, is that U.S. emissions are increasing, undermining Republicans who point to emissions reductions during the last 15 years. EPA’s most recent numbers found that greenhouse gas emissions rose 3.1% in 2018 — during Trump’s second year in office — despite the continued decline of coal (Climatewire, Feb. 13).

Meanwhile, the party as a whole still roundly rejects carbon pricing and regulations, tools that most climate experts say will be necessary to deploy clean energy technology to the market and reduce emissions fast enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

“Looking back over the last several years there have been policies that are entirely consistent with Republican ideology that we can continue doing that achieve multiple goals,” Graves said. “My whole thing is let’s not sit here and fight over the details of the science.”

Constituent services?

Ebell and other skeptics dismiss conservative clean energy groups as empty vessels with money but no loyal supporters, but they’re having an impact.

CRES alone spent nearly $500,000 lobbying on various energy issues in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to disclosure forms, including with several outside lobbying firms.

Much of the lobbying effort went toward getting clean energy priorities into the tax extenders package at the end of last year, according to CRES Executive Director Heather Reams, but CRES and ClearPath were enthusiastic about Republicans adopting their rhetoric in early 2020.

Still, Reams said she doesn’t see her group’s efforts as in direct conflict with those who question climate science. Rather, she believes she offers Republicans who want to talk about climate change a supportive landing pad.

“They’re responding to voters,” Reams said. “So I think it’s a very unfair position that some groups are putting Republican members in. These are complex problems and deserve complex solutions, and keeping your head in the sand is not a solution.”

And in a sign that the climate skeptic wing’s influence could be petering out, the Heartland Institute — a conservative think tank that has long dispersed debunked theories about climate change — laid off some of its staff last week amid reported financial woes (Greenwire, March 9).

Efforts to promote carbon taxes as a conservative solution to climate change have been less successful so far, however, showing the limits of the Republican transformation. Currently, the policy has only a small constituency.

Read the rest of the article here....e&e

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-the-coronavirus-crisis-revealed-the-danger-of-the-decades-long-conservative-movement/

no lnx

How the coronavirus crisis revealed the danger of the decades-long conservative movement

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon March 13, 2020

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell smelled an evil liberal conspiracy on Thursday, one designed to steal away his decades of tireless work to kneecap the federal government. The Democratic-majority House had passed a large emergency bill, designed to combat the coronavirus pandemic, and McConnell was absolutely certain Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were trying to pull one over on him.

“Unfortunately, it appears at this hour that the speaker and House Democrats instead chose to produce an ideological wish list that was not tailored closely to the circumstances,” McConnell said. He accused Democrats of exploiting this situation, saying the bill addresses “various areas of policy that are barely related, if at all, to the issue before us.”

There’s a lot at stake here, but apparently the big sticking point for McConnell was a provision requiring employers to offer paid sick leave to employees, which McConnell claims would “put thousands of small businesses at risk.”

In reality, of course, this is just common sense. As the New York Times editorial board noted, companies that don’t offer paid sick leave “are endangering their workers and customers.” A lot of workers with public-facing jobs — such as food service workers and retail employees — come into close contact with dozens or hundreds of people a day. But they are the people least likely to be allowed to stay home without losing their jobs, or at least losing a paycheck.

McConnell is so poisoned by his right-wing ideology that he can’t see this, or chooses not to. Instead, he’s standing firm on the long-standing Republican tendency to view employers as feudal lords who should be allowed to treat employees however they wish — even, apparently, if that means allowing a deadly disease to rip through the population, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people if it is not checked.

So far, most of the panic over the coronavirus outbreak has been driven by the undeniable incompetence of Donald Trump. At every turn, Trump has made this situation worse — even going so far as to try to discourage testing to bamboozle the public and, I suspect, tanking the markets by screwing up an Oval Office address because he’s too vain to wear glasses so he can see well enough to read a teleprompter.

That’s all true. But it’s also important to understand that the larger Republican Party, even without Trump, is also to blame for what looks to be a serious public health crisis. Right-wing ideology, often marketed as “rugged individualism” but perhaps better understood as an aversion to the very concept of a common good, is one major reason why the U.S. government, hamstrung for decades by Republican power, isn’t better equipped to handle a crisis.

This isn’t just a Trump problem. This is a widespread Republican problem. For decades, GOP strategy has been consistent: Whenever they get power, they slash regulations and gut spending, with the goal of making government less effective. This is a deliberate strategy to make the public broadly distrustful of government, and therefore increasingly open to shifting more and more power to the wealthy individuals who control the private sector.

This ideological commitment to an every-man-for-himself ideology, which is terrible in any circumstances, is exposed as particularly dreadful in the face of a pandemic. Disease is a reminder that humans are a herd species, wholly dependent on each other for survival, and that government must be a way to formally organize that joint survival pattern. It’s not some villain in a racism-inflected right-wing morality fable about the importance of “personal responsibility.”

Simply put, we need our government to be able to protect us from disease. Republicans have spent years tearing it down, and even in a crisis are incapable of accepting that “small government” is not always a good thing.

As Max Moran at Talking Points Memo argued, the fact that Vice President Mike Pence — deemed a “normal” Republican — is in charge of the coronavirus comforts some people, because they believe he is more adult and responsible than Trump. Pence’s track record suggests otherwise. As governor of Indiana, he oversaw an HIV outbreak that led to 10% of the population people in a single county becoming infected because Pence thought preaching the value of personal responsibility was better than following the recommendations of public health experts.

“[A] Pence-led response is dangerous, not in spite of, but precisely because he is a typical Republican,” Moran writes, because normal Republicans “apply their competence and considerable resources” to the task of “protection for the powerful, callousness for the afflicted, and a special disdain for the ‘other.'”

The right-wing idiocy that is going to get people killed is all over the Republican response to this situation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joined McConnell in denouncing the Democratic bill, even though everything in it — including expanding food-stamp spending — will either help slow the spread of the disease or stimulate the American economy to offset the inevitable slowdown caused by this epidemic.

Instead, McCarthy is resorting to racism instead of sensible public health measures, calling the coronavirus the “Chinese coronavirus” for no apparent purpose except to feed the assumptions of the Fox News base than their whiteness and their racist attitudes will somehow protect them. (This assumption, by the way, is leading many older Americans to take serious and completely unnecessary risks with their health.)

The right-wing ideology poisoning is so bad that the coronavirus bill was held up in part because Republicans wanted to inject some anti-abortion language into it. There is absolutely no reason to believe that helping people protect themselves against a viral epidemic will lead to more abortions, but that’s the modern GOP for you: They’re always worried that somehow or other the Democrats have a sneaky agenda to “let” women have sex. (Which women will undoubtedly do, whether the Democrats authorize it or not.)

Even the so-called Republican “moderates” are to blame for this situation. For instance, Politico reporter Michael Grunwald uncovered this little tidbit about Sen. Susan Collins of Maine from his book about the Obama era.

Michael Grunwald

@MikeGrunwald

I had forgotten my own reporting that @SenatorCollins stripped $870M for pandemic preparations out of the 2009 stimulus.

Zooming out, it’s easy to see how decades of damage to our government are likely to make this epidemic worse. Republicans have been stingy about health care spending and have blocked Democratic efforts to increase access, especially when it comes to the Medicaid expansion under the Obama administration. The result is that we have fewer doctors and hospitals ready to handle what we know is coming, and we will probably have a lot of infected people who won’t get tested, either because they can’t afford it or don’t even know where to go for testing and treatment.

By all means, blame Trump for the current crisis. His incompetence is especially central to the panicked reaction of the financial markets. Even a slightly steadier president, whatever his or her party or ideology, would bolster investor confidence a whole lot more.

But this isn’t just about Trump. Republicans have a profound hostility to good government, and whatever slapdash response they may grudgingly accept in an effort to save their skins at the ballot box this November will be hamstrung by the fact that they refused, for decades, to invest in the infrastructure necessary to weather the big shock that is hitting us right now. Viruses are the ultimate reminder that humans are interconnected and need each other, and that the ideal of “rugged individualism” is childish and often racist nonsense.

1219

‘Insulting’: Dem lawmaker in Trump-leaning district takes down Kevin McCarthy for blatantly lying about reasons for impeachment

Brad Reed / Raw StoryDecember 18, 2019

During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Slotkin slammed McCarthy for shamelessly misrepresenting House Democrats’ arguments for impeaching the president.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/top-house-republican-kevin-mccarthys-ad-defending-trump-on-impeachment-features-stock-footage-from-russia

the top Republican in the House of Representatives this week released an ad defending President Donald Trump which includes footage from Russia.

The ad itself has been widely mocked, but now that CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski has identified the stock footage is from Russia, it’s becoming all the worse for McCarthy. Several years ago McCarthy was caught saying he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is paying Trump...

==

robt murray coal sob

https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/summary.php?id=C00541011&cycle=2018

2018

==

ca gs tax prop

https://www.alternet.org/its-more-tweet-kevin-mccarthys-tweet-targeting-george-soros-reveals-troubling-history

...

California lawmaker has come under intense scrutiny in recent days after he suggested on Twitter last Tuesday that Jewish people are trying to buy the midterm elections this November, just four days before a gunman opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue, leaving 11 people dead and six others injured. The suspect allegedly made anti-semitic remarks to police after his arrest.

In a tweet posted last Tuesday,McCarthy wrote, "We cannot allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election. Get out and vote Republican November 6th! #MAGA." The tweet accompanied a video of McCarthy making the same remarks.

McCarthy's tweet, which has since been deleted, referred to George Soros, Tom Steyer and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg — three billionaires who donate heavily to liberal causes and have Jewish family backgrounds. Soros is a Hungarian American Holocaust survivor; Steyer has a Jewish father; and Bloomberg is Jewish and was named the first recipient of the Genesis Prize, dubbed as "the Jewish Nobel Prize." The tweet was pinned to the top of McCarthy's Twitter profile until it was deleted on Wednesday. Soros and Steyer were among high-profile Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump who received packages containing explosive devices last week.

Several critics and political observers have expressed concern that McCarthy and his wife's comments are dog whistles for people like Cesar Sayoc, the Florida man who arrested in connection with the suspected bombings, and Robert Bowers, the suspect in the Pittsburgh shooting. Others have pointed out that McCarthy's tweet didn't mention top Democrat donor Fred Eychaner, who gave $68 million to Democrats this election cycle, because he's a Methodist.

It is unclear why McCarthy pinned the tweet to the top of his Twitter page and why he deleted that tweet. It is unknown if the tweet was pre-scheduled. Matt Sparks, McCarthy's communications director, told Salon, "Kevin McCarthy's legislative record, personal experience, and regular participation in bipartisan, pro-Israel policy conferences make it unquestionably clear he loves the Jewish people and the Jewish State. We will not dignify this hurtful accusation with further comment."

But Steyer, whose father was Jewish, said he felt McCarthy's tweet about him was anti-semitic during a Sunday appearance on CNN. "In terms of interpreting what he said, that seems, to me, like a straight-up anti-semitic move. I think that there – that is a classic attempt to separate Americans. I think that absolutely falls into the category of what I'm describing as political violence," Steyer said. He also accused the Republican Party of creating a politically violent environment and blamed Trump of "routine, systematic, lawlessness." While Steyer said he did not blame Trump for the shooting, he said, "I'm absolutely associating and blaming him for creating the atmosphere that exists."

Trump responded on Twitter, writing that he watched "Wacky Tom Steyer," who he said, "comes off as a crazed & stumbling lunatic who should be running out of money pretty soon."

On Monday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway suggested Saturday's synagogue shooting was part of "the anti-religiosity in this country," which she said is demonstrated by late-night comedians who crack jokes about Christians. During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Conway said that the president "denounced anti-Semitism," before citing the racist massacre in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that left nine worshippers dead in 2015.

"These people were gunned down in their place of worship," she said of both the Charleston victims and those of Saturday's shooting. She concluded that the shootings are a sign that "this is no time to be driving God out of the public square." Conway conveniently forgot that Dylann Roof, the convicted Charleston church shooter, is a white supremacist who was motivated by racial hatred. Similar to the Pittsburgh shooter, Roof publicly broadcasted his racist beliefs and motivations for his attack. Sayoc, the suspected bomber, was also radicalized. Even Jeff Sessions, Trump's Attorney General, confirmed the suspected bomber is a "partisan" at a press conference Friday afternoon.

"We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence," Sessions said. He warned, "Let this be a lesson to anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, that we will bring the full force of law against anyone that who attempts to use threats, intimidation and outright violence to further an agenda. We will find you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."

Despite Conway and McCarthy's claims that Christians suffer anti-Christian bias, Christians are the least targeted group for anti-religious hate crimes, according to FBI hate crime statistics for 2016. Of the total 1,538 offenses reported by law enforcement, Jews and Jewish institutions constituted more than half of the victims — 54 percent. Muslims were victims of 24 percent of anti-religious crimes and Christians and their churches were victims of only 11 percent of the incidents. Statistics for 2017 have not yet been published.

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http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/06/13/44705/does-kevin-mccarthy-s-rise-spell-trouble-for-calif/

It's looking all but certain that Bakersfield Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy will be elected as the next House Majority Leader. But his rise to the number two GOP leadership position could mean trouble for one of Gov. Jerry Brown's pet projects: high speed rail. 

McCarthy has long opposed spending federal dollars on California's bullet train. Testifying before a House hearingearlier this year, he called the California High Speed Rail's Authority's business plan "deeply flawed," saying it left him with "serious concerns with the authority's finances and how they plan to come up with the tens of billions of additional funds needed to complete the project."

Now, with McCarthy almost a heartbeat away from the Speaker, some are wondering whether federal funding for high speed rail is doomed.

RELATED:**Eric Cantor fallout: Pete Sessions begs off GOP leadership role, leaving Calif.'s Kevin McCarthy**

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Record and controversies

State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)

In 2007, Congress took up the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health care for about 6 million children and 670,000 adults from families who earn too much money qualify for Medicare but not enough to afford health insurance. Congressional Democrats and many Republicans tried to use the opportunity to dramatically expand the program but were opposed by President George W. Bush and other Republicans. In 2006, 5.4 million children were eligible but not enrolled in SCHIP or Medicaid and 9.4 million total children were uninsured.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy voted against the first House bill, which passed along party lines. It would have added $47 billion over five years to the $25 billion cost of the program and added about 5 million people to the program, including children, some legal immigrants, pregnant women and adults aged 18 and 19. The bill was financed mainly by an increase in cigarette taxes.[1]

House Democrats, with 45 Republicans, later compromised and passed a bill which expanded the plan by $35 billion and would have insured about 3.5 million more children from families generally making between 250% and 300% of the federal poverty line (about $51,000 to $62,000 for a family of four). Most non-pregnant, childless adults were excluded, as were most legal immigrants and all illegal immigrants. McCarthy voted against the bill.[2]

After President Bush vetoed the bill, Democratic leaders attempted to override the veto with the same bill but failed. McCarthy voted against the bill.[3]

House Democrats then attempted to override it with another bill, which gave into Republican demands for increased checks for citizenship, the quick phasing-out of adult coverage, a hard limit of 300% of the federal poverty level and funding for families that covered their children through private insurance instead. Republicans, angry that the vote was scheduled during massive fires in California, blocked the veto override. McCarthy voted against the bill[4]. For details on the bills and the debate, see the main State Children's Health Insurance Program page.

Iraq War

For more information see the chart of U.S. House of Representatives votes on the Iraq War.

Environmental record

For more information on environmental legislation, see the Energy and Environment Policy Portal

Biography

Born in 1965, McCarthy earned both his undergraduate degree and Masters of Business Administration from California State University, Bakersfield. He opened his first business, Kevin O's Deli, at the age of 21 to raise money to for college. He and his wife Judy have two children, Connor (12) and Meghan (10). [5]

From the late 1990s until 2002, McCarthy served as the District Director for U.S. Congressman Bill Thomas. In 2000, he was elected as a Trustee on the Kern Community College District Board. In 2002, McCarthy was elected to the California state assembly and became the first person to be elected Republican Assembly Leader as a freshman.[6]

2006 election

McCarthy defeated Democrat Shannon Beery to replace retiring Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) in the 2006 congressional elections. He received 71% of the vote.

Committees and Affiliations

Committees

• House Committee on Agriculture
  • Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management
  • Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture

• House Committee on House Administration

More Background Data

Contact

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turns out to punch above his wt in fundraising PAC

2014 PAC Contribution Data

Official PAC Name:

MAJORITY COMMITTEE PAC--MC PAC 

Location: BAKERSFIELD, CA 93389

Industry: Leadership PACs; Republican leadership PAC

Treasurer: THOMSON, JILL 

FEC Committee ID: C00428052

(Look up actual documents filed at the FEC)

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Sector Totals

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Chris Van Hollen, Kevin McCarthy Spar Over Keystone XL Pipeline

The Huffington Post  |  By Lucia Graves  Posted: 03/18/2013 11:24 am EDT  |  Updated: 03/18/2013 12:14 pm EDT 

Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press" on Sunday, sparred briefly over the State Department's pending approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

McCarthy claimed the pipeline would create "20,000 new jobs," and urged its construction. "Why do we have to wait?" he asked. The jobs numbers he referenced are actually off by several thousand, however, according to a study conducted by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute.

The study found that the project "will create no more than 2,500-4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years, according to TransCanada’s own data supplied to the State Department," and that the "claim that KXL will create 20,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs in the U.S is not substantiated." The State Department's own study found the pipeline will createjust 35 permanent jobs.

Van Hollen said that, while he was still reviewing the State Department’s “very complicated” assessment of the project, he thought the pipeline could be safely built. "Now the question is whether or not the overall climate effects, the overall energy impacts, are something we support," he said.

The State Department -- which has purview over the approval process since the pipeline crosses an international border -- will issue a final assessment of the project following a 45-day public comment period. The Obama administration is expected to reach a final decision by July or August.

The 'Young Guns' Are Here: Cantor, Ryan, McCarthy Hit Media Tour

Chris Good 9/14/12

The "Young Guns" are here: House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Budget Committee Ranking Member Paul Ryan, and National Republican Congressional Committee recruitment chair Kevin McCarthy are posing themselves as "the leader," "the thinker," and "the strategist" in a new book the three have released today, pitching the co-authored "Young Guns: The Next Generation of American Leaders" in a media tour that began this morning with a stop on NBC's "Today":

Released Sept. 14, the 191-page paperback was penned jointly by House Republican leaders Eric Cantor of Virginia, Kevin McCarthy of California, and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The book lays out broad conservative talking points and tackles Democrats on health care legislation, taxes, and social security. It makes little to no mention of fellow Republican heavy-hitters John Boehner (R-OH) and Mike Pence (R-IN), instead showcasing "young, reform-minded Republicans" as the key to overhauling Washington.

The congressmen founded the book's namesake organization, Young Guns, during the 2007-2008 election cycle. By the end of Aug. 2010, the National Republican Congressional Committee's associated program, which recruits and assists congressional hopefuls to "build a foundation for victory," showcased more than fifty conservatives - of all ages - with "young gun" status.

"We were fired in 2006, and part of what this is about, Young Guns, is finding candidates that will run on ideas, and actually solve problems using conservative beliefs," McCarthy, who is the chief recruiter for House Republican candidates, told NBC's TODAY Show Tuesday morning. "I think that's one of the fundamental differences you'll find in this election."

Read the full story from Fox News. See the book cover and description on the Barnes & Noble site. It's a clear effort by these three lawmakers to raise their profiles and promote their brand of House leadership...which could, one easily surmises, get pitted against Minority Leader John Boehner if Republicans take over the House and Cantor runs for Speaker. The Washington Post's Perry Bacon, Jr. reports that Cantor is disavowing a "power grab" with the new book.

 LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist lhenry@bakersfield.com

House Speaker John Boehner dug his shiny loafers into a swath of powder dry Kern County dirt on Wednesday and promised to move quickly on legislation aimed at easing the pain of California's historic drought.

Boehner and his partners on the legislation -- House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, and Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford -- all agreed that, yes, the drought is the biggest obstacle to farmers getting adequate water in the near term.

But they denounced as "idiocy" and "nonsense" California's management of its water system.

"In my part of the world we would shake our heads at how things work here, " Boehner said. "It's nonsense that a bureaucracy would favor fish over people."

He referred to the delta smelt and other fish protected under the Endangered Species Act. In an attempt to bolster those populations, water exports from the San Joaquin-Sacramento delta have been curtailed.

The proposed bill would attempt to bring "reason" to how the system is managed, if only during the drought emergency, the politicians said.

The bill has yet to be written, but its three main prongs would seek to increase pumping out of the delta -- if water is available -- to agreed-upon 1994 levels, suspend the San Joaquin River restoration settlement and create a Senate-House task force to come up with long term solutions.

The consequences of the drought were brought into sharp focus when local farmer Larry Starrh talked about his family being forced to let 1,000 acres of productive almond trees die this year for lack of water.

"Water is life," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "But sadly in this world, water has become about power, water is used as a weapon."

As real and painful as the water situation is, there was more than a hint of politics lurking around the edges of Wednesday's press conference. The first two prongs of the proposed bill have already been rejected by the Senate last year. Increased pumping and suspension of the San Joaquin River restoration agreement were both parts of H.R. 1837, introduced by Nunes, passed by the House and left to whither and die on the steps of the Senate.

Though all the politicians at Wednesday's conference insisted this bill was different because it would implement those measures on an emergency-only basis, Senate reaction is likely to be the same.

Indeed, a press release from Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office Wednesday warned that "I am concerned that (the new proposed bill) may follow the pattern of previous House bills which seek to either preempt state law or waive state water quality and Endangered Species Act requirements which could spur serious litigation and likely delay any action."

The likelihood of strong opposition cast Wednesday's event in a suspect light. Was it a sincere attempt to help California in a time of need or an unofficial reelection kickoff for Valadao, who is being heavily targeted by Democrats?

While Boehner's presence brought a great deal more media attention to California's water plight, any meaningful change in federal law or a federal-state partnership would have to get Senate buy-in, meaning Feinstein, who's long been a heavyweight in California water politics, not Boehner.

However, if freshman Valadao needed a boost to help loosen wallets before the mid-term elections this fall, Boehner would be a great leg up. Since Valadao, himself a dairy farmer, has made water a key issue, Wednesday's event would look to be a smooth political fit.

Meanwhile, California's reaction to the proposed bill pitched by Boehner, et al, was wary.

John Laird, secretary of the state's Natural Resources Agency, provided testimony in 2011 vehemently opposing Nunes' bill, H.R. 1837. The state was particularly upset by the portions of H.R. 1837 that would have set pumping levels at those agreed to in 1994 and suspension of the San Joaquin River restoration settlement, which he said would essentially toss out California water law and upend long held water rights.

The exact same measures are being discussed for this new bill, albeit on an emergency basis only.

In an email on Wednesday, Laird said that if this new bill proves sufficiently similar to the old H.R. 1837, the state would again stand in opposition.

"We are rarely forced to confront water allocations this low, salinity in the delta, and difficulty moving water during a crisis. Now is not the time to be divided -- now is the time to bring people together to find solutions," Laird said.

http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/local/x22866465/Boehner-comes-to-Kern-to-pitch-water-bill

maj pac 2012

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2012 maj pac:

House

Total to Democrats: $0

Total to Republicans: $1,174,421| Recipient | Total |

Senate

Total to Democrats: $0

Total to Republicans: $30,000| Recipient | Total |

Presidential

Total to Democrats: $0

Total to Republicans: $2,500| Recipient | Total |