After 3 Weeks of Paralyzed Government Mike Johnson Gives the House a Long Weekend

Last updated on October 27th, 2023 at 07:27 pm

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Now Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the hard-right architect of congressional efforts to overthrow the election whose contempt for actual voters is palpable, has began his speakership in the wake of three weeks of inaction by his chamber by giving the House a long weekend off, even as the world and the nation face crises and a government shutdown looms.

Perhaps all of that not-working is exhausting.

Imagine if you could fail to do the most basic part of the job you are paid to do, and then, after three weeks when you finally managed to show up without being a reckless drunk endangering the entire country with your irresponsible folly, you finally won a vote to lead your side of a company team. Your first order of business? To give yourself a long weekend.

Now imagine you did that as the world burned around you, quite literally.

It’s not a great look to be taking extra time off in the wake of the attack on Israel and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as well as Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine as we lurch into yet another government funding crisis brought on by this same crew.

It’s made even more sickening taken in context of Johnson’s attacks on everyone he believes aren’t working hard enough to deserve any government money… as he takes government money and flees to a long weekend.

The Louisiana Republican made the case against reparations by claiming it “would harm black Americans’ dignity by depriving them of the “meaning” injected into their lives by having to achieve equality without government aid.”

Might we suggest that the House of Representatives not get government handouts via a “paycheck” for not working, as it would deprive them of the meaning of real work, but rather they might show up five days a week like many Americans, or better yet to get the real feel for how many live, seven days a week. For meaning.

Johnson is so concerned with the “deficit” that his party ballooned after giveaways to the most wealthy that he drew up budget resolution suggesting the best way for these guys who are paid from government money and get a healthy pension, healthcare and more to “preserve American freedom” is to just take $2 trillion from Medicare (why should you have healthcare just because they do?), $3 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, and “Obamacare”, and of course for you lazy people who have paid into Social Security your entire lives, he proposed $750 billion in cuts to your safety net.

Also, you may not take a long weekend.

Who better to guide the moral compass of the U.S. budget than the man who believes he was anointed by God to serve as Speaker, as “God is the one who raises up those in authority.” There has been no explanation for God’s delay in asserting His will, but the press is not here to get questions answered. We are to “shut up!” as House Republicans yelled when Johnson was questioned about his attempts to steal the votes of the majority of Americans.

Shut up, fourth estate.

House Republicans will not be questioned about their seething contempt for the American voter. House Republicans will dictate to, not be questioned, thank you very much. Any questions for how this works should be directed at Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who has been deftly manipulating the press for decades, albeit with more finesse and less overt hostility. McConnell just assumes the right to direct the narrative. House Republicans are too boisterous a bunch of thugs, alleged criminals, con artists and democracy thieves to carry themselves with such tempered class as the Senate’s architect of democracy’s demise. It used to be that one must put a pretty face on theft of rights and trampling of norms, but now one just tells the press to shut up and claims the authority of none other than God herself.

Johnson’s moral character is so Trump-tinged that he cheerily promoted the conspiracy theory about Hugo Chávez and Dominion voting systems in mid November of 2020. When you couple this with his firm belief in himself as The Chosen, you can see the republic is in for a carnival ride of true believers the likes of which it hasn’t seen for years.

Upon his eventual return to the toil of conspiracy theories and theft of security and votes from The People, Mr. Johnson can be relied upon to return his gaze to the steely dealings of his obsession with sodomy and women becoming broodmares to produce workers, when he is not using the entire U.S. House to attack President Biden for the benefit of the weakened, lost Mr. Trump who continues to threaten and troll like an angry, powerless teenager, even as his own lawyers turn on him to save themselves.

On the 22nd day without a leader, the Republican-led House of Representatives managed to finally elect the worst person for the job, also known as the best representative of the Republican Party agenda. It only took four other nominees to get there after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was kicked to the curb after less than a year, for which he had endured the humiliation of 15 rounds of voting.

This is the longest time Congress has flailed about since 1962, when they took 55 days to elect a speaker. But it can’t be said that Republicans didn’t work hard for this level of dysfunction, which appears to be their largest policy goal: Paralyze the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, and thereby give our enemies all that they need to overtake the U.S. globally.

While Mr. Johnson claimed in 2004 that same-sex marriage would doom the republic and gay sex could even destroy “the entire democratic system, it seems he didn’t see himself and his boorish band of Trumpists coming. No one has been a bigger threat to the republic and the entire democratic system than Mr. Johnson and his master, Donald Trump, both of whom tried to steal the right to have votes counted from a majority of the country.

How is this man speaker, you ask? Dear Reader, this is the best they had to offer.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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