Feb. 6, 2024 - Mayorkas impeachment vote today

… House impeachment vote … Blinken in Egypt … immigration deal … DeSantis DeFeat …

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House Vote on Mayorkas Impeachment Today

The House of Representatives today will vote on whether to impeach Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The charge: That he has not carried out all the aspects of his job. Republicans don’t know whether they have the votes to impeach Mayorkas, because they have not carried out all the aspects of their job.

Specifically, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his leadership team haven’t said whether they’ve counted enough votes to impeach Mayorkas. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) has said he’s a no, which means Republicans can only lose one other vote.

If the House does vote to impeach, the case will go to the Senate, where it will be prosecuted by the managers named in the impeachment bill, including Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). It’s not expected to pass the Senate, but if it did a conviction there would make history as (a) the first conviction of a cabinet member in modern history (b) Republicans voting to oust a Cuban-born cabinet member in an election year, and most notably (c) Greene doing something well.

U.S. Pushes to Prevent Expansion of Israeli Conflict It’s Helping Israel to Expand

Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in the Middle East today, in diplomatic talks pursuing a cease-fire and seeking to prevent Israel from expanding military action that the U.S. will support if the U.S. can’t stop it.

The Gaza conflict is increasingly threatening to splash over the border into Egypt, especially since Israel has said its military offensive is going right up to the border. That’s where Israel has chased more than a million Gazans who were told to evacuate there to escape from Hamas and are now being targeted there because they’re part of Hamas.

The UN said this morning that Israel’s evacuation orders now encompass more than two thirds of Gaza, meaning evacuees barred from crossing the border may soon have to consider fleeing either through time travel or to parallel dimensions where Tobey Maguire is still Spider-Man. 

Supreme Court to Debate Coolest Method of State Murder

The right-wing Supreme Court today will hear arguments over exactly which are the coolest ways for states to kill people they want to kill and have legal permission to kill.

The arguments incorporate a number of cases and methods for killing people:

• Lethal injection (forced poisoning to end bodily functions necessary for living),

• Electric chair (strapping people down to cook them in chair-shaped convection ovens), and

• Firing squad (injection of high-speed projectiles to shred internal organs).

The state of South Carolina will argue that all three methods of killing people are not merely cool, but super-cool. Neither cruel nor unusual. Because cruelty is relative and we do even worse, and unusual stops being an issue as long as we do it a lot.

“Courts have never held the death has to be instantaneous or painless,” according to Grayson Lambert, a lawyer for Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC), who wrote that in a state legal filing and then slept fine that night.

Anti-death-by-poisoning radical extremists argue that the state should at least disclose details about how it plans to poison people to death. Why doesn’t it? The companies that make and sell these chemicals — for killing people — refuse to sell them to South Carolina unless the state agrees to keep the company names secret. Feel free to speculate starting right now on exactly which companies want to sell death chemicals in secret, and which corporate marketing departments are shitting themselves right now just like they were being executed.

Senate Immigration Deal Already Collapsing

After months of hard labor, the bipartisan Senate deal attaching border security and immigration policy to military aid for American allies was completed Sunday night and unveiled yesterday. Built by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), the deal includes erecting new barriers at the border and delivering:

• $60 billion to Ukraine

• $14 billion to Israel

• $20 billion to the border

• $20 billion or so to the Pacific before anyone realizes that China’s gonna collapse under its own weight.

All told, the bill for this work would total $118 billion. But already, senators on both sides of the aisle said yesterday the deal the three senators cobbled together sucks and it’s not clear whether it’ll even survive its first test, a Senate vote tomorrow. That’s right, the thing’s already falling apart, thanks to the shoddy workmanship of the unskilled laborers who made it. 

This is what happens when you hire non-union workers who come from different states and barely even speak the same language. Plus, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says the deal won’t even make it to the floor of the House. That’s right, they built it outside the House without even checking whether they could get it through the door. Are these people even bonded?

It’s not clear why Johnson thinks it won’t fit inside the House, since they built it to his exact specifications: Knocking down due process at the border and replacing it with shiny, high, neo-Draconian presidential power. Specifically, the deal would give whoever is president the power to just reject asylum-seekers without even checking to see if they qualify for asylum.

Despite Lankford’s leadership, his fellow Republicans say they just don’t want to pass a bill to fix the alleged problem they’ve been complaining about for years. Because some Americans just don’t wanna work.

How come? Some are unwilling to compromise their values by doing degrading work like compromising. Others refuse to sully their hands with disgusting menial tasks such as working with Democrats.

Not everyone has taken sides across the political landscape, some are sitting on the fence instead of getting off their ass and doing the job they’re getting paid to do: Blocking people from coming in to do actual work like fixing fences and tending to landscapes.

The reality is, Republican politicians are terrified someone’s gonna take their jobs. Especially if their rich boss — with a history of not checking laborer immigration status — decides he wants to replace them with even cheaper more obeisant labor willing to do even more disgusting tasks for less.

ALSO One of Lankford’s biggest critics on the right — and yes, I’m dropping the exhausting immigrant-labor shtick — has been Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who called the bill a “crap sandwich” on Sunday. Lankford responded by mocking Lee for basing his thinking on “a Facebook post somewhere.”

On Monday, Lee’s staffers reportedly were screaming at Lankford’s people in a closed-door but-you-can-still-hear-Mommy-and-Daddy-fighting Senate meeting. A Lee staffer stormed out, raging about “betrayal,” and then the Senate staff left behind burst into laughter.

That was just three days after the National Prayer Breakfast — the raison d’etre for which is the bullshit lie that prayer is unifying.

And not only are Lankford and Lee true believers, insiders of The Family (the Christian group behind the breakfast), but it was Johnson who let them hold it in Statuary Hall for the first time, serving up the biggest theocratic meal in the breakfast’s history on Thursday. And there they were savaging each other on Sunday. Partisanship was resurrected after just three days!

So, how do these Christians heal the rift between their God-fearing souls? Well, last night Lee posted that Lankford “is a good man.” Lee blamed “The Firm™” for putting Lankford in “a bad position.”

When asked who The Firm™ is, Lee responded by invoking Senate leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY), blaming “The law firm of Schumer & McConnell.” Because how better to repair a gap between Christians than by patching it up with a little touch of anti-semitism?

ALSO BUT MORE HILARIOUSLY Shortly after Johnson said he’ll try to nix the deal, the actual union representing the federal workers at Customs and Border Protection endorsed the deal. The National Border Patrol Council obviously took a shot at Pres. Joe Biden in the process, but said the new border policies are “far better than the status quo.”

What do they like about it? According to the union statement, lack of due process, der.

“This will allow us to remove single adults expeditiously and without a lengthy judicial review [italics added for emphasis of contempt for the rule of law], which historically has required the release of these individuals into the interior of the U.S.”

Oh noes not the interior of the U.S.! That’s the bestest part!

Keep in mind, these are law enforcement officers bemoaning “judicial review.” And complaining that they can’t imprison people prior to determining whether they broke the law. 

Why’s this hilarious? Because (a) it’s not happening to me personally and (b) now it’s Johnson and his rich boss, D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump endangering Merka according to the noble saints who guard us against the hordes of cheap labor that Republican campaign donors need to keep their businesses businessing.

BONUS HILARITY Johnson last night bordered on pooping on border patrol agents. Asked about the union endorsement, Johnson suggested that it was because they might get raises. Why do you hate the troops?!?

College Basketball Players Can Unionize

The National Labor Relations Board ruled yesterday that Dartmouth College basketball players are employees and therefore can form a union. And, because all communism is creeping communism, the ruling opens the door for basketball players at other colleges to pursue the same rights. And for athletes in other sports to pursue the same rights.

Dartmouth’s basketball team last year sought the right to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), to which SEIU responded, “Go team!”

The NLRB ruled that the players must be employees because the school…

1. bosses them around

2. compensates them (poorly)

3. exploits them financially, and

4. benefits disproportionately from their skills and labor.

Sounds like workers to me!

Vegas Hotel Strike Averted

(Calm down, I’m not going back to my hacky immigrant-labor bit even though this story is literally about workers who refused to keep working for low wages. Obviously we’re gonna go with hacky Mafia jokes…)

The union for Las Vegas hotel workers yesterday said they won’t go on strike after all, after they made the hotels an offer they couldn’t oh god I’m already exhausted.

Some of Vegas’s biggest, most famous, and superficially glamorous (but existentially horrific) hotels and casinos — dedicated to by feeding gambling addictions for the whole family — finalized agreements yesterday for new deals with the Culinary Workers Union (CWU). And the union agreed to hold off on a strike, despite Monday’s deadline, while talks continue with other hotels. (h/t)

It’s worth noting that the hotels capitulated just after reports began circulating that Pres. Joe Biden was considering taking sides with the CWU if they went to the mattresses. (Shut up. Whatever.)

America Approves Lengthy Reparations Process

Despite decades of controversy, America appears to be moving forward with ad hoc plans to provide financial reparations for its history of discriminating against Black people. The plan involves paying Black people millions individually, on a case-by-case basis, as each Black person or family is inevitably victimized by police.

Yesterday, for instance, Aurora, CO, agreed to pay $1.9 million to Brittney Gilliam after police pulled her over as she was Blackdriving, an offense for which she has a long list of priors. When police stopped her in 2020 they were looking for a stolen car, which apparently they thought Gilliam had stolen with a gang of four girls along for the ride. As accomplices. 

Gilliam’s daughter and the other girls watched while police handcuffed Gilliam and some of the girls and pointed a gun at them. Aurora prosecutors concluded that police violated no law, which is both (a) correct and (b) the problem.

Aurora’s reparations plan has already provided $15 million for the parents of Elijah McClain, who was killed for Blackwalking. It’s not clear how long it will take for U.S. law enforcement to ensure that every single Black person in the country gets a seven-or-eight-figure payout, but progress is being made.

Campaign Watch

NEVADA The Nevada Republican presidential primary is today. And it doesn’t count. What happens in Nevada, blah blah blah.

Here’s WTF is going on.

State law requires the GOP to hold a primary. That’s today.

But D4FRFP Donald Trump wanted the state to pick its delegates via caucuses, which are easier. Because Donald. Trump. Does. Not. Like. Work.

So, a court allowed the GOP to pick its delegates via caucuses, which it will do on Thursday.

Former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) has called the voting rigged, because suck it, and focused her efforts on the Feb. 24 primary in her home state. Where she is currently losing.

TRUMP One of the very fine people D4FRFP Donald Trump will now have to campaign on having hired turns out to have been a secret ally of Arabs. And not just fake-American Arabs. We’re talking Middle Eastern Arabs!

The Washington Post revealed this morning that when Trump nominated former Marine Gen. Jim Mattis to be his defense secretary, Mattis concealed his past work on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, which is so Arab that “Arab” is their middle name.

And not just any work. The UAE was part of the coalition of countries that was failing to stop the Houthi rebels in Yemen, but succeeding spectacularly at killing civilians there by blowing them into pieces of meat and/or starving them of pieces of meat. And Mattis served as their military advisor. 

In other words, Mattis was an advisor for one of two shitty sides of a shitty war … and his shitty side did a shitty job of warring while he was militarily advising them.

It’s not clear whether Mattis got paid for this work; he only disclosed it to a handful of people, so he wasn’t questioned about it publicly. Because you can’t spell “secretary” without “secret”!

Post-Campaign Watch

FLORIDA Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) — just a couple weeks after his starring role in “Honey, I Shrunk the Governor of Florida” — got even weer (wee-er? more wee?) yesterday. And this time it wasn’t even D4FRFP Donald Trump who ensmallened him.

Now that DeSantis has been reduced to a pre-shrunk empty suit, even Florida state legislators are pushing him around. DeSantis was backing a bill to bring a casino to Miami Beach, like you do when no one gives a shit about your position on the National Defense Authorization Act anymore.

And yesterday, Republican lawmakers killed the bill, taking DeSantis in a headlock, noogying the top of his skull, and forcing him to hit himself while repeatedly asking him why he was hitting himself even though they knew full well that they were making him do it.

Asked to comment yesterday, DeSantis — ah, I gotcha! No one gives a shit what he says anymore. Before you know it, even colleges and libraries will be pushing him around and he’ll be scared again of drag queens and books.

TCB

As I mentioned, I skipped yesterday’s TFN because sometimes I’m gonna skip days and my offboarding and Journey to the Center of Unemployment take up a fair amount of time — and so does promoting TFN. Which apparently I’m terrible at.

Why do I say that? Because in Sunday’s email I griped about how more people sign up as paid subscribers when I talk about my aspirations for TFN and my original reporting than sign up when I actually do it. And so of course that one email inspired more people to become paid subscribers than any of the TFNs or original reporting I’ve done. I mean, yes, thank you thank you! But also: I see what you did there!

Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President