For all the drama, House Republicans have passed only 22 bills into law this session. One established a commemorative coin, and two renamed medical centers.
Unfortunately it’s the American public that is paying the price for the stupid prizes.
the “trio of Democrats censured by the House this year marked a milestone not seen in more than 150 years, raising questions over whether the historically rare form of punishment is becoming weaponized in the lower chamber.”
If you for even a moment pretend there’s any doubt about it, you’re an idiot, a cowardly journalist or both.
One was for competently chairing a committee, another for speaking truth to power about Palestinians not being disposable sub-humans and the third for pulling a childish prank that was still more professional than 99% of what any of the Republicans have done this year.
Journalists don’t seem to know how to report on politics when people are not acting in good faith. Why assume that Republicans stated motivations are genuine at this point? Republicans know that they will always be given the benefit of the doubt by the media and that their radical messages will be transmitted directly to their supporters and then sanitized and normalized when repeated by other media outlets.
Journalists don’t seem to know how to report on politics when people are not acting in good faith
This is exactly it. They either don’t know how to react to it or they simply refuse to acknowledge it out of fear of jeopardizing their disingenuous absolute neutrality facade.
Why assume that Republicans stated motivations are genuine at this point?
Literally no good reason.
Republicans know that they will always be given the benefit of the doubt by the media and that their radical messages will be transmitted directly to their supporters and then sanitized and normalized when repeated by other media outlets.
Yup!
Sartre described their bad faith perfectly when he talked about antisemites:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
The guy who pulled the alarm deserved a censure. You don’t fuck with fire alarms. I’ll agree, Republicans do some stupid, unprofessional shit, and more than a few deserve a censure, but let’s not defend the guy who made the building less safe because he was late to a vote.
The guy who pulled the alarm deserved a censure.
I disagree. Since they can’t fine each other, censure is the strongest condemnation short of being stripped of committee assignments. While what he did wasn’t great, it was nowhere near serious enough to warrant censure.
You don’t fuck with fire alarms
Yeah you do. Schoolkids do it all the time.
but let’s not defend the guy who made the building less safe because he was late to a vote.
I’m not saying it wasn’t a bad thing to do but he didn’t make the building less safe. That’s a ridiculous hypothetical based on assuming likelihood of an extremely unlikely confluence of events.
You need to relax with the learned alarmism, pun intended.
