Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Next Speaker Of The House

Cathy McMorris Rodgers may have never entered the race to become the next Speaker, but I think she is perfectly qualified.

I'm not running, but pick me! Pick me!

Look back at her work as chair of the Select Committee on Earmark Reform, all mention of which is scrubbed from her web site. The disappearance of that information is an indicator of leadership potential, but let's look at what disappeared. To review, she was appointed chair of the committee in December 2008 and the committee was supposed to provide a report on earmark reform in February 2009. By March 2010 there was still no report. Better yet, the committee never held a single meeting during it's vaunted existence. So if you want someone to lead something that would benefit the country by simply fading away into history with nary a footnote, Cathy McMorris Rodgers would be a pretty good choice.

Besides, it's not like the House of Representatives could get any more dysfunctional, right?

10 comments:

Likable Enough said...


Future-Speaker McMorris Rodgers regrets that you don't understand.

The Earmark Committee met regularly in a secret, corporate location. They published their reports on a secret, corporate server, and shared them through a secret, corporate email system.

The committee did nothing wrong, and understandably acted for it's own convenience. They did not want to carry extra devices. Would you?

McMorris Rogers will release all the reports from the committee in the interest of complete transparency--assuming that the FBI and courts demand her to do so.

Future-Speaker McMorris Rodgers accepts full responsibility for keeping the committee and its work secret, but would like to point out that any legal fault most definitely lies with junior IT staffers and of course a vast left-wing conspiracy.

Thank you, and a reminder that Cathy welcomes donations to her Global Initiative.



Bitter Houses and Gardens said...

Hillary R-C and Cathy M-R are equally vapid enough to reply to an email reporting drone killings with concerns about "attractive boxes/baskets/ conmtainers" next to the benches in their respective gardens. But the comparison has to end there.

Clinton is about 5% Martha Stewart and 95% Dick Cheney. McMorris Rodgers probably gets lost just driving through Cheney. It's hard to imagine her trading her nothing-burger "leadership" House position for the real meat of the Speakership. There would be endless rumors about who was really running things. She ain't no Pelosi. Anyway, Cathy already wilted at the thought of running for no. 2.

With the President directing the DOJ to look-forward-not-back on the emails, Hillary is basically in Cheney's posture: unprosecuted, but also unelectable. Cathy, however, could have been a Palinesque VP, if not for the unfortunate trajectory of Palin herself.

R-C and M-R have reached the pinnacle of their political careers, and will soon enough be driving around Cheney together looking for a Kmart so they can pick up some Martha Stewart garden conmtainers.

Maybe a comparison isn't that far-fetched.

You say Dick, they say deke said...

I can agree that Hillary is a hair ball coughed up by Cheney. The Constitution post-Cheney makes this a nation of men (and women), not laws. The wealthy and powerful can break the law with impunity. Yes both showed it.

But, as the fawning post-debate cheerleading from the elite media shows, there is a powerful contingent of the wealthy who want Clinton to be President, and who find her the reasonable candidate of wealth compared to the Republican options. They've got Hillary shaking lose of emailgate and wagging her finger like she just faked and dunked.

The election looks as surreal as the virtual reality versions of Hillary and Bernie snipped and dropped into NBA 2K or, heck, GTA. We have the illusion of driving this election, but voters are just lines of code written by the elites. Or by whatever they call Diebold now. Oh, "Premier Election Solutions." Perfect.

Why vote.

Mr Sandman said...

According to newly leaked documents, those drone dead, who Hillary thought might look nice in trophy flower pots, were almost all innocents, including women and children.

Having exhausted themselves with celebrating Clinton's exoneration courtesy of stalking horse Sanders and Obama, let's see if the media can rouse themselves to actually report on Secretary Clinton and President Obama's war crimes.

Do we really need someone who "gets things done," when those things are Iraq, Libya, drones, TPP, evading FOIA, deregulating Wall Street, and survelliance?

Too bad the American don't have a (real) candidate representing our interests in this election.

Or a real news media.

Sophisticated Folks said...




A vote for Bernie is a vote for Hillary.

If Sanders opposed the power establishment, he would point out that Clinton's email defense is inherently elitist. Clinton feels a private server is OK for herself, but not for a GS-5. Clinton argues that government surveillance of citizens is good, but government should not be transparent to citizens.

Sanders defends not only Clinton's violation of the law, he has abandoned the democratic principles he purports to represent.


Sanders has betrayed us, and its time to move on. He's running for something, but it's not president, and it's not socialist.

de Tokenville said...

Betrayal or cooption? Either way, it's clear Sander's function is to deliver Progressive voters to Clinton in the general.

If we focus only on betrayal, though, the story is strictly personal venality, rather than a chapter in the larger crisis in the mechanisms of American democracy.

The ungovernable House is another chapter, appointments another, the autonomous military-industrial-intelligence sector another, the unregulated financial elites another, the corruption of the courts, etc.

Sanders was coopted because elections themselves are coopted, or marginalized. The forums of real political dispute do not align with our Constitutional structures. Government power is sourced elsewhere, not from the will of the people.

The machine that would run by itself has wound down. Some parts were removed, others vandalized, maintenance wasn't performed, and the elites bicker only over which among them owns this nostalgic curio.

Americans live in a sort of dollhouse of electoral democracy, a simulcram. The purpose of elections is distraction of the people, not an investure of power or sounding of public policy.

American Twilight said...


Move on to where? Sanders is a Clinton tool. Everybody is giving up on him (though now the elites love him).

The two party system doesn't offer any real choices and hasn't for decades. Third parties never work.

Should we start building a parallel government?

Let's make it a parliament, not a congress. Go Canada.

We need a peoples' constitutional convention.

Last Gleaming said...



Well, at least the New York Times, etc are covering Sanders now that he's revealed himself to be a fake.

That's a little thing the elites like to call "progress" and "real democracy."

Back to black said...


The Canadians elect Marty McFly.

But Americans only get to choose between cackling Aunt Bee and Howdy Doody in a toupee.

The future ain't what it used to be.

Rock and Wry said...



Say what you will about the Times, they have a good headline today: "Trey Gowdy, Hillary Clinton and Elijah Cummings Open Sober Hearing." Yep, just streamed it, and that's what Clinton looks like after months of sobriety. Looking good, Friend of Bill!

Contrast her look today with her earlier post-"stomach virus with concussion" appearance or her "we came, we saw, he died" puffy loopiness just after the ill-fated Libyan invasion. Belly up to the witness stand, Madam Secretary.

The Times and Post now point the finger at the Committee itself, turning accuser into accused, building on the loose-tongued partisan admissions of the would-be speaker. That's fair to a point. But the real mistake of the committee is that they focused on Benghazi alone, rather than the Libya incursion as a whole. But that approach would have also point the finger at the compliant Congress.

Even so, Gowdy can correctly argued that the committee dragged on because Clinton illegally hid her emails for years. We only know about Svengali Blumenthal's missives, for example, because a hacker released them this past spring. Cheers, yo.

Sure, the Committee should have wrapped up anyway and formed a new and separate committee focused narrowly on the emails. Kept it neat.

Sanders is right, everyone is tired of the damned emails. But we're also tired of damned Clinton herself, the damned Congress, both damned parties, and pretty much the whole damned election process.

Our leaders may be sobering up, but they've got us headed to the apathy of gin alley, not the church basement voting booth.