Tag Archives: Matt Gaetz

Will We Ever Be Delivered from the Plague of Unserious People?

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Lauren Boebert groped 'Beetlejuice' date in heavy-petting session before getting tossed out

The current betting line is that this next Republican-driven government shut down, the one likely to begin at midnight on the 30th, will last three weeks. That anyway is what I’m picking up from the smart kids in the know.

But … those kids have no idea what it will take to actually end it. The fundamental problem being that the — take your pick here — “Clown Caucus”, “idiots”, “MAGA dead-enders” leading the revolt simply don’t care what damage they wreak. Put another way, they aren’t really serious about spending, (all this cynical/moron-level grandstanding is over 1.9% of the federal budget). We all know that what it’s really about is the value to their personal fund-raising, which only increases the longer their tantrum.

The “serious” business has been lodged in my brain lately thanks to the now infamous Lauren Boebert vaping/heavy petting session at that Denver theater and a fascinating story in the UK’s Daily Mail about South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, often touted as “veep” material for a second Trump term.

Because it was both comically salacious and her hypocrisy/lying was validated by the videotape, we all know about Boebert, the epically nitwit Congressperson/former escort (or maybe not) from western Colorado. But the Noem story has received far less traction, possibly because The Daily Mail, Britain’s highest circulation paper, doesn’t exactly compare with the New York Times in terms of, you know, journalistic credibility.

Still … with your gimlet eyes at full focus, I encourage you to read what the Mail dug up on Noem, who, keep in mind, is the sitting governor of an American state, albeit “Prairie ‘Bama” as I’m obliged to call it.

The very short version is this: Noem is still carrying on a not particularly down low affair with ex-Trump “advisor” Corey Lewandowski. That’d be one thing I couldn’t give a damn about, other than the usual rich irony that she’s still selling herself — successfully — to rock-ribbed Prairie ‘Bama Republicans as a model mother and wife.

Governor Kristi Noem, “God-Fearing” Family Woman, and Corey Lewandowski, Trump Creep, Reportedly Had “Yearslong” Affair | Vanity Fair

But, as the story strongly suggests, the amount of time and state money she’s spending on far flung adventures to burnish her, mmm, conservative bona fides and get regularly advised by Lewandowski, is kind of, well, scandalous, not that anyone over there seems to care all that much.

Noem of course is very much modeling her governing after the likes of Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Tim Pawlenty here in Minnesota, two dudes who thought nothing of contorting their management obligations to, first and foremost, advancing their laughable presidential ambitions. Although in Walker and Pawlenty’s defense their cynical manipulation of state government never approached ignoring a deadly pandemic that at one point in November 2020 had Noem’s Live Free or Die fiefdom #1 in the world in terms of deaths per capita. (But hey, most of those were Indians and migrant workers at slaughterhouses.)

By contrast to all this manifest unseriousness, and the Matt Gaetz-Marjorie Taylor Greene clown caucus about to grind the gears of the country to a halt … again … (by now this is a Republican tradition), it’s worth a moment to compare all of that crew’s self-serving chaos to a very little noticed event hosted by MAGA bete noir, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, aka AOC.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells climate marchers to be 'too big and too radical to ignore' – as it happened | Climate crisis | The Guardian

While Boebert was checking her date for pocket change and Noem was racking up frequent flyer perks with Lewandowski, AOC, one of the most frightening figures on the landscape to the MAGA echo chamber was leading a thousands-strong awareness/protest march in New York City against fossil fuels and for green energy. Green energy! The horror! The stuff that you don’t choke on at stoplights behind that 7000 pound Duramax diesel. Pollution-free, job-creating renewable energy being an idea that Boebert/Noem/Gaetz/Greene Unserious Subcaucus rails against nearly as much as … as … well, I don’t know, as … books in libraries.

Lauren Boebert, Far-Right Firebrand, Wins Re-election After Recount - The New York Times
Kristi Noem's on a Political Rocket Ship. But Don't Rule Out a Crash. - POLITICO

The contrast couldn’t be more stark. Yet one crew has the ability to bring government to dead stop … again … while the other, AOC, is treated like a Bond villain by the MAGA intellectuals on the set of “Fox & friends.”

I apologize for not having a solution to the existence of nitwits and charlatans like Boebert, Noem, etc. All I’ve got is the same question I — and perhaps you — have asked for years now, namely, “What do voters see in these people? What do they imagine politicians like this will or are doing for them? How are their lives better with the likes of Lauren Boebert in charge?” I mean, beyond, “sticking it to the libs?”

Personally, I return to brain science and ask what structure or gland or cluster of neurons is so excited by the sight of MAGA-speaking women in tight dresses and/or tight jeans … and can it be treated with drugs? Perhaps even via vape pen?

Florida Man Seeks Teenage Female for Fun Adventures with Frequently Indicted Tax Collector/Embezzler/Trump Minion

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The competition is intense and the choice is always subjective, but everyone has their favorite Florida Man story. But this thing with super-Trumper Matt Gaetz and his tax collecting home boy is so spectacularly and so ludicrously Floridian it will soon eclipse a couple of my all-time favorites.

Until Gaetz I was fond of the tale told by a Florida Highway Patrolman who pulled over a Cadillac exceeding 100 mph on Alligator Alley, i.e. I-75 from Naples to Ft. Lauderdale. According to his report, upon stopping the vehicle he noted that the driver was both “intoxicated … and naked” and that the three women passengers were likewise, “intoxicated … and naked.” Florida: the Wisconsin of the South.

Perhaps better is the tale of the extremely Trumpy couple in a Tampa-area Medicare-related business. The dude was the company’s super salesman and the Mrs. was the receptionist for the small office. She was the cheery face of the company. Family values and other assertions of all-American patriotism and rectitude were standard parts of their conversations, along with lamenting the hell-on-earth sewer being propagated by liberals, socialists and pretty much anyone who didn’t genuflect to the godliness and glory of Donald Trump.

So it came as a bit of surprise to learn that the couple’s side-hustle was running a Mom and Pop porn site, featuring the Mrs. as the main attraction Pop as the cameraman/director and a half dozen of their buddies as the eager and willing props.

Hey! Free country! Drain the Swamp!

But come on, the steadily accumulating details about Gaetz and his buddy the Florida tax collector (a can’t-make-it-up filigree) are so sleazy, so shameless and so … so … Florida in all its humid corruption it would take your breath away if you weren’t laughing so hard. And the fact that no character in Congress had coiled himself tighter around Donald Trump’s cankles than Gaetz — to the point he was “dating” Trump’s daughter makes it more delicious than a sweaty trucker’s cap filled with deep-fried gator bites. (Apparently that relationship has cooled. Gaetz recently proposed to his latest girl friend while relaxing at Mar-A-Lago. The girl friend just happens to be the sister of the guy who invented the Oculus virtual reality head set, is worth $700 million and has been an unapolgetic Islamaphobe and alt-right Trumpist on social media.)

Here’s more on Greenberg. And still more.

If you haven’t paid full attention to this farce, not only is Gaetz under investigation for having sex with under-age girls, but his buddy, the tax collector, is now looking at … wait for it … 33 separate federal charges, including sex trafficking as well, mail fraud and embezzlement from his tax collecting job. (The latter may be part of every Florida government official’s job description, I’ll have to check that.)

Everything about Gaetz screams “rich, entitled asshole”, which explains why so many of his Republican colleagues seem happy to let him flail and rant to Fox News about “extortion” … while simultaneously rolling Tucker Carlson into his sewer and defaming a prominent Florida attorney (I say “prominent” not necessarily “respectable”) in the same berserko interview. .

But since I’m always interested in “Where do you get these guys?” I Googled around a bit for Gaetz’ old man, Don Gaetz, politely described in news stories about his um, troubled, off-spring as “a wealthy Florida businessman and prominent state politician.” And that is true, as far as it goes.

The good and wholesome part about the old guy, is that he was born in North Dakota and educated in the great evangelical tradition at Concordia College right over there in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Then he moved to Florida.

It was down there on the Redneck Riviera that he made his fortune in … wait for it again … the for-profit hospice business. A unique health service niche for which his company was eventually indicted for Medicare fraud — over-charging the government, charging for people with no need for hospice care, etc.. i.e. the usual Florida business model . The case was quietly settled out of court in the way that most well-capitalized fraud cases involving prominent politicians usually are.

Oh, and did I mention that old man Gaetz cashed out by selling his pricey, government-supported hospice business for close to a half-billion bucks to an Ohio firm best known as the parent company of … Roto-Rooter?

At death’s door? We’ll handle that and get that nasty grease glob out of your pipes!

Florida. For-profit hospice Medicare scams. Sex trafficking teenage girls. Embezzlement. Mail fraud. Defamation. Face-planted puckering into Donald Trump’s gold-leafed rump.

Even Carl Hiaasen hasn’t rolled all this into one character.

Impeachment Blahs?

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One thing I always try to keep in mind anytime there’s an issue or event requiring more than an hour of the public’s attention is: how high is the entertainment quotient here?

Take impeachment, where for all the headlines, all the indignation on cable news and all the chanting at rallies like the one I attended last night in downtown Duluth, (+2 degrees, but “Hey, hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go”), there doesn’t seem to be the same pitch of fervor that I remember back when ’70s-era Republicans were telling us every president did what Richard Nixon did, so get over it.

A lump of beautiful coal for you, Donnie boy. Duluth. Dec. 17.

Good public entertainment requires juicy dollops of suspense, excitement, hilarity or prurient appeal. Mix and match as you see fit.

But other than Trump’s Stephen Miller copy-edited letter to Nancy Pelosi, the antics of Rudy, Lev and Igor and the fools-at-court blithering of Doug Collins, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz and other House Republicans, hilarity is in pretty short supply with this impeachment drama.

Likewise any prurient appeal. Especially if like me you’re still trying to bleach your neurons of the image of Donny having his way with a porn queen.

There’s been too much inevitability about this episode to really grab and hold an American audience. Going way back, everyone familiar with Trump’s career as a fraudulent real estate buffoon (of the casino-bankrupting variety) knew he was such a reckless fool it was inevitable that sooner or later he’d screw the pooch so badly he’d get himself impeached. We’re just amazed it took this long.

But now we’re dealing with the House’s long inevitable vote to actually do the deed, and that’s rolled in with the very high expectation that Mitch McConnell will cook the Senate trial into a quickie nothingburger putting a “fully exonerated” Donald on the road to reelection against a creaky, bumbling Joe Biden.

As loathsome a national embarrassment as Trump is nothing galls me more than the fact that there has never been even an hour of reckoning for Mitch McConnell. You know the system is in shambles when he flat-out says things like he said to Sean Hannity last week, about how he, the jury foreman, is tightly coordinating his trial duties with the defendant, right before, during and after he takes that oath to be impartial … and there’s no legal downside.

There are various ideas being floated to force a series of votes on things like the witnesses (Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, John Boltobn) Mitch doesn’t want anywhere near the trial cameras.

There’s even an interesting idea whereby Pelosi and Adam Schiff don’t even formally send the articles of impeachment to McConnell to begin a trial. They do this on the grounds that (pick one) McConnell has disqualified himself by his public remarks to Hannity and/or the obvious fact that Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, is still running around try to get Scorsese-worthy Ukrainian wise guys to invent a tale or two about those Biden bastards. In case you’ve forgotten, that presidential attorney Rudy who is being paid by his “translators” Lev and Igor, the former of whose wife recently came in possession of a $1 million check from a Russian gangster.

Point being, the plots to pollute the next U.S. election and obstruct Congress are clearly still going on. So … instead of a sham trial led by a guy who has said he’s in the bag for the defendant, Pelosi and Schiff hang on to these articles and announce they’re contining the dozen or so inquiries slogging through the Trump-crippled U.S. court system.

Wait long enough and the SDNY may spit out its case against Rudy, Lev and Igor … and Principal #1. Or maybe … really maybe … in June the Trump-toady Supreme Court will go all Nixon on him and compel him to release his tax returns.

Whatever. As effective as the Democrats have been in telling the story of Trump’s Ukraine scandal, the Senate trial, hobbled and gelded by Moscow Mitch, is going to need several twists of plot to go boffo at the box office.