OT subject but worth a main-stream read- OT News Feeds...

nolaegghead

Not looking forward to the big fight in the house when the crazies that watch Russian propaganda friendly news try to stop the flow of American aid to the Ukrainians.  “We want to be like Hungary!” they say…

”but…but…that might lead to a strongman fascist takeover of Eastern Europe” normal people will counter.  (And then threaten Western Europe)

MAGAts (not fully grasping the implications)… “exactly!”

FML

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1605690797206011904?s=20&t=1fTdMLQFOyFm2d1878mzYw

Botch

JohnInCarolina said:

http://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1605690797206011904?s=20&t=1fTdMLQFOyFm2d1878mzYw

And he's still communicating lying, golfing, and throwing ketchup.    

JohnInCarolina

JohnInCarolina

From here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/volodymyr-zelensky-us-congress-address-ukraine/672546/

Worth your time.

lousubcap

^^^^ That is a very good read.  Thanks for the link.

lousubcap

Thursday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Washington yesterday.During his visit he made an impassioned speech before Congress, where he urged the U.S. to increase its military aid to Ukraine. He stressed that the aid provided by the U.S. wasn’t charity, but “an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.” Ken Thomas and Andrew Restuccia report for the Wall Street Journal. 

The Biden administration announced that it will provide an additional $1.85 bil in military aid to Ukraine. The package includes $1 bil in weapons and equipment from Pentagon stocks, including a Patriot battery - the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Ukraine so far. The remaining $850 mil will be provided through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and will be used, in part, to fund a satellite communication system. Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee report for AP. 

The U.S.’s decision to supply Ukraine with Patriot missile systems, will not contribute to settling the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said yesterday. Peskov, said there had been no signs of readiness for peace talks during Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington, and that this was evidence the U.S. was fighting a proxy war with Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” The Guardian reports. 

Russia’s ambassador to Washington said Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. “showed that neither the administration nor Zelenskyy are ready for peace.” According to a transcript of his comments released by the Russian embassy, Anatoly Antobov also criticized plans to provide Ukraine with Patriot missile systems, questioning whether they would be operated by U.S. or NATO specialists. The Washington Post reports. "

JohnInCarolina

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNvioVAqc_I

Just a remarkable speech in so many ways.  Worth your time if you haven't seen it yet.  

lousubcap

And a bit more suggested reading from Tom Nichols of The Atlantic:
"

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2022 ∙

Tom Nichols STAFF WRITER

The Ukrainian president came to Washington not only to seek aid in the fight against Russia but to remind Americans that there is still a “free world,” and only the United States can unite it.

A Call to Defend Freedom Volodymyr Zelensky addressing Congress in Washington, DC on December 21, 2022 (Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty) View in browser Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stood before Congress last night and asked for yet more help in his fight to stop Russia from erasing his country from the map. His visit to Washington was something of a surprise, but its purpose was clear. Zelensky is facing a terrible winter, when the Russians, after terrorizing and murdering Ukrainian civilians, may well try to return to offensive operations. He came to make his case to the American people that his fight is our fight—and that the money and weapons we have sent to Ukraine are being used responsibly. Zelensky’s address, however, was much more than a plea for assistance. The speech was brilliantly written, and the Ukrainian president delivered it in English with real emotion. He made an effort to speak both to U.S. political parties in the chamber and to the entire country watching at home. Most important, Zelensky issued a call, as the leader of a nation at war in Europe, for Americans to remember who we are, what we stand for, and why our destiny is inextricably bound to the eternal fight for freedom and democracy. Three moments stood out as inspiration and as lessons. In a brief allusion, Zelensky name-checked the Continental Army’s 1777 victory at the Battle of Saratoga, an excellent historical analogy for present-day Ukraine. If you’re a bit rusty on your Revolutionary War history, recall that the fledgling United States was trying to break away from one of the strongest empires on the planet, and Britain’s competitors had little interest in helping what seemed to be a doomed crusade by a bunch of colonists. At Saratoga, a British plan to divide the Colonies and thus isolate and strangle the troublemakers in New England failed, resulting instead in a stunning British defeat. At that point, the other major powers in Europe—including Britain’s avowed enemy, France—realized that the Americans could fight, and fight well. Four years after Saratoga, the British suffered a final defeat in North America at the hands of a combined French-and-American force at Yorktown. Next, Zelensky insisted that the world cannot do without American leadership. He invoked the concept that global security is indivisible, a principle that goes all the way back to the Helsinki Accords of the mid-1970s and that was reaffirmed in the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, signed by most European governments as well as the U.S. and Canada—and the then-soon-to-be-extinct Soviet Union. (Whoever wrote this speech didn’t just craft the language well; they did their homework.) “This battle,” Zelensky warned, “cannot be frozen or postponed.” He continued: It cannot be ignored, hoping that the ocean or something else will provide a protection. From the United States to China, from Europe to Latin America, and from Africa to Australia, the world is too interconnected and interdependent to allow someone to stay aside and at the same time to feel safe when such a battle continues. This almost sounds like a paean to globalization, but it is actually a restatement of America’s own Cold War foreign policy. (Indeed, Americans took this to an extreme in the 1950s when then–Secretary of State John Foster Dulles growled that neutrality in the Cold War was “immoral.”)  Despite being better-traveled and more aware of the rest of the world than previous generations, many Americans still think that what happens in faraway places will never touch them. The shock of 9/11 wore off long ago, and traditional American provincialism—along with its toxic by-product, isolationism—has been on the rise, especially in the Republican Party. Finally, Zelensky reminded us that national security abroad is intrinsic to our well-being at home: “Your well-being,” he said, “is the product of your national security; the result of your struggle for independence and your many victories.” Americans once instinctively understood this reality. After World War II, the United States helped build an international system based on laws, institutions, and trade, on the free movement of human beings and the free exchange of ideas. We did this imperfectly, and sometimes we cruelly violated our own principles. But this system of global cooperation outlasted the Cold War, and it is crucial to our own security and our ever-increasing standard of living. We have, however, become victims of our own successes. When the Cold War ended, we experienced a new era of peace and plenty. We outsourced anti-terrorist operations and other military dangers to overworked and over-deployed volunteers while the rest of us enjoyed low unemployment and ridiculously cheap credit. We could not imagine a world controlled by our enemies, because we had no real competitors. We were ill-prepared to grasp the reality of a major war raging on NATO’s borders. Zelensky knows what a world without American leadership looks like: It is a world, as my colleague Anne Applebaum wrote today, in which he and his family are dead, and the Russians are preparing their assault on Poland and the Baltic states. China, seeing Ukraine subjugated and NATO in disarray, might have moved against Taiwan; Iran would likely complete its dash to nuclear status; and every dictatorship on the planet would almost certainly think their day had finally arrived, while from “Washington to London, from Tokyo to Canberra, the democratic world would be grimly facing up to its obsolescence.” Anne’s depiction of what could have happened, and what could still happen if Russia rallies to defeat Ukraine, should be a bracing blast of cold reality to anyone who thinks that America can simply pull up the drawbridges and ignore the global assault on democracy. In the end, Zelensky made the case that Ukraine is the main front in a global fight. He’s right. Vladimir Putin is counting on America and NATO to tire and to falter. It is up to us to prove him wrong, and to warn the other dictators on the planet that they will never extinguish human liberty while America and its allies in this great battle—including Ukraine—are still standing.

lousubcap

Friday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has returned to Kyiv after visiting the U.S. and Poland. In a brief evening address yesterday, he expressed satisfaction with his landmark visit to Washington, insisting that it had heeded “good results” that “will really help” with Ukraine’s ongoing war effort. Andrew Higgins, Cora Engelbrecht, Andrew E. Kramer and David E. Sanger report for the New York Times. 

The Senate gave final passage to an amendment giving the U.S. government the authority to sell assets seized from Russian oligarchs to pay for rebuilding Ukraine. The amendment is part of a $1.7 tril spending package, which includes more than $44 bil in emergency aid to Ukraine, that is expected to be taken up by the House today. Carly Olson reports for the New York Times. 

The White House warned yesterday that North Korea had delivered supplies to the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary force with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, and North Korea’s foreign ministry both denied the accusation. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, also said that Prigozhin, was spending about $100 million a month deploying Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine. Zolan Kanno-Youngs reports for the New York Times. 

After 10 months of calling it a “special military operation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday called the situation in Ukraine a “war.” “Our goal is not to spin this flywheel of a military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said during a televised news conference following a government meeting yesterday. Mary Ilyushina reports for the Washington Post. "

JohnInCarolina

Doesn’t anyone from Russia know how to use a window?  Incredible how this keeps happening…

Gulfcoastguy

And they keep dropping their lit cigarette buts everywhere.

HeavyG

And this was probably just due to natural causes... probably.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/25/europe/russia-shipyard-director-death-intl/index.html

HeavyG

https://twitter.com/digby56/status/1607527035118956544

lousubcap

Tuesday Russia-Ukraine update:

• On Monday, a drone believed to be Ukrainian penetrated hundreds of kilometres through Russian airspace, causing a deadly explosion at the main base for Moscow’s strategic bombers in the latest attack to expose gaps in its air defences.
• Russia said it had shot down the drone causing it to crash at the Engels airbase, which houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bomber planes, where three service members were killed.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said power shortages were persisting, with nearly nine million people without electricity.
• Ukraine’s military said dozens of towns in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions had been shelled. In the Kherson region, Russian forces were shelling populated areas along the right bank of the Dnieper river, it said.

And a good article from the BBC here regarding how the war could go in 2023:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63987113?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d

lousubcap

Wednesday Russia-Ukraine update:

• The front line in eastern Ukraine remains little changed despite an increase in fighting, with neither side making any major advances, said Britain’s defence ministry and Ukraine military analysts.
• The fighting was particularly fierce around the strategic eastern city of Bakhmut in Donetsk province and Svatove, further north in Luhansk province, according to Britain’s defence ministry.
• In Bakhmut, home to 70,000 people before the war and now in ruins, Reuters reporters saw fires burning in a large residential building, while debris littered the streets and most buildings had their windows blown out.
• Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said in a YouTube video that fighting had intensified with Russia deploying armoured vehicles and tanks.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video message on Monday, called the situation along the eastern front line in Donbas “difficult and painful”.

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/GaryDelaney/status/1608075070106214400?s=20&t=H1q9FQubykNNJyW9NEWpiw

lousubcap

Thursday Russia-Ukraine update:

• Air raid sirens rang out across Ukraine as several regions Kyiv, were facing a Russian missile attack. Sounds of explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv, where the regional administration said air defense systems had been activated to fend off the ongoing missile attack.  Authorities in several regions said some Russian missiles have been downed.
• Russia has shelled more than 25 settlements around Kherson and Zaporizhia, causing civilian casualties and damaging civilian infrastructure in Kherson city and region, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
• Fighting was particularly intense around the strategic eastern city of Bakhmut in Donetsk province and Svatove, further north in Luhansk province, Britain’s defence ministry said.
• Kyiv-based military analyst Oleh Zhdanov noted that Kharkiv city and region have suffered heavy attacks, and a regional gas pipeline has been damaged.
• Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in a Telegram post that the city has come under attack twice, “presumably” from Iranian-made Shahed drones, five of which Ukraine’s eastern air command separately reported downing over the city of Dnipro.
• Ukrainian officials are calling on residents to evacuate from Kherson amid renewed Russian attacks on the southern city.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told parliament to remain united and praised Ukrainians for helping the West “find itself again”.
• The Kremlin rejected Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan, reiterating that proposals to end the conflict must accept Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions: Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south.
• Russia will not use Zelenskyy’s “peace formula” as a basis for negotiations and believes Kyiv is still not ready for real peace talks, Russia’s RIA news agency cited foreign minister Sergey Lavrov as saying, adding that Kyiv’s idea of driving Russia out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea with Western help was “an illusion”.
• Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, has called for further support for his country in fending off the Russian invasion, saying “peace does not fall from the sky. It has to be fought for.”

lousubcap

Friday Russia-Ukraine update:

• Shortly after 2am, Kyiv’s city government issued an alert on its Telegram channel calling on residents to proceed to shelters, as air raid sirens sounded. Olekskiy Kuleba, governor of Kyiv region, said an “attack by drones” was under way.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video address on Thursday night, said air commands in central, southern, eastern and western Ukraine repelled 54 Russian missiles and 11 drones. Officials had earlier said more than 120 missiles were fired during Thursday’s assault.
• More than 18 residential buildings and 10 critical infrastructure installations were destroyed in the latest attacks, the defence ministry said in a statement. Waves of Russian air raids in recent months targeting energy infrastructure have left millions without power and heating in often freezing temperatures.
• The Belarusian defence ministry said its air defences had downed a Ukrainian S-300 missile in a field, during one of Russia’s largest missile attacks against Ukraine since the start of the war."

lousubcap

This is worth 17 minutes of your time as this year opens up:

New Year greetings of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANaVkRxDPCI

Legume

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/12/ron-desantis-just-as-bad-as-donald-trump-2024

SamIAm2

@Legume - Thanks for the link. I stated back in September of 2022 that he always struck me as a bully. Glad someone else with a wider audience has noticed and commented about many of the things I as a Floridian have been saying here for a while. 

lousubcap

Tuesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Ukrainian forces used American-made rockets to kill dozens of Russian troops on Sunday. The strike by the HIMARS rockets killed 63 Russian soldiers in the illegally occupied city of Makiivka, in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said yesterday. Ukraine military officials put the number at “about 400.” However, even the lower Russian estimate would represent one of the worst Russian losses in a single episode in the war. Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Richard Pérez-Peña report for the New York Times. 

Moscow’s acknowledgment of Sunday’s attack has generated Russian criticism of the country's military command. Russian military bloggers have questioned why a large group of service members were apparently stationed in one location and criticized claims from Kremlin-backed officials that some soldiers were using their phones which allowed Ukrainian forces to locate them more easily. The Washington Post reports.

In his nightly address yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is planning a prolonged campaign of attacks with Iranian-made drones. 80 such drones have been shot down over Ukraine since the start of 2023, he added. Mariya Knight reports for CNN. "

lousubcap

Here's more-wpulda been posted up sooner but had to deal with some personal issues-
"It's day 314 of the Russian military's Ukraine invasion, which finds Vladimir Putin's occupying forces picking up the pieces after suffering one of their deadliest attacks yet late last week when explosions rocked a temporary barracks building on a college campus in the eastern Ukrainian city of Makiivka, in Donetsk. The barracks were established near an ammunition depot, which appeared to have caught fire after the strike. 

The explosions killed at least 63 soldiers, according to Moscow's defense ministry, which attributed the attack to the U.S.-made HIMARS long-range artillery system. The Associated Press obtained footage of cranes sifting through the rubble Tuesday in Makiivka. Aric Toler of Bellingcat published before and after satellite imagery from above the barracks (cloudy weather restricted what could be seen over several days) over on Twitter, here. 

As before, Russia spent much of the holiday break sending wave after wave of missile and drone strikes toward Ukraine's energy infrastructure. One such attack triggered a Ukrainian air defense missile, which eventually landed in neighboring Belarus; Reuters has more on that event, here. Nearly a dozen regions suffered significant damage from Russian strikes, as AP reported separately on Dec. 29."

Frictionless conduit here.

lousubcap

Wednesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"The “mass use” of cell phones by soldiers was the “main reason” for the New Year’s Day attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Makiivka, Russia’s Defense Ministry has said. Some Russian lawmakers and military bloggers have pushed back against the assignment of blame, calling it an attempt by the Russian military to fault the rank and file rather than their commanders. Victoria Kim reports for the New York Times. 

The Russian Defense Ministry has acknowledged that 89 Russian troops died in the Makiivka strike. Moscow had previously put the death toll at 63. The Guardian reports. 

Investigators have discovered an alleged Russian torture chamber in a village in the Mykolaiv region, Ukrainian authorities said yesterday. This adds to the more than 50 similar sites found in territory recaptured from Moscow’s forces. Andrea Kannapell reports for the New York Times. 

Ukraine wants the U.N. to send peacekeepers to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant even without a deal with Russia to establish a safety zone there, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear power company has said. This is the first time a Ukraine nuclear official has suggested publicly peacekeepers should be deployed in the absence of an agreement to create a safety zone at the plant. Timothy Gardner reports for Reuters."

lousubcap

There are some rich insights in the below from Tom Nichols and The Atlantic:
Worth a read if you are here-

Tom Nichols STAFF WRITER

If you think the crisis of American democracy is over, the circus in the House should remind you that a significant portion of the Republican Party has no interest in governing, policy, or democracy itself.

A Fatuous Rebellion Kevin McCarthy sits among colleagues casting their votes for Speaker of the House on January 03, 2023 (Win McNamee / Getty) View in browser Watching the messy filleting of Representative Kevin McCarthy’s career (and ego) over the past 24 hours has been undeniably entertaining, not least because the representative from California deserves it. McCarthy, a dull creature of the Beltway, tried to pander his way to power. Much like his lieutenant, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, he sold his soul to Donald Trump’s movement and expected loyalty in return. (Trump endorsed him for the job, but for a moment seemed to have second thoughts about backing a loser.) Ambition and opportunism are common among politicians, but McCarthy took it to new levels. He even sorted Trump’s favorite Starburst candies so that the “Toddler in Chief” could avoid the icky yellows and oranges. (I am not making this up.) Maybe Stefanik and other grovelers deserve such a comeuppance even more, but McCarthy has built up a serious karmic debt. He once preened as one of the self-appointed GOP “Young Guns,” the trio of conservative up-and-comers who were going to lead a practical and policy-oriented Republican Party to a governing majority. Reality quickly intervened: Cantor was turfed in a 2014 primary by a Tea Party flash in the pan named Dave Brat, who was defeated in 2018 by an actual centrist Democrat, Abigail Spanberger. Ryan suffered through two terms as speaker before boarding the John Boehner Emergency-Exit Pod and bailing out of politics. McCarthy stayed and made the compromises he thought he had to make, which is how he ended up sorting candy with his staff. As I said to my friend Charlie Sykes yesterday, if there is such a thing as Narcan for schadenfreude, I’ll need to keep it handy if McCarthy is actually defeated once and for all in his quest for the House’s top job. But McCarthy’s misery is secondary to the real story behind the hijinks of the Republican defectors tormenting their own leader. McCarthy and others have asked what the rebels want—but they do not understand that the rebels have no tangible goals. A significant part of the Republican Party, and especially its base, now lives in a post-policy world. Governing is nothing. The show is everything. As I was writing this, Representative Chip Roy of Texas proved that the play’s the thing by nominating Byron Donalds for the speakership. Who? Donalds is a 44-year-old Republican first elected to the House in 2020. I’m guessing Roy nominated him simply to counter the nomination of Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democratic caucus, with that of another Black legislator. Roy even made a cringe-inducing speech, complete with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote, about the wondrousness of two young Black men vying for the speakership. It’s great television, right? Unfortunately for McCarthy, it’s also great television to see the GOP leader lose his fourth vote for speaker, which he did in short order, with the same 20 votes for Jordan moving over to Donalds. The fifth and sixth defeats followed in quick succession. The inane Kabuki taking place around McCarthy’s job isn’t really about debt ceilings or abortion or Ukraine—or anything else. If you think Lauren Boebert or Matt Gaetz or Andy Biggs are possessed of deep thoughts about any of these issues, you have already made the same mistake that brought McCarthy to this impasse. Gaetz’s big idea in politics is that—according to a Trump aide’s testimony to the House Select Committee on January 6—he should be given a blanket pardon for things he swears he didn’t do. (Gaetz has denied asking for the pardon.) Biggs is the high-minded Cincinnatus who suggested that the January 6 riots could be blamed on the FBI; Boebert ran a gun-themed restaurant back in Colorado and often says things that lead to debates not over policy, but over whether she is the most ignorant person currently sitting in Congress. What all of these GOP members do seem to have in common is a shared belief that they should be in Congress in order to make other people miserable. Usually, those “other people” are Democrats and various people on the generic right-wing enemies list, but lately, the targets include the few remaining Republicans who think their job in Washington is to legislate and pass bills and other boring twaddle that has nothing to do with keeping the hometown folks in a lather, getting on television, and getting reelected. Note, by the way, that the conspiracy-minded Marjorie Taylor Greene—herself a perennial nominee for, shall we say, the least intellectually incisive member of Congress—is backing McCarthy. Indeed, Greene and Boebert are now in a political slap fight with each other. Both women are playing to the same base, but Boebert’s district is far less safe than Greene’s, and so, as Ed Kilgore wrote recently, “it makes sense for her to pick a fight with Greene, or with one of Greene’s famously batshit bits of commentary.” Greene, meanwhile, can aim for more power by backing McCarthy. This would also explain McCarthy’s support from Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who slyly went to the floor to argue for electing McCarthy and then watched as McCarthy failed yet again because 19 votes were cast for—wait for it—Jim Jordan. This is the best of all worlds for someone like Jordan, one of the most irresponsible members of Congress, who thinks his job as a legislator is to show up at hearings and Gish gallop the proceedings into chaos. He gets to support McCarthy and look like a team player, and then, no matter what happens, get the job he wants: chair of the House Judiciary Committee, where he likely intends to investigate Hunter Biden and impeach the president. The Republican rebellion is rooted in a giant inferiority complex: We know we’re not popular, we know a lot of people think we’re jerks, but we’ll show everyone that we can paralyze this country and its institutions using the machinery of government. Democracy, process, lawmaking, and governing? All of that is for saps; doing it is how you end up becoming Eric Cantor or Paul Ryan. The GOP rebels have every intention of staying in Washington and staying in power—even if “power” amounts to little more than sitting in the wreckage of the Capitol and keeping warm by burning the furniture. Win or lose, McCarthy never had a chance at being a true master of the House."

Gulfcoastguy

Well when you only have the House, and by a narrow majority all you can do is say no. In the British parliament once under similar circumstances a member of the minority party was asked about his party’s goals.  He responded “ We are the opposition party, by definition we oppose “.  For the next 2, 4 , or 6 years any laws passed would be those proposed by the Democratic Party. If the Republican House passes a law it will be without a single Democratic vote and it would die in the Senate.

lousubcap

Here's a path ahead-you've got 213 D's solidly against McCarthy.  You've got 20 R's solidly against McCarthy.  So, find a nominee who can swing 5 R votes and with 213 D's-you have a winner.  
Yep- not likely to happen but if you want another chance to move away from CHEETO-here's your opportunity.  

Gulfcoastguy

Those 20 want someone more anti democrat than McCarthy. They also really want to wait until the new members are seated on January 20th to vote.

HeavyG

Gulfcoastguy said:

Those 20 want someone more anti democrat than McCarthy. They also really want to wait until the new members are seated on January 20th to vote.

All Representatives (rookies and vets) get sworn and seated on January 3rd of each odd-numbered year. What do you mean by "new members" are seated on the 20th?