Quick take: Kevin McCarthy, George Santos and liars

 I have not commented on the ongoing comedy of Tommy Flanagan Emperor Supreme George Santos because I have no insight.  He is Trump without the bravado to gaslight you and berate you after you catch him.  Rather, I turn briefly to the observation that the party of Trump, and its desperate-to-be leader in the House will run screaming in terror-- screaming on the inside, and never uttering a sound on the outside-- to avoid commenting publicly on Pope George I.  Generally speaking, one should not be surprised that the party of Trump is OK with someone trying to out-lie the lying-est liar who ever lied a lie.  I mean, if they had a problem with lies, can anyone thing of anything that would have played out differently over the last batch-o-years?  No?  Me neither.

Anyway, my observation this morning is different.  Instead, it is the observation that Kevin McCarthy's hopes and dreams depend entirely on lying.  Here is what I mean.  Five-plus House Republicans have stated that they will never, under any circumstances, vote for Kev' for Speaker.  Yet an even larger group of, well, not exactly "moderates," but just not full QAnon'ers, have signed a letter stating that they will only vote for Kev'.

Huh?  Here's what that letter means.  The Speakership contest is a majority vote, rather than a plurality vote.  If all Dems vote for Hakeem Jeffries, and the GOP splits between Kev' and, say, Andy Biggs, and Kev' only gets 217, the contest goes to a second ballot, and it will keep going until someone gets 218.

Kev' doesn't get the gavel unless some of the insurrectionist caucus is lying.

But actually, it's crazier than that.  Nobody gets the gavel unless someone is lying.  If the Biggs faction and the letter-writers are all telling the truth, then it is mathematically impossible to construct a majority coalition.

In voting terms, there's nothing special about that.  That happens all the time, both in theory and in practice.  The problem is that the House kinda needs a Speaker to function.  Not that the House will function for the next two years anyway.  Kev' is a fool, and a Trump bootlicker, while any alternative would be somewhere between crazily incompetent and psychopathically competent, the latter of which would be only marginally relevant, being checked by the Senate and President, but still.

I return, then, to Generalissimo Santos.  Kev' only gets his gavel if Republicans are liars.  Why tolerate lying?  He needs that caucus to be a bunch of fuckin' liars.

And because it's Friday, here's some jazz.  The best ever.  John Coltrane, "The Promise," from Live at Birdland.