Today is Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Today the House of Representatives voted to refer a Democrat-led resolution to expel newbie Rep. George Santos whose tissue of lies committed before entering office would easily outdistance little Pinocchio’s wooden nose, even, to the House Ethics Committee, thus avoiding a voice vote on expelling the despicable guy in glasses. Thus these cowardly House repugnicans have decided to keep their bitch man in office, despite all of the evidence there to expel him for transgressions against the American people. He could have been expelled tonight from Congress, but that did not happen because of this vote. Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman called this maneuver tonight on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show a “complete copout.” Many of these cowards have actually come out to say that Santos should resign, but not one voted to expel him in a definitive fashion. This means that repugnicans want Santos to remain in power. This shameful move on the part of House repugnicans is covered in an online CNN article by Clare Foran, Kristin Wilson, Haley Talbot, and Lauren Fox entitled “House votes to refer resolution to expel Santos to Ethics Committee.”

This week California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia introduced a “privileged resolution” to expel Santos from Congress, which many of his poor constituents actually endorse. “A vote to expel Santos would be politically perilous for House Republicans,” as the article mentions. This is so because repugnicans control only a narrow majority and cannot afford to lose more than a handful of votes to pass legislation. The party also wants to keep Santos’s seat, a key New York swing district.

The move to refer the resolution, which required a simple majority to succeed, passed on a party-line vote of 221-201-7. Seven members voted “present” in the final tally.

Thus with today’s maneuver, Democrats did not get their wish: the expulsion from Congress of the bespectacled representative.

Now the fate of the lying representative is in the hands of this House Ethics Committee, but if you can believe another liar, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is a craven politician, the Committee will supposedly move rapidly on its investigation of Santos, according to McCarthy himself. Dan Goldman disputed McCarthy’s stated alacrity in the case, saying that McCarthy and his committee would actually wait until the Department of Justice’s probe into Santos takes full bloom. McCarthy is on record, though, saying he doesn’t want to wait to see what the DOJ does in the case of Santos, indicating instead, that “I want our Ethics Committee to do their job.” Yeah, who expects this sniveling toady to the former president to do the right thing and conduct an extensive investigation into the representative’s abysmal record of alleged malfeasance? I certainly don’t. I expect that McCarthy and his toadies will just extend the deadline for coming to any conclusion about little George Santos before his term will actually expire.

Recently, Santos was indicted and pleaded not guilty to 13 federal charges, including allegations of fraud related to COVID-19 unemployment benefits, misusing campaign funds, and lying about his personal finances on House disclosure reports.

After his arraignment, the brazen new House member blasted the indictment as a “witch hunt,” mimicking his Golden Idol’s phraseology and said he will “fight my battle.” He still says he will not resign from his seat and that he plans to seek reelection next year. What shamelessness, I would say. This guy definitely has a lot of chutzpah, given his supposed “Jewish-ish” roots.

So as of today, we are still unfortunately not rid of this fraud in Congress. Thank the Republicans for that!

By the way, I learned that this date, May 17, 2023, marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate hearings in this country. As a paean to this anniversary, HBO has a great miniseries called White House Plumbers which documents the events leading up to the break-in of the Watergate complex housing the Democratic National Committee office, where a group of ragtag operatives launched the eventual downfall of an American president, in this case Richard M. Nixon. The series chronicles the actions of two Nixon operatives, E. Howard Hunt, here played by a stalwart Woody Harrelson and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent who enjoys playing Hitler marches in front of his guests invited to his house. Since returning home yesterday, I’ve watched only one episode thus far.

Anyway, it’s getting late here. I’ll just say that today I did take our car to drive – egad! – to Metropolitan Avenue to buy three comic books waiting for me and stayed around with Elliot before going to dinner at London Lennie’s for a sort of celebratory repast heralding our return home. Needless to say, I did all of the driving. I gave poor Elliot a break today.

Stay safe and be well.

Here is the majestic landscape of Yellowstone National Park again.

This is Old Faithful in Yellowstone. This is the geyser that erupts at certain times in the park. We missed the earlier eruption to wait for another one with dozens of viewers to the daily spectacle.

More of Old Faithful.

Can you identify the four presidents on Mt. Rushmore? Doesn’t it look as if some of them are actually crying here? If you think so, why do you think they are crying?

Here we are again at Gutzon Borglum’s massive sculpture of the four former presidents. The memorial, I learned, took 14 years to complete, as the architect of the memorial died in March 1941. On October 31, 1941, Mount Rushmore National Park was declared a completed project.