Republicans wasting time and money on nothing burgers

Echo editorial published in the Las Vegas Nevada Sun newspaper:

House Republicans have no qualms about wasting their time and our money in pursuit of revenge❗

So let me get this right? 

• Ukraine is on the verge of collapse. 
• Israel is fighting a battle against terrorists using civilians as shields. 
• China, Venezuela, Turkey and North Korea are all saber rattling.

Domestically, critical shortages of highly trained workers continue to plague our schools, hospitals, nursing homes, daycare centers, construction sites, manufacturing plants, small businesses and more. Children and families are going hungry after pandemic-era programs that lifted millions out of poverty abruptly expired, with no plan for how to help the Americans who benefited from them. And a humanitarian crisis on the U.S. southern border is taking the lives of countless children and families that are simply looking for a better life.

Yet, the GOP-led House of Representatives has done exactly nothing to tackle any of these issues.

A lack of productivity seems to define the current House more than almost any other attribute, beyond perhaps a lack of empathy and a fabulist’s enthusiasm for made-up issues.

After almost 12 months in power, House Republicans will leave Washington, D.C. today for their winter recess having accomplished little more than fighting amongst themselves over who their leader would be and taking the nation dangerously close to a government shutdown and debt default.

Despite their mind-boggling inability to agree to anything other than political vandalism, House Republicans did manage to rally together and unite behind a single proposal this week: launching an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. This (useless effort😕) despite presenting no evidence 😬of the constitutionally required “high crimes or misdemeanors” committed by the president. None.

Just hours after voting to support the impeachment inquiry, Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, even openly admitted that he hasn’t seen any evidence to support Biden’s impeachment.

“The process has been abused,” Joyce said in an interview on NewsNation’s “Dan Abrams Live.” He went on to describe how the impeachment process should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances in which elected officials have lost the capacity to govern or people such as former Rep. George Santos of New York, who are facing a substantial body of evidence suggesting they committed a crime while in office or to obtain office. “I don’t see that yet,” Joyce admitted, before nonsensically explaining that he voted to open the impeachment inquiry so that the investigation could begin.

In other words, after months of investigations by the GOP-led House Oversight Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Ways and Means Committee, and years of investigations by the Justice Department, Joyce voted to launch an impeachment inquiry of the president of the United States so that he could start investigating❓😟😞😠

Impeaching a president should not in any way resemble a game of Mad Libs in which feckless Republicans make up the charges and evidence as they go.

Of course, we do have some idea of the charges the GOP is likely to gin up. They’ve spent years trying to implicate Biden in his son Hunter’s troubling history of substance abuse and foreign lobbying shenanigans.

Even the Fox News’ White House correspondent, Peter Doocy, acknowledged this week that, “The House Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business.”

For that matter, they’ve barely been able to implicate Hunter Biden in illegal overseas transactions. Even after Hunter gifted his father’s political opponents with an abandoned laptop filled with salacious images and details of the younger Biden’s troubling life, the most significant criminal charges the Justice Department could muster against him were related to the unlawful purchase and possession of a gun while he was using drugs.

Yet the lack of evidence didn’t stop Republicans in the House, including Nevada’s own Mark Amodei, from formally opening an impeachment inquiry.

Newly elected Speaker and Trump acolyte Mike Johnson, R-La., has said the formal inquiry is necessary to enforce subpoenas and compel witnesses to appear. But the American people know the absurdity of that argument after watching numerous Republican legislators, including Rep. Jim Jordan (#GymJimJordan!) of Ohio, the current chairman of the House Judiciary committee, defy subpoenas from the House committee that investigated  January 6th  attack on the Capitol.

Still, after spending an entire year of doing nothing but investigate Biden and finally building the unified coalition necessary to formally launch an inquiry, it’s hard to imagine right-wing extremists accepting anything less than articles of impeachment.

Moreover, their false idol, Donald Trump, already warned them months ago via social media to “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION.”

If the House GOP does impeach, it will force its counterparts in the Senate to also waste time and taxpayer dollars conducting a trial. Which is ultimately the point of this entire three-ring circus: weaken Biden by forcing an impeachment trial during an election year; create a counterbalance to the numerous criminal trials facing Trump.

Never mind the two ongoing wars involving U.S. allies, the growing threat of China, the ongoing crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border or the many challenges and struggles facing everyday Americans. House Republicans couldn’t care less about doing the hard work of governing the nation. All they care about is owning the libs and praising their idol.

It’s shameful❗ 

But more importantly, it’s also dangerous. It’s dangerous to the institutions of democracy, dangerous to the economy that sits at the heart of American exceptionalism and influence around the world, and dangerous to our allies, who are fighting for their lives while waiting for us to get our house in order.

Republican nothing burger!