The House Republican Menagerie gathered behind closed doors today and apparently with a bare minimum of opposition chose Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy to be the new majority leader, their No. 2 guy to Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner, then chose LA Rep. Steve Scalise to fill McCarthy's spot."All we ask of this President is that he do one thing: settle a religious conflict that has been going on for a millennium and a half. What did he offer today? Nothing."-- Senate Minority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell,as quoted by The Borowitz Reportby KenI know I should be writing about the usual degenerate Village life forms, like for example the Simian-American House Republicans' elevation of a new majority leader, or one of the other animal acts I normally write about. (I'm still trying to track down results of the Governors Island baby-goat-naming festivities that were supposed to reach resolution last week.) But I've been forced to push up by a day the onset of ruminations about my second-longest-serving friend (after Howie) undergoing a procedure that, while not as far as I know seriously life-threatening (though I don't suppose there's an element of "anything goes" when they're mucking around with a person's spine), is promised to be seriously painful and to involve long and difficult recovery and rehab.I haven't even been able to talk to him much recently, since talking on the phone for him involves getting up to walk to a phone and then standing, and right now the problem is that getting up and walking and standing are inordinately painful for him. How it happens that this phone-answering and -talking routine exists in a house with roughly a million phones (I've never actually counted, so that's just a seat-of-my-pants guestimate) -- well, that information is above my pay grade.The day's up-scheduling came about, as I just discovered, as a result of the need to do another procedure in anticipation of the main event, for which it turns out he needed to be at the hospital at crack of dawn today, and it seems likely they'll just admit him. Which makes sense, since it's not a short trip, and it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for him to return home today only to retrace his steps tomorrow. Still, I've had tomorrow's date imprinted in my brain, and was pleased with myself for remembering to call this morning -- only to find that, albeit unknowingly, I've already blown the schedule.Not that the phone call would have made any difference, except that I would have felt a little better, and maybe he would have too, though considering what he's facing, it's hard to see how it might have made him feel enough better to make a difference. I mean, when they tell you ahead of time that it's going to be very painful and that the recovery is going to be long and hard, just how bad do you suppose it's going to be? I'm thinking plenty bad. You just hope that coming out the other end he's going to get some relief from the agony he's been enduring.Which I hope explains why I'm not much in the mood for yammering about Village life forms today, even with the near-instantaneous arrival of my Amazon Gold Box Deal of nine (count 'em) Marilyn Monroe films on Blu-ray. (C'mon, Some Like It Hot, The Seven-Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes -- this is hot stuff!) Though if I were visiting the Village menagerie, I probably couldn't think of a much better starting point than this exclusive from the breaking-news-breaking Borowitz Report, to complement Howie's 2pm PT post, "Iraq -- A Religious Civil War That Started In 680."
June 18, 2014PRESSURE ON OBAMA TO QUICKLY RESOLVE CENTURIES-OLD SUNNI-SHIITE CONFLICTPosted by ANDY BOROWITZWASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Congressional leaders left the White House on Wednesday “deeply frustrated” that President Obama had not found a swift resolution to the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites that began in the seventh century A.D.After meeting for more than an hour with the President in the Oval Office, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed disappointment that Mr. Obama “came up empty” when asked for a plan to heal the rift between the two religious groups, which began in the year 632.“All we ask of this President is that he do one thing: settle a religious conflict that has been going on for a millennium and a half,” McConnell said. “What did he offer today? Nothing.”Speaker of the House John Boehner acknowledged that there was a possibility that Obama might find a way to resolve the centuries-old Sunni-Shiite conflict, but the Ohio Republican was not optimistic.“This struggle between Sunnis and Shiites has been going on for almost fifteen hundred years,” he said. “That means President Obama has had ample time to fix it.”
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