Politicians aren't stupid; they think you're stupid
Democratic Congressman commits felony on tape to delay the official business of the Congress of the United States
The real news story is that Congress has kicked the can down the road on the debt-ceiling, once again, by passing a continuing resolution good through November, and that the leadership of both parties remain committed to throwing American taxpayer dollars down the drain to fund Ukraine in their war against Russia.
However, the fun news story is that of Representative Jamaal Bowman pulling a fire alarm to delay the House of Representatives voting on the continuing resolution introduced by Republicans so that Democrats would have more time to read the bill. Bowman claims that he did pull the fire alarm, and did so intentionally, but that he thought that pulling the fire alarm would open the set of doors that you can see behind him in the image at the top of this post.
I’ve seen some claims that state that those doors are usually open during the week, when Congress is typically in session, but on weekends, such as yesterday when the vote occurred, they are kept shut and used only for emergencies. I don’t know how accurate that claim is, but it’s not really the point. Bowman’s fellow representative Thomas Massie has an interesting insight into these doors:
The point: Where and when has it ever been the case that a clearly labeled fire alarm has ever been the means to open any set of doors in the United States? Everyone, except for the youngest of children, knows that pulling a fire alarm results in, you guessed it, an alarm going off and an evacuation of the building where the alarm was pulled. There isn’t an adult in their right mind in the United States who believes that pulling a fire alarm opens a set of doors, and that includes Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
Bowman, hilariously, in my frankest opinion, pulled the fire alarm to cause a delay in the vote, which his political party was actively and openly attempting to delay at the time. Here’s a tweet from Rep. AOC about why they were trying to delay the vote:
The problem is that pulling a fire alarm under false pretenses is itself a felony in most jurisdictions, and delaying the business of Congress, which the prosecution of January 6th rioters makes clear, is punishable by spending decades locked in prison. And if, as Rep. Bowman himself has stated, “No one in this country is above the law,” then Representative Bowman should be prosecuted swiftly and mercilessly. But we know that plenty of people are above the law, don’t we? No, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be above the law, and his much-less-wealthy supporters certainly aren’t above the law. But establishment politicians in good-standing with the ruling regime? They’re always above the law, aren’t they? The corporate media is already providing cover for Bowman regurgitating his and his staff’s official statements on the matter as if they’re settled fact, and within a week this will go down the memory-hole and anyone who dares to bring it up will be a racist and possibly an insurrectionist trying to subvert democracy.
But the reality remains that Jamaal Bowman did not believe that pulling a fire alarm would open a set of doors; he just wants you to believe that. No, that’s not even right. Bowman doesn’t care if you believe that he pulled the fire alarm to open a set of doors so that he could get to an urgent vote in the House; he just wants you to parrot it regardless of whether you believe it, or to know that you’re powerless to do anything about it.