House Expels George Santos From Congress

My god. This deliciously tasty excerpt:

In various campaign biographies, a résumé and interviews, Mr. Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in New York City, where he was a volleyball star on a championship team. He boasted of working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and amassing personal wealth. He claimed to be descended from Holocaust refugees; that his mother was in the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks; and that he lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

None of those claims were true.

The real question is where tf were the journalists while Santos was running his campaign on these false claims?
Too busy playing horse race? Frantically trying to find something newsworthy about Hunter Biden's laptop? Credulously glorifying some billionaire's childish misconceptions?
Guess we'll never know.
- Well, he's a representative for New York, in a district for ~~New York City itself.~~ Long Island and "technically" a tiny bit of NYC. (I have been informed that his district is mostly Long Island)
  Let's break this down into two parts, okay?
  Local journalism is dead, dead, dead, dead dead. Especially in big places like New York City, where everyone assumes that the New York Times will be covering things. They didn't dig deep into Mayor Adams either, and that guy is under investigation now as well. They didn't question his former police credentials after decades of police misconduct. Beyond that the NYT is more of a national newspaper than an actual local paper. I'm sure there are plenty of small independent news sources in New York City, but I'm also sure they're mostly drowned out and ignored compared to how many people read something like the NYT.
  Corruption in New York City is literally, completely nothing new. Journalists have been failing to uncover unscrupulous activity for decades in this city. As I referenced mayor Adams above, this city filled with the rich, egotistical, and greedy, is a city built on the kind of lies George Santos peddles. How do I know? Because that city allowed Donald Trump to be a successful real estate developer using similar tactics. People have known he's corrupt since forever, but plenty of his corruption was just ignored until decades later. Same with Rudy Guiliani and so on.
  Now I'm not saying we should just give up. Local journalism is important to fight for, and NYC being a corrupt hell-hole isn't a permanent foregone conclusion. However, my point is that NYT employs far fewer reporters than you think to cover an entire country, and the dearth of real local news sources all over the country is contributing to these kind of people succeeding, because the local press is dead in the water and can't afford to send someone researching local corruption.
  Pay for your local news, is what I am saying, I guess, and things might marginally improve.
- I remember seeing articles about this stuff during his election. Republicans elected him anyway. That's where we are now
- Why are you blaming journalists and not the GOP for not vetting their own fucking candidate.
- The North Shore Leader, a small paper on Long Island, broke the scandal before the November election. By the time other outlets picked it up, Santos had been elected. Grant Lally joined Geoff Bennett to discuss.
  PBS News Hour - Small, local paper uncovered and reported George Santos scandal before November election, January 9, 2023
  Local media does need support.
- where tf were the journalists while Santos was running his campaign on these false claims?
  There aren't enough journalists to go around. There are hundreds of congresspeople and there definitely aren't hundreds of journalists covering random unimportant congresspeople.
  People have voted with their dollars, saying they don't care enough about vetting congresspeople before they're elected to actually pay the salaries of journalists to do that.
- Journalism as it used to exist has been absolutely gutted. There's no time for investigation, we need endless content pumped out at faster and faster rates. Who cares what's accurate as long as people click the link and give up that sweet, sweet ad revenue?
Well, go big or go home. I’m sure he met Jesus Christ personally and he knows where Excalibur is hidden.
- But can he find Jimmy Hoffa’s body?
There's a reason why there are so many memes about this guy:
- How dare you sully the name of Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein!

- Nah. They're on record saying it sets a bad precedent to expel a member before they are convicted. I can only imagine the awful shit they're hiding and are worried they could get expelled for.
- Power protects power
- George Santos is from tomato red Long Island. The seat is gonna stay red. Long Island was literally founded on racism (look up the history of Robert Moses)
It's not rocket science. The only publicly said reason it's never happened before is they want to respect the decision of their constituents. Unofficially, nobody wanted to see themselves on that chopping block.
From a political scientist game theory point of view it's possible that a majority faction of party A throws a minority faction of Party A on the chopping block and Party B obliges them because they think they can pick up those voters.
So yeah, a lot of resistance to actually unseating someone. For good and bad reasons.

I can't believe that they treated the first Congolese-American female PHD/Astronaut this way. Did she cure polio for nothing? You can't do enough for some people.

I thought he stormed Delaware Beach at Normandy while solving P=NP.

As with most things American the more likely explanation is we played ourselves
- At first, settlers had stuck to the edges of America, leaving the middle untouched, like a frozen pie in a microwave.
  But Americans back then weren't the humble, unassuming people they still aren't today.
  They believed in something called Manifest Destiny, the belief that all the land belonged to them and that God wanted them to go west and claim it back from the Native Americans he'd put there first by mistake.
  -Philomena Cunk from Cunk on Earth.
Absolutely nothing about this guy requires Russia to explain.
- In my mind, he's more a product of social media than any spy agency.
Nah he's a piece of shit from my neck of the woods, he more than likely saw what Trump was able to get away with and said "I live in prime Trump moron land, I can pull this off." So he lied about literally everything and almost got away with it lol I know 100 other people who would try the same thing.
Most of us long islanders are absolute garbage selfish greedy assholes lol
This dude was a straight russian psy-op right?
Well, he claims to be gay, but the rest is spot-on
A Russian agent would be more subtle.
- Which shade of Cheeto orange do you think he'd use? And how big are his hands and toupée?
I refuse to believe the KGB has that much of a sense of humor.
Hey everyone, so here's the deal with Santos aka Kitara Ravache: he's totally heading back to Brazil, probably to chill on a reality show. But the real game plan? He's gonna make bank selling some sketchy stuff and, get this, he's got a pretty good chance of landing a gig as a deputy back there

Wow it finally happened. Now I wonder if they'll take away his Grammy, 2 Oscar's, MTV Movie Award, Nickelodeon Teen Choice Award, and induction into the Grand Ole Opry.

Wasn't he also a winner of the Beijing Film Festival's coveted Crying Monkey Award?
He never said any of those things. He just didn't correct you when you said them.
- I’m glad he’s finally focusing more on being the Green Ranger.

Now convict him of his crimes so he doesn’t have any of the other perks of Congress.

Seven counts of Wire Fraud. He's donezo.
According to factcheck.org
Members of Congress are eligible for a pension at age 62 if they have completed at least five years of service.
He didn't last a year...

You can't just kick a Galactic Emperor out of Congress, WTF?

He's not our Lord zaphod beeble brox, he's one hoopy frood

So there's finally a line: "you must be this shit to get fired". I expect a lot of people toeing up to it.

Well yes and no.
The line was literally defrauding another republican and his mother.
He could have kept on being as shit as he wants to the out-group, just never turn on the in-group, that has always been the line.

We live in historic times. Sixth congressman ejected. First speaker voted out. I wonder what happened around all the other historic times?

I wonder what happened around all the other historic times?
You could learn all about it at your local library!
- For now.
The American Troubles: Part III

Which two Democrats voted against expulsion and which two voted Present?

According to NYT, Robert Scott of VA and Nikema Williams of GA voted No.
Al Green of TX and Jonathan Jackson of IL votes Present
Sheila Jackson Lee (TX), AOC (NY) and Dean Phillips (MN) have no vote recorded
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/01/us/politics/santos-expulsion-vote.html
- Overall vote tally:
  98% (206) of Democrats voted yes (to expell)
  1% (2) voted No
  1% (2) voted present
  49% (105) of Republicans voted to expel
  51% (112) of Republicans voted No
- I'm betting AOC is because they're both from NY and they're very close geographically. Definitely seems like a conflict of interest
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/01/us/politics/santos-expulsion-vote.html
[No]
Nikema Williams
Robert C. Scott
[Present]
Jonathan Jackson
Al Green
- Their no votes were because they wanted due process and judicial conviction before kicking him out.
  Nikema Williams' statement:
  “Unfortunately, George Santos won a free and fair election and elections have consequences. He also has not yet been convicted of a crime and the ethics investigation is ongoing. It would be dangerous to set the precedent of expelling a Member of Congress who has not been convicted of a crime. When and if Santos is convicted of these serious offenses an expulsion resolution would be more appropriate. Let’s be clear – we have current members who have been accused of even more egregious crimes while the Republican majority continues to look the other way.”
  Robert Scott's statement:
  “The Ethics Committee is charged with investigating alleged wrongdoing by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the past, I have been appointed to serve on multiple investigative subcommittees, and I can personally attest to the nonpartisan, rigorous and deliberative process conducted by the committee. In fact, the committee is expected to soon release findings and recommendations on the Santos matter. These resolutions were rushed to the floor outside of that deliberative process. In 2002, I voted to expel Rep. James Traficant but that was after he was found guilty in a court of law. Absent any report or recommendation from the committee, or a criminal conviction, these resolutions are premature. For the sake of the institution, we must stop the cheapening of the censure and expulsion processes for political expediency and get back to the process that we already have in place to appropriately deal with these matters.”