Nursing a cup of coffee, Greg Forbes sighed as he looked over the stack of papers before him. He hated these “informal” meetings. These little catch-ups, where nothing was formally minuted or decided but all the actual decisions were taken, infuriated him. Decades in the job, and he still disdained what they represented and what they said about declining norms of propriety and decency, still was as clueless as ever about how he was meant to handle the ethics or etiquette of them.
Greg had been trying, in large part at Grady’s insistence, to punt SOTF responsibility away from his committee. What he couldn’t shake were the responsibilities that came from being on the GOP Policy Committee, so here he was, meeting with the informal House Republican response team. There was a public response team, one with a bit more gender diversity and a freshman with a Portuguese surname to pretend like they had ethnic diversity, but this was the Speaker’s brain trust. Where the decisions would get made. Greg didn’t want to be on it, but the way he saw it, it was the best way to make sure that he didn’t have to deal with it any longer than necessary.
Dirk Kernell was already there. Because of course he was. The meeting space was Dirk’s office. The moment the Speaker had found out the acoustics in Dirk’s office were perfect for small conference meetings, Dirk hadn’t had a moment of solitude since. He accepted it, though. Dirk was a good footsoldier. Greg liked Dirk. He just sat there, quietly, looking over his own notes, sharing Greg’s philosophy of using meetings he didn’t want to attend as a chance to get to emails and reports that he otherwise wouldn’t have time to get to.
Their silence was broken soon enough. “Little piggies, little piggies, let me come in.” Greg flared his nostrils in frustration before looking up at the new arrival, head popping out from behind the door.
Michael Bromley. Urgh.
“I won’t hurt the hairs on your chinny chin chins.” Michael was saying it all with an obnoxious accent. As to what accent, Greg didn’t know. Generic foreign. He entered the room, making himself at home by dumping his bag and his coat in the corner of the room, scraping a seat along the floor until it was in the centre of the room.
“You have that CRS report, Greggles?” Michael continued, now speaking in his normal accent, which was even more grating to Greg’s ears. Some dumb valleyspeak abomination. Greg threw a quick glance at Dirk - hoping against hope that a sympathetic look of understanding would be permeating through his stoic expression - before reaching into his bag and pulling out a printed copy of the CRS’s latest report on policy responses to SOTF. Michael snatched it and quickly flicked through the pages. What would be achieved by flicking through the pages, Greg had no idea. It wasn’t like there were pictures or pretty illustrations or anything.
“Surprised you got my email,” Michael chuckled. “Or did you have your staff transcribe it for you on papyrus or parchment or...stone tablets. Heh.” Michael did this annoying thing where a normal sentence would sound like a question and a question would sound like a sentence. He also did this annoying thing where every time he saw Greg, he made a joke about the latter’s disdain for emails.
Greg was an old-fashioned guy, at the end of the day. Up until...2016, he’d managed to run a “no-unnecessary emails” policy at work. Even that was a step back from his initial attempt to have a “no-emails” policy. It’d fallen apart. So many of Greg’s people had left when Canon came in, and he was left with the detritus, the intellectual flotsam of the conservative movement. But Michael? Michael was the intellectual jetsam of the movement, brought back only because he liked to pretend he wasn’t old-fashioned. He surfed and played guitar and talked about shit like bitcoin and SpaceX and so on, but he was older than Greg.
“Ha. Ha,” came Greg’s response, and he looked down at his stack of papers. More detailed, more comprehensive, than just some dumb publicly available CRS report.
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to say, Greg, but I think you guys really need to do hearings into California preparedness,” Michael continued, and Greg felt his forehead fall onto his palm as a headache came on.
“I guess we should all make sure we’re familiar with where we are now with SOTF policy before we get into details,” Dirk interjected. Maybe Greg was reading too much into it, but he liked to imagine that interruption was intended in part to spare Greg from further interactions with Dirk.
“You got it, Dirk,” Michael said. His tone was annoying. Like that simple statement was a quip. Like every syllable was laden with wit and irony.
Saul Enright arrived next. The heavyset Pennsylvanian gave everyone the customary handshakes, did all the routine small talk, business charm that Greg had become numb to. He couldn’t remember what Saul said. Couldn’t remember what vague pleasantries Greg had uttered in return. Just couldn’t shake how his fingers felt like greasy overly tenderised sausages, feeling larger and heavier than they actually looked.
Greg didn’t like Saul, so he blocked out all of Saul’s comments about how his daughter was getting into obnoxious poetry or how hilarious it was that one of his interns was getting into wacky conspiracy theories. Greg had made the mistake of listening to Saul’s ramblings once, and came away knowing way too much about how the view from his son’s therapist’s office had been ruined by a shipwreck.
Now, Saul was a good guy. Honest, decent, a man of faith who loved his country and valued every life. Was important to keep that in mind in his dealings with him. He just...wasn’t politician material. He was the sort of guy who got his news from TV sets left on in gas stations and convenience stores, who got angry about the woke brigade wanting to spite hardworking and decent folks, wanted to be left to run his business in peace, who had just enough wealth and political acumen to win a congressional primary in a safe seat that he ran for largely on a whim. Not that Greg could say any of that out loud, no. ‘Not being a politician’ was inexplicably something people wanted from politicians. It wasn’t becoming for him to criticise that.
What he would admit was to a modicum of professional jealousy. Saul was a freshman, yet his committee assignments and staff hires had been far superior to what Greg had been able to garner back when he’d entered office. Greg was a serious politician, but the party had struck him off as an accidental incumbent, one who’d lose his seat in the next difficult midterm and allow a more favoured and less socially charged activist to run for his seat the election after. That was back in the eighties. Greg normally didn’t feel much resentment over that - let bygones be bygones and all that - but he couldn’t resist that involuntary and nauseating pang of envy when he saw someone like Saul given all the accoutrements of safe seat incumbency right out of the gate.
“So, what’s on the agenda?” Saul asked, dropping his body into the seat. It was rare that his voice adopted the cadence of a question. Rare enough that Greg actually looked up.
Michael jumped at the opportunity to talk. “Yeah, I think we can get started. So, what I’m thinking is we encourage schools to-”
“We’re still waiting for Josh,” Dirk cut him off.
“What’s the point of an informal meeting if everyone needs to be in the room before we begin?” Saul grumbled, addressing Dirk rather than Michael. “We all know what this is about, we all know why we’re here, why bother-”
And Michael took Saul’s grumbling as another excuse to ramble. “Exactly, I think it’s good to have a sort of free-flowing exchange of ideas, take a spin on the ideas carousel, so I’d like to focus on both the school districts and the unique needs we have in high-priority targets like Orange County-”
“Oh yes, because Buttfuck, Arizona was high up on a priority list,” Saul snapped.
“Well, Washington DC so clearly was,” Michael sarcastically quipped, looking at Dirk and Greg as if expecting them to join in his eyerolling.
“Oh, so you’re worried they’re just gonna yoink kids away from Disney World?” Saul shot back.
“Disneyland, actually, Disney World is not my problem,” Michael continued. “I also have had some ideas sent to my office from some good conservative think tanks-”
“We all got those emails.”
“Me and my team have been through them methodically-”
“Oh, did you look at the contents page?”
It sounded like five men were talking at once, but in the end it was just Saul and Michael. That was Greg’s favourite thing about Saul. He hated Michael. Why, Greg did not know. But the moment Michael started talking, trying to pretend he was some policy whiz, Saul just sat there all red faced and shouty. Saul was useless at policy, but he didn’t pretend otherwise. He seemed to have no patience with those that did.
The Kitchen Cabinet
A meeting of Republican Congressmen - part of the Crucial Hamilton County memes
-
General Goose
- Posts: 731
- Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 4:02 pm
-
General Goose
- Posts: 731
- Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 4:02 pm
“Knock knock.” The fifth member of the team, Josh Chipman, stood at the door. He was the guy that the Speaker had made the head of the “public” response team. “Did I miss anything? Well, anything that I couldn’t have heard in the hallway?” Closing the door behind him, Josh sat on a chair by the wall, and sat down, smiling. Josh was equally unqualified, but at least Greg understood the reason why he was there. He was the party’s man for taking on the Senate Witch in Missouri. He was charismatic, young, handsome. The latter two admittedly only by politician standards, but still.
“Okay, so, we’re all here,” Dirk said, finally deciding the time was now appropriate to get the meeting rolling. “So before the inaugural meeting of the group that Josh here is chairing, the Speaker wants us to brainstorm, casually, some ideas for flagship Republican policies we can have on this. So, let’s…” He paused, trying to think of a speaking order that would not allow the loudest voices to dominate the conversation. That’s what Greg suspected, at least. “In order of seniority. Descending. From the most senior downwards. Let's go around the group, one idea at a time, until we're back to where we started, okay?”
That meant Greg was first. Good. “My priority is that...Homeland Security has done all it can on the matter. We have drained our well of institutional knowledge at that committee. Now what I want, and what I think is of the utmost importance, is to move it somewhere good. I think a special committee, a la Benghazi, is a good idea, but it needs to have its work supplemented by a regular standing committee.”
He leaned back in his seat. “Now, what committee? I don’t think we should split up the jurisdiction or go for any BS intersectional nonsense, I don’t think that approach from the Democrats is worth the time of day, and quite frankly Health and Education haven’t got the instincts needed to grapple with a tough issue such as this. I think Oversight is too politicised, can’t trust Democrats with that. I don’t think Foreign Affairs can handle it either.” Unspoken was that Greg thought the chairman of said committee, Adam Simpson, had for years been looking for an excuse to exponentially grow his committee’s jurisdiction. Greg didn’t trust him with that. Too transactional, too hardnosed, for Greg’s liking. He knew the others shared a negative view on Simpson. Michael, for one, was a Russophile who hated Adam’s hawkish inclinations. Adam Simpson was not a popular man in that room. For different, incompatible reasons for each person, sure, but it was perhaps an acceptable shortcut to make use of that inadvertent coinciding of interests for now.
“Now, that leaves Judiciary…”
“The Speaker doesn’t want it in Judiciary,” Dirk cut in.
Greg didn’t let it interrupt his flow. “Or Intelligence. I say Intelligence.” Saul theatrically slapped his forehead like it was the most obvious suggestion in the world. “I know that’s not a policy suggestion per se, but I think a big coordinated announcement can really get the ball rolling.”
“Undercut the Democrats on this, great idea,” Josh chipped in. “They don’t want it to go to Intelligence, they want that committee clear for their witchhunts, but they can’t exactly argue against it going to Intelligence and then Intelligence taking the lead on creating a bespoke select committee. I mean, just an inadvertent side advantage of Greg’s approach. Obviously we’re not making the decision based on partisan gain.”
"We can do some good stuff with it in Intelligence," Michael muttered as an aside. "I'm in line for the top Republican post on the Counterterrorism subcommittee, so I'd relish the chance to help shepherd oversight through."
"Alright," Dirk continued, scribbling down some notes on what Greg had discussed. "Next in order of seniority is-"
Michael didn't wait for Dirk to finish before jumping in. "So, one issue really of concern to me and my people is the need to provide more funding for school security. There's a really severe shortage of proper resources for the most at risk schools, and I think right now there's a really unjust lack of coordination at both state and federal level. So, what I propose is we take a lot of the current block grants to schools and create a new school security funding mechanism to guard against this terrorist threat - as is the proper domain of the federal government. So based on criteria such as how much of the student body goes on such field trips, the security costs entailed by the trips they go on, how likely they are to be attacked based on metrics such as school size and the damage done to American morale by an attack on it."
Noticeably Michael was leafing through a lot of papers, a lot of notes, a lot of reports. Not to say that he didn't understand the concept or grasp its implications, but he wasn't an ideas man. He wasn't the originator of this idea. He was a conduit, to put it bluntly. But he'd done some research, showed some initiative, which was to be commended. For his part Greg wasn't sold on it. Yes, it was a big ticket thing that would get the headlines and show initiative, but so much of its desirability depended on the details. Could be benign and pragmatic, could be social engineering. All depended on the details.
"Certainly interesting," came Dirk's commentary as he made his own notes. Greg couldn't tell if they were positive or not.
Saul, meanwhile, was leaning back against the wall, an eyebrow raised, but the gesture did not catch Michael's attention. Josh did notice Saul's trepidation, but that didn't stop him from launching into his own messaging spiel. "I like the messaging inherent within it. The government's chief role in education, in the current climate, is to handle those security threats the states are unable to address themselves. That's a strong conservative message."
"I'd need to see the details," Greg added after a moment's silence, once it became clear Saul was just sitting on whatever objection he had.
"Yeah, Michael, make sure to send some stuff out, like a memo or something," Dirk added. "Anyway, my idea's simple. We use this as an opportunity to promote homeschooling. Make it the new normal. Simple idea, but we can go through from there." He wrote his own idea down. "So, who's next?"
Greg preemptively rolled his eyes as Josh jumped to his feet and walked to by the window. "So, we need to think outside the box. We need to look at what works. We need to think about how best to prepare our kids for the tragic yet tiny possibility that they end up kidnapped."
Michael sat up. Saul looked down at the floor. Dirk did nothing.
Josh continued. "I visited a school in my district. They were doing a live shooter drill. A non-intrusive, rights compliant, life saving intervention. You're all smart guys. You can see where I'm going with this. I'm thinking I make it a key policy plank of my campaign and-"
"Sorry," Greg cut him off. Greg wasn't just going to let this chaotically stupid idea go by unvocalised. No, Greg wanted to make Josh own his stupidity. "I must be fucking dumb, because I don't know what you're referring to."
"Come on, Greg," Josh replied, trying to sound sociable. "I'm sure you know exactly where I'm-"
"Nope. I don't. Am at a loss here."
Josh paused. Hesitation. Told Greg all he needed to know. He knew it was stupid. But after that second's brief concession to logic, he smiled and continued, as confident as ever. "SOTF drills. We make sure kids know the best way to respond to being captured, and how best to elongate the game in a way that buys us time for rescue efforts. Now-"
"I'm sorry, and how are we going to teach them to deal with getting kidnapped and having explosives wrapped around their neck?"
"My legislation will call for a nationwide panel of experts to decide the best strategy, and to ensure that the kids know how to handle things like what happens if a classmate decides to 'play', how to interpret the announcements, danger zone patterns-"
Greg interrupted again. "And how do you propose we teach them to elongate the game? Draw lots and sacrifice one kid a day?"
"If they do do that," Michael mused, "they should do it late. Like, it'd suck to do the sacrifice at 3pm and then get rescued at 5pm."
"What if they change the fucking rules?" Greg shouted, just yelling out one of many lethal objections to Josh's idea.
"What about stuff like hunting and first aid? Those could be useful skills," Saul chimed in. His idea made sense, but not within the framework Josh was proposing.
"Wait, wait," Michael added, "if who changes the rules?'
"Danya. The terrorists. The-" Greg was getting flustered. He buried his head in his hands. He wanted to be methodical. Analytical. Failing that, he'd like to at least have some rhetorical sway. "You're an idiot."
Josh was unfazed. "I see you're a sceptic," he calmly replied, before stooping down to pull some papers from his bag. "But my campaign did some preliminary polling, and people are very sympathetic if given the right messaging and are more likely to comply than they are with other more burdensome proposals." He shoved some papers in Greg's face, before swiftly yanking them away. Not swiftly enough, though - Greg knew push polling when he saw it, and Josh knew a look of pure contempt when he saw one. "You're not convinced yet," Josh continued. "We did some polls in other states, and some focus group trials, bear with me a jiffy…"
As Josh was halfway through fishing through his papers for more dodgy poll results, Greg’s phone lit up. A text from Dirk, who had all but faded into the background, all but given up on moderating the meeting.
“let him have this. hes our best shot at taking down-” and then a square. Okay. An emojicon or a smileface or whatever that Greg hadn’t downloaded. Probably of a Witch. He sighed. Yeah, Josh was the best shot at getting someone pro-life in that seat. Someone principled and compassionate. Greg cared about that more than anything, so, with a sigh, he shrugged. Relented. Spared him the hassle of fighting his own party, the ignoble notoriety that came from getting embroiled in some internal policy war.
“Fine. You know what, Josh, I think you might have a valid argument with this. If you wish to champion it, I’ll support you.” And that was that.
“Okay, so, we’re all here,” Dirk said, finally deciding the time was now appropriate to get the meeting rolling. “So before the inaugural meeting of the group that Josh here is chairing, the Speaker wants us to brainstorm, casually, some ideas for flagship Republican policies we can have on this. So, let’s…” He paused, trying to think of a speaking order that would not allow the loudest voices to dominate the conversation. That’s what Greg suspected, at least. “In order of seniority. Descending. From the most senior downwards. Let's go around the group, one idea at a time, until we're back to where we started, okay?”
That meant Greg was first. Good. “My priority is that...Homeland Security has done all it can on the matter. We have drained our well of institutional knowledge at that committee. Now what I want, and what I think is of the utmost importance, is to move it somewhere good. I think a special committee, a la Benghazi, is a good idea, but it needs to have its work supplemented by a regular standing committee.”
He leaned back in his seat. “Now, what committee? I don’t think we should split up the jurisdiction or go for any BS intersectional nonsense, I don’t think that approach from the Democrats is worth the time of day, and quite frankly Health and Education haven’t got the instincts needed to grapple with a tough issue such as this. I think Oversight is too politicised, can’t trust Democrats with that. I don’t think Foreign Affairs can handle it either.” Unspoken was that Greg thought the chairman of said committee, Adam Simpson, had for years been looking for an excuse to exponentially grow his committee’s jurisdiction. Greg didn’t trust him with that. Too transactional, too hardnosed, for Greg’s liking. He knew the others shared a negative view on Simpson. Michael, for one, was a Russophile who hated Adam’s hawkish inclinations. Adam Simpson was not a popular man in that room. For different, incompatible reasons for each person, sure, but it was perhaps an acceptable shortcut to make use of that inadvertent coinciding of interests for now.
“Now, that leaves Judiciary…”
“The Speaker doesn’t want it in Judiciary,” Dirk cut in.
Greg didn’t let it interrupt his flow. “Or Intelligence. I say Intelligence.” Saul theatrically slapped his forehead like it was the most obvious suggestion in the world. “I know that’s not a policy suggestion per se, but I think a big coordinated announcement can really get the ball rolling.”
“Undercut the Democrats on this, great idea,” Josh chipped in. “They don’t want it to go to Intelligence, they want that committee clear for their witchhunts, but they can’t exactly argue against it going to Intelligence and then Intelligence taking the lead on creating a bespoke select committee. I mean, just an inadvertent side advantage of Greg’s approach. Obviously we’re not making the decision based on partisan gain.”
"We can do some good stuff with it in Intelligence," Michael muttered as an aside. "I'm in line for the top Republican post on the Counterterrorism subcommittee, so I'd relish the chance to help shepherd oversight through."
"Alright," Dirk continued, scribbling down some notes on what Greg had discussed. "Next in order of seniority is-"
Michael didn't wait for Dirk to finish before jumping in. "So, one issue really of concern to me and my people is the need to provide more funding for school security. There's a really severe shortage of proper resources for the most at risk schools, and I think right now there's a really unjust lack of coordination at both state and federal level. So, what I propose is we take a lot of the current block grants to schools and create a new school security funding mechanism to guard against this terrorist threat - as is the proper domain of the federal government. So based on criteria such as how much of the student body goes on such field trips, the security costs entailed by the trips they go on, how likely they are to be attacked based on metrics such as school size and the damage done to American morale by an attack on it."
Noticeably Michael was leafing through a lot of papers, a lot of notes, a lot of reports. Not to say that he didn't understand the concept or grasp its implications, but he wasn't an ideas man. He wasn't the originator of this idea. He was a conduit, to put it bluntly. But he'd done some research, showed some initiative, which was to be commended. For his part Greg wasn't sold on it. Yes, it was a big ticket thing that would get the headlines and show initiative, but so much of its desirability depended on the details. Could be benign and pragmatic, could be social engineering. All depended on the details.
"Certainly interesting," came Dirk's commentary as he made his own notes. Greg couldn't tell if they were positive or not.
Saul, meanwhile, was leaning back against the wall, an eyebrow raised, but the gesture did not catch Michael's attention. Josh did notice Saul's trepidation, but that didn't stop him from launching into his own messaging spiel. "I like the messaging inherent within it. The government's chief role in education, in the current climate, is to handle those security threats the states are unable to address themselves. That's a strong conservative message."
"I'd need to see the details," Greg added after a moment's silence, once it became clear Saul was just sitting on whatever objection he had.
"Yeah, Michael, make sure to send some stuff out, like a memo or something," Dirk added. "Anyway, my idea's simple. We use this as an opportunity to promote homeschooling. Make it the new normal. Simple idea, but we can go through from there." He wrote his own idea down. "So, who's next?"
Greg preemptively rolled his eyes as Josh jumped to his feet and walked to by the window. "So, we need to think outside the box. We need to look at what works. We need to think about how best to prepare our kids for the tragic yet tiny possibility that they end up kidnapped."
Michael sat up. Saul looked down at the floor. Dirk did nothing.
Josh continued. "I visited a school in my district. They were doing a live shooter drill. A non-intrusive, rights compliant, life saving intervention. You're all smart guys. You can see where I'm going with this. I'm thinking I make it a key policy plank of my campaign and-"
"Sorry," Greg cut him off. Greg wasn't just going to let this chaotically stupid idea go by unvocalised. No, Greg wanted to make Josh own his stupidity. "I must be fucking dumb, because I don't know what you're referring to."
"Come on, Greg," Josh replied, trying to sound sociable. "I'm sure you know exactly where I'm-"
"Nope. I don't. Am at a loss here."
Josh paused. Hesitation. Told Greg all he needed to know. He knew it was stupid. But after that second's brief concession to logic, he smiled and continued, as confident as ever. "SOTF drills. We make sure kids know the best way to respond to being captured, and how best to elongate the game in a way that buys us time for rescue efforts. Now-"
"I'm sorry, and how are we going to teach them to deal with getting kidnapped and having explosives wrapped around their neck?"
"My legislation will call for a nationwide panel of experts to decide the best strategy, and to ensure that the kids know how to handle things like what happens if a classmate decides to 'play', how to interpret the announcements, danger zone patterns-"
Greg interrupted again. "And how do you propose we teach them to elongate the game? Draw lots and sacrifice one kid a day?"
"If they do do that," Michael mused, "they should do it late. Like, it'd suck to do the sacrifice at 3pm and then get rescued at 5pm."
"What if they change the fucking rules?" Greg shouted, just yelling out one of many lethal objections to Josh's idea.
"What about stuff like hunting and first aid? Those could be useful skills," Saul chimed in. His idea made sense, but not within the framework Josh was proposing.
"Wait, wait," Michael added, "if who changes the rules?'
"Danya. The terrorists. The-" Greg was getting flustered. He buried his head in his hands. He wanted to be methodical. Analytical. Failing that, he'd like to at least have some rhetorical sway. "You're an idiot."
Josh was unfazed. "I see you're a sceptic," he calmly replied, before stooping down to pull some papers from his bag. "But my campaign did some preliminary polling, and people are very sympathetic if given the right messaging and are more likely to comply than they are with other more burdensome proposals." He shoved some papers in Greg's face, before swiftly yanking them away. Not swiftly enough, though - Greg knew push polling when he saw it, and Josh knew a look of pure contempt when he saw one. "You're not convinced yet," Josh continued. "We did some polls in other states, and some focus group trials, bear with me a jiffy…"
As Josh was halfway through fishing through his papers for more dodgy poll results, Greg’s phone lit up. A text from Dirk, who had all but faded into the background, all but given up on moderating the meeting.
“let him have this. hes our best shot at taking down-” and then a square. Okay. An emojicon or a smileface or whatever that Greg hadn’t downloaded. Probably of a Witch. He sighed. Yeah, Josh was the best shot at getting someone pro-life in that seat. Someone principled and compassionate. Greg cared about that more than anything, so, with a sigh, he shrugged. Relented. Spared him the hassle of fighting his own party, the ignoble notoriety that came from getting embroiled in some internal policy war.
“Fine. You know what, Josh, I think you might have a valid argument with this. If you wish to champion it, I’ll support you.” And that was that.