As of Wednesday, Jim Jordan has been rejected twice in his bid to become speaker of the House.  He actually lost ground, failing by two more votes on Wednesday than he had on Tuesday. It’s not at all clear what will happen next, whether he just keeps trying to win over the now 22 Republicans who voted against him, or they give up and try a third candidate. Marjorie Taylor Greene is available. 

So for the time being, there is no Congress. The House can’t act on anything without a speaker (who, by the way, is in the line of succession right after the vice president), so nothing gets done.  A fair percentage of the Republican members seem to think that’s great. Nothing is what they want. Except that we are operating on a temporary funding process that will run out in about a month, and there’s that whole debt ceiling theater that we have to go through again in December.  Lights out, bond default. Details, details.

Meanwhile, the world is coming off the rails, with wars on split screen like the NFL weekend roundup. There should be a sense of urgency to at least be able to fund our own military/—/let alone aid to Israel and Ukraine. But no, the Republicans will continue to put up election deniers who claim the insurrection on January 6 was a normal tourist visit (tourists normally steal the speaker’s podium? It wasn’t like that when I visited the Capitol.)

So the whole operation looks like a Keystone Cops parody. Part of me is full of schadenfreude; it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people. It’s like they don’t understand even the most basic operations of Congress. The House can pass whatever crazy legislation they want, but it still has to get through the relatively sane Senate, and get signed by the president in one of his lucid moments. So what’s the point in the constant tantrums in the House?

Maybe the game plan is to delay doing anything for a year in hopes that Trump will still be out on bail, and then they can do … — well, that’s the problem. Nobody knows what they want to do. Yeah, tear it all apart. And replace it with what? They don’t know.

Every now and then, our representative, John Curtis, gives reason for a glimmer of hope. He’s actually a believer in climate change and looking for practical solutions. But when push comes to shove, he is a dependable partisan tool, falling in line and supporting Jordan.

Entertaining as it is, this can’t go on. In my most hopeful moments, I think maybe there is a sane Republican who would get enough votes from other sane Republicans, leaving the Matt Gaetzes of the world to pound the table all they want and pull a few Democrats over to get the necessary votes. A coup by the radical center. A middle group who would ignore the more ridiculous and dangerous impulses of the extremes in both parties and actually govern. It’s probably too much to hope they can solve the mounting pile of world crises, solve our own fiscal problems, or even name a new post office building. But maybe they could manage to keep the lights on.

But it’s not likely to happen soon. Stand by for a shutdown in a month because that will somehow fix everything. Why do we keep electing these morons?

On a local front, government is getting things done. Over in Coalville, the county has just spent $38,000 on a piece of public art that has been installed in a very prestigious location. It’s next to the entrance to the restrooms at the Ledges building at the fairgrounds. It’s an interesting piece, sort of the remnants of a UPS truck roll-over with a pile of partially crushed metal boxes in bright colors. There are apparently magnets that look like petroglyphs that kids can move around and arrange in new and creative ways. Or steal and put them on their fridges at home. The county arts board is complaining that the sculpture is not what they were expecting. The artists, from Buenos Aries because we have no local artists capable of such a design, have agreed to install more boxes. Yeah, that’ll fix it.

When I saw it, that was exactly my thought. This really needs more crushed boxes to capture the full train-derailment esthetic. Could we add some smoke and a cow in a hazmat suit?

An earlier article on this project from KPCW said they were building the sculpture at a location in Oakley, accompanied by a videographer. The creation of the art is also art, so of course there is a documentary on it. Sounds like Sundance material. 

Public art is always controversial, and not everybody’s taste is alike. Some of us think that an old tractor on the front lawn is a thing of beauty, and others think it is depressing property values in the neighborhood (which, in its own way, is also beautiful). There are always hits and misses. The sculpture in front of the MARC building is cool. The upended pile of sprinkler pipe at the dog park, not so much. Maybe it needs more crushed boxes.

Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.