Republican Rep. Andy Ogles heroically vows to save hot showers — government shutdown be damned
While he helped bring the government to a standstill, right-wing Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee took a moment to announce urgent legislation to address what he sees as a threat to the American way of life.
“Biden’s war on everyday devices is not over,” Ogles said tweeted amid a national crisis on Thursday. “Now he’s letting his bureaucrats go after your water heater.”
While congressional leaders worried about the immediate impact a shutdown would have on everything from child care to cancer research, Ogles worried about a federal energy conservation measure for new water heaters that wouldn’t take effect until five years after final approval.
“I introduced the Hot Showers Act to require the Department of Energy to end its climate tyranny and allow the free market to dictate equipment prices, not woke energy elites,” Ogles continued in his tweet.
He added: Press release“Dealing with big government is stressful enough, and a good cure for these problems is a long, hot shower.” But like most good things, Joe Biden wants to take that away from you.”
Such nonsense is not surprising when you look at this freshman congressman from the vocal minority. For one thing, he described himself as an economist when, after his election, it was revealed that he hadn’t even majored in economics. He has it too said he is a “former member of law enforcement, [having] worked on international sex crimes, particularly child trafficking,” although he only served as a volunteer reserve deputy with the Williamson County Sheriff from 2009 to 2011. He was fired because he didn’t complete his training, skipped too many meetings, and didn’t meet his minimum time commitments.
An unresolved question from Ogles’ past is what happened to the $23,575 that he and his wife Monica behaved with a GoFundMe appeal following the death of a stillborn son in 2014. Her stated hope was to create a burial site for other children in the cemetery where her son was buried, and perhaps install a swing along with religious statues. Ogles said the project was hampered by burial regulations and that he distributed money to other families who had lost a child. He backed up that claim with a letter from a Republican fundraiser with a record of fraud convictions.
Ogles managed to get elected despite everything, and other bills he has introduced include “Teachers Empowerment Against Classroom Harm.” (TEACHING) law “Expand access to firearms for educators to protect their classrooms” by “providing teachers and school staff the opportunity to participate in defense training programs aimed at protecting schools and their children.” He announced the legislation a month after an intruder armed with an assault rifle killed three 9-year-olds at Covenant School in his district. He was unapologetic when it came to light that he had sent a Christmas card last year that included a photo of him, his wife and two of their three children smiling and standing in front of a Christmas tree brandishing assault rifles. The photo appeared on Saturday Night Live‘S Weekend update.
“Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents the district where the Nashville shooting occurred, is being criticized for a Christmas card that showed him and his family holding assault rifles,” Colin Jost told the audience. “Even ignoring mass shootings, who do you psychos send these cards to? If I received this in the mail, I would move. This map just tells you, ‘I’m armed, I have terrible judgment, and I know where you live.'”
The TEACH Act was cosponsored by other far-right extremists such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ). Ogles has joined them and others like them in attempting to hold the nation hostage with the threat of shutdown. He tweeted his special demands on Tuesday:
“Until we close:
-Our border
-Jack Smith-
– Budget proposals woken up
-Inflated spending in Washington
-J6 cover-ups
Let’s shut down the government.”
Jack Smith is the special counsel who secured an indictment against Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election by storming the Capitol, where Ogles sits in Congress.
Ogles was among those Trump targeted in a TruthSocial post on Wednesday in which he said: “Republicans in Congress can and must scrap all aspects of crooked Joe Biden’s armed government.” Trump said it was “the last chance “to prevent these political prosecutions against me and other patriots.”
Trump and Ogles spoke Thursday after the House recessed for a week as hapless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proved unable to negotiate a short-term deal to keep the government running.
“I just got off the phone with President Trump about an hour ago and talked about this process and how broken and weaponized the government is,” Ogles said said on Steve Bannon’s War room Podcast. “He just said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for standing up and being one of the voices for America, because look, I’m fed up. You’re tired of it. And frankly, I think America is fed up.'”
Trump has been known to rail against federal environmental protections on dishwashers, showerheads, gas stoves and light bulbs. But perhaps because he imagines the current crisis is a final opportunity to derail the federal case that could land him in prison, he didn’t stray from the devices last week.
If Ogles were truly an economist, he might have better grasped the severity of a government shutdown. And he might have understood the absurdity of even thinking about introducing the Hot Shower Act.
Somehow in American history there is now a fabulist who tweets with the grandiose, pompous defiance of someone who fancies himself the Patrick Henry of water heaters.
“If Joe Biden wants to take a cold shower every night, that’s his decision, but I won’t let the government dictate how hot my shower can be.”
