Not even pretending Speaker Mike Johnson did it. He passed a stopgap spending measure through the House meant to prevent a government shutdown on Friday. With Democrats’ help. With all but two House Democrats. With more Democrats than Republicans. Now as it heads to the Senate, we await the MAGA fallout in the House. The Washington Post and CNN will give you the bill’s details. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reacted to Johnson’s accomplishment and its potential blowback on “The Late Show.” “I’m sure Mr. Johnson is very … smart,” she began ironically, because “the previous guy was driven out with torches and pitchforks.” “We all know how this ends. This is not a party that is trying to govern.” The two parties are doing two very different things. So now we are going to keep the government open. It is because the Democrats came to the rescue and said that we should. But this is the Republican Party still not even wanting to keep the government going because they don’t believe that governance is what we need in this country.
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Benefits from Biden’s infrastructure bill sinking in Voters’ choice next year is not just between preserving our experiment in government of, by, and for the people or creeping fascism. It’s also a choice of whether to improve Americans’ lives today and for our children’s future or to squander more energy and treasure on playground brawls, revenge, and punching down. Is returning to middle school any mature adult’s idea of “great”? Navigator this morning finds what Americans prefer: More: By a 43-point margin, Americans continue to support the Bipartisan Infrastructure legislation that President Biden signed into law two years ago today. When asked about a new infrastructure plan that would “improve roads and bridges, expand power infrastructure, increase passenger and rail access, and improve water infrastructure,” 65 percent of Americans support this legislation with only 22 percent opposed.
The Republican Party has viciously turned on itself You know how it is when toddlers get tired. They get cranky. They cry and they pout and sometimes they even try to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don’t get their way. When this happens you know it’s time to give them a bottle and put them to bed. When they get older there can be the problem of how to handle an unruly teenager, defiant and hostile, challenging every rule and boundary and refusing to acknowledge any authority. Sometimes it’s enough to take away the car keys and ground them for a while but in other cases, intense therapy or even military school, as in the case of young Donald Trump, is seen as the only way to get through to them. But what do you do when elected officials suddenly start behaving like screaming toddlers and teenage bullies in the halls of congress? Is there any authority that can step in and quiet the tantrums? And when this increasingly anti-social behavior is happening in the shadow of a party leader and presidential candidate who exalts violence and cruelty, can we really just chalk it up to frustration and fatigue?
Mary Trump Barry died today. She was known as the protective big sister toward Donald but she knew what he was. His niece Mary Trump spoke with her about him for her book and recorded the conversation. It was something: Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on. “All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.” Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying.
Jay Rosen’s reporting principle As tedious as it is commenting on Donad Trump’s latest verbal atrocities, as well as on the relentless 2024 horse-race coverage in the press, it would be far more tedious seeing Trump abolish the United States if given half a chance. Or any Republican Trump wannabes, for that matter. I’m already musing about bumper stickers. ABOLISH AMERICA | VOTE TRUMP. Four words. NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has a six-word formulation for how the press should be reporting the 2024 presidential race instead of its reflexive horse-race framing: “Not the odds, but the stakes.” That’s my shortand for the organizing principle we most need from journalists covering the 2024 election. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy. Rosen thinks (in this case, anyway) Axios gets it right. Stakes: “I am more worried for America today than I was on January 6,” Michael Luttig tells the Guardian.
Eating the Big Enchilada one bite at a time From the point of view of private profit, one of these analysts enthusiastically observes, “the K-12 market is the Big Enchilada”. (2007) What is the largest portion of the budget in all 50 states? (2011) Money laundering for the masses (2012) “Folks, they want to destroy public education,” the state Senate minority leader told a room full of supporters last year. (2014) Venture capitalist, Eric Hippeau, believes the “education market is ripe for disruption.” (2014) Readers know by now that the promotion of school “choice” is not aboutand the diversion of public ed funds into private academies (“the money follows the child“) is not about what’s best for America’s children. Like so many other special-interest enthusiasms, it’s about the investor class chasing public money. Oh sure, they’ll leverage the religious right’s paranoia that public schools are indoctrinating little Dick and Jane in the ways of Satanic multiculturalism and science. But they’re just investors’ useful idiots.
The Art of the Con Don Jr. testified for the defense in the NY fraud trial on Monday and spent his time talking about his father’s brilliance and his company’s success: n a return appearance at a trial that has featured a parade of Trumps on the stand as they fight for the future of their family business, the junior Mr. Trump testified in bursts of hyperbole and platitudes. His rhetoric sounded as though it had been ripped from the pages of an airline magazine or a travel brochure, and he saved the highest praise for the man who he said made it all happen: his father, a “visionary” who is “an artist with real estate” and “creates things that other people would never envision.” Yet some of his high-flying claims clashed with present-day reality. In recent years, the Trump Organization has shrunk, as the family name was scrubbed from some of the properties he extolled, taken off buildings in New York, Washington and, soon, Hawaii. Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street have also, at times, lost a number of tenants. Some of the former president’s properties struggled even to turn a profit.
You’ll note that person is still anonymous. Is he keeping his options open in case Trump wins a second term? A man’s gotta make a living, amirite? What’s a little traitorous behavior between friends? This is all obvious, of course, to any sentient being. And yet millions of people think Trump is the better choice for president again over Biden who has done an excellent job in difficult circumstances, even some who voted for Biden in 2020. (Lead in the water? What?) This is the man they think is so terrific:
Slightly left of centrist U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Virginia Democrat, will run for governor in 2025, the Associated Press reports this morning: Spanberger, a three-term Democrat, made the announcement in a campaign video, highlighting the importance of lowering prescription drug prices, growing the middle class and easing inflation. In a video titled “What Matters Most,” Spanberger also emphasized the importance of recruiting and retaining teachers “and stopping extremists from shredding women’s reproductive rights.” “Our country and our Commonwealth are facing fundamental threats to our rights, our freedoms, and to our democracy,” Spanberger said. “While some politicians in Richmond focus on banning abortion and books, what they’re not doing is helping people.” Spanberger’s run for governor has been rumored since July. Let’s hope she has a Democrat lined up to run competititvely in 2024 for her 7th Congressional District House seat. The former CIA officer and law enforcement officer for the U.S.
Dual threats We raised the alarm yesterday both about Donald Trump’s Nazi-adjacent eliminationist rhetoric and his “concentration” on creating detention camps in a second term. We have also spread lots of pixels describing the New Apostolic Reformation that views Trump as an instrument of God. Trump and Stephen Miller want to lock up and deport all immigrants not to their liking, and to eventually cut off paths to immigration for the same. That’s the political cleansing of America they seek. But the Seven Mountains people backing Trump want religious purification as well. They will dismiss any and all his personal, political, and criminal failings to advance that end. All of them, they don’t want to govern, they want to rule. There will be cracks on the road to Christian Dominion and local infighting, as Fred Clarkson details at Salon. Plus a healthy dose of wishcasting and Christian soldiers cosplay. But right now these people hold actual political power in the Speaker of the House. Janine Melnitz : Yes, of course they’re serious… Think they’re not serious? Remember Jan. 6?