Lately, it seems like all the very richest, most successful people (men, mostly) are batshit crazy. Here’s a primary example: The Adidas team was huddled with Kanye West, pitching ideas for the first shoe they would create together. It was 2013, and the rapper and the sportswear brand had just agreed to become partners. The Adidas employees, thrilled to get started, had arrayed sneakers and fabric swatches on a long table near a mood board pinned with images. But nothing they showed that day at the company’s German headquarters captured the vision Mr. West had shared. To convey how offensive he considered the designs, he grabbed a sketch of a shoe and took a marker to the toe, according to two participants. Then he drew a swastika. It was shocking, especially to the Germans in the group. Most displays of the symbol are banned in their country. The image was acutely sensitive for a company whose founder belonged to the Nazi Party. And they were meeting just miles from Nuremberg, where leaders of the Third Reich were tried for crimes against humanity.
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You can’t win if you don’t show up to play David Rothkopf described new House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana as representing “a movement that is actively seeking to institutionalize the religious beliefs of evangelical Christians into law.” Rothkopf was just getting warmed up (Daily Beast): The term Christofascism may seem inflammatory. It is not. It is intended to provide the most accurate possible definition of what Johnson and those in his movement wish to achieve. Like other fascists they seek to impose by whatever means necessary their views on the whole of society even if that means undoing established laws and eliminating accepted freedoms. Christofascists do so in the name of advancing their Christian ideology, asserting that all in society must be guided by their views and values whether they adhere to them or not. Johnson has ties, Rothkopf claims, to the Christianist New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and Seven Mountains Dominionism. Read more at Daily Beast. David Corn has another chilling account of Johnson’s beliefs at Mother Jones. Men in Afghanistan who don’t think the same things as Mike Johnson think the same way.
Upcoming “Corporate Bullsh*t” David Dayen reviews an upcoming book by Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh, Donald Cohen and Zachary Roth. “Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America” examines the boilerplate arguments corporate shills have used to object “to virtually every government and social program, from the abolition of slavery to the increase in the minimum wage.” Dayen writes: These timeworn tactics have been successful, the authors write, because “they offer a civic-minded, reasonable-sounding justification for positions that in fact are motivated entirely by self-interest.” It’s an attempt to set the terms of debate and to make those terms unchanging and unmovable. The endless repetition of these talking points is a source of their strength. But identifying their history and application to virtually everything can be a source of their weakness. The six categories of corporate bullshit begins with pure denial.
Or they pretend not to anyway It may seem obvious that everyone in the country knows that Donald Trump tried to overturn the election results in 2020 because we all watched him do it live as it was happening. His campaign filed more than 60 lawsuits in various states, as was his right, none of which were found to be meritorious. His minions and accomplices in the Republicans party both in Washington and around the country actively tried to help him do that by pressuring election officials, persuading local officials to sign on as “alternate electors” etc. And I think you’d have to have been in a coma not to know that he aggressively tried to bully Vice President Mike Pence into refusing to count the electoral votes on January 6th. Trump’s famous January 2nd phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger was all over the news the very next day in which he very pointedly said: “What I want to do is this.
He’s an anti-immigrant zealot too Greg Sargent writes about the new Speaker’s extreme views on immigration: Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker, has repeatedly flirted with what’s known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that Democrats are scheming to supplant American voters with immigrants. The Louisiana Republican’s views show how fringe conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the Republican Party at the highest levels of power. “This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters,” Johnson said at a congressional hearing in May 2022, gesturing at Democrats. “That’s why the border’s open.” The “open borders” trope is a lie, and while a few municipalities allow voting for noncitizens in local elections, in no sense do national Democrats have any such “plan” for “all the illegals.” As far as I can determine, no House speaker in recent memory has been quite as reckless and incendiary with this kind of language. Johnson employs it regularly.
How many of these richie-rich narcissists are there anyway? This unknown egomaniac who’s decided to make a name for himself as a Democratic Biden critic at a time of great peril for the country and the world is also a straight up kook: About two years before he launched a campaign to unseat President Joe Biden, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) was anxious to win something else from his future opponent: his attention. In November 2021, Biden traveled to the town of Rosemount, Minnesota—just south of St. Paul—for one of his first events touting the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law he had just signed. Traveling with Biden were Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), who represents Rosemount, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), who represents St. Paul, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was also on board. Phillips, who represents the western Minneapolis suburbs, did not travel to Minnesota with Biden, but was insistent on flying back to Washington with the president.
They are in short supply in discussions of the war in Israel but they do exist I’m trying to feature commentary that I think adds to the conversation about this horrible situation. This piece is by two British politicians with skin in the game: Much has been said in the past three weeks about the tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians, not least in the Houses of Parliament. For us, it is deeply personal. We are the only two British MPs with parents who grew up in Israel and Palestine. Though we represent different political parties, this is not the first time we’ve worked together on this conflict. However, we feel this is the most urgent, and most important, intervention we have had to make. Israelis and Palestinians need support from their friends abroad, and our own communities here in the UK that are affected by the conflict need reassurance as the Middle East conflict spreads to the streets of the UK. We are concerned by how little space there is for nuance in parliament and in wider society on this issue.
The new Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Hannity last night and made it clear that the impeachment inquiry onto Joe Biden is all systems go. Or is it? Philip Bump writes: The Hannity interview was useful in one sense. Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), had approved the impeachment inquiry driven largely by Comer and Jordan. When McCarthy was ousted, it wasn’t clear what would happen. Johnson confirmed that it will move forward. Or perhaps it won’t. In late September, the impeachment inquiry held a hearing involving a handful of witnesses, none of whom could provide any evidence impugning Joe Biden or his son, by their own admissions. The 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump — probably the target of Johnson’s sniffy disparagement of “the other team” — had released its final report about three weeks after its first hearing (which was followed by four more days of hearings). The Biden “impeachment inquiry” has held no more hearings in the month since the first one. And, by his own admission, Comer doesn’t want to.
The Tanuki! The tanuki is a wild canid species native to Japan that is related to wolves, foxes, and domestic dogs. It’s also known as the Japanese raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus) and is a subspecies of the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) that’s found in mainland Asia. With its thick fur, masked face, and curious nature, the tanuki has served as a cultural icon in Japanese folklore for centuries. The bushy-tailed animal is known as a mischievous trickster that’s shown up in legends and myths as a shapeshifter with supernatural abilities. In popular culture, tanuki can be spotted in Nintendo video games and Studio Ghibli films. Here are eight little-known facts about this fascinating canid species. 1. Tanuki Are Not Related to Raccoons Despite their masked appearance, tanuki are not close relatives of the common raccoon, the famous species native to the United States. Tanuki belong to the Canidae family, alongside wolves and foxes. In contrast, the common raccoon shares more in common with mustelids, a family that includes weasels, badgers, and otters.
Family members of Al Jazeera Gaza Bureau chief die in IDF bombing The “wife, teenage son, daughter and grandson, and eight other members” of Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh died Wednesday in an Israeli air strike on the the Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza. The Israeli military said in a statement it had “targeted Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the area” without elaborating. Washington Post: In its statement, the Israel Defense Forces also said it had “been targeting military targets across the Gaza Strip. Strikes on military targets are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties.” The journalist’s family had relocated south to an area the Israeli military had designated a safe zone.