Anything but “violent insurrection” Let’s begin with this clip from “The Daily Show”: The clip illustrates how the GOP is dedicated heart and soul(?) to fitting its square-peg worldview into an other-shaped hole. Speaker Mike Johnson, Brian Beutler offers, is dispersing “unreleased Capitol security footage from January 6 (to help pro-Trump propagandists lie about the insurrection) but not before he blurs the faces of the rioters (because the raw footage would make it easier for these lawless, often violent Trump supporters to face justice).” Johnson wants to both protect MAGA footsoldiers while aiding the right’s efforts to rewrite the history we saw with our very lyin’ eyes. That’s a rather delicate maneuver (subscription req’d): [I]t’s a policy manifestation of the MAGA code, wherein January 6 can be anything BUT a violent insurrection orchestrated and encouraged by Donald Trump. It can be Antifa, or a false flag, or tourism, or a Patriotic Protest or any combination thereof. But not what it actually was. Call if Big Lie 2 Electric Boogaloo.
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The media finally caught on to his plans U.S. Presidents have been accused by their political rivals of wanting to be kings or dictators ever since the very beginning of the Republic. It’s even a charge that’s had some merit from time to time. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson charged John Adams with acting like a king when he expanded federal power and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which basically made it a crime to criticize the government. But Adams lost his re-election and gracefully conceded, establishing the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power that until very recently was observed by every president. Then there was Andrew Jackson whom his critics assailed as a would-be king for wielding his veto pen for political purposes and challenging the primacy of the Supreme Court to decide constitutional matters, among other things. But he too left peacefully after eight years. Abraham Lincoln was repeatedly accused of being a dictator during the Civil War for implementing numerous extreme measures including the suspension of habeas corpus and the jailing of journalists.
Life’s a beach, ladies Some guy seems not to have noticed that Taylor Swift’s hottest concert ticket of the year made her Time‘s Person of the Year. Or that Barbie was the hottest movie ticket of the year. Barbie ends with joke about women’s health care. It figures some clueless guy‘s name is Ken. Alexandra Petri noticed (Washington Post, gifted): “Judge Guerra Gamble is not medically qualified to make this determination and it should not be relied upon. A TRO is no substitute for medical judgment.” — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, writing to doctors who have received a court order allowing an abortion to end a nonviable pregnancy There is no substitute for medical judgment, except the judgment of me, Ken Paxton. Am I a doctor? No. I’m something better than a doctor: a Ken. My accessories include: no medical expertise and a boundless reservoir of cruelty. And one time, I saw a horse. I have also been told that my handwriting is bad and that I am not patient. This all screams “doctor” to me. Move over Karen. Ken is here.
November 2024 is a referendum Call it a referendum. Call it a ballot measure. Whatever. The race at the top of every voter’s ballot next year will not be a race for president. Not pumped enough to show up and vote in a race between (highly likely) two old white men? How do you feel about a choice between authoritarianism and democracy? That’s what’s really the first contest on your ballot. Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré (Ret.) is counting on Gen Z, first-time voters to help save the country he served for decades: In 2024, 41 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote. For the youngest 8 million of this group, Election Day in 2024 will be the first in which they are old enough to cast a ballot, according to recent findings by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. This new generation of voters will be the most diverse our nation has ever seen. And already, these same young people have been politically engaged.
Even pre-schoolers understand this In one of the Atlantic articles about “If Trump Wins” Mark Liebovich goes where everyone else is afraid to go. He talks about the Trump voter. Of course, he does it after explaining that you can’t really point any of this out because it upsets the MAGAs and we can’t have that. But he does explode this high minded myth that “we’re better than that,” meaning Americans write large, which clearly only applies to some of us. Anyway: After the shock of Trump’s victory in 2016, the denial and rationalizations kicked in fast. Just ride out the embarrassment for a few years, many thought, and then America would revert to something in the ballpark of sanity. But one of the overlooked portents of 2020 (many Democrats were too relieved to notice) was that the election was still extremely close. Trump received 74 million votes, nearly 47 percent of the electorate. That’s a huge amount of support, especially after such an ordeal of a presidency—the “very fine people on both sides,” the “perfect” phone call, the bleach, the daily OMG and WTF of it all.
None of that matters. They have order from Dear Leader and they do what he wants: House Republicans are preparing to formalize their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden with a House vote this week, as their investigation reaches a critical juncture while right-wing pressure grows. Up until this point, House Republicans have not had enough votes to legitimize their ongoing inquiry with a full chamber vote. The probe has struggled to uncover wrongdoing by the president which is why it hasn’t garnered the unified support of the full GOP conference. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unilaterally launched the inquiry in September, even though he had previously criticized Democrats for taking the same step in 2019 when they launched the first impeachment probe of then-President Donald Trump without taking a vote at the beginning.
Thoughts and prayers, America. That’s all you get.
Stop hand-wringing People feel what they feel. Don’t tell them otherwise, suggests Dave Johnson (now blogging from across the Pond). “Biden & Dems need to be saying, ‘We understand how hard it has been and we’ve been working on it. It is starting to turn around,’” Johnson reminds readers of Seeing the Forest. That was Bill Clinton’s message to the DNC convention that renominated Barack Obama in 2012. The economy was a wreck when Obama took over, but he’s turning it around, Clinton told the assembly: Now, look. Here’s the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you who support him face. I get it. I know it. I’ve been there. A lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated about this economy. If you look at the numbers, you know employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend again. And in a lot of places, housing prices are even beginning to pick up. But too many people do not feel it yet. That was two months before the 2012 election. You know how that worked out.
Worth repeating “America is more than a country. America is an idea,” former Speaker Kevin McCarthy told an Oxford Union audience in late October. That idea is freedom [timestamp 7:35]. At the New York Times DealBook event last month, McCarthy repeated something else he’d said at Oxford about Americans who are the true caretakers of that idea (Washington Post): “I became leader when we took the minority, and this was a turning point for me,” McCarthy said, describing having attended the 2019 State of the Union address. “I’d just become leader and I’m excited and President Trump’s there. And I look over at the Democrats and they stand up. They look like America,” he told Sorkin. “We stand up. We look like the most restrictive country club in America.” Called it: Robert Calhoon once wrote about colonists who supported the Crown during the American Revolution. “Historians’ best estimates,” he wrote, “put the proportion of adult white male loyalists somewhere between 15 and 20 percent,” a figure not far removed from the Republican base.
Your once and possibly future president , ladies and gentlemen: No, you are not dreaming. That’s who half the country wants to lead it. Oh my: Beck asked Kelly if she thought Trump has cognitively “faded from where he was in 2020.” Kelly’s response: “Yeah, I do … There’s no question Trump has lost a step. Multiple steps. He is confusing Joe Biden for Obama. I know he’s now saying he intentionally did that. Go back and look at the clips. It wasn’t intentional.” “Look, any of us can have a slip of the tongue, but it’s happening to him repeatedly. The reference of how somebody is going to get us into World War Two, confusing countries, confusing cities where he is in, and it’s happening more and more. With all due respect to Trump, this is what happens when you are 77 years old … Are we really going to pretend that Trump is just as vibrant as he was in 2016?”