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.
Uncategorized
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.
Not Big Daddy’s ‘American carnage,’ is it? After Otis strengthened from a tropical storm to a Cat 5 hurricane in 24 hours before slamming into Acapulco on Wednesday, CNN’s Derek Van Dama called it “the new normal…. Climate change? The fingerprints written all over it.” Nope, climate change deniers will insist. After a suspected firearms instructor and Army reservist armed with an AR-style rifle murders 16 in Lewiston, Maine, injures dozens, and throws multiple communities into shelter-in-place lockdown, gunophiles will insist the problem isn’t easy access to guns either. The suspected shooter remains at large as I type this. Hannaford Supermarkets has closed all its stores in Maine until at least 10 a.m. L.L. Bean has closed its facilities across Maine as well. New York Times: The “34th mass killing” this year is the 565th mass shooting in the United States, defined by the Gun Violence Archive as “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.
A Category 5 hurricane hit the city and nobody saw it coming OMG this is the Princess hotel in Acapulco. That’s some serious damage!!! 😫#HurricaneOtis #HurracanOtis #Otis #Acapulco #México pic.twitter.com/MWauoK1bbG — Volcaholic 🌋 (@volcaholic1) October 25, 2023 Whoahhh! Jeeeze!! This video really shows how bad the situation is in Acapulco 😭💔 📹 Jorge Martíne#HurricaneOtis #HurracanOtis #Otis #Acapulco #Mexico pic.twitter.com/XboA3EYoCM — Volcaholic 🌋 (@volcaholic1) October 25, 2023 I didn’t see one news report about any of that yesterday on cable. (I sure am glad I got to hear hour after hour of lying Republicans instead.) Anyway, it’s a good thing global warming is a hoax or this sort of thing might be a problem: Hurricane Otis, a tropical storm that strengthened suddenlyinto the most powerful cyclone known to have hit Mexico’s Pacific Coast,slammed into the tourist resort of Acapulco on Wednesday and battered nearby beach communities. The hurricane’s 165-mph winds shattered windows, rattled tall buildings and snapped power and telephone lines.
The new Speaker of the House is a Christian Right extremist. A sage Dem texts, basically: Repubs are gonna elevate a speaker who tried to overthrow the election and backs an abortion ban – the two issues we won on in 2022 “What are they thinking ?” — Jonathan Martin (@jmart) October 25, 2023 Throw in entitlements and it’s basically every gross rating point Dems have bought in last few elections — Jonathan Martin (@jmart) October 25, 2023 He was a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund for 20 years: The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, is an American conservative Christian legal advocacy group that works to expand Christian practices within public schools and in government, outlaw abortion, and curtail the rights of LGBTQ people. ADF is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, with branch offices in Washington, D.C., and New York, among other locations. Its international subsidiary, Alliance Defending Freedom International, which is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, operates in over 100 countries.
It’s hard to find anything to say about this anymore. A disturbed man takes up one of his easily obtained semi-automatic weapons and mows down a bunch of innocent people. The gun proliferation zealots instantly call for more guns and better mental health. Oh, and thoughts and prayers. It never, ever, changes and I have come to believe that we are now addicted to the cycle of violence as some sort of primitive cleansing ritual. It makes no rational sense. This latest shooter reportedly had mental illness and was hearing voices. According to some reports about his social media, he was also a right winger. Surprise. It also sounds like he and his family are gun extremists. Maybe this guy is lying, but it tracks:
Say it ain’t so! Trump in 2018: “You look at GDP at 3.2 percent, we’re doing so well… Nobody would have believed it” GDP just hit 4.9 percent under @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/5w0TZm9tjU — Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) October 26, 2023 Not counting the gyrations of the pandemic period, it is stronger economic growth than any quarter of the pre-Covid Trump presidency and stronger than any quarter since 2014. https://t.co/xkPejz7Stw https://t.co/0xm4sJ5sPS — Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) October 26, 2023 I guess I’m past hoping that people will ever “feel” that the economy has improved as long as the price of eggs is higher than it was in 2010. But honestly, I think that Trump’s ongoing presence in our political culture makes his followers gleefully pretend that the world has gone to hell since he left office and the rest of us are just depressed and enervated by the relentless chaos he causes. Still, the news is true. The economy is rolling and the relentless doom saying over the past couple of years, predicting an imminent recession, remains wrong.
With Trump putting all his weight behind them Margaret Sullivan with a sobering take on the Speaker debacle: The process was appalling, and the outcome even more so, as Republicans in the House of Representatives finally found someone they could more or less agree on. That agreement, though, may be more accurately described as simple exhaustion after three weeks of embarrassing misfires. And who is it they have managed to elect speaker of the US House, the person in line to lead the nation just after the president and vice-president? It’s Mike Johnson of Louisiana who, as one example of his profound unsuitability, brags that he doesn’t believe that human beings cause the climate crisis, though his home state has been ravaged by it. He is against abortion, voted against aid to Ukraine and stridently opposes LGBTQ+ rights. Perhaps most notably, Johnson had a leading role in trying to overturn he 2020 election. That means that the official second in line to the presidency “violated his oath to the constitution and tried to disenfranchise four states”, as the writer Marcy Wheeler neatly put it.
That’s because he’s never actually participated in one This piece by David Pepper is illuminating: A few years ago, now-Speaker Mike Johnson said we do not live in a democracy. "You know, we don't live in a democracy" but a "biblical" republic. That's what Mike Johnson said in a 2016 interview as he explained his views on the U.S. government. That's what the new Republican House speaker, who tried to overturn the will of the voters in 2020, believes. pic.twitter.com/AEwQXwutpl — Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) October 26, 2023 As I wrote several months ago, it’s a common right-wing refrain. Share Johnson turns out to offer the perfect example of how in today’s gerrymandered world, people can ride to the highest levels of power without facing a real election their entire careers. Which means they can be complete extremists and never face accountability for it. It also means that not only do they not know democracy, they actually come to fear it. Not just because they have never experienced it, but because it poses the biggest risk to their grasp on power.