He knows how to fail When Mike Johnson tried to start a law school it didn’t go well: In February 2012, Mike Johnson sent an aide on an urgent mission at the college where he had been working to open a law school: Locate a study that he believed would provethe project was financially possible. For more than a year, Johnson — the dean of the not-yet-opened law school — had been telling donors and the public that the institution, which would focus on training Christian attorneys in northwest Louisiana, was not only achievable, but inevitable. “From a pure feasibility standpoint,” Johnson, then 38, told the local Town Talk newspaper in 2010 after becoming dean, “I’m not sure how this can fail because … it looks like the perfect storm for our law school.” But he had still not actually seen a feasibility study commissioned by the parent school, Louisiana College,a private Southern Baptist college in Pineville, La., now known as Louisiana Christian University. The aide soon returned with disturbing news: The study had been buried in a filing cabinet. And it was all but useless.
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But this looks promising Simon Rosenberg, who called the red trickle in 2022, wrote this on twitter: As folks ready their election takes for Tuesday night, it’s important to check in on the big advantages Congressional Dems have opened up in recent months. Perhaps most important polling data out there right now. Tuesday is off-year election day and because the Virginia Governor’s race overly excites the beltway press we’ll all be watching to see how the Great Whitebread hope Glenn Youngkin does. His race doesn’t really mean anything nationally but they will say it is a bellweather despite their huge miss in 2022. And whether or not this discontent with the GOP congress transaltes to other races is unknown. But it’s not good for them. And with MAGA MIke in charge it’s probably going to get worse.
It’s not good This guy is nuts and he’s leading a small army of nuts. We just have to hope that if he gets on the ballot that more right wing nuts than left wing nuts vote for him: At an anti-vaccine conference in Georgia on Friday, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed his commitment to the cause and spoke to his base about how he, as president, would serve the movement he built. “I feel like I’ve come home today,” he said to a standing ovation, crediting the assembled audience with his candidacy. He then laid out his vision for a Kennedy presidency, which would include telling the National Institutes of Health to take “a break” from studying infectious diseases, like Covid-19 and measles, and pivoting the agency to the study of chronic diseases, like diabetes and obesity. Kennedy has suggested without evidence that researchers and pharmaceutical companies are driven by profit to neglect such chronic conditions and invest in ineffective and even harmful treatments; he includes vaccines among them. “I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, God bless you all,” Kennedy said.
I just finished watching “Now And Then — The Last Beatles Song” documentary film, written and directed by Oliver Murray and produced by Jonathan Clyde of Apple Corps. I then then immediately watched it again. (It’s only 12 minutes long.) The … Continue reading
The greatest disjuncture in the social sciences is between the image that economists have of their discipline, and its reality. A decade before David Graeber published Debt: the First 5000 Years (Graeber 2011), the future chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush published a paper with the confronting title of “Economic Imperialism” (Lazear 2000), … Continue reading "Puncturing the Hubris of Economics"
His first hire says it all: When an ABC News reporter last week tried to ask Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), the soon-to-be Speaker of the House, about his key role in Donald Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election, the message relayed by House Republicans was, essentially, “Shut up.” While the new House leader continues to sidestep questions about his election denialism, his latest hire shows that trying to overturn the next presidential election may still very well be at the top of the House GOP’s agenda. It was reported on Tuesday that Johnson had tapped Raj Shah to be his office’s chief spokesperson and oversee his communications operation. In this position, he will not only serve as Johnson’s top mouthpiece but also, according to Politico, “help run messaging for House Republicans.” Representatives for Johnson and Shah did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Oof — this Morning Joe supercut of Trump foreign policy comments from just the last few weeks pic.twitter.com/B6QrJJiRgw — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2023 Just thought I’d drop this in as a reminder. In case we’ve started to forget.
Pelosi brings the hammer down on No Labels I noted in an earlier post the new Q Poll which included RFK Jr and Cornel West in the presidential survey. It’s not at all decisive and I have a feeling those numbers will not hold once the campaign begins in earnest anyway. But No Labels is also a threat if they succeed in carrying out their plan to get on the ballot in the battleground states. They cannot win but they seem determined to do it anyway. The worst case scenario is that there will be a tie in the electoral college, which is very possible with their ballot strategy, throwing the decision to the House. I think we know how that’s going to pan out. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t mince words on this subject: Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi on Thursday became one of the highest-profile elected Democrats to go public with her concerns about the centrist group No Labels’ third-party presidential bid. “No Labels is perilous to our democracy,” she told reporters. “I hesitate to say No Labels because they do have labels. They’re called no taxes for the rich. No child tax credit for children.
But it’s a start Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko pointed to this introductory ad from a candidate running for Congress in Arkansas. Yeah, on first glance this ad from retired colonel Marcus Jones is good. Then again (from 2022): During the 2010 senatorial primary in North Carolina, Democrat Cal Cunningham said to my face that the DSCC told him his Bronze Star would trump anything the right wing could throw at him. My first thought was, “And you believed them?” My second was, “Does John Kerry ring a bell?” At the Democratic State Executive Committee meeting in Durham Saturday, one delegate rolled her eyes at Senate candidate Cheri Beasley’s TV ads as the bland products of talentless consultants. “She’s going to lose.” Former N.C. Chief Justice Beasley did in 2020 and 2022. Cunningham famously lost a second bid for Senate in 2020. Another retired colonel ran for Congress here in WNC and lost to Madison Cawthorn. Having a military background may get you a foot in the door with swing voters but won’t prevent them from slamming it on your foot. Post by @adamparkhomenko View on Threads Good luck, colonel.
Be as excited about expanding freedom Anand Giridharadas presents a video conversation about what inpired “The Persuaders” at The Ink : A year from now, America will face a defining choice between authoritarianism and freedom, hatred and love, exclusion and inclusion, and, as of now, it’s a dead heat. It shouldn’t be. It doesn’t have to be. Early in the conversation, Giridharadas says: In a moment in American life in which the contest is not small government versus big government, blue versus red, left versus right, high taxes versus low taxes, in which the contest is really pro-democracy versus anti-democracy, some of us versus all of us … it was a dead heat. And sometimes we do well in the dead heat. And that means 49-46. A couple states more than that, and sometimes we lose the dead heat. But as a writer, as opposed to being a campaigner who has to eke out these narrow victories, I have the luxury of stepping back a little bit and saying, hold on.