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.
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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.
Bored? Who has time to be bored? Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi left her post with a historic legacy of accomplishment. There is much there to admire. I wish she’d go back to San Francisco. Or at least leave Congress. She could take Steny Hoyer, Dick Durbin, and Chuck Schumer with her for the good of her party. (Let Republicans clean their own houses.) Political life in this country is dominated by a gerontocracy that is stunting its growth. Local Democrats are forever lamenting the lack of young blood in their ranks. But look around at the dominance of wrinkles at most any meeting. It’s not a particularly inviting environment for people under 50. And with the oldsters tending to stay in positions of power well beyond their “best by” dates, the young have nowhere to go. Why bother wasting the time? The Washington Post reports that the trend extends beyond politics: Yet even beyond Washington, a geriatric elite also controls many other aspects of an aging society, to such an extent that in some professions there are deep concerns about how those roles will be filled in decades to come.
Different worldviews, shaped by a different understanding of history I was on the Majority Report last Friday and in discussing the Israel War with Sam and Emma I made the point that one of the divides on this issue is generational and it’s for a lot of reasons. Older people like myself were raised in the direct shadow of WWII and “Never Again” is etched on our brains. The war was an everyday part of popular culture, our parents talked about it as if it was yesterday (which it was, to them) and the Holocaust was something immediate and horrifying. (I went to see “The Sorrow and the PIty” twice!) All that is ancient history to today’s young people who are far more influenced by our culture’s belated recognition of white colonialism and racist violence writ large as their historical touchstone, perhaps made more immediate to them by the actions of the United States after 9/11. It’s a different worldview shaped by different historical experiences. Both are valid ways to see this current situation and it’s hard to argue either way.
Just chaos and culture war. That’s about it. Philip Bump digs down a little to find out what really animates them. And it’s not surprising: One of the central refrains of Donald Trump’s campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — a refrain focused, justifiably, on a general election rematch against President Biden — is that the economy was more robust during his tenure in the White House. Trump and his allies make this argument constantly, one that largely focuses on inflation and that almost necessarily includes an asterisk that excepts the months of the coronavirus pandemic. But any person asked to evaluate the central themes of this race would very quickly identify the economy as a central part of Republican support for the former president. As it is, it seems, until a competing priority is presented: the need to “preserve American culture and way of life.” Then, the reality emerges. On Wednesday, PRRI released the results of its annual American Values survey, a look at broad themes in American political and religious thought.
I assume you’ve heard that ABC is reporting that Meadows got an immunity deal with Jack Smith and has told them that he knew the election wasn’t rigged and told Trump that many times (among other things.) If you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to that article. Nobody is sure who may have leaked this or why but I think it’s pretty clear that it wasn’t Trump’s team. He does not sound pleased.