Good point. Media Matters on how this ubiquitous right wing “dementia” claim looks today: The last week has been brutal for this theory, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden personally negotiating a debt ceiling deal that right-wing media figures call a “total cave” to Democrats that produced “a typical DC swamp sewer bill.” In March, McCarthy offered to bring the president “soft food” to kickstart negotiations, an obvious crack at his age. But on Sunday, after striking a deal, the speaker described Biden to reporters as “very professional, very smart. Very tough at the same time.” The resulting legislation passed the House on Wednesday night and now moves to the Senate. The right is having difficulty coming to terms with how, as Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) put it on Twitter, “Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants.” Some, like Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity, are treating Biden’s purported senility as entirely unrelated to the result.
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I’m relieved to see it. Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman have the story: A raucous school board meeting in Hernando County, Fla., on Tuesday night captured what’s striking about this new phenomenon. The scene featured teachers pointedly declaring that right-wing attacks are driving them to quit, even as parents and students forcefully stood up on their behalf, demanding a halt to the hysteria. “I have never seen such fear from my colleagues as I have seen in the last two months,” social studies teacher Victoria Hunt told the board. The whole affair really put the culture-war-mongers to shame. Not that they’ll see it that way; as the meeting also showed, scenes like this — with maximum rage, fear, tension and suspicion surging between parents and educators — are precisely the outcome they want. This county, north of Tampa, voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 by a 41-point margin. It’s wherefifth-grade teacher Jenna Barbee recently enraged local enforcers of right-wing orthodoxy by showing her class “Strange World,”a Disney movie with an openly gay character.
University workers are fighting for job security and fair pay. But docking lecturers’ pay risks worsening industrial action, UCU activist Dr Antonia Dawes writes
This piece in the Guardian by Moira Donegal nails it: On Monday, Jim Pillen, the Republican governor of Nebraska, signed a law that bans abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy and restricts gender-affirming care for anyone under 19. The ban on trans medical care takes effect in October and the abortion ban goes into effect immediately. And so Nebraska has become the latest state to determine through law what might have once been determined by the more pliable tools of custom or imagination: the way that the sexed body a person is born with shapes the kind of life they can live. Be it through forced pregnancy or prohibited transition, the state of Nebraska now claims the right to determine what its citizens will do with their sexed bodies – what those bodies will look like, how they will function and what they will mean. It is a part of the right’s ongoing project to roll back the victories of the feminist and gay rights movements, to re-establish the dominance of men in public life, to narrow possibilities for difference and expression and to inscribe in law a firm definition and hierarchy of gender: that people are either men or women and that men are better.
More to the point, if he did, did he know it? The problem is that it only takes one to raise the motion. And it will only take five to vote him out. So this remains a very live possibility. On the other hand, Jim “Beavis” Jordan told the Freedom Caucus to pipe down and stop threatening the speaker and at least a couple of them seem to have gone quiet on the motion to vacate. So, who knows? The big question that’s probably hanging over their decision to do this is, who could they get to replace him? There is no blue-eyed dream boat like Paul Ryan waiting in the wings as there was last time the winguts pushed out a speaker. Stay tuned. This could still get interesting. Update: Lol. I don’t think this is going to cut it.
This one seems bad CNN reports: Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything. The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said. CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.
Here’s a useful quick primer on who won and who lost in this debt ceiling hostage crisis: Don’t say it out loud until the debt ceiling is raised and we can breathe again, but the fact is that the Republicans got rolled. Shhhhh. They’re busy passing around internet memes about how Chik-fil-a is woke and don’t realize that Kevin just put on a very sad little kabuki dance.
And there will be a next time By the time you read this, it’s possible that the debt ceiling saga will finally be over. Senate leaders have said they have the votes to pass it and as of this writing, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is set to call for a vote on the package immediately — and unless he is completely inept (which is very possible), that means he knows he has the votes. Of course, anything can happen with this volatile, slim GOP House majority, as we learned during the epic speaker vote back in January. They like the drama and we may get some yet. But at this moment it appears that the deal struck by McCarthy and President Biden over the weekend is likely going to pass on a bipartisan basis over the objections of some on both the left and right, avoiding a default and any ensuing economic catastrophe. This agreement has left a sour taste in the mouths of progressives who were led to believe that the Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House had learned their lesson from past debt ceiling showdowns and were not going to engage this time.
The right is systematically boycotting everything they love. Out of hate. Let’s see how this goes over:
Kids in one of London’s poorest boroughs, Newham, are struggling to breathe. So why is the London Mayor pushing ahead with a new road tunnel that could make the situation even worse?