Fourth Time's the Charm  ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Back to Normal: For a few weeks, reports about gun death in the US moved to the back burner, not because people aren’t still being shot, thus far this year there have been 563 mass shootings, defined as an incident in which four or more victims are shot and killed.  The shootings were off the front page because it takes a large number of casualties for a gun incident to make it into the national headlines especially given the Speaker fiasco, the terrorist attack on Israel, the Gaza war and the heightened threats in the Middle East.  Sadly, another one of those heinous mass shootings took place in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday night and as a result eighteen people are dead with an additional fourteen wounded. Jared Golden, Maine’s centrist Democratic Congressman who previously opposed banning assault weapons because he had “false confidence” that Maine’s residents were “above this” has finally seen the light and is now in support of a ban.  Too bad for him and the rest of us, that ban is not going to happen anytime soon because the other “back to normal” thing that happened this week is that the House finally voted in a Speaker and the new one, who every House Republican voted for, is Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Johnson is from the rightest wing of his already substantially right-wing party where gun ownership is second only to Bible thumping which goes far to explaining why his response to the Maine massacre was to say: “prayer is appropriate in a time like this, that the evil can end, and this senseless violence can stop.” Nothing about guns, just a call for prayer not surprising since Johnson once said that mass shootings are a result of the cultural revolution of the 1960’s, no-default divorces, the legalization of abortion and the teaching of evolution. The prayer part is Mike Johnson’s thing, during his Speaker acceptance speech he noted that his wife had “spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord” to ensure his come from behind ascension to the Speaker throne. He and his wife aren’t just married, they have a covenant marriage, something that’s supposed to make divorce impossible, at least until he decides he wants one.  Johnson, who former Congressman Adam Kinzinger describes as Jim “Gym” Jordan in a suit jacket, also believes that abortions are equivalent to the Holocaust, that abortion providers should be punished with hard labor and that that reason “we are struggling to cover the bases of social security and Medicare and Medicaid” is because we don’t have “all those abled bodied workers in the economy” due to all those abortions, a convoluted attack on immigration, working women and abortions rolled into one.  Johnson, who was mentored by Gymbo, tried hard to help Trump overturn the election and also doesn’t believe in climate change. He has no experience legislating and hasn’t ever chaired a committee, but he’s now got a job that’s eaten more experienced people alive and is also second in line for the Presidency right behind VP Harris.  Remember the so-called moderates, many from swing or Biden plus districts, who stood up to oppose Jim Jordan, they all voted for Johnson as did Colorado’s Ken Buck who said he’d never vote for someone who hadn’t voted to certify the 2020 election.  They caved either because they were worn down by the Speaker shit show or because their opposition to Jordan had little to do with his right-wing positions but a lot to do with his personal offensiveness and the bespectacled Johnson with the same wacko views has a calmer demeanor, and is more camera ready than the hunched over, loud, shirtless Jordan. 

Still Crazy:  Whatever the reason, the House is now back to “normal” and by normal, a government shutdown looms, there’s no farm bill, and Israel and Ukraine are looking to the US for funding.  Newbie Johnson has his work cut out for him and to the extent that he thinks that keeping the government open is a good thing, he’s likely to face a lot of the hurdles getting things done that former Speaker McCarthy faced, one of which includes keeping Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz who celebrated his success at replacing McCarthy with MAGA Johnson on Steve Bannon’s show right after the final Speaker vote.  Some of the important legislation will probably be passed but the price of doing so will involve letting folks like Jim “Gym” Jordan get back to impeaching President Biden and going after Hunter, again.  Margie Q is acting out too, she’s working to force a privileged vote to censure Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for her “anti-Semitic activity” and “supporting of terrorist activities” which has triggered Democrat Becca Balint of Vermont to counter by reupping her effort to force a censure vote on Margie Q for her “five years-worth of incendiary actions and comments. Not to be outdone, a set of NY’s mostly vulnerable freshman Republican Congressmen have introduced a privileged motion to kick George of many name Santos out of the House.  They’re doing that to distract from their votes for Mike Johnson’s Speakership, because their Democratic challengers are already running ads attacking them for supporting someone who is anti-abortion, opposed to same sex marriage and right of Rick Santorum on all the other social issues that they care about. It wouldn’t be the worst thing if all of these motions succeeded.  We really could use more teamwork and fewer flame throwing in both houses but don’t count on it.     

And:  Trump has been fined, again.  The fine this time was $10,000 for continuing to threaten NY Judge Engoron’s clerk.  Trump’s one time lawyer Michael Cohen testified in the NY fraud case that Engoron is overseeing and while his testimony revealed that Trump’s asset valuation numbers were invented out of thin air to make Trump seem richer than rich and to improve his Forbes standing, Cohen also revealed that he previously lied to the Feds to protect his wife and her family or so he says.  Cohen’s testimony can be corroborated but still he’s not the best witness.  And lastly, remember Justice Clarence Thomas’s $270k RV, the one he bought with money “loaned” to him by a friend.  It should surprise no one to learn that though Thomas made some interest payments he never paid off the principal which was ultimately forgiven by his friend.  Of course, Clarence failed to mention that in either his court disclosures or his tax filings.  Grifter’s got to grift.

 

 

Arin Goldman