Meet The Speaker Of The House

Posted: October 30, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

“The swamp is on the run, MAGA is ascendant, and if you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement, and where the power of the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.” — Congressman Matt Gaetz (MAGA-FL) talking about the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (MAGA-LA).

Last week House Republicans ended three weeks of bitter infighting, recriminations, and ignoring the people’s work by electing a new Speaker of the House. The unanimous Republican vote for Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana proved that the rabble rouser Gaetz was accurate in his assessment. The House Republican Party can only be considered a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump, Inc. and a solid MAGA institution. There are no moderates left on the Republican side of the House given that the support for “MAGA Mike” was without exception.

Note that Trump thoroughly controls the House through his MAGA acolytes. His autocratic control can be discerned from one telling event. Speaker Johnson was the Republicans’ fourth choice after they deposed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy — thrown out because he dared to pass bi-partisan legislation to keep the government functioning under a Continuing Resolution (CR). Their third choice was Congressman Tom Emmer of Minnesota. He had the votes of most of the caucus, but one social media post by an ex-president doomed his chances and his support evaporated before a formal vote on his Speakership. In other words, Trump vetoed Mr. Emmer from becoming Speaker. Trump supported Mr. Johnson and he became Speaker. Pretty simple. One person out of the government controls what happens with the party holding the majority in the House. It took them three weeks to figure out who would be the biggest MAGA champion, but they found their guy.

It appears that Speaker Johnson is a nice, polite, well-dressed individual with a pleasant smile. Do not let the packaging influence your opinion of what is inside. Here are a few examples.

He is labeled an “election denier” but it goes far deeper than that. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) called him “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.” He organized over 100 House Republicans to sign an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting an effort by the Texas Attorney General to throw out the results of the presidential vote in four swing states. The Supreme Court turned it down. In gathering support for that effort, Mr. Johnson sent an email to all Republicans in Congress explicitly saying that Trump asked him to recruit all of the Republicans to join the brief to the Supreme Court and that he would report those that sign on as Trump “will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review.” A not so subtle threat. When that didn’t work, he helped to organize the sedition caucus of Republicans that voted on 6 January 2021 to decertify the results of the election — after the capitol was attacked. He was an ardent advocate of the Dominion voting machine scam claiming that the machines came from “Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.” The very allegations that cost Fox News three-quarters of a billion dollars and for which increasing numbers of scammers are pleading guilty in court agreeing that they are all lied when they claimed that there was massive voting fraud.

This does not bode well for certifying the 2024 election results in the House.

One would think that this alone would disqualify anyone from becoming the second in line to the presidency — behind a president he apparently does not think is legitimate. When asked about this in recent interviews, he refused to answer.

But wait! There’s more!

For example, he is widely recognized as a right wing, white Christian nationalist, although he demurs when asked if that his world view. As he stated in a recent interview on Fox News, “I am a Bible believing Christian, …go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my world view.” Such a devotion to his religion is in itself not a problem. The problem is that he has worked most of his adult life to push his religious principles ahead of, and over-riding those of other religions or those that have no religious belief at all. His states is that the U.S. was founded on Christian principles and that the Constitution is really a Christian document, but a Christianity that he defines. To him, our constitutional republic was established by the Founding Fathers because “they followed the Biblical definition of what a civil society is supposed to look like.” He is vigorously opposed to same-sex marriage, LGBTQ rights and the influx of immigrants (not just border control but who is allowed to enter the U.S.).

After the mass shooting in Lewiston Maine he said in response to a question about stricter gun laws that “The end of the day, it’s, the problem is the human heart. Its not guns. Its not weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment.” A few years ago, in his speeches (some call them sermons) he blamed school gun violence on various social issues including abortion, divorce and the teaching of evolution.

There is more, but it is clear that he is far to the right and in perfect alignment with MAGA principles. As to governing, we will see. He has little experience in any government leadership position having never even chaired a full committee within the House of Representatives. The coming months are going to be difficult for our country as we still need to fund the government, decide on aid to Israel and Ukraine and deal with the many issues that continue to languish in the House for lack of action because the MAGA agenda is Hunter Biden’s laptop and not much else.

Some might argue that having anyone as Speaker is better than having no Speaker at all. Well, with “MAGA Mike” we may have just gotten exactly what we asked for.

Dysfunction Or Destruction?

Posted: October 23, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Tomorrow, it will be three weeks since the United States of America had an actual Speaker of the House of Representatives. On 3 October, Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy (CA) was voted out of his position as the Speaker due to a revolt of the hard right MAGA Republicans. They were enraged that he worked to pass a bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government operating until 17 November of this year. For those zealots, doing anything with the support of Democrats is unacceptable. In this case, it was, to them, an outrageous breach of faith that Mr. McCarthy worked to allow the government to continue to operate without their hard right policies in place. Since then, the Republicans (the majority party in the House is always responsible for choosing the Speaker) have floated a number of options for choosing a new Speaker, including giving the current Speaker Pro Tempore Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC) more power to enact some basic legislation. (Under the current rules, the Speaker Pro Tempore can only preside over the election of a permanent Speaker.) Complicated, it is. The only good thing that has happened so far is that Representative Jim Jordan (MAGA-OH) failed three times in his attempt to bully, intimidate, and threaten his way into the Speakership.

Democrats have consistently and unanimously voted for Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Note that he gets more votes than any Republican so far (it takes a majority of 50% plus one to be elected). Mr. Jeffries continually floats bipartisan proposals to solve the crisis, but Republicans refuse to allow Democrats to participate (see above and the impact on Mr. McCarthy when trying to use bipartisanship).

As I write, nine Representatives have thrown their hats into the ring to attempt to convince their colleagues that they should take the gavel. I will note that only two of those running voted to certify the election of President Biden in 2020. It would seem that acknowledging the results of a free and fair election would be a prerequisite for the job which is second in the line of succession to the presidency, but it is not in the current state of the party formerly known as the Republican Party. This does not bode well for certifying the 2024 election results should their preferred candidate lose.

As the old saying goes, “pay backs are hell!” This past week numerous Republicans and their families were the recipients of death threats, vile insults, intimidating emails and other actions that are part and parcel of the MAGA playbook against their perceived “enemies” (fellow Americans) because they would not support Mr. Jordan as Speaker. They were aghast at what they heard and appalled that it happened. Hmmm. I don’t recall any of them standing up and expressing their outrage when political violence was threatened by an ex-president and his MAGA acolytes against those in the other party, the Department of Justice, FBI, or judiciary, to name but a few of their targets.

The main question I now have is whether the Republican Party’s inability to preform the most rudimentary of parliamentary duties is a result of their dysfunction or is it a deliberate attempt at destruction? There are a solid block of the hard right in the caucus that are perfectly happy to knee cap the democratic process and thereby prevent the most basic of government functions to take place. If past performance is indicative of future results, then I opine that although not planned, the current state of affairs fits perfectly into their scheme to burn it all down and start over under autocratic rule with a certain ex-president in charge.

The world is on fire with serious conflicts in Europe and the Middle East that each have the potential to blow up into wide-spread wars impacting our own national security. The government shuts down because of the lack of spending authority in about four weeks. All funding for the military, foreign aid, government functions, etc. originates in the House of Representatives, which can take up no legislation without a Speaker. Layer on top of that Republicans in the Senate holding up promotions for over 300 senior military officers and the Ambassadors to Israel and Egypt, as well as other ambassadors, in the midst of an explosive crisis.

Such actions have serious domestic and international consequences. The lack of the House to get itself in order is not only a national embarrassment, it sends exactly the wrong signal to our adversaries and undermines our claims that democracy is the best form of government on the planet. Putin, Xi, Kim and others are loving it.

Meanwhile, an ex-president is openly admiring our adversaries, mocking our own men and women in uniform and generally running amok as he pursues his personal wealth and power.

Even the most casual observer of our domestic political turmoil would recognize that the Democrats are interested in, and capable of, governing even if one may disagree with particular policies. That same observer would also recognize that as a party, Republicans either have no interest in, or ability to, govern. Governing requires positive actions. The MAGA crowd, and those Republicans that refuse to stand up to them, have only negative actions to sustain them. They are against a lot, but there is little to nothing that they are doing to move the country forward.

At the risk of sounding like a doomsayer, I do not see things getting any better leading up to and beyond the 2024 election. Political violence and dysfunction are part of the MAGA playbook. There will be serious attempts to disrupt the elections and we already know that the MAGA followers will not accept the results of any election that they do not win. We had one failure of imagination in that no one expected an attempted coup in our country. It happened. Given the current state of affairs fomented by one man and his followers in and out of Congress, I have little expectation that things will improve over the coming year. Dysfunction or destruction? It does not matter. The results are the same.

Terror In The Middle East

Posted: October 13, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

The horrifying Hamas terrorist attack from the Gaza strip into Israel last Saturday continues to escalate. The situation is complicated and will get more so, but make no mistake, Hamas is a terrorist organization with one goal and one goal only — destroy Israel by killing Jews. The attack is considered the largest loss of Jewish life in one day since the Holocaust. It’s bad. Really bad. Hamas is evil on earth and no one should be confused about their goal or mix their murderous, immoral and depraved actions with any aspirations that Palestinians may have for autonomy and a free state. Hamas cares nothing about their fellow Palestinians and, in fact, are effectively using their friends and families as human shields along with the hostages kidnapped in Israel and taken back to Gaza.

According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, Hamas was created in 1987 at the beginning of the first Palestinian Intifada (an uprising against Israel). It has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and is concentrated in Gaza, although elements of the organization exist in the West Bank and other areas. In conjunction with the terrorist arm of Hamas, there is also political leadership that won elections in Gaza in 2006 giving them complete control of the population, and rejecting the government and agreements formed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) that nominally controls the Palestinian territories. Starting in the 1990s, Hamas periodically fired rockets into Israel and conducted small scale terrorist attacks in Israel. Over this time period, Israel periodically bombed Gaza in retaliation for the rocket and terror attacks and in 2005 conducted a large scale ground attack into Gaza to cripple the infrastructure and leadership of Hamas. There are slightly over two million Palestinians living in Gaza which covers about the same area in size as Philadelphia. It is considered the most densely populated territory on earth.

The attack into Israel on 7 October apparently took the Israelis completely by surprise. In military attacks, it is often possible to achieve tactical surprise (think an Army company getting ambushed). Occasionally, a military force may achieve operational surprise (think the Battle of the Bulge in World War II). It is nearly impossible to achieve a strategic surprise as occurred nearly a week ago. Ironically, in military case studies, the most discussed strategic surprise was the 1973 Yom Kippur War where Egypt and Syria completely surprised the Israelis, catching many of their units unprepared. Israel prevailed, but only after a bitter and hotly contested fight. It is too early for in-depth analysis at this point, and the focus should be on destroying Hamas, but it appears that there are similarities between 1973 and 2023. In the former case, Israeli politicians, intelligence analysts and the military considered the region to be relatively stable and that their enemies were not capable of fighting Israel’s superior military. In particular, Israel believed that air superiority was necessary for any successful ground attack and Israel ruled the skies. What they did not account for were Arab mobile air defense systems that provided a secure umbrella over their ground forces protecting them from Israeli air attacks. In 2023, Israeli intelligence analysts and politicians assessed that Hamas was a nuisance with their periodic rocket attacks, but not an imminent threat to national security. Israeli policies were geared towards normalizing the situation in Gaza through economic efforts (aid and allowing Gazans to work in Israel) and to achieve political stability by working with Arab countries to develop their de facto government and to contain Hamas. They were wrong. Hamas is not a “normal” organization and has no interest in acting in a rational manner. Their only mission is to destroy Israel and kill Jews. Exacerbating the slow military response in Israel is the fact that many troops normally stationed on the Gaza border were moved to the West Bank to protect Israeli settlements there and to northern Israel to deter Hezbollah from attacking from Lebanon. The Israeli forces on the border were overwhelmed by the coordinated, simultaneous and substantial influx of terrorists, something that the Israelis (and indeed much of the world) thought impossible for them to do.

Israel will prevail. Unfortunately, it is going to be ugly and there will be large scale loss of life and many of the casualties are and will be civilians.

There is one nagging thought that bothers me. Hamas had to know that the Israelis would respond with a large, overwhelming military response including a ground invasion. Israeli leaders are very clear that their mission now is to kill every member of Hamas. They intend to destroy Hamas so that they are incapable of ever attacking Israel again. This is a clear mission, but perhaps unattainable. My concern is that if Hamas anticipated this response, do they have some surprise in store for the Israeli forces entering Gaza? In and of itself, rooting out Hamas in Gaza, given that Hamas has prepared for this moment for years, will entail bloody, difficult building to building fighting with Hamas on their home turf knowing the lay of the land far better than the Israelis. That will be very difficult, even with the determination, courage and resolve that Israeli forces have in their DNA and through superior training. But is Hamas drawing them into a trap? Having once surprised the world, do they have one last trick up their sleeve? We will find out in the coming hours or days as the Israeli invasion is imminent.

Wars are easy to start and hard to end. A fact in military planning is that the loser decides when the war is over. If the enemy does not give up, if they keep fighting, however feeble their resistance may be, the conflict is not over. The Israelis will have to make it so painful that Hamas gives up. Their political and military leadership declared that they would only accept unconditional surrender, a very rare and difficult resolution to conflict. Since Hamas true believers are willing to die for their cause, even in suicide attacks, they are unlikely to quit, even if they have little hope of succeeding.

The next great humanitarian crisis is about to explode. There is no place for the civilians, many of whom do not support Hamas, to go in Gaza. The territory is bounded by Israel, the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt. Israel will not allow Gazans into Israel (nor should they). To date, Egypt is unwilling to allow refugees into their country — probably because they are afraid that they will never leave and that they would destabilize Egypt. They simply do not have the ability on their own to feed, shelter and protect a projected one to one and a half million refugees, especially as half of the population in Gaza is under 18.

Among other military aid and intelligence assistance the U.S. deployed the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier along with the guided missile destroyers and cruisers in the strike group. Their purpose is to deter other bad actors from becoming involved in the war. The aircraft and cruise missiles in the strike group are a formidable capability that should make other groups and nations hesitate to aid Hamas or to create their own mischief. U.S. involvement in the current fighting will be avoided (not to mention that Israel does not want it), with the possible exception of special operations forces acting to rescue American hostages taken by Hamas and hidden in Gaza.

At any one time there are thousands of U.S. citizens in Israel on business, touring the holy land, or living in the country. Additionally, there are thousands of dual Israeli-US citizens living in Israel. The State Department is organizing evacuation flights out of the country but inevitably some U.S. citizens will be caught in the fighting (as some already have, at least 27 have been killed and 14 are missing) which will give U.S. military and diplomatic planners cause for concern. The carrier strike group is not configured to evacuate large numbers of civilians. With skill and a little luck, the evacuation flights will get everyone out that wants to go. Not all will want to. For the roughly 600 Americans believed to be working or living in Gaza, for now, they are on their own. They have no way out.

Expect this war to be a long drawn out conflict with large numbers of casualties. Do not underestimate the cruelty and depravity of Hamas. There will be despicable developments surrounding the hostages. Likewise, do not underestimate the determination of Israel to exterminate Hamas. Unfortunately, that will also bring disturbing stories of innocent civilians in Gaza killed and injured. Not because the Israeli forces are targeting them, but because there is nowhere for the civilians to go to be safe and Hamas is not in the least concerned about their well being.

Hamas must be destroyed. It is not going to be easy.