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.

Lying For Profit And Purpose

Posted: March 8, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , | 2 Comments

The lying liars that work at Fox News Corporation (FNC) are now the official propaganda arm of the MAGA Republican Party and cater to the party’s autocratic and fascist tendencies for corporate profit and to push lies about the 2020 election (still!) and the attempted coup on 6 January 2021. Too strong of a statement? I think not. This week we saw for ourselves how hypocritical and uncaring about the future of our country the “talent” and corporate leaders at FNC actually are.

In recent days, two sets of supporting documents were released for the Dominion Voting Systems Corporation case suing Fox News and FNC for defamation and asking for 1.6 billion dollars in damages. They are also suing Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Mike Lindell, Patrick Byrne, One America News Network (OANN), and Newsmax for billions more. (Another voting machine company called Smartmatic is also suing FNC for 2.7 billion dollars along with the other defendants.) The Dominion case is moving through the judicial system as, so far, all attempts by the defendants to have the cases dismissed failed.

The documents released so far clearly show that the leadership at FNC and the on air personalities such as Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and others knew that the falsehoods being spread by Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell and the rest were entirely false. Yet, they continued to give them air time and to promote the lie that the election was rigged and that Trump actually won the election. They purposely tried to undermine the 2020 election results as they feared a loss of profits from a Fox viewership that was turning to other sources of right wing conspiracy stories because Fox announced Joe Biden as the winner. (Isn’t it ironic that they lost viewers by telling the truth?)

Under the terms set by the Supreme Court decision in New York Times vs Sullivan, there is a very high bar required to prove defamation or libel by a news organization. Because of the First Amendment, the court ruled in that 1964 case that the plaintiff must show that “the defendant knew that a statement was false or was reckless in deciding to publish the information without investigating whether the information was accurate.” Over the years, this ruling has protected many news organizations from lawsuits. In the Dominion case, judges have so far ruled that there is sufficient evidence in the case to move to trial because it may be possible that FNC knew what they were doing was wrong, but they did it anyway. I am not an attorney, but to me the emails, texts, and memos revealed so far clearly show that everyone involved knew exactly what they were doing and deliberately and with malice of forethought went ahead and spread lies as though they were facts.

It gets worse.

Knowing full well what was happening in the Dominion case, and that many Fox News personalities were liars, the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (MAGA – CA) none-the-less turned over roughly 44,000 hours of video evidence from the violent attack on the capitol to Tucker Carlson of Fox News. Only to Tucker Carlson. Not to any other news outlet, at all. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Carlson played his selected excerpts from the recordings that purported to show that the rioters and thugs in the building were actually just “sightseers.” He claims that the footage shows that “taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.” He also claimed that the authorities lied about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, a particularly callous and shameful statement. In other words, all of us that saw what was happening, live and in color, as it happened, are all victims of yet another big lie. Or as Trump once said, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” Only people like Trump, Green, Boebert, Gaetz and Carlson are truth tellers, otherwise it’s all “fake.” Thankfully, many Senate Republicans, along with all Democrats, condemned the selected release of the tapes and reiterated that it was a full blown attack on the capitol by insurrectionists. Unfortunately, in the heart of MAGA country — the House Republican caucus — there was no such condemnation. In fact, there was celebration in some corners that now the “truth” is out. They claim the insurrectionists are actually patriots being held as “political prisoners” by a corrupt government.

Why do I bring this up? Because to me it is terrifying. I may be able to call Tucker Carlson a liar and understand his devious motives, but millions of others take him at face value. He is purposely poisoning the well of facts, truth, and trust in order to undermine our democracy. Oh, and to make a profit while doing so. Despicable. Why poison the well? Because he, and those like him, do not believe in a democracy where everyone has the right to vote and a voice in choosing the direction our country should go. Mr. Carlson’s favorite leader is Victor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary. Why? Because Mr. Orban is anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-free press, and believes that the white Christian culture of Europe is being destroyed by “outsiders” and must be “saved.” He is creating an autocratic state where his is the only voice that matters.

It gets worse.

Last weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — a long standing conference that used to be about discussing conservative values and policies and ideas, but now is a MAGA rally — Trump took it over as a coronation of his future presidency. In a nearly two hour rambling mess of a speech, Trump laid out the reasons he should be elected president. While I happen to believe that he is becoming less and less a factor in politics, he is not irrelevant. And his supporters are becoming ever more rabid. That makes him dangerous.

In his speech he said these ominous lines, “If you put me back in the White House, their reign will be over and they know it. America will be a free nation once again. We are not a free nation right now. We don’t have a free press or a free anything right now. In 2016 I declared I am your voice. Today I add that I am your warrior, I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged, and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. I will totally obliterate the deep state.”

Fascism, here we come. “Retribution?” Sounds like he is claiming that he will rule with an iron fist. Recall that he called for the “termination” of the Constitution.

What do we have when we put this all together? Danger. The MAGA crowd in Congress, some state legislatures, some governors, “news” outlets, and the dark reaches of the web all believe that they must “rescue” our country. The threats of violence are barely disguised. The propaganda machine at FNC continues to pump out lies. And on and on in various forms. For those not paying attention, the anti-democratic voices are getting louder and stronger.

Why? To sow division, hate, fear and confusion. Once people think that they cannot trust any government or elected official, any news organization or any other citizen outside of their tribe, the door is open for the autocrats and fascist leaning elements of our society to step in and impose their own view of the future. Believe me, most of us reading this piece are not in their plans.

We have to care or they win. No more “whataboutism” or “both sides” or “I don’t read the paper or watch the news anymore because it is too upsetting.” That is what they are counting on. The aim is to wear people down to the point that they stop paying attention. Do not let it happen. Pay attention. Vote. Let your voice be heard.

By nature I am an optimist. I think our democracy will survive, after all we survived the Civil War. But it won’t survive on its own. I worry that the attack on 6 January was a dress rehearsal. I worry about political violence, as does FBI Director Wray who is on record that the number one threat to our society is domestic political terrorism — and most of it comes from the hard right. When Trump talks of “retribution” he is using a thinly disguised reference to violence. When MAGA Republican members of Congress wear AR-15 lapel pins on the House floor, they are silently implying violence. There are signs everywhere.

Be careful out there.