Lots of interest in McConnellâs career move this weekend. On to cartoons.
Biden says goodbye to Mitch:
Mitch was a good soldier for the 1%:
Mitch leaves a legacy:
Trumpâs delaying tactics are working:
Mike Johnson has no heart or courage:
Embryos get religion:
Michigan voters send a message:
Nikki and Thelma the elephant take a joy ride:
The Daily Escape:
Bee in a Fishhook Cactus bloom, Anza Borrego SP, CA – February 2024 photo by Paulette Donnellon
âI worry that no matter how cynical I get, itâs never enough…â â Lily Tomlin
There are abundant reasons for cynicism today. First, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Â will step down as Senate minority leader, three years ahead of his retirement from the Senate. McConnell said the recent death of his wifeâs sister reminded him of his mortality, which encouraged him to step down and take a seat in the back. But for an 82 year-old man who is in iffy health, McConnell may not want to keep sweeping up after the growing number of rogue elephants in the Senate any more.
Wrongo is glad heâs finally going because heâs an awful human being. However, after the Republicans in the Senate replace him, Wrongo is certain to miss the good old days when McConnell was in charge, because whoever follows him will be much worse.
A short look back on Mitchâs tenure: He made it his mission to ensure that nothing would get done under Obama, even if it meant the country went into a default. McConnell denied Obama the chance to fill a Supreme Court seat, holding it open for Trump. If it wasnât for Mitch’s partisan warfare, Trump wouldnât have appointed three right wingers to the current Supreme Court; Roe v. Wade would still be the law of the land.
McConnell fundamentally changed the way the Senate works. Now we all know that if something passes the Senate it needs 60 votes. Mitch McConnell made votes for Cloture (the procedure by which debate is ended and an immediate vote is taken on the matter under discussion) a huge thing. Under McConnellâs leadership, cloture votes went from a handful each term to hundreds.
McConnell will be remembered for his cowardly votes in two Trump impeachment trials. His failure to lead the Senate to a Trump conviction for the Jan. 6 insurrection may well have doomed our democracy. We remember him for his brazen/unprofessional treatment of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (“…nevertheless, she persisted…”). If it hadn’t been for John McCain, Mitch would have dismantled the ACA, leaving millions of Americans without health insurance today.
His legacy will be his success in his decades-long work of damaging America:
Todayâs second reason for cynicism is the Supreme Courtâs decision to take up the question of whether Trump enjoys total Presidential immunity for his actions in the January 6th case. Their decision sent a shockwave through the nation, dismaying Democrats and any American who understands the implications of the delay. Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, the most important of Trumpâs four (four!) criminal trials may not be finished before Americans cast their ballots in November.
From Rick Wilson:
âThe Court handed…Trump two gifts last night: time and comfort….The gift of time was so deliberate that it can only serve as one more blow to the Supreme Courtâs battered reputation. The Court…should move with dispatch in vital cases….If the immunity case isnât of the most critical urgency and consequence, what is? Take it as given that the Supreme Court of 2024 is the most intensely political of our lifetimes….â
The Courtâs surprise grant of review was a gut punch for many Democrats. They set the oral argument for April 22, 2024. It is doubtful that an opinion will be issued before June 2024. So, there is little chance that Trump will be on trial in the federal election interference or defense secrets cases before the November election.
There is no doubt that the Court was aware that theyâve delayed the Jan. 6 trial at least four months, past the point at which Trump will be the Republican Partyâs nominee. That time frame is traditionally when the Department of Justice (DOJ) refuses to pursue cases against presidential candidates. Will Attorney General Garland have the cojones to let the case proceed, or will he tell Special Counsel Smith to pause it?
In some ways, this changes nothing. Wrongo has said that the courts were never going to derail Trumpâs candidacy before November. We, the American people, remain in charge of our destiny, and thereby, Trump’s eventual accountability. Our remedy lies in defeating Trump in November. If that happens, Trump will be convicted. There is no cavalry coming. There is no miracle solution.
If we fail to do so, when Trump is again president, he will use the DOJ to end his federal criminal prosecutions.
It was clear that no conviction of Trump (including appeals) for Jan. 6 or the secret documents cases could possibly be final before the November election. A final verdict wouldnât be achieved before the election, so obsessing over when any Trump trial begins is pointless.
Those who hoped the legal system would stop Trump are disappointed. As is anyone who hoped McConnellâs Senate would stop Trump in February 2021. As are those who hoped Garlandâs DOJ would move (quickly) to hold him accountable in 2021 and 2022.
Once again the US Supreme Court has put its thumb on the scales of justice to preserve Republican political dominance. We all recall Bush vs. Gore where an earlier version of a Right-wing Supreme Court gave the 2000 presidential election to GW Bush. Back then, everyone said it was a âone-offâ intervention in the democratic process. But here we are, 24 years later with another one-off.
To pull together these two stories, Mitch McConnell didn’t steal the Supreme Court for nothing,
Wrongo thinks that the many elite lawyer pundits are starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court are robe-wearing political hacks doing whatever they can to perpetuate Republican Party policy.
There remains only one guardrail left to check the Conservative goal of restoring rich, white-Christian hegemony: Voters.
Make America Great Again, Trump for Prisoner!
Plenty of false equivalency cartoons this week. Here are the best
Pick your plagiarism:
Canât you see it? The evidence is right in front of you:
Supreme cleaning service will keep Trump on the ballot:
Changing minds will be difficult:
What could happen in November:
The Elephant has a bad dream:
The Daily Escape:
Geminids Meteor shower, Grand Tetons, WY – December 2023 timed exposure photo by Jeff Bernhard
Weâve just passed the 11th Anniversary of the school massacre in Newtown, CT. Wrongo and Ms. Right live about 20 minutes from the scene. While that grisly event is never too far from our consciousness when December rolls around, we never thought there would come a time when America would have an easier time banning books than guns. From the WaPo:
âLast school year, news reports identified more than 1,150 guns brought to K-12 campuses but seized before anyone fired them, according to an investigation by The Washington Post. Thatâs more than six guns each day, on average. Nationwide…1.1 million students…attended a school where at least one gun was found and reported on by the media in the 2022-2023 school year.â
Itâs hard to imagine that while some children are trying to learn, others are packing.
Even that exhaustive review of local news sources doesnât account for guns that are carried into schools undetected. In addition, many gun seizures are never disclosed by districts. Some guns are found on campuses located in communities that are underserved by news organizations.
The Post asked the countryâs 100 largest school districts to share data on guns seized over the last five school years. Many said they do not track that data. But disclosures from 51 of them illuminated the gap between whatâs reported in the news and what happens in schools.
In those districts, representing 6.3 million students, 515 guns were found during the 2022-2023 school year. That means 58% of seizures in those districts last academic year were never publicly reported by news organizations. The Postâs survey recorded guns recovered at schools in rural, suburban and urban areas, in all 50 states and Washington, DC. Hereâs a chart from the WaPo survey:
Note the sharp increase after the Covid shutdown. A giant problem is that the true number of guns on school campuses is almost certainly far higher.
The Post found that the number of campus gun seizures spiked significantly between the 2018-2019 school year and the 2022-2023 school year â a five-year period that, following the pandemic shutdowns, has also seen significantly more behavioral problems in school. The 47 districts for which The Post was able to obtain five full school years of data saw a 79% increase in guns found on campuses over that time frame. In many communities, the number of guns found has more than doubled, a trend that mirrors a precipitous rise in school shootings.
A huge question is whatâs causing so many more kids to bring loaded guns to school? The WaPo quotes Megan Ranny a leading firearm-injury researcher and dean of the Yale School of Public Health:
âKids are more likely to carry firearms, and even to bring firearms into school, if they have been victims of violence themselves, if they arenât connected to a community, if they have post-traumatic stress….Weâve got a lot of kids who are scared…maybe have lost parents from Covid, maybe have lost community connections because of shutdowns of community groups during Covid. And then add on to it increased access to firearms. A lot of guns bought over the last couple of years. It becomes a perfect storm.â
Such frightening thoughts. One of the positive outcomes from Sandy Hook is that Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit launched after the 2012 killings, debuted the âSay Something Anonymous Reporting Systemâ that allows users to anonymously alert school officials of safety concerns at any time of day, online or by phone. More from WaPo:
âMore than 5,000 schools use the program….The system is free to schools….In the districts theyâve trained, about 3% of students and staff, on average…submit tips…although some school systems see higher participation rates, up to 5%. Most tips concern suicidal behavior and drug use. But the system has averted at least 143 acts of violence with a weapon, including at least 15 planned school shootings, since 2018…â
And what about parents? Whatâs their responsibility for one of their kids bringing a gun to school? Parents have largely skated on accountability for the misdeeds of their children, except in Virginia, where last week, CNN reports that:
âThe mother of the Virginia 6-year-old who shot his first grade teacher in January was sentenced Friday to two years in prison, according to the court in Newport News.â
What happens to her son (sheâs a single parent) will be collateral damage in this story. Parents need to be held accountable for these acts, particularly when the kid took the parentâs gun to school.
When we talk about whatâs wrong today, we have to admit that thereâs nothing more important in America than the supremacy of the Second Amendment. Your life, the lives of your spouse and children, or your friends are worth nothing compared to that ârightâ to own guns.
Time to wake up America! The nation is sinking under this sick and warped interpretation of the Amendment. To help you wake up, It’s the perfect time for Tchaikovshyâs 1892 âWaltz of the Flowersâ from his ballet âThe Nutcrackerâ. Here it is performed by the Concertgebow in the Netherlands, conducted by Semyon Bychkov.
The waltz is the last number in the Nutcracker Suite, which is set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child’s imagination:
The Daily Escape:
Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, ME – December 2023 drone photo by Rick Berk Photography
There are plenty of newsworthy items as we end another week. You can read about them all over the internet. Wrongo wants to highlight just one: The Dow Jones index is up 29% since bottoming on Sept. 30, 2022, climbing to a new all-time high.
This is mostly due to the announcement by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday that in all likelihood, there will be no more increases in interest rates, and that there may be as many as three interest rate reductions in 2024.
Professional investors arenât following the Dow, but it remains a mental benchmark that many Americans use to gauge the health of the stock market and the economy. So accept good news when it shows up.
Today we return to the topic of illegal immigration. As Wrongo writes this, there is still no deal on immigration, which is thought to be the hold-up on funding for Ukraine and Israel. From Semaphore:
âGOP negotiators said they believed they were making progress in securing a border policy package thatâs tilted toward conservative priorities….They also welcomed the…Democratic attacks on the negotiations…..âThere are several Democrats that have spoken against it,â GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-NC) told Semafor. âThat means weâre hitting the right sort of tone.ââ
Wrongo mentioned that it is very difficult to find facts from either side in the immigration debate. One constant refrain from the Right is that terrorists are slipping over the southern border, posing an existential threat to America, and itâs all Bidenâs fault. From CBS:
âRepublican lawmakers, GOP White House hopefuls and conservative media figures have argued that the Biden administration’s border policies have given terrorists an easier way to enter the US and harm Americans. On Monday…Trump claimed that the “same people” who killed or abducted more than 1,000 civilians in Israel are coming across the southern border separating the US and Mexico…â
And Media Matters added:
âSince the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent bombing campaign in Gaza, Fox News has seized on the chaos in the Middle East to revive its relentless fearmongering campaign suggesting that migrants crossing into the US at the southern border are terrorists, this time from the Middle East. Foxâs toxic rhetoric follows âa spike in hate incidentsâ against Muslims in the US.â
There has been an increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of individuals who are on the US terror watchlist over the past two years. But they represent a tiny fraction of all migrants processed along the southern border. From the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âFrom October last year to this September, officials at the southern border arrested 169 people whose names matched those on the watch list, compared with 98 during the previous fiscal year and 15 in 2021, according to government data. But that is a minuscule fraction of the total number of migrants who were apprehended at the border over the past year, more than two million.â
That fraction is less than 0.01% for those of us without calculators. Finding illegals who are on the terror watch list is far more common along the US-Canada border, despite much lower levels of unauthorized migration there. Hereâs a US Customs and Border Protection chart:
Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 430 watchlist hits along the northern border in fiscal year 2023, the vast majority of them at official ports of entry.
Still, there are concerns. In its homeland threat assessment for 2024, the intelligence branch of DHS said:
â…record encounters of migrants arriving from a growing number of countries have complicated border and immigration security…â
The assessment also said a recent increase in apprehensions of migrants from the Eastern Hemisphere, while still significantly lower than those from the Western Hemisphere, has âexacerbated border security challengesâ because those individuals require more vetting and processing and because itâs more difficult to deport them.
Thereâs also the question of migrants who arenât apprehended. The Border Patrol estimates more than 1 million individuals have entered the country surreptitiously over the past two years.
Republicans in Congress now talk about the southern border primarily as a national security issue rather than largely as a collective fear of the âgreat replacementâ. If hundreds of thousands of migrants are evading apprehension, these national security fears have merit. But since terror watch list apprehensions are tiny and a lot higher along our northern border, that border most likely poses an equal threat to national security, if not more, since the security along the northern border is lax. We donât really have any idea how many evade apprehension by crossing it.
Despite the constant hammering by Fox and the Right, since 1975 no one has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the US that involved someone who came across the border illegally. Whenever Congress gets around to dealing with illegal immigration, the solution will require more manpower both for the border patrol and immigration services.
Immigrants will keep on coming. Migration is a part of human nature. Europeans came to North America before America was a country. The peoples of the UK are not the peoples that were there 5,000 years ago. The vast majority of UK citizens have little DNA from the original peoples of those islands. That is also true in the US.
History shows that trying to stop immigration all together is a foolâs errand.
Regardless of how successful we are at controlling immigration, the US demographics of the past 250 years will look VERY different from the US demographics of 100 years from now. That doesnât mean we should give up on controlling the process as much as possible. Part of that is to increase the costs of crossing the border, which we are doing today with instant expulsion and denial of asylum claims.
And once people are here, we must do all we can to get them integrated into US society.
Itâs the start of a brand new week with shopping opportunities! And you can watch our Senate and House members leave for their undeserved vacation without doing much. Try that at your house. On to cartoons.
Trump told us what he plans to do:
Trump thinks he has an âItâs Easyâ button:
Voters then and now:
The Republican Party sleeps through a real crisis:
The MAGAts are all in:
The economy sucks and the checkout lines are too long:
Tuberville feels heâs entitled to more obstruction:
The Daily Escape:
Cholla Cactus at sunrise, Joshua Tree NP – November 2023 photo by Michelle Strong
Yesterdayâs column described how confusing current polling data is with less than a year to go before the 2024 presidential election. We can easily overdose on polls, but in general, they seem to be pointing toward a very difficult re-election for Biden.
At the risk of contributing to the OD, hereâs another example of terrible poll for Biden. It comes from Democratic stalwarts Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg:
âPresident Biden trails Donald Trump by 5 points in the battleground states and loses at least another point when we include the independent candidates who get 17% of the vote. Biden is trying to win these states where three quarters believe the country is on the wrong track and 48% say, âI will never vote for Biden.â
What to make of all this? Wrongo thinks itâs time to take a different approach to the Democratâs messaging. Letâs start with a quick look at the NYTâs David Leonhardtâs new book, âOurs Was the Shining Futureâ. Leonhardtâs most striking contention is based on a study of census and income tax data by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty: Where once the great majority of Americans could hope to earn more than their parents, now only half are likely to. From The Atlantic:
âOf Americans born in 1940, 92% went on to earn more than their parents; among those born in 1980, just 50% did. Over the course of a few decades, the chances of achieving the American dream went from a near-guarantee to a coin flip.â
As we said yesterday, the American Dream is fading. Leonhardt says that the Democrats have largely abandoned fighting for basic economic improvements for the working class. Some of the defining progressive triumphs of the 20th century, from labor victories by unions and Social Security under FDR to the Great Society programs of LBJ, were milestones in securing a voting majority. More from The Atlantic:
âRonald Reagan took office promising to restore growth by paring back government, slashing taxes on the rich and corporations…gutting business regulations and antitrust enforcement. The idea…was that a rising tide would lift all boats. Instead, inequality soared while living standards stagnated and life expectancy fell behind…peer countries.â
Today, a child born in Norway or the UK has a far better chance of out-earning their parents than one born in the US. More context from The Atlantic: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âFrom the 1930s until the late â60s, Democrats dominated national politics. They used their power to pass…progressive legislation that transformed the American economy. But their coalition, which included southern Dixiecrats as well as northern liberals, fractured after…Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Richard Nixonâs âsouthern strategyâ exploited that rift and changed the electoral map. Since then, no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote.â
The Atlantic makes another great point: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âThe civil-rights revolution also changed white Americansâ economic attitudes. In 1956, 65% of white people said they believed the government ought to guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one and to provide a minimum standard of living. By 1964, that number had sunk to 35%.â
Americaâs mid-century economy could have created growth and equality, but racial suppression and racial progress led to where we remain today.
Leonhardt argues that what Thomas Piketty called the âBrahmin leftâ must stop demonizing working-class people who do not share its views on cultural issues such as abortion, immigration, affirmative action and patriotism. From Leonhardt:
âA less self-righteous and more tolerant left could build what successfully increased access to the American Dream in the past: a broad grass-roots movement focused on core economic issues such as strengthening unions, improving wages and working conditions, raising corporate taxes, and decreasing corporate concentration.â
Can the Dems adapt both their priorities and messaging to meet people where they are today?
The priorities must change first. What would it take to establish the right priorities for the future? Stripping away the wedge issues that confuse and divide us, Americaâs priorities should be Health, Education, Retirement and Environment (âHEREâ). Itâs an acronym that sells itself: âVote Hereâ.
(hat tip to friend of the blog, Rene S. for the HERE concept.)
Wrongo hears from young family members and others that all of the HERE elements are causing very real concerns. Affordable health care coverage still falls short. Regarding education, college costs barely seem to be worth shouldering the huge debt burdens that come with it.
Most young people think that they have no real way to save for retirement early in their careers when thereâs the most bang for the buck. They also feel that Social Security wonât be there for them. From the NYT:
âIn a Nationwide Retirement Institute survey, 45% of adults younger than 27 said they didnât believe they would receive any money from the program.â
Today, only about 10% of Americans working in the private sector participate in a defined-benefit pension plan, while roughly 50% contribute to 401(k)-type, defined-contribution plans.
Finally, people today feel that their elders have created an existential environmental threat that will be tossed into their laps. A problem for which there may not be a solution.
As Leonhardt argues, these HERE problems should have always been priorities for Democrats. But for decades, the Party hasnât been willing to pay todayâs political price for a long term gain in voter loyalty. That is, until Biden started working on them in 2020.
But every media outlet continues to harp on inflation and the national debt. Much of what would be helpful in creating a HERE focus as a priority for Democrats depends at least somewhat on government spending. No one can argue that our national debt is high. It is arguable whether it can safely go higher or if it must be reigned in at current levels.
To help you think about that, we collected $4.5 trillion in taxes in 2022, down half a $trillion vs. what we collected in 2021. Estimates are that the Trump tax cuts cost about $350 billion in lost revenue/year.
Looking at tax collections as a percentage of GDP, itâs less than 17% in the US, well below our historical average of 19.5%. There are arguments to keep taxes low, but if you compare the US percentage to other nations, Germany has a ratio of 24%, while the UKâs is 27% and Australiaâs is 30%.
If we raised our tax revenue to 24% of GDP, which is where Germany is now, we would eliminate the US deficit.
Thereâs a great deal of tension in the electorate between perception and reality. And itâs not caused by partisanship: Democrats and independents are also exhibiting a disconnect, too.
Democrats have to return to being the party of FDR and LBJ. They need to adopt the HERE priorities and build programs around them.
At the request of a few readers, (including Fran M), here are this weekâs cartoons.
Sign of the times:
Israelâs dilemma:
Both sides:
Republican talking point:
Halloween was the same as any other night for the grifter:
The Daily Escape:
First snow, Great Balsam Mountains, Canton, NC – October 2023 photo by Brandon Montgomery
“To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.” â Thomas Merton
Everyoneâs talking about Hamas, the Gaza hospital and Jim Jordan. Wrongo is certain to write more about those issues, but today, letâs talk about two polls that seem to be telling us a lot about what Americans are feeling right now.
First, the survey by Pew Research âAmericansâ Dismal Views of the Nationâs Politicsâ confirms that millions of Americans are feeling so exhausted and depressed by American politics that they are disengaging from it just when its important to fully engage. Some highlights:
Hereâs the tag cloud from Pew:
Notice that there arenât any positive words that made the cut from the responses. From Robert Hubbell:
âIt is no wonder that people want to disengage and look away. Exhaustion is the point of MAGA extremism.â
Hubbell goes on to point out that Republicans turn every issue into an attack:
âImpeach Trump? Weâll impeach Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Christopher Wray.
Indict Trump? Weâll indict Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.
Protect Americans from a deadly virus? Weâll undermine trust in science.
Fight human-caused climate change? We will make it illegal to discuss climate change in the classroom.â
These responses are part of a mind game designed to make Democrats and Independents give up and go away. But his great idea is this:
âWe have one job: To endure, to abide, to keep the faith until this moment of reactionary extremism subsides. If we can do that, we will leave to our heirs a healthier, stronger democracy.â
John Dean Also wrote about this:
â…I was thinking about how Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. The first thing that came to mind was his iconic poster with his image and the word “HOPE.” That differentiated Obama from his Democratic party competitors…and his Republican rival, John McCain. Obama embraced hope and the future, and he won.â
Some people attribute the negative messages offered by current candidates to the fact that today’s world is troubled. But as Dean points out, the world was also deeply troubled in 2008 and only Obama was offering hope. He won two terms.
More from Dean:
âThe challenges facing America today are enormous. At the top of the list is solving climate change. When asked if we can address climate change and reduce the existential risk that climate change represents, I want a candidate who answers, “Yes, we can.”
Then there are the wars in Ukraine and Israel that many Republicans wish would disappear. The solution for some Republicans is for America to sit these wars out. But US engagement in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan is about keeping the flame of freedom alive. Putin and Hamas need to be stopped if liberty and democracy are to have a chance.
Dean closes thusly:
âI remain hopeful that hope is not dead. Can the American people give up the current orgy of hate and blame and start working for a brighter future? Yes, we can.â
Turning to the second poll, from the University of Virginiaâs Center for Politics shows an intensely divided country in which partisan rancor has grown so deep that many Americans support authoritarian or unconstitutional proposals. Hereâs the percentage of respondents that back radical ideas:
The poll also finds Biden leading Trump 52% to 48% in the 2024 horse race. You can view the details here.
So how do we (or can we?) turn the ship around? Dan Peiffer offers some thoughts:
Weâre all exhausted. The system IS corrupt. Politicians lie to get elected. They get in Congress and forget the constituents that voted for them. The system needs reform, but the reform we are moving toward (autocracy) isnât the right answer.
It seems that the hill weâre climbing keeps getting steeper. We are all tired, but we must continue the fight.
We have one job: To resist until we subdue this moment of reactionary extremism.
The Daily Escape:
Nauset Beach, Orleans, MA – October 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo
Itâs already been a long yearâŠand there are still 3 months left! Two issues dominated this week: the Hamas war on Israel and the Republican intramurals in the House.
Letâs start with the Republicans. Semafor reports that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) gave up on his quest to become Speaker even though he had been nominated by his caucus as their candidate:
âScalise withdrew himself from the speakerâs race just one day after colleagues narrowly nominated him for the job, as it became clear he lacked the 217 votes necessary to secure the chair. But there are serious doubts that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Â Scaliseâs top rival, can pull together the support necessary for a win â in part due to the bad blood over his contest against Scalise.â
This isnât a time for Republican arm wrestling. The country and the world need attention. As AB Stoddard says at the Bulwark:
âTHE REPUBLICANS WHO CONTROL the House of Representatives cannot respond to a new war waged against Israel. They have rejected new aid to support Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. They have no plan to keep the government from shutting down on November 17 when funding next runs dry.â
Right now, thereâs no path forward. While many things in this world are broken, this isnât a case of American politics being âbrokenâ. If as many pundits say, American politics are broken, we’d have seen things just like this when Democrats controlled the House. But they didn’t. What’s broken is the Republican Party.
A few House Republicans have suggested that their only choice might be to strike a bargain with Democrats. But behind closed doors, there hasnât been a real effort to hatch a bipartisan deal, writes Semaforâs Kadia Goba: (brackets by Wrongo)
âI donât think there has been legitimate outreach….Sure, those members talk to the press, but not to Hakeem Jeffries [the Democratsâ Majority Leader] or leadership.â
The potentially disastrous consequences of a broken House of Representatives are real, and some Republicans understand that. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said the following after Scalise withdrew his name from consideration:
âWe are living in a dangerous world, the worldâs on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do â and quite frankly, they like it. I see a lot of threats out there. One of the biggest threats I see is in the [GOP caucus] room, because we canât unify as a conference and put the speaker in the chair…â
Brian Tyler Cohen, who hosts the podcast No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, summed up where the GOP is at with his post on Xitter:
âThe fact that ALL Republicans would rather fight over Scalise (who attended a neo-Nazi event) or Jordan (who allegedly covered up rampant sexual abuse) rather than simply work with Democrats to elect a Speaker says it all.â
There are two possible paths forward: Either the Republicans unite behind one candidate for Speaker, or they accept that it will take some Democratic votes to elect a bipartisan candidate. âBipartisanâ is a dirty word among many House Republicans. They have broken the House and have zero intent to fix it.
They must be stopped before they break us all.
The murderous rampage by Hamas last weekend against Israeli civilians and Israelâs sharp response will reverberate for years to come. Eric Levitz wrote in New York Magazine:
âThis weekend in Israel, a far-right Islamist group perpetrated the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust, murdering entire families, including babies…and slaughtering 260 concertgoers. More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in all, and over 100 others taken hostage.
Israelâs far-right government predictably responded by choking off all food, electricity, and fuel to Gazaâs 2 million residents and then preparing a military assault more untempered by concern for civilian casualties than ever before.â
The Israeli Ministry of Defense just notified the UN that Palestinians living in Gaza City should evacuate to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. But more than 1 million Palestinians live in this area. How is it possible for so many people to move, even if they had months to do it?
If you are a member of the center-left, It is difficult to see any positive influence on this situation. It shouldnât be a question of whether youâre for Israel or against it. Terrorism directed at civilians is abhorrent regardless of whoâs doing it.
And here at home, conservative pundits exploited Hamasâ attack to fearmonger about immigrants in America. Several right-wing media figures have baselessly warned that Hamas or other âsleeper cellsâ are lying in wait to attack major American cities, calling October 13 âDay of Jihadâ. They also used this lie against American Muslims after 9/11.
Whatâs happening now between Israel and Hamas makes you want to throw up your hands in despair. Itâs impossible to think of or see a solution that can satisfy all sides. Despite that, we need to take a break from so much frustration. We need our Saturday Soother. We need to stiffen our spines for what will be yet another week of horror and nonsense.
Here on Cape Cod, the weather is seasonably crisp, so we will be wearing jackets to todayâs Wellfleet Oysterfest. Later, weâll go to the beach to watch the sunset that is coming earlier every day.
To meditate for a few moments on the Hamas/Israel war, grab a comfy chair and listen to John Lennonâs âImagineâ from his 1971 album of the same name. Released during the heart of the Vietnam War, Lennon asks us to envision a world of peace and unity. âNothing to kill or die for And no religion tooâ:
Sample Lyric:
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one