Mike Johnson’s ‘worldview’ advocates necromancy, foreskin collecting, murdering rude children

Daily Kos Staff

Friday October 27, 2023 · 9:38 AM PDT

2023/10/27 · 09:38

Speaker Mike Johnson tonight: “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” pic.twitter.com/ylMWX1XVJy
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 27, 2023

“Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”

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Daily Kos Staff

Friday October 27, 2023 · 6:00 AM PDT

2023/10/27 · 06:00

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 31: A reveler wearing a costume of Donald Trump in jail holds a sign "A Term he is fit to serve: Inmate Donald" at the 48th Annual New York City Halloween Parade on October 31, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images)

It would seem to appear that several of our nation's judges are not quick learners: Even after defendant Donald Trump continues to ignore their orders over and over again, the jurists presiding over his four indictments are treating him with kid gloves.

Trump often complains that he's being singled out for unfair treatment when facing trial for fraud, document theft, and attempting to subvert a United States election. Special treatment is more like it: Judges are bending over backward to let Trump keep getting away with things other defendants wouldn't, and until a judge is willing to dump him in a jail cell overnight to remind him that judicial orders are not optional, Trump is only going to keep defying them.

On Wednesday, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron fined Donald Trump $10,000 for once again publicly targeting Engoron and his clerk in disparaging social media posts. This was after Engoron previously fined Trump $5,000 for the same offense.

Presuming Trump keeps violating the order ostensibly barring him from targeting the court, the prosecution team, and witnesses in the case once a week for a year, his loose lips would still cost him only a bit above a half million bucks. Trump might consider that a small price to pay to stoke continued death threats against his most visible "enemies." He's also likely to get his presidential campaign to pay the bill, claiming the fines as legal expenses.

We'll find out, because the latest fine didn't do a thing to stop Trump from again taking to social media to again blast the judge, declaring Thursday morning that Engoron "HAS GONE CRAZY IN HIS HATRED OF TRUMP."

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Thursday October 26, 2023 · 11:03 AM PDT

2023/10/26 · 11:03

Donald Trump, the first U.S. "president" to be impeached twice, get indicted on 91 felony counts, and attempt a coup against this nation's government, hasn't had much happen to him of late worth cheering about. That may be why he seems especially giddy at House Republican "moderates" rolling over to install one of his most loyal toadies as their new House speaker.

Trump Truth Social post: 'Speaker Johnson was on Trump's legal defense team for both impeachments. This is how he celebrated Trump's victory [laughing emoji]

That's a social media post Trump made on his "Truth Social" website around midnight on Wednesday (we're not linking to it, obviously) that shows Rep. Mike Johnson posing with a newspaper in front of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office after Senate Republicans refused to investigate charges against Trump. Johnson lowers the paper, looks at the sign indicating Nancy Pelosi's office, and winks.

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Wednesday October 25, 2023 · 3:30 PM PDT

2023/10/25 · 15:30

Rep. Mike Johnson was just another Republican no-name as of last Monday, but his agenda as the newest speaker of the House is now coming into stark relief. The first rule of a Speaker Johnson-led House? Nobody gets to ask questions about Speaker Johnson.

"Just asked newly minted Speaker Johnson whether he believes the 2020 was stolen," reported Washington Post congressional reporter Jacqueline Alamany at midday on Wednesday. "He declined to answer before walking away. 'We're not talking about any issues today. My position is very well known.'"

That's identical to his blowoff of reporters who asked him about his stances in a Johnson-scheduled press conference Tuesday evening. Johnson's allies booed reporters, and in response to a reporter’s question about Ukraine and Israel aid, Johnson said he was "not doing any policy tonight."

On one hand, it's hard to blame Johnson for not being able to articulate his policy stances; just two days ago, he was a hard-right anti-abortion nobody known mostly for his work as a legal gadfly pushing the agendas of the nation's most committed theocrats. Now his anti-Ukraine, anti-Social Security, and pro-insurrection stances have immediately become the de facto ideologies of the House Republican caucus, and reporters suddenly know how all that’s going to square up.

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Wednesday October 25, 2023 · 11:11 AM PDT

2023/10/25 · 11:11

On Tuesday night, The Washington Post's editorial board posted an opinion column pompously titled "Democrats should help elect a Republican speaker." It's one of the worst examples yet of the national media's belief that Republicans are allowed to be incompetent extremists who wreck budgets, raze federal agencies, and attempt coups, and that Democrats, being the adults, are expected to trail behind, patching the government back together again.

"This is Republicans’ mess. But it hurts the whole country. If Republicans change course — for example, by nominating a better candidate — Democrats should be willing to help them clean it up," says Post opinion-page editor David Shipley and his editorial board. So right off the bat, we've established the theme: Democracy Dies in Partisanship.

But the Post's editorial wonks don’t provide any plausible path toward that "clean up."

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Tuesday October 24, 2023 · 1:46 PM PDT

2023/10/24 · 13:46

Tuesday is election day for one of the most bizarre Republican candidates to not yet be elected to the House of Representatives. Gabrielle Hanson, the Republican mayoral candidate for Franklin, Tennessee, should soon know whether she gets to run the Nashville suburb of roughly 87,000 people or will remain a mere semi-delusional MAGA-boosting town alderman.

Hanson is closing her campaign out with a bang, though.

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Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday October 24, 2023 · 10:33 AM PDT

2023/10/24 · 10:33

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake highlights a new poll probing what share of the Republican base even wants a House speaker to be elected. The first thing to know is that the poll in question, conducted by Suffolk University, is deeply goofy, asking respondents which of these two sentiments they more agree with:

1. “Congress needs to elect a Speaker as soon as possible to fund immediate needs like support for Israel, Ukraine, and to prevent a government shutdown in November,” or …

2. “I don’t care if Congress elects a Speaker. Every day that goes by without a Speaker means that Congress can’t waste more of our tax dollars.”

You can see the poll is designed to split Americans into two groups: those who are vaguely informed about politics and understand what a speaker does, and those who are generally uninformed radio listeners and base their entire personalities around what some performative turd announces during peak commuting hours. Unfortunately, it also loaded the civics-based first option with support for Ukraine and Israel, which stacks the deck against Republican support. Still, the question basically probes whether respondents ground their beliefs more in civics or trolling.

What's interesting is the sheer number of Republicans who chose the trolling option—34%—whereas only 57% preferred to have a speaker and a functioning government. But—surprise!—not caring whether the government remains open jumps to 40% among those who support Donald Trump in the upcoming Republican primaries.

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Monday October 23, 2023 · 1:12 PM PDT

2023/10/23 · 13:12

The New York Times' new examination of the ties between the now-indicted Donald Trump and Australian multibillionaire Anthony Pratt, the man Trump is alleged to have divulged U.S. nuclear submarine secrets to, is full of more curiosities than it's possible to sort out.

The most consequential revelation, however, is that prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith who have been questioning witnesses about Trump's revelation of classified information to Pratt may now have significant evidence that Trump offered the disclosure as part of a larger pattern of favor-trading between the two men. And that may turn what began as an investigation into retention of classified documents to a full-blown espionage case.

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Monday October 23, 2023 · 10:21 AM PDT

2023/10/23 · 10:21

The Republican National Committee's "research" team has been doing crack work of late, if you consider crack work to be "watching hours and hours of television and calling it research." Their latest blockbuster is that after a whirlwind trip to the Middle East to express support for and coordinate with Israeli leaders, President Joe Biden briefly walked on a Delaware beach.

Americans are still being held hostage by Hamas terrorists — and Joe Biden is at the beach pic.twitter.com/uQDmIbFTYo
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 22, 2023

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Saturday October 21, 2023 · 10:49 AM PDT

2023/10/21 · 10:49

CBS News:

The operator of a distribution center in Hebron, Kentucky, faces a $30,000 fine for employing children — ages 11 and 13 — to operate a forklift and pick up warehouse orders. The findings add to a trend of employers hiring more children illegally, with some of them working in dangerous jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Investigators discovered the children to be illegally employed in August at a Win.IT America Inc. distribution center in Hebron. The kids had worked there for months and had worked for more hours than legally allowed ...

If there's one trend that's stood out in the Trump and post-Trump years, it's that America's grade school-aged children yearn for jobs in heavy industry. Children might go to their parents complaining of all the attention a classmate has received after an accident in which cleaning equipment in a meat processing plant peeled the flesh of one arm to the bone. Or maybe you’ve seen children gaze longingly toward your town's industrial zone, impatient to begin a career at one of the three remaining factories, none of them unionized.

Most importantly, America’s children want to drive forklifts and receive the lowest possible wages to do it.

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Friday October 20, 2023 · 1:20 PM PDT

2023/10/20 · 13:20

Republican Rep. Ken Buck, a member of the House’s hard-right Freedom Caucus, is nobody's idea of a moderate. But the Colorado congressman has been in the MAGA movement's crosshairs since Donald Trump's Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt, and for just one reason. Though Buck signed the amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to throw out electors in multiple states in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, he appears to have been affected by the Jan. 6 riot. Since then, he has issued strong condemnations of the election hoaxes pushed by Rep. Jim Jordan and other Republicans. Buck also demanded that Jordan accept the results of 2020 in order for Buck to consider supporting Jordan’s bid for House speaker.

That's all it took for Buck to become the newest pariah among members of the MAGA base—and he is paying the price.

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Wednesday October 18, 2023 · 12:44 PM PDT

2023/10/18 · 12:44

President Joe Biden is in Israel to demonstrate unwavering U.S. support for the nation after Hamas launched an indiscriminate attack, killing about 1,400 Israelis and resulting in an Israeli military response that has now killed thousands in Gaza.

Comparing the Hamas attacks to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., Biden emphasized both that "justice must be done" but that Israel must not be "consumed by" its rage.

YouTube Video

Justice must be done. But I caution this: While you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes. I'm the first U.S. president to visit Israel in time of war. I've made wartime decisions. I know the choices are never clear or easy for the leadership.
There's always cost, and it requires being deliberate. It requires asking very hard questions. It requires clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment about whether the path you're on will achieve those objectives.

The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.

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Mike Johnson’s ‘worldview’ advocates necromancy, foreskin collecting, murdering rude children

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Presenting FORKS!: A new line of forklift safety equipment for children

Rep. Ken Buck: I didn't think leopards would eat MY lease

Biden compares Hamas attacks to 9/11, advises Israelis not to be "consumed" by rage