The Johnson tenure in the House has been something else. But he’s getting shit done. Check out this math.
He convinced enough Democrats to side with a plan to fund further military aid to Israel by cutting money from the (already agreed upon, fully authorized and legislated) plan to increase funding to the IRS. The $14 billion cut from the IRS will add about $30 billion to the deficit (between the two bills) according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and literally anyone else with a brain and a calculator. The additional funding to the IRS was to chase down wealthy tax cheats and force them to comply with their patriotic duty of not robbing the government.
But that’s not all Johnson got done. Because Republicans are the party of free speech, he allowed a resolution to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, for posting a video of protestors that included chants of “from the river to the sea,” a rallying cry for the Palestinians that has been invoked by groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Likud Party charter from 1977 also states, “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” It’s almost like the land of Israel/Palestine is located between a river and a sea and both sides want all of it. Weird.
I’m the first to acknowledge that language matters and can be weaponized. We should all be sensitive to it. Tlaib offered a clarification and an apology for sharing a video that contained the phrase but the Republicans did their solemn duty to protect, er, deny free speech and gave Tlaib the distinction of being one of only 27 members in the history of the U.S. House to be censured. Mike Johnson. Getting it done. (With the help of 22 Democrats.)
Yeah. Just like those times but without the censure.
Here’s Tommy Tuberville falling down stairs after making fun of Joe Biden falling down stairs.
Wait, there’s more! Johnson also announced that he’s going to issue a subpoena to Hunter Biden so we can get that witch hunt back on track!
Oh, and we’re about to have another debt ceiling fight that threatens to shut down the federal government. Gotta say, this guy is good. We’re so lucky as a nation to have a firm, evangelical, conversion therapy promoting, abortion banning, Hunter chasing, censure issuing, budget gutting Speaker of the House in our corner.
In other news, Biden is still too fucking old to do this job. The GOP clown show issued like 17 different declarations of war on the debate stage the other night. It seems increasingly likely that Trump will run his campaign from prison next summer. (And he’s the favorite.) RFK Jr. is crushing polls as an independent. Jill Stein just entered the race. And Joe Manchin just announced that he’s not seeking re-election, which means he’s probably going to appear as a presidential candidate for No Labels.
To quote Depeche Mode: “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors, but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor.”
Here’s a roundup of my favorite headlines:
“A Batshit Number of Young Swing State Voters Think RFK Jr. Should Be President” -Vanity Fair
“Trump leads Biden among ‘double-haters’ in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin: poll” -NY Post
And our winner:
“Critics Warn Jill Stein Candidacy Could Harm Cornel West’s Chances Of Being Elected” -The Onion
This is pretty cool. A few years ago, OpenTable began aggregating and releasing its proprietary data to track dining activity in the countries where it has a substantial presence. Financial analysts began to take note of this activity because it appeared to provide early indications of consumer confidence in a real-time fashion. This chart, which compares 2023 to 2022 shows a general softening trend. Again, I’m not an economist nor do I play one on TV (unless you count YouTube) but this trend is a bit troubling because we’re coming off 18 months of generational inflation. Yet another indication that the consumer is spent. My guess is that the holiday shopping season is going to range from ‘soft’ to ‘brutal.’
Headlines
Calling all diplomats. Hello? Is there anyone there?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s refusal to consider a ceasefire has once again surface the age old question: What the fuck does the United Nations even do? The fact is, the UN holds some relevance in the world—at least where developing nations are concerned and if the issue at hand has nothing to do with anything the U.S., China or Russia want. But on the big stuff, it appears more toothless than ever.
From the article:
“The war in the Middle East has underlined this increasingly sharp-elbowed approach to UN diplomacy. During past eruptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the outbreak of violence in Gaza in May 2021, Russia and China refrained from criticizing the United States’ involvement too loudly at the UN. This time, China has once again avoided the controversy, limiting its comments to calls for a cease-fire. But Russia has gone out of its way to take advantage of the situation. After the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian assistance to Gaza in mid-October, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, lamented the ‘hypocrisy and double standards of our American colleagues’ and implied that Washington might be fueling the war to boost U.S. arms sales. Russia’s posturing over the conflict has annoyed its fellow Security Council members, which have sought common ground on humanitarian issues, and even Arab states, which suspect that Moscow is exploiting Palestinian suffering for its own ends.”
This lengthy piece by Emmeline Clein probes the celebrity memoir industry and holds a mirror to celebrities, fans and media alike. Celebrities might be trying to set records straight or reframe their images as activists rather than beautiful, brainless vessels but we probably pick up their books to find more of the salacious and unflattering details and gossip that got us hooked on them to begin with.
From the article:
“These books arrive amid a broader reconsideration. For the past few years, the press has been on something of an apology tour, acknowledging its rankly misogynistic behavior. In recent documentaries about Spears and Hilton, a former Us Weekly editor admits to running exploitative coverage, paparazzos remember taking their car chases too far, and celebrity journalists recall writing reductive, cruel articles. Spears, in her book, casts the bimbo summit vividly in this light, including it in a long litany of media misdeeds. She accuses the public of policing her every move, and refusing to allow her to escape from the purgatory of not a girl, not yet a woman. (‘At what point did I promise to stay seventeen for the rest of my life?’ she asks.)
“Fans, too, have been reconsidering the past few decades. This new crop of memoirs allows us to announce our own moral evolution.”
Western media coverage of the conflict is so bad. Check out this episode of Intercepted where Murtaza Hussain speaks with an actual (OMG) Israeli reporter about the conflict, how Israeli Jews are feeling about the war, Netanyahu, Hamas and the hostages.
“In Responding to the Right, Robinson blasts right-wing nonsense with devastating intellectual weaponry, revealing how everyone from Ann Coulter to the National Review uses fear and lies to manipulate the public. He gives a detailed explanation of how conservative arguments work and why we need to resist them, then goes through twenty-five separate talking points, showing precisely why each one fails.”
“I appreciate this beyond words, REALLY... BUTTTTT ... Within the brilliance, are moments that detract from the generosity of your sharing. For example... you throw in a statement "That asshole Columbus" without any explanation of why he was an asshole. Please understand that personally, I don't give much of a f*ck, I get it, I am not offended, I love to swear and I love scatology, but I know the straight ass people I love or don't, will recoil at the statement and I want to share your shit with them. They have to get by the name of your game as well. You have a great voice in all ways. It is valuable and my enthusiasm tells me EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO THIS AND LEARN!!!!!! Please, don't shoot yourself in the foot!”
This Week on the Pod
Palestine: Part Two.
Part Two of our series on Israel/Palestine turns back the clock to examine the time period from Part One but from the Palestinian perspective. By establishing the foundation of the conflict in parallel, it helps organize internal and external events that explain sympathies toward Jews and Palestinians alike. This episode digs into the cultural underpinnings of Arab society in the 19th and early 20th centuries and examines the fault lines that occur as a result of Jewish migration, industrialization, the collapse of Ottoman rule and fallout from World War One.
Here’s a snippet from the pod:
“Before the Great War, the people of Palestine didn’t question who they were. They just were. They were the inhabitants of Palestine who identified by their family name, village, religion and language. It’s a strange thing to think about today. Palestinian Arabs, Jews and Muslims understood their differences on religious grounds but in all the other ways they shared an identity. Prior to the war, and even with the influx from the first Aliyot, Jewish people made up about 7% of the population in modern day Israel/Palestine. Arab Jews and the newer Sephardic and Ashkenazi settlers were fully assimilated into Palestinian culture, economy and governance. But word of Zionist intent to foster mass migration and carve out an independent administrative state began to worry some of the occupants of the region.”
Part Four bridges the gap between New Harmony in 1825 and 1870. Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon make grand entrances into our narrative and bring some intrigue along with them. We cover the splinter between the anarchist and Democratic socialist wings of the party, and speak to the variables present on the European continent at this critical juncture. The episode culminates with the Paris Commune of 1871 and lays the groundwork for Part Five where we’ll cover the rise of the Bolsheviks and the American labor movement.
One of the distinctive features of the UNFTR podcast is the original music. Since the beginning, we’ve had the good fortune to collaborate with renowned singer-songwriter and musician Tom McGovern. We finally got around to fulfilling a request often made by our listeners to upload the music in one place