So yesterday Joe Manchin announced he would not run for another Senate term (yay), but then he dropped big hints he might to open to other things …

“After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”

This immediately fueled speculation that Manchin might be angling for a nod from No Labels to run for POTUS. If Manchin seriously thinks there’s some groundswell of “moderate” voters out there just looking for a right-leaning, anti-progressive Democrat to vote for, he’s likely to be disappointed. In truth, the word “moderate” means absolutelly nothing in the U.S. political climate. But of course No Labels is hardly a group that cares about ordinary Americans.

I’m sure No Labels prayerfully hopes there are substantial numbers of voters who are lost somewhere between the GOP’s culture wars and MAGAism and the Democrats’ increasingly progressive direction, which would have been a lot more progressive had rats like Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema not been gumming up the works. But I don’t think there are. The closest they might get are with low-information voters who are not Fox News viewers and whatever Hillary Clinton die-hards are still breathing. And frankly I don’t think there is any voter support for Joe Manchin, anywhere.

Democrats are rightfully concerned that Manchin’s retirement from the Senate could cost them a Senate majority. But there were a lot of warning signs out there that Manchin was likely to lose next year, anyway. At the Bulwark, Jonathan Last argues that the Dems will be hurting without Manchin, and that if they want to win more elections they need to make their tent bigger to allow for more Manchin-esque type candidates. Do I ever disagree. I think the third-way style Democrats that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s — and I include the Clintons —  did huge damage to the Democratic brand. The young folks especially refused to believe there was any real difference between the parties, until possibly very recently, and that was mostly because of abortion. Democrats will benefit from a consistent policy message and then delivering on that message whenever possible. If the young folks would turn out to vote in big numbers because they trust Democrats to deliver on issues they care about, it would be genuinely revolutionary.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party seems determined to promote the most extreme MAGA candidates it can find, even though voters keep signalling they want something else. Aaron Blake writes that they just can’t get the clue that voters are looking for “mormal.”

At the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie writes that The G.O.P’s Culture War Shtick Is Wearing Thin With Voters.

To be fair to Republican strategists, there was a moment, in the fall of 2021, when it looked like the plan was working. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, ran on a campaign of “parents’ rights” against “critical race theory” and won a narrow victory against Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic governor, sweeping Republicans into power statewide for the first time since 2009. Youngkin shot to national prominence and Republicans made immediate plans to take the strategy to every competitive race in the country.

In 2022, with “parental rights” as their rallying cry, Republican lawmakers unleashed a barrage of legislation targeting transgender rights, and Republican candidates ran explicit campaigns against transgender and other gender nonconforming people. “They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the drag queens,” said Kari Lake, an Arizona Republican, during her 2022 campaign for governor. “They took down our flag and replaced it with a rainbow.”

And, of course, Lake lost, as did a lot of other MAGA candidates. But this year the GOP doubled down.

Undaunted, Republicans stepped back up to the plate and took another swing at transgender rights. Attorney General Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, the Republican nominee for governor of that state, and his allies spent millions on anti-transgender right ads in his race against the Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear. In one television ad, a narrator warns viewers of a “radical transgender agenda” that’s “bombarding our children everywhere we turn.” Beshear won re-election. 

The thing is, right-wing politicians have been using scare tactics to win elections going back to Joe McCarthy, if not earlier. They painted the opposition as pro-Communist pro-desegregation pro-racial justice pro-welfare pro-affirmative action pro-Women’s Rights Amendment etc etc etc. And on the whole it’s worked pretty well for them over the years. It’s also pretty much all Republicans know how to do these days. The current crop in the House can’t seem to organize themselves to pass bills or do much of anything except inept “investigations” of Hunter Biden and his legendary laptop.

I’m sure there are still a lot of voters who fall for the scare tactics. But now they aren’t working the way they used to. Perhaps there are more voters now who grew up on the Internet, and they are more sophisticated message consumers. Or something. And certainly what was said at the Republican candidate “debate” Wednesdy night didn’t reveal that anyone was ready to take a new direction.

So Joe Manchin and the No Labels crew are out of touch, and Republicans are out of touch. I’m not going to give Democrats a complete pass. This Huffington Post article says Democrats in Washington have been slammed by constituent phone calls demanding a cease fire in Gaza, and this has thrown them off guard. I disagree somewhat with the author of the article, Molly Redden. When President Biden said there is “no chance” for a cease fire, she interpreted this as a refusal by Biden to use “his leverage.” I think it’s more an admission of reality, that Netanyahu is not going to agree to a cease fire, period. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the old timers really have been caught off guard by support for Palestinians. 

With 95 percent of the votes counted, the “yes” votes on the Ohio abortion rights referendum are ahead 56.6 percent to 43.4 percent. So it wasn’t at all close. And this was in spite of Republicans pullling every scam they could think of to trick voters into voting “no.” The numbers for the referendum to legalize marijuana are nearly identical, btw. I wonder if having both measures on the same ballot helped both measures pass by pulling young folks to the polls.

And Virginia voters gave Gov. Glenn Youngkin a big ol’ noogie by turning control of both houses of the state legislature to Democrats. Perhaps talk of drafting Youngkin to run for president was a tad premature. See Glenn Youngkin handed presidential buzzkill at Axios and Virginia Democrats’ wins thwart Youngkin on abortion, taxes, climate at WaPo.

By giving control of those two chambers to Democrats, voters denied Youngkin (R) the political allies he needed to ban most abortions after 15 weeks. The governor also lost his chance for turning Virginia sharply to the right in other areas, including public education, tax policy, LGBTQ+ rights, criminal justice, the environment and voting access.

Youngkin’s popularity numbers in Virginia are not exactly impressive (ignore the headline). I think perhaps he’s further to the Right than Virginia voters thought he would be. He can’t run for re-election because Virginia doesn’t allow governors to serve consecutive terms, but if he could I wonder if he’d win.

But the important point for now is that Youngkin ran the GOP’s so-called “moderate” position on abortion, a ban at 15 weeks’ gestation, up the flagpole. And voters shot it down. Will Republicans get the memo? I’m betting a lot of them won’t.

See Philip Bump, Abortion Access Remains Undefeated in the Polls Post-Roe.

Ohio became the seventh state to vote to protect access to abortion in a statewide initiative since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court last year. Four of those initiatives were on the ballot in states that Joe Biden lost in the 2020 election; in all seven, the abortion-access position outperformed Biden’s support in the state.

I don’t know how much clearer it could be. But watch Republicans continue to push for abortion bans.

Update: This is from Politico regarding the Ohio abortion referendum votes —

The unofficial results also suggest that the counties with the highest turnout in Tuesday’s election were actually jurisdictions that had favored Trump in 2020. The victory for Yes on Issue 1 was not driven by remarkable Democratic turnout — but by a significant share of voters in Republican-leaning counties casting their ballots for abortion rights.

And this is about Virginia —

The wins are a rebuke to Youngkin’s efforts to consolidate power in the state by removing a Democratic roadblock to his agenda, on everything from taxes to abortion. Youngkin, unusually, launched a strategy to have Republicans run on abortion in these elections. Youngkin pushed candidates to coalesce around a 15 week ban in the state, trying to cast Democrats as extremists on the issue and Republicans as the party with the reasonable position.

Update: More good news — Moms for Liberty Candidates Take a Beating in Some School Races.

It appears Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has just been reelected governor of Kentucky. And Ohio has voted to add protection of abortion rights to the state constitution. Good news. I understand Beshear ran on protecting abortion rights.

Trump “testified” today, and according to the reviews it must have been a mess.

Aaron Blake at WaPo has three early takeaways. No paywall; just read it. In brief, Trump ignored questions and just delivered a diatribe about how unfair the whole things is. He probably lied quite a bit. And he basically served notice that he will continue to try to bulldoze the legal process.

At Politico, see Trump, on witness stand, derides judge, denies fraud and talks of castles and windmills. Do read all of that one, too. Here’s just a snip:

Asked to name properties he believed were over- or under-valued, for example, Trump responded by saying his Trump Tower triplex apartment had likely been overvalued, then launched into a soliloquy about brand value.

During one heated exchange, Trump attorney Alina Habba snapped at the judge, telling him: “You are here to hear what he has to say.”

Engoron shouted in response, commanding her to “sit down.”

“No, I am not here to hear what he has to say!” he yelled. “I am here to hear him answer questions.”

From the witness stand, Trump interjected, leaning into the microphone: “This is a very unfair trial — very, very — and I hope the public is watching.”

Also, too.

At times, Trump sprinkled his testimony with some of the signature subjects and phrases likely familiar to anyone who has observed one of his political rallies.

“I’m not a windmill person,” he said at one point.

“I have a castle,” he said at another.

Of his golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, he said: “At some point, maybe in my very old age, I’ll go there and do the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”

You can read through the blow-by-blow account at the New York Times here. No paywall.

I’m sure there will be more commentary later. Ivanka will testify Wednesday.

Update: Jack Smith ain’t kidding around. See Josh Kovensky at TPM. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith hit back at Donald Trump’s attempt to have the Jan. 6 case against him dismissed in a stark Monday reply, characterizing the former president as committing crimes without parallel in American history.

Smith is trying to persuade U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for the District of Columbia to allow the Jan. 6 prosecution to go forward. Trump filed motions to dismiss last month in which he asked Chutkan to toss the case.

Trump argued in part in the briefs, and more broadly in public in the years since the Capitol insurrection, that his behavior in 2020 was nothing out of the ordinary. All he was doing, Trump has argued, was questioning the election results, a right granted to him under the Constitution.

“But the defendant stands alone in American history for his alleged crimes,” Smith shot back in the filing. “No other president has engaged in conspiracy and obstruction to overturn valid election results and illegitimately retain power.”

Well, yeah.

I highly recommend this commentary from Chris Hayes on the U.S. response to the Israel-Hamas War.

As he says, it seems pretty obvious that the Biden Administration’s plan since the October 7 Hamas assault has been to embrace and support Israel publicly but work diplomatically behind the scenes to keep the government of Israel from commiting atrocities in Gaza. And given that the government of Israel is headed by hard-right bigots, that always was probably the best we could do. There was no way Israel was not going to slam Gaza to some degree; the only question was how hard.  And there is no power on earth that could persuade Netanyahu’s government to agree to a cease fire right now. And, frankly, whatever leverage the Biden Administration might have in Israel is built mostly on the popular opinion of Israelis. Not commiting support to Israel after October 7 was not an option, IMO.

Meanwhile, Anthony Blinkin is working his ass off trying to do damage control. For example:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday issued a strong message after a day of meetings with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv, declaring, “we need to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.”

In some of his most forceful comments to date, the top US diplomat said that “civilians should not suffer the consequences for (Hamas’) inhumanity and its brutality.”

Still, Blinken continued to offer support for Israel’s “right” and “obligation” to defend itself after the brutal October 7 Hamas attacks.

He’s getting slammed in some quarters for stating support for Israel’s self-defense, but in truth whatever little bit of influence he might have on the hard-liners would end the second he stopped saying that. Since then Blinken made a surprise visit to the West Bank and met with the Palestinian Authority — which may have reverberated a lot more in Israel than it did here. And I see now that Blinken made a surprise visit to Iraq to talk to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in Baghdad.

It’s obvious to me that the U.S. is trying to get Israel to back off and adopt a more humanitarian posture toward Gaza. Blinken wants the Arab world to know this. But it seems this has to be made more explicit, or it’s going to destroy the Biden Administration.

Bernie Sanders is proposing that we use the only leverage that we have left, which is the $3.8 billion the U.S. gives every year to Israel. I can’t see Congress going along with that, but somebody needed to say it.

Also do see Obama Urges Americans to Take in ‘Whole Truth’ of Israel-Gaza War at the New York Times. No paywall. I so miss President Obama’s deep thoughtfulness. In brief, what he says is that there is plenty of blame to spread around for the current situation in Israel and Gaza. And also, “What Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it,” Mr. Obama said. “And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.”

Naturally the Right had an absolute fit about this, because they want there to be clear good guys and bad guys. This is one of the milder complaints:

Tim Scott on Saturday slammed Barack Obama as “dead wrong” after the former president called for a more nuanced approach to the Israel-Hamas war.

“From Obama to Biden, Democrats have a problem: supporting Israel always has an asterisk,” the South Carolina senator and presidential contender said in a statement to POLITICO.

“Obama is dead wrong and he has a legacy of aiding those who support terrorism,” Scott continued. “The truth is simple: Hamas is evil.”

I haven’t heard anyone making excuses for Hamas. But there is no rule anywhere in the Universe that says that evil only takes one side. In any situation where there are two opposing forces, it’s always possible they are both evil. (Although I want to go on the record I am not comfortable with dismissing any group of people with the word “evil,” no matter what they’ve done. It’s a label that doesn’t tell us anything useful, IMO.)

And maybe what we need right now is a hell of a lot bigger asterisk. Close association with Netanyahu’s Israel is not in the long-term interests of the United States.

Jonathan Chait:

Here is a simple proposition: You can oppose antisemitism without condoning hatred of Muslims or Arabs. Likewise, you can oppose bias against Muslims and Arabs without condoning antisemitism.

This may sound like a simple idea. Yet it is one the entire Republican Party seems unable to grasp.

Last May, the Biden administration announced what it called the most ambitious strategy to oppose antisemitism ever undertaken. In the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attack last month, President Biden and Second Gentleman Douglass Emhoff held a roundtable with Jewish leaders to express support for Israel along with opposition to antisemitism. And as antisemitism has grown on campuses, the administration recently announced new stoops to combat it.

Republicans insist Biden and his party are complicit in antisemitism. The main reason they give is that the Democrats also oppose bigotry against Muslims and Arabs.

Given that I am accusing the Republicans of failing to grasp a principle a literal child could easily understand, you may be justifiably suspicious I am either making it up or picking on one or two random outliers. So I am going to supply several examples, all taken from published journalism, not random social-media posts.

And then Chait does give examples of prominent right-wing columnists in major right-wing media citing the Biden Administration’s concerns about Islamophobia as evidence that the Biden Administration is antisemitic. Chait continues,

Conservatives — ironically, like many radical leftists — see the world in zero-sum terms, so that opposing prejudice against one party to a conflict means accepting it toward the other. Segments of the anti-Israel left cannot bring themselves to denounce antisemitism precisely because they see doing so as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. The right’s mentality is a mirror image of that thought process.

There is all kinds of research showing that liberals and conservatives have very different psychological wiring. Let’s just be blunt and admit that the conservative brain is miswired.

Speaker Johnson is perhaps not ready for prime time.

And if you think that’s stupid, flaming idiot and Western Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke today introduced a bill proposing that Palestinians be expelled from the United States. This is his idea for Keeping America Safe From Terrorism. The actual effect of this would be to hang a big neon sign over America saying “Bomb Me.” More here.

“This is the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I have seen and it’s well deserved,” Zinke said in a statement that conflated all Palestinians with Hamas.

As justification for this racist immigration overhaul, Zinke in a press release quoted articles from as far back as 2019 that have nothing to do with Palestinians or even threats to America, as well as articles from conservative outlets The Daily Mail and Fox News.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the co-sponsors, naturally.

In other news: Secretary of State Blinken released a nearly tearful statement practically begging Israel to stop bombing civilians and allow for a humanitarian pause. Netanyahu promptly rebuffed this. No cease fire, no fuel, Netanyahu says. Israel “took credit” for bombing ambulances near a hospital today. The Biden Administration may have to explicitly break with Netanyahu. Palestinian lives do not matter to Netanyahu’s government.

The Right likes to ceaselessly chirp that Israel has a right to defend itself. But I don’t see anyone saying that it doesn’t. The real question is whether what Israel has been doing in Gaza is effective self-defense. Israel has managed to lose the moral high ground even faster than the U.S. did after 9/11 and likely is fueling the fires of future terrorism. This is not smart self-defense. Fight smarter, not harder.

And this puts the United States in a precarious place.  I think on the whole the Biden Administration has walked a fine line, supporting Israel while trying to mitigate its worst impulses. Now the Biden Administration is urging a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza so that people can get food, medicine, fuel, clean water, and maybe more of the injured can be removed.

Politico reports that the White House thinks Netanyahu is on his way out. “Joe Biden and top aides have discussed the likelihood that Benjamin Netanyahu’s political days are numbered — and the president has conveyed that sentiment to the Israeli prime minister in a recent conversation.” The Daily Beast reports that Biden and Netanyahu probably are headed for a breakup:

While the immediate support the U.S. showed for Israel in the wake of Hamas’ wanton atrocities of Oct. 7 was humane and appropriate, founded (as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has noted) in President Joe Biden’s moral decency, that very same Biden character trait will very likely soon require a rift with Netanyahu.

That is because the Israeli prime minister and the extremists in his government are fundamentally bad actors who have contributed greatly to the current crisis.

It is the profound flaws of judgment and instincts of Bibi & Co. that will require Biden and his team to demand a significant change of course by Israel. Should that change not come, it will then be the deep-seated values of Biden and his team and their clear sense of U.S. national interests that will require what will be a major adjustment in U.S. policy.

Edward Luce of the Financial Times writes that Netanyahu is an albatross around Biden’s neck.

Joe Biden has hitched his fortunes to a man — Benjamin Netanyahu — who is co-creator of the ghastly dilemma with which Israel is now faced. The problem with Biden’s bearhug strategy is that he has no veto on the Israeli prime minister’s actions. The tool Biden wields is influence. Everything about Netanyahu suggests that behind-the-scenes suasion is not a method that works.

I don’t know that Joe Biden “hitched his fortunes” to Netanyahu but to Israel, and very likely the White House would be just fine if there were a new Prime Minister sooner rather than later. But yes, I think Joe Biden’s support for Israel is in part about trying to influence it to not go crazy and massacre civilian Palestinians, but that doesn’t seem to have worked.

In other news — Yesterday Senate Republicans finally had enough with Tommy Tuberville. 

Republican senators angrily challenged Sen. Tommy Tuberville on his blockade of almost 400 military officers Wednesday evening, taking over the Senate floor for more than four hours to call for individual confirmation votes after a monthslong stalemate.

Tuberville, R-Ala., stood and objected to each nominee — 61 times total, when the night was over — extending his holds on the military confirmations and promotions with no immediate resolution in sight. But the extraordinary confrontation between Republicans, boiling over almost nine months after Tuberville first announced the holds over a Pentagon abortion policy, escalated the standoff as Defense Department officials have repeatedly said the backlog of officials needing confirmation could endanger national security.

“Why are we putting holds on war heroes?” asked Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, himself a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. “I don’t understand.”

I’m out of time to write today, but here’s the New York Times article you may have heard about, no paywall. If Trump Wins, His Allies Want Lawyers Who Will Bless a More Radical Agenda.

And here’s another tidbit about the deeply weird speaker of the House:

Newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) does not have a bank account.

At least, that’s what Johnson reports on years of personal financial disclosures, which date back to 2016 and reveal a financial life that, in the context of his role as a congressman and now speaker, appears extraordinarily precarious.

Over the course of seven years, Johnson has never reported a checking or savings account in his name, nor in the name of his wife or any of his children, disclosures show. In fact, he doesn’t appear to have money stashed in any investments, with his latest filing—covering 2022—showing no assets whatsoever.

Of course, it’s unlikely Johnson doesn’t actually have a bank account. What’s more likely is Johnson lives paycheck to paycheck—so much so that he doesn’t have enough money in his bank account to trigger the checking account disclosure rules for members of Congress.

House Ethics Committee filing guidelines state that members must disclose bank accounts they have at every financial institution, as long as the account holds at least $1,000 and the combined value of all accounts—including those belonging to their spouse and dependent children—exceeds $5,000. …

… Jordan Libowitz, communications director for watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, offered a more blunt assessment, saying that if Johnson truly doesn’t have any assets, it “raises questions about his personal financial wellbeing.”

“It’s strange to see Speaker Johnson disclose no assets,” Libowitz told The Daily Beast. “He made over $200,000 last year, and his wife took home salary from two employers as well, so why isn’t there a bank account or any form of savings listed?”

Johnson has also carried debts over for several years, which Libowitz said would sharpen the question.

“He owes hundreds of thousands of dollars between a mortgage, personal loan, and home equity line of credit, so where did that money go?” Libowitz said. “If he truly has no bank account and no assets, it raises questions about his personal financial wellbeing.”

The article goes on to say that the Johnsons have reported about $200,000 annual income for the past several years. They aren’t wealthy, but they shouldn’t be destitute.

Here’s another story on the deep weirdness of Mike Johnson, although it’s about his wife. Kelly Johnson for years has run some kind of “Christian counseling service” that is partly based on the writings of Hippocrates.

Kelly Johnson’s website listed a specialty in Temperament counseling, a specialty that she received training for from an organization founded in the 1980s by a Christian couple. According to the materials the organization provides, the National Christian Counselor’s Association is adamant that its offerings take place outside of more traditional state-licensed settings so that counselors and clients can be fully engaged through their faith.

“The state licensed professional counselor in certain states is forbidden to pray, read or refer to the Holy Scriptures, counsel against things such as homosexuality, abortion, etc,” a catalog of the organization’s offerings states. “Initiating such counsel could be considered unethical by the state.”

The temperament-based approach breaks people down into five types: Melancholy, Choleric, Sanguine, Supine, and Phlegmatic. Richard and Phyllis Arno, who established a test to identify people’s temperament, founded the National Christian Counselors Association in the early 1980s. They and their advocates prefer the term temperament over personalities as the term personality is characterized as a “mask” while temperaments are “inborn” and thus inherent to each individual regardless of outside influences such as parenting. Their work is largely based on Hippocrates’ view that there were four temperaments.

Does she know that Hippocrates wasn’t a Christian? Anyway, the website was taken down shortly after MAGA Mike became speaker. For more about how the forced-birth movement seems to have adopted Hiipocrates as one of their own, see The Shadow Medical Community Behind the Attempt to Ban Medication Abortion at The Intercept.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan has reinstated Trump’s gag order.

Trump responded by attacking Attorney General Bill Barr, a potential witness in the case, while continuing his public assault on Chutkan. 

Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal election interference case, reinstated a partial gag order that had been approved then temporarily appealed in October as Justice Department prosecutors and Trump’s legal team debated the First Amendment grounds of the order. Trump took to Truth Social barely an hour later to attack the judge and former Attorney General Bill Barr, a potential witness in the case. 

“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB. He just didn’t want to be Impeached, which the Radical Left Lunatics were preparing to do,” Trump wrote just 75 minutes after the gag order was reinstated. “Bill Barr is a LOSER!”

Your move, Judge Chutkan.

The most interesting thing I saw this morning is this item from the New York Times, How Trump’s Verbal Slips Could Weaken His Attacks on Biden’s Age. I apologize that I’m out of gift articles for the month. This article is arguing that Trump is making more verbal gaffes than usual, and that this may be a sign of deterioration of some sort. I don’t know that I’m taking this very seriously, as his head was never screwed on all the way as near as I can tell.

Mike Spence is suspending his presidential campaign. Yeah, I know, we weep and we mourn. “Suspending” means it is not officially ended, and he could crank it up again should the political landscape shift. Maybe Trump will be abducted by aliens. You never know.

Another of the specimens running for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, said  “liberal, soft on crime” policies were to blame for the mass shooting in Maine that left 18 people dead earlier this week. According to the CDC, in 2021 the homicide mortality rate in Maine was 1.7 per 100,000 population. The homicide mortality rate in Florida was 7.4. The winner, though, was liberal, soft-on-crime Mississippi, at a whopping 23.7. And number two is Mike Johnson’s Louisiana, at 21.3. Indeed, with a couple of exceptions, the states with the most homicide deaths make up a roll call of the old Confederacy. See America’s Highest Gun Death Rates Are in the South at Axios. Somehow I don’t think liberalism is the problem.

Speaking of aliens, the new Speaker seems more alien by the minute. To plumb the depths of his weirdness, do read What’s Up With Mike Johnson’s Black Son at TPM by Josh Marshall.

Video surfaced of an interview Johnson did with Walter Isaacson just after the death of George Floyd in June 2020 in which he revealed that he had an adopted black son, Michael. … 

…I had only heard this story in passing until this evening when TPM Reader RS flagged something odd about the story. No African-American son shows up in any of the family photographs on Johnson’s House website or on his personal Facebook page. Nor does Michael figure anywhere in any of Johnson’s campaign biographies.

As I went further down this rabbit hole tonight I was a bit dumbfounded. Is Michael made up? Is he excluded from family pictures? I was so baffled that I went pretty far down that rabbit hole trying to figure out what was going on.

It gets weirder.

I was able to piece the story together from the introduction to the full video of the 2020 interview and a write up in The Advocate centered on the 2019 reparations hearing. In Johnson’s interview with Walter Isaacson it sounds like he’s talking about two 14 year olds, boys of the same age. But if you listen closely he refers to Michael at that age in the past tense. Michael was 36 in June 2019 and presumably 40 today. Johnson is 51.

Josh Marshall speculates that maybe this was some kind of fostering situation, and that the Johnsons never formally adopted Michael and consider him a “son” in an informal sense. But who the bleep knows?

I’m all out of gift articles for the month, but everybody should read Paul Krugman’s column from a couple of days ago. Johnson wants to raise the Social Security retirement age to 69 or 70. He wants to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 70 and keep raising it. He wants to destroy employment based health insurance by limiting the tax deductions for employers. He wants to cut  $3 trillion over a decade from Medicaid, children’s health coverage, and subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans would lose health care.

And I have to ask, why? What does he think he’s saving money for?

And then there’s his extremist culture war positions. See Mike Johnson Hates America, But He Believes He Can Save It by David Corn at Mother Jones.

Please, Democrats, don’t hold back. Hang this guy around the neck of every House Republican who voted for him, which is pretty close all of them, I believe. There may have been a couple of absences.

In other news. It appears Israel has begun its ground invasion of Gaza. I think someday they’ll regret this.