Little known outside of Louisiana before becoming speaker, Mike Johnson is a 51-year-old evangelical Christian who says the Bible informs his policy decisions. He’s against same-sex marriages and enumerated rights for the LGBTQ+ community. He strongly opposes abortion and believes life begins at conception.
Johnson started working with Louisiana Family Forum prior to graduating law school at LSU in 1997. He traveled with Gene Mills, the Baton Rouge group’s director, when Mills was visiting with pastors around the state to set up the organization that would advocate governing policies from a biblical perspective.
Johnson's history is well known in Louisiana, but few outside know of his goal to make the U.S. a "Biblical Republic". For example, this Christianoid cretin insists that the separation of church and state is a myth. He also has cast the Declaration of Independence as a "creed" despite the fact it was written by Deists, not Chrristians.
For those unclear about the meaning, the Deist God is analogous to an intelligent child who makes a toy with a gear wheel, and the toy has the ability to move after being wound up and released. Thus, the child makes the toy, winds it up, releases it down the sidewalk, then walks away never to glance at it or its final outcome, destination. Strictly speaking then, Deism treated in its orthodox and traditional manner is only one step removed from implicit atheism. In the Deist view an innominate, impersonal Intelligence created the cosmos - but then detached from it. Note here for Johnson: all the Founders were Deists, including the ones that penned the Declaration!
It doesn't end there. In a 2006 column for Townhall, a hyper conservative website, Johnson railed against atheism and came within a couple steps of proposing a "national atheist registry" like my now deceased youngest brother, "Pastor Mike", e.g.
Florida Pastor Doesn’t Get Why Atheists Aren’t Registered Like Sex Offenders (nymag.com)
Johnson then proceeded to rail against the "earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion" - as if the two go hand-in-hand. Adding:
"This sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image. In the space of a few decades they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, and objectify children as sexual objects as well as criminalize Christianity in popular culture."
Not to be outdone by this demented blather, the cretin then one-upped himself in remarks to a Louisville congregation in 2016. There he asserted that school shootings are linked to no-fault divorce laws, "radical feminism" and illegal abortion. Of course, he now has an agenda to make any form of artificial contraception illegal as well.
No, you can't make this shit up, it's for real.
Fortunately, the Dems have wasted no time attacking this Xtian Nationalist in ads, noting:
“Johnson is as extreme as they come,”
As one of the spots tells it:
“Mike Johnson will use his gavel to push MAGA Republicans’ evidence-free impeachment inquiry. All to hurt President Biden. This is who [U.S. Rep.] Mike Lawler voted for.”
The ad is a timely heads up. Lawler is a Republican from New York who, like every one of his House GOP colleagues, voted for Johnson as speaker. There is a targeted commercial for each of the 18 GOP representatives in Democratic-leaning districts. It needs to be played and replayed to bring every one of those imps down - especially the criminal Santos.
Meanwhile, voters, and especially the 22 percent of blacks and 10% of suburban white women now moving toward support of Trump need to grasp the threat Johnson and his Christian Nationalism pose.
To their credit Americans United for Separation of Church and State released a a short video to make citizens aware of what these religious fifth columnists are up to. Anyone concerned about religious authoritarians and their game, and agenda, needs to carefully watch it.
Then there was the conservative speaker and Falkirk Center fellow David Harris Jr. who put it this way:
If you’re a believer, and you believe God appointed Donald J. Trump to run this country, to lead this country, and you believe as I do that he will be re-elected the President of the United States, then friends, you’ve got to guard your heart, you’ve got to guard your peace. Right now we are at war.
The ordinary rationalist and secular humanist, of course, will easily dismiss all of these folks as demented even if not entirely 52 cards short of a full deck. The unseemly Trump worship of 2020, such as revealed in the Jeff Sharlett (Vanity Fair) article: 'He's The Chosen One To Run America: Inside The Cult of Trump, His Rallies Are Church And He Is The Gospel', e.g.
Has echoes of Jim Jones' "People's Temple" cult. The takeaway for me of these authoritarian Trump worshippers is just how similar they are to the acolytes of Jim Jones.
Sadly, Trump worship is now ramping up ahead of next year's critical general election as a recent (Siena- NY Times) poll shows Trump winning by up to ten points against Biden in 5 of 6 swing states. One hopes Americans soon return to sanity - and see through Trump seditionist Mike Johnson (and Trump himself) before then! Our futures may very well depend on it.
See Also:
— from The New Civil Rights Movement
A Fox News host’s claim he spent $90 on a Thanksgiving turkey is getting tremendous pushback and mockery as economists note the price of turkeys, gas, airplane travel, and even complete Thanksgiving Day dinners have all dropped in what one jovially declared a “Thanksgiving miracle.”
“We went to go buy a turkey today — it was $90 for a turkey,” former Republican U.S. Congressman turned Fox News host Jason Chaffetz said Monday (video below).”The price of stamps is up 32% in the last four years. But it’s all a choice by Joe Biden. That is what Bidenomics is.”
The first of a first class stamp today is 66 cents. Four years ago, in 2019, it was 55 cents — that’s a 20% increase. (For the record, here’s the price 0f stamps since 1885.)
Chaffetz was roundly mocked, with many posting ads from their local grocers showing the price of turkeys this Thanksgiving, which CNBC and others report is actually lower than last year.
The 1970s was a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.
Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and avoided participating in politics.
Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and nonprofit hospitals across the nation; nearly free college, trade school, and research support; healthy small and family businesses; unions protecting a third of America’s workers so two-thirds had a living wage and benefits; and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports that transformed the nation’s commerce.
Just days after filing a motion to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, a co-defendant indicted alongside ex-President Donald Trump and 17 others in the Fulton County election fraud case, District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand in a Monday hearing to argue her case.
Per the Associated Press, "The charges against Floyd relate to allegations of harassment toward Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump and his Republican supporters. Floyd took part in a Jan. 4, 2021, conversation in which Freeman was told she 'needed protection' and was pressured to lie and say she had participated in election fraud, the indictment says."
MSNBC's Chris Jansing spoke with Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Melissa Redmon and NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard during the ongoing hearing about what a bond revocation for Floyd could indicate for the other co-defendants.
And:
by Joan McCarter | November 7, 2023 - 7:14am | permalink
The government shuts down Nov. 17 at midnight unless Congress acts in the next 10 days to pass a short-term funding bill, or a continuing resolution. As of Monday, it looks like the Republican House has no intention of working on that this week: There is no CR on the schedule.
If Punchbowl News is to be believed, Speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t brought his leadership team together to hash out options with the conference, and the “GOP whip operation is not currently in action at all.” If Johnson is to be believed, working on a CR is his focus. "We worked through the weekend on a stopgap measure," Johnson said on Fox News Sunday.
And:
by Joan McCarter | November 4, 2023 - 6:53am | permalink
New House Speaker Mike Johnson’s entire political schtick is rooted in his “Christianity.” In one of his first interviews after being elected speaker, he said: “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.’”
It seems that Johnson’s Bible contains only the Old Testament, or he’s skipped over the parts that are inconvenient to his actual worldview. Like the part where those who aren’t in need share their bread with the poor. He wants no part of that—and doesn’t want the government to be involved in making sure American families don’t go hungry.
He’s called one of the most important anti-poverty programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, “our nation’s most broken and bloated welfare program.” His position is complicating an already messy effort to get the massive farm bill reauthorization over the finish line before it expires at the end of the year.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | November 2, 2023 - 6:41am | permalink
Excerpt:
Mike Johnson wants a religious litmus test for office holders, and thinks environmentalists are possessed by the Devil himself. This shows that his shtick is about power, not Christian religion. If it were about religion, he would be singing an entirely different tune.
Religious charlatans like Speaker Mike Johnson, exploiting a basic human urge to know the unknowable, to touch the mystery of life, are the most despicable of all the various types of con men on Earth. And the most dangerous.
For them, it’s rarely about religion: instead, it’s all about controlling others and acquiring wealth and power for themselves. Which is why more people have been murdered in the name of religion than any other single cause.
Certainly, charlatans like Johnson surround themselves with the trappings of religion. They pray in public with great fervor. They claim, with absolute certainty, that their particular god or holy book tells them who should be favored and who should be shunned. They know the rituals and behaviors that will give their god a smile or provoke his (it’s almost always a man) wrath.
And:
The REAL Problem with Christian Nationalism - YouTube
And:
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