Because most all repulsicans are into the bring back 1700's as well as full religion in government, they were unanimous about it in the vote.
I'd like to know how the fuck they got so organized in 2 days with a certain fuckhead after everyone and their sister said it's going to be after thanksgiving and they'll never find anyone. Absolutely fucking suspicious. Forgive my french but this pisses me off to no end.
"Mike Johnson fucking sucks" Mike Johnson, theocrat: the House speaker and a plot against America
Related: The Constitution never mentions, most of the Forefathers were Deist. In my interpretation of that belief is that there is a God, but he does not reveal himself to humans in this life. P - I always remember from my history readings that George Washington just wanted all Americans to stop persecuting the Catholics. The new country wanted to break away from the Church of England, they thought it was wrong to dictate that upon the country. That is why they made sure that in this new country all Americans could worship the way they wanted. That included all faiths. zab - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173265338
Mike Johnson speaks in Las Vegas. Photograph: Caroline Brehman/EPA
Second-in-line to the presidency, the Republican makes claims about the constitution and Christianity, and his wish to impose his faith on others, that do not withstand serious scrutiny
Marci A Hamilton Sat 4 Nov 2023 17.00 AEDT Last modified on Tue 7 Nov 2023 01.18 AEDT
The new House speaker, Mike Johnson, knows how he will rule: according to his Bible. When asked on Fox News how he would make public policy, he replied .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/27/mike-johnson-christian-bible-lgbtq-abortion-rights : “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” But it’s taking time for the full significance of that statement to sink in. Johnson is in fact a believer in scriptural originalism, the view that the Bible is the truth and the sole legitimate source for public policy.
The ADF has always been opposed to privacy rights, abortion and birth control. Now Roe is gone, the group is laying the groundwork to end protection for birth control. Those who thought Roe would never be overruled should understand that the reasoning in Dobbs v Jackson is not tailored to abortion. Dobbs was explicitly written to be the legal fortress from which the right will launch their attacks against other fundamental rights their extremist Christian beliefs reject.They are passionate about rolling back the right to contraception, the right to same-sex marriage and the right to sexual privacy between consenting adults.
Johnson’s inerrant biblical truth leads him to reject science. Johnson was a “young earth creationist”, holding that a literal reading of Genesis means that the earth is only a few thousand years old and humans walked alongside dinosaurs .. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1717342823572259075__;!!IBzWLUs!WO2rSudt5vtMMNc2lhegTLQRW7PwsUikUnJ1dKUsFR94j8XEr_834WkGpT_pQL0omT1_vIFjvsrELrETVCeoiL5WsnX-H6P5$ . He has been the attorney for and partner in Kentucky’s Creation Museum and Ark amusement park, which present these beliefs as scientific fact, a familiar sleight of hand where the end (garnering more believers) justifies the means (lying about science). For them, the end always justifies the means. That’s why they don’t even blink when non-believers suffer for their dogma.
Setting aside all of these wildly extreme, religiously motivated policy preferences, there is a more insidious threat to America in Johnson’s embrace of scriptural originalism: his belief that subjective interpretation of the Bible provides the master plan for governance. Religious truth is neither rational nor susceptible to reasoned debate. For Johnson, who sees a Manichean world divided between the saved who are going to heaven and the unsaved going to hell, there is no middle ground. Constitutional politics withers and is replaced with a battle of the faithful against the infidels. Sound familiar? Maybe in Tehran or Kabul or Riyadh. But in America?
When rulers insist the law should be driven by a particular religious viewpoint, they are systematizing their beliefs and imposing a theocracy. We have thousands of religious sects in the US and there is no religious majority, but we now have a politically fervent conservative religious movement of Christian nationalists intent on shaping policy to match their understanding of God and theirs alone. The Republicans who elected Johnson speaker, by a unanimous vote, have aligned themselves with total political rule by an intolerant religious sect.
The philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard eloquently explained that religion is a “leap of faith”, not susceptible to reasoned discourse. The framers of the constitution and Bill of Rights thought the same. Under the first amendment, Americans have an absolute right to believe anything we choose and courts may not second-guess whether a believer’s truth is supported in reason or fact. For a believer, their belief is their “truth”, but for the republic, it is simply one of millions of beliefs across a country where all are free to believe. Thus, a scriptural originalist is by definition incapable of public policy discussions with those who do not share their faith.
The grand irony is that being a “scriptural originalist” is oxymoronic. The colonies were first populated by those fleeing the theocracies of Europe – a fact the founders knew and respected. Millions were killed during the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the Spanish and Roman inquisitions, because only one faith could rule. Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, as well as many other kings and queens, ordered apostates killed, imprisoned or exiled. Current theocracies underscore this historical reality. The Pilgrims fled England because they were at risk of punishment and even death for observing the wrong faith. So did the Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians. Despite the ahistorical attempts of rightwing ideologues to claim we are or were a monolithic “Christian country”, this was always a religiously diverse country, and they did not all get along at first. Jews arrived in 1654. Early establishments faded away in the early 19th century as they could not be sustained in the face of our diversity.
The primary drafter of the first amendment, James Madison, was keenly aware of these realities as he reflected on the dangerous history of theocracies in his famous Memorial and Remonstrance, opposing Virginia taxes for Christian education, asking: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/christianity , in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”
Madison further invoked the Inquisition, stating that a bill funding religious education through taxes “degrades from the equal rank of citizens all those whose opinions in religion do not bend to those of the legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance.” US history is proving him correct.
Johnson isn’t just talking about a tax to support his brand of Christian nationalism, though the right’s religious movement, with the approval of the supreme court, has gone all out to ensure that as many tax dollars flow to their mission as possible. Johnson has asserted .. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/27/mike-johnson-value-moral-conservative-republican__;!!IBzWLUs!WO2rSudt5vtMMNc2lhegTLQRW7PwsUikUnJ1dKUsFR94j8XEr_834WkGpT_pQL0omT1_vIFjvsrELrETVCeoiL5Wsg2M39nn$ .. the hackneyed conservative theory of original intent – that the constitution must be interpreted precisely according to what the founders said – but with a twist. According to Johnson, George Washington and John Adams and all the others “told us that if we didn’t maintain those 18th-century values, that the republic would not stand, and this is the condition we find ourselves in today”. The founders, according to Johnson, were scriptural originalists and he’s here to take us back to their “true” Christian beliefs. In fact, the founders’ 18th-century enlightenment values directly repudiate Johnson’s 21st-century theocratic dogma.
The Constitutional Convention itself shows how little support there is for the view that America started from a dogma-soaked worldview. During debates, Benjamin Franklin proposed bringing in a member of the clergy to guide them with prayer. Only three or four out of 55 framers agreed. The matter was dropped.
Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
------ [Insert: Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the US constitution [...] The goal is, in essence, to turn the country into a permanent conservative nation irrespective of the will of the American people. The convention would promote policies that would limit the size and scope of the federal government, set ceilings on or even abolish taxes, free corporations from regulations, and impose restrictions on government action in areas such as abortion, guns and immigration. P - “This is another line of attack strategically,” Bannon told his viewers .. https://americasvoice.news/video/VSyRTWNpPvw5UwL/ .. last month. “You now have a political movement that understands we need to go after the administrative state.” P - By “administrative state”, Bannon was referring to the involvement of the federal government and Congress in central aspects of modern American life. That includes combating the climate crisis, setting educational standards and fighting health inequities. IMAGE Mark Meckler, a founder of the Tea Party who now leads one of the largest groups advocating for the tactic, the Convention of States Action (Cosa) .. https://conventionofstates.com/ , spelled out some of the prime objectives on Bannon’s show .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9KLHPklC3A&t=302s . “We need to say constitutionally, ‘No, the federal government cannot be involved in education, or healthcare, or energy, or the environment’,” he said. P - Meckler went on to divulge the anti-democratic nature of the state convention movement when he said a main aim was to prevent progressive policies being advanced through presidential elections. “The problem is, any time the administration swings back to Democrat – or radical progressive, or Marxist which is what they are – we are going to lose the gains. So you do the structural fix.” [...] Article V of the constitution lays out two distinct ways .. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/article-v.html .. in which America’s core document, ratified in 1788, can be revised. In practice, all 27 amendments that have been added over the past 244 years have come through the first route – a Congress-led process whereby two-thirds of both the US House and Senate have to approve changes followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states. P - Meckler, working alongside other powerful interest groups and wealthy rightwing megadonors, is gunning for Article V’s second route – one that has never been tried before. It gives state legislatures the power to call a constitutional convention of their own, should two-thirds of all 50 states agree. A bar chart of party control of state legislatures since 1978. The state-based model for rewriting the US constitution is perhaps the most audacious attempt yet by hard-right Republicans to secure what amounts to conservative minority rule in which a minority of lawmakers representing less-populated rural states dictate terms to the majority of Americans. Russ Feingold, a former Democratic US senator from Wisconsin, told the Guardian that “they want to rewrite the constitution in a fundamental way that is not just conservative, it is minoritarian. It will prevent the will of ‘we the people’ being heard.” [...][Supreme Court May Adopt Extreme MAGA Election Theory That Threatens Democracy [...]In rendering its pro-voter decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court rejected the radical argument that the state legislature had the sole authority to draw congressional maps without consideration of the state constitution and without review by state courts. The court correctly concluded that the ISL theory would upend long-settled precedent and is “repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions, and the independence of state courts, and would produce absurd and dangerous consequences.”4 P - Nonetheless, continuing its radical quest, the North Carolina legislature asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case and reinstate its maps. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and will hear oral arguments sometime in its upcoming term starting on October 3, with a ruling likely by June 2023.5 P - The illogical reasoning underpinning the independent state legislature theory [...] Donald Trump, aided by now-discredited attorney John Eastman and other allies, made the ISL theory a key building block in his conspiracy to pressure several battleground states in the 2020 election to appoint alternate electors and steal the election from President Joe Biden. [...]Deep-pocketed conservative special interests are funding the well-coordinated effort to make the ISL theory the law of the land.12 The ironically named Honest Elections Project, a group pushing for restrictive voting laws, has filed multiple friend-of-the-court briefs, including in Moore v. Harper, in an attempt to influence the Supreme Court.13 That group is reportedly tied to CRC Advisors and the Marble Freedom Trust, organizations that control at least $1.6 billion in donations and hard-to-trace political spending via Leonard Leo,... https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170987461] ------
But instead of surrendering, the truest believers vowed to supplant democracy. They doubled down on furiously grabbing political power, to force everyone else to live their religious lives. Led by the likes of Leonard Leo, a reactionary Catholic theocrat who is chair of the Federalist Society’s board of directors, Dobson and many other Republicans, including the then little-known Mike Johnson .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/mike-johnson .. remade the supreme court and instituted stringent religious litmus tests for Republican candidates. Unable to control the culture, they have mounted a legal-political crusade against all who refuse to embrace their religious worldview.
In little over a year, since Dobbs, the theocrats have converted their belief in the divinity of the fetus and disdain for the life of the pregnant into law, in one Republican-dominated state after another. But that is just a preview. Johnson and his crusaders would like to insert their scriptural originalism into every nook and cranny of federal law and public policy, to create a blanket of religious hegemony. Conservative governors and legislators have shamelessly invoked their God as the legislative purpose behind such draconian limitations.
In the US, the peaceful coexistence of thousands of faiths was made possible in great part by the separation of church and state, which was demanded by Baptists in Massachusetts, Virginia and other places where they were being ostracized, taxed, flogged, imprisoned and even killed for their beliefs. That separation, which is the wall that protects religious liberty and prevents religious hegemony, was engraved in the constitution. How cruel an irony that some of the spiritual descendants of those persecuted Baptists should, like Mike Johnson, pervert American history and the constitution to impose a theocracy that would mean the end of democracy.
Marci A Hamilton is a professor of practice and the Fox Family Pavilion non-resident senior fellow in the Program for Research on Religion at the University of Pennsylvania
Years ago someone wrote that the right is so much better organized than the left, and so much more focused. Looking at the situation in America today it's hard to argue against that opinion.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
