Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

He may be rude, but he speaks for me:

As a young kid whose parents didn’t care what I watched, I loved All in the Family. And I didn’t see Rob Reiner’s Michael Stivic as Archie Bunker did, as “Meathead.” I was inspired by Michael’s passion and activism. I wanted to be like him because it pissed off the Archie Bunkers.

— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit.bsky.social) 2025-12-15T04:32:57.348Z

Not unlike the rude fella, I was first exposed to All in the Family at an impressionable age; I was 14 years old when it  premiered in 1971. I may not have fully grasped all the sociopolitical undercurrents running through Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin’s groundbreaking sitcom (which went on to run for 9 seasons and achieve “classic” status) but I instinctively glomed onto Michael Stivic as my hero.

The funny thing about actors is, they act for a living. More often than not, the character you see on the screen doesn’t necessarily reflect the person portraying that character (“never meet your idols”, and all that). However, as it turned out, “Michael Stivic” was largely simpatico with the actor portraying him, Rob Reiner. I’m referring to the “passion and activism” mentioned at the top of my post:

In a world where fewer and fewer people concern themselves with the plight of others, the loss of Rob Reiner, who cared deeply about humanitarian causes, feels that much more devastating. RIP: 1947-1925.[Selfie: July 2022, NYC]

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neildegrassetyson.com) 2025-12-15T13:52:11.548Z

This was the statement from the family of the late Norman Lear:

Here’s just a taste of Reiner’s activism over the years:

Two of Reiner’s biggest political contributions were his work in defending marriage equality and establishing critical child development programs.

Reiner co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights in 2008 to help fight against California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state.

Reiner helped spark the court challenge of Prop 8, leading to a 2010 trial that preceded the Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage at the federal level.

 While speaking about the importance of his fight against Prop 8, Reiner invoked the civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education.

  “We don’t believe in separate but equal in any other legal position except this,” Reiner said in 2011, referring to same-sex marriage. “We feel that this is the last piece of the civil rights puzzle being put into place.” […]

His work extended beyond LGBTQ+ rights; Reiner was also a fierce advocate for children. In 1998, Reiner led the campaign to pass California’s Proposition 10. The initiative formed First 5 California, a collection of childhood development services in the state funded by a tobacco tax. Reiner served as the organization’s first chair for seven years, from 1999 to 2006.

 “Nobody did more to create universal preschool in California,” political consultant Roy Behr, who worked with Reiner on the campaign to pass Prop 10, told PEOPLE. “Literally tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of kids got access to preschool entirely because of him.”

Reiner also proposed California’s Proposition 82 in 2006, which would have raised taxes on the wealthiest residents in order to fund free preschool for all 4-year-olds in the state. The proposition failed to pass, though his suggestion to tax the rich as a means for expanding government services has became a popular element of the progressive platform in recent years.

Just another one of those damn Hollywood lefty busybodies.

His acting credits are numerous. Previous to All in the Family, his appearances include Enter Laughing (his 1967 acting debut, and father Carl’s directorial debut), and the 1970 cult comedy classic Where’s Poppa (another Carl Reiner film). He appeared (uncredited) in Steve Martin’s 1979 comedy The Jerk, and had memorable supporting roles in Throw Momma From the Train, Postcards From the Edge, Sleepless in Seattle, Bullets Over Broadway, and Primary Colors.

He also directed a film or two you may have heard of. He was on a roll in the 80s, delivering five exceptional films in a row:This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. His streak waned a bit in the 90s, nonetheless that decade yielded three more gems: Misery, A Few Good Men, and The American President. 

Reiner co-founded Castle Rock Entertainment in 1987, an independent television and film production company. In addition to a number of Reiner’s own films, the company’s canon includes City Slickers, Year of the Comet, In the Line of Fire, Barcelona, The Shawshank Redemption, Before Sunrise, Lone Star, Waiting for Guffman, The Last Days of Disco, The Green Mile, Best in Show, Before Sunset, The Salton Sea (a 2002 neo-noir that needs more love) and Michael Clayton.

Glancing at his filmography, I have some catching up to do; with the exception of his wonderful 2023 documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, I’ve somehow missed his entire output since 1996’s Ghosts of Mississippi. As fate would have it, his final directorial project, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is currently sitting in my DVR, waiting to be watched (it just dropped on HBO/MAX this week).

Speaking of “the Tap”,  my favorite Rob Reiner joint will forever and always be his 1984 directorial debut, This is Spinal Tap.

Reiner co-wrote this mockumentary with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, who play Spinal Tap founders Nigel Tufnel (lead guitar), Derek Smalls (bass) and David St. Hubbins (lead vocals and guitar), respectively (several actors portray the band’s revolving door of drummers, who tend to meet untimely ends such as spontaneous combustion, “a bizarre gardening accident”, and perhaps most famously, choking on “somebody else’s vomit”).

Reiner casts himself as “rockumentary” filmmaker Marty DiBergi (a goof on Martin Scorsese, who similarly interjected himself into The Last Waltz) who accompanies the hard rocking outfit on a tour of the states (“their first in six years”) to support the release of their new LP “Smell the Glove” (DiBergi has been a fan since first catching them at the “Electric Banana” in Greenwich Village in 1966).

By the time the film’s 84 minutes have expired, no one (and I mean, no one) involved in the business of rock ’n’ roll has been spared the knife-musicians, roadies, girlfriends, groupies, fans, band managers, rock journalists, concert promoters, record company execs, A & R reps, record store clerks…all are bagged and tagged.

Nearly every scene has become iconic in muso circles; ditto the plethora of quotable lines: “These go to eleven.” “I mean, it’s not your job to be as confused as Nigel.” “You can’t really dust for vomit.” “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” “No…we’re NOT gonna fucking do ‘Stonehenge’!” “We’ve got armadillos in our trousers-it’s really quite frightening.”

The great supporting cast includes Tony Hendra (who steals all his scenes as the band’s prickly manager, clearly modeled after Led Zeppelin’s infamously fearsome handler Peter Grant), Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley, Jr., Fran Drescher, Parick Macnee, June Chadwick, Billy Crystal (“C’mon…mime is money!”), Howard Hesseman, Paul Shaffer, and Fred Williard.

So if you are looking for one Rob Reiner film to watch tonight in memoriam, I say go for the sights, the sounds…and the smells of this joyous romp. And as for your off-screen time…follow the advice someone offered on BlueSky today:

In a world full of Archie Bunkers, be a Meathead.R.I.P. Rob Reiner

— Truth Social(ist) (@twitterrefugeeog.bsky.social) 2025-12-15T14:14:14.453Z

More reviews at Den of Cinema

UPDATE: Damn. No one does these like TCM:

— Dennis Hartley

Some Montana Trump voters are never thought their faces would get eaten:

Zink, 57, is a third-generation houndsman who hunts big game, including mountain lions and bears. He also owns an archery target business. He’s a rural Montanan whose way of life and livelihood depend on public lands.

He led me into the Hilltop, where half the people inside knew his name, to a corner where we sat drinking diner coffee. “You won’t meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn’t vote for this,” Zink said.

“This” is the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) deep cuts earlier this year to federal public lands agencies’ funding and to the staff at those agencies who administer that funding and steward public lands and wildlife.

Zink voted for Trump but said he doesn’t agree with everything the president does. Zink clarifies he calls himself a “conservative” over calling himself a “Republican.” He doesn’t like Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. “I prefer common sense in the middle,” he said.

He believes wolves need to be hunted to manage their numbers; abortion should only be legal in cases of rape, incest and to protect the mother’s life; and he’s an ardent Second Amendment supporter. He’s also a passionate advocate for public lands and wildlife. And the cuts have, frankly, ticked him off.

Oh really? He cares about public lands and wildlife? Did he think Trump gives a damn about any of that? Lol.

Trump wants to open public lands to development and he’s quite serious about doing it. He’s already opened up ANWR in Alaska.

hanks to an outpouring of opposition from across the political spectrum, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was forced to withdraw language from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that would have sold millions of acres of public lands to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.¹ Nonetheless, a flurry of orders and proposals from the Trump administration—some supercharged by lesser-known provisions in the OBBBA—are still in motion to open up vast amounts of public land for extractive development, allowing it to be leased and claimed by drilling, mining, and logging companies.

The Trump administration has made little secret of its plan to let private companies drill, mine, and log America’s public lands. In fact, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum—who is charged with overseeing the majority of U.S. public lands—recently told those extractive corporations that he views them as “the customer” for his department.

When he was sparring with Canada over lumber early in he said he wants to open the national forests to commercial logging so we aren’t “dependent” on the Canadians.

He does not care about preserving anything, anywhere. It’s all about making money for himself and his rich friends and stroking his ego. Since he doesn’t value nature (and he hates animals) destroying America’s natural beauty is the least of his concerns.

Leopards (and wolves) love the taste of “very conservative Trump voters.” And they are starting to feast.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

A warning from MI6

BBC News:

The new MI6 chief has said “we are now operating in a space between peace and war” as she laid out the “interlocking web of security challenges” that the service is working to tackle.

Blaise Metreweli’s first public speech since taking the role focused on the multi-faceted threat posed by Russia, which she said was “testing us in the grey zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war”.

She also highlighted the “the menace of an aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia” while referring to the war in Ukraine, insisting the UK would maintain pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine’s behalf.

“[T]he front line is everywhere,” cautioned Metreweli Monday as the first female Chief of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

There are short clips like this posted around the internet.

@bbcnews The new MI6 chief said Britain’s overseas spy agency is dealing with an “interlocking web of security challenges” during her first public speech. #MI6 #Spy #Security #NationalSecurity #UK #BBCNews ♬ original sound – BBC News

>

Truth Matters (@politicsusa46) commented on X:

I can’t tell you just how profound a statement this is from the head of MI6 Blaise Metreweli.

It is VERY uncommon for the head of the UK’s foreign intelligence agency to make such a public statement. There may now be a slow shift towards considering the US as representing a threat to UK national security if aligned with Russian interests.

But let’s escerpt a bit more from the transcript:

Let’s be in no doubt. Our world is more dangerous and contested now than it has been for decades. Conflict is evolving and trust eroding, just as new technologies spur both competition and dependence. We are being contested from sea to space, from the battlefield to the boardroom. And even our brains, as disinformation manipulates our understanding of each other and ourselves. Across the globe, we are now confronting not one single danger, but an interlocking web of security challenges – military, technological, social, ethical even – each shaping the other in complex ways.

We are now operating in a space between peace and war.

This is not a temporary state or a gradual, inevitable evolution. Our world is being actively remade, with profound implications for national and international security. Institutions which were designed in the ashes of the Second World War are being challenged. New blocs and identities forming and alliances reshaping. Multipolar competition in tension with multilateral cooperation.

But new technologies form a threat as well, said the former head of Q Branch:

Advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing are not only revolutionising economies but rewriting the reality of conflict, as they ‘converge’ to create science-fiction-like tools.

There’s incredible promise in all this for all of us, from green technologies to hyper-personalised medicine. But also peril. AI-powered robots and drones are brilliant for scaled manufacturing but devastating on the battlefield. Discoveries that cure disease can also create new weapons. And as states race for tech supremacy, or as some algorithms become as powerful as states, those hyper-personalised tools could become a new vector for conflict and control.

Power itself is becoming more diffuse, more unpredictable as control over these technologies is shifting from states to corporations, and sometimes to individuals.

You can probably name a few of those individuals Metreweli doesn’t.

And at the same time, the foundations of trust in our societies are eroding. Information, once a unifying force, is increasingly weaponised. Falsehood spreads faster than fact, dividing communities and distorting reality. We live in an age of hyper-connection yet profound isolation. The algorithms flatter our biases and fracture our public squares. And as trust collapses, so does our shared sense of truth – one of the greatest losses a society can suffer.

The defining challenge of the twenty-first century is not simply who wields the most powerful technologies, but who guides them with the greatest wisdom. Our security, our prosperity, and our humanity depend on it.

I’d suggest that top officials in Washington, D.C. are reading between the lines of that speech Metreweli’s distrust of the Trump administration and its cozy relationship with Moscow. But that assumes there is anyone left competent enough to interpret anything more nuanced than a meme or an overt racial slur.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

We’re still here

Dennis, as I’d hoped, popped in Monday evening, my time, with an in memoriam for Rob Reiner. His “Inconceivable” title first elicited a wide-eyed “of course” followed by a wave of grief.

I never met Reiner, just like I’ve never met Dennis. People who don’t live online don’t get that netizens often collaborate without (or rarely) seeing each other. When I was a consulting engineer, people asked why I didn’t telecommute. It wasn’t that kind of job. This is.

Digby, gracious as always, wrote some very nice things yesterday about my morning work here. We met at a conference in D.C. in 2009. I haven’t seen her in person since Netroots 2013. We text and rarely talk. (Actually, I was so floored when she asked me to join her in August 2014 that it took me years to start even texting.) I met Spocko at the same 2013 conference and didn’t see him again until he and his wife were in town for a wedding two years ago. We had pizza. As Harry Chapin once sang, “That’s how this business goes.”

Weeks like this take a toll. When news is so bad that many people want to tune out, we have to carry on. There are rare days when Digby has a string of posts scheduled ahead of time, and I think, “Thank God, she’s getting out.” I immerse myself in morning headlines, write up my posts, then spend four miles walking it off. I watched MS Now’s Nicole Wallace Monday afternoon sniffle and hold back tears while still facing the cameras and hoping to collect herself during the breaks. Some mornings, the news is so bad, one doesn’t know where to start. But we do somehow.

Another old-school blogger I haven’t seen since 2015 lamented that lefties were helping Donald Trump claw back attention by reposting and commenting on the “Truth” he issued on Reiner’s death. Don’t do that, please. And I wish pundits wouldn’t.

Maria Shriver managed to say something substantive about Trump’s latest atrocity without reposting it. Better.

Maria Shriver obviously comes from a very political family and has supported candidates for office, like her now-former husband Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barack Obama, but for the most part she has always chosen to focus on storytelling and journalism.

She has clearly hit her… pic.twitter.com/ZKuIMCRxrW

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 16, 2025

Thanks for reading our processings every day. For you, I hope it’s helpful. For me, it’s therapeutic. It would be great to see more of my remote colleagues in person on a regular basis. But we make due. The internet means that there are many “friends” I think of more as serial acquaintances. Lizz Winstead, one of “The Daily Show” co-founders, is one of those. I see her maybe once a year. Last night on FB she gave me a laugh I desperately needed. Hope it helps.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

'The frontline is everywhere," warned new UK MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli today. Highlighting a wave of inter-connected threats to western democracies, she added: "We are now operating in a space between peace and war.”https://t.co/L0JS5XflpP

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) December 15, 2025

Semafor:

European officials are raising the alarm over Russia’s expansionist agenda and hybrid warfare tactics. “The new frontline is everywhere,” the UK’s MI6 chief said in her first speech atop the agency, warning that Russia poses an “acute threat” to the West. The EU on Monday tightened sanctions against Russian ally Belarus, following incursions by weather balloons into Lithuanian airspace, which officials believe are part of Moscow’s intensifying covert sabotage campaign to sow instability.

European leaders are further grappling with how to respond to Washington’s disdain toward the continent amid precarious Ukraine peace talks. The US’ disengagement “could give Russia a window of opportunity to escalate before Europe is ready to resist,” Lithuania’s former foreign minister wrote.

Those comments are pretty intense.

The Guardian has more:

The order of world institutions “designed in the ashes of the second world war” was, she said, being deliberately contested “from sea to space, from the battlefield to the boardroom” and “even our brains” through the deliberate spread of disinformation online.

She said Britain and the world were “operating in a space between peace and war” – which the spy agency, traditionally focused on running agents and working with human sources, had to contend with. She said MI6 had to become “fluent in technology” and anticipate the impact of future advances.

Metreweli, 48, took over as the head of MI6, the UK’s international spy agency, in September, becoming the first woman to hold the post. As its chief, or C, she is the only member of the organisation to be publicly named.

An Arabic speaker, her early career included running agents in the Middle East as well as deployments in eastern Europe. She was appointed to the top job by the prime minister after running MI6’s technology department, or Q branch.

Metreweli said she would “break with tradition” and not “give you a global threat tour”. This allowed her to sidestep any direct analysis of China, which has been accused of trying to run espionage and hacking campaigns against the UK.

[…]

Russia, the focus of remarks trailed in advance, was described as “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and harass Nato”. She said Putin was not serious about trying to end the war in Ukraine, describing him as “dragging out negotiations” and shifting the burden of the conflict on to his own population.

Meanwhile, the head of Britain’s armed forces said on Monday that Britain needed to develop “a whole of nation response” to deal with the growing military threat posed by Russia.

Richard Knighton, the chief of the defence staff, said that while there was a “remote chance” of a direct attack on the UK, the invasion of a Nato ally in eastern Europe by Russia’s 1.1 million-strong army was more likely.

Just because she refers to the threat against “the west” and doesn’t specifically call out America, if you think her complaints aren’t aimed at the U.S as well as Russia, you’re missing the point. We are abandoning the European alliance in favor of Putin and everyone knows it. They see the writing on the wall.

Happy Hollandaise everyone

On all (waves hands) this:

How did we become a country that inflicts itself on people the way it has on Zoe Weissman?

She has popped up on TV in the aftermath of the murders at Brown University in Providence. She is a sophomore there. In 2018, she was in a middle school that was attached to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when Nikolas Cruz and his very large gun came to call. On Saturday night, she was in her dormitory room when another shooter with another very large gun showed up on campus.

How did we end up with two of our children at the same university experiencing the second mass shooting of their lives? In 2019, Mia Tretta was wounded by a mass shooter at her California high school in which her best friend was one of two people killed. And on Saturday night, on a campus in Rhode Island, she was sheltering in place. And Tretta was asking all the right questions. From NBC News:

“No one in this country even assumes it’s going to happen to them,” Tretta said. “Once it happens to you, you assume or are told it will never happen again, and obviously that is not the case.”

Obviously.

Obviously?

Obviously!

It was a brutal weekend around the world. Brown. Bondi Beach in Australia. The murders in Brentwood, California, of Rob and Michele Reiner. The news reminded me of the dispatches from World War II. There was insupportable violence on many fronts in many places.

He discusses the right’s reaction to all this, led by the president which I’m sure you’ve seen by now, and he concludes:

There is a cost to the sickness that has been unleashed on the world. The current president, with his merciless predator’s instincts, recognized not a soul-deep crisis but a golden opportunity. There is a price to living on the edge the way this country has been and the uncertainty we’ve unleashed on the world, a mortgage on the body and a lien on the soul, as the old bluesmen sang. For those of us on the outside of these cascading tragedies but fully immersed in their effects on our lives, we have heroes to follow. We have Mia Tretta and Zoe Weissman, double survivors giving witness. And we have Ahmed al-Ahmed, an immigrant from Syria who ambushed one of the shooters at Bondi Beach and disarmed the bastard, taking several bullets for his trouble. One small step back from the cliff and the abyss below.

We do have heroes, famous and obscure. We need to remember that.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

Philip Bump writes:

[H]ostility to our traditional allies was made manifest at the United Nations this week, as the U.S. sided with Russia and against our erstwhile allies on a vote centered on fixing the damage done to the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown site during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I was curious whether there was a change in the pattern of votes at the U.N. that reflects this shift in loyalties. Happily, the U.N. has a repository of voting data that facilitates such analyses.

As is the case with most things geopolitics, this was tricky. How do you measure conflicts with other nations? What constitutes “Europe”? I decided that a conflict was any vote in which Europe (defined as at least two-thirds of the E.U.’s current membership) and Russia (or the U.S.S.R.) were on opposite sides of a yes-no vote and the U.S. aligned with one or the other.

I guess it could be worse but the trend in this second term is pretty clear.

And that doesn’t even count the effect of Trump and Vance’s rhetoric which clearly favors Russian interests. This could not be more obvious.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic reports on the sad state of small businesses in America as a result of Trump’s tariffs. Big businesses have been able to deal with it so far, although they’re losing their cushion too. But the smaller companies are in huge trouble.

Here’s one:

Many small firms have closed down, fired workers, watched their sales fall apart, or worse. In a new survey, 71 percent of small-business owners said they expect the trade war to depress their revenue this holiday season. Only 5 percent said they were hiring and expanding their business.

The holiday season “is our Super Bowl,” Nichole MacDonald told me. “This is when we’re supposed to make all of our money.” MacDonald runs the Sash Bag, a company that manufactures and sells specialty handbags. Like many retailers, the Sash Bag generates an outsize share of its annual sales and profits leading up to Christmas. But this year, she said, she is “literally terrified.” Batches of her bags are stuck in two warehouses in India because she cannot produce the $430,000 needed to cover the import tariffs on the goods. “That product is done,” she said. “It’s sewn. It’s perfectly saleable—beautiful leather, beautiful Sash bags, sitting in India for months because I don’t have the budget to bring it here.”

In addition, she has let go some of her employees, raised prices by 10 to 15 percent, canceled special orders, and considered finding new suppliers. But “people don’t understand” how hard that is to do, MacDonald told me, when you have “your own proprietary product, not something a manufacturer has already invented or already created.”

Well, at least the oligarchs and the CEO’s are happy. That’s really all that matters.

There was a time when Republicans were the greatest advocates for small businesses which they called the engine of the American economy. The NFIB practically functioned as an arm of the party. Not anymore.

Trump doesn’t care about small businesses. They’re losers —big businesses are the winners. Maybe if they were smarter and better they’d be big too and they could “eat the tariffs” and everything would be fine.

I hope the small business owners aren’t hoping for any relief from Trump.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Happy Hollandaise! Thank you so much for your kind words and generous support all these years. I can’t tell you how much in means to me, especially when times are tough and there are so many choices. I will never take it for granted.

I wanted to take this moment to thank my morning wing man Tom Sullivan who has literally only taken a handful of days off over many years, once for a medical emergency and the other because he was caught in the middle of the epic hurricane Helene! He is as reliable as the sun coming up in the morning and I think that for many of us his posts are the first look at the news cycle we have with our morning coffee. His writing is passionate, incisive and empathetic and always entertaining. It is blogging at its finest.

As my pal, historian Rick Perlstein, said to me the other day, “Tom’s blogging has been en fuego.” Indeed it has. I am so lucky to have him writing for Hullabaloo and I know it.

However, that’s only part of what Tom does for our country. He is extremely active in the North Carolina Democratic Party, serving as a delegate to the convention last year and working closely with people like Anderson Clayton, the terrific chair of the state party whom he championed for the job. He does the grassroots work that makes it possible to keep that state purple and may very well give us a Democratic Senator next year with Roy Cooper.

But Tom’s contributions don’t end there. As many of you know, Tom goes out on the streets of Asheville with some other activists several times a week to hold up signs on an overpass with funny and poignant political messages, getting lots of thumbs up and middle fingers from the passing cars. He believes that it’s a way of communicating something immediate and personal to a fairly large number of people in his own community and he’s right.

Doing this isn’t without risk in these troubled times. The CPB and ICE are in North Carolina and Asheville is on the target list. But Tom and his compatriots are fighters and they’re putting their time and effort where their mouths are. This is where the real leadership is coming from.

If you are of a mind to keep this little project going for another year, I would be most grateful. It’s a labor of love but it’s also a lot of work and there’s no way I could do it without your help.

We have a big year ahead of us. The world is on fire and our country is in deep trouble. But there are millions of people like Tom out there, fighting back, and it’s an inspiration. We’ll keep trying to make sense of it all and putting it into perspective as best we can and I hope that you’ll keep reading. We’re all in this together.

If you’d like to put a little something in the Christmas stocking you can hit the buttons below or, if you’re old school, you can use the address on the left. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

cheers,

digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

President Donald Trump declared last week that House Speaker Mike Johnson “has been a fantastic speaker,” making it clear that he considers Johnson to be one of his most important subordinates. Trump wasn’t doing Johnson any favors. With his latest approval ratings firmly in the thirties, the president is increasingly seen as more of an albatross than a benefit to the GOP. And right now, with House Republicans on the verge of a full-scale mutiny, Johnson needs all the help he can get. 

In fairness, Johnson is not the first Republican speaker to find himself in that situation. In fact, it has become something of a ritual sacrifice for the leader of the House GOP to be unceremoniously deposed by his own members. Johnson himself won the post after his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Ca., was removed from his post after a painful series of votes in which the caucus finally settled on the virtually unknown congressman from Louisiana to lead them. 

McCarthy had a tumultuous nine-month tenure after the Republican members staged a raucous spectacle by taking an historic 15 votes to elect him to the job. Before him, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, had been pushed to take the job when the caucus forced out former Speaker John Boehner. But Ryan was so disillusioned that he ended up quitting politics altogether after just three years. Boehner abruptly quit when he lost support after deigning to compromise. His predecessor, Illinois Rep. Dennis Hastert — now a convicted sex offender — resigned due to scandal, as did Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich before him. 

Republicans eat their own. And apparently a speaker of the House is a delicacy. So it’s not surprising that Johnson would find himself on the run at this point in his term.

Republicans eat their own. And apparently a speaker of the House is a delicacy. So it’s not surprising that Johnson would find himself on the run at this point in his term.

Republicans govern in total chaos. But Johnson’s case is unique in one important respect: In the past few years, the reason GOP speakers failed was because the most extreme conservatives in the caucus would not accept any kind of compromise with Democrats in order to pass legislation. And even when the “compromise” was really a win, they refused to take yes for an answer. They wanted to dominate the opposition, to pound them into submission, and if they couldn’t have that they would rather have nothing. Boehner, Ryan and McCarthy all fell prey to that puerile intransigence. Johnson was one of those guys himself and, for the most part, he’s been able to keep his hardcore tea party types in line. His resistance is coming from a number of other directions. 

One of the biggest thorns in his side, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has been trying to depose him almost from the beginning. Back in March, she filed a motion to vacate the chair — essentially, a no-confidence vote —  because Johnson “betrayed our conference and broke our rules” by working with Democrats to pass a bill to fund the government. The fractious right-wing did not join her in rebellion, instead opting to express support for Johnson.

Nevertheless, Greene persisted. She complained about his support for FISA reauthorization and the foreign aid bill, making demand after demand until she finally triggered a vote that resulted in the Democrats stepping in to save him with a vote of 359-43. The 10 Republicans who voted with Greene included a few of the usual right-wing suspects, but the rest were unpredictable cranks; most of the conservatives stuck with Johnson. He is, after all, one of their own. 

That quieted the restiveness among the ranks for a time, but Johnson has always had to look over his shoulder. Now, Greene has now decided to turn in her MAGA hat and will be resigning next month. True to form, she is planning to take one more shot at Johnson before she departs. According to MSNOW, she’s once again trying to round up the nine votes needed to bring up a motion to vacate the chair and oust Johnson. While most people think she won’t succeed, her complaints about Johnson are now being echoed by many in the caucus, most pointedly by some of the women who are very unhappy about his dismissive attitude toward them. 

Greene complained to CNN that Johnson has sidelined them and doesn’t take them seriously. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., took to the pages of the New York Times to rail against his leadership. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a member of the House leadership, called Johnson a habitual liar and told the Wall Street Journal that she doesn’t think he would have the votes to survive if a vote were held. “It’s that widespread,” she said. 

Although they have been the most vocally defiant, it isn’t just the women. The New York Times’ Annie Karni reported on a number of others who have soured on Johnson’s leadership. Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican facing a loss of his seat due to redistricting (precipitated by the snowball effect from Trump’s demand that Texas gerrymander five more seats for Republicans) said that “the overriding issue is the House has not been at the forefront of driving policymaking, or the agenda in Washington.” In other words, they’ve become a rubber stamp for Trump’s increasingly unpopular agenda. 

Members are still angry about Johnson’s decision to send them home for two months during the shutdown, and those in vulnerable swing districts are desperate to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, knowing that allowing them to lapse will be the kiss of death. Johnson, following his own deep hostility to any kind of government health care program, is refusing. Even Trump was briefly willing to extend them for a couple of years, but the speaker and others quickly informed him that plan was a non-starter with the right wing, which is excited by the idea that people on the hated Obamacare will lose their insurance.

Johnson’s caucus has had enough. They’re rebelling with discharge petitions to force votes against his will and tanking rule votes that would bring bills Johnson wants to see passed to the floor. Until recently, such actions were unheard of. Discharge petitions like the one that made the administration release the Epstein files were always seen as a desperate Hail Mary that never worked. Washington insiders would roll their eyes and scoff when anyone would suggest that it be tried. Not anymore. As POLITICO has reported, since Johnson took over, members have managed to defy him by “getting the required 218 signatures needed to force votes on legislation he had blocked — more than in the prior 30 years combined.”

Mike Johnson is in trouble, and as the GOP stares at the likelihood of a possible electoral bloodbath in the 2026 midterms, he may not last through the next year. While he won’t have to deal with his nemesis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, any more, the rebellion she started has become a full-fledged insurrection. In what’s become a GOP tradition, “the ousting of the speaker” is likely to come sooner rather than later. The only question is: Who in the world would want the thankless job?

Salon

Happy Hollandaise everyone!