Today is Wednesday, October 25, 2023. The country lost again in the dreadful win of far-right Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House. This development that occurred today after a three-week absence of having a speaker of the House chamber bodes ill will for the country because of who Johnson is and what he represents -despite the fact that he’s little known by most anyone right now. An opinion by Julian Zellzer for CNN lays out the reasons why Johnson is a bad choice for this very important job. His opinion is entitled “Opinion: Why Mike Johnson winning the speakership is a loss for the country.”

Very simply, Johnson’s win is a win for MAGA, and that ain’t good, despite what the Orange Hemorrhoid and his innumerable supporters might think. After Johnson’s win, we might – egad! – even hunger for the days of Kevin McCarthy once more.

Johnson is labeled no moderate by Zellzer, even though he’s gentler in demeanor than Ohio’s Rep. “Gym” Jordan. He might be a person who “carries himself in a reasonable way, but make no mistake about it,” Zellzer says: “He is perfectly aligned with the new generation of Republicans who are replacing the generations of the upstart tea party and smash mouth partisan Newt Gingrich as they push their party even further to the right.”

This position of Johnson’s should worry all members of the LGBTQ+ community: he has been a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage. “He also has been at the forefront of opposing reproductive rights. He opposed funding for Ukraine. He wants to deregulate the economy, cut taxes, and deny the very real problems facing our climate.”

Even with all of these disqualifying knocks against him, the most significant and most disqualifying feature inherent in his quest for speaker is his effort to overturn the 2020 election, something that in more rational times would have been immediately disqualifying for holding office, let alone being speaker. Zellzer writes, “Within the House itself, he was one of the point persons working with the Trump administration to subvert the decision of American voters by standing against certifying the 2020 results and helping create the legal strategy that was the basis for Trump’s attempted overthrow.” In particular, he helped to round up support for a legal brief behind a lawsuit in Texas that would have thrown out the election results in four battleground states where Biden was victorious. How crazy is this?

If you think the repugnican party is not going full MAGA altogether, listen to the repugnant Matt Gaetz tell Steve Bannon on a recent “War Room” podcast: “If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party lies, then you’re not paying attention.” Therefore, we must all pay attention here when this bereft party appoints a MAGA loyalist as Speaker of the House.

The enshrinement of MAGA to the top chamber of Congress today clearly shows that so-called “moderate” Republicans were fine with nominating a far-right hardliner to the position. Also these repugnicans made a practical decision to go with the most extreme candidate because it was probably better to settle on someone than to let the uncertainty of not having anyone in the role continue.

The sad reality of Jonson’s win is that the #NeverTrump contingent is irrelevant at best, or even an illusion.

With Johnson’s ascendancy to the speakership, Democrats have some huge decisions ahead. Issues such as assistance to Ukraine to funding for basic social safety programs will result in both parties being very far apart. “To keep government functioning while protecting core programs that have been created since the New Deal, Democrats will have to choose whether to make concessions to their opposition that will no doubt leave voters feeling dispirited when the next election rolls around.”

As for the Orange Toddler, today was another bad day for the former commander in “grief” who was forced to take the stand in his continuing civil trial and was fined $10,000 for violating the judge’s gag order. This scenario was covered by Jeremy Herb and Lauren del Valle for an online CNN article entitled “Inside the courtroom as Donald Trump is forced to take the stand, is fined, and then storms out.”

Today the judge, Arthur Engoron, in Chump’s civil fraud trial, wanted to hear from the Orange Hemorrhoid directly after he heard that Trump apparently spoke about his law clerk – apparently in violation of Engoron’s gag order – briefly paused the New York trial and said he was “going to hold a hearing right now” on the matter and decided to call his first witness: Donald J. Trump.

After being asked if he would like to be on the witness stand, Chump didn’t hesitate, not realizing that once he opened his fat mouth, he would be shredding all credibility immediately. And this he certainly did!

What followed in Engoron’s grilling of this disgraced witness provided a much-needed moment of levity as Engoron read back what Chump actually said to reporters outside the courtroom only hours earlier. Here Chump went into a tirade about the judge being partisan as well as naming a person sitting alongside him as being even more partisan than him. Then there was a disagreement as to who this person really was in Chump’s mind; he tried to say that he meant his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, not the judge’s law clerk. Even Chump’s own legal eagles tried to assert that their client was referring to Cohen, not the judge’s law clerk whom Chump attacked personally on his social media platform which resulted in the gag order.

After Chump offered his testimony, Engoron promptly fined him for not offering credible testimony. Chump was fined for a grand total of $10,000.

At one point, the Orange Toddler had enough of the bad news he was receiving from the judge and stormed out of the courtroom, with Cohen still on the stand. He appeared noticeably agitated when he spoke briefly to the camera in the hallway outside the courtroom, taking no questions. Before leaving the hallway, Chump bizarrely said, “We won this trial.” What reality is he referring to here? From all intents and purposes, it’s quite obvious that he has lost the trial from the get-go.

Breaking news: an active shooter has been reported in Lewiston, Maine. More bloodshed spilled across our 50 states. The carnage just keeps racking up. More information will be released as time wears on. From CNN online, reports say that there have been at least 16 dead from multiple shootings in Lewiston. No one on MSNBC is corroborating this figure. We’ll know more tomorrow, regretfully. There is a security camera image of a young white man carrying some sort of rifle somewhere. It seems that multiple locations were affected: bars, restaurants, a bowling alley, etc. I can’t say this is shocking anymore since this happens so regularly here in the United States, especially given the number of firearms in Americans’ possession. All I can say is sick, sick, sick.

Stay safe and be well.