A Roundup of Good News, Winning Virginia, John Kirby On Israel-Gaza, Ongoing GOP Betrayal

Tom Bonier and I Are Joining Network NOVA at Noon EST To Talk Virginia

Happy Friday all! Got a few things for you today:

Lots of Good News Of Late - A reminder of what we’ve learned in the last few weeks:

• GDP growth In The Third Quarter Was 4.9% - A huge encouraging number, another sign of the strength and vitality of the American economy despite it all

• This Month’s Jobs Report Exceeded Expectations, Again - Under Biden lowest unemployment rate since the 1960s, lowest uninsured rate ever

• New Inflation Date Released Today Shows Inflation Continues to Fall

• The Wealth of Americans Jumped 37% from 2020 to 2022 - As we like to say here, we are better off today due to Joe Biden and the Democrats

• When Voters Are Informed About What Biden Has Done, His Numbers Go Up - another in a long line of polls show that by informing voters of what Biden has done his approval goes way up. This can and will be done next year by the campaign

• Gas Prices Are Lower Than They Were A Year Ago - despite Russia and Saudi Arabia trying to raise gas prices, the price of gas keeps tumbling

• Murder and Violent Crimes Rates Came Down in 2022, and Continue to Fall in 2023

• American Has Experienced An Explosion of New Black and Hispanic Small Businesses

• Lots of New, Encouraging Data About Our Transition From Fossil Fuels to Cleaner Forms of Energy

What did I miss?

Winning Virginia - While the early vote in Virginia is getting more Democratic every day, we are still not where we want to be and need to keep pushing. Hope will you donate to or volunteer for one of the six swing, too-close-to-call races we’ve gotten behind here, or keep working with whatever program you are working with already. We need to have a big weekend this weekend to have the election we all want to have in November. I will be canvassing on Saturday - weather is looking good! Thanks to all of you who have donated, volunteered - been so inspiring to see all the ways people are helping out in Virginia! We are now over $100,000 raised for our six candidates!

If you want to do a live check-in on Virginia today, Tom Bonier and I will be joining our friends at Network NOVA for their weekly Power Lunch at Noon EST. RSVP here!

John Kirby On Israel-Gaza - For all of us trying to make sense of this terrible moment in the Middle East, I pass along an instructive video and partial transcript of White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby’s answer to a question yesterday from a Brazilian reporter from the briefing room:

TV Globo’s @RKrahenbuhl: “So, besides saying that he doesn't have confidence in these numbers, the President went further to say that innocents will die and that this is the price of the war. You also said that.” Kirby: “I have indeed.” Krähenbühl: “Don't you think this is insensitive? There’s being very harsh criticism in about it. For example, the Council of American-Islamic Relations said it was deeply disturbed and call on the President to apologize. Would the President apologize?”

Kirby: “No.”

Krähenbühl: “And does he regret saying something like that?”

Kirby: “What’s harsh — what’s harsh is the way Hamas is using people as human shields. What’s harsh is taking a couple of hundred hostages and leaving families and anxious, waiting and worrying to figure out where their loved ones are. What's harsh, is dropping in on a music festival and slaughtering a bunch of young people just trying to enjoy an afternoon. I could go on and on. That's what's harsh. That is what's harsh and being honest about the fact that there have been civilian casualties and that there likely will be more is being honest, because that's what war is. It's brutal. It's ugly. It's messy. I've said that before. President also said that yesterday. Doesn't mean we have to like it. And it doesn't mean that we're dismissing anyone of those casualties each and every one is a tragedy in its own right...It would be helpful if Hamas would let [Gazans] leave....We know that there are thousands waiting to leave Gaza writ large and Hamas is preventing them from doing it. That is what is harsh.”

The New Speaker - So yesterday I shared an op-ed our new Speaker published some years back decrying the Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw anti-sodomy laws in the United States. So it was a bit surprising to hear the new Speaker claim in an interview he recorded yesterday (clip below, with Hannity of course) that as a “rule of law” conservative he abides by the Court’s decisions once they are made. Not what he did in that op-ed yesterday, of course, and not what he did in his decades long challenge of Roe. It’s perhaps a small lie but to me a significant one for he is so clearly and shockingly full of shit here that we should anticipate many more lies, about things that really matter, in the days ahead. Watch the video for it also contains this all time classic:

“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.”

Unprecedented GOP Betrayal Continues - So in a time of dramatic and escalating tension around the world, the Republicans continue to:

• Block hundreds of Pentagon appointees, weakening our military

• Block over 60 State Department appointments. Those held up include 38 Ambassadorships and the Ambassadors to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon

• Block critical cybersecurity legislation, turn off a DHS program called Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), and are now working to terminate DHS programs to counter use of drones by terrorists here in the US and the office which works to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction against the American people

• Fight additional aid to Ukraine, once again appeasing and enabling Putin

• Excuse the Trump theft and wanton dissemination of America’s secrets, which is almost certainly the most significant national security breach in US history

• Elevate Insurrectionists including now a man who was the one of the primary architects of the Republican Party’s effort to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and end American democracy to the Speaker’c Chair

Keep working hard all. We have a lot of work to do - Simon