One Woman's Viewpoint

It is easy to make fun of the student protesters who have vociferously made their voices heard in support of the Palestinian people, pretty much across the whole country. Even here in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico. The front page of the May 16 Albuquerque Journal, perhaps inadvertently, did just this with its banner headline, "Duck Pond Encampment torn down." That a ragtag encampment at a duck pond needed to be torn down by law enforcement officers to make sure that, well what? Keep the ducks safe? There seems to be fun to make all around.

May 8 could have been another low point for U.S. House Republicans. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), after weeks of threats, finally pulled the pin on the grenade she'd been carrying around since March and officially filed her motion for Speaker Mike Johnson to vacate his leadership position, forcing a vote on the measure.

Greene was booed on the House floor. By her own party. 196 of 217 Republicans voted to table her motion, along with 163 Democrats. Most of the Freedom Caucus did not back her. Matt Gaetz didn't support her. Neither did Jim Jordan. Frenemy and fellow Congressional howler monkey Lauren Boebert voted to table the motion.

Does everyone in your household have a spare $102,000 lying around? Because that's what it will take to clear our federal debt: $102,000 from every woman, man and child in the United States.

The debt currently stands at $34 trillion, is rising by a trillion dollars every 100 days or so and projected to reach $54 trillion by 2034. The debt is currently 96% of our gross domestic product. Just the interest paid on the debt – projected to total $870 billion for fiscal year 2024 by the Congressional Budget Office – exceeds the budget's largest discretionary line item, the defense budget.

There are only two mechanisms to address the debt: increasing revenues (raising taxes) and decreasing spending. As we all know, the major parties tend to subscribe to all-or-nothing proposals with the Democrats wanting to raise taxes and increase spending and Republicans wanting to cut taxes and decrease (sort of) spending.

I am doing a couple interviews this week to provide a Republican perspective on New Mexico politics in 2024. That might seem amusing to some of you who perceive New Mexico as a Democratic state. But as I gathered my thoughts ahead of these interviews, I realized that for the last 50 years until 2018, New Mexico has never been an entirely Democrat or Republican state, but always a mix.

At its heart, I think it still is.

So it's been a pretty exciting week in Washington. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson's legislative package for the most part passed on a bipartisan vote, with the exception of the border security piece. The Senate rejected the impeachment articles against the Secretary of Homeland Security. The howler monkey caucus wailed and gnashed their teeth but did little else, like actually fire the Speaker, as they have been threatening for some weeks now.

The first criminal trial began against former President Trump. Unsurprisingly, a stern warning has already been delivered from the judge to the defendant regarding the proceeding's gag order which is largely being ignored.

Possibly my favorite thing about writing this column is interacting with readers. That goes for the critical comments as well as the positive. I try to reply as my day job and bourbon consumption allow.

(Here's a tip: if you want to criticize me, please make it conversational. Screeds that just focus on calling me a fascist/RINO/moron with no contribution to the political debate do not receive replies. Pejorative profanity gets blocked. Repeat screeds get blocked. I mean, I understand it is probably pretty fun and cathartic each week to break out the keyboard and tell me what a fascist/RINO/moron I am, but please know it's going straight to the spam folder after the second message.)

Every now and then I get what is for a pundit high praise: A suggestion I run for office. I simply cannot think of enough swear words to put in front of my very emphatic "no." For print propriety standards, I'll just say, "hell, no."

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, trying to simultaneously do the right thing, not trigger former President/current GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, and keep Congressional howler monkey Marjorie Taylor Greene from formally moving to remove him as Speaker (a "motion to vacate"), announced on April 15 his intent to split the Senate foreign aid package into four separate bills.

Johnson proposes a bill for aid to Israel and is silent about whether that will include humanitarian aid for Gaza. A separate bill would provide aid to Ukraine. The remaining two bills would be for aid to Taiwan and a bill comprised of several measures, including seizure of Russian assets and banning TikTok. Border security measures could be added to this last mop-up bill.

You might have missed it. On April 7, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Mike Turner (R-Ohio) announced on two different Sunday news programs that members of his caucus were repeating Russian propaganda in their arguments against foreign aid for Ukraine.

Just let that sink in for a minute.

Turner said on CNN's State of the Union, "It is absolutely true we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor."

Anti-Ukraine sentiment in the most extremist arm of the GOP has been simmering since Russia invaded in February 2022. U.S. intelligence data shows a proactive Kremlin campaign to undermine American support for Ukraine has been ongoing since at least May of 2022, and underway in earnest since January 2023.