Hand Munch, Max’s Dad’s Dad, Carols, Bethlehem, Trump, COVID, McConnell

  • Finger sandwiches, I think. @momwino98 enjoys Christmas dinner:
     


    • Max’s Dad misses his dad, loves a Beatles tune his father shared, and mourns a bit of religious bigotry that kept the song out of the funeral.
       
    • Damn, I’m old. nojo remembers carols that are way out of my memory. See how many you recall.
       
    • The Moderate Voice applies Trump standards to a transformative event in my own religion.
       
    • In MadMikesAmerica, Michael J. Scott explores the myth of Bethlehem. The star, the wise men, Bethlehem itself. Could be none of it is true.
       
      Michael has been my friend for years. He would have no mission concerning my faith. Indeed, such details probably bounce harmlessly from the beliefs of most Christians. Still, my brothers and sisters in Christ do share with me a vulnerability. It is that ours is an historically based belief.
       
      This comes from what I have written in the past.

      I do love the idea that God would come to earth as human, experiencing more temptation, pain, and struggle than most of humanity. So my faith would be shattered if it was proven to me that Jesus died running in panic from Gethsemane with a Roman spear in his back.

    • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz vividly describes the fight-against-death struggles and the constant care, naming health care workers as bruised angels struggling to lift victims out of nightmarish hell.
       
    • Nan’s Notebook illustrates, with stories from those she knows, how we tend to regard the pandemic as a sort of theoretical, perhaps good citizenship, thing. That is until a friend or family member gets hit with COVID. It was real for me from the start. Got more real when family, those I admire, got hit.
       
      This thing is deadly dangerous, folks.
       
    • Not to worry. Reductress proves that COVID is not real. Three spirits have not visited to provide important life lessons. Okay, that beats other COVID-denialist arguments I’ve heard.

    • Richard Nixon wanted a more constructive approach to poverty. He would eliminate most programs like food, education programs, and income supplements. He wanted something like a negative income tax instead. Conservatives were for it as an alternative to the welfare state.
       
      I was younger, to be sure. But I still recall twin battles. At the same time as the poverty fight, Richard Nixon fought tooth and claw against any increase in Social Security benefits. He finally gave up and signed on to a Social Security increase in exchange for a tiny experiment using a portion of his new approach to poverty. That approach eventually became an earned income tax credit, supplementing earnings from employment up to some level.
       
      Having lost the fight against Social Security, Nixon sent out a notice with the new benefits letting retirees know he had enthusiastically signed the increase into law. Made it sound like he fought for it instead of against it.
       
      The game of lies is still played today. PZ Myers points to Mitch McConnell who has reluctantly signed on to a COVID relief program Democrats want but that he has fought against from the start. It looked like continued opposition might hurt Republicans in the special runoff in Georgia. So now Mitch has a new story. He was for it all along, but had to overcome Democrats who opposed it.
       
      What a guy, that McConnell, fighting for us that way!
      What wonderful folks, those Republicans, always on our side.
       
      By the way, once conservatives won the battle for the earned income tax credit they turned on it. Another damn liberal program to help those in poverty.
       
    • At News Corpse, Trump now opposes COVID relief because it doesn’t do enough. Which may sink it, since Republicans say they will oppose any increase. Trump says he has been fighting for increases. Nope. He hasn’t. Democrats are handling it as best they can. They’re proposing the higher amount, the amount they’ve been supporting from the start, as a separate bill. Republicans, as before, are opposed.
       
      Let’s see. Trump suddenly wants everyone to get $2000 to help them get by. Same as Democrats have been pushing to get. If he’ll raise that to $20,000 maybe Americans will reverse their election decision and let him stay.
       
      Okay, no.
       
    • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil seems to have run out of joy at repetitive schadenfreude as a COVID denier loses his parents and a Trumpster gets arrested for voter fraud.
       
      I take two lessons:

      1. COVID doesn’t care what you believe. Please let’s be careful.
         
      2. This example shows why voter fraud doesn’t happen often enough to affect elections. Penalties are too high and it’s too easy to discover.

       

    • Sarah Cooper has had this up for a while, but it gets better each day.

    • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life explains the two weird tricks that keep Trump supporters in the MAGA line.
       
    • Trump lawyers do make a lot of claims – out of court. Green Eagle discovers and links to Sidney Powell’s incredibly fantastic, astonishingly heroic personal history, as related by …well… herself.
       
    • You think Trump’s latest series of pardons pretty much demonstrates what the deal was in Russian collusion? If you are convicted of obstructing the investigation, Trump will take care of you. That deal was denied at the time, but that was then. Ant Farmer’s Almanac explains the amount of evidence it will take to convince Republicans. As in, no high is high enough.
       
    • In a Cato sponsored podcast, Julian Sanchez is joined by Caleb Brown, analyzing what is known and speculating about what is yet to be discovered about the amazingly thorough Russian cyber attack on our country.
       
    • Andy Borowitz reports that those Russian hackers, the ones American intelligence services reported and Trump denies, are disappointed at what they found.
       
    • JoAnn Williams finds a 1962 film about Donald Trump as a future adult.
       
    • In Scotties Toy Box a certain Republican Senator running for re-election in Georgia turns out to favor only a specific kind of government help. I don’t wish to mention her name, this being an election season for her. But her initials are Kelly Loeffler.
       
    • Remember when Elizabeth Warren got in trouble for quoting from a letter written by the late Coretta Scott King, widow of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King? Mrs. King carefully documented racist incidents by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions back when Sessions was considered for a judgeship. The incidents all happened. But, when Warren read them out loud, Sessions was Senator Sessions, nominated for Attorney General, and Senate rules make it wrong to criticize another Senator. Doesn’t matter if the criticism happens to be irrefutably true.
       
      Senate Rule 19 went into effect after an actual fistfight on the Senate floor in 1902. Those were the days.
       
      Rule 19 doesn’t apply to the House of Representatives, but don’t worry. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors documents a new solution by conservative Republicans, a Second Amendment solution. They want to carry firearms into Congress. What could possibly go wrong?
       
    • Who knew The Onion has its own podcast? This season, they examine why most business leaders visited by three spirits are making no changes to their lifestyle.
       
    • Iron Knee at Political Irony compares 2020 with the worst year for our nation in living memory. Which is to say no year in living memory. Not in mine, and I was born during the Truman administration.
       
    • Tommy Christopher calls out MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace for airing her negative opinion of Chris Christie when, only 7 years ago, she thought him quite attractive.
       
      I dunno, Tommy. It’s almost as if the things you also mentioned (bridge closing scandals that endangered lives, failure to push back against horrible Trumpisms), and several others that have happened since then might have justifiably influenced her opinion.
       
      Admittedly, I’m advanced in years and those scandals may have been Tommy’s point. He is, after all, one of the best writers online. But I didn’t see it. Your mileage may vary. He’s worth reading at any rate.
       

    – Podcasts –
     

    One thought on “Hand Munch, Max’s Dad’s Dad, Carols, Bethlehem, Trump, COVID, McConnell”

    1. Howdy Burr!

      I had a social work professor back in the day when I had social work professors who worked on the negative income tax experiment that was the basis of the program Nixon fought for. It actually worked. People were grateful for being on the program and getting the money when their income slipped below poverty level, but were just as happy to be off of it when they earned more. It was not a disincentive for work as many assume.

      GiveDirectly is a non-profit that started operating in Kenya when I lived there a few years ago that has piloted a similar program of just giving people money. I think it was a $1,000.00 (US). It changed people’s lives for the better, or at least most people’s lives for the better. There was a very small number who went out and spent it poorly, but the vast majority used that money to make their lives better in some way. It was far more effective than a non-profit going in and providing something for the community.

      I think it all proves once again that the definition of a conservative is someone who is worried that someone somewhere is getting away with something they shouldn’t.

      Huzzah!
      Jack

      PS Happy New Year! I hope your Festive Season has been festive within the bounds of social distancing and stuff.

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