Christmas, Trees, Plague, Trump, Goo, Cult, Jan 6, Watters All Wet, QAnon

Legal expert Imani Gandy gets surprisingly musical:

  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara rejects left and right this season. Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity and multi-culturalism rejects true American culture, which is inherently libertarian. So both are unAmerican.
     
    Here’s why Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity: It is a state and federally sanctioned holiday.
     
    Inherently libertarian? I’m taking some liberties here. He actually says American culture is rooted in individualism. Mr. LaFerrara is not the only libertarian to appropriate individualism as a synonym for their anti-government philosophy.
     
    Let’s take a look, shall we?
     
    That Christ is part of the name Christmas is not simply historical coincidence.
    Right?
    Nobody should be required to celebrate December 25 as a religious holiday, nor should it be prohibited. The fact that it is recognized by government is not a barrier to either. That includes my right wing friends. It also includes me and other hippy leftist longhairs who happen to be religious (remembering those happy days I actually had hair).
     
    In fact, religious freedom includes everyone. Celebrate or don’t celebrate as secular or religious. That’s …you know… individual.
     
    Multiculturalism extends social participation to those who have been excluded in the past. It does not require anyone to give up their individuality.
     
  • Concerned about the War on Christmas? In MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist says Christmas has already been killed.
     
  • But maybe Christmas in its truest sense can be given a resurrection:

  • SilverAppleQueen protects her Christmas tree from predators.
     
  • Household pets cannot always escape the joy:
  • @momwino98 is stunned by a Christmas realization:
     

    @momwino98

    Come on Santa! Get here!!! ##santa ##FFXmasSwitch ##thegrinch ##wine ##tiktokmom ##fyp ##foryourpage

    ♬ Original sound – TikToksSoundGuy

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz suggests the real tragedy of the COVID pandemic is the core reason the pandemic did not end long ago.
     
  • As to humanity lost:

  • Hackwhackers still doesn’t much care for Mr. Trump but since suddenly he so vigorously endorses vaccinations, Mr. Trump deserves some appreciation. The turnaround does produce some conflict within the MAGA crowd.
     
    My reaction:


    And maybe I yield to a bit of cynicism:

  • PZ Myers has yet another story of folk who don’t want vaccines because they don’t know what’s in it.
     
    Good phraseology:
    …but then they’ll turn around and slurp up toxic goo mixed up in a church basement by a kook…

  • Not all goo comes from a church:

  • The Propaganda Professor explains eight characteristics that can help us recognize a cult, then takes a look at the MAGAverse to see what might apply.
     
  • driftglass believes he has determined the key to Republican success.
     
  • Last week, Nojo put together a report on bad news, but had to scrap it when worse news came at us, then had to do it again, and finally gave up with a short eloquent paragraph on despair.
     
  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson sees that the Jan 6 investigating committee is considering a criminal referral for former president Trump.
     
    The focus is Mr. Trump’s activities during the Capitol siege, especially the more than three hours before urging supporters to go home.
     
    One bothersome question concerns the line of succession with the next three hiding in the Capitol Building as it was under attack, while Donald Trump was making multiple attempts to produce a video outside the White House rather than in a secure location.
     
    Key sentence:
    It seems so odd to me, I feel like I must be missing something obvious.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has a bit of insight into the Jan 6 insurrection and the current investigation:
     

  • Several former top presidential aides to Donald Trump have refused to testify, saying they had been directed by their former employer not to say a word. Thus they invoke executive privilege. Their claim doesn’t seem likely to hold up in court, since citizen Trump is no longer President Trump and crimes would not be covered even if he was. News Corpse has the story as Trump turns everything on its head, seemingly denying he ever told these folks anything but to testify truthfully.
     
  • Aren’t we all in some way implicated in his crime? That’s a quote.
     
    At The Moderate Voice, David Robinson remembers the trial of Timothy McVeigh for the bombing that killed children and adults in Oklahoma City in 1995, and the question posed by McVeigh’s lawyer. David provides a short answer and applies it to something more recent.
     
  • Tommy Christopher has the clip from Fox personality Jesse Watters urging viewers to “ambush” Anthony Fauci, to “take the kill shot” along with Fauci’s recommendation that Fox fire the offender.
     
    My thoughts:

  • CATO’s Julian Sanchez is unimpressed with Jesse Watter’s imaginary hunt for Anthony Fauci:
     

  • The Palmer Report covers Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, lately endorsed by Donald Trump, who is asked for his opinion of the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill. The candidate, unfortunately, answers: seemingly unaware of who John Lewis was, what office he held, or that he fought for voting rights.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger tells of the adventures of a group of Texas teenagers who thought it would be funny to pull on their KKK robes and assault a neighborhood black classmate with tasers while video recording the drama. Ted offers a lesson about humor.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit watches bunches of QAnon folk get COVID at a QAnon gathering, observes Trump folk get a high percentage of COVID related illness and death in Trump voting counties, and looks on as individual anti-vax activists die from you-know-what, then sees Qs and Ts twist into pretzels to explain it all away. Seems every sad incident is actually part of the same grand liberal conspiracy.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil seems unimpressed as a well known Republican politician is tricked by a fake announcement, one he thought came from the Biden White House, about new concentration camps for anti-vaxxers.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged understands White House messaging, but says they are screwing it up.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life says we will lose our democracy unless Democrats get to a better diagnosis of the electoral situation.
     
    One key sentence:
    The question is how do we get the 57% of white Americans who voted for four more years of Trump and the GQP in the 2020 election to be more worried about the fate of our democracy than they are about the browning of America.
     
  • Biden shows he’s a class act, even when confronted by an act composed of something less than class:

  • Frances Langum considers the continuous media focus on how Vice President Harris treats her staff and comes up with a short answer.
     
  • Green Eagle has a criticism of the strength of character of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
     
  • In Scotties Playtime, Joe Manchin kinda, sorta, not quite threatens to become a Republican. Scottie explains why that won’t happen. Could be he’s right.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy says we must not bring bad abortion energy into 2022. She offers an end-of-year list of six things we’ve probably been doing that we should stop doing.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook urges us to be openminded enough to read opinions from sources with which we disagree.
     
    I offered an opinion.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce does get more than his share of antagonism from my brothers and sisters in Christ. Noah insists Bruce is unwittingly still a Christian, that he might be God’s punishment on stupid people, and that he (Noah) is surprised God has not yet killed him (Bruce). I suppose the Almighty is merciful and works in mysterious ways, presumably beyond the comprehension even of Noah.
     
    Christians are part of the same family in faith, are we not? And occasionally, as in many families, we acknowledge embarrassing siblings.
     
  • Infidel753 is protective of effective free speech generally, and blogging friends specifically, as he organizes a search party for a suddenly missing blogger.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever starts a Twitter war about oatmeal raison cookies.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors records on video the results of an insane challenge and the reward achieved for a classroom of children as was foretold in prophesy.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research carries a joint study by scholars from the University of Texas and the Institute of Crime Science on why there are fewer urban robberies on streets that are really steep.
     
  • Reductress carries the inspiring story of the individual who remains optimistic about learning to skateboard before going the way of all mortal flesh.
     
  • At The Onion, a woman is interviewed after a sudden ephiphany. Turns out she is the same age her parents were when they were her age.
     

Tweets I thought worthy:


And I’m allowed a few of my own:


– Podcasts –
 

One thought on “Christmas, Trees, Plague, Trump, Goo, Cult, Jan 6, Watters All Wet, QAnon”

  1. Pavlovitz expresses a common opinion, but he makes the even commoner American error of looking at the US in isolation. There isn’t a single country on Earth where the pandemic ended a year ago and things have been back to normal since then. Yes, the wingnuts / anti-vaxers have made things worse here — we have 4% of world population but 15% of world covid-19 deaths — and we’d have suffered a lot less if we didn’t have so many more stupid people than most countries, but the biggest problem is slow progress in vaccinations globally, which has left a huge reservoir of unvaccinated people in poorer countries. Neither the original virus nor the delta variant nor the omicron variant started in the US, but they all got here very quickly. Trying to end the pandemic in just one country is like trying to lower the water level in just one part of the bathtub. Probably the best thing we can do to beat this problem is to forget the intractable wingnuts in our own country and focus on getting as many people in Africa, Asia, and Latin American vaccinated as possible.

    The question is how do we get the 57% of white Americans who voted for four more years of Trump and the GQP in the 2020 election to be more worried about the fate of our democracy than they are about the browning of America.

    Or we could try to understand the real reasons people are rejecting the Democrats in droves instead of making assumptions and reflexively attributing everything to racism. A good place to start would be to look at why so many more black, Hispanic, and women voters voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016.

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