Merry Holidays, Pelosi, DeSantis Jawed, Never Forget Hanukkah 1942, Jan 6

Shamelessly stolen from HackWhackers.
Watch what happens on the evening news when the sports guy is drafted into reporting the weather:
 

  • The Palmer Report pictures current Republican politics as akin to the movie Jaws, with Ron DeSantis as the swimmer in the water. You’ll never guess who’s the shark. Nope, not Trump.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz remembers 10 years ago, in a very personal way, the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary. Little kids killed at their desks.
     
  • Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group review 2022, the year that the Supreme Court dismantled abortion rights, and speculate on what sort of wild restrictions will come in 2023. Summary and transcript are provided.
     
  • Sarah Cooper is back with a public service piece on climate:
     
  • An online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy, Just Security, has a more complete summary of the January 6 report.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life reads the January 6 Committee report and has bad news. A substantial political movement relies on a substantial part of the population who no longer care about democracy.
     
  • Tommy Christopher reviews the coverage and the dramatic testimony, captured on video, as Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson describes a frantic struggle. Trump assaults a Secret Service Agent who refuses to drive him to join the Capitol riot.
     
    Buried in the testimony is the pressure applied by the attorney supplied by the Trump White House, ostensibly to represent her. She is directed to give misleading testimony to Congress, omitting the entire incident.
     
    She was so shaken by the legal jeopardy, and what she perceived as implied threats, she begged her Trump supporting family for help in getting her own attorney.
     
    Key quote within her testimony:
    And they will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.
     
  • Max’s Dad takes a look at the now revealed Jan 6 text messages on the phone of Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, pleading with him to join conspiracies to cancel the 2020 election, and sees evidence that age and wisdom have no correlation.
     
    Well there go all my hopes.
     
  • This can safely be filed under the well worn I’m not a lawyer but… category.
     
    My poor understanding of defamation law is that the defamed must show the defamer knew the defamation was not true, and that the lying was done maliciously.
     
    Fox Network is being sued for a Billion dollars for falsely saying Dominion Voting Systems switched votes from Trump to Biden. Showing that Fox stories were false is the easy part.
     
    The heavier lift for Dominion is showing Fox deliberately broadcast what they, in fact, knew to be false.
     
    News Corpse reports on Sean Hannity’s deposition under oath, and it appears the lift just got a lot lighter.
     
  • Frances Langum provides the video as an actual, real, no kidding, Congressional Representative from Pennsylvania believes the 2020 election was stolen by Italian space lasers.
     
  • Hackwhackers makes it easy for those of us who are allegedly elderly by putting a very tough week for mr Trump and other authoritarians into understandable cartoon form, and then providing reactions in understandable Twitter form.
     
  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson recounts the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s unexpectedly weak military, and the unexpected robust defense by ordinary citizens. She shows how Volodymyr Zelensky’s dramatic visit to the US Capitol fits into this new chapter in world history.
     
    Key passage:
    From the beginning, Biden and Blinken recognized that if Russia were permitted to crush the sovereignty of Ukraine and take its territory, the concept of an international rules-based order that has protected much of the world since World War II would have been abandoned.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit watches the news. Allies have been helping as Ukrainians prepare to defend civilians from more missile attacks. Putin spokespeople are getting terribly angry about having those missiles knocked down before reaching hospitals, schools, and apartments.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has an idea for Ford:

  • Disaffected and it Feels So Good goes to an anti-war site from the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and discovers pro-Putin propaganda.
     
  • Julian Sanchez of Cato Institute may understand why right-wing haters target an international hero:

  • Very strange. A programming glitch combined with some sort of lotto level negative chance?


    Note: This was corrected without explanation after widespread online protests.

  • Not the only strange Twitter occurrence.
     
    Elon Musk said he was only concerned with his security when he suspended several journalists from Twitter for tracking and revealing his location. He quickly reinstated them after it became publicly apparent that they did no such thing.
     
    Andy Borowitz reveals another online poll, this one satiric, in which most people want to know Elon’s location so they can avoid him.
     
    Key sentence:
    The results reveal that a visceral fear of encountering Musk is what drives eighty-nine per cent of those who follow his movements.
     
  • In another Christmas gesture at Twitter:
     
    M. Bouffant at Web of Evil says Elon Musk has ordered the removal of a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines.
     
    Skeptical?
    Well-l-l-l: It’s true and he helpfully links to the details.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor provides an overview of the files Elon Musk released as Twittergate.
    Contrary to all the hyperventilating hype, Elon’s dumps contained no new revelations; the files mostly just rehashed things that were already public knowledge for some time. Nor did they contain anything of any significance. At least not about the matter in question. But the reaction to them — the spawning of “Twittergate” — does reveal some significant things about right-wingers themselves.
     
    There follow 14 thoughtful insights.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged ponders Elon Musk and the real reason he does the weirdest stuff.
     
  • driftglass discovers the seven stages of conservative media and suggests that Elon has recapitulated all of them.
     
  • At The Onion, Elon Musk is hiding in his dark Twitter office as the landlord bangs on the door demanding rent.
     
  • Infidel753 has video on why you really don’t want to accept Elon’s invitation to live on Mars.
     
  • Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes is going in again for yet another test for dementia, and finds comfort in a newspaper crossword, the ambiguity of language, and the lyrics of a popular song from a generation or so ago.
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails da-AL has an emotional recipe. This one is more than special.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 explains the highs and lows of life:
    @whiskeywhistle98 Happy Monday!! #mondays #fyp #foryourpage #pants #rockstar #tiktokmom #kids #tired ♬ original sound – Mac Brazina

  • PZ Myers is reminded that Harvey Weinstein still exists. Rather than being eaten by the judicial system, Weinstein is slowly being chewed to pieces, as one conviction piles on another. Defense lawyers are still brutal, putting victims on trial.
     
    The system is horribly slow. But this grind brings hope that a separate grind will eventually move on another culprit. Want to guess who?
     
  • Another reminder that my slang education is far from complete. And that I am naïve as all hell about addictive recreational drugs.
     
    Turns out negging is what we used to call left-handed compliments.

    • I admire your independence. You really don’t care what other people think of you.
    • That was a great report. Who helped you with it?
    • I love your blog. Every time I read one of your posts, I feel more intelligent.

     
    And ketamine is a mostly veterinary anesthetic that is often sold on the street as an hallucinogen.
     
    Damn, I’m old!
     
    Which brings us to clickbait satirist Reductress who brings encouraging news. Your boyfriend is not negging you after all. He just has holes in his brain from ketamine.

  • The Journal of Improbable Research discovers an irresistibly titled scholarly study: Too Much Excitement Under Highway 87.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen has cats who helpfully safeguard quilting materials.
     
– Podcasts –
 

3 thoughts on “Merry Holidays, Pelosi, DeSantis Jawed, Never Forget Hanukkah 1942, Jan 6”

  1. I did it! I got to the end! I think I clicked on everything this time, and it’s taken me all day to get here, but I did it, and thank you! Merriest of Christmases to you and yours!

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