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After a rollicking Hanukkah, we at The Daily Kibitz are placing a "hold" on the usual commentary and instead offer up a real hodge-podge of what The War On Christmas is all about.
Let's start out with experiencing a Christmas Party with our old friend Bob Dylan. It really looks like the sort of soiree that would have been great fun to attend. Bob is kind of a hybrid Jew-Christian anyway, so the Klezmer sound here fits. Bob Dylan sings "Must Be Santa" and it's pretty great!
OK, we will never know what happened to that drunk who was booted out of the party. But Bob and Santa seem to know. Speaking of Santa, here is the Holiday Classic Of The Ages - the SNL take on when Santa was too sick to deliver on Christmas Eve, so he makes an emergency call to his old friend, Hanukkah Harry. Word of warning: you will have to endure an ad to get to this truly golden video. It's well worth it:
"Here are some nice slacks. They're a little big, but you'll grow into them." Oh, SNL, you were good.
For a glimpse into some really weird Christmas customs, check out this next link. Our favorite involves the newsworthy Spanish province of Catalonia. Their custom involves ceramic figures that are taking a poo, and then hiding them in Nativity Scenes for an odd game of Where's Waldo. The rest of Spain probably wants them to be independent:
Speaking of odd, here is the entryway designed by Melania Trump for the White House Christmas. Not a jolly Ho Ho Ho, but definitely some Nightmare Before Christmas vibes:
Yikes! Let's bump the mood with a quick blast of Super Soul by the late, great Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings. Sharon passed last year and the world is so much worse because she was The Best! Here she is belting out "White Christmas" and there isn't a White Supremacist in sight:
Speaking of White, there is a goofy Christmas-time tradition in Gavle, a town in Sweden. Every year, a giant straw goat is constructed in the town square. It's nice and cute and serves as a tourist draw for the town:
But the goat has a hard time staying safe. Since the town began erecting this straw statue back in 1966, it has been destroyed (usually by fire) far more times than it has survived. Here is a video of the Goat being attacked and burned from a previous Christmas - the footage is from the security video installed to help stop incidents like this - it doesn't work:
Please, for a good laugh, go to this link for the Wikipedia page on the Gavle Goat and scroll down to The Timeline portion. It is wonderful stuff!!
Speaking of wonderful stuff, here is another dip into SNL's glory days. It's a terrific "lost ending" of "It's A Wonderful Life" and it fulfills everyone's wishes about what should have happened to Old Man Potter:
The Daily Kibitz does not endorse any commercial ventures, but if you're stuck on getting a holiday gift for someone special, consider the tried and true sweater present:
Christmas music plays really well when it's performed in the style of The Devil's Music. Here is our old friend Chuck Berry, performing his stomping "Run Run Rudolph". Great fun for two minutes!
For many who live in Northern climes, Christmas-time is marked by short snowy days and long freezing nights. It seems inconvenient that Baby Jesus was born around the Winter Solstice, but of course no one really knows when that Holy Night occurred. Instead, we celebrate Christmas on the ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia. This was a prolonged and often wildly debauched celebration of the Solstice and the God of Saturn. Things changed after Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 a.d. and the Council of Nicaea codified and streamlined the early Christian faith in 323 a.d. Since then, it's been The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year!
There are always sticklers and purists who just can't leave well enough alone. Saturnalia was a special time, no doubt. Thank you, The Onion, for spotlighting this Man-In-The-Street moment:
There will be no time for such frivolity at the North Pole! Not when Santa hires a "Glengarry Glen Ross"-style motivator to get more production out of the elves. Here is Alec Baldwin reprising his iconic role as the intimidator from David Mamet's great play and movie... done up holiday style!
"Put that cocoa down! Cocoa's for closers..er, cobblers only!" Oh, that is so very good, particularly if one is familiar with the source material. "Glengarry Glen Ross" was about a corrupt real estate office trying to sell crappy properties to unsuspecting "marks". Strip mall real estate is always a tough business, but somehow this holiday season may be different:
For our final musical selection, please enjoy the supremely silly "Santa Lost A Ho". Where'd the other "Ho" go? Santa's feeling mighty low...
On behalf of the entire staff here at The Daily Kibitz, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season! And, as always, thanks for reading!
Since November 9, 2016, a mighty firehose of BS and bad news has been blasting full force at us. It often seems improbable that Reason and the Age of Enlightenment's core moral values, so long the bedrock of our nation, have been abandoned by our Administration and Congress. It can be difficult to remain a cheerful optimist in these times.
But as dark as these days can be - and they are going to get worse - the center will eventually begin to hold again, as the poet W.B. Yeats might have said. His 'slouching rough beast' has been among us for a year. But he will not always hold sway. In the meantime, we can all appreciate the glimmers of light that will occasionally pierce through the blanket of gloom that has covered the country.
Like what happened in Alabama! What a glorious upset!! Among the reddest of red states, Alabama seemed poised to elect Judge Roy Moore as their next senator. Moore has not been shy about his loathing of post-Civil War society. He had declared his belief that homosexuality should be criminalized. Women should not hold elective office. Heck, they shouldn't even vote - he wanted to negate the 19th Amendment. Oh, also the 14th Amendment... you know, the one that outlawed this:
Yes, a well-regarded Man of God, a budding Theocrat in fact, who called for an end to the Separation of Church and State. His refusal to remove a large monument honoring the Ten Commandments outside his courtroom got him into trouble, built his base, and presented the GOP with their Senate candidate. The GOP endorsed him, and so did an enthusiastic Trump... all despite the revealed scandal of his early days, in his 30's, when he would prowl retail malls for young teenage girls.
It didn't seem like his opponent, Doug Jones, had much of a chance. He had a checklist of Democratic Party positions, including abortion rights - a huge issue in religious Alabama. Plus, he had done what many said could never be done: successfully prosecuted the KKK perpetrators of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four young black girls at their Sunday School.
In the end, it was close. But Jones carried the night, by a razor-thin 21,000 votes. And this graph really says it all:
So let's consider... Black voters, who comprised nearly 30% of the vote (and who had to jump through multiple hoops to get registered and then to vote) delivered a 96% pro-Jones bloc. Wowzers. They showed up in numbers that exceeded totals in the 2008/2012 Obama elections! They must really hate Roy Moore.
And it worked. It put Jones up. What remains disheartening is that the White People vote polled so low for Jones. 65% of White Women voted for Roy Moore. 65%!! To give us a little insight into the hive mind of the Moore World, let's follow the Tweet thread of an ACLU lawyer who attended the final campaign rally, the night before the election. It is quite a spectacle as he follows along:
Whew. That is quite a concentration of Oddballs. But the real prize belongs to Moore Spokesman Ted Crockett. After a repugnant conversation on why Moore would outlaw homosexuals, Crockett claims that Muslims shouldn't serve in public office because they can't be sworn in on a Bible. Watch how Crockett is crushed into speechless astonishment when Jake Tapper tells him that this is simply not true. Hilarious:
That interview is simply Comedy Gold! This sets us up for the usual terrific Onion satire piece, and it doesn't disappoint:
God Bless The Onion. For another look into the mindset of how White Evangelical voters can side with one such as Moore, follow this short Tweet thread from Elaina Plott, an actual White Evangelical who is not conservative. She reacts to Roy Moore's refusal to concede the election:
It is kinda strange that days after the election, Moore is still calling for a recount (which the State of Alabama won't do automatically because the vote margin isn't close enough). He is currently soliciting/grifting his base for money so he can pay for one himself. And he won't concede; instead, he is waiting for God to speak to him, because "God is always in control". To which noted bullroar-caller, J.K. Rowling, tweeted:
Narrator's voice: Roy was right. God was in control. What he didn't realise was, She's black.
Oh, ho ho. That's why Rowling is Empress of all she surveys...
Then there was the immense brouhaha when three of Trump's sexual impropriety accusers appeared again on television this week, prompting Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) to call for his resignation. In typical fashion, Trump doubled-down, going for the crotch punch against Gillibrand. She was told of the tweet during her bipartisan Bible study group session:
She'd do anything! Well, Press Secretary Sarah H. Sanders suggested that anyone who thought that Trump imbued that text with sexual meaning "must have their minds in the gutter." Yes, everyone must necessarily have their minds in the gutter when reading texts from our Sleazebag-in-Chief President. What was quite unusual about all this umbrage was how USA Today, the national newspaper, reacted. Customarily, their editorial board does not weigh in on sensitive matters. They prefer to react to things like floods, or norovirus, or not enough sunshine.
But Oh Boy did they react to Trump's tweet about Gillibrand! "President Trump has shown he is not fit for office," it says:
"A president who all but calls a senator a whore is unfit to clean toilets at Obama's Presidential Library or to shine George W. Bush's shoes." What do they really think?
If Trump is unfit, does that make "only the best people" that he'd hire unfit as well? The awkward question and answer session this week during a Federal Judgeship Nomination Hearing in the Senate makes one wonder. One of Trump's early selections, Brian Talley - he of the Paranormal Investigator background - had been yanked for being stupid. But Stupid is not a rare element in Trump World. Check out Matthew Peterson's responses to a Republican senator's questions. It boggles the mind:
Maybe he will learn how to be a Federal Judge on the job. Another example of "the best people" is found with Kathleen Hartnett White, nominee to be Chair of the Environmental Quality Council:
Obtuse mind-thought must be the primary qualification for Trump Administration folk, which makes sense when considering the following: the four Trump family absentee ballots for the recent New York City elections were messed up. Here is how:
It is amazing that President Trump forgot his birthdate. And Ivanka didn't send the ballot in on time. And Melania forgot to sign her ballot. And Jared decided, Fuck It - I'm not going to vote. The best and the brightest, on full display.
Speaking of best and brightest, Virginia Thomas, the political activist wife of accused sexual harrasser Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, presented a conservative group's award to James O'Keefe. "Defending Liberty" is an interesting take on O'Keefe's actions, which include being criminally convicted. And he was recently caught Red-Handed by the Washington Post for trying to plant a false "scoop", fraudulently presenting a "witness" to the Post with a juicy-but-untrue storyline.
But that doesn't matter when one is defending Liberty. Yay!
This week also marked the fifth anniversary of the horrible Sandy Hook elementary school massacre. Of all the mass shootings, this one was the worst. 20 first-graders blown to bits, and six teachers. President Obama honored the date each year by hosting grieving parents and gun control groups. This year, of course, was different. Trump ignored the Sandy Hook anniversary entirely, no tweets, no notices. But he did host the NRA:
Well, according to one of his favorite news sources, InfoWars, Sandy Hook was a false-flag hoax designed by the government to bamboozle the nation into supporting gun controls. Simply amazing that there are people who believe this shite.
Before we leave, take a peek at the latest on the Center for Disease Control. Their employees have been told to NOT USE certain words in preparing presentations for their upcoming budget:
Words like "science-based", "evidence-based", "diversity" and "gender". It all reminds of the classic George Orwell work, 1984. Recall this bit from the book when Winston was listening to a colleague speak on Oldspeak versus Newspeak:
"In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?
"Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten... Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller."
OK. Finally, for a good laugh, check out the customer reviews for the pricey "Make America Great Again" Christmas ornament.
And to send you off with appropriate Christmahanzakkwaah Spirit, here is the Wynton Marsalis-directed Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra performing the Overture to Duke Ellington's "Nutcracker Suite". What a swinging way to rock through the holidays!!
Today, Senator Al Franken, D-Minnesota, told the Senate he would resign in the coming weeks. This was not unexpected, given the number of accusations against him that have accumulated like mold on cheese.
This follows the "retirement" of Representative John Conyers, D-Michigan, the longest tenured member of Congress. He had been accused of sexual impropriety by several of his staffers. Moreover, his name was discovered on the recently revealed list of Members of Congress who have had private settlements made to complainants. These "hush payments" were designed to gag accusers by having them sign off on agreements to not blab about transgressors. It is a shameful practice that has been in place for over 20 years:
Yuck. Especially when one considers that such payments are supplied by ... YOU. Yes, taxpayer money is the source for these payments. Franken never made the list - most of his accusers go back to his pre-Senate days. Conyers was responsible for a $27,000 payment.
But wait, there seems to be something wrong with this picture. These Democrats remove themselves from the scene (willingly or not), but no Republicans? Does "The Party of No" mean No Shenanigans? Is the GOP truly God's Own Party?
Say "hello" to Representative Blake Farenthold, R-Texas. This sugar bear was on the list, too. He's worth over $5 Million dollars. But $84,000 of your taxpayer money went out to shut up his sexual misconduct accuser. But Farenthold has not resigned, is not planning and is under no real pressure to do so. It's Tribe over Morals in the GOP.
Speaking of Tribal, consider the case of probable incoming Senator Roy Moore, R-Alabama. He has been accused of sexual assault by at least 9 women. But they weren't women when these incidents occurred. They were early-to-mid-teens. And he was in his early 30's, and a District Attorney who apparently enjoyed prowling a nearby mall to pick up young 'uns. He developed enough of a sketchy local reputation to be banned at the mall.
But when this info was revealed, he denied it all, despite the 30 sources corroborating the story. Instead, he accuses his accusers of being godless sluts who are out to get him. And he brings up the usual rage points in Alabama of Gays, Socialists and Liberals as being behind these false allegations.
And how his opponent, Doug Jones, a former US prosecuting attorney, wants to free murderers and allow abortions for full term babies, and prolly wants to eat them, too.
Moore will probably win this special election. Because the GOP backs him. And Doug Jones was responsible for this terrible stain on Alabama justice:
Yep, Doug Jones, "soft on crime", is the prosecutor who fought the KKK and put away the flower of Alabama's White Supremacists into prison for killing those four girls. That's not something that White Alabamians forget. They can claim to not believe Moore's many accusers, and that Moore is a strong Christian man... but deep down, it's about how Doug Jones embarrassed Alabama by finally catching the culprits. Oh, the Deep South really is like a crazed William Faulkner novel.
And then there is our President, who strongly backs Moore and has ridiculed Jones (of course). President "I Moved On Her Like A Bitch" Trump. Leading up to Franken's announcement, Trump had tweeted a series of thoughts about the Minnesota senator, reveling in his opponent's situation.
The upside-down in all this is a President who has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women, giving political cover to a guy who is a pedophile! Really, Al Franken should just turn around and declare himself as a Republican, because they don't care about such things; they only care about their Tribe. The Tribe and The Power. Nothing else matters.
Time Magazine disappointed our President this week by not naming him Person Of The Year. He really wanted it again. Instead, it went to the women who are standing up to testify against the creeps who have been preying on them. The #metoo movement has been a long time coming. We at the Daily Kibitz hope that this swell turns into a permanent sea change.
One thing that needs to be addressed for this to happen is the role of White Conservative Women. Never let it be forgotten that 53% of White Women voted for Trump. 62% of non-college-educated White Women voted for him. There are plenty of reasons for this, like abortion and, well, tribal allegiances. And misogyny towards their own kind. There's also the role of White Evangelism, which offers up an upside-down version of Christianity. There's a very large overlap with Republicans and White Evangelicals. And what they think is kinda shocking:
Wowzers: "White evangelicals went from being the least likely to the most likely group to agree that a candidate's personal immorality has no bearing on his performance in public office." And why was there such a sudden and drastic change -- the cult candidacy of Donald Trump. He could have them line up to drink the kool-aid and they would guzzle away.
Until conservative white women break from their way of thinking - and voting - it will be harder to change that which needs changing. At present, they appear as opportunists who benefit from the actions and achievements made over the decades by feminists. The GOP as a party is hostile towards the rights of women. It represents Patriarchy. They can continue to prop up this misogynist, sexist model... or change.
Oh, ha ha! What a slow news day to cap off a slow news week here in sleepy DC! The White House Press Office must be fighting off the urge for a late-morning power nap - they need to get things ready for this afternoon's big "White House Press Holiday Party", which won't include not-invited woman-of-color WH correspondent April Ryan, and CNN (natch).
And it might not include the President and First Lady. Customarily, the POTUS and FLOTUS attend this event, helping to hand out punch and cookies to the Fourth Estate while posing for smile-time pictures with WH correspondents. But something happened earlier this morning which might have created a change in their scheduling...
So, let's see here. Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos and now former National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn. MAGA: Many Are Getting Arrested. POTUS lawyer, Ty Cobb, describes Flynn as a "former Obama official". Yep, he was, until he got fired for incompetence, insubordination and recklessness! Then Obama told Trump to not hire Flynn because of the deep doo-doo he was up to with Russia and Turkey. But did Trump listen? Well, no... because he was in deep doo-doo himself! So, so deep is this Deep State of Treason we witness. Also, have a laugh, courtesy of snarky prankster "Frederick Douglass":
Anyway, nearly all legal experts now point to Jared Kushner as the next domino to fall, according to the really good investigative reporter, Natasha Bertrand:
And because Flynn was thisclose to Mike Pence during the campaign/transition/early days of the administration, it's being presumed that the Vice President is going to receive more attention from Special Counsel Mueller. And let us not forget that Pence was brought into the Trump fold by his old friend, recently-indicted Paul Manafort. It's all a giant hot mess. There is even scuttlebutt that Flynn is going to implicate President Trump himself:
Why is this all happening? Money. Big Massive Money. Russia wanted to have its economic sanctions lifted. Trump was in hock to Russian "loans". Also, Flynn was poised to make millions off of a hare-brained scheme to kidnap a Pennsylvania-residing Turkish cleric and deliver him to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdogan! Ya can't make this stuff up! It was going to be a major payday for everyone... and it still might, for Putin, because Trump is not implementing the additional sanctions that the Republican Congress passed this summer!!
But hold your horses here! The Daily Kibitz is determined to not go down the rabbit hole any further with this. Nope. Nopitty-nope. Instead, let's take a fun look at some of the other High Ridiculousness that has happened over the last few days...
The President suggested that a Fake News Trophy be awarded to a deserving media outlet, suggesting CNN as a favorite. He also tweeted that Fox News should not be considered, because they are the best, very fair and beautiful to him. This all lead to some funny stuff:
In previous tweets, the President has indicated his media preferences for sycophants like Fox, Breitbart News and some really strange outfits such as:
InfoWars. "The single most important voice in the alternative conservative media," says Roger Stone, the Nixon-era political trickster who orchestrated Trump's appearance on it... It promoted the insane Hillary Clinton Comet Pizza child sex slave traffic story. On a related note, it has pushed one about NASA having a child labor colony on Mars.
MAGApill. Yes, it is certifiably BatShit Crazy. That's why our President reads it, I guess.
The Gateway Pundit. Called "the stupidest man on the Internet", Jim Hoft somehow managed to get a White House Correspondent status through the Trump Administration. Incredibly dumb and deranged.
Oh, for some brain bleach. Take a quick break for a One Minute Mic Drop Special, here is the amazing Sarah Kendzior rebutting a Breitbart editor back in January on the real-world dangers of crazy political rhetoric. It's only 1 minute, but I guarantee you will wish it were longer:
OK, back to nuttiness! Our President's mental rampage this week included a few real head-scratchers. Speaking in St. Louis, he confessed that he had no idea that the Lewis and Clark expedition had begun there. Maybe he didn't know who they were?
He suggested that former Member of Congress and morning network TV news host Joe Scarborough had murdered an intern.
He sent a series of retweets of really vile anti-Muslim videos from a tiny far-fringe extremist right wing group from the United Kingdom called "Britain First". Naturally, these have been debunked and earned Trump a stern rebuke from British Prime Minister Theresa May. Of course that set off our President, who fired off a nasty tweet reply... except he sent it to the wrong Theresa May. His angry words were received by Theresa May Scrivener, who has six Twitter followers. She was kinda flabbergasted and didn't know what to do (sounds like an Onion story).
Once he figured things out, Trump sent the same Tweet to the Prime Minister, saying basically "mind your own beeswax, and your country sucks and we are great again!" No mention of the eight deaths from the Terror Truck in New York City, because we are doing just fine!
While leaders in Britain and Europe took great umbrage to Trump's tweets, his hard-core base of Deplorables here did not. Foremost among them was the response by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, fresh from his appearance at the Charlottesville, Virginia nazi rally:
Yes, the White House Ceremonial Lighting of the Cross is the new traditional start of the Christmas season.
We could go on, but we won't. But yesterday's appointment of the Trump Administration's version of the Third Reich's Leni Riefenstahl, Kelly Ann Conway, to become the Opioid Crisis Czar is really too much. Displaying her usual lack of empathy and warmth, Conway suggested that the problem of those millions who are addicted is that they lack the will power to rehab themselves. So she is going to instill a Triumph of the Will into them. This position was once designed for Boy Wonder Jared Kushner, but apparently he's going to be too busy solving his own problems.
That's it for now. Next time, better fun! In the meantime, check out the short video from a couple of weeks ago when The Daily Kibitz family traveled to Baltimore for a performance by Rodrigo y Gabriela. Here it is! We were standing about six feet from this videographer:
The amount of sound they generate from two acoustic guitars is simply amazing! Truly World-Class!!
