Churchill just got the color wrong What better reason to invoke the famous Churchill quote: “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.” Happy Hollandaise!
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It’s a real contest but if I had to choose Donald Trump’s most fatuous claim it would have to be that until he became president “nobody could say Merry Christmas anymore.” He said it again just the other day and his ecstatic followers practically went into a collective fugue state and began speaking in tongues they were so thrilled. This war on Christmas has been a theme on the right for many, many years but Trump is the first politician to say that he “won” it. It was smart. After all, the war didn’t exist in the first place so every time anyone says “Merry Christmas” he gets the credit. Boom! I have no doubt that his right wing evangelical fans are thrilled by all this. This is one of Christianity’s most important holidays after all. On the other hand, most of them are also fine with Trump evoking Adolph Hitler’s rhetoric so their alleged reverence for Christmas as a religious holiday may be beside the point.
That would be Christopher Rufo: I had been wondering why there was such out-sized coverage of this issue. I realize that many members of the elite media went to Ivy League schools so it’s of personal interest. But now I see that it’s a right wing hissy fit ginned up by their chief propagandist. Rufo knows exactly what he’s doing. And I have to assume that the mainstream media knows it too. It’s not as if he’s trying to hide it. Keep your eye on this as we go into the election year. These mini-scandals have a way of affecting close elections depending on the timing. I can’t help but think of the Comey sabotage in 2016. Thee is good evidence that if it had happened a week or so earlier, Clinton would have recovered in the polls. (They bounced up and down a couple of points throughout the fall campaign.) These folks know how to get the media excited and they’ll find a way to dominate unless the public remains vigilant and calls them out. Happy Hollandaise!
Been there, done that … For those of you who are wondering about how to deal with this problem, here’s a handy video from the cat whisperer, Jackson Galaxy:
This was your court, John Roberts SCOTUS-watcher Dahlia Lithwick comments on the dilemma in which the Roberts court finds itself. Choose your clichéd metaphor: painted itself into a corner, hoisted on its own petard, shot itself in the foot, chickens coming home, etc. Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife are just one court soap opera. The fact that conservative funders expend lavish sums to sustain the pair in the style to which they’ve become accustomed makes it clear that both the Federalist Society and SCOTUS conservatives believe justice goes to the highest bidder. The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to ban Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot for engaging in insurrection is on its way to D.C. Thomas will surely not recuse himself from that and other Jan. 6 cases involving players with which his spouse Ginny is closely aligned.
And $6 boxes of cereal Between degrees I worked as a waiter. I preferred tips on a credit card. Yes, that made them more reportable. But it also made them bigger. Customers seemed more generous when the cash didn’t come directly out of their wallets. They felt the bite more when they plopped down cash. Americans’ sense that their personal economy remains unwell may stem from something like that. Great economic data is abstract. Six-dollar boxes of breakfast cereal are not. Nor five dollars for a dozen eggs. That’s what Americans feel most, The Atlantic‘s Gilad Edelman explains: Working with Leger, a North American polling firm, we asked 1,005 Americans how they felt about the economy. As with other recent polls, this one painted a gloomy picture. Only 20 percent of people said that the economy has gotten better over the past year, compared with the 44 percent who said it has gotten worse. (There was a big partisan split, but even among self-identified Democrats, only 33 percent said the economy has improved.) Then we asked them to choose, from a long list, what factors they consider when deciding how the national economy is doing.
He thinks it’s working for him Of course it’s Miller who’s put the Nazi talk back into the discourse. Trump doesn’t know from “vermin.” He would just say “rat.” Trump is an instinctive fascist not an ideological one. And that may even be worse: IN THE DAYS following Donald Trump’s remarks that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” the 2024 GOP frontrunner was met with a wave of Democratic and media criticism, likening his speech to Nazi rhetoric. In response to the Adolf Hitler comparisons, Trump has privately vowed to further amp up the volume on his extreme, anti-immigrant messaging, according to two sources who’ve spoken to him since his rally in New Hampshire last weekend. “He wants the media to choke on his words,” one of these sources says.
It couldn’t happen to a nice bunch of zealots I’m sure you’ll recall that the NRA recently had a little “controversy” when it turned out that their revered leader Wayne LaPierre was livin’ the life of a Clarence Thomas on the members’ dues. Well, things have gotten even worse: While the events contributing to the NRA’s freefall have been well-documented, a review of the gun rights group’s tax filings and political spending over the last 15 years provides some of the clearest evidence of its downfall—showing just how badly the legal setbacks and mismanagement have ravaged the once-formidable gun lobbying giant. The NRA’s most recent tax return, filed in November of this year for 2022, reveals dramatic declines along almost every conceivable metric: revenue, assets, member dues, lobbying, and political spending—with conversely sharp increases in legal costs and deficits. And as the NRA’s power and influence has waned, gun violence has perversely soared, particularly suicides, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
I just wanted to give a shout out to all of my faithful readers to thank them for stopping by Hullabaloo to read our scribbles and put a little something in the old Christmas stocking. I’m a very lucky person and I know it. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, whether it’s about church, football, food, family or extra sleep. Or all of the above. cheers,digby As I have done here every Christmas since 2003, here’s my Christmas wish for all of us: Merry Christmas everyone!