'Tis the Season in Pictures

 

A time for rebirth and renewed hope?  And a promise of protection?

The 25th consecutive day of protests in Georgia. The "Georgian Dream" might just be heading towards a "Romanian Christmas". pic.twitter.com/oNkhkwvZYq

— Daractenus (@Daractenus) December 22, 2024

The War on Christmas

 

It's Christmas Eve and about 50 migrants were dropped off in front of Kamala Harris' residence with the temperature in the teens. Another stunt by Greg Abbott. pic.twitter.com/wUjkxplYmB

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) December 25, 2022

You can tell me there was no room at the inn, but does anyone honestly mean to say there was no room--in Texas? Or was it only that in his fondness for the stranger (as even He had been a sojourner in Egypt), Governor Abbott felt it correct to send these people across a storm-thrown passage because he couldn't be sure he could keep the lights on for them?

 

Jesus, Guns, Babies, and American Exceptionalism

 

Rep Brian Babin (R-TX): "The United States of America has always had guns. It's our history. We were built on the Judeo-Christian foundation and with guns" pic.twitter.com/vldB0ODaS7

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) May 25, 2022

When Senator Ted Cruz got visibly disturbed during an interview and walked away after the words "American Exceptionalism" were spoken, something snapped into frame for me:  so much of American history seems to assume our current status in the world is the result of faith and superior firepower. The idea of the gun as a sacral part of our national religion isn't really just a metaphor for some of us--it is reality. 

The religious right has long suggested that if "they" (a tyrannical leftist, probably godless Communist, government) come to take the guns away, the Bibles are next. It always sounded like fear-mongering to me of the typical "Red Scare" tropes, but it also resonated as tangentially white supremacist to me because gun-grabbing was the impetus of the uprising in the neo-Nazi classic The Turner Diaries. I'm starting to see it, though, as an artifact of our founding myths, and it defines the divide in our politics--what makes the US unique or great? Are we a creedal nation or a story of blood and soil? And was any of this especially ordained by God? 

Leave it to the "Jesus, Guns, Babies" lady for clarifying this for me--even though she lost her bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination (or did she? Mike Lindell is asking, so, uh, there's that). The quick capsule review of American history that a lot of people seem to have absorbed goes a little something like this: 

Christopher Columbus discovered the promised land in 1492, then the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock to form a shining city on a hill, so America overthrew British tyranny, had a civil war over states rights, freed the slaves, conquered the West (by killing most of the people previously living there) and then kicked everyone's ass in WW2 because we have nukes now, so thank you Jesus and Smith & Wesson. 

          And they called it manifest destiny. And it was good.

I may be exaggerating, but I don't think I'm off by that much. This is why CRT and the 1619 Project have set the usual suspects off--it challenges their post-Columbian chapters of the American Bible. It's like arguing against creationism.  It fiddles with a worldview where American primacy is founded in freedom and God has always been on our side. They don't see the past is existing outside of the formalized, handed-down from Mount Rushmore version*, and then continue to operate as if might made right. 

And that's where the guns come in. The iron rod is how the faithful Americans earn their New Canaan. The land is purified in blood, because we're in times of tribulation. Wars. Rumors of wars. Pestilence. Famine. You know. Same shit, different century. So you have to be morally and militarily prepared. 

And how do the people in the Church of American Exceptionalism mentally cope with the violence? It's supposed to happen.  It's the Abrahamic sacrifice to show fidelity in order to get that which has been promised. The Lord provided a sheep for the holocaust--and it's hopefully other people's babies. 

That sacrifice is supposed to make us exceptional and give us the freest and most prosperous country on earth. It's why people all over the world want to come here, after all, whether we want them to or not.

All Lies and Jest

 

The funny old thing about the First Amendment is that you can say what you want to say, and while the federal government can't prosecute you (unless your speech was sedition or fraud, and like, we are definitely going to see some cases about those kinds of things, right?) for the things you say, other people can criticize the hell out of you. And that is what is happening to a father of four from Oregon, who decided that "Let's Go Brandon" was part of his Christmas message to the White House. 

And I am all about Jared Schmeck's First Amendment rights--he exercised the heck out of it for the opportunity he had. It was the rhetorical equivalent of saying "Bababooey" and accomplishes nothing to advance the MAGA mindset, It was something akin (not to be ableist, I hope) to political Tourette's syndrome, in that he spontaneously behaved in an asshole manner according to his politics, and we can assume his upbringing otherwise would not have him wishing people get fucked in answer to Christmas well-wishes. 

But because I'm me, I do think it funny that he's shocked that he isn't greeted with universal high-fives, but is getting static from other people just exercising their free speech, and I also wonder if he ever considered that making Christmas a whole political to-do kind of made the White House call less a cool thing for his kids and more like a resignation to accept this is their dad now, the guy who did the thing. 

Of course Schmeck, a former Oregon police officer who resigned for reasons he doesn't want to talk about and who is now employed by the family business, thinks he is the persecuted one here. I don't want him persecuted. I think his pluck is revelatory, but not damaging to our democracy or anything--we have greater threats. But he thought he'd be more universally applauded for his MAGA cult catch-phrase. And he thinks telling us he's Christ-following now changes whether people find what he said disturbing.

Some people will. But if I say Trump can eat shit and die, people will criticize me for that, no matter how genuinely I mean it, or even if he somewhat deserves to swallow his own words and face the consequences of them in the figurative way I might have meant what I said. This is the consequences of my free speech. I will be criticized, and I accept that my whole online life. A long online life. 

So what I'm saying is, he isn't a free speech martyr because here he is! Still good. And he said what he wanted to say, and maybe discovered not everyone agreed with him. Oh, careless speech, there are sometimes reactions. This is called a conversation! Despite all lies and jest still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. But I want to think we can do better.  

Schmeck can do better and I hope he has the opportunity. But no, he isn't a free speech martyr, and I wish him both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, because I am exactly that kind of commie asshole. 

From "A Christmas Carol"

 

“They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

It's not the cheeriest of meditations for a Christmas morning, but I think of these two especially today, because we live in a world where ignorance and want are not mere human conditions created by the lack of something denied: learning and nourishment; but where poor information, misinformation, and pockets of human poverty are designed.  Like Dickens' s Christmas spirit, I think there is terrible danger there. 

The Christmas gift we have is the one given Scrooge--to know that and to make a choice.  Ignorance and want are not someone else's problem but add to the chains weighing down all our human existence. Better is possible. But when I see the gospel preached that ignorance is safety and want builds character, I know why "better" stays a struggle. 

Budget Palin Wants To Be Part of the War on Christmas

 

One of the many ways to be a parent in politics is to not expose your children to the white hot spotlight of the gotdamb culture war, but this is apparently not the choice Lauren Boebert has made. She featured her kids in a gun-brandishing Christmas post in support of Thomas Massie, who was being a whole thing there on the internet for a minute. Yeah, very supportive of....displaying weapons of war to celebrate the Prince of Peace, dumbass. Nice job.

But as Dan Crenshaw (also a thirsty boy) has noted, there are definitely some famewhores in the GOP caucus right now. And Boebert was already being a center-stage clown regarding her jihad-squad nonsense regarding Rep. Ilhan Omar, which she has apparently been working out at the open mic nights that are GOP fundraisers for more than a minute. It's tacky, but it becomes her, like flypaper or a glue trap.

Now, far be it for me to say she's playing at using her own kids and the sacred holy day that is Christmas just to promote her branding, but I will note, that she did get a fundraiser in Las Vegas in support of her Islamophobia, so yeah, definitely.  It's exactly like she goes out of her way to to seek out attention, and is rewarded for it. And she will probably try to benefit herself from getting shut out of her committee assignments, too, because why wouldn't she try?

Because here she is responding to the backlash for her putting guns in the hands of her babies:

Oh noes! A Democrat is attacking her because of Christmas and children and somehow, not because she cynically used her kids to promote guns even while we are a country that has mass shootings, even at schools, even at schools with young kids. Even at schools with young kids really close to Christmas, like the babies of Sandy Hook. 

Ms. 1776 over here thinks her act is cute. But Iola Boylan's evil twin is not cute. It might be half-cute, but it's entirely not what anyone should want in a US Representative. 

Keeping the Confederate in Christmas

You know, I like to think of myself as a current events blogger, and so, I guess I'll start with what brought me to this really weird place, which is that Wake Forest cancelled their Christmas parade because people were going to protest the Confederacy floats. 

You can't have Christmas without those Confederacy floats, you know. If Antifa, Yankees in general,  or the revenuers show up, there goes Christmas. You take out the Daughters of the Confederacy and their world-famous pecan pies and Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus will boycott, and you can't have that. You are basically the Grinch that stole Dixie Christmas. (No shade to Christmas in Dixie, which gives shout outs to Chicago and California, and Motown and is basically blameless here. As far as I know.)

I did not know, because I am Northeast Philadelphia born and bred, that Confederate Christmas was a thing. I had no idea that a rich Christmas lost and found cause thing was going on.  This eerily intrigues me.  A revanchist memory capped with holly and ivy and associated with family and religion and good works might blot out the dark truth at the core of that society--if no one ever pointed out that it came to no good and the fight wasn't noble at all. It was beastly. As a nation, we should be looking back in horror, not with mistletoe and eggnog. What the entire fuck?

Anyway, we are still living with inequality born out of the enshrinement of racism that is still respected by jusqu'au bouters who believe that toppling bronze monuments raised in the 1950s and 1960s that celebrate a war of treason in defense of slavery over 150 years since Appomattox is somehow too soon.  

I have never felt like I had a war against Christmas (this is not a real thing, but people may have been conditioned to believe by umpty-gazillion movies or tv shows where Christmas had to be "saved" for some reason followed by Fox News conditioning) even if I have a war against Bad Christmas Muzak (which IMHO amounts to psyops against retail workers, thanks!) But making Christmas a signifying thing about a bloody Civil War?

I just don't know you guys. That's kind of weird. Maybe more "Peace on earth goodwill to men" and less "brother against brother" is how I think of Christmas? But I guess happy holidays anyway. 

The Gift of The Wiseguy

This isn't a very nice prank, but it does have some seasonal appropriateness:

A man who appears to be the person who left a gift-wrapped box of horse manure outside the home of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Saturday spoke with AL.com via phone late Sunday evening, calling the incident an "act of political theater."

L.A. psychologist Robby Strong provided AL.com with convincing evidence that he is the man behind the now-infamous incident, which attracted the LAPD's bomb squad and other law enforcement personnel to Mnuchin's home in the city's Bel Air neighborhood.

He defended his decision to drop the box of manure - which he says he got from a horse-owning friend - off at Mnuchin's house as a "prank" aimed at raising the awareness of Americans about the idea that "Republicans have done nothing for the American worker" and other political topics.

"The thing I live by is a rule of transparency and I was exercising my First Amendment rights," Strong told AL.com. "A few years ago when [a Supreme Court ruling] said that corporations are persons and money equals free speech, that is so absurd and my rule of thumb is now that if corporations are free speech, then so is horses***t."

He also likened his act to that of the individual whose birthday we now celebrate, who became famously irate at the money changers who gouged regular folks in the name of religion.

It makes a certain kind of timely poetic sense--if this tax bill was rushed to be signed for the holidays, then it is practically simple good manners to return a gift to the Trump Administration in kind. And while we enjoy the benefits of a court ruling that labelled money as "speech", and then produced politicians who would only recognize their big money donors as their true constituency, how then are we to discern why boxes of poo or any other physical item of value, can't be speech, if it is used as a means to convey grievance to the effect that people in high places have forgotten the people who don't have dollars at their ready disposal, but can bestir great loads of shit?

And why not horseshit? For twenty years, we have known of the great good Christmas spirit of Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo, and for years before him, there was the Caga Tio of Catalan.  Christmas, lest ye forget, is based on the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which represented a turning of the tables where the rich and poor would change places and prank gifts were a part of the merry-making.

I rather hope, then, that Robby Strong is granted a little leniency for his high spirits .In fairness to the family Mnuchin, I do believe it would have been fairer had he spread it around, though. Surely there are many others who deserve something carbon-based, and not actually coal, in their stockings.

Merry Christmas. Mister Trump!

In the vein of Twitter diatribe that I think of as "Trump Going 'Boom!'" the Peerless Feeder had to engage with social media to soak up likes and retweets and outrage and whatnot--again. So, in his recent obsession, the FBI is chockfull of wacky liberals out to get him who for entirely partisan reasons tanked the email investigation against Hillary Clinton and ginned up the Russian hacking investigation that his campaign/administration got swept up in (because of all the Russian contacts people in the Trump orbit actually had and the ridiculous mendacity they chose to use to half-assedly hide it)-which now makes career professionals like FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and FBI Counsel Jim Baker his targets for cranky Twitterage.

It's adorable, really--he once pretended he fired James Comey because he was too hard on Clinton (is she supposed to be the phony--or was the investigation?) and now Trump is pissed that the investigation didn't go far enough? The little joys of an extended interobang ( ?!!!) to imply that FBI Deputy Director McCabe might not outlast the period of time he indicated before he retired (when he would be eligible for pension). Does this sound like Trump is going to fire a man before he is eligible for pension--out of sheer spite? To me, a little!  And Trump also says he is learning that James Baker is being reassigned from Fox News. Because he isn't in the loop on personnel and learns everything he needs to know from "the shows" despite never watching tv?  Ah!

Also, he now thinks official reporting of the unemployment rate is spot on despite calling it fake news during his campaign, and doesn't realize that the news covers the stock market on the daily. And he conveniently forgets the robocall and the rally he himself personally held for Roy Moore, the pedophile, whose name will now be associated with Trump's desperate support because his hand in Congress is weak! "Good Republican candidates will win BIG!" for a value of "Good" that means they win and a value of "BIG" that means he will fake it later.

I don't know why he had to explode on Twitter just now, when we are finally able to say "Merry Christmas" and mention "Jesus Christ" and all that. Maybe he's worried about some spirits regarding former associates, or the past, or maybe his present, or maybe he's thinking about Christmases yet to come.

Anyways--Merry Christmas, Mr. Scrooge  Trump!

There Wasn't a Goddamn War on Xmas, Until NOW!

We finally have a leader unafraid to boldly proclaim those two simple, beautiful words “Merry Christmas” https://t.co/smzbbfiEPv

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) December 9, 2017

Finally as in all the Presidents before Trump, too? Honest to Goodness, I just can't--




Barack Obama was saying "Merry Christmas" all the time. He was. There was never a War on Christmas. Atheists even like Christmas--family and presents and eating too many cookies is nice! There were only ever people who kind of thought maybe people who don't celebrate Christmas should also be acknowledged because of a thing called "not being an asshole". We have radio stations and retail store Musak that start Christmas carols in November. Dollar stores start carrying Christmas ornaments and wrapping paper in October. And then Fox News has to be like some reverse Suess character: "The Grinch that Shoved Christmas Down Everyone's Throat in a Bizarre Culture War Narrative that Truly Stupid People Pretended was a Real Thing."

I'm seriously loading catapults with flaming figgy pudding. EAT XMAS CHEER! JINGLE THIS!

Actually, I'm not that exercised about this, but why is it a thing?

EDIT: No, no, I truly get that it's a conversation about who is a Real Christian (TM) and who is not. I just don't see why it's treated as realer than caribou aeronautics when surely, everyone must get the joke by now. Why not just get all point blank Iowa's Steve King about it and say diversity makes the Baby Jesus cry?

Can We Talk About Xmas FLOTUS?

I'm not entirely sure if the look she is going for is Christmas Angel Fierce or Japanese Horror Film Does Ghost of Christmas Past or Winter Without Christmas Until Aslan Returns or Cultist from a Sect that Baptizes But Holds People Down Just a Little Too Long or Fuck It White After Labor Day Bitchez or Welcome to Your Frosty Dystopian Hellscape, I Will Be Your Servitor or This Also Comes With a Hood But I'm Shy Around the Holidays or what, but I am just saying, FLOTUS is never scared of untraditional sleeves. Not ever. I feel like she should be accessorizing this outfit with a sword in one hand and mistletoe in the other. I like how the light fixture above her head is part halo and part "I just had a slightly medieval thought." Those bare branches all had a little color before she walked through. It's like a tribute to the concept that global warming will still have winters.

Melania, you are doing amazing, sweetie.

Climate Sunday: Recycle your Xmas Trees!

I celebrate a secular Christmas, but I decorate minimally and never have a Christmas tree--my house is just too small and since we don't have kids it's just not that big a deal. My husband sometimes brings home a rosemary bush. That's plenty festive for us--and we use the rosemary in lots of great food! But for those of you who do use cut evergreens for your holiday decorations--please recycle! The sight of dry fire hazards on the sidewalk waiting for a trip to the landfill in mid-January is one depressing sight every year that ends the holiday season on a downbeat.

So one thing I'd recommend is checking with your local municipality to see if they have a tree recycling program. We have one here in Philadelphia, and if you're in a pretty good-sized town, your community should also have one (and if your community doesn't--see what you can do about getting one started).

But that's not all that can be done with old trees. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a use for your old trees, at least, in GA--they use them for fish-habitats in a local lake. You may want to check if they have such a program in your neck of the woods.

You know who loves disposing of evergreen trees? Goats. They find them delicious and it's a pretty good dietary change for them. But they aren't the only critters that enjoy trees. As above, zoos also sometimes take trees as recreational enhancements (big old toys) for their big cats and other animals.

But that's not all! Here's a list of some other cool ideas to get more use out of your tree.

Of course, if you use an artificial tree, you will get years of use out of it. But if you are looking to downsize or are moving and want to unload your artificial tree, be sure to see if a local charity can take it as a donation so it can continue to give holiday cheer.

Climate Sunday: Cherry Blossoms and Daffodils

Yep, that's the National Mall today! Fall-blooming blossoms going strong in the warmth. https://t.co/VTxrTLH8En pic.twitter.com/OdHVZJCbrX

— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) December 9, 2015

We are enjoying a particularly mild December here in the East Coast. Just yesterday my dad had to mow his lawn. Fall-blooming cherry blossoms are still going strong in DC. Buffalo, NY just had its first little bit of snow, the latest snow has started there since 1899. We're not alone. All of the lower 48 states have had higher-than-normal temps, and daffodils have bloomed in the UK. It's weird, but it's sort of a pleasant-weird for many of us. Looks like I'll be in shorts for Christmas Eve instead of dashing through the snow. I can deal with that.

But as you've probably guessed, I know this pattern is largely to do with current weather conditions, and isn't necessarily "proof" of global warming. (Although the last five years having all been records pretty much is.) And, as you've also probably guessed, I'm just starting on a pleasant note before launching into my weekly warnings and portents.

Happy Holidays!

Now I know that not everyone is sold on the value of "Happy Holidays", and some people actually might reject this fantastic seasonal offer, but I am here to talk about the virtues of the Happy Holiday package. For the same price as one "Merry Christmas!" (free), the "Happy Holidays" package is offering one "Merry Christmas" (to keep), throwing in a "Happy New Year" (good for a whole year!) and throwing in at least one other holiday of equal or lesser value! But in all honesty, you can have as many happy holidays as you like!

Sounds to good to be true? Wait, there's more! If for any reason you aren't satisfied with your "Happy Holidays" package, you can simply return "Happy Holidays" to the giver--entirely free of charge! Or you can keep the Holidays of your choice--and let others keep theirs. It's a really great deal!  Start enjoying happy holidays today!

Did Megyn Kelly Race-Bait Herself?

I wasn't going to address Megyn Kelly's original assertion that Santa Claus and Jesus are white and that this is an historical fact, because, gosh darn it, people say things I disagree with all the time, and who am I, right? But now that she has decided that disagreeing with her is "race-baiting", well, I might have something to say about that.

The first thing I want to mention is that Kelly choose the topic of Aisha Harris' Slate piece, and she is, after all the person who made the assertion that Santa and Jesus are white, which tipped off the conversation. Who's baiting who? After all, despite the slightly eyebrow-raising title "Santa Claus Should Not be A White Man Anymore", the piece isn't arguing for a black Santa, but a nonhuman figure who transcends our human baggage--a penguin Santa. A penguin Santa Claus could, possibly, be more inclusionary by not really resembling any person, but being a character we could all at least like, because penguins are adorable. It's Megyn Kelly's claim that Santa and Jesus Christ, as historical people, were definitely white, that sounded kind of knee-jerk to me.

But that is how they are depicted in popular culture, aren't they? Which leads me to Kelly's defense:

“Many questioning whether I understand that Santa is a mythical figure, others’ suggesting that I am a racist who is outraged at the idea of a black Santa,” she continued. “Well, this would be funny if it were not so telling about our society, in particular the knee-jerk instinct by so may to race bait and to assume the worst in people. Especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News channel.”

Far be it for anyone to imply that there's necessarily anything exclusionary about a network that considers cultural diversity a "War on Christmas"--and by extension, a war on Christianity, or implies that there is something ridiculous about Christmases that aren't white. One doesn't presume that Kelly is "outraged" by the idea of a black Santa, so much as not aware of what a black Santa means, culturally.

She also wondered "Why is white skin alienating?"  I think I can understand why she asks that. I can understand that as a little girl, a Santa Claus that was Megyn Kelly-colored brought her a doll that looked just like her, a doll that was advertised during the commercial breaks of TV shows that featured families that looked just like hers. The alienation for people of color isn't so much the whiteness--it's the absence of color. The question isn't "Why does it have to be a white Santa?" so much as "Why can't it be a black Santa?" Who is assuming the worst in people?

White people in America just don't experience that flavor of alienation. We are more than adequately represented in popular culture. But perhaps she can easily imagine the alienation some white people feel when they see people of color in places they historically usually aren't. Like the White House. Or the discomfort they even feel seeing them outside the polling places in their own neighborhoods. And I might even suppose that the topic of a black Santa might be of concern to the predominately white Fox News audience that already, for some reason, believes that their Christmas is under siege.

I think she understands those things quite well.

She has no idea what she is talking about.

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She just doesn't. She is saying words that do not mean things when strung together in the order that she puts them. I think when people talk about complicated policies in front of her, she hears that "mwamwamwa" sound of adults talking from the Peanuts cartoons. She actually said she wants to lessen the threat of tort reform. I am not sure that is what the so-called independent grassroots Koch-backed Tea Partiers that use her as a mascot actually told her.

Also too, I don't really care much about the war on Christmas, but if you are on the side of Christmas and Palin is your spokesperson, I'm just saying, somewhere out there a reindeer is crying.

In other news, she thinks the national debt is just like slavery, but not in a racist way. I think it's really interesting that she's learned from the whole "blood libel" episode of a couple years back that appropriating the tragedy of other people to make a hyperbolic statement sounds racist, but hasn't actually absorbed why that is.

Teddy the Porcupine wishes you a Merry Christmas

Adorable. Makes me consider getting a new pet and a strong pair of gloves.

Sen. Jon Kyl believes in several days of Christmas

This is the sort of thing a real War on Christmas should be about.

To sum, Sen. Jon Kyl of AZ doesn't want to come back after the Chrsistmas holiday to do his job because:

"It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out," Kyl said today, "frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff."

How long is his Christmas? It's just December 25 on my calendar. Maybe he had a vacation planned, but that isn't quite the same as respecting the holiday. I'm working the 27th through the 31st myself. Maybe he agrees with his colleague from AZ that it would make the Baby Jesus cry to vote on DADT while other people are still nogging it up. But in any event, it seems to me like if there's a job to be done, he might as well do it--

So many don't have those things, after all--jobs.

The War on Christmas Just Jumped the Shark

The Christmas display war--now with more Ted McGinley:



Oh, damn. One more Baldwin sacrificed to mediocrity and the forces of pro-religious-propaganda. Part of the fun--that the atheist against the Nativity display is supposed to be doing it for personal reasons that are entirely besides the point. And "Mitch Bright". Shit. I knew this "brights" idea was gonna be used against us someday, somehow. And the "grinchiness" and the "big city elitists vs. small town folks" and the "Christians started Amurrika!" Yow! This is everything I blog about and nothing I ever thought would be a good movie. Thank you, people who probably aren't even Hollyweirdizens, for making a crap movie about a mostly crap subject. Direct to Netflix.

Alaska? Really people? To guarantee snow and the plausibility of such, and other reindeer games? Oh, people......

The Perpetual War for Perpetual Xmas

I swear, this conflict has raged for so long, on so many fronts, over so much time, I get out of bed and hear sleigh bells, sometimes....or Christmas carols....mostly Christmas carols.

Christmas carol initiative no joy to California

Californians apparently weren’t feeling the Christmas spirit during Merry Susan Hyatt’s five-month carol initiative signature collection effort.

The measure failed Friday when the final signature count turned out to be only half a percent of the required 433,971, according to the secretary of state’s office. In all, 2,176 signatures were collected in California between Nov. 2 and March 29.

Hyatt is a retired substitute teacher from Riverside who now lives in Redding. She announced her initiative drive in November, saying schools needed to provide children with the opportunity to listen to Christmas carols during the Christmas season.

Hyatt, who wouldn’t give her age, said it didn’t make sense to celebrate the birthday of Jesus without inviting him to the party, and she believed bringing Jesus back into the classroom was the only way to curb violence among children.

The initiative would have forced schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols and would have subjected the schools to litigation if the rule wasn’t followed.

Force schools to inflict Christmas music on kids--who presumably couldn't go to a shopping mall or supermarket, or who were never exposed to any of those 24-hour a day Christmas carol radio formats? That's just cruel and unusual. I take note that the perpetrator of this Christmas-centered attack on the civil liberties of students who actually don't go to school to celebrate Christmas, but to learn, is allying with the local Tea Party--who, as Constitutional scholars, have no qualms about the separation clause*. But alas for them, too little too late--not enough signatures.

*(Yes, Virginia California, there is a separation clause.)