Happy New Year 2025!

 

The year is new, 

but you are not

and still have all

the issues you've got. 

Your will is good

and your plans sincere

and I hope they make

a fine New Year.

This Holiday, JD Vance is Serving

 

Uh. Huh.

Welp, I'm just screen capping the above Twitter post for posterity in case it disappears, because I believe in sharing the things that bring me joy, and perversely, this does. It sort of sums things up in a way I'm not even sure Vance has totally unpeeled. It's a psychological onion--it has layers.

I really wonder why the Harris/Walz campaign drifted away from calling these guys weird. Because you know what?

This is kinda weird. 

But you guys? You just have the kind of Thanksgiving that makes you happy. Which I'm sure will be very, very traditional. In its very own special way.

TWGB: We Need the Wood!

 

There's hardly anything wilder to me than Trump fluffing up his crucifixion narrative while being literally the most un-Christlike person you could think of. Turn the other cheek? Love thy enemy?  Forgive others as you would also be forgiven? Oh, that stuff is crazy. He sure does try it though. He's being persecuted for taking what he hast (overleveraged) and using it to get more rich (or at least, pretending he is).  He's being crucified (being prosecuted, not persecuted) for his hush money arrangement--a business fraud, based on an election fraud, based on an illicit sex fling--selling himself as a better man than he actually is. 

So how does this modern-day martyr show his Christ Consciousness? You know, the way Christ did, by letting his disciples know what Pilates' family members look like, so they could...use their imaginations. Who wants to tell me where in the Bible Jesus would have done anything of the sort? 

Trump is no Jesus and Judge Merchan is no Pontius Pilate--what the hell? This is where my blog title comes from--get on down off that cross honey, we need the wood! 

Cops Killed Jesus

 

In addition to Easter Sunday it is also the 125th Anniversary of Paul Robeson's birth. So in honor of the man who once said, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth," here's a message from an Asheville, NC graffiti artist. pic.twitter.com/A8YMxYYbyX

— Daryle Lamont Jenkins (@DLamontJenkins) April 9, 2023

I've been saying for some time that the things no Christian should be about are blasphemy laws and the death penalty. The trumped-up charge against Jesus of Nazareth was that he played at being king of the Jews, which was an office that could only be bestowed by Rome. He claimed a moral right to the children of Israel that he politically could not claim. But he wasn't saying he was the King of the Jews, only his presence as a preacher against the princes of this world existed as a problem for them. 

His sentence was death, and before his death was carried out, he suffered police brutality in the form of a crown of thorns. In custody, he was mocked and stripped naked. His judge, Pilate, didn't seem to think he was guilty, but "washed his hands and sealed his fate". Because someone had to be made an example of. 

Call me, the atheist, a Holy Saturday Christian, because I see the Christ in the downtrodden and persecuted, in the wronged and derailed, in the fucked up and failed people around me. I don't know that the fallen rise, but I want to believe we can all get lifted by understanding one another and helping ourselves up from failure bit by bit. I have no proof for my faith, I just think it would be great. 

2023-Skidoo!

 

Out with the old, and in with the new!

Doesn't it seem like we're always shaking our fist at the old year, sending it packing, and hoping the next year will be better--when we're just the same folks, and things just keep happening to us, no matter what the hell year it is?

Out with the old, and in with the new!

This year can be a year of change, but it starts with taking out the trash, taking a new step, saying goodbye not to the sorry old year, but the sorry old people (you may have some famous examples in mind), habits and things that don't make sense anymore. A genuinely new year means doing something new. 

2023 is an enigma.   That means anything's possible. 

The History of Labor Day

Greeting fellow workers! Hope you treated yourself and considered your value today!

UPDATE: Did you know approval and appreciation of unions is on an upswing? My personal guess is it has a lot to do with COVID-19 when we collectively experienced crises related to the fragility of our employment status, the need for health benefits and paid leave, and absolutely treacherous workplace safety. Work is political. People work to earn a living, but work is not one's whole life. Supporting your fellow workers to make workplaces better improves productivity and helps the business thrive by decreasing turnover, burnout, and improving employee service. It's a good thing!

UPDATE: We often talk about how the labor movement put an end to child labor (conditionally) but the labor movement also protects aging workers by making retirement more comfortably possible. 

Note--an important part of the end of child labor is free, compulsory education. A free and fair society means that our children have the means to grow up and fend for themselves because they have the knowledge to do so. A free and fair society means we don't write off people because they are no longer productive workers. 

Thoughts and Prayers, Our National Pastime

 

Today, at an Independence Day parade about a half hour north of Chicago in Highland Park, Il., a scion of the town's good folk is alleged to have fired into the festivities, killing six and wounding dozens, and causing the shut-down of other holiday celebrations in the vicinity while the manhunt for the shooter was underway. Robert "Bobby" Crimo, III was later taken in "without incident." 

The alleged shooter apparently provided a lot of internet content, which is in the process of being scrubbed and I guess there are reasons not to publicize his little cartoons and lyrics and all. But apparently, red flags existed as to what was on this young man's mind about thinking of doing damage to other people. The above screenshot is from a video he did that depicted himself as a school shooter. The flag symbolism is just something to ruminate over--for now. 

But I want to short-circuit the idea that this kid was antifa because of random dress-up photos or the idea that scrawny little pencil-neck betas are a libtard thing. Waldo over here was signifying badass MAGA wannabe, and that apparently meant embracing the gun--the symbol of dominance and cleansing for an American kid who has gone off the rails and wants to signify his badassery. By shooting innocent folks and causing terror for no clear reason at all. 

So, we can offer up our thoughts and prayers now, our numb-skulled thoughts and broken-hearted prayers, that this kind of monstrosity which happens here more than anywhere else, happened here, on this day we celebrate our nation's uniqueness and history. These offerings are our national pastime after all. 

The Catch-2022

 

I've blogged about disasters to mark the New Year, but that hardly seems necessary now, and I've blogged about the necessity for truth to usher in a year that was as full of bullshit as ever. So, for what it is worth, I offer what I know about the New Year before it has even gotten under way: the Catch-2022:

We are all in this together, therefore we will all have to be in this together. 

The power to change direction doesn't rely on any one person alone, but on many people deciding, alone, that change is possible and that they will work towards it. The catch is not everyone sees change as positive or even understands the stakes. But just because some people don't see the problem doesn't mean the problem isn't also theirs. And choices people make for themselves often affect others. 

There isn't a way out of that, you can only do what is best for yourself and others. Take care of yourselves, friends. Make the most of the time. 

Welcome to 2021

 

So we have bid a not-so-find farewell to 2020, but let's get real for the New Year as at least one of our resolutions: the problem, you guys, was not so much in the stars as in ourselves, that 2020 was, to put it in a word, suboptimal. The secret word isn't "plastics" or even "biotin" (that's a Wonder Woman 1984 reference)--it's got to be "truth". 

Honesty is such a lonely word, everyone is so untrue--songwriter and historian, Billy Joel.

We live in an age of sincere falsehood and earnest fraud and it fucking sucks. Unless critical thinking becomes a trend and the laying down of a hard truth pipeline becomes a part of our social "infrastructure week" (as if Rome itself was ever built in a week, let alone a day), we're all screwed. People doubt one another, they doubt institutions, they doubt science, they doubt politics--they have reasons, but we need to look at the environment not with belief as a signifier of tribal belonging, but with judgment as a tool to actually survive.

The truth isn't always popular, but it's necessary. We can't go on pretending the lead in the water is good, actually, that the dead canary in the mineshaft probably doesn't mean a thing, that the virus isn't that deadly and the vaccine wouldn't have worked anyway. We can't litigate away reality; but once we understand what is true, we can understand what choices make sense and will have better outcomes. Those choices aren't always easy but success doesn't come by way of shortcuts. There isn't a pill for it, just a path made of the right decisions. 

Anyway, I just had a satisfying plate of cotecchino and ceci (that's a Philadelphia Italian take on the southern black-eyed peas repast--maybe you could call it a "Hoppin Jawn") and some tasty beer* to get my year started right, and look forward to just telling it as close to how it is and how I see it as I can on the blog for the coming year. 

The year can be a good one, but it's on us. It's always on us.

* The other word for this year, for me, will be "moderation". Because I don't have to like it, but it is also true that I need to remember to be moderate in all things.

PSA: Saving Your Blessings

 

I know a lot of people have already left to get to their family holiday get-togethers, and some others might be very certain that warning about the spread of COVID-19 is a liberal plot to destroy the family by attacking our sacred holidays, but I think it should be said that if our service-members and veterans do and have spent holidays away from their loved ones for the protection of this nation, isn't that really something any of us should be patriotic enough to do? 

COVID-19 has killed over 250K Americans (given the excess death figures, probably tens of thousands more). That's an enemy you shouldn't want to bring home with you for the holidays. And while it isn't fatal for everyone who comes into contact with it (although it is dangerous enough for older people and immune-compromised people), it can certainly send someone to the hospital. Those beds are already filling up. Hospitals and health care workers are stressed to the maximum. 

No one is saying not to celebrate Thanksgiving--in a small group within your household and maybe making some nice long phone calls to folks who are distant. Be thankful! But sometimes the best way to show thankfulness for your blessings is to save them. Social distancing saves lives. Too many people have learned this lesson the hard way.

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. 

Happy Labor Day, Fellow Workers!

Hello, fellow workers, once and future workers, office workers and outdoor workers, and manufacturing floor workers, field hands and dab hands, sex workers and home carers, cubicle rats and wage slaves, documented workers and undocumented workers, professionals and paid amateurs, unpaid interns and well-paid union folks, grindstone go-getting candleburners of every conceivable shift--your value doesn't lie in what you do alone, but you give value to the world in what you do and have done, and respect must be paid. Also fair remuneration and at least earned time off plus federal holidays, if you asked me. But barring that, a tip of my figurative hat and continued support for workers' rights.

That Could Have Been Worse

 

I think we can all agree that it was a good idea that Trump's speech marking Independence Day was more historical than the campaign-rally type screed we were expecting.

 

 



Do You Know What Today is, Kids?

Apparently it's National Symbol Groping Day!

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.

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.

Thankful

I think taking the time to take stock of your blessings in life is a great thing. The troubles of the world weigh on us, sometimes lighter than they should. If I am thankful for my full plate, I have to also know that there are people whose larder has been bare. If I am thankful for my heat and light and access to the world through the internet, I also have to understand what it is to be without these things. If I am thankful for my health, I have to also remember those who are without health care, or who soon could be. If I am thankful for the safety of my home, I have to also think of those who might have no home, or might lose their home. If I am thankful for the love I have enjoyed in my life, it needs to be balanced by knowing the love that has been denied  (and is still being denied). If I am thankful for my education, I need to acknowledge that getting a good education is still a struggle for so many.

What I am thankful for, and humbled by, is the gift of perspective. I could be unhappy about the things I do not have, but find the only desire I should by rights want is the ability to work to make anything better for anyone else because of the gifts I do have. And understanding that creates purpose to me, and a better appreciation for all of it.

I could almost pity someone with no perspective, or empathy, or appreciation of the power and wealth dumped in their lap, lacking all capacity to better the life of a single deprived soul because knowing how isn't in them. But of that particular knowledge and blessing, I find myself bereft. And perhaps, it's just as well. Recognizing obstacles that need to be removed is also a kind of perspective.

Memorial Day 2017

Some gave all they had for an imperfect nation, for their love of their countrymen, for the ideals and values this nation stood for in their eyes, for a sense of profound duty, for the fellow service members fighting alongside of them. There are many reasons--but they are rooted in a sense of meaning greater than oneself. They performed an act of selfless honor. In their memory, it is fitting and correct to show honor not just to their sacrificed lives, but to acknowledge the greater civic community for which their sacrifice was made. We also can find our services to render to the greater good.

The White House Does Easter

A kid asks Trump to sign his hat at the White House Easter Egg Roll. The president signs ... and then tosses the hat into the crowd. pic.twitter.com/7ExdhpO97H

— POLITICO (@politico) April 17, 2017

It's not that Trump forgets to place his hand over his heart during the national anthem until his spouse gives him a helpful nudge, or even the fact that the 139th annual Easter Egg roll was sparsely attended, and KellyAnn Conway implied it was a practically a favor to the country that Trump bothered to have it at all. Oh, jeepers, no! It isn't even that Trump threw autographed hats into a crowd that the bearer had meant to keep*.

It's that this sort of thing is supposed to be the easy, normal stuff--and just isn't. Pulling off an Easter Egg Roll party is a Celebrity Apprentice task. De-escalating a potential nuclear conflict in the Pacific rim, that's the hard stuff. This is why some of us worry--not to be snarky. But because this awkwardness is easier to talk about than the real fears we have.


UPDATE: In the interest of being scrupulously fair, from another angle, it appears the kid dropped back and Trump threw the hat to him. I wish I could find other angles from which Trump appears to be doing the right things.