LISTEN TO THE PROPAGANDA, LISTEN TO THE LATEST SLANDER.

 I feel better already. Getting rid of the Muslim Ban and the "Patriotic Education" bullshit is a good start.

But watchman, what of the Right? They keen, they burn! Attend one of the hot new vendors of wingnut poop, The Epoch Times, which today dropped this: 

That was actually just the email come-on: The thing itself is called  "Ideological Alignment Pushing America Toward Totalitarianism, Experts Warn," and it's a caution. Take this:

The formation of a totalitarian state is just about complete in America as the most powerful public and private sector actors unify behind the idea that actions to stamp out dissent can be justified, according to several experts on modern totalitarian ideologies.

(The "experts" actually cited by author Petr "Not A Typo" Svab, BTW, are "Michael Rectenwald, a retired liberal arts professor at New York University" mainly famous for promoting Milo Yiannopoulos and his own r-u-triggered @antipcnyuprof account, and James Lindsay, another from an apparently inexhaustible supply of "gay people are oppressing us" types.)

So Tubby's only been out of office for a day and already we're Hitler's Germany! I'm not kidding either -- several grafs in the thing refer to "Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist Workers Party in Nazi Germany." ("Socialist," you'll be saddened to learn, was not in boldface type.) For instance:

Hitler initially didn’t control the spread of information via government censorship but rather through his brigades of street thugs, the “brown shirts,” who would intimidate and physically prevent his opponents from speaking publicly.

The tactic parallels the often successful efforts to “cancel” and “shut down” public speakers by activists and violent actors, such as Antifa.

Gee, sounds awful -- until you realize they don't mention any specific canceled/shut-down people because even Epoch Times readers might think, "Oh, you mean like when Josh Hawley loses his book deal (at least for a couple of days)? Or students decide they don't like their commencement speaker? Who gives a shit?" (The people who really get persecuted for speech, as I have observed repeatedly, you seldom hear about.) Svab goes on:

Dissenting media in America haven’t been silenced by the government directly as of yet. But they are stymied in other ways.

In the digital age, media largely rely on reaching and growing their audience through social media and web search engines, which are dominated by Facebook and Google. Both companies have in place mechanisms to crack down on dissenting media.

For rightwingers, "Crack down on dissenting media" means "enforce their own terms of service on their own platforms" -- as when President Tubby, after whipping up his goons to storm the Capitol, got his plug pulled by Twitter and all the wingnuts cried censorship.  

Google gives preference in its search results to sources it deems “authoritative.” Search results indicate the company tends to consider media ideologically close to it to be more authoritative. Such media can then produce hit pieces on their competitors, giving Google justification to slash the “authoritativeness” of the dissenters.

See? Google considers the New York Times "more authoritative" than QAnon Catturd Infect Your Computer News -- clearly librulmedia BIAS.

It goes on and on like this -- they marvel that "Alex Stamos recently labeled the widespread questioning of the 2020 election results as 'violent extremism,'" as if the Capitol siege were a hundred years ago instead of two weeks -- and who needs it, but you should understand what ET is peddling is right in line with what a lot of these guys are focused on -- not only the usual pencil-necks like Rod Dreher but also now-former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who I am told to my astonishment is prepping for a Presidential run with material like this:

Stands to reason, I guess: You can't run against the disastrous mishandling of the pandemic, unemployment, racism etc. the day after you were in charge of them all. Maybe in a month they'll try it! But till then and in any case, the conservative cri de boor will be Liberal Fascism.

UPDATE. Also what all the wingnut kids are into: transphobia! From Holy Rod Dreher:

And so, on the first full day of a Biden presidency, female school athletics is sacrificed to wokeness. 

??? 

From an executive order sent down from on high today:

Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.  Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. [Emphasis mine — RD]...

 Gasp! 

This means that schools that get federal funding have to treat biological males who identify as female as if they were female. With this order, the federal government declares that the biological advantage that male bodies have over female bodies, in terms of strength and endurance, does not matter — at least not in schools that receive federal funding.

I can easily imagine Rod squinting at LSU women's basketball games, trying to figure out which ones used to be a dude so he knows who not to beat off to. (Ha, just joking -- Dreher and 99% of these guys never gave a shit about women's sports until it became something liberal to blubber over.)

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

She's cool.

•   It's been a hell of a 2021 so far, eh?  Well, the upside of seeing the neighborhood overrun by National Guard is that I strongly doubt under the circumstances even the most committed Nazi/Proud Boy fucks are going to try it this weekend or on the 20th. Lauren Boebert (R.-Crazyland) or some other Qball Rep may whip out a gun in an effort to fulfill the Nutcake Prophecy, but I expect the feds have a couple marksmen properly assigned. 

And it seems Tubby's approval rating has sunk considerably -- which, to me, doesn't necessarily mean his hardcore minority of yahoos has shrunk too much: rather, it means some of them are getting less of a kick professing their love for him than they used to. Which is still good, even though they've begged off less out of shame and more because the one thing they could never admit has become incontrovertible -- that Trump is a loser. It still saps his power. It's fun for some people to back a bully when he's beating up nerds, but when he finally gets his ass kicked who's gonna sympathize with him? 

All he was able to do in the last ditch was try a putsch and come up with a figurative bloody nose. Hitler came back from a putsch, true. So the Democrats have gotta start acting like they know that: give the people their two grand (I know I know), whip this vaccine delivery into shape, and in general govern like they want people to vote them back in, not like they want their donors to keep it coming. 

Tall order, I know, but that's what it will take. And it can be done! Seriously, who knew even a couple of years ago this was coming:

The National Rifle Association on Friday filed petitions with a U.S. bankruptcy court seeking protection from creditors by restructuring, the gun rights advocacy group announced.

The NRA filed the Chapter 11 petitions in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, it said in a news release.

The NRA said it would restructure as a Texas nonprofit to exit what it said was a “a corrupt political and regulatory environment in New York” state, where it is currently registered.

The “corrupt political and regulatory environment in New York” to which they refer is one in which they apparently got caught doing massive fraud by New York Attorney General Letitia James. From August 6:

Sean Delany, a former head of the charities bureau in the office of the attorney general — the same division now handling the case — said, “I think the facts are very strong, but I think the remedy of dissolution is a stretch, because the A.G. would have to prove that the organization is so rife with fraud that there isn’t anything sufficiently substantial in the organization’s charitable programs to make it worth saving.”

WELP.  And James is currently gunning for Tubby. Courage, my friends, with God all things are possible. 

•  Oh yeah, in case you want some funsies here's a bagatelle from the newsletter. Ripped from today's headlines! 

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE.

I've unlocked today's Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issue reviewing the steps that brought us to our current situation, where the inauguration of an exceedingly moderate Democrat as President must be prepared for as if he were Lincoln on the cusp of civil war. 

Unlike a surprising number of commentators, I don't think this country is on the verge of civil war -- I think rather that the sane people of America are being harassed by a bunch of nuts who want such a war, notwithstanding that if they really tried it they would get their asses kicked even worse and much more quickly than their Confederate predecessors. 

Part of the insurrectionist Right's shtick is to talk about the 73 million Trump voters as if they're all waiting for Ted Cruz to drop his handkerchief and will come rebel-yelling over the ridge when he does. That's what Peter Navarro is doing here:

This is part of the Trumpian con-manner, whereby everything you do is colossal, stupendous, the greatest, and can't fail. Thus the Trumpkins enlist Republican voters as co-conspirators in their imaginary uprising. 

Not bloody likely. There's a lot of madness afoot, but if all or even most Republican voters were as crazy as the Republicans who are screaming sedition, this country would  have ground completely to a halt years ago as they all tried to figure out how to pour piss out of a boot.

The ones who actually are that crazy are finding out quick that federal law enforcement is not going to wave them through this gate. Their elected nutcakes, and their unwillingness to go the whole hog and eject Tubby to prevent more miscief, remain a problem. And it bears remembering that in addition to the five dead at the Capitol they are at least partly responsible for the mounting COVID death toll and a lot of other lethal and just plain stupid shit.

For that we only have the tedious remedy of politics. So on to the Biden Administration and all the cruel disappointments that await us there! But as for the MAGA Mob, the prescription is simpler: Play stupid games and win stupid prizes.  

ROD DREHER FASCISM WATCH CONT.

The great volume of work required by my God Damn Job and Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (a classic, only Substack newsletter not devoted to cancelculture blubbering, subscribe!) is part of what keeps me from following Rod Dreher as closely as I used to. But most of it is just fatigue and disgust. As with another of my longtime figures of fun, Jonah Goldberg, their idiocies that once tickled me have palled; neither Dreher nor Goldberg ever improves or even becomes memorably worse, and all they seem to learn are new scholarly references to stick to their same old, shitty ideas. 

Dreher is mainly noteworthy for the increasing obviousness of his fascist beliefs.  Last week I mentioned his latest expression of fondness for Generalissimo Franco (one in a series). This week, as you may expect, he has been disgusted that the awful man whose manners he excoriates (but who he nonetheless had hoped would be reelected) spurred the mob to violence, but did you know the attempted coup was actually "The Left’s Reichstag Fire"? No, he's not saying the Left actually did the attempted coup (at least not yet) but that they stand to benefit from it -- that is, sure, Trump's goons tried to murder Congress, but now liberals will treat this "as an opportunity to begin to implement the rudiments of a social credit system, and to otherwise marginalize and suppress right-of-center discourse and people." Which is so much worse! 

Then, in another post, Dreher goes further: 

Anyway, I anticipate that rightist radicals will now begin to undertake campaigns of low-level violent actions — bombings and other forms of domestic terrorism. It won’t amount to anything, but it will give the Establishment (= not just the state, but corporations too) even more excuses to crack down. 

So "rightist radicals" are going to do "bombings" and "other forms of domestic terrorism" but "it won’t amount to anything" -- besides, I guess, the murder of a bunch of people, but Rod's not really concerned about them because really, what's some dead terror victims that probably don't go to his church compared with cancel culture victims? You may have lost your life but I got a 12-hour Twitter time-out! And my beloved horrible president [sniff] lost his Twitter entirely! ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL!    

Guy's a fascist.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Kia's still on a Carol Burnett kick, and we saw one where Gentry did this number.

Pretty cool, no?

Funny thing -- I was on way late Wednesday morning to the Mall to take some pictures, as I am accustomed to do at local protests, when I ran into a disabled neighbor who needed help; by the time I got through with that, I had to go back home to do job-work. Thus I missed the helter-skelter at the Capitol, though like everyone else I had a few hours' worry about how it was going to come out.

I'm still worried. After a wave of bipartisan calls for Tubby to be removed by impeachment or 25th Amendment -- including from Peggy Noonan, of all people! -- the energy seems to be flowing the other way; Nancy Pelosi is holding firm, but Lindsay Graham has tweeted, "As President @realDonaldTrump stated last night, it is time to heal and move on" -- as if Trump's word for anything could be trusted, except when it is employed -- as it has been from “I would like you to do us a favor though" through "We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you... you have to show strength" -- in the commission of a crime.   

I hope not only our electeds but also the FBI and whoever actually countermanded Trump on National Guard deployment are getting busy, because the nuts who rampaged on Wednesday are as accustomed to a lack of consequences as their leader, and unless they see some consequences pronto they'll be back with worse. Count on it. 

TIME TO GET SERIOUS.

I understand from people who spend time on Facebook and Brit Hume's Twitter feed that a lot of MAGA zombies are saying today's obvious, red-hatted, incited-by-Tubby attempted MAGA coup was the work of Antifa provocateurs pretending to be Trump supporters. 

Somebody should have told that to the current and former Republican office-holders who joined the vandals at the Capitol! Not to mention such notorious MAGA chunkheads as Baked Alaska who sent selfies out from the coup to their social media streams and law enforcement officials who, I hope, will start doing something about it as soon as we wrench control of this government away from Tubby's bund.

The people who refuse to believe what is happening even while it's happening are a sad testament to our shitty public school system and perhaps lead-based paint, but even worse are the rightwing shysters who sort of admit that it's terrible but the real crime is the left using it to cast aspersions on Trump and his devoted followers. Here's Scott Johnson, one of the assholes at remember-when blog Power Line:

President Trump seems determined to leave office in a manner that vindicates the vile accusations hurled at him by his opponents over the past four years.

If only he behaved like the true gentleman we know him to be! Alas, now our years of tongue-bathing him will come to naught, as evil liberals exploit his actual behavior to diminish him and our cause! 

Worse, predictably, is Rod Dreher:

Nevertheless, I believe that these MAGA fools have provided those on the Left — in the government and within corporations, universities and other institutions — who wish to suppress conservatives and religious dissidents with a Reichstag-fire excuse to crack down (except in the case of the Reichstag fire, that didn’t happen; this abomination in Washington today really occurred). The soft totalitarianism I’ve been warning about: the MAGA mob today accelerated its arrival.

It's like the Reichstag fire -- except we totally did it!

I'm glad to see some Democratic officials invoking the 25th Amendment -- not because I expect the gutless shits in Tubby's cabinet to do the right thing, but because it has to be said, loudly, that this shit is so unacceptable we have to do something drastic -- or it'll keep happening and maybe next time they'll get lucky.

As for the oh it must be antifa types, it's time for some serious de-Nazification. Make 'em look at the evidence, like the Allies did to German citizens after the war, and see what they did. 

THE LAST CHOPPER OUT OF SAIGON.

[Note: This is part of an upcoming item in Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, the Substack for smart people with a sense of humor. Most items are paywalled but some, like today's lookback at the 2020 election, are open to the public.]

While low-rent rightwingers howl for a coup, most top-ranked conservative outlets are at this point slightly abashed, maybe even scared, at the unseemly spectacle of their hero trying mob boss tactics to overturn the election. At National Review the longtime utter fraud and heretofore reliable defender of Trump Andrew C. McCarthy was originally willing to go along with the gag in post-election stories like "Michigan Certification of Biden Win Is a Step Toward the End — But It’s Not the End" and "As Time Is Running Out, Trump Campaign Files Stronger Lawsuit in Georgia." 

But now McCarthy seems to caught nerves; In "The Risky Wager of Betting on Trump" he even begins "Were the anti-Trumpers right all along?" before deciding, like Principal Skinner, that no, it's the children who are wrong:

The Trump fanatics notwithstanding, the case for Trump, in 2020 as in 2016, was never based on the comparative merits and demerits of the man. It was Trump as opposed to whom? That’s still the most sensible way to look at it.

This is like the argument made by Russian and Polish Nazis who argued after the war that Hitler was, on balance, a better guy than Stalin and that's why they killed those Jews.

Even the damage now being done, the trail being blazed for the next Democratic administration to subvert future Republican electoral victories, has to be weighed against, say, what the Supreme Court would look like for the next 30 years if Mrs. Clinton had been president for the last four, and what that would portend for our constitutional republic.

Like other Republicans, when this is all over, whether they boldly defend their Trumpism or pretend they were in Switzerland for the entire war, McCarthy will comfort himself that he may have put American democracy at risk but oooooh those reactionary young judges! (And, of course, the traditional confidence of the hypocrite that his opponents would do just as badly in his shoes.) 

One imagines McCarthy wouldn't be too sad if Tubby actually did blow it all up, but apparently he expects that won't happen and he doesn't want to look too Trumpist when the smoke clears. So he talks about how the threat was never so bad because we were always bound to be saved by either the bureaucracy ("the quotidian details of governance are handled by an administration, now grown to thousands of bureaucrats") or the Constitution ("the real genius of the Framers was to plan for the inevitability of crises"). 

Also, ho ho, Trump himself isn't a real threat because he's too silly; "in reality, his lust is more for pomp than power... his fatal flaws have little to do with coveting power and everything to do with vanity..." He's just a clown, not a serious man like Hitler or Mussolini! 

Then McCarthy goes on to slag the just-as-bad Democrats and to hope, like many other conservatives-with-good-taste, that what he's heard about the ever-shrinking attention spans of our citizens is not a myth, and in a few weeks at most they can pretend to care once again about the deficit and "rule by pen and phone" and the dignity of the office without too many of them going Hey, wait a minute!  When do you suppose they'll accuse the absurdly moderate President Biden of posing a greater threat to the stability of the country than the much-maligned Donald Trump ever did? I give 'em two months. 

JUST FOR THE RECORD.

Rod Dreher, who we know from his previous posts is glad the fascist Francisco Franco overthrew the Spanish government and ruled as a dictator for 39 years -- "I didn’t intend to argue about who was right and who was wrong in that war. Personally I believe the better side won" -- recently put up a post about how bad the Spanish leftists Franco defeated were, and how this reminds him that today "the cultural left really is marching through the institutions" and of the "costly stand against the mob" taken by, get this, Bari Weiss. Also, Dreher explains he can't back the Trump "Stop the Steal" crew because they're not doing it right:

It’s all performative with that crowd. They satisfy themselves with, “But he fights!” — ignoring that at best, Trump has only slowed down the takeover. There’s no strategy there, only emoting about God, the flag, and pillows. Instead of a Gen. Franco, a leader who seriously and effectively fought the radical left, they have produced a Gen. Flynn, the crackpot who is now openly promoting the QAnon cult. 

The Right needs leadership. Desperately. [Emphasis added]

This guys gets loved up by David Brooks, the New Yorker and lots of other mainstream types, and he's a straight-up fascist. That's all I came here to say. Happy new year! 

HAPPY NEW.

All the "fuck 2020" talk has got me a little crabby; it's not like everything changes just because the clock strikes twelve. We still have the same creeps, assholes, and wasters following us into 2021. But thanks to a few things that went right last year -- like Black Lives Matter and Blue Georgia and a general understanding that the last four years was not what we want for ourselves or anyone else -- we have a better chance than we've had in a while to kick them to the curb. A friend wrote to me that she thought the Trump fiasco might actually be salutary in the long run: "the openness of his misogyny compared to the comparatively covert previous war on women brought many younger women who felt feminism unnecessary into the fold." She thinks this lesson might also apply to issues of race, water rights, health care and so forth. Maybe it's New Year's talking, but I think she may be right. So let's toast that, and with whatever music or other means bolsters our resolve to make this next whatever better. If that's a champagne toast, so be it. See you on the other side.

HORSESHIT THEORY.

Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review last May:

Horseshoe theory holds that at a certain point, the political left and the political right bend around and begin to get closer together again. You can see it on economic issues when Senator Josh Hawley is talking with Matt Stoller. I noticed it often among my fellow “restrainer” foreign-policy friends.

And here's Stoller himself on December 5, after Hawley "joined" (for some sense of the term) Bernie Sanders in requesting $1,200 checks for stimulus relief in the senate:

"Bipartisan cooperation a welcome sign on Capitol Hill" marveled the Boston Herald. "If our lawmakers can do it on stimulus payments," the Herald went on, "maybe there are other areas where the left and right can find populist common ground: criminal justice reform or paid family leave perhaps." 

"Josh Hawley, populism's philosopher-in-chief," swooned Charles Fain Lehman in a long, lubricious ode at the Washington Examiner that had Hawley denouncing the Pelagian heresy "that you can 'emancipate yourself from God by creating your own self'" and extolling "the original Populist Party" of the early 20th Century:

"It was a moment of significant social, economic, international upheaval, which we’re experiencing now as well,” Hawley said. “The late 19th, early 20th century was also a moment when the existing political coalitions were in a state of collapse and reforming, which is clearly what we’re in the midst of right now."

Populist and anti-Pelagian -- a 2024 dream candidate! Hawley also joined the more recent Sanders push for $2,000 checks -- even less likely to go through than $1,200  (and it hasn't), but a great way to keep the rubes paying attention. 

Well, today the horseshoe is on the other foot:

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced Wednesday that he would object next week when Congress convenes to certify the electoral college vote, a move that all but ensures at least a short delay in cementing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Turns out the dreamboat is just another crackpot grifter like Louie Gohmert and Tommy Tuberville. Being a boring old-fashioned type of liberal I could smell Hawley walking in. Here's your humble narrator in June 2019 on Hawley's lionization at The Federalist as one of two "Brand-New Senators" who "Cast Light on the GOP's Post-Trump Future" (the other one was, lol, Rick Scott): "Josh Hawley's the young, hip kind of theocrat creep who's bound to appeal to hypothetical young people who think like Roy Moore."

About the only good thing about Hawley is that his horseshoe-y idea to make Federal workers decamp to rural districts so's to make everything more equal-like -- 'cause he don't like no "cosmopolitan elites" nohow! -- inspired me to my Gulchville, KY Winter White House series*.

But gratitude only extends so far. When we talk about Trump being succeeded in the hearts of conservatives by cleverer fascists, this is what we're talking about.

* BTW that edition of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down isn't the only freebie presently available to non-subscribers -- today's Twitter feud among leading conservative lights is also yours for the clicking. Consider subscribing before your company's Substack benefits for the year run out! 

UPDATE. Some people never learn.

After January 20 Tom Cotton will start referring to Biden as "the so-called president" and McArdle will wonder if he's a body double. 

CHRISTMAS 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

It has been noticed elsewhere that the assholes at the Wall Street Journal opinion section have run another of those Defenses of Christmas Villains with which conservatives like to blight our holidays, in this instance pre-redemption Scrooge. Phil Gramm and Mike Solon write "In Defense of Scrooge, Whose Thrift Blessed the World" that the grasping old sinner did well to deprive Bob Cratchit of a living wage and a heated office, and local paupers of handouts, because his capital was instead invested in financial institutions, and thus created prosperity -- "Wages, stagnant for more than 600 years, exploded during the Victorian era—rising from less than $567 a year in 1840 to $1,216 in 1900 (expressed in 1970 dollars)." In 1970, and its dollars, the U.S. median wage was $9,870, so $1,216 ain't so hot, but there were prisons and workhouses so it's all good. 

Columbia's Karl Jacoby debunked a bunch of Gramm's and Solon's bullshit, but the fact is normal people hardly need it; we know by instinct and upbringing what Dickens' message is: it's that of Jesus Christ, and not the phony Christ of corrupt and vicious megachuches but the Christ of Bethlehem and the Sermon on the Mount. Conservatives write and publish atrocities like "In Defense of Scrooge" as in-jokes and taunts, really; look, we can paint this trickle-down bullshit on any subject, even one of your most venerable social-justice stories! You may blanch at this, but elsewhere we'll tell you $2,000 after nine months of pandemic lockdown is too much to spare Because Capitalism, and a bunch of you will swallow that!  

But after all we've been through, I expect the ranks of the gullible are a little thinner than once they were, and will get thinner still especially among the young, and these people will soon enough find the joke getting turned on them.

Normally on Christmas I put Big Star's "Jesus Christ" up top -- big, heroic-in-an-altrock-way music -- but as we leave 2020 and burn the bridge behind us let us have Nilssonesque nostalgia, because just as we cannot and will not let the sour example of the recent unpleasantness rob us of a better future, so we cannot and will not let it rob us of our better past. Let us bring forward all that was wonderful in our history -- in art and social progress -- and add to it, or rather build on it, new triumphs.

RELEASE THE -- WAIT, WHAT'S OUR LATEST BULLSHIT AGAIN?

It's getting on to Christmas, and you know what that means -- more Trumpkin fever dreams of deliverance from the judgment of their fellow citizens! Santa, they pray, please bring us a fascist dictatorship -- or at least let us believe one is imminent! 

I already wrote about one recent effulgence of their mania, in which Congress is alleged to have sneaked a codicil into the Stimulus Bill that would erase the Insurrection Act -- which Trump needs to keep, I guess, so he can kill enough Democrats to stay in office. Neither the Stimulus Bill, nor the Defense Appropriations Bill that wingnuts have taken to claiming is where it actually is, contain any such language. 

Anyway now mainstream sources have gotten around to debunking this bit of nonsense, and Tubby's pretense of interest in $2,000 stimulus payments -- something AOC and other progressives have been demanding since March -- has cooled the brethren's ardor and they've moved on. Now they're talking about the "Pence Card." You can see it as a popular hashtag on Twitter -- at least for the moment. Here's some site called "Newswars" (gee, wonder what audience they're going for) explaining, or rather EXPLAINING:

SOURCES IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONFIRMED TO NATIONAL FILE THAT PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S MOST VOCAL ADVOCATES WITHIN THE WHITE HOUSE HAVE DETERMINED THAT BOTH U.S. CODE AND THE CONSTITUTION CONTAIN LANGUAGE THAT REQUIRES VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE TO REJECT UNLAWFUL ELECTORAL COLLEGE CERTIFICATES, BUT PENCE MUST ACT BY NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23.

They later purport to quote (in sentence case, fortunately) a memo allegedly circulated at the White House that claims support for this scenario in parts of the constitution and federal law, ranging from the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to 3 U.S. Code § 7. Needless to say there is nothing in there that supports this idea (though I'm sure some operative somewhere is going "Not that 3 USC 7, stupid libtard, this super-secret edition of which I produce a screenshot, checkmate!"), but nonetheless conservative elected officials and Twitter trolls are pushing the idea:

I invite commenters to tell us what's next when this one flops -- a Christmas Kraken, when Trump dressed as Santa rides his sleigh to all Democratic electors' homes and kills them? Or maybe something a little more Trilateral Commission-y?

UPDATE. Snopes breaks it down:

This provision does not give the vice president the authority to reject votes certified by the states. It only says that the vice president shall attempt to expedite the process if states fail to deliver their certification of votes on time.

Furthermore, this provision states that the vice president can only get involved in this process by the “fourth Wednesday in December” if the president of the Senate or the archivist of the United States does not receive a state’s certificate of votes. The archivist of the United States, however, has already received certifications of votes from all 50 states and Washington, D.C, for the 2020 general election. 

If brains were dynamite, these people couldn't blow a fart. 

COME, LET US TREASON TOGETHER.

If you need a little Christmas cheer, they're taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee in Congress' Statuary Hall, and conservatives (who of course support the cause of civil rights in their own quiet way) are throwing a shitfit. The comments at National Review's terse report are a treasure trove. Some of the mourners tell us that Lee really hated slavery, and only fought for a state created to protect it because Virginia happened to be part of it; "The best comparison I can think of to the way people's loyalties to the US back then were distributed," says one, "is similar to the European Union today. Your average Italian has more loyalty to Italy than the EU for example." Well, many Italians consider the Roma sub-human, so it sort of makes sense.  

My favorite is "Anyone else hear the sound of breaking crystal?" -- yes, given the brethren's outsized persecution complex, we must assume this is a Kristallnacht reference -- but there are many other winners and more coming every minute:

This is another example of erasing history instead of reminding us of our history. Lee was a West Point graduate who was on the other side. Grant was a West Point graduate on the right side.

One sided arguments never go well nor do they give reasons for actions taken.If we are to learn from history we need to be reminded of it . We don’t pretend it didn’t exist nor do we persecute.

Benedict Arnold and Kim Philby would be relieved to hear it.

Moreover he left because VA voted to secede! The same legislature that is now attacking him! Has anyone realized this basic fact?!?!

First you say you're in favor of secession, then, 159 years later, you attack Robert E. Lee. Which is it, Virginia? 

This is simply embarrassing. The left is only capable of destroying rather than creating.

I stand ready to support a subscription drive to create a statue of Eugene Debs to represent Indiana. 

What about Patrick Henry? George Mason? VA has more people to honor than any state! Oh wait..they all held slaves!

In their defense, it must be said that, unlike Lee, Henry and Mason never took arms against the United States, either. But you have to expect this neo-Confederate attitude from a movement that mostly refuses to accept Trump's defeat and supports further efforts to overturn the will of the governed -- treason runs deep in their blood. Fortunately they keep showing their hand like this, which raises the hope that more decent people will learn to be vigilant against letting them into power again.  

(P.S., if you've never read Adam Serwer's "The Myth of the Kindly General Lee," today's a good day for it.)

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Warm Leatherette's the killer but I always liked the flip side too

•   I unlocked today's edition of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, which is about the Biden campaign worker who got in trouble for calling Republican "fuckers" and how she had the right idea and rather than apologize she and all of us should tell the pearl-clutching pissants to eat shit, take their nomenclature and like it. I always opposed them because I thought they were wrong and even crazy, but between Trump nihilism, COVID denialism, and QAnon cultism, they've mutated into a clear and present danger. David Atkins got grief for talking about "deprogramming" Republicans ("We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South") but when their major media outlets and elected officials are transparently trying to get the election results overturned -- not because their fraud claims have any merit, but because those results show that their voter-suppression tactics are starting to lose their potency and their minority rule may be coming to an end -- it's clear a Rubicon has been crossed; if they're willing to defy both democratic principles such as consent of the governed and objective reality, they are not in any sense a loyal opposition, and the absolute least we can do is acknowledge that and stop cooperating with the absurdly hypocritical standards by which rampaging Republicans are treated like entertaining scamps while mild incivilities from Democrats are treated like war crimes. Fuck that and fuck them.  

•   One good thing about Kyle Smith's (roundly mocked) stupid column about Joseph Epstein's (roundly mocked) stupid column about how Jill Biden shouldn't use her "Dr." honorific is that it exposes more people to what a piece of shit Kyle Smith is. You can find several references to Smith's career as a culture-war creep at the New York Post and National Review by searching his name at this site. Among the highlights: Smith venturing into theater criticism solely, it would seem, so he could yell at Will Ferrell for unpatriotically making fun of George Bush ("Is it too much to ask for Hollywood's leading comic actor not to use the deaths of our troops in combat for a giggle?"); the logical culture-warrior conclusion to years of rightwing rage-wank over Lena Dunham, entitled (amazingly) "Lena Dunham’s Ultimately Conservative Message"; and Smith explaining that while Republicans enlist in the armed services for noble reasons, Democrats only enlist to disguise the fact that they hate America.

Smith's absolute nadir, though, came when New York's Shakespeare in the Park did Julius Caesar and made Caesar a Trump look-alike, leading conservatives to the insane conclusion that the venerable theatrical institution was calling for the President's assassination; Smith went further still, exulting that the theater got some of its funding cut and that "Lefty Actors Are Beginning to Fear Donald Trump," as if that were something anyone who pretends to care about culture as opposed to culture war would be happy about.  Well, everything else conservative has degenerated; I guess it's only natural that they culture warriors would, too. 

DON'T DREAM IT, BE IT.

Today Joe Biden's winning vote was tallied in the Electoral College. At The Epoch Times -- leading contender for Rupert Murdoch's propaganda crown now that the brethren have judged Murdoch too soft -- here's the headline:

It wasn't just the rightwing press, either: Perhaps inspired by White House neo-Nazi nudnik Stephen Miller's crackpot scheme, Republicans in four states that Biden won actually assembled "electors" of their own and either attempted to storm the actual vote or went off in a corner and had their own fake ceremony:

Copies of the documents obtained by The Arizona Republic show a group that claimed to represent the "sovereign citizens of the Great State of Arizona" submitted signed papers casting votes for what they want: a second term for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, 62, helped created a facsimile of the "certificate of ascertainment" that is submitted to formally cast each state's electoral votes as part of an effort to prevent what she views as the fraudulent theft of the election.

I wonder if her certificate was covered with gold stars like a kindergarten report card. I wrote this weekend about the fantasy world of wingnuts as displayed at the DC "Jericho March," where Trump was celebrated as a quasi-Biblical figure and the true victor of the 2020 election; it appears many of them are accelerating their descent right into actual madness. I expect a significant percentage of them to mutilate themselves for their mania like the Ellen Jamesians in The World According to Garp. As I said elsewhere, I would happily abandon them to their fantasy if they could resist trying to impose it on the rest of us.

ALL THE STAGES OF GRIEF AT ONCE.

The Supreme Court dismissal of Texas' lunatic attempt to overturn the election offers a momentary respite from what, alas, is an apparently unshakeable conviction among a depressing number of our countrymen that Biden stole the election and Trump doesn't have to leave on January 20. 

Nonetheless a respite it has been, and at times hilarious: RedState reports on "The Cases Still Out There," doing the old King Lear "Look on her, look, her lips" bit ("There are still cases wending their way through the state courts, including one in Wisconsin. The plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania case just filed a petition for writ of certiorari..."). In case that fails to convince, the author portrays a SCOTUS silver lining:

We heard from the left that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch were going to be shills for President Donald Trump. That obviously wasn’t the case. Not that Democrats would ever admit that.

Ha ha, take that, libtards! By saying we're full of shit, the Supreme Court is saying you're full of shit! 

Meanwhile the Texas Republican Party  -- or rather their leader, reliable buffoon Allen West -- is calling for Trumpkins to secede and create their own union, perhaps to be called Griftopia. It's like they're going through Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief at once, or in an endless loop. 

We can laugh -- I sure have! -- but we should note that these people are a little cracked and some of them more than a little: Along with the cries for secession at Parler and elsewhere (some humorously misspelled) are calls to murder judges, and some yahoos who are attending this weekend's Jericho March in DC -- like the Christian "Return" event last summer and the MAGA March last month, an opportunity for Trumpists to vent -- are openly calling for violence and insurrection. (And so are Diamond and Silk!) 

And the high-profile grifters who have played on their illness -- like Sidney Powell and Sebastian Gorka and Trump himself -- are still out claiming the fight isn't over. Their self-interest is obvious, as is their lack of concern for what it's doing to the country. And it's a cinch their agents in Congress will try to leverage this mania as well -- their stonewalling of the stimulus is not about fiscal responsibility (who even believes that about Republicans anymore?) but about making Americans more desperate: They've sized up their suckers and decided that since they blame everything else bad that happens to them on black people, Antifa, and Soros, they'll do the same even as Mitch McConnell spits directly in their faces. 

But those of us who always thought of Biden as half a loaf at best know the transfer of power is a milestone, not a finish line tape. Here's hoping for some lucky breaks, and that good policy (if we can get it!) has slightly more appeal than fascism. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

 

 Just found out about this guy. Brilliant! 

(Maybe we can make it a fun game -- Fela had a Zombie, and Zappa a Zombie Woof.

Any others?

 •  Have a blast with some free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down copy -- there's today's edition about what's probably going on at the Biden camp's Be Nice To Republicans office, and my previous column on leftward comrades who have already declared Biden the samer of two evils. And while I'm at it, my review of Mank, now playing, as a public service. 

 •  On Tuesday White Working Class Whisperer Salena Zito -- who has been scraping the clouds for silver linings since Biden won the election -- paid tribute to the brave Republican Attorneys General who have "set their sights on checking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris":

[Adam Piper, the executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association] said the line of defense Republican attorneys general will possess will be more coordinated than ever before. “You will see Republican AGs take bold action to make sure that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cannot unconstitutionally use the phone and the pen the same way Barack Obama attempted to do so,” he said...

As Piper sees it, Republican attorneys general are the one thing that will defend the country during the Biden-Harris administration.

Piper might have said "defend the country from there ever being a Biden-Harris administration," as about a day later 17 of those AGs signed on to Ken Paxton's insane lawsuit to overturn the election in states other than ones they serve, on the grounds that states that are not theirs electing Biden is against the Consti-ma-tution. 

I wonder if Piper could have tipped Zito to the attorneys' plan to destroy democracy and how the squares with their passion for our founding documents. Come to think of it, I wonder if the AGs tipped Piper. In either case, it just goes to show what happens when you praise any Republicans' devotion to American first principles these days -- they'll disprove your thesis within the week.

 •  Haven't looked in for a while on Victor Davis Hanson, the gentleman farmer who blamed Obama for Bonnie and Clyde and the theft (via his Mexican agents) of Hanson's chainsaw. Turns out VDH has taken a strong position not only on Trump but on hydroxychloroquine, the fad COVID cure that Republicans keep trotting out crackpots to promote, notwithstanding it keeps getting debunked by actual scientists -- most recently in this randomized study with results published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. This week VDH asks: Will Joe Biden make the socialistic mistake of turning his back on hydroxychloroquine just because Trump endorsed it? 

Almost immediately [after Trump endorsed the drug], the media, the university and government medical community, and the progressive political opposition declared hydroxychloroquine useless and dangerous. 

"The university and government medical community" apparently means doctors and researchers who are not obvious nutballs and quacks like Jane Orient and Stella "Demon Sperm" Immanuel.

A recent media study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that positive news stories about the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines barely outnumbered negative stories about Trump and hydroxychloroquine.

Never mind what the so-called "scientific studies" say about the drug -- what matters is that the media reports those results, which is liberal bias! I bet a lot of these scientasters will tell you Biden won the election and Jesus didn't endorse Trump, neither!

Trump’s presidential endorsement was apparent proof of rank quackery. 

Well, mainly it was the actual research, though after four years we can probably assume everything Trump says is bullshit and be right >95% of the time.

Yet a few recent second-look studies, especially abroad, suggest that hydroxychloroquine, a dirt-cheap, time-tested anti-malarial drug, can in fact offer help in treating some cases of COVID-19.

VDH declines to link to such studies, natch. 

This Hydroxy Effect — hysterical disavowal of anything Trump has endorsed — is dangerous to the country at large.

The answer is clear: Either Biden admits Trump was actually right about his debunked miracle drug (and a long list of other things Hanson describes as "Trump successes") and starts dishing it out tout suite or else he is simply giving up on COVID-19 -- as liberals claim Trump has; how ironic! -- out of spite and "Trump derangement syndrome." Either way Trump wins! That so many Republican go-getters such as the aforementioned amici AGs will mouth nonsense in defense of Trump's insane claims is disturbing, but to see an old classics professor doing it, even one with Hanson's clownish reputation, is just disgusting.  

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

It's like 70's detective show music -- but good!

•   Sorry to be so light in posting lately -- things are out of hand at the Cott Damn Job. Mind, I do appreciate having one at all, since Tubby's on a rule-or-ruin rampage and his co-saboteur Mitch McConnell is killing the stimulus. (I'm not a Nancy Pelosi fan, but let's be clear about whose mess this is.) Still, this dull shit is making my eyes cross and it's true what they say about getting old -- one gets much less tolerant of tedium than one was in even the last blush of youth. 

But I lament leaving you guys high and dry, so tell you what I'm gonna do: You can have have a crack at no fewer than three (3) free installments of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, that rare Substack newsletter with more laffs than cancel culture crybaby crap! Yours for the clicking:

• A consideration of the difference between how Democrats deal with election conspiracy theories and how Republicans do;
• Another White House scene, this one starring Tubby and Rudy Giuliani;
• In anticipation of Fincher's Mank, an essay on the Biblical angle in Citizen Kane.  

Don't thank me! Were I you, though, I'd consider a subscription. Five days a week for $7 a month -- it's like throwing money away if you don't subscribe. 

•   A month after the election, and sone of the brethren are still only grudgingly starting to acknowledge the results. A. Ridiculous Pseudonym at RedState clearly hopes readers will be attracted by hopeful headline -- "Justice Alito Has Asked Pennsylvania to Respond to Kelly Request for Emergency Injunction -- by December 9" -- and too dumb to realize they're being had when they read through reams of copy to this:

It has now been posted on the Supreme Court’s docket for the case that Justice Alito has directed the attorneys for Pennsylvania to file a response to GOP Congressman Kelly’s Emergency Application for an Injunction to prevent the naming of Electors for Joe Biden by December 9. That date is meaningful.

The “Safe Harbor” provision for naming Electors is December 8.  What that means is that Congress must accept as valid — without allowing any challenge — the Electors named by a State on or before December 8 if those Electors were chosen in the manner prescribed by state law.  The Pennsylvania state officials are not, at this time, prevented by any court order from naming Electors for Joe Biden...

This is how a dollar-a-word man tells his suckers "we lose." Later Ridic Pseud does try to keep hope alive -- "the fact that [Alito] has ordered Pennsylvania to respond does suggest that there may be some sentiment in the Court to take up the case," ha ha -- but when he senses the crowd turning ugly (probably a few thrown tomatoes late) Pseud goes for the more au courant alternative, A Plea for Electoral Integrity:

The bigger problem we have as a nation is that we are acquiescing to voting processes that are not capable of being verified and tested in a meaningful fashion during the time period available under the statutes and Constitutional provisions that determine how Presidents are selected.  

If you interpret this as "Republican state legislatures kept election officials from counting mail-in votes till the last minute so they could scream fraud later," congratulations, you've been paying attention. Hope everyone else has been, too! Meanwhile for the slower members of the RedState congregation, another genius works the Let Me Explain How This Footage of Nothing Is Actually Vote-Stealing grift. You sheeple may think it's been "debunked," but Nick Arams sees the Truth:

It’s important to note that we cannot identify what exactly has been passed, we cannot say for sure that it was a usb and it’s not clear that anyone did anything improper. 

The plot thickens!

You see them looking around and the man’s body partially blocks the camera. The older woman hands something to her daughter. Then some speculated that she hands that thing to the man, that’s not clear. But if you saw action like this on a casino camera in Las Vegas it would certainly perk up the eyes of the security. 

I've been amusing myself imaging Kevin Costner reading these lines in his "back and to the left" voice from JFK, but Tom Waits as Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula works too. 

UPDATE, 12/6: Alito has moved the response date up to December 8. The smart people say don't worry, it makes no difference, which is something I'm awfully tired of having to be told. 

THANKS FOR NOT BEING A PSYCHO.

[This Thanksgiving post is mirrored at my newsletter, Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, in a spirit of comity and mutual respect and laziness. Please, subscriber and non-subscriber alike, enjoy, and don't expect too much of me on Friday.]

The thing that is supposed to be ruining Thanksgiving for all True Sons of Liberty is not bothering me any more than it usually does. But the people it’s bothering the most are certainly making it worse.

I haven’t had a big “family” Thanksgiving in years and while I cherish my childhood memories of a warm, bustling, sage-scented house, I do not miss the traditional Thanksgiving travel chaos I’d have to face to get to such a feast. (I understand travel is vastly lighter this year than before, though this Thanksgiving travel flight animation still makes my skin crawl; it looks like one of those microscopic films of teeming human blood cells.) I wouldn’t mind seeing a few friends, but the missus and I can keep the holiday happily enough ourselves without playing COVID roulette with a bunch of people, at least for this year.

I confess part of my phlegmatism — is that a word? Well, if not, then part of my phlegm — is a reaction to conservative rage over Thanksgiving COVID-19 restrictions, real and imagined.

Conservatives been nuts on this subject from the beginning, of course — at first in total Trumpian “This Is Their New Hoax” denial, then trying to blame the spread of the virus on protesters, then asking why liberals won’t let them shoot grandma up with hydroxychloroquine and/or disinfectant as The Leader prescribed.

Now, thanks in part to their stupidity, we’ve got the explosive third-wave COVID spread across the country that health officials were trying to head off. State officials are, very sensibly, trying to get people to give up Party Size Thanksgiving just this once. (Look, there are vaccines just around the corner! For fuck’s sale show some impulse control!)

But conservatives, in response, are proving that their allegedly serious philosophy is basically all about being a fucking asshole. At the New York Post, Roger Klein:

Not long ago, Americans wouldn’t have even considered the possibility of government agents entering their homes to cancel their Thanksgiving. Then came COVID-19. Gov. Cuomo has imposed a 10-person cap on New Yorkers’ Thanksgiving tables. Three-thousand miles away, the California Department of Public Health imposed a 10 p.m. curfew on millions of Golden Staters. Across the country, other politicians have mandated similar restrictions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released an extensive list of holiday recommendations, as well: no large gatherings, no singing, no loud music, no drinking alcohol, no in-person shopping.

This is a tyranny of the joyless and the ­irrational.

You smart readers have no doubt spotted Klein’s crackpot party trick of conflating actual, mild government restrictions such as Cuomo’s 10-person rule with CDC recommendations that do not have the force of law, and then going SEE, LIBTARDS SAY YOU CAN’T HAVE A BEER! MOLSON LABE! This is typical bad-faith conservative argumentation, and also typical modern conservatism in general, which sees any concession to the public good as an intolerable check on Muh Liberty.

And it’s also alarmingly dangerous, as you can be sure it encourages other wingnut assholes, who might have been at least a little observant of social distancing rules heretofore, to take Thanksgiving as an inspiration for a greater show of patriotism — which, again, in the conservative imagination means being more of an antisocial dick. (Whole studies could be written, I’m sure, on the transformation among conservatives of the idea of patriotism from being about sacrifice to being about selfishness.)

You can see the more intellectual-like, conservatives-with-good-taste version of this at National Review, where Michael Brendan Dougherty complains that some of his relatives may not make it to his big Thanksgiving bash because of “a freaking doorknob” at his brother-in-law’s workplace that revealed the presence of COVID:

This doesn’t mean the doorknob was necessarily a source of great danger — more that someone in the company likely brought the virus in with them recently, and because it was a common area, it was impossible to narrow down the potentially sick workers from the rest of the group.

And so the mandatory human testing began. But, there’s a catch. There is a major pre-holiday rush on COVID-19 tests, and so, we may not know the results until Friday.

Well, gee, that’s too bad, but so what? If his brother-in-law may or may not be infected, can’t we trust him and Dougherty to make a sensible decision about their gathering? Last I heard troopers were not pulling cars over on the New York State Thruway and demanding proof of non-infection.

If the doorknob holds back my brother-in-law and his wife, the only guests we’ll have are the vegan in-laws. I love them dearly. We have roughly the same risk tolerance. I already spent a weekend making turkey stock, and preparing for the big roast turkey.

The turkey is the best part of Thanksgiving. I get up early, butter it up, and coat it inside and out with paprika, salt, and pepper...

Uh, yeah — again, too bad, buddy, but you do know the virus is, like, contagious, right?

Really, family is everything this year. I haven’t seen a co-worker outside of Zoom since March. I haven’t seen friends since summer. The kids wear masks to school, which I think is unnecessary, even objectionable. But they’ve needed their friends more than they need my interference on this matter...

Dude, focus. This is a pandemic. I know you’re a ruff tuff Constitutionamalist, and I’m sure you give the other parents at your kids’ school who seem comfortable and accepting of their masks the stink-eye a patriot owes to collaborationists, but as of Wednesday America has seen 2.8 million infections and 262,020 deaths. I realize you’re a conservative, but can’t you think about someone other than yourself even for just a minute?

Apparently not:

Back on April 1, I wrote that this COVID-19 purgatory was no way to live. That we should try never to get used to it. Politicians and average people were becoming nastier and weirder, and accepting infringements on human life that were unthinkable. A British human-rights lawyer suggested Prime Minister Boris Johnson move Christmas to February...

She’s wrong, Christmas is not an arbitrary date. And although she has the debility of coming from a culture used to dictatorial interference in religion, the liturgical calendar is not subject to even the British parliament...

Welp: We can see Dougherty is gone, well past even that Water The Tree of Liberty thing and deep into Faith of Our Fathers Holy Faith. He wails that he’d have his brother-in-law “at the table even if he was dying of leprosy” and nothing you heathens whom bro-in-law or Dougherty or any of the others at his feast might later infect at the toll booth or the grocery store or handing off the kids at school has anything to say about it.

Horrible as it is to have to share a country with these psychopaths, I also share it with good people such as yourselves — and, as was recently demonstrated, we outnumber those guys. For that and for you I am truly grateful. However you celebrate or don’t, I hope you find plenty to be thankful for, and if it doesn’t seem like enough this year, I hope the days ahead bring blessings enough to more than make up the shortfall.

UPDATE: Looks like the Handmaid did superspreaders a solid:

The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.

The court’s ruling was at odds with earlier ones concerning churches in California and Nevada. In those cases, decided in May and July, the court allowed the states’ governors to restrict attendance at religious services.

Stare decisis my Holy Roman ass, we gotta give Opus Dei some of what they paid for! Jesus loves you and wants you (and anyone you come in contact with) to join him as soon as possible. I bet Dougherty called his brother-in-law first thing and told him to bring the infected doorknob to Thanksgiving, so that he might later bring it to Mass for veneration as a Holy Object. 

John Roberts played Mr. Reasonable in this decision, a role I'm sure he'll fill henceforth with Susan Collins aplomb as SCOTUS' rightwing wackos run riot. Happy Holidays/Pack The Court! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

 Dunno if the '68 Catch My Soul was any good (anyone see it?)
but Jerry Lee is always worth a listen

•   Hey, don't you wish you knew what Tubby was up to behind the fortifications? Here are some White House scenes from my newsletter, unlocked for non-subscribers: Trump with the vaccine team, and Trump giving Mike Pence some news. Plenty more where that came from, so subscribe: It's one of the few Substacks that aren't about how cancelled the author is! 

•   Conservatives continue their Edgeplay of Trump's attempted coup. At the Examiner Edgelord Byron York explains what's really bad about this straight-up assault on democracy:

Thursday's news conference by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis marked a turning point of sorts in the way some Republicans view the president's challenge to election results around the country. Among those Republicans -- Trump supporters all -- there is concern that the attorneys' sensational theories of election fraud are hurting the president's cause rather than helping it. [Emphasis added]

I mean, it's like Seven Days in May meets the "It's a Good Life" episode of The Twilight Zone, but the main thing for York is, how does this get us to 270+1? The rest of the cabal are only slightly further along the road to "Donald Who?" Rod Dreher feels compelled to tell readers, "if Team Trump can produce meaningful evidence, then we have to take it seriously, no matter how much that ticks off Democrats," before admitting -- convinced, apparently, by his hero Tucker Carlson -- that the Giuliani-Powell stuff is Looney Tunes and Trump lost. But no need for too much soul-searching because bothsides:  

I talk about the Left and its crazy beliefs about the founding of America (e.g., The 1619 Project). But we are seeing the same kind of thing on the Right with this post-election psychodrama. 

Leftists have opinions about historical events; Republicans try to overthrow the will of the people. Same diff! At the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan laments what might have been if only Trump had "acted even remotely normal in his first term, if he’d had the intellectual, emotional and spiritual resources to moderate himself, to act respectably." And if my uncle had tits he'd be my aunt. Clearly these guys are hoping everyone will pull themselves together and get back to electing duller, less volatile authoritarians such as Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton -- unless they won't and choose to stick with Trump, in which case they'll get back to forgetting what was dangerous about him in the first place.