HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Stay safe and healthy!

Another example...

of rabid right wingers shutting down free speech again.

This is proposed on the state level. 

It's not protected by the First Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from banning books, as far as I know. 

Does anyone know the law on this?

Oklahoma bill gives parents the right to have a book removed from a school library 

 OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma lawmaker wants to give parents the right to compel public school libraries to remove books that contains objectionable content of a sexual nature or addresses sexual preferences or sexual and gender identity. 

 Under Senate Bill 1142, if just one parent objects to a book it must be removed within 30 days. If it is not, the librarian must be fired and cannot work for any public school for two years. Parents can also collect at least $10,000 per day from school districts if the book is not removed as requested.

Trump supporting states owning the libs one death at a time:

 

*The states with the highest COVID death rates in 2021:

1.    Oklahoma

2.    Alabama

3.    West Virginia

4.    Arizona

5.    Kentucky

6.    Mississippi

7.    Wyoming

8.    Florida

9.    Georgia

10.  South Carolina

*SOURCE:  Johns Hopkins, US Census, CDC   

A new NBCLX analysis details the high cost of low vaccination: 

In 2021, the states with America’s lowest vaccination rates lost residents to COVID at a rate two to five times higher than states with high vaccination rates. 

[skip]

“Certainly you can attribute a substantial number of COVID deaths to a mistrust of public health measures, and you could probably attribute a certain amount of that to political and social trends that have happened over the past decade or more,” Dowdy said. “So I think it's fair to say that those trends have killed people.”

They sure did own the libs by killing themselves, didn't they.

I've read E.O. Wilson's books and have always admired him and his work. R.I.P.

 

From Frans de Waal's public page on Facebook:

RIP E.O. Wilson

Prof. Edward O. Wilson, one of the most distinguished and recognized American scientists in modern history, died on December 26th in Burlington, Massachusetts. He was 92.

Wilson was an inspiration to all naturalists in the world, moving easily from his deep knowledge of ants and their societies to the general synthesizing of scientific ideas and being a pioneer in the field of biodiversity and conservation.

He wrote like a poet and was awarded two Pulitzers for his books.

I've met him on multiple occasions, and he was always gracious and humble even though he was certainly no pushover and would object vigorously to ideas he didn't agree with. His own ideas met with public resistance, especially in the 1970s, and he seemed to enjoy the fight.

We've lost a giant!

Carl Zimmer wrote a nice obituary for the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/.../27/science/eo-wilson-dead.html

See also:

https://eowilsonfoundation.org/e-o-wilson-darwins.../

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

CHRISTMAS DAY DANCING

 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

MERRY CHRISTMAS

The Nutcracker Ballet:

CHRISTMAS EVE 2021

 

This was my father's favorite Christmas song:

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

 

To my P.E. friends:

I wish you a healthy and peaceful holiday.

P.E. will be off for a few days while I enjoy my special family from France as they are here to celebrate Christmas with me.

Joyeux Noel! Buon Natale! Feliz Navidad! Happy Christmas! 

A Love Letter to Trump From One of His Cultists

 

You do remember Ethan Crumbly, don't you? 

Here's a billet doux written by his mother, Jennifer Crumbly, to Donald Trump.

But it could have been written by any of Trump's female cultists -- especially those on The Mother Ship who adore the guy who's been impeached twice and incited an insurrection against his own government and vice president. In fact, much of what Mrs. Cumbly writes sounds EXACTLY like what the women on the Mother Ship write about Trump on a daily basis.  

This is stomach-turning:

Ethan Crumbley's mother is a member of Donald Trump's political cult, a movement fueled by white supremacy, misogyny, sadism, anti-intellectualism and other antisocial tendencies. In a letter to Trump, Jennifer Crumbley wrote:

Mr. Trump, I actually love that you are a bad public speaker because that showed sincerity, and humility. You changed your mind, and you said "so what." You made the famous "grab them in the pussy" comment, did it offend me? No. I say things all the time that people take the wrong way, do I mean them, not always. Do I agree that you should of shown your tax returns? No. I don't care what you do or maybe don't pay in taxes, I think those are personal and if the Gov't can lock someone up over $10,000 of unpaid taxes and you slipped on by, then that shows the corruption. I like that you have failed. I love it even more that those failures taught lessons and made you one of the most successful Business Men in my history.

I love that you are not from the political spotlight, maybe you are the hope that can really uncover the politicians for what I believe they really are. I have high hopes you will shut down Big Pharma, make health care affordable for me and my MIDDLE CLASS family again. I hope you uncover the cure for cancer, because there is one, we all know it, but you are the one to prove it. I'm not scared of your big personality and quick temper….

My parents teach at a school where their kids come from illegal immigrant parents. Most of their parents are locked up. They don't care about learning and threaten to kill my mom for caring about their grades. Do you realize Mr. Trump that they get free tutors, free tablets from our Government so they can succeed. Why cant my son get those things, do we as hard working Americans not deserve that too?...

I believe YOU are the President who will make these things happen. I have NEVER had this much belief in one person, and you are it.

If this blog even makes it to your eyes…thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

Yours Truly,

A hard working Middle Class Law Abiding Citizen who is sick of getting f**ked in the ass and would rather be grabbed by the pussy.

Yeah. That "hard working Middle Class Law Abiding Citizen" gave her disturbed 15-year-old son a lethal weapon (which is illegal in Michigan), ignored his obvious mental instability; and when her son was arrested for killing 4 and maiming 7 others at his school, this "hard working Middle Class Law Abiding Citizen" took off with her husband and hid from the authorities. 

Sounds just about right for a Trump cultist.

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

"Silence the angry man with love.

 

Silence the ill-natured man with kindness.

 

Silence the miser with generosity.

Silence the liar with truth."

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

 

Kimin Kim and Maria Khoreva 

From The Nutcracker:

Who Doesn't Love A Little Fish Opera?

 

Laurence Tribe: 

 U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ruled last week that a corrupt effort to interrupt counting the electoral votes is a federal crime punishable by 20 years in prison even if no violence was contemplated.

GQP STIMULUS HYPOCRISY

 

South Dakota Republican Governor Noem lied to her people when she claimed that the stimulus money from President Biden's policies would go to other states if she refused it. That's not true (What a surprise! She lied!), that money would go back to the Treasury Department. Gov. Noem is taking the money and, like other GQP governors, is taking credit for being able to spend it on badly needed infrastructure programs that she was against.

Oh the hypocrisy!

Strange Things One Reads On The Internet, Part the Gazillionth

Here's what we're up against:  STUPIDITY, against which even the gods contend in vain.

Read this:

A rabid right wing Trumper wrote:

"One might wonder if George Soros is as bad as everyone on the right claims he is, how is it possible that he’s not wearing an orange jumpsuit in federal prison, or buried in an unmarked grave at a remote desert location? Is it possible that Soros is every bit as good at avoiding a “final solution” as is Crone Clinton? I don’t have any facts about Soros, so I cannot say with any degree of certitude that he’s responsible for any of the things I suspect him of masterminding or funding. How would we know if he funded the riots in Ferguson, for example, or gave “seed money” to BLM or Media Matters?

All we know is that Soros is one of the dozens, perhaps even scores, of extremely wealthy Jewish businessmen who use their billions to influence public opinion through the media conglomerates they own and manage … you know, exercising their first amendment rights and their freedom of association to manipulate the less-intelligent masses. Which makes George Soros one of the “well-protected” members of a closed society. Almost as well-protected as Crone Clinton.

I don’t mean to suggest that rich people protect Soros. Not at all — only the extremely wealthy Jews who run this country. And we know this because, in defense of Soros, writers such as Seth Cohen of Forbes Magazine spell it out for us. People hate George Soros because he’s a Jew. Everyone who doesn’t like George Soros, or doesn’t trust George Soros, or who criticizes George Soros, is a filthy anti-Semite. Forget the fact that Jewish George Soros conspired with the Nazis against his own people. "

Sigh.

They don't even read what they write!  This Trumper writes in his very first paragraph that he has NO FACTS ABOUT SOROS! ..."so I cannot say with any degree of certitude that he’s responsible for any of the things I suspect him of masterminding or funding."

And then he goes on to write that "Jewish George Soros conspired with the Nazis against his own people."  (This is a lie. And we know with certainty that it is because he wrote it after stating he knows no facts about Soros. (Here are the facts that this Trumper was too lazy to look up.)

How does one deal with people who don't believe what they themselves have written? Crazy, huh?

But these are Trumpers; and it's painful to read how confused, illogical, fraudulent, and I'm sorry -- (no, I'm not) -- to say just plain DUMB they are!

And he ends with this:

That was only a Meh Moment a long time ago. No, the only reason that people on the right continually challenge Soros is that everyone on the right is anti-Semitic.

Which, when you think about it, is quite revealing.

No. What's "revealing" is the fact that this writer is dishonest.

"How in the world does the media treat the GOP and its continued fidelity to Trump as anything but a repudiation of democracy?"

 

Forget about seeing anything about these jaw-droppingly explosive revelations about the GOP Trump enablers on any Trump-supporting blog or news site. Those GOP news sites and blogs will continue to pretend this assault on the very foundation of our democracy didn't happen or was nothing more than "a tiny bit of rowdiness." That's because they're cultists, and cultists never see their cult leader as anything but a hero, no matter how evil, how crazy, or how big a liar he is.

In fact, these revelations (from actual GOP emails) from Trump's inner circle will prove how Trump tried to pervert our democracy, steal an election, and have his thugs assault his own vice president so that he, Trump, could decertify the electoral college votes and install himself as the illegitimate POTUS.

Everyone's hair should be on fire! 

The House committee now has solid evidence of Donald J. Trump's coup to overthrow the government of the United States.

Jennifer Rubin:

"The extent of this effort reached the highest levels of our government, and it runs right through Mr. Meadows.” 

"Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) used the wording from the federal obstruction statute to ask whether former president Donald Trump “corruptly” sought to “obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceedings.” 

"Unlike many in the media and the White House, they made clear this was an attempt to overthrow democracy."

[SNIP]

"Cheney read text messages sent to Meadows on Jan. 6 by hosts Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity, who all pleaded for him to get Trump to stop the Capitol violence. They knew how serious it was; they knew Trump could have stopped it. Yet since that day, they have all defended (if not revered) Trump and played down the seriousness of the scheme to overthrow the government. (Fox did not carry the hearing Monday evening, needless to say.)" 

"As Cheney said, 'These text messages leave no doubt ... multiple Fox News hosts knew the president needed to act immediately.' And they leave no doubt about their cringeworthy pandering to Trump and his base, whom they helped radicalize." 

"As Ingraham declared, 'This is hurting all of us.' ”

[SNIP] 

 "Donald Trump Jr. apparently sent multiple texts pleading with Meadows to persuade Trump to stop the violence. Cheney read from some: 'He’s got to condemn this s--- ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough. ... We need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far. And gotten out of hand.' Meadows responded: 'I am pushing it hard. I agree. '

In short, Trump refused to heed pleas to call off the mob, endangering the lives of lawmakers and the vice president and grinding a constitutional process to a halt. Even Trump’s son knew this was a devastating event."

*********************

We are living within a pandemic of ignorance and deceit. All the evidence is before us, and Trumpublicans will do nothing more than shrug. 

Trump's cultists idolize him, as he has helped legitimize the basest feelings of their nature. Nearly half this country hold no truths, no matter how black and white, to be self evident. They are a plague helping to decimate what's left of our institutions.

Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski: 

What did we learn? 

1. All the Fox hosts had Meadows' cell number.

 

2. They either didn’t have Trump’s, or he was blowing them off. 

3. They believed Trump and only Trump had the ability to control the mob.

4. They believed they had influence over Trump and could get him to do what they wanted.

 

5. Meadows either never relayed their messages to Trump, or he blew them off.

 

6. Everyone in Trump’s orbit -- media, friends, WH staff, Cabinet, family, and Members of Congress -- were begging him to tell them to stop but he refused to do anything.

GUEST POST BY DAVE MILLER

 

A Thank You to P.E. commenter and guest poster, Dave Miller, for this thoughtful contribution:

It has recently been reported in Forbes and elsewhere that after a ten month audit of the 2020 elections in Wisconsin, which President Trump lost by over 20,000 votes, no voter fraud has been found.

 

Here are a few excerpts from an exhaustive dive into those election results by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

 

•   In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. We found limited instances where ineligible persons voted or attempted to cast ballots. We found no evidence of more than one vote being cast in the name of the same voter. And our analysis of the results and voting patterns does not give rise to an inference of fraud.

 

•   Donald Trump won communities that used Dominion voting machines with 57.2%, an increase from 2016. WILL’s review found that jurisdictions that used Dominion voting machines had no effect on the expected vote total.

 

Take a moment and let the results of this study sink in. Deep. Because these results essentially mirror the results we saw in Arizona. In both of these states, Former President Trump and his allies have, without any evidence, alleged widespread fraud. The reported results support the views from Secretaries of State across the land, from both political parties who under penalty of perjury, attested that our recent elections were free, fair and devoid of voter fraud.

 

Now, that’s not to say there were not problems.

 

As the Wisconsin report shows, there were times there, and in other states, where officials bent or even created new election procedures out of whole cloth, potentially breaking state and local laws. However, this was mostly what state officials felt was prudent given that we had to hold a national election in the middle of a pandemic.

 

However, this is the crux of the matter, to date… even with the anomalies brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic that caused political leaders in both conservative and left leaning states to change election procedures, audits show few people voted who were not entitled to vote, or voted multiple times.

 

Studies and audits also show that the widespread memes of dead people voting in the election are either false, or when it was found, mostly involved Republicans. Other studies and research lay waste to the claim of far-right conservative voters that millions of illegal voters stepped up to vote for and swing the election to Joe Biden. In the words of Lorraine Minnite, Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University and reported by the Austin Statesman and other outlets, that view is “preposterous” and not supported by evidence or the facts.

 

In most of the closely contested battleground states, votes were recounted numerous times and cross checked against voter rolls to ensure only registered voters voted. Additionally, in spite of what bloggers have been saying around the country, we did not have more votes cast than we have registered voters.

 

Each time, those recounts, studies and audits confirmed the original results. Joe Biden won the presidency fair and square in the 2020 elections

 

In an election where by and large, Republicans did well, President Trump was unable to match results seen elsewhere in his party. Put another way, voters supported the GOP, but rejected President Trump.

 

All of this affirms that the 2020 elections were, in the words US Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary Chris Krebs, a Trump appointee, the “most secure in US history.” All of this shows that President Trump was not cheated out of an election win, but rather, he lost.

 

The question now is why those on the right will continue to believe and share, without evidence, the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump.

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

 

The Rockettes:

I was today years old when I found out...

that it's FOUR COLLY BIRDS, not "calling birds," in the Twelve Days of Christmas song.

In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” one’s true love bestows, among other things, a partridge, two turtle doves, three French hens, and four calling birds. Right? Maybe not. The “calling” birds were originally “colly” birds, according to a blog post by Peter Armenti, the literature specialist for the Digital Reference Section at the Library of Congress. “Colly bird?” 

It’s essentially a black bird, Armenti said Wednesday. Although both “calling” and “colly” have appeared in versions of the song, “colly,” which is derived from the Old English word for coal, predates “calling” by more than a century, he wrote. And the reference is to the color of the bird, not its voice.

I'll never be the same!

By now...

 everyone's heard about the homeless, and probably mentally disturbed, man who set fire to the FAUX NOOZ Xmas tree.

To hear the NOOZers' unceasing reports on this unfortunate incident, you'd think the wrecked Xmas tree signified the end of the civilized world. They couldn't let it go because they love to feed their viewers on fear and victimhood. The head of the RNC even blamed President Biden for the vandalized tree! 

 "From its early reports, though, Fox News’s on-air team framed the tree burning within the context of a broader story that has been a continuous theme on the network, particularly during the Biden administration: an argument that criminality is on the rise in the United States." 

 FBI Report on Crime Shows Decline in Violent Crime Rate for Third Consecutive Year

 

GQPers SENDING THEIR BEST LETHAL WEAPONS MESSAGES AT CHRISTMAS

 

Because nothing represents the "Spirit of Christmas" more than lethal weapons in the hands of children and adults.

These Trumpublican Christmas cards represent their Savior's message of "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men." 

Or not.

Isn't it beautiful to see children holding lethal weapons in front of a Xmas tree? 

"O Come, All Ye Locked and Loaded!" 

"Silencer Night; Holes in Body Night, Nothing's Calm, They're not Bright"

"Cocking Your Guns 'Round the Xmas Tree, Have a Bloody Holiday!"

"Deck the Halls with Belts of Ammo! Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-tat-tat!"

"We Four Kids of Boebert Are Armed."

"Bang! Hear the Guns! Christmas is Here!"

"On the First Day of Xmas My Mother Gave to Me An AR Fiiiiiiifteen!"

"Chestnuts Roasting; Mamma Yells 'Open Fire!' "

"We Wish You A Gun-Filled Xmas and a shooty New Year!" --Xmas Song Titles by S.K.

Here, once again, are more "Christians" spreading the word of their "Prince of Peace," Jesus!

The happy, smiling faces of Trumpublicans holding lethal weapons 

in front of a Christmas tree!

Jeff Tiedrich

@itsJeffTiedrich

what kind of shithole party falls all over itself in a mad dash to see who can shove the most guns possible into the hands of their children

10:29 AM · Dec 8, 2021

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Tell me again where Christ said “use the commemoration of my birth to flex violent weapons for personal political gain”? lol @ all the years Republicans spent on cultural hysteria of society “erasing Christmas and it’s meaning” when they’re doing that all on their own

"The GOP has become the party of death."

We interrupt today's blogpost to present one of the GQP's Death & Destruction cheerleaders, Republican US Senator, Roger Wicker: 

 On Fox News, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) floats the idea of bombing Russian military assets -- and says he wouldn't even rule out a nuclear strike.

Because, as TFG once said,  we have nuclear weapons so "why can't we use them?" 

This is a US Senator going straight to the nuclear option to solve a problem, and TFG whined about not being able to do so while he was POTUS.

Why would any sane person EVER vote for a Trumpublican?  

How is the GOP’s coronavirus recklessness compatible with being pro-life?

Michael Gerson, WaPo:

"The core of the Trump movement has always been more interested in political conspiracies, White identity politics, persecution fantasies and disdain for elites. Remember that Trump himself was initially supportive of “partial-birth” abortion. As a presidential candidate, however, Trump issued one of U.S. history’s most effective political bribes: He set out a list of conservative judicial nominees for the Supreme Court, promised to pick from among them and then kept his word. 

 Now, with a conservative legal challenge to Roe nearing fruition, anti-abortion advocates are understandably pleased about their political alliance with the anti-government populists. Yet even after the effective overturn of Roe, years of political battles await at both the state and federal levels. And it is hard to see how a GOP increasingly dedicated to needless death can carry an antiabortion message. The effective end of Roe would be an ideal point for responsible pro-lifers to assert their position on abortion as part of a broader culture of life, including the unborn and their mothers, the old and ill, people with intellectual disabilities and refugees fleeing oppression. Instead, in the Trump era, the state of Texas is taking the messaging lead on the topic, ensuring that the antiabortion movement seems as radical, punitive and vicious as possible. 

 How can the anti-vaccine ideals of “my body, my choice” Republicanism — which refuses even the easiest and safest sacrifices to protect the life of a neighbor — coexist with a “culture of life”? One is a reckless purveyor of needless death. The other, at its best, is a movement of human rights. It is clear enough which is ascendant. The GOP has become the party of death."

Let's see The GOP is . . . 

For the death penalty  

Against universal health care  

Against sensible gun control  

Against setting a leadership example to mitigate the effects of Covid 

Against vaccine mandates

Against raising the minimum wage 

Against paid maternity/parental leave 

For laws outlawing mask mandates and distancing 

For characterizing Jan. 6 as just a bunch of tourist not worth investigating .

Indifferent to the lowering of American life expectancy, maternal, and child deaths 

Almost all "pro-life" folks really don't care about life AFTER birth. That said, how does a "pro-lifer" square his/her pro-life views with the fact that, after a child is born alive, it has a much greater chance of dying if it is around unvaccinated people, who can infect it with a deadly disease? 

How much longer before the Republican Party self-immolates? This is a really slow-burning fire but eventually, it's going to turn into a full-blown blaze. This is like the snake consuming itself from the tail. Will it take TFG  croaking, developing full-blown dementia, or some other medical condition to remove him from the scene? 

What does the GQP do after he's gone? He's made the the once relevant GOP into his brand. Without Trump, it just becomes a collection of lilliputian imitators with an abhorrent "zeitgeist." Naturally, the MAGA crowd has not considered that, not that I care. 

Of course, prison time could also do the trick. Whatever it is, I keep hoping that in the short or long run, his influence on America will wane. I have no hope for his supporters, they're irredeemable, 

But, as Trump's brand of politics shrinks, think about what Tolstoy, in War and Peace, says about General Kutuzov, the Russian general who was the victor in the war against Napoleon in 1812: He counselled his generals to allow "time and patience" to work against the enemy. 

We hope, in the meantime, that the nation doesn't disintegrate.