Author Archives: Hue White

Remember Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R-TX) and his offer of a million bucks for evidence of voter fraud? For completeness, I offer this Houston Chronicle update:

All John Fetterman wants for Christmas is the $3 million he says Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick owes him.

The Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania has been trolling his Republican counterpart for weeks to collect on the $1 million Patrick offered in November for evidence of fraud in the Nov. 3 election. Three supporters of President Donald Trump have now been charged in separate voter fraud schemes in Pennsylvania. Fetterman says they should all count for bounty purposes.

Which is fine for justifying schadenfreude – savor – but Lt. Governor Fetterman’s expostulation is really the most important part of this exchange:

Fetterman says he is serious — about debunking the false allegations being thrown at his state. He has taken the lead in Pennsylvania pushing back on bogus claims of voter fraud circulated by Trump and his allies. Patrick — honorary chairman of Trump’s campaign in Texas — and his million-dollar reward are helping to disprove those claims, Fetterman says.

“While it’s undoubtedly and undeniably hilarious these cases involved Trump voters and their dead mothers, it’s irrelevant because it documents how truly rare voter fraud is and how impossible it is to truly pull it off,” Fetterman said.

If Trump and his allies are utterly incapable of bringing a credible case of systemic voter fraud or procedural irregularities to the attention of judge, whether appointed by Clinton, Bush, Obama, or Trump himself, then the only valid conclusion that any sane, mature, adult American can reach is that none occurred, and that Biden won the election.

These are the procedures we’ve refined & followed for more than 200 years, and to abandon them now is to abandon the very precepts by which the United States has been successful. Republicans love to toss around the word ‘radical’ in descriptions of Democrats, but it should be apparent that the only anti-American radicals are Republicans who persist in believing in systemic voter fraud.

And, by the way, Lt Governor Patrick’s offer, as I noted before, is the offer of a third-rater. What would he do if Trump’s victory of Florida was abruptly threatened by the revelation of systemic voter fraud on Trump’s behalf? Frantically withdraw or amend the offer?

Prominent Republicans: Don’t bother to look, there’s no good apples here.

It’s simply another symptom of the self-inflicted moral bankruptcy plaguing today’s Republican Party. For the honest independent, it’s difficult to list any prominent Republican name with pride, while those on the shameful side of the ledger overflow the bin.

It’s old news that President Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act (2020) because it didn’t strip certain protections from social media companies, but Heather Cox Richardson’s summary of it sparked an odd thought. First, the summary:

Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, which specifies how the defense budget will be spent, on Wednesday, December 23. The NDAA has passed with bipartisan majorities since the 1960s when it first began, and presidents have always signed it. But Trump has chosen to veto it, on the grounds that it calls for the renaming of U.S. military bases named for Confederate generals and that it does not strip social media companies of protection from liability when third parties post offensive material on them. [bold mine]

Protection from liability? So, let’s stipulate Congress gives in on the issue.

How do the social media empires respond?

Do they shut down – permanently – offending accounts?

President Trump is a leader in the lies and conspiracy theories category of social media posting. Is President Trump looking to have his own accounts deleted? After all, stripping social media companies of protections means they’ll have to protect themselves by minimizing their exposure.

And this applies to all social media platforms. Like, say, Parler, the reportedly new social media platform used by right-wing fringe types. A few lawsuits tossed at Parler and they’ll either collapse or begin to frantically clean up spewing accounts.

No, I don’t think President Trump has thought this demand through. Neither has Donald J. Trump, private citizen. Losing his braying megaphone of lies would be a deadly strike against his ego.

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The Death Kiss (1932) is a mostly ineffectual comedy that doubles as an average murder mystery. Leading man Miles Brent, on set and in action, is approached and kissed by a strange woman, the leading lady, who then wanders off. Brent, shaking off the kiss, begins to proceed about his business, only to be gunned down.

The production? “The Death Kiss.” But when it’s time for take two, Brent fails to jump to his feet: he’s really dead, a bullet through his heart. We’re off on a clumsy, gallumphing run, as the studio police, the city police, and scriptwriter Franklyn Drew, who writes detective novels on the side, fall in to the chase. But when the path leads to the leading lady and former wife of the murdered actor, Marcia Lane, Drew, who’s sweet on her, becomes disenchanted with the shortcomings of the police and begins a deeper investigation.

The humor, while perhaps accurate in its send-up of the inner workings of movie production, fails to translate to the screen in a useful way. But the murder mystery is mildly clever, including an intriguing method to the initial murder, a second murder which is set up to look like a suicide, and Drew, who tramples all over the evidence from here to Timbuktu.

In the end, it’s nothing compelling, but it is pleasant – if murder strikes you as a pleasant way to spend an evening. Or, if you’re a Bela Lugosi completist, you should also see this. He keeps his accent nearly imperceptible, and shows he had normal acting chops as well as his more traditional horror skills.

The mystery actually makes sense, as gradually more and more information is revealed, and in the end the bad guy gets his. Yay!

Average herd of New Jersey hitchhikers.

The Addams Family (2019) is another entry in the growing collection of films and TV series based on Charles Addams’ family of anti-society people. This version, an origins story, is animated and derives its artistic inspiration from Addams’ original cartoons of the family – an impossibly thin Morticia, the squat, debonair Gomez, and on and on.

So we quickly learn that Lurch is … well … that would be sayin’, as they say. But I do feel free to remark that, based on his entrance into the family, there may be something to be said for giving those who have been put away as mad a place in society. Give them a role, even as crazed as Lurch’s, and the frenzy’s energy may be absorbed by devotion to the role.

But the story has twin centers: Pugsley’s rite of passage, a desperate affair of uncertain judging and physical strenuousness, a veritable microcosm of the family’s search for a place on the landscape, and the evil machinations of a local TV star and interior designer who is bent on, well, being evil.

She’ll fit right in, won’t she? But only if Wednesday permits.

There’s room to hate the art – I didn’t care for Uncle Fester, for example, and my Arts Editor felt Kitty needed to be redone – but the story rarely drags and acknowledges the realities of normal society only when it absolutely must.

And who ever thought of a pink mansion for the Addams?

It’s not quite compelling – but it’s fun.

The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackerman, is not a dry, academic work on our avian cousins, but rather an exploration, usually by way of anecdote and personal observation, of the varied habits of birds. From hunting to courtship to raising offspring – or not – Ackerman provides a well-written and frequently fascinating exploration of the vast range of behaviors followed by birds – and explores the question of just how much of that is instinct, and how much of it is learned.

From the brush turkeys who get no parental care at all, the brood-parasites such as the infamous cuckoo, to the clowns of the mountains, the kea parrots who frolic in the snow and show impressive intelligence, this is an easy and interesting read.

Where do I buy a crub?

From Harvest Rock Church, Inc. et al. v. Gavin Newsom:

Plaintiffs paint a stark picture. They claim that Tier 1 “totally prohibit[s] religious worship services of any kind and any number.” (Motion 3.) This is not true. The First Amendment has not taken a sabbatical. Californians may still worship, attend services, pray, and otherwise exercise their religious freedoms. They just may not do so in ways that significantly increase the likelihood of transmission of a virus which has claimed more than three hundred thousand American lives in less than one year. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The First Amendment may not be used to make it one.

Slapping the religiously entitled down, one church at a time.

But we can also guess that it’ll be rulings such as this that the far-right will use to prop-up their So sad are we, we’re such victims! propaganda. Sigh.

The post is better than any stills, really. Another mark of the 1970s,

Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) is a bizarre slasher movie in which its biggest star, John Carradine, is reduced to just a couple of minutes of screen time, restricted to writing on notepads and ringing a little bell one might find at a desk. He manages to gasp out all of a single line of dialog – I think.

But the movie does have the oddest charm about it, as proven by the fact that we not only finished it, but we kept looking at each other, mystified concerning where it was going. After an opening in which we learn the previous owner, Wilford Butler, self-immolated twenty years earlier, leaving the property to his grandson, Jeffery, lawyer John Carter shows up at a magnificent ruined East Coast mansion, much younger mistress in tow, to inspect it. From there, he travels onward to the City Council and states that he’s authorized to sell it to them for $50,000 cash – perhaps 20% of its value, he states.

The Council is its own collection of characters with hidden pasts, from mayor to sheriff to the mute newspaperman. None appear to be happy people, but they tell the lawyer that they are interested and will attempt to raise the money. The lawyer returns to the mansion and the arms of his mistress, and, well, as this is a slasher flick, we can guess what happens to them.

But it’s just the start, and it’s not clear who’s providing the horror. The caretaker, who remains a figure in the dark? The daughter who birthed the grandson? Random mad slasher? The daughter of the sheriff, who, surprised by a random stranger who appears from nowhere, meets him with a gun? And, hey, how does that early scene showing someone escaping from the local insane asylum play into this mess?

But at the denouement, we learn the horror is much worse than a simple mad man with a big knife. Incorporating a scene which was filmed either with deep incompetence or admirable innovation – take your pick of adjective, but at the end of the sequence I was unsettled – this sickly moral horror piled on other moral horror on yet another moral horror, all filmed in a decayed manner which emphasizes the fragmentation of the moral depravities on which the film is based, makes the initial murders almost trivial in comparison to what has happened in the past.

I cannot possibly recommend this, but it was actually fascinating as we kept juggling elements and trying to make rational sense out of it. The era sensibilities vis-à-vis the art of movie-making, much like that of Britain’s, is that slightly brittle style of bad audio, unclear visuals, and apparently unsympathetic characters, but these technical facets gradually recede into the background as the bodies pile up and the mysteries of the characters become paramount.

Enjoy? Be horrified? Are those the same things? After this, you tell me. Merry Christmas!

P.S. As it was never copyrighted, here it is:

Kickback:

A kickback is an illegal payment intended as compensation for preferential treatment or any other type of improper services received. The kickback may be money, a gift, credit, or anything of value. Paying or receiving kickbacks is a corrupt practice that interferes with an employee’s or a public official’s ability to make unbiased decisions. Kickbacks are often referred to as a type of bribery. [Investopedia]

Used by me here. I receive annual training from my employer that emphasizes kickbacks will result in termination. Since I’m not in Sales, it doesn’t really apply, but the training is still mandatory.

This will be a short feature, since Trump has less than a month left in office. These are deals that appear to be ripe for benefiting Trump personally. Retroactively, we can include this deal with the United Arab Emirates, as well as the other deals for Muslim nations to normalize relations with Israel (see previous link).

Here’s the next deal on the Kickback Watch:

The Trump administration has formally notified Congress that it intends to sell nearly $500 million in precision bombs to Saudi Arabia, a transaction that is likely to fuel criticism from lawmakers who object to arming the Persian Gulf nation over its record of human rights abuses and stifling dissent and role in the war in Yemen. …

The gulf monarchy, with which the Trump administration has forged close ties, has been the subject of bipartisan criticism over its war in neighboring Yemen, where Saudi jets, using U.S. precision munitions, have repeatedly bombed civilian targets as the kingdom has sought to weaken Iranian-linked rebels there. [WaPo]

That the Trump Administration is trying to sneak it past the media and public by announcing it on December 24^th is telling. But this is particularly worrisome:

An individual familiar with the sale, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment to the news media, said the deal includes 7,500 “Paveway IV” precision-guided bombs, worth $478 million, which under the terms of the agreement would be produced in the kingdom.

Read that as “technology transfer” – from advanced science to manufacturing techniques. If I were a fly on the wall in the Oval Office, my guess is that the Saudis refused to pay a kickback without that clause.

Merry Christmas, everyone. The Sun is giving you a gift of a new sunspot, which have been few and far between in the last few years.

From NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Another Nutcracker Suite has arisen, and I can only pity Vice President Mike Pence:

Hours before President Donald Trump retweeted a message for his vice president to “act” in stopping the ratification of the Electoral College, he met for more than an hour in the Oval Office with Mike Pence, whom he has complained recently isn’t doing enough to support his bid to overturn the election.

The discussion was “entirely unrelated” to the eventual tweet, one person familiar with the matter said, though would not specify whether the issue of the January 6 ratification in Congress arose. The two men went separate ways for the holiday. [CNN/Politics]

Pence will be in charge of the counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6^th. By bringing him to the attention of the Trump cultists, Trump  has given Pence two unpalatable choices:

1. Ignore Trump’s pathetic treaty. Trump’s cultists will hate Pence forever, and his political career is over. He cannot win an election without the support of the cult.
2. Somehow bollix up the count. We can then assume Trump will desperately try to hold on to power for as long as possible, and pick his own successor. It’ll be a member of his family, not Pence. Additionally, if it fails, Pence’s perfidy will be remembered, and his political career is over.

As observed by many, for Trump loyalty is for suckers, and Pence has been loyal even when he could have led a 25^th Amendment maneuver to remove Trump from power, and made it stick.

Now, I would be shocked if he ever wins another election.

The kid did good work.

Identity Unknown (1945) follows a man’s search for his name and identity in World War II. Caught in a blast in France that killed three other servicemen, he alone survives – but not all of him. He’s forgotten who he is, and all of their dog tags were blown off and recovered, but with no clue as to who is who – and fingerprint checks take a long time when computers don’t exist and there’s a war going on.

Sent back to the United States, with a list of potential names and homes in his pocket, he takes the name Johnny March^[1], and impulsively decides to search for his identity. He jumps a train and begins his exploration of America’s id.

He encounters a woman who assumes she’s a widow, a little boy who thinks March is his Daddy, a gang war in progress, and a farm auction, and in each manages to make a positive contribution. He’s the quintessential Everyman, proving that it isn’t position, but what’s in the heart that matters.

It is not as compelling as it might have been, but it kept us interested and watching. Its mystery keeps it in the ballpark, and its humanity keeps it watchable.

And here it is now. It’s a feel-good movie, no doubt about it, and if that’s what you’re about, this may be for you.

¹ Yes, yes, I know that “Johnny March” is the same name I mentioned in the recent review of The Power Of The Whistler (1945). So I screwed up, eh? I think the name in that movie was simply “George.” Mea culpa!

Over the last couple of days we’ve seen Fox News, NewsMax, and OANN retracting or otherwise whitewashing claims aired on their networks of corruption of voting machines, under threat of lawsuit from SmartMatic.

And today there’s a new lawsuit in the wings:

An executive for a voting machine company that has been the target of conspiracy theories in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss and been baselessly accused of swinging the results against the President is suing his campaign and conservative media figures for defamation.

Trump has called Dominion Voting Systems “a disaster,” and his supporters have pushed the conspiracy theory that the company deleted votes for Trump on its voting equipment and that Dominion’s director of product strategy and security, Eric Coomer, helped subvert the election. …

The lawsuit names as defendants the Trump campaign, Rudy Giuliani, Trump adviser Sidney Powell, conservative media outlets One America News Network and Newsmax Media, the right-wing website Gateway Pundit, and Colorado businessman and activist Joseph Oltmann, among others. CNN has reached out to those named in the lawsuit. [CNN/Politics]

And I’m left wondering:

Is the lawsuit the point?

Or is the legal process of discovery the point?

Will there be some interesting information that comes popping out if these lawsuits are not settled prior to reaching court?

On this snowy night here in Minnesota, that’s what is coming to mind.

That would be the Senator McConnell’s (R-KY) in the wringer over the recently passed Covid-19 stimulus bill:

“I’m asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2000 or $4000 per couple,” Trump said in a video released on Twitter. “I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items in this legislation or to send me a suitable bill.”

The extraordinary message came after he largely left negotiations over the measure to lawmakers and his Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump did not explicitly threaten to veto the bill, but said he was dissatisfied with its final state. [CNN/Politics]

McConnell’s signature behavior over the years has been No victories for Democrats! Even more so than Only conservatives need apply for positions in the judiciary!

But this bill is a response to the Senate race runoffs in Georgia, a carefully crafted attempt at buying votes for incumbents Loeffler and Perdue. If the benefits of the bill are expanded to more money for direct subsidies to citizens, that will be a direct blow to his creed. Democrats will be able to use it in future campaigns. Democrats used Trump to increase the emergency benefit to you, while Republicans had to be dragged into it! Although Republicans denied increased benefits to you for no good reason! is also an effective slogan.

And the Democrats have seized on this opportunity:

Still, Trump’s message appeared to be greeted favorably by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tweeted: “Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks.”

“At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent,” she said. “Let’s do it!”

Will Republicans tell their beloved President NO! and risk the wrath of the wretched Trump cult?

Or will they fold and hand the Democrats a victory?

This is the problem of supporting a narcissist as your Leader. Trump has no loyalty to anyone but himself, and he has been disappointed that most Republicans are not willing to cross the line into autocracy territory and hand him what he thinks would be power, so he’s putting the squeeze on them by pushing on McConnell, who’s much more a leader than newbie Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) or any unelected official. This is a tug of war between McConnell and Trump.

It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

One of the complaints of the Skeptic community concerning journalism on such subjects as homeopathy and other quack remedies is that the journalists think that balance is the arch-goal, and often the only goal.

Therefore, the Skeptic community should be cheering Jennifer Rubin’s piece in WaPo yesterday on the next step the journalistic community must take to avoid enabling autocrat-wannabes in the future:

Fairness comes not in serving up equal portions of lies and truth, but in accurately separating, as best the media can at that moment, what is true and what is false. Instead of “balance,” which denotes an artificial leveling of the scales, reporters should aim for perspective, context and completeness. And, most critically, notions about moral equivalency between the parties and the assumption of sincerity and honesty from Republicans must be rethought in an era in which so many Republicans are indifferent, if not hostile, to truth and democracy.

Quacks, would-be theocrats, and other believers in the ridiculous may hate it, but facts and the study of reality – which is science – take precedence over their wants. Journalists are not finished when they’ve presented “both sides” of a subject. They need to also survey the relevant science, whether it be directly (hard), or by interviewing an acknowledged expert in the field (also hard, as sometimes an “expert” is either a fellow crackpot, or someone outside of their field). For example, a clash between a homeopath and a skeptic should include the fact that there are no solid scientific studies (which would be studies that have not been shot down by scientific criticisms about procedures or analysis, including making allowances for the well-known, yet mystifying, placebo effect) showing homeopathy has any efficacy.

“In fact, given the number of such studies that failed to show the effect, homeopathy is probably bullshit.” This might be a bit harsh, but accurate.

A good journalist would also include a short paragraph on how homeopathy might result in treatment delay, which, in the case of serious illness, can shrink life expectancy.

I think Rubin has done a service for the entire journalistic world here, not just for political reporters.

But this might be it:

It’s never aliens, until it is. Today, news leaked in the British newspaper The Guardian of a mysterious signal coming from the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, a star too dim to see from Earth with the naked eye that is nevertheless a cosmic stone’s throw away at just 4.2 light-years. Found this autumn in archival data gathered last year, the signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI)—a so-called “technosignature.” Now, speaking to Scientific American, the scientists behind the discovery caution there is still much work to be done, but admit the interest is justified. “It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it,” says Andrew Siemion from the University of California, Berkeley.

Most curiously, it occupies a very narrow band of the radio spectrum: 982 megahertz, specifically, which is a region typically bereft of transmissions from human-made satellites and spacecraft. “We don’t know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single bin in frequency” such as this one, Siemion says. Perhaps, he says, some as-yet-unknown exotic quirk of plasma physics could be a natural explanation for the tantalizingly concentrated radio waves. But “for the moment, the only source that we know of is technological.” [Scientific American]

It’s quite convenient that the apparent source is the closest star system to ourselves, isn’t it? While everyone says they expect this to turn out to be natural or from an Earth-based system, there’s an undertone of excitement.

It’d be quite a turnaround, after this mess of a 2020, if 2021 was the year in which we confirmed there’s someone else out there?

If you’re in the mood for amusement, the blizzard of Presidential pardons that began today should provide it. First, toss out the idea that pardons should be used to correct injustices.

The goal here is to understand what each pardon is trying to accomplish for Donald J. Trump.

For example, the pardons of campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former NSA General Michael Flynn (admittedly an early pardon), and others in this category are a signal that President Trump will take care of those who are willing to break the rules on his behalf. This guarantees a flock of potential criminals applying for jobs with a future Trump campaign.

The pardons of former Republican Congressmen Collins, Hunter, who I’ve mentioned before for their missteps, and Stockman signal that if you’re a loyal elected Republican official, don’t be too worried about corruption, Trumpie will take care of you. This applies to those politicians who signed the legislation Texas v Pennnsylvania, especially. All they have to do is get Trump, or his designated ideological successor, reelected, and any corruption problems will be resolved.

See? It’s fun! But those are the easy ones. How about the non-violent drug offenders? That’s a bit more of a challenge, isn’t it?

An addendum to the last part of the Campaign Promises Retrospective series:

With his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and GOP leaders, President Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss.

The president’s orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a pardoned felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover.

Members of the group assembled­ in the Oval Office on Friday for a marathon meeting that lasted more than four hours and included discussion of tactics ranging from imposing martial law in swing states to seizing voting machines through executive fiat. The meeting exploded into shouting matches as outside advisers and White House aides clashed over the lack of a cohesive strategy and disagreed about the constitutionality of some of the proposed solutions. …

In [the place of relatively mainstream Administration advisors such as White House Counsel Pat Cipollone], Trump has welcomed figures from the political fringes who have offered him optimism and ideas for how to stay in power. Their brazen proposals have rankled some of the president’s aides and allies, who have warned that attempting to invoke the military or challenge states’ election processes through executive power would violate the Constitution and backfire politically, according to officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. [WaPo]

Anyone who wishes to contend that Trump has hired the best must now attempt to justify the appearance beside Trump of the likes of Giuliani, Sidney Powell, MacEnany, and even worse figures who have little respect for democracy – but a hunger for power.

But the striking feature for me is that Trump does not stare hard reality in the face and deal with it. Instead, he seeks those who say what he wants to hear, without regard to the quality of the source. In this, he’s emblematic of the Fox News viewers who flock to Fox News not because of excellence, but because it tells them what they want to hear – especially its editorial side –  such as that the election was rigged.

The recent walk-back of Fox News‘ Lou Dobbs’ claims in that arena must have been quite a shock to them.

I have to wonder how many Fox News viewers will find in the loss, and despicable post-loss behavior, of President Trump an allegory for their own behavior – and how they should modify it.

And that doesn’t mean moving on to OANN and NewsMax, who are vying to replace Fox News in the affections of the conservative viewer. It means seeking facts, not lies, opposing viewpoints and not precious coddling.

President Trump didn’t seek out and hire the best of the best for his Administration. He sought and hired those who shared his predilection for conspiracy theories and amateur ideas of America’s place in the world – and how we should behave.

And we’ve been paying the price for that in prestige and lives.

While some conservatives still believe that the mainstream media, such as CNN, are irrationally against President Trump, I think his actions of late – as if his impeachment and failed but near conviction wasn’t enough – have proven that their reporting has been accurate and fair.

So here’s CNN/Politics‘ Stephen Collinson today:

Joe Biden will be president in 30 days. Until then, the question is how much damage can be done by a vengeful, delusional soon-to-be ex-President swilling conspiracy theories, whose wild anti-democratic instincts are being encouraged by fringe political opportunists.

Donald Trump will retain the awesome powers of the presidency until noon on January 20, and there’s never been a time when he has been subject to as few restraining influences or has had a bigger incentive to cause disruption.

The President is spending day after day in his White House bunker, entertaining crackpot theories about imposing martial law, seizing voting machines and staging an intervention in Congress on January 6 to steal the election from Biden.

Surrounded by the last dead-end loyalists, Trump is flinging lies and political venom like King Lear in a crumbling Twitter kingdom, alarming some staffers about what he will do next.

If you have any doubts, Professor Richardson provides this bit, although I looked at her endnotes and I’m not sure where this information about his empty schedule comes from:

As he descends into the fever swamps, Trump has largely given up any pretense of governing. His public schedule remains empty, and his private meetings appear to focus on how he can stay in office. Today we learned that Russian hackers broke into the email system used by the leadership of the Treasury Department, but the cyberattack from Russia has gone unaddressed except to the extent the president tried to blame the attack on China (although he has made no move to retaliate against China for the attack). He has made little attempt to shepherd any sort of an economic relief bill through Congress. And, most crucially, he is silent about the epidemic that is killing us. As of this evening, more than 18 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, and at least 319,000 have died.

So here’s the thing: how to corral this President into flying right and at least not deliberately damaging anything more?

I believe this falls on the President-elect and Corporate America.

First, Biden should make arrangements with Corporate America, meaning a quiet conference call with various major entities which may interact with The Trump Organization. Then Biden should call Trump, unofficially, and say,

Hey, Jack! Fly right or The Trump Organization will be strangled into dust.

And then the titans of Corporate America should start calling Trump. The message?

We won’t use your hotels.
We won’t golf on your golf courses.
We won’t buy from you.
We won’t sell to you.
We’ll pressure your allies in the same way, until they agree.
You will be sanctioned.
And this goes for all your children as well.
Forever.
Enough of damaging the United States.

Corporate America depends on a healthy United States to operate, to profit, to let the CEOs pretend they’re great people. It’s time for them to contribute to the country in which they operate, to keep it politically safe.

Because no sane business wants to operate in TrumpLandia.

Hemant Mehta on Friendly Atheist is puzzled by megachurch Christmas displays:

Here’s what some megachurches are doing to celebrate Christmas. Far from a simple Nativity play, these are Broadway-style performances that, I think, are meant to bring you closer to Jesus.

I haven’t figured out the connection yet, but maybe you can fill me in.

How much money is wasted on these performances… and for what real purpose? Does any of that scream “birth of Christ” to you? Does any of that make you want to join these churches? I have to imagine it does or else they wouldn’t be doing it, but then I have to question the type of people suckered in by these spectacles who think they’re somehow more devout as a result of watching the show.

The answer to real purpose is maintenance of the epistemic bubble. This is the fulfillment of a bonding need of a group of people. By providing it, the church reduces the risk of exposure to influences which may dilute both offerings and allegiance.

This is how you build loyalty to irrationality. It’s a small step, but it’s the building of that bubble of a society, within the larger American society, that emphasizes homogeneity while reducing tolerance.

If they didn’t provide it, members would seek it elsewhere – and their information stream would be less controlled by the church.

Either that, or all of these megachurch pastors are drama queens – and that is entirely possible. After all, megachurch.

But it bears repeating.

Currently, President Trump is Commander-in-Chief of Armed Services that are sworn to the Constitution, not to him.

As a member of the military, as informal as that might be, he is subject to military discipline.

If he thinks he can stomp his feet and try to pull off a military coup, he may find himself sitting in prison, facing a military tribunal – and then, possibly, a firing squad. Engineering a coup would qualify for treason or sedition, punishable by death.

This should be made blindingly clear to him by his legal advisors. Trump’s best option, if he has no appetite for the alleged avalanche of legal actions awaiting him on January 21, is to get the hell out of Dodge on or before January 20.

Today, outgoing AG Barr announced there will be no special counsel investigating Hunter Biden or the election:

Attorney General William Barr on Monday rejected several of President Donald Trump’s inflammatory and unfounded statements regarding the presidential election, saying at a news conference that he doesn’t plan to appoint a special counsel to investigate President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter or the election.

“If I thought a special counsel at this stage was a right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t and I’m not going to,” Barr said in response to a question on the presidential election. He said that widespread fraud wasn’t found in this election.

Barr also roundly rejected suggestions from the President’s supporters in recent days who’ve called for the US government to seize voting machines. …

On the Hunter Biden financial investigation — which the Biden transition acknowledged recently and Barr had kept quiet during the election season — the attorney general gave a similar answer that there is no need for him to take special steps to protect the investigation.

“To the extent there’s an investigation, I think it’s being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department, and to this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” Barr said when asked about Hunter Biden. Federal prosecutors and IRS investigations are conducting the probe, and Hunter Biden has not been charged with any crime. [CNN/Politics]

The Democrats – and anyone who cares for truth and its proper representation, including Robert Mueller – were outraged at Barr’s characterization of the Mueller Report as essentially exonerating Trump and his election campaign. The investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election resulted in multiple indictments, convictions, and identification of multiples cases of obstruction of justice, which could not be further pursued by Counsel Mueller. Barr’s assertion was preposterous.

Barr also interfered outrageously in ongoing investigations and prosecutions, leading to two unprecedented petitions from former DoJ employees requesting his resignation.

But since September 2020 onwards, he’s been a disappointment to Trump and the right, as he failed to find any mud to smear on the Biden family, any evidence of really anything at all. In some ways, it’s as if Barr had realized that the Evil of the Democrats might actually be the Evil of the Republicans.

But this announcement is a bit more important than it sounds, because it confuses the message Trump and the far-right would like to push on receptive voters in 2022 and beyond. It’s important to have a straight-forward message when it comes to politics: The Bidens are corrupt and The election was stolen. It keeps the base all stirred up and in training.

It’s harder to push those messages when AG Bill Barr, a man who had the potential to be the “greatest” AG ever, according to Trump, drops a brick on those messages.

We should still look for those messages being used as weapons by the right, but the Democrats should be ready to use Barr’s own words against them. Even if the Deputy AG initiates special counsel proceedings at Trump’s direction – and I expect that to happen, as Deputy AG Jeffery Rosen has a record of being led around by the nose – it’s not important. The investigations will lead nowhere, even as they’re seized upon as proof that … well … something happened!

Yeah. Trump bullied Rosen into initiating unjustified investigations for political purposes. That’s what happened.

Vatican critic Novus Ordo Watch (Novus Ordo translates to New Order, and is generally thought to refer to the most recent promulgation of the Catholic Mass by Pope Paul VI, in 1969 – and, if you’re wondering, the blog is subtitled Unmasking the Modernist Vatican II Church – oh, the horrors!) seems to be having a conniption over the Vatican’s … nativity scenes:

In case you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, it just did: The Vatican has unveiled its Nativity Scene in St. Peter’s Square.

Although this year we’re not confronted with a homo-erotic Frankie Horror Picture Show or an unconventional Nativity display made of sand, what Bergoglio’s sect came up with this time around is a fitting end to an annus horribilis, a truly horrific year.

Here’s one:

Unlike most American nativity scenes around here in Minnesota, which tend to be in the realist, if not authentic, tradition, this seems to be an abstraction, an interesting commentary on the dual natures of those involved in the nativity – both human and divine, or at least mythical, as it were. Unlike the American tradition, which suggests that humanity and Christ (and attendees) are alike, the Vatican nativity scene suggests a difference, an incomprehensibility concerning the Divine, that perhaps humanity will have to face for an eternity.

Which is quite appropriate.

And then there’s the scene which has led to some people to ask if Darth Vader has invaded Catholic orders:

I love the camel, who seems entirely disenchanted. And Darth as a wise man? Wise guy might be more appropriate. The Art Newspaper engages in a bit of snark:

But the 2020 offering has received mixed reviews, as the tableau, which the Catholic Herald is calling an “embarrassing sci-fi creche”, features an astronaut as one of the three wise men, with another that can only be described as a Darth Vader-doppelganger holding a shield. While it would appear that Darth Vader was not, in fact, at Jesus’s birth, it’s important to remember that the Gospels were written long after Christ’s death and such facts could easily have slipped through the cracks.

Ahem. The figure in question reminds me more of a Teutonic Knight of the Middle Ages, but rumor has it they were not invited to the Nativity, either.