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13th Annual War on Christmas

Here we go again!

Anger drives ratings, as Fox News is well aware. And that’s why they created the War on Christmas. Those poor Christians, being attacked and persecuted and treated terribly — how awful it must be to be a discriminated against majority. All those laws requiring people to never say “Merry Christmas” …  oh wait.

I remember now. None of that ever happened.

Nick Anderson

Every example Fox News gives for a “War on Christmas” always boils down to something like “They won’t let us force kids to sing our religious songs!” or “They say ‘Happy Holidays’ which acknowledges that not everyone is a Christian and therefore they are attacking us!” or “They are refusing to allow us to use their money (taxpayer dollars) for a religious display.”

You never heard of a “War on Christmas” until Fox News made it up as a way to gain ratings, because they have learned that the angrier they get their viewers, the more they tune in. So they create fake controversies each week, with this being the annual rerun.

So here we go again. It’s now the 13th year where I have challenged anyone to give me an example of a real “attack on Christmas,” because every one of these examples is, in reality, fought in defense. You wouldn’t even hear about them if these particular Christians weren’t trying to require everyone to obey their beliefs.

Once more, I am not counting the lone Grinch who doesn’t want anyone to say it around him, nor am I counting stores that want their employees to say “Happy Holidays” in order to include everyone. (Clearly, while on the job, employers can require you to do and say certain things.) I’m talking about a law or ordinance or anything that would prohibit anyone from saying “Merry Christmas” or otherwise stop you from celebrating the religious holiday.

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Unnecessary Censorship

You ever see someone write “f*ck” or something similar, as if that absolves them of writing a bad word? Like we can’t figure out what the word could possibly be, especially when taken in context?

Or when a TV censor bleeps a word but you can still tell from the context and the speaker’s mouth what the word is? Or when a comic book character says “&%@(!!” instead of what you know they’re really saying?

Who are we protecting here? You think kids haven’t heard these words before? You think they’re too dumb to figure it out? The very young ones, maybe, but then they’re not reading “f*ck” or watching the kinds of shows where those words might be used. (Or in comic books and comic strips that kids might read.)

For network TV, which has to apply for licenses from the government, it makes a bit more sense. However, I see that most cable stations don’t censor any more (Jon Stewart and the cast of “South Park” are finally free to say what they think without bleeping), and clearly we’re moving in that direction. Even our President and other politicians use words that would have destroyed their careers when I was young.

These kinds of silly word censorships are sort of like those fashion pictures you’ve seen where the beautiful female model is topless but she has her fingers covering her nipples … Gee, what could possibly be under her finger? I can’t imagine! (And seriously, it’s not the nipples we care about anyway. If all I wanted to do is see nipples, I could look in a mirror…)

Anyway, the point I was trying to make before I distracted myself with nipples is this: I sometimes have to laugh at silly censorhip. I mean, come on. No one is going to be hurt by it. It’s just a f*cking word.

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They know they’re unpopular and they don’t care

Trump’s approval is around 35% or so, and those are mostly the cultists who will support him no matter what. It’s still lower than any other President at this point in their presidency.

The majority of Americans do not approve of anything he is doing, but the Republicans don’t care. They laugh and pretend they’re popular — mostly because they live in that bubble where they only pay attention to the news sources that suck up to them — but the fact is that they are tremendously unpopular.

And that’s why they cheat. That’s why they do everything they can to prevent people from voting. That’s why they ignore the laws and do whatever they want because they know they’ll lose otherwise.

And they’re successful often because they have spent years building to this point, filling courts with judges whose views are political instead of legal, gerrymandering to control legislatures, and knowing they can get away with it because we’re the “good guys” who won’t stoop to their level to stop them.

But hey, they don’t care who they hurt to get their power, to help their billionaire friends, to destroy people who aren’t like them.

I mean, seriously, this isn’t a fight between liberal and conservative any more; it’s more of a fight of good and evil.

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The Republican platform 2025

“Hi, we’re the Republican party! We’re the ones who just shut down the government and are violating your Constitutional rights. We’re led by a rapist with 34 felonies who is suffering from dementia and who has the lowest approval rating of any President at this stage of his presidency. If you vote for us, we promise to cut every government program that helps you and will work to hurt everyone who is not a straight, white male! So, can we count on your vote in November?

Oh, did we mention that we’re actively hiding evidence about rich people raping young girls?”

(An apology: I’ve been so depressed over politics lately, I find it hard to write about it on this blog, although I do give small comments on my Facebook page often.)

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Paint it black

Dave Whammond
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Lymph node transplant diary

I’ve been a bit depressed to write too much about politics lately, but I do have some good news, if you don’t mind me sharing.

My wife, award-winning dryer lint artist Heidi Hooper (you may have seen her on ABC’s “To Tell the Truth” with Mel Brooks or on “Access Hollywood” or in Ripley’s Believe it or Not books and museums) had a major cancer operation around the turn of the century which took away much of the use of her right arm. She developed lymphedema which got worse over the years, and for the past 10 years or so was forced to get into a massaging machine for her arm three times a day for an hour each time. If she did not, the arm would expand, she’d be in terrible pain, and have to go to the hospital (and she did, too, from time to time when it didn’t work).

Just take a second and imagine if you had to do that, every single day, no holidays, no weekends, for ten years.

So when her doctor told her about a new procedure where they could transplant lymph nodes from her stomach to her arm and thus, if successful, prevent her from having to spend three hours a day in a machine, she decided to take the chance.

She made a video diary of the experience so that other possible patients would see what it was like.

And here it is.

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This is not normal

Republicans are doing everything they can to try to make this normal — like it’s normal to ignore court rulings and politicize the justice department and call anyone who disagrees with them enemies of the state and spit on the Constitution and use the military against civilians…

I am not sure our democracy will endure now that the white supremacists have taken over. Even if we take over the White House and Congress again, there’s no reason to believe they won’t still have the same disgust for democracy as they are showing now.

Politics used to be liberals vs. conservatives, but now it’s good guys vs. bad guys.

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Can Trump legally do what he is doing?

No.

The President does not have the power to make laws or set tariffs. Executive Actions are not in the Constitution at all, but courts have allowed the President to use them for things under his control, such as with the bureaucracy. (A good example is when Truman gave an Executive Order integrating the military.)

Executive Orders have expanded over the years, but never to the abusive degree that Trump exercises, with orders that have nothing at all to do with his powers but instead are in essence laws that he is decreeing like some emperor.

So can he do this under the Constitution (you know, that document that he admits he doesn’t know anything about and doesn’t think he has to obey)? No. No again.

But none of that matters if no one stops him. Congress could overrule and ignore 90% of his Executive Actions, and the courts could rule them unconstitutional — but unless they act, he’s going to get away with it all.

Fortunately, some courts have ruled that he isn’t a dictator able to unilaterally issue decrees, but so far, not one Republican has decided that their oaths to defend the Constitution are meaningful compared to their loyalty to Trump. They are as unpatriotic as you can be and are the reason we are in this mess.

Election season is coming up in many states. Be sure to vote against every Republican, no matter what the position, because if they’re still a member of that party after all this, they clearly have no problem with Dictator Trump and every Republican elected just helps to strengthen the party’s power.

cartoon by Clay Jones

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Super Genius

Clay Bennett
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The Book of Everyday Resistance

I’ve hardly posted here for a while, because politics has just made me so depressed. (I do still rant on Facebook, though)…

The next four years are going to be difficult. Those of us who did not vote for this President are deeply concerned about the direction in which this country is now headed.

Agent Lori Perkins asked herself, “What can I really do?” and created THE BOOK OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE — a collection of essays about what we can do to resist, how we resist, and why we resist. It includes my essay “Fighting Back.”

She has made the book available for FREE as a kindle download. (The paperback is priced as low as possible to cover costs.) The book has been #1 on Amazon’s “Constitution” category for weeks now (beating my own Constitution book, of course!)

Get yours here!