Marie: After watching a movie yesterday evening, I switched to MS NOW to see if there was any breaking news, and there was Donald Trump standing at a podium next to President Zelensky, and Trump was saying there never would have been a Ukraine/ Russia war if the 2020 election hadn't been stolen, and he also that he got along very well with Putin "despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax." And then I turned off the teevee.
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Charlie Savage & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s dizzying first year back in office has been polarizing.... The handful of other presidents who had comparatively momentous first years were responding to a true national crisis: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Depression. The United States faced no such emergency in January, but Mr. Trump has routinely governed through emergency powers.... As Mr. Trump nears the end of the first year of his second term, how much of what he has done can be considered irreversible, and will Washington ever be the same?”
Daniel Dale of CNN chooses Donald Trump's top 25 lies of 2025: “Trump’s lying has always been characterized by dogged repetition. It became especially repetitive in 2025. While he continued to regularly sprinkle in new lies, he relied on a core set of go-to fabrications he deployed virtually no matter the setting and no matter how many times they had been debunked.... Here is our highly subjective list of Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025. We chose some because the president repeated them particularly often, some because they were about notably consequential topics, and some because they were especially egregious in their distance from reality.”
Sophia Cai of Politico (who seems to be very pro-Trump): “Donald Trump says he believes the 2026 midterm elections will center on 'pricing' as Republicans head into a critical period with control of Congress on the line.... After insisting that affordability was a Democratic 'con job', Trump over the last few weeks has repeatedly sought to reframe the issue, arguing that it was the Democrats under Biden who caused prices to increase and that he is bringing them down.... Helping his broader case was a surprisingly good GDP number released Wednesday, giving the president more good news to talk about.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: So as I understand it, "affordability" is a hoax but "pricing" is real. Okay then. ~~~
~~~ The Rich Get Richer & the Poor Get Poorer. Marie: Here's a report I linked last week that should curb Trump's enthusiasm (but it won't): Sam Sutton of Politico: “... Donald Trump’s economy has exceeded expectations in his first year back in office. Mainly for America’s wealthiest households, that is. The top 10 percent of U.S. earners spent $20.3 trillion through the first half of 2025 — nearly matching the $22.5 trillion shelled out by everyone else, according to the Royal Bank of Canada.... Bank of America says its top account holders saw take-home pay climb 4 percent over the last year, while income growth for poorer households grew just 1.4 percent. That spending power has kept Trump’s economy humming.... But the robust numbers mask the extent to which the wealthy are driving growth.” This is what economic commentators mean when they talk about a “K-shaped” economy: looking at a chart of income and wealth growth, you'll see that people at the top of the “K” are seeing their income & wealth rise over time, while simultaneously those at the bottom of the “K” see wages & job security fall.
Steve Rattner of the New York Times assesses Trump's Second Reign of Error & Terror by analyzing what ten charts show. ~~~
~~~ Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo: Trump too is very fond of charts. Read and listen. Thank you to RAS for the link.
Matthew Purdy of the New York Times: Donald “Trump’s long love affair with his own name and likeness is peaking in his second term. There’s now the Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace and the Trump Kennedy Center, the performing arts venue. There are Trump Accounts for newborn babies and Trump Gold Cards for wealthy U.S. residency-seekers. Giant Trump portraits have been hung from select federal buildings and smaller ones will appear on national park passes. Coming soon: a so-called Trump class of battleships for the Navy and a Trump commemorative coin to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.... But as Mr. Trump normalizes norm-shattering, this self-aggrandizement, unheard-of in the history of the presidency, puts him in the company of conquerors and dictators.”
Trump: Witness for the Prosecution. Upon reading Donald Trump's cheery Christmas day post in which he boasted that he had the wisdom to dump Jeffrey Epstein long before "many sleazebags" did, Joyce Vance writes on Substack that "Trump offered up some specifics that he might have more information about: People who loved Jeffrey Epstein; People who gave Jeffrey Epstein bundles of money; People who went to Jeffrey Epstein’s island and parties; Why Trump dropped Jeffrey Epstein long before it became fashionable to do so.... He looks like a witness to me!... If I were still a prosecutor, I’d send out two FBI agents to have a chat with him. As far as I’m aware, the Supreme Court has never said presidents can’t be witnesses."
Heather Cox Richardson: “Over the Christmas holiday, the Trump administration threw its weight against the U.S. Constitution in favor of Christian nationalist authoritarianism.” MB: As usual, Richardson does a fine job of weaving Trump's anti-American, greedy impulses into how these impulses are translated into actions and policies. A good deal of what she wrote was covered by Ashley Ahn of the NYT a couple of days ago. Here's a citation for consideration: “As foreign policy journalist Anne Applebaum noted, rhetorically, 'Not sure I understand why the Trump administration cares about Christians in Nigeria and not Christians in Ukraine.'”
Edward Wong, et al., of the New York Times: The U.S. attacks on Venezuelan-affiliated boats & ships “reflects overlapping drives by [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio and [Trump advisor Stephen] Miller, who have worked in tandem on policies against [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro. Each has come to it with a focus on long-held goals: for Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, a chance to topple or cripple the governments of Venezuela and its ally, Cuba; and for Mr. Miller, an architect of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration policies, the opportunity to further his goal of mass deportations and to hit criminal groups in Latin America.” ~~~
~~~ If you think Donald Trump isn't very bright (see Tom Sullivan's post linked above to reinforce that opinion), neither are his top advisors: ~~~
~~~ Rubio. Upside Down & Bacwards. Mike Masnick in an MS NOW opinion piece: "The U.S. government just banned five people from entering the country because it doesn’t like their speech. This ban, according to the State Department, is necessary to protect free speech.... On Tuesday..., Marco Rubio’s State Department announced ... [it would] take 'decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.' The five — former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) CEO Imran Ahmed, Global Disinformation Index (GDI) cofounder Clare Melford and HateAid leaders Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon — are now blocked from getting U.S. visas. [The Department's] theory relies almost entirely on fabricated or grossly misrepresented evidence.... [To try to bolster their case,] the State Department is citing a case that disproved government censorship as evidence of government censorship.” ~~~
~~~ Miller. Julia Ornedo of the Daily Beast, republished by Yahoo! News: “'Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids,' [Stephen] Miller wrote in an X post on Friday. 'Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.'... The two stars [were] both children of Italian immigrants.... Sinatra’s parents moved to America from Sicily in the 1890s, when the southern Italian island was deeply impoverished. Martin’s father immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s from Abruzzo, a poor region in central Italy.... Sinatra was particularly outspoken against 'race- and color-haters.'...”
Marianne LeVine, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has led to a significant change in strategy, as federal officers shift away from focusing on arresting immigrants already held in local jails to tracking them down on the streets and in communities, according to a Washington Post analysis of government data. The result has been a huge surge of such at-large arrests, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement tallying about 17,500 in September and on pace to exceed that in October. (The data The Post examined had been updated through the middle of that month.) That was far more than any other month included in the data, which dated back to October 2011.”
Aaron Gregg & Jaclyn Peiser of the Washington Post: “Corporate bankruptcies surged in 2025, rivaling levels not seen since the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession, as import-dependent businesses absorbed the highest tariffs in decades.... Companies cited inflation and interest rates among the factors contributing to their financial challenges, as well as Trump administration trade policies that have disrupted supply chains and pushed up costs. But in a shift from previous years, the rise in filings is most apparent among industrials — companies tied to manufacturing, construction and transportation. The sector has been hit hard by ... Donald Trump’s ever-fluid tariff policies — which he’s long insisted would revive American manufacturing. The manufacturing sector lost more than 70,000 jobs in the one-year period ending in November, federal data shows.”
Anita Gates of the New York Times: “Brigitte Bardot, the pouty, tousle-haired French actress who redefined mid-20th-century movie sex symbolism in films beginning with 'And God Created Woman,' then gave up acting at 39 to devote her life to the welfare of animals, has died. She was 91.”
10 comments:
Remember that Kim Karnes hit from 1981, "Bette Davis Eyes"?
I'm working on a new version: "Mar a Lago Lips". I know, it sucks.
Only rhyming I can come up with is hips, or tips.
Phillips P. OBrien explains the peace plan Pantomime
"President Zelensky will meet with President Trump in a few hours. It was another hastily scheduled meeting between the two and has ostensibly been called to see if Ukraine can fully agree a new “peace” plan to present to Putin for the Russian dictator’s approval. We know a little of where the plan is, or at least what the Ukrainians want us to think what the plan says, because its 20 points were outlined to the press by the Zelensky government.
Of course, this Ukrainian version is probably not a reflection of where the Trump administration and Putin are. The US government has not acknowledged these points, and it is clear that the US has a completely separate dialogue going with the Russians. In fact, in a Politico story, Trump was asked about the status of the 20-point plan and the US president turned the tables on the Ukrainians. "
This weekend's sermon:
The Swastika in Our Midst
Things happen in our lives that we don’t fully understand, especially when we’re young. Over time, experience and education often fill in the gaps in our comprehension, but not always. My education and a lifetime of experiences, for instance, haven’t helped me understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. I can read about the theory and the observations and experiments that confirm it, but the how and why someone traveling away from Earth at the speed of light would age relatively slower than those they left behind still boggles my mind.
Parents often deal with their children’s limited understanding by resorting to the standard “I told you so.” Like most parents, I’ve done it, too, always in the hope that our children would eventually understand the “why.” Most often, they did.
But there are some experiences from my youth that I still don’t get. One is on my mind today.
I remember a sixth-grade classmate who drew swastikas on his Pee-Chee, and I don’t understand why he did. After all, this was the 1950’s, when the men returning from WWII were very much alive and the scars of the war were still visible, my fifth-grade teacher who had a bullet hole above his elbow from his service in the Pacific prominent among them. In comic books, Sgt. Rock, fresh off fighting Hitler, had transferred his valor to Korea to fight the Communists. Ration books were still stored in kitchen drawers, and our town's 4th of July parades generated great enthusiasm. The America of my youth was rightfully proud of being on the right side of history.
And yet, there was this boy drawing swastikas on his Pee-Chee, and I never asked him why.
Now, nearly seventy years later, I suspect he might not have known. Those swastikas might have been no more than doodles he liked to draw, their connection to Hitler’s Nazi Germany far from his mind. Or perhaps they were an assertion of independence from the common herd that many on the cusp of teendom need to feel. Regardless of what he was thinking, I’m sure he was too young to be aware of all the awfulness those symbols of fascism represented.
But fascism’s characteristics should still be well known to adults, even those born long after WWII. Fascism’s governing power is rooted in the politics of “us” and “them.” It dehumanizes segments of the population based on their race, religion, or gender. It hearkens to a mythic past, and rejects reason and critical thinking, substituting propaganda and misinformation for fact. It forges alliances between big business and government. It opposes any challenge to male dominance. It abhors democracy (How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley).
Before WWII thousands of Americans pledged allegiance to the Nazi cause. In 1939 a pro-Nazi fascist rally drew 20,000 to Madison Square Garden just months before Hitler invaded Poland. They billed their rally as “pro-Americanism,” shorthand for an America first, anti-immigrant foreign and domestic policy bathed in a sauce of antisemitism. America’s declaration of war against Germany in 1941 drove support for American fascism underground, but the politics of “us” versus “them,” the preference for male primacy, and the attacks on reason and critical thinking never went away (motherjones.com). Regrettably, they remain as American as apple pie....(to be continued)
Part two.
Aided by social media and the internet, an explicitly neo-fascist Right has experienced a rebirth (arxiv.org). Silicon Valley is increasingly given to spreading “Techo-fascist”, anti-DEI, anti-feminist, and anti-democratic memes (theguardian.com). Elon Musk’s “X” welcomes posts about fascism, while Musk himself often spouts fascist and antisemitic ideas (theunpopulist.net).
Today’s fascism also lodges in our politics and government. Recently, scholars and trustees left the right-wing Heritage Foundation in protest after its leader defended a Tucker Carlson interview with a known antisemite (nytimes.com).
It 2017, Trump suggested there was no moral difference between the white supremacists and the counter-protestors who clashed in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue (usatoday.com). Now his administration uses accusations of antisemitism as a pretext to attack universities, while it simultaneously welcomes known antisemites into our government (npr.org). The administration's recently released National Security Strategy supports anti-immigrant Nazi-leaning parties in Europe (politico.com), and it took Senate intervention to force the U. S. Coast Guard to label swastikas and nooses “hate speech” after it had relabeled them only “possibly divisive” (washingtonpost.com).
Today my sixth-grade classmate would not be drawing swastikas on his Pee-Chee. He’d be plastering them on thousands of screens, and he’d be far from alone.
While fascism may be experiencing a national resurgence, its attraction remains to me as strange and incomprehensible as Einstein’s Relativity.
The Guardian
"‘It’s frightening’: How far right is infiltrating everyday culture
Extremist messaging now woven into music and YouTube videos, with one expert saying: ‘You can be radicalised sitting on your couch’"
Ron Filipkowski
"25 Worst Villains of the Trump Admin
The worst of the worst, ranked 1-25."
@westcoastman: Oh, there are many, some of which are promising: blips, chips, clips, dips, drips, flips, grips, gyps (racist!), nips, quips, rips, ships, sips, skips, slips, snips, strips, trips, whips (a good one), zips.
Also, real songwriters & poets take plenty of liberties with "rhyming." When they approximate a rhyming scheme, they want the words to be close in sound, not perfect. For example, maybe the vowel sounds are the same by not the final consonant sound. Here's a novelty song Steve Martin wrote; it includes close rhymes like risen/existentialism; scrolls/rock & roll; faith/case.
Ken: re boomer grade school boys and swastikas etc.
I was an army brat boomer. My dad was an Army Medical Corps neurosurgeon. His patients, soldiers, gave him lots of tchochkas. So we had US helmets, German army helmets, lugers (with steel rods welded inside the barrel -- totally inop), SS deathshead wool caps, brass knuckles, artillery ranging periscopes -- all sorts of WWII army stuff, all armies, to play with. We prized the German stuff, because it was "real booty", taken from "the enemy", and it was cool. In grade school we had no concept of the horrors of war, of totalitarianism, of real Nazi-ism, of the meaning of 20th century mechanised mass death, of real WWII. Fighting "Germans" and "Japs" was a game like cowboys and indians, where the bad guys got shot, no blood, and got up and switched sides the next day.
And swastikas were easy to draw. As were Stukas, P51's, and P47s, machine guns blazing tracers in dotted lines actross composition book pages.
Grade school art included also godzilla, King Kong, swords, bows and arrows, and various tanks. But swastikas were easier to draw than all of those. So maybe it is just a design that is easy to doodle and when you're in 4th grade that's all it is, and part of the "playing war" stuff that boys do.
Or, could be psycho.
Patrick,
Yes, indeed. My grandparents ended up with WWI mementos. One small artillery shell, powder removed, which I still use as a bookend and a crucifix about 5 inches high welded together from German rifle ammunition. Always found that one a bit weird and don't mind that I've lost track of it.
Don't know how or where that kid ended up. He disappeared from my school cohort sometime before high school, but I do remember him clearly for his aura of oddity. Not as odd as the kid who tortured cats but...;
Re Patrick's explanations: My younger brother got in trouble in school or camp, I forget which, because he was drawing swastikas all over his papers, and when questioned, he said it was an "old Indian symbol" and it was fun to draw. PLUS, he knew pretty much nothing about Nazis, even after WW II was not that long before. I don't remember if he was punished, but I do remember hearing about the discussion about what to do about it. I think my mom, card-carrying liberal Unitarian feminist teacher and social worker, probably told him a little bit about it and to not do it anymore on papers others would be seeing. As far as I know, it did not ruin anyone's lives...
Read the synopses of the ferocious pigs running the country (animal farm?) and they made me pretty much sick and ashamed. I know we had nothing to do with appointing these people, but I feel like the right pretty much has snookered the rest of us, and nothing short of an actual war will rid us of these disgusting pieces of offal.
I feel like the smartest of us were warning about this for years, and the most naive of us thought it could not happen here. The things happening now make our angst about W and his wars especially stupid. We should have been marching much earlier. Well, a hell of a year. Hard to be optimistic. At any rate, my heart is full of good wishes for the coming new year, for all of you. You're the best of the best.
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