Month: December 2015

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A big, beautiful Muchas Gracias

by digby

Just a quick note this morning to thank everyone who has donated to my annual fundraiser. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the support. It means the world to me.

This old blog is a relic, I know. But then so is The Drudge Report and it still gets monster traffic. (I don’t, for the record, never have…) But I bring it up just to say that at this point my “retro” style sort of fits since I’m kind of “retro” myself.

You can follow the blog on Facebook or on twitter, where there’s often a lively conversation. And you can follow all the great writers who contribute here on twitter as well.

Again, thank you so very much.

And get ready folks — this next year is going to be one for the books. I have no idea what’s going to happen with the election but I can guarantee it’s not going to be dull or uneventful.

cheers —

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

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QOTD: Who else?

by digby

Wages in are country are too low, good jobs are too few, and people have lost faith in our leaders.We need smart and strong leadership now!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2015

He said that in a twitter storm in which he claimed that Bernie Sanders voters were all coming over to him.

I wonder if any enterprising reporter will bother to question him saying this in light of his previous assertions in front of 20 million people that wages are actually too low:

He doubled down on this statement the next day:

“Whether it’s taxes or wages, if they’re too high we’re not going to be able to compete with other countries,” Trump said Thursday morning on Fox News.

On Morning Joe:

Mika, we’re becoming a non-competitive country. That’s the problem. We’re becoming non-competitive. I would love to say, “make it $50 an hour, I think it’s great” — you know what, it’s a difficult position politically . . . Our taxes are too high. Our wages are too high. Everything’s too high. We have to compete with other countries.

Somehow I think Sanders voters are a little bit smarter than the Trump voters who look at an exploitative billionaire who says he thinks working people in America make too much money and see a working class hero.

Happy New Year everyone!

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A wingnut pitch for centrist Republicans

by digby

I think they’re still working it through but here’s what Conservative Movement OG Richard Viguerie is sending out to his people:

Yes, Ted Cruz Can Unite Right-of-Center Voters

There’s a myth among establishment Republicans that Senator Ted Cruz, as Donald Trump put it, “can’t get anything done” because the Capitol Hill Republican establishment won’t work with him.

But the record, especially on issues that unite the old Reagan coalition of economic conservatives, cultural conservatives and national defense conservatives shows that claim isn’t a myth – it’s a lie.

Ted CruzYou’d be hard pressed to find a more establishment Republican than Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25), who represents a huge district in Florida that runs from the western suburbs of Miami and Hialeah, across the Florida Everglades and then north to the farming community of La Belle.

Rep. Diaz-Balart has endorsed Jeb Bush for President saying he’s “all in” with Bush.

Rep. Diaz-Balart voted for the Ryan – Obama Omnibus and issued a press release singing its praises.

Rep. Diaz-Balart is a proponent of “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Rep. Diaz-Balart was appointed to the House Appropriations Committee by former Speaker John Boehner and has always been a reliable vote for more spending.

And Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart is the House sponsor of a bill, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act that Senator Ted Cruz introduced to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization and finally end the U.S. operations of this subversive Islamist organization.

“I proudly join Sen. Cruz to introduce this bill in both chambers. This legislation codifies into law something that is long overdue. The Muslim Brotherhood has a long history of terrorism around the world. The group supports and stands behind numerous terrorist organizations that are responsible for acts of violence and aggression,” Rep. Diaz-Balart said. “It is time for Congress and the Department of State to recognize and sanction them as they deserve – as a foreign terrorist organization.”

As Senator Cruz justified and summarized the bill:

“This bill recognizes the simple fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical Islamic terrorist group. For years, American presidents of both parties have correctly designated the Brotherhood’s various affiliates, such as Hamas and Ansar al-Sharia, as terrorist groups.

They have designated individual Muslim Brotherhood leaders such as Shaykh Abd-al-Majd Al-Zindani, who was complicit in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and Sami Al-Hajj, who was captured on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2001 running money and weapons for al Qaida, as terrorists.

Now we can reject the fantasy that their parent institution is a political entity that is somehow separate from these violent activities… A number of our Muslim allies have taken this common-sense step, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. As this bill details, the Brotherhood’s stated goal is to wage violent jihad against its enemies, and our legislation is a reality check that the United States is on that list as well.”

Capitol Hill Republican leaders have known for years about the subversive activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, and how it has worked to place people, such as Hillary Clinton’s close aide Huma Abedin, in positions of power and influence while funding and encouraging violent jihad against America, in America.

Some of these “leaders,” such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio, sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where it would have been natural for a bill to stop the Muslim Brotherhood from operating in America to originate.

Over the next few weeks we are going to knockdown other myths and lies about Ted Cruz’s record and about his ability to assemble a winning right-of-center coalition for the Republican primaries and the November battle with Hillary Clinton.

So, consider this one a twofer demonstrating that not only does Senator Cruz work effectively with the Republican establishment without compromising his principles, but where Ted Cruz has been a leader in the fight against radical Islam, Marco Rubio has been MIA on the most important national security issue of our times – the threat to constitutional government posed by Islamic supremacist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

If they can get people worked into a full fledged frenzy over the next few months it might even work. If there’s one thing that unites the right it’s hardcore nationalism. Interestingly, Cruz has not been the most bellicose of right wingers on that. Rubio is actually more aggressive on national security. But the Cruz crew have to begin to make an electability argument and they’ve decided to go right at Cruz’s weak spots — the fact that he’s a little bit less militarily adventurous than Rubio, Christie or Bush — and that nobody in Washington can stand him.

Happy New Year everyone!

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The bad guys are in the eyes of the beholders

by digby

In light of the announcement today that there would be zero repercussions for the police officers who Tamir Rice, a 12 year old with a toy gun whom they shot instantly upon rolling up to him in a park in Cleveland Ohio, I thought I would reprise this piece I wrote for Salon several months ago.

Open Carry zealots don’t have to worry about this sort of thing — as long as they’re white:

So would Tamir Rice, I have no doubt.

Happy New Year everyone … sigh.

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Can you believe what a coward Jeb Bush is?

by digby

His mommy should give him a good talking to:

He knows very well that it was wrong for Trump to say this because it’s a rude, sexually suggestive, creepy and inappropriate thing for a presidential candidate to say about anyone. The problem is that he said it not that it gives the feminazi beyotch Clinton “ammunition” to claim victimhood.

She didn’t claim victimhood and neither did the millions of women all over the country whose skin crawled when they heard it. Not victims, just people, citizens, voters who think that the President of the United States ought to be more mature than your average 11 year old boy and that other candidates should be man enough to stand up to the puerile fool and blame him not the woman he was demeaning.

Apparently these Republicans only want women who like being doormats to vote for them. That’s fine.  I’m sure there are many of them out there who have no problem with Trump’s crude puerile nonsense. It takes all kinds.  But it sure seems like a foolish, unnecessary mistake to go out of your way to insult so many people like this. After all, the voting booth is private and they cannot know how many of these Republican and Independent women will take secret pleasure in casting a ballot against them.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

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Trump’s wingnut instincts are well-honed

by digby

He gets it in a visceral way that the rest of the pack just doesn’t grok:

Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy sent waves through the GOP presidential race with word he will endorse Marco Rubio. The announcement — the Rubio campaign is touting Gowdy’s upcoming trip to Iowa on Rubio’s behalf — became the subject of angry tweets from Donald Trump supporters, who quickly denounced Gowdy as a RINO and a fake conservative. (Gowdy’s rating from the American Conservative Union is a near-perfect 97 for the nearly five years he has served in the House.)

Trump, in a Sunday-morning appearance on “Fox and Friends,” took a different tack. “I hope [Gowdy] does a better job than he did, frankly, at the Benghazi hearings, because they were a total disaster,” Trump said, referring to the Oct. 22 hearing in which Gowdy, chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, called Hillary Clinton to testify. After the marathon hearing, some observers on both sides of the political aisle concluded that Republicans had failed to lay a glove on Clinton.

“[Gowdy] did not win with those hearings,” Trump said. “It was not good for Republicans and for the country. I hope he does a lot better for Marco than he did with the Benghazi hearings.”

Trump also tweeted Sunday morning: “Rubio finally gets an endorsement — from Benghazi loser Gowdy.” In another tweet Trump said, “Face it, Trey Gowdy failed miserably on Benghazi. He allowed it to drag out and in the end, let Hillary get away with murder.”

As Byron York, the author of that piece, points out, Trump doesn’t attack Gowdy for his ideology as the rest of the field did. He attacked his competence. Gowdy’s a bad attack dog who couldn’t kill the witch. Trump, of course, will get the job done. He’s a killer. And a winner.

And it also says that Clinton’s victorious appearance before Gowdy’s committee wasn’t really hers, right? It was just that Gowdy is a loser and couldn’t put her away. It would have been easy if a real man had been in charge. Clinton, like Jeb, is “weak” and “has no stamina”, remember? Both Clinton and Bush are girly-men, each being put-down in different ways with the same infantile gendered insult.

He’s a cretin and a clown and a demagogue. But he is tapped directly into the wingnut talk radio id and he’s much better at channeling it than any other politician out there because he feels no need to be respectable. In fact, I’m not sure he even understands what that is. It gives him a great advantage and he seems to know it.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

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A “small step” towards a better future
by Tom Sullivan

This exchange from Star Trek: First Contact always fascinated me:

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century.
Lily Sloane: No money? You mean, you don’t get paid?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

What a concept. A society not organized around money. Thomas Paine floated the idea of a citizen’s stipend in Agrarian Justice (1797). His ideas for reorganizing the economy were a bit ahead of his time. And while the 24th century may be bit far off yet, it seems several European cities are taking Paine’s 18th century idea out for a test drive:

An experiment to give away money as “basic income” is underway in Germany. In 2014, Michael Bohmeyer, a 31-year-old German entrepreneur, launched “My Basic Income” (“Mein Grundeinkommen”), and this month, the project, made possible through crowdfunding, issued $1,100 checks to 26 people to use however they want.

Leftists in Germany tend to support the idea of basic income while others in the country say the idea might take away incentives for people to work.

Wirklich? It has long puzzled me: the reflexive assumption that Man is purely mechanistic, driven solely by carrots and sticks (extrinsic motivation) and that, on the one hand, making the sticks sharper will reduce undesirable behaviors (not that we believe in state control of that sort of thing) and that, on the other hand, making the carrots sweeter will release a cascade of creativity and productivity from these Skinerrian lab rats. Studies show that sometimes just the opposite occurs. But it seems counter to common sense, especially if you have a thing for poking “lessers” with sticks and wringing your hands over the help being properly motivated.

Summarizing research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in his book, “Drive,” Daniel Pink concluded that for the kind of work more Americans will be doing in the 21st century, for tasks requiring “even rudimentary cognitive skill,” the traditional extrinsic incentive model doesn’t work.

Plus, the new gig economy means we are all going to be working for less anyway. And besides, the job-killing robots are coming (Obama’s fault!), “So to be able to work creatively, people need some security, they need to feel free. And they can get that with a basic income,” says Bohmeyer. Originally from the former communist East Germany, Bohmeyer will be experimenting with American founder Thomas Paine’s idea for a basic income grant.

He won’t be alone. Utrecht and 19 other Dutch cities are engaging a similar experiment:

“We don’t call it a basic income in Utrecht because people have an idea about it – that it is just free money and people will sit at home and watch TV,” said Heleen de Boer, a Green councillor in that city, which is half an hour south of Amsterdam.

Nevertheless, the municipalities are, in the words of de Boer, taking a “small step” towards a basic income for all by allowing small groups of benefit claimants to be paid £660 a month – and keep any earnings they make from work on top of that. Their monthly pay will not be means-tested. They will instead have the security of that cash every month, and the option to decide whether they want to add to that by finding work. The outcomes will be analysed by eminent economist Loek Groot, a professor at the University of Utrecht.

Alaska has been running a
“basic income” experiment statewide for 40 years. How about it, Sarah Palin, has the Last Frontier gone to Hyder in a handbasket? Or do Alaskans still persist in pursuing their own interests and dreams?

Now, I have a personal project in the works that I feel is sort of important. I wouldn’t turn down the money if it were available. But like like writing here, I don’t do it for money, but for another kind of personal enrichment. It’s simply annoying to have people ask how I plan to monetize it, as if that’s the point or the measure of something’s worth. Gene Roddenberry didn’t think so. His vision was for a human future better than that. But for now, that’s the cage we have constructed for ourselves, a model that seems to be failing.

Nice to see some human creativity being directed at giving Paine’s idea a whirl, at least in Europe. Americans like Paine used to embrace that sort of experimentation. Lately, America’s idea of innovation is a Great Wall along the southern border. How’d that work out for the Chinese?

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

The warning bell tolls for thee DNC

by digby

People love to portray Bernie Sanders as some kind of loony left liberal without any sense of how the world really works. That is a mistake. Here is what he said this morning on Meet the Press this morning:

“We have had our differences of opinions with the DNC. But at the end of the day, the DNC, Hillary Clinton and myself — we want to defeat right-wing extremism in this country. So we’re trying to work out our differences of opinion.”

That’s your unpragmatic socialist purist for you.

Primaries are tough fights and they serve the important purpose of allowing all factions of the party to have a say in the way the party is run and the agenda it promotes. It’s really the only time everyone has a chance to weigh in and influence the system through the system. But the campaigns want to win and they will push as hard as they can to make that happen. That’s natural and the way it should be. But it’s also good for the candidates themselves to stay somewhat above that fray so that when all is said and done, however it comes out in the end, the party can still provide a basic organizing function.

The DNC under Wasserman-Schultz has been incredibly dismissive of the left wing of the party in ways that actually go far beyond what people are upset about in the presidential race. The two congressional campaign committees are just as bad. They do everything in their power to suppress the progressive left. And they’ve put all the elements in place for a very ugly backlash. If they want to see the Democrats come apart like the Republicans are doing they’ll keep it up.

Sanders and Clinton will do what they have to do to bring the party together regardless of which one of them wins. The stakes are always high but at this point of peak right wingnuttia, they are even higher than usual. Nonetheless, the Democratic establishment is very shortsighted if they don’t look at this race, see the growing strength of the progressive wing in the party, and start to find ways to accommodate it rather than dismissing it as a bunch of fringe characters. It’s not. It’s the largest single faction in the party — and it’s getting restless. A little respect would be a good starting place.

Update: When I say the DNC has been dismissive of the left I’m talking about the down ticket races in which they do involve themselves by guiding donors to more conservative candidates and cutting off the access to money by progressives. A lot of wealthy liberals depend on the DNC to help them decide who to support and they are very often … misled. Progressives have to fight twice as hard in districts and states where they have good chances to win because they’re fighting their own party right along with the Republicans.

This was handled better during the Howard Dean years. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

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QOTD: someone who had to listen to Marco Rubio talk for 20 minutes

by digby

Rubio’s visit to the Conway Daily Sun did not go well: “like a computer algorithm designed to cover talking points.” pic.twitter.com/9e1Mqq1QcD

— Scott Conroy (@ScottFConroy) December 23, 2015

He is very robotic and without any sense of spontaneity.

What made all the GOP professionals and extremely rich billionaires think guys like Perry, Walker, Rubio, Bush and Christie were such dreamboat candidates? I assumed they had to be fairly good from what the TV gasbags all said about them. But once you see them in action yourself you really have to wonder what in the world they were thinking. Sure, they may look good on paper. But they are actually all so … bad.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

The Swifties are out and they’re better than ever

by digby

If you’ve been around the liberal blogosphere for any time you know that my friend and sometime Hullabaloo contributor, Batocchio of the blog Vagabond Scholar, hosts the annual Jon Swift Memorial round-up of Best Blog Posts every year.

People think the liberal blogosphere is no longer around and it just ain’t true. Most of these blogs have been around as long as I have and they’re churning out great stuff year after year. You can follow many of them on Facebook and twitter or just do it the old-fashioned way — bookmark ’em or get them on your RSS feed. Bloggers will keep you sane because they are not of the mainstream political world or even the so-called “professional left.” They’re liberal indies. You’ll see a lot of humor and analysis that you’ll never see anywhere else.

As always, this year’s Swifties offers an impressive list of truly informative, entertaining and important blog posts written by some of your favorite writers as well as some you may not know but should. If you’re looking for something good to read online over this long holiday week I urge you to check out these offerings.

Anyway, included in this year’s great list of readings are posts written by people who also write here regularly, Tom Sullivan, Gaius Publius and Spocko.

I’m just going to list the names and the titles. You can click over to Vagabond Scholar for the story of the Jon Swift awards and the links to all these great pieces:

The Professional Left Podcast
Episode 295 (July 31, 2015): “Is Cecil the Lion a Proxy War?”
Blue Gal: “Cecil the Lion – Environmental crime and misplaced rage.”

A Blog About School
“Standardized tests and your cat’s body mass index”
Chris Liebig

Infidel753
“Long war, decisive battle”
Infidel753: “Why does the right wing invest the fight against gay rights with such existential importance? Deep down they know it’s a crucial part of a much longer and more fundamental conflict over the essential nature and identity of our civilization.”

You Might Notice a Trend
“Insanity Is Repeating the Same Shooting Over And Over Again and Expecting a Safer Gun-Happy Result”
Paul Wartenberg: “The United States is under attack from itself as a minor group of gun-worshiping sociopaths allow – and in some ways encourage – shooting deaths on a daily basis just so they can proclaim their devotion to a metal god of death.”

Mad Kane’s Political Madness
“St. Boehner???”
Madeleine Begun Kane: “3-Verse Limerick mocking the so-called “sacrifice” John Boehner made in giving up his Speakership.”

World O’ Crap
“World’s Worst Toys R Us Spokesmodel”
Scott Clevenger: “Who can forget Sabrina Corgatelli, the sultry, seductive Idaho accountant who went to Africa, wrapped a dead giraffe around her body like a mink stole, and sang “Blood Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”? “

The Debate Link
“Anti-Semitism as Structural and the Iran Deal Debate”
David Schraub: “Many critics of the Iran Nuclear Deal have contended that deal proponents have engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric; proponents have roundly rejected the charge. Both camps, I argue, are mistaken in the processes by which anti-Semitism operates and has its effect in contemporary society.”

Kiko’s House
“When Things Fell Seriously Apart & The Center Didn’t Hold”
Shaun D. Mullen: ” We’ll motor past how the brilliant Yeats, as prescient as he could be, foresaw this political season and the coming of Donald Trump nearly 100 years ago in his classic dirge for the decline of civilization, but today even the best in the overcrowded Republican field seem to lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity, and surely some revelation is at hand. Or so we should fear.”

Zencomix
“Beyond Here There Be Dragoons”
Dave Dugan: “Watercolor, Pen & ink on handmade paper, about 8 cm x 11 cm for each image, contained in a small gift box with a velcro closure, decorated with white exterior house paint and india ink, marking 70 years of goddamn nuclear weapons…”

Pruning Shears
“On the sorry state of American fascism”
Dan: “A look at some of the more hyperbolic claims about so-called ‘PC culture.’ “

David E’s Fablog
“Pa Pa Pa Pa Pa Pa”
David Ehrenstein: “It’s about how Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” is as valid today as it was in 1960 in showing how the media actually works.”

Experiential Pagan
“Innocence Lost”
Syrbal/Labrys: “A brief memory that proves ‘the more things change, the LESS they stay the same’ – at least for a female.”

Confession Zero
“With the Wind it Shall”
Mark Prime offers a poem.

Scrutiny Hooligans
“Sellin’ the big nothin’ “
Tom Sullivan: “In the military we hold up as representing America’s highest ideals, it’s all esprit de corps and teamwork. Yet outside the base perimeter in Anytown, USA, it’s screw you, I’ve got mine. (Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.)”

Strangely Blogged
“47 Dumbass Ronin”
Vixen Strangely: “The idea that 47 actual US Senators got together to show this particular letter and their behinds off to the world struck me as a suggestion that perhaps they hated President Obama more than they even liked their country.”

Simply Left Behind
“How to Defeat Terrorism”
actor212: “Thirty years of war (going back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) has done nothing but make more rabid dogs. That’s a failed policy. This is not a war against people, it’s a war against an ideology – the ideology of jihad – and every time we’ve bombed a country, we created more enemies as we’ve attempted to wipe out that ideology.”

Real American Liberal
“Diving into the Abortion Debate”
John Sheirer: “I tried to have a civil, reasonable discussion about abortion on the Internet. The results were even more disturbing than I anticipated.”

Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I
“Republicans May Be Perfidious Bastards, But the Democrats Are Still Idiots”
Comrade Misfit: “Essentially, why the Democrats’ focus on gun control will hurt them.”

Shakesville
“Jeanie Bueller’s Day of Feminist Killjoying”
Melissa McEwan: “In which I reconsider “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” 30 years later and discover that I’m rooting for little sister Jeanie Bueller, who huffs and eyerolls and shouts indignantly through the film, a perfect picture of injustice in a pink cardigan.”

Spocko’s Brain
“Mr. Robot Will Scratch The Corporate Justice Problem in Your Brain”
Spocko: “Mr. Robot was the most fascinating TV show I watched this year. The lead, Elliot, is a cyber-security engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night. His target is “Evil Corp” a sort of BofA, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, JPMorganChase combo. In this post I reviewed the pilot and anticipated the ethical, technical, financial and human issues it will grapple with over the season.”

M.A.Peel
“The Songs Our Mothers Sang to Us”
Ellen O’Neill: “The news of the BBC’s discovery of Diana Rigg’s Desert Island Disc lead me to their wonderful website. Where I stumbled on Yoko Ono’s desert selections, and her anecdote about a particular song & her mother poignantly, surprisingly linked her to me and my mom.”

Kathleen Maher’s Pure Fiction
“If He Wished”
Fiction by Kathleen Maher.

Poor Impulse Control
“The World Is the World”
Tata: “You can be a different person every day, and by you, I mean me.”

Mock Paper Scissors
“Hell Hath No Fury Like A Boomer Scorned”
Tengrain: “MoDo writes a poisoned pen letter to Hillary Clinton using Joe and Beau Biden as the ink.”

The Rectification of Names
“What’s to stop me from marrying my television?—Ross, I think you did.”
Yastreblyansky: “Back in May, as we were all awaiting the Obergefell decision, Monsignor Ross Douthat, Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street, decided to show us how marriage equality was going to lead to polygamy for all, and then how are you liberals going to like that? Spoiler: He was wrong.”

Indomitable
“American Exceptionalism? ISIS and the Christian Right are More Alike Than Different”
Chauncey DeVega: “The American Christian Right-wing and ISIS are much more alike than different. This truth is upsetting because American Exceptionalism is based on a lie. On matters of violence, extreme religion, anti-Cosmopolitanism, and a yearning for End Times battles between countries ruled “god’s law” ISIS and the American Christian Dominionists and Reconstructionists are in almost total agreement.”

driftglass
“At The Pillory Clinton Hearing”
driftglass: “An experimental, real-time, free-form, impressionistic interpretation of the Hillary Clinton Benghaaaazi show trial in October.”

The Way of Cats
“The difference between dogs and cats”
Pamela Merritt: “Dogs do sports. Cats do theater. They are two very different kinds of pets, and require two wildly different approaches for care and training.”

Anibundel: Pop Culturess
“Good Morning and Welcome to Force Friday”
Ani Bundel: “In case you haven’t heard, today the 4th will be with you. But it’s not May the 4th, the organic holiday that sprung up in the Star Wars community in the last decade. Today is a different fourth. One invented by Disney, to go along with their marketing department’s plans for total Star Wars world domination.”

Self-Styled Siren
“Claude Rains: An Actor’s Side-Eye”
Farran Smith Nehme: “My posting rate slowed considerably this year, but this was by far the most popular thing I wrote for the blog. Sifting through stills from all stages of the career of the great Rains was a wonderful experience.”

Perrspectives
“Sorry, Jeb. Your Brother Did Create ISIS.”
Jon Perr: “Jeb Bush got schooled by a 19 year-old college student who informed him, “You brother created ISIS.” Or to put in terms even Republican myth-makers can understand: ISIS? George W. Bush built that.”

The Rude Pundit
“America Has Become a Second Amendment Death Cult”
Lee Papa: “The United States is on the same road as the Mayans and the Aztecs as we shoot ourselves into oblivion.”

Ramona’s Voices
“As Long As There Is A Constitution, The GOP Can’t Win”
Ramona Grigg: “So the crazies won the 2014 midterms. What, me worry? Yes, me worry.”

[this space intentionally left blank]
“I Read Only Books by Women For a Year: Here’s What Happened”
Dallas Taylor: “Post details the experience and results of a year spent reading only books by women: why I did it (as both writer and reader), what it was like, what I learned from it, and how it changed me. Concludes with encouragement for the reader to try the same, or at least examine the reasons for refusing to do so.”

Doctor Cleveland
“Winnowing the GOP Field with Jane Austen”
Doctor Cleveland AKA Jim Marino: “Demonstrates the Pareto principle with the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice and then applies it to the crowded GOP primary field, showing which candidates have never been in the running. A post so crazy it just might work.”

The Hunting Of The Snark
“Guts And Glory: The Story Of Ross Douthat”
Susan of Texas: “This is a review of Ross Douthat’s book about his years at Harvard,Privilege: Harvard And The Education Of The Ruling Class. In this book we see how the son of “ex-hippies” reshaped himself into an authoritarian thought leader without becoming either thoughtful or a leader.”

The Inverse Square
“We Have a Problem With Guns”
Tom Levenson: “Guns are not toys. They’re profit centers. As long as we accept that, we get the culture — political and more — that might be expected. This post is another way of writing how sick I am of having to say In Memoriam….”

Show Me Progress
“The Bill of Rights applies to everyone, right?”
Michael Bersin: “An interview with anti-Obama open carrying teabaggers flying large Confederate battle flags (among others) in an overpass protest on U.S. 50 in west central Missouri.”

Lotus – Surviving a Dark Time
“Only the poor face drug tests to receive any public aid or benefit”
LarryE (Larry Erickson): “The content should be clear from the title: Drug testing of the poor – and only of the poor – to qualify for a public benefit is expanding.”

Eunoia
“Timetraveller’s’ Reunion
Ole Phat Stu: “Some of the consequences of time travel.”

Bark Bark Woof Woof
“Gay Day at the Supreme Court”
Mustang Bobby: “Written on the morning of oral arguments for marriage equality before the Supreme Court in April: ‘If I cannot be treated the same way as everyone else for no other reason than an innate quality such as sexual preference, then the rest of those rights, however noble, are meaningless.’ “

Empire Of The Senseless
“Hold my Life”
zombie rotten mcdonald: “A review of the recent Replacements reunion shows, and reminiscence…”

and that’s the way it was
“Don’t help ISIS get what it wants”
Derek Davison: “I’m my own worst critic when it comes to evaluating my writing, but this piece, written in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attack, is the most widely-read and shared thing I’ve ever written for my own blog. I try to explain why overreacting to ISIS’s terrorism—by rejecting refugees, by turning on Muslims living in our own communities, by panicking—is giving the terrorists exactly what they want and what they need to perpetuate their message”

This Is So Gay
“Onward, Christian Soldiers”
Duncan Mitchel: “If you’re using the Bible to hurt people, you’re using it wrong: you should be using a sword, or a battle axe, as the Lord intended. You can’t do any serious, God-breathed damage with a floppy leather-covered book!”

Checking Out Your Shorts
“Behind the Politics – Scott Walker”
paleotectonics: “”VH-1 Behind The Music meets the Scott Walker Campaign, takes much acid.”

Gaius Publius
“Climate Change, the “Free Market” & the California Drought”
Gaius Publius offers an overview of the situation.

Bluestem Prairie
“No small potatoes: Dept of Natural Resources requires EAW for pinelands to spud fields project”
Sally Jo Sorensen: “When the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced a discretionary environmental assessment worksheet (EAW) for an area where the R.D. Offutt Company, America’s largest potato company, been buying forest land and converting it to potato fields, bushels of money set the stage for a later withdrawal of the study.”

Balloon Juice
“It’s a Giant Fucking Mystery Wrapped Inside A Riddle Inside an Enigma”
John Cole sounds off about the “enigma” of the Planned Parenthood shooting.

p3: Persuasion, Perseverance, and Patience
“Sunday morning toons: Fear of a Trump planet! And other horrors.”
Nothstine: “A December 2015 edition of p3’s weekly round up of political cartoons (with a dash of Golden Age animation). This week the theme was Fear!” [49]

Mister Tristan
“Liars”
Gary, a relative of Mister Tristan: “Liars’ pants should actually burst into flames. Brian Williams paid a price for lying about Iraq; Dick Cheney, not so much.”

alicublog
“Roots”
Roy Edroso: “It’s less overtly political than most of my stuff, but also (I hope) funnier.”

bjkeefe
“Now THAT’s something to ponder”
Brendan Keefe: “Since I haven’t been writing much at length lately, I’ll pass along one of the most fun things I read this past year.”

Schrodinger’s Cat: Many Worlds and One Cat
“Bihar Gives India a Diwali Gift: An In-Depth Analysis of the Assembly Elections”
schroedinger’s cat: “I analyze the state assembly elections held in the Indian state of Bihar where Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a humiliating defeat. I explore what this means for India now in the context of the recent past and in the historical context.”

Lance Mannion
“Nobody’s unbreakable, not even Kimmy Schmidt”
Lance Mannion: “The premise of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt isn’t comic. It’s tragic. A real evil has been inflicted upon Kimmy and her friends from the bunker and, whatever the outcome of the trial, the villain has gotten away with it. What he did to the four women cannot be undone. The comedy is in Kimmy’s determination to survive the evil.”

Vagabond Scholar
“Blogiversary X: 10 Posts That Shook the World (or Slightly Amused a Dozen People)”
Batocchio: “I didn’t write much this year, but this post links the best pieces of my first decade by category.”

Click here for the links.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

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