Month: December 2022

It wasn’t spontaneous

In July of 2020, Barton Gelman wrote a story for the Atlantic entitled “What if Trump refuses to concede?” It was prescient in many ways but I think this is the most important detail:

We are accustomed to choosing electors by popular vote, but nothing in the Constitution says it has to be that way. Article II provides that each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Since the late 19th century, every state has ceded the decision to its voters. Even so, the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that a state “can take back the power to appoint electors.” How and when a state might do so has not been tested for well over a century.

Trump may test this. According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.

Gelman wrote this in July of 2020. This wasn’t some hare-brained scheme that John Eastman and Ken Cheseboro cooked up after the election. This was planned.

Now, they thought they could get this done before December 8th but they missed that deadline. At that point they moved their target date to January 6th. But the plan was essentially the same, only with Pence only accepting the fake electors and throwing the vote count to the House. But the fake elector concept was in play long before.

I don’t know if their alternate plan was thought out in advance but the fake electors plan certainly was. Gelman wrote about it months before any votes were cast. How can they possibly be allowed to get away with this?

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Somebody’s not having a very happy holiday….

The border was calmer two years ago because we were in the middle of a raging pandemic. What a dolt. As for the electoral count act, they had to shore it up because this moron tried to use it to steal the election.

No doubt his cult is convinced though. How many of them are there?

That’s about it. He’s re-posting articles about Hillary’s emails. how the FBI needs to be defunded and more Mitch McConnell bashing. And then there’s this:

It’s just hilarious. Pelosi was in on the insurrection that was incited and carried out by rabid Trump lovers. Does she realize how ridiculous this is? No? No, I guess she doesn’t. They just say whatever is convenient in the moment. it doesn’t have to make sense.

Buckle up. It’s going to be quite a ride next year with these people.

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The most flagrant case in US history

This case took place after the election. It was a conspiracy designed to award the presidency to the person who didn’t win:

On December 14, 2020, Republican operatives in at least five states—each of which had already officially certified Joe Biden as the winner—forged and submitted to Congress and the National Archives fake Electoral College certificates purporting to certify Donald Trump, not Biden, as the “duly elected” winner. The left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight first blew the whistle on the fake elector scheme in March 2021, but it wasn’t until Rachel Maddow devoted a series of shows to it in January 2022 that it really captured public attention.

The fake electors were hardly the worst of what Trump visited on us. For sheer journalistic sex appeal, a scheme by a bunch of unknown, bumbling state functionaries to phony up some documents just can’t compete with a president siccing an armed mob on the Capitol. But the fake elector scandal, while not the most shocking of Trump’s predations, has long looked like the straightest route to cracking open the entire 2020 election scheme, and to getting Donald Trump indicted and convicted of a crime (at least until the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents scandal was revealed, but that’s another story). If Trump was a knowing participant in the scheme (more on that later), his reasons for doing so would make absolutely no difference. Even if he really, truly believed the election was stolen, it would not be a defense to criminal charges for participating in a fraudulent scheme to submit forged documents as the official results of state presidential elections. To the contrary, his belief that he was stealing back a stolen election would be highly incriminating proof of his motive, not a defense.

Contrast that, for instance, with a potential charge that Trump tried to corruptly alter the result in Georgia in his infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. When Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to flip the Georgia election, was he asking him to legitimately root out and disqualify votes that he honestly believed were fraudulent, or was he asking him to manufacture votes?

In the real world of courts, unanimous juries and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, showing that Trump was “only” asking Raffensperger to root out and disqualify illegally cast votes would be, if not a defense, then at least a complication. It would give Trump’s lawyers something to work with. And while I don’t think Trump gave a damn whether or not there actually were illegal votes in Georgia—Trump operates in a fact-free, amoral universe that makes it pointless, if not impossible to try to discern what he “really believed”—there’s enough in the transcript of the call to make that argument to a jury.

Same with a charge that Trump incited the January 6th insurrection. Trump has so far not been directly linked to the violence perpetrated in the Capitol attack. Yes, he sent an armed mob to the Capitol and told them to fight like hell to take back the country. But his defense team will argue that Trump was using permissible, albeit very strong political speech to exhort his followers to send a loud, angry message to Congress, not to physically attack it. And, again, there’s arguably enough weasel-wording in Trump’s January 6th speech to convince at least a single juror to give Trump the benefit of the doubt for burying the word “peacefully” in the middle of his otherwise incendiary speech.

It’s one thing to believe the obvious: that Trump was acting like a mob boss, sending coded signals that his gangland cronies fully understood. It’s another thing to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of every one of twelve randomly selected jurors. Again, it’s complicated. And prosecutors hate complicated.

Not so the fake elector scheme.

If it can be proved that Trump intentionally participated in the scheme to try to pass off forged documents as official state documents, and then use the phony documents to overturn an election, it wouldn’t make any difference why he did so. The act of participating in the scheme, in and of itself, regardless of his purported reasons for doing so, would still run afoul of all kinds of state and federal criminal laws.

The path to prosecuting Trump for the fake elector scheme—either as a standalone crime or as a crucial element of a larger conspiracy to overturn the results of a presidential election—became much clearer last week with the publication of the  final report of the House January 6th Committee.

Until the publication of the report, there were arguably two open questions: (1) How high in the levels of Trump world did the scheme go? And (2), could at least some of the perpetrators assert a credible defense that they understood it was just a contingency plan to have electors in place in the event that the courts or state legislatures determined that Trump, not Biden, was the winner in one or more of the five states?

The report answered both questions. (1) The scheme went all the way to the top, right up to Trump himself. And (2), while some of the lower-level participants in the scheme—most likely some of the state-level GOP operatives who actually signed the phony certificates—may have been duped into believing that that it was a contingency plan, the higher ups who created and executed the scheme knew better.

They knew it was an action plan.

[…]

According to the report, by December 8, 2020—less than three weeks after Chesebro first laid the groundwork for the scheme in a November 18 memo—“President Trump had decided to pursue the fake elector plan and was driving it.” By mid-December, Trump had enlisted the assistance of RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in the scheme, worked with Rudy Giuliani on its implementation, and been informed that litigation would be filed in four states “to create a pretext to claim that it was still possible for the fake electors to be authorized retroactively.”

So it appears that the previously missing link—the link between the fake elector scheme and Trump himself—is no longer missing. Trump not only “participated” in the fake elector scheme, he orchestrated it.

With Trump’s knowing participation seemingly clear, the only remaining question appears to be whether the perpetrators can credibly soft-sell the scheme as merely a contingency plan, not an action plan to overturn an election.

They can’t.

The report makes it plain that plan was never to collect the signatures, file them away, and only pull them out in the unlikely event that a court or state legislature reversed the results of one or more of the elections in the five states. The plan was to use the fake certificates affirmatively:

This effort was aimed directly at the President of the Senate (which, under the Constitution, is the Vice President) in his role at the joint session of Congress on January 6th. President Trump and his advisors wanted Vice President Pence to disregard real electoral college votes for former Vice President Biden, in favor of these fake competing electoral slates.

According to the report, public comments made by Rudy Giuliani and Stephen Miller on December 14 suggesting that the phony certificates were merely “contingent” were window dressing: “That pretense was dropped in short order.” In fact, Team Trump was actively plotting to execute a strategy, designed largely by Eastman, to use the slates of fake electors as a pretext to prevent or delay certification of Biden’s election.

Nobody on the leadership team was mincing words: A December 13 memo from Chesebro to Rudy Giuliani suggested that while presiding over the counting Vice President Pence could toss out Biden’s actual electoral votes for any state where Trump had fake electors “because there are two slates of votes.”

And nobody was waiting for a court order that they knew would never come.

If there were ever any doubt about that, of course, it is dispelled by the fact that the schemers not only planned to use the phony certificates affirmatively, they did use them affirmatively, albeit ineptly.

Ever incompetent in executing even the most clerical, ministerial tasks, Team Trump orchestrated not only a massive fraud, but a comedy of errors.

The phony certifications from Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania failed to meet the requirements of federal law because they bore no state seal and no evidence that the required state officials had delivered them. The submissions from Georgia, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania lacked the required approval of the governors of those states. Other fake Trump electors failed to follow state rules specifying where they were required to meet, but nevertheless certified that they had done so.

The comedy of errors morphed into outright farce with Team Trump’s frantic, buffoonish, last-minute efforts to get them to the church on time.

By early January, the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin had not yet arrived in Washington, and Team Trump freaked out. They arranged to fly the certificates to Washington for hand delivery to the Vice President. Or, in the undying words of a Wisconsin Republican Party official, “Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President [i.e., Pence].”

Speaking of freaking Trump idiots, enter Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson stage right. Johnson, implored by the Trump campaign’s lead attorney in Wisconsin to assign a staffer “to get a document on Wisconsin electors to you [for] the VP immediately,” accommodated by putting not just some staffer, but his chief of staff on the job. That plan died a humiliating death when an aid to Pence brushed off Johnson’s request, bluntly telling Johnson’s chief of staff “Do not give that to him [the Vice President].”

Suffice it to say that none of this activity was triggered by a court or legislative order to the effect that Trump, not Biden, had won any of the five states. That never happened. Anywhere.

So the “it was just a contingency plan” defense is a non-starter.

It’s all up to Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors now. Let’s hope they look very closely at this fraudulent gambit and throw the book at the guilty parties if they have the goods. This is ridiculous. Republicans screeching “voter fraud” perpetrating this crime isn’t something that should just be let go.

And it’s also up to the American voters. It was insane that so many of them voted for him in 2020 after four years of chaos and incompetence, but they did. That’s why I’m not sanguine that they won’t do it again. I mean, what more did they need to know? I suppose that some of them may fall away now with some asshole alternatives presenting themselves, but there are many Americans who simply love the guy and can’t be moved away from him because that would be admitting they were wrong about him in the first place. Not bloody likely.

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Google Trends for 2022 news topics

Height is search interest in a given topic, indexed to 100

That’s fascinating. But I have no idea why “Elmo” is such a continued source of interest. Or Pete Davidson. Whaaat?

Axios analyzes the numbers:

These are the five news events that generated the biggest spike in Google searches this year.

–The FIFA World Cup, which concluded last week with Argentina’s victory — led by Lionel Messi.

–Ukraine, which continues to fight against Russia’s invasion launched early this year. Americans turned to Google in droves to find information about Ukraine.

–The Powerball jackpot, which set a new world record for a lottery prize this year at $2 billion.

-Will Smith, who snagged headlines after slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.

-A tie: Search interest in Queen Elizabeth spiked around the time of her death; and searches about Russia surged during the first week of its invasion of Ukraine.

Several topics were so momentous, they maintained high levels of attention for multiple weeks — and at times, multiple cycles.

-Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gripped the nation and held people’s attention for weeks as the war dragged on.

-The historic confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and an attempted murder of Brett Kavanaugh, kept people Googling about the U.S. Supreme Court.

-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made waves during her visit to Taiwan, after the attack on her husband Paul Pelosi and when she announced she would step down from her leadership role in the House.

-Continued waves of migration at the southern border … drastic actions taken by Republican governors such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis … and the anticipation of the end of pandemic-era border policies supported a steady level of Google searches about immigration most of the year.

-The year was again marred by devastating mass shootings, which took the lives of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas; 10 supermarket shoppers and employees in Buffalo, New York; and many others. There have been a total of 636 mass shootings this year — nearing last year’s record 690, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

This is all America centric which I find weird. Was the whole world obsessed with the Will Smith story? Alex Jones? Maybe. But if that’s so American culture is even more dominant than I thought.

You can see by the way the waves move that we are a very short attention span society. It is a window into why someone like Donald Trump can be successful. Nothing sticks because we all quickly move on to the next bright object — which he usually provides.

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We have to keep learning them

Obligations took me away from Pottersville on Christmas Day just after Clarence Odbody, AS2 informed George Bailey he had no identity, no wallet, and no Zuzu petals. It’s a shame Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and the various Scrooges come around but one month each year. The lessons in them seem to be too simple for a lot of us to learn even after many years of revisiting them. And the real-life Potters and Scrooges never seem to get it. Most don’t even know they are Potters and Scrooges. The rest, if they do, don’t care.

Whoever runs Carolina Forward‘s Twitter (speaking of Pottersville) offers a few more observations that are too obvious to gain a firm foothold.

What "It's A Wonderful Life" does a good job of demonstrating is that when you elevate pure profit-seeking as the only valid goal – instead of, say, an economy that lifts all boats – it results in the Mr. Potters of the world taking over and ruining good communities.

— Carolina Forward (@ForwardCarolina) December 26, 2022

A block of hundred-year-old Victorian homes here, long broken up into apartments, were allowed by the owner over years to fall into disrepair.

Demolition by neglect, as they say, became the rationale for selling the now inflated real estate to a devloper for building a trendier and more profitable development.

Getting misty-eyed once a year over George Bailey never stops modern-day Potters from acting like Potters.

And speaking of Zuzu’s Petals on this Boxing Day:

Democrats need to keep their foot on the gas

When Republicans take control of the U.S. House next month, lunatics will have run of the asylum. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will chair the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will have a firm grip on Speaker(?) Kevin McCarthy’s balls. The clowns will be driving the car.

The real action, the place where your primary focus needs to rest, is out in the states. Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, is already on it.

“I was throwing up with anxiety,” Wikler told the Guardian as the midterm elections grew near. Republicans already held control of both houses of the state legislature. If Democrat Tony Evers lost reelection to the governorship, Republicans had sworn the GOP “will never lose another election.” Republicans would engineer themselves permanent control of the state, one crucial to Democrats’ presidential chances in 2024.

The Guardian explains:

Wisconsin has the most gerrymandered legislative map in the country, designed to ensure the GOP has as easy a path as possible to capture majorities in the legislature, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study.

Meanwhile, the Cost of Voting Index ranks Wisconsin as the fourth most difficult state in the country for people to exercise their right to cast a ballot, thanks to its strict voter identification requirements and laws that make it practically impossible to conduct voter registration drives.

But Wisconsin’s Republicans are looking to tighten access to polling places further, and passed a host of measures to do so, all of which fell to Evers’s veto pen. With a supermajority in the legislature, they would have been able to override his vetoes.

The “red wave” collapsed and “Wisconsin Democrats narrowly managed to keep Republicans from a supermajority in both houses of the legislature.”

“Because of all that, democracy is going to survive in our state,” Wikler said. And perhaps more.

At the meeting of Democratic governors and governors-elect in New Orleans earlier this month, officials who have played defense over the last two years hope now to go on offense.

That, despite unified Republican control in Texas, Ohio, Florida and Georgia where Republicans are working to pile voting restrictions atop voting hurdles. In Congress, Democrats have yet to advance the John Lewis Voting Rights Act out of the Senate after passing it in the House last summer. The Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Harper could give states even more power over election laws and congressional maps.

Democrats need to overcome their reflexive complacency. Adam Pritzker, cousin to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, is founder of the States Project that focuses on legislative races (New York Times):

“Democrats never cease to amaze me,” he said. “They go from like waving the white flag in states to then thinking that we won, then wanting to take the foot off the gas pedal. It just seems a little bit dangerous to think that way.”

There is much to do to push back against the GOP’s assault on popular democracy:

The most popular Democratic plan on voting access is to join the 20 states that have already enacted or approved automatic voter registration, a system that adds anyone whose information is on file with a government agency — such as a department of motor vehicles or a social services bureau — to the voter rolls unless they opt out. Oregon, which in 2016 became the first state to adopt the practice, had the highest percentage of voter turnout in the country last month, a distinction held in recent elections by Minnesota.

Steve Simon, a Democrat who won re-election as Minnesota’s secretary of state, said that automatic voter registration and preregistering 16- and 17-year-olds before their 18th birthdays would be atop the voting access agenda for his state’s Democratic legislators.

Democrats in Michigan there hope to leverage their gains there:

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said at the recent governors’ gathering that she was considering backing automatic registration and making it easier for out-of-state students attending Michigan universities to register to vote. (Republicans in some states have sought to make it harder for out-of-state college students, who tend to lean Democratic, to vote, arguing that they should cast ballots in their home states.)

The Michigan secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a fellow Democrat, said that while her office worked to carry out the election changes approved by voters, she would like to see sweeping new rules and penalties for disseminating and amplifying misinformation that interferes with voting — things like fliers or mailers with the wrong dates for an election or deceptive language on petitions that are gathered for proposed ballot amendments.

“The greatest threats to our democracy right now continue to be the intentional spread of misinformation and the threats and harassment of election officials that emerge from those efforts,” Ms. Benson said. “We owe it to voters on all sides to ensure we are seeking accountability for anyone who would intentionally try to essentially block someone from voting through misinformation.”

In Wisconsin, Tony Evers’ reelection means Republicans may be less likely to challenge his veto pen. Republicans have said they will not reintroduce the more than dozen bills Evers vetoed over the last two years.

But don’t count on it. They are nothing if not relentless. Adam Pritzker had it right. It’s not time for Democrats to take their foot off the gas.

They’re unremittingly evil

It's Christmas Eve and about 50 migrants were dropped off in front of Kamala Harris' residence with the temperature in the teens. Another stunt by Greg Abbott. pic.twitter.com/wUjkxplYmB

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) December 25, 2022

CNN reports:

Several busloads of migrants were dropped off in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington, DC, on Christmas Eve in 18 degree weather late Saturday.

An initial two busloads were taken to local shelters, according to an administration official. More buses arrived outside the vice president’s residence later Saturday evening. A CNN team saw migrants being dropped off, with some migrants wearing only T-shirts in the freezing weather. They were given blankets and put on another bus that went to a local church.

Amy Fischer, a volunteer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, which has been receiving migrants sent to DC since the spring, said the organization had been prepared for Saturday night’s arrivals, having been informed about it earlier by an NGO working at the border in Texas.

The arrivals included asylum seekers from Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia, according to Fischer, who told CNN the buses were supposed to go to New York but were diverted to DC due to the weather. Busloads of migrants have been arriving in Washington weekly since April.

They were taken care of, thank goodness. DC services picked them and took them to churches which took in the refugees as real Christians are supposed to do.

I am sickened by this. These are nothing but political stunts designed to own the libs using human beings, including children, as pawns for laughs. It’s despicable.

This is who they are. And millions of people who wear their religion on their sleeves vote for it.

What a sweet story from the NY Times’ Charles Blow who took his boyfriend home for Christmas for the first time. I guess it’s tough even for people who are publicly out to deal with their families:

This Christmas I introduced my boyfriend to my family. It was one of the greatest gifts I ever gave myself. It was the gift of demanding to be seen by the people whom I love in the fullness of myself. It was the gift of forcing my worlds into collision, and therefore into singularity. It was the gift of living in truth and walking in freedom.

My extended family has developed the tradition of gathering to celebrate Christmas the week before so that everyone can be home with core family on the actual day. This also has the benefit of allowing people to travel when the roads and airports are less crowded and to go out to activities together when bars, restaurants and entertainment venues are still open.

The celebration location floats around from family member to family member. This year was my first hosting at my home in Atlanta and only my second time ever hosting. When I lived in New York, it was simply too far to ask the whole family to travel, almost all of whom still live in the South.

I decided that if my family was coming to my house, they were going to meet the person I was dating. Simple as that.

But, to me, that wasn’t so simple. I had never had the sense that they were open to queerness. In fact, I thought them hostile to it. My mother was not happy about the memoir that I published in 2014 in which I came out to the world as bisexual. She has never called the book by its title. On the few times she has referred to it, she has done so by saying, “You know, that book you wrote.”

When “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” was developed into an opera, only one of my four brothers came to see it. My mother did not, although she did go to see the movie theater showing of it. She didn’t tell me what she thought.

But one of my brothers died a few years ago, and that event has completely changed me. I now start every decision with a question: If not now, when? His death has infused my living with urgency and clarity. There is no time or space for fear or indecision. There is no time or space for wasted days and wasted years.

I must live, now, fully, ferociously. I had to stop being self-destructive and live in self-care and self-forgiveness. In my case, it is not hyperbolic to say that my brother’s death not only changed my life but saved it.

I thought I was being rejected, and that plunged me into darkness. When my brother passed and moved into the light, I chose the light.

Part of choosing the light was choosing to shine it into all of my corners, to make sure that all the people I loved knew whom I loved and how I loved.

My boyfriend is a dancer and choreographer. He was in a show in California the day my family arrived, but he took an early flight the next day so that he could meet them before they left. My family had no idea that he would be there. Beyond my children and their cousins, I wasn’t even sure they knew he existed.

For two days before they met, I had terrible tension headaches. But I just took headache medicine and told myself that this was a thing that had to be done.

That Saturday, he walked into my place with my entire family there, and I reflexively introduced him with a joke: “Everyone, this is my boyfriend. He and I have been dating for two and a half years. If anyone is shocked by that, take a deep breath and swallow hard. You’ll get over it.”

My family responded the way I should have expected them to: They didn’t skip a beat. They embraced him and fixed him a plate, and shared love and laughter. My youngest son asked him with a wry smile, “Do you need me to make you a drink?” My brothers began to ask him about himself and his work.

Later we all biked the BeltLine in Atlanta (even though it was cold), and that night, we went bowling. More love and laughter.

In the abstract, my family may have disapproved of this supposed “lifestyle,” but when confronted with the truth of my life and a flesh-and-blood person I loved, they responded with love because they loved me.

I should have been elated by all of this, but I was enveloped by an enormous sense of regret. I had waited and worried all this time. There were years, decades, of sadness and pain that could have been avoided. I have talked and written about the importance of visibility, but I have had to learn that lesson over and over. I have learned that coming out is not for me a one-time event but a series of events.

I was hesitant to write this column. I said to myself, who cares about the coming out journey of a middle-aged man in an era when children come out before their teens? But I was reminded of what I learned when I wrote my book: I am not alone. There are others out there with similar stories, thinking that they are alone.

To them, the late-in-lifers, I give the gift of being seen and reflected. I give this story and hope that it helps. I give the gift of permission that I gave to myself and that my deceased brother gave to me. Merry Christmas.

A lot of the conservative hostility to these big social changes is abstract. But when it comes home, they realize that it’s fine. I’ve found that in my own family. It doesn’t excuse the toxic politics. But it does show that for many, it’s all about social expectations rather than a deeply felt moral opposition.

This has been one of the great successes of the LGBT rights movement — bravely showing America through millions of stories like Blow’s that they already love gay people. After this current paroxysm of hate toward trans people, I suspect the same thing will happen there.

Mexican Christmas is a lot of fun:

From her shop in eastern Mexico City, Tania Hernandez begins making piñatas for the holiday season as early as October.

That’s because piñatas are essential to celebrating Christmas in Mexico. Specifically, traditional ones in the form of a seven-point star.

The reason why goes back years, and continents.

The Posadas tradition

Hernandez says her favorite piñata to make is that traditional one.

These colorful figures are a key element in Posadas – which translates to inns – an annual tradition that runs from December 16 to 24 and is fueled by music, food, and a piñata for the children. During Posadas, family, friends and neighbors drop in on each other at night, asking for shelter in representation of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem ahead of Jesus’ birth.

Participants stand in the historic Avila Adobe house, the oldest standing residence in L.A., as they prepare to march in the annual Las Posadas procession on Olvera Street on December 17, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.

Walther Boelsterly, director of the Museum of Popular Art in Mexico City, says that while there’s no documentation about the origin of piñatas, oral history gives some idea of where they come from.

“What is said is that piñatas have an Eastern origin, basically Chinese,” he says. “They used a mud pot where they put seeds, and it was broken in the best moment of sowing to have good luck in the harvest.”

Boelsterly says Marco Polo then brought that idea to Europe, and when Spanish missionaries arrived in Mexico, they used piñatas in services ahead of Christmas. It was around the same time that the Aztecs in Mexico celebrated one of their gods.

“So, it’s a tradition that from the 16th of December when the Posadas start, until practically Christmas, the 24th, people use piñatas to deck their Posadas and have fun,” Boelsterly says.

The shape of the piñata used in these festivities is significant.

In that seven-point star, each pointed cone represents one of the deadly sins – pride, envy, lust, gluttony, anger, greed and sloth.

And the act of breaking the piñata has meaning, too.

“It’s to break with the deadly sins in order to be able to receive Jesus in a more purified state,” Boelsterly says.

Then, he adds, all the treats that come out once the piñata is broken reflect generosity.

From Posadas to daily life

Eventually, the tradition of only using piñatas in the Christmas season started to break. They were made in new shapes – like a carrot where the mud pot would sit at the top – and they made their way into birthday celebrations, bachelor parties and more.

“One of my friends had a divorce, and he had a very good relationship with his ex-wife,” Boelsterly says. “So, they made a party to get divorced and the way to break the compromise [of marriage] was breaking a piñata.”

The traditional mud pot, which would shatter everywhere once it broke, was more often replaced by cardboard, and as cartoons and TV shows became more popular, piñata makers started to use those characters in their products to appeal to children.

Now, Tania Hernandez talks eagerly about her job and is thankful that she learned the skills from her father-in-law.

But, as popularity and demand grew, some artists who create piñatas have found themselves in a bind – like Yesenia Prieto, a third-generation piñata maker in Los Angeles.

“The name of the game is, ‘Make things as fast as you can because we’re not getting paid very much for anything that we’re making’,” Prieto says. “So, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce.”

That’s what she learned seeing her family struggle with their business years ago.

“There [would] be a team of about four people working on one piece. It took about two hours to create and you would only get about $10 in return,” she says. “So on a good week when selling wholesale, we would get about $60 to $100 a week in terms of pay, working about like eight hours a day.”

She recognized the art involved in their work, and wanted others to do it too.

Prieto now owns the custom shop Piñata Design Studio. She uses materials like cardboard, tissue paper and homemade glue, as well as sequins and wood for bigger installations. Her piñatas average about $125, and start at $50.

She says that the artistry of a piñata tends not to be appreciated because its purpose is to be destroyed, and she wants to change this.

The basis of her business is to put time and care in the production process, and Prieto wants people to slow down, too, so they can appreciate the value of the product.

“The piñata offers not just something to look at, but it offers an experience,” she says. “It’s transitory, but everything is. Just because it has a shorter lifespan doesn’t mean it’s less valuable.”

Recognizing artistry and history

There are some efforts to recognize that artistic value of piñatas.

For 15 years, the Museum of Popular Art that Walther Boelsterly directs in Mexico has held a piñata contest as a way to celebrate the tradition and the talent involved in the process.

Participants have to use traditional materials, like a mud pot and tissue paper for decoration, and compete for a cash prize.

And in L.A., Prieto also recently participated in an exhibit hosted by the nonprofit organization Craft in America. It was titled Piñatas: The High Art of Celebration and ran from September to December 4th.

“One of our goals was really to highlight this as a living craft form,” says Emily Zaiden, director and curator at Craft in America. “One of the few that people experience in this day and age – to have an object like a piñata that’s so much a part of people’s celebrations and memories. And have that be a handcrafted piece of work is really special.”

Whacking the piñata is super satisfying and fun but you do hate to see them ruined. But then, as a human, beauty, schmeuty, you just want to get to the candy inside.

Enjoy!

Thank you Daily Beast!

The far right is out to destroy one of their own.

Over the past week, far-right pundits have begun lining up to take shots at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as the congresswoman reportedly vacationed in Costa Rica.

As for why fellow extremists are upset? That’s three-fold—and it involves Greene’s vocal support for Rep. Kevin McCarthy to be the next Speaker of the House, her public spat with onetime friend Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and the finalization of her divorce.

“MTG wants to protect McCarthy from being removed if he is elected Speaker,” Jan 6th organizer Ali Alexander wrote on Telegram, seething over Greene. “There is something so odd about what is going on between McCarthy and MTG. I’ve only ever once before seen anything like it. It may be time for me to intervene.”

The “Stop the Steal” leader—once an ally of Greene’s—subsequently returned to Telegram to tear into the Georgia Republican, who he referred to as a “trailer park hoodrat,” for “attacking” Boebert earlier this week after the Colorado congresswoman ignited a public feud with Greene.

“I’ve been aligned with Marjorie and accused of believing a lot of the things that she believes in,” Boebert said Monday at a Turning Point USA conference—which kicked off the feud. “I don’t believe in this, just like I don’t believe in Russian space lasers, Jewish space lasers, and all of this.”

Greene responded on Twitter by accusing Boebert of engaging in “high school drama” and generating “media sound bites.”

Since then, far-right radio host Stew Peters has also gotten in on the Greene bashing.

“I see you’ve stopped talking about dildos and butt plugs,” Peters fumed on Twitter after Greene fired back at Boebert.

In a phone interview with The Daily Beast, Peters said that Greene was “actually a threat to national security” and declared that she would “burn in hell” one day.

“Marjorie is NOT America First, but regrettably a faker and a liar who raised millions claiming she would impeach Biden, and now backs a man for Speaker who refuses to impeach Biden,” he said Friday evening. Additionally, Peters—like many other far-right pundits—engaged in an extremely sexist attack referencing the allegation that Greene had an affair with a “tantric sex guru” ahead of her recent divorce.

Peters suggested the “wholesome Christian mom” image she ran under was a farce, apparently in light of her divorce, calling her a “two-bit whore.”

Likewise, former Right Side Broadcasting Network host-turned-failed Republican congressional candidate Mike Crispi suggested that Greene was being “blackmailed” by McCarthy, which he called the “only logical explanation” for her fervent support.

“All she does is bully and try to discredit,” he continued of the Georgia Republican.

White nationalist leader-turned-Kanye West informal campaign associate Nicholas Fuentes additionally turned on Greene earlier this month after she denounced him in late November, despite speaking at Fuentes’s annual AFPAC conference months earlier in March.

Fuentes—who now refers to Greene as “Large Marge”—has since encouraged his white nationalist “groyper” followers to heckle Greene at her campaign events.