I’m just leaving that classic bit up for a while for your enjoyment. It never gets old. But if you’re interested, please click over to this great piece by Jeff Maurer breaking down why it’s so great. An excerpt:
In my opinion, this is still funny after 38 years, which is remarkable. One reason why it perseveres might be because it’s all wit and no cheats: It’s not a song or an impression, there are no costumes or pop culture references or celebrity cameos. It’s just a fucking guy sitting in a chair talking — the only “cheat” is that the guy is Steve Martin
So: The writing is doing all the work. And the writing is an especially clean example of the three steps of sketch writing, which are: 1) Establish the game, 2) Heighten the game, and 3) Blow it out.
Read on for what he means by that. It’s fascinating.
And since we’re talking about comedy and since Hanukkah has begun, here’s another holiday comedy classic:
The Gävle Goat is currently being protected by 24-hour guards who patrol the perimeter nonstop, two security fences, CCTV, and the constant vigilance of volunteers around the world who watch a streaming image of it to detect and deter any malfeasance.
“While the town of Gävle diligently tries to protect its magnificent Goat, it rarely succeeds. In the last 57 years, the Goat has survived intact until New Year’s just 19 times.”
From the first Sunday of Advent, the thirteen-meter-tall Gävle Goat lights up Rådhusesplanaden in Gävle – a beloved landmark and symbol of our Christmas tradition. With its central location, the goat becomes a natural gathering spot along the bustling holiday walkways, inviting people to explore Söder’s cozy shopping district. Be sure to visit Agnes Cultural House as well, welcoming Gävle locals and visitors with inspiration and culture from December 6.
If you can’t access Klaas’s more colorful account, there’s some history here, including the town’s efforts to keep vandals from burning down the goat, part of an unsanctioned local tradtion of destroying the symbol of Christmas. Check and see if it’s still there via the goat-cam.
This charming song and arresting video by local artist Lord Stryrofoam (Robert Henderson) is a holiday tradition in our household. Notice the sun traverse at 1:35.
It seems His Lordship survived the hurricane (Nov. 6): “All I can do is try to be compassionate and truthful, even though those things are now completely out of fashion.”
I wish I could say with confidence that a headline like that (on Christmas Eve no less!) Matt Gaetz is toast but I’m afraid I just can’t. Even that headline in the Wall St. Journal probably doesn’t hurt his chances of winning office or becoming a Fox star. MAGA loves him. I could easily see him becoming the Governor of Florida.
It’s possible that the only thing normal people will get out of this disgraceful episode is Gaetz’s departure from the back bench of the House and some moments like these:
Tom and Jerry in The Night Before Christmas (1941) The toys under the tree accurately represent what was available at the time. This is also the first time Tom and Jerry called a truce. If they can do it, maybe we all can. Merry Christmas, everyone. 🐈🐭🎅 pic.twitter.com/DMzxFH3b1m
Tom and Jerry in The Night Before Christmas (1941) The toys under the tree accurately represent what was available at the time. This is also the first time Tom and Jerry called a truce. If they can do it, maybe we all can. Merry Christmas, everyone. —
Thanks again, folks, for your generosity. I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Here’s hoping you have a lovely Christmas Eve, whether you celebrate with friends and family or are happily solo relaxing and enjoying the long winter night. (Or for those of you in the southern hemisphere, enjoying the beautiful summer weather!” )
I’ve been on a rolling rant lately about the age of Democrats in top leadership. I’m not the only one concerned about the gerontocracy. Charlie Sykes comments on the disappearance of Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), 81, who seems to have vanished from Congress in July.
“Since early September, my health challenges have progressed making frequent travel to Washington both difficult and unpredictable,” Granger said in a statement to Axios this week. She’s now in an assisted living facility. Her son told reporters she’s having “dementia issues.”
Once again, the moral questions of America’s political gerontocracy reveal themselves. This is an especially sensitive subject, because so many of us have loved ones—parents, grandparents, siblings—who are in cognitive decline. They deserve our consideration, compassion, and honesty. That’s also true for members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and presidents. But the stakes there are much higher, and in those cases, sometimes compassion means being truthful about when it’s time to move on.
Sykes mentions Joe Biden’s decline. And Senator Dianne Feinstein and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who both died in office.
“For much of this year, our politics has been dominated by octogenarians, including Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Grassley (who, at the age of 91, is actually a nonagenarian),” Sykes muses. “But Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection at the age of 80 was the strongest case against the gerontocracy.”
I was still living in South Carolina in the mid-1980s when mental decline anecdotes went around about Sen. Strom Thurmond, then deep into his 80s. Thurmond was in meet-and-greet mode at an event, an attendee related at the time, when Thurmond’s young son walked up to his dad and the aging senator thrust out his hand and introduced himself.
After a closed Senate Judiciary hearing for organizing the Clinton impeachment trial over a decade later, a reporter related (on NPR, IIRC) that Thurmond, 96(?), had exited the meeting room and, mistaking him for an aide and needing an escort, took the reporter’s arm and shuffled down the hall to visit the men’s room.
But mental acuity is not the only reason for those in power to know (or to be told) when it’s time to hang it up and call it a career.
There is no substitute for long experience. But for a political party to remain vital, vibrant, and competitive, it has to have regular infusions of young blood, fresh ideas, and modern skills. Democrats are at a structural disadvantage and faced with a media environment dominated by outlets run by right-wing billionaire-ideologues. That is not the world as we’d like it, but it is the world as we find it.
Democrats’ top leaders cut their political teeth in the pre-internet era of network news. It is clear that, despite their deep political experience, they don’t understand how to interact with the media via any medium much more relatable than a press conference. Younger rising stars know how to draw attention and reach citizens more effectively in the age of social media and hostile media conglomerates. But so long as their elders hang on to their sinecures indefnitely, Democrats will struggle with 20th-century skills to meet the communication challenges of the 21st.
Moerover, with older pols hanging on beyond their expiration dates, attracting young talent to political work becomes that much harder when college graduates do not see paths for themselves into political leadership posts or jobs. (See AOC v. Connolly.) Why is turnout among young voters so low?
@davidhogg.bsky.social: “One of the biggest things that I'm doing in my run for vice chair is encouraging our party to stop paying consultants to shove our fingers in our ears so far that we just don't hear the voters.”
It’s one of the classic blunders. Not the most famous — “never get involved in a land war in Asia” — nor the most recent — “everything Trump touches dies” — but it’s up there. Men assume their expertise in one area of human endeavor makes them experts in another. (It’s always men, isn’t it?)
President Elon Musk and billionaire-dilettante Vivek Ramaswamy are joining the Trump 2.0 administration (1st classic blunder) to operate as his proposed, informal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Never having worked in government before, the pair mean to “to cut the federal government down to size.” And inflict pain on the little people. Piece of cake.
Except.
The irony come Jan. 20 is that Trump, the naif in 2016, now brings experience, if not wisdom, to his White House job. Musk and Ramaswamy are the overconfident naifs (2nd classic blunder).
MSNBC’s Jen Psaki invited Bob Bauer, former White House Counsel to Barack Obama and Jack Goldsmith, former Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush, onto her show Monday night to discuss the obstacles Musk-Ramaswamy may face in implementing government of, by, and for oligarchs through a presidential advisory commission.
View on Threads
Whaddya mean, I can’t just slash shit?
Trump 2.0 may attempt to incapacitate agencies from within through firing and not hiring, and by installing unqualified MAGA loyalists to run agencies. But Bauer and Goldsmith write in their new substack that the Musk-Ramaswamy effort to drown government in the bathtub simply may not be legal:
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is one tool that the Trump administration will use to deregulate. Trump says DOGE “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” According to Musk and Ramaswamy, DOGE will work closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two men will “serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees,” and will “advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.” This will raise a hornet’s nest of legal issues.
One is the legal status of DOGE itself. It appears it will be a group of non-government officials who lack policy-implementing power and instead will advise the White House on various deregulatory steps. If so, DOGE would likely be governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). FACA defines an “advisory committee” subject to its rules as “any” committee, task force, “or other similar group” which (among other things) is “established or utilized by the President.” FACA, if it applies, will slow DOGE down, since it has rules about transparency, record keeping, and conflicts of interest. The incoming Trump administration is surely looking for ways to avoid FACA compliance—perhaps by “taking on an informal structure and rendering advice as individuals rather than as a group,” or by going all in on a 1974 Antonin Scalia Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that elements of FACA are unconstitutional. DOGE’s operation will likely be litigated.
A lot will hinge on “likely be governed” and “likely be litigated.” The first instinct of Trump and his allies in oligarchy will be to treat inconvenient regulations as “likely to be ignored.” Like conflict-of-interest rules and transparency regulations. But a more glaring problem for Musk-Ramaswamy, says Goldsmith, is that as nongovernmental advisers they’ll lack real authority to impose any government shrinkage they recommend. Plus there are a hornet’s nest of federal laws and regulations that may impede the efforts of these wannabe masters of the universe to build better worlds in their image.
Nate Cohn at The Upshot makes a useful observation in his newsletter today (gift link)
There’s a lot about politics that’s hard to predict, but there’s something you can count on every four years: One party loses a presidential election, and the recriminations begin.
Every four years, the post-election fight seems to play out the same way. Every move of the losing campaign is questioned and scrutinized. The party’s center blames the activists for alienating swing voters. The activists blame the center for failing to mobilize the base.
And no matter what, you’ll find each pundit concluding that the party’s way forward is to do exactly what that pundit has been arguing for all along.
While you might not guess it from my tone, these debates do matter. They shape the strategy of the next midterm campaign, they can change the policies supported by elected officials, and they even influence how ordinary voters cast their ballots in future presidential primaries.
Still, there’s a reason you could probably tell my eyes roll at the prospect of most election postmortems. In hindsight, they don’t usually look great.
In fact, many look so bad that there may be more lessons for today’s Democrats in the failure of past postmortems than in any analysis of Kamala Harris’s campaign.
He recaps the postmortems of 2004, 2012, 2016 and 2020 and notes correctly that they were all wrong. That’s not to say they this time the insistence that Democrats abandon their allegedly “woke” agenda (which Harris did not run on) and hit immigration and crime as hard as possible is wrong. (Today, I’m hearing a lot of bellyaching about Biden’s commutation of federal prisoners in order to deprive Trump of yet another bloodthirsty execution fest.) But I doubt it. None of the autopsies strike me as adequate to explain what happened or the give very good advice about what to do next. So much will depend on events that haven’t happened yet.
Cohn points out that the election was actually very close but also that trying to reclaim voters that have gone over to the other side is harder than it looks. But still, over the past few cycles, the out party has succeeded in coming back anyway. He writes:
Finally, there’s the most important reason the autopsies haven’t panned out: the desire for change. The president’s party has retained the White House only once since 2004, mostly because voters have been unsatisfied with the state of the country for the last 20 years. No president has sustained high approval ratings since Mr. Bush, in the wake of Sept. 11.
As a result, losing parties haven’t needed to make brilliant changes to return to the White House, even though the postmortems almost always imply such changes are necessary. The implication is that the most important factors shaping the next election probably aren’t in the hands of the loser, whether it’s the state of the economy or the conduct of the party in power.
Looking even further back, the president’s party has won only 40 percent of presidential elections from 1968 to today. With that record, perhaps it’s the winning party that really faces the toughest question post-election: How do you build public support during an era of relatively slow growth, low trust in government and low satisfaction with the state of the country?
Here, the ball is in Mr. Trump’s court. If he and his approach are popular in four years, there might be little Democrats can do. Recent history suggests, however, that Democrats might well have an opening…
Whatever the case, a simple desire for change might be all Democrats need to return to the White House. Of course, they would need a theory of what’s wrong with America during their campaign, and one that contrasts with the vision of the party in power.
We are living in a very turbulent time in which incumbents are being kicked out all over the world. Here in the US we’ve been going back and forth in both the presidency and the congress for over 30 years. People are perpetually unhappy with the status quo and it’s been turbo-charged by the rise of social media which makes everybody outraged and angry all the time.
If very bad things happen (a recession, inflation, war…) during Trump’s term, which is certainly possible, change will almost certainly be called for. But even if things go along as they are, the Trump show is already stale. People may very well want to change the channel and yet Republicans will necessarily have to push his anointed successor.
In any case, it’s much too early to make any decisions about what the “message” should be for 2028. Nobody knows what the world and politics are going to look like then. Everyone needs to take a breath and let things unfold for a bit.
As I had hoped, Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of all but three federal prisoners to life without parole. Considering that he is a committed Catholic and the pope himself petitioned him to do it, I’m not surprised. He left three heinous mass murderers (Tree of Life, Boston Bombing and the Charleston Church) on death row which is disappointing for those of us who believe that the principle at stake is that the state should not be in the business of killing people. But I can understand why he would do it, particularly considering the inevitable blowback for the commutations, which is fierce.
President Joe Biden heeded the calls of anti-death penalty campaigners and spared all but three federal prisoners from the threat of execution on Monday, commuting a total of 37 sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In a statement, Biden, who has overseen a moratorium on federal executions even as federal prosecutors continue to seek the death penalty, cast the move as an act of mercy. It comes after President-elect Donald Trump, during his previous term, executed 13 federal prisoners in the span of six months, more than the previous 10 presidents combined.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement explaining his decision. But he argued that taking their lives would not constitute justice.
“[G]uided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
This was the right thing to do.
The Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan wrote about Biden last week and I thought it was quite good:
As with many a lame-duck president in the past, it feels as if Joe Biden has already left the national stage even though he has a month left in his term.
In his case, that disappearing act is vastly exaggerated by the man who was his predecessor and will be his successor. Donald Trump sucks up every bit of oxygen in the room with his daily outrages – horrifying cabinet choices, transactional friendships with oligarchs, appalling social media posts. With all the lack of grace we’ve come to expect, he is threatening and bragging his way to inauguration day.
Biden, by contrast, is mostly low-key and taciturn.
[…]
Some major news organizations are giving Biden an extra shove into the wings with coverage that emphasizes what we already know: that Biden, at 82, is old and less than vibrant. A Weary Biden Heads for the Exit, read a headline in the New York Times, with observations, in the newspaper’s own voice, that Biden “looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day”, and that “it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world’s most stressful job for another four years.”
The Wall Street Journal reprised its once disparaged and now praised coverage from last spring about the president’s increasing frailty with a story about how staff shored him up and distracted the public and the press: “Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted.”
But even in this diminished state, and even amid low approval ratings and endless criticism, Biden remains himself to a large extent: decent, optimistic, patriotic and empathetic. In an extensive video interview published recently by the progressive, independent media organization MeidasTouch Network, Biden sounded cogent and thoughtful as he answered questions from founder Ben Meiselas.
Granted, the interview was non-combative; rather, it was notably tactful and respectful. But it was also substantive, and Biden sounded the familiar notes as he pledged to attend next month’s inauguration and explained why he invited Trump to the White House, despite having often depicted him as a threat to democracy.
“Because it’s who we are as a nation, it’s how we’re supposed to be … ” he said about the peaceful transfer of power. He emphasized his belief in the American people and joked about being what he called “congenitally optimistic”.
I’m not sure I share those rosy views, given the outcome of the election and the way things are unfolding day after day. But that’s vintage Biden. And as I watched and listened to him answering Meiselas’s questions, I somehow felt nostalgic – yes, nostalgic for a presidency that hasn’t even ended, though it is fading fast.
I couldn’t help but think that – despite all Biden’s well-documented faults and misjudgments (including failing to step away much earlier from the presidential campaign) – this president has done a lot right. His accomplishments are real, and his decency as a human being is, too. Some of us, at least, are going to miss him when he’s gone. Even if it seems like that has already happened.
America wanted a freak show not a decent, competent old man (or an accomplished, vibrant Black woman.) And they got what they wanted.
