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MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR READERS AND SUBSCRIBERS.  IF I GET ARRESTED FOR SAYING THAT, PLEASE START A GO-FUND-ME PAGE.

DECEMBER 25,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

THE DEMS AND THE MEN – FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:   As Democrats investigate what went wrong in the 2021 elections and what is going wrong heading into the 2022 elections, a familiar pattern is emerging: Men are abandoning the party in droves.  Just this week, snippets from the Democratic Governors Association’s postmortem of the Virginia governor's race were made public , including the report’s conclusion, which read, “We need to address the long-term problems that exist for Democrats with Latinos and black men.”  On background from a source with knowledge of the findings in the memo, the Washington Examiner has obtained the underlying data driving this conclusion. It turns out that Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe actually improved on President Joe Biden’s margin among black women (+78 for Biden compared to +87 for McAuliffe). But at the same time, McAuliffe’s support among black men fell off a cliff (+74 for Biden compared to +55 for McAuliffe).  This growing gender gap among blacks is also evident among Hispanics. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that while a strong 55% of Hispanic women said they would vote for Biden in 2024, an even stronger 56% of Hispanic men said they would pull the lever for President Donald Trump. That 56% support among Hispanic men almost matches the 61% of white men who voted for Trump in 2020.  Why should anyone be surprised.  The Democratic Party only represents certain groups, and certain sub-groups.  And men, who happen to exist in America, have started to notice.

December 25, 2021       Permalink

THRILLING POLITICAL NEWS, NOT – OVERNIGHT:  Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, together again!  Tickets here!  From the Washington Examiner: 

Vice President Kamala Harris is turning to Hillary Clinton for advice on plotting "a path forward," according to a new report.

The New York Times reports Harris sought out the counsel of Clinton, the first female Democratic presidential nominee and a fellow former U.S. senator, and other women when she came to Washington.

Harris and Clinton speak every few months on the phone, and the two met in the vice president's West Wing office in November, the report said.

Harris, who, like President Joe Biden, has job approval numbers around the 40% mark, has privately complained to allies she is being treated differently by the media than her 48 predecessors while describing them as all white and male, according to the report. Clinton echoed that sentiment.

“There is a double standard; it’s sadly alive and well,” Clinton told the newspaper. “A lot of what is being used to judge her, just like it was to judge me, or the women who ran in 2020, or everybody else, is really colored by that.”

COMMENT:  This is a very strange story, for everyone knows that Hillary Clinton is making her move to run for president again in 2024.  In her way is one Kamala Harris.  We can almost see the two heading toward each other with spears.  It's impossible for me to believe that Kammy doesn't see the threat from elder stateswoman Hillary.  The only thing both candidates have in common is their regular playing of the gender card, and, in Kammy's case, the race card as well.

We are about to enter a bitter political year.  No doubt the oddfellow relationship between Hilly and Kammy will be sorted out.  They will both learn that there are no friends in politics and that knives are dangerous items. 

December 25, 2021       Permalink 

DECEMBER 24,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Christmas message to the world, delivered while on a trip to Washington in 1941, just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: 

"I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

"This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.

"Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

"And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."

December 24, 2021       Permalink

WHAT IT'S COME TO – OVERNIGHT:  As the great, sane majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, the less stable among us continue their brave work of chasing phantoms and gremlins.  Try to understand them.  From Legal Insurrection: 

This is just ridiculous. This apparently started years ago.  But can we get through Christmas without the left trashing some classic element of it?

The Rochester Beacon reports:

Jingle all the way? Maybe not.

“Jingle Bells” is one of the most performed and well-known secular holiday songs ever written, not only in the United States, but around the world. It’s the first song to have been broadcast from space—by Gemini 6 astronauts nine days before Christmas in 1965. It’s regularly been sung at the White House—most recently by President Barack Obama and his family upon lighting the National Christmas Tree in 2016.

But “Jingle Bells” isn’t being sung anymore at Brighton’s Council Rock Primary School.
“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”

“Jingle Bells” offensive? How so?

Tappon and other staff confirmed by email that the decision to remove the song was based in part on information in a 2017 article written by professor Kyna Hamill, director of Boston University’s Core Curriculum. Hamill’s article is a deep dive (nearly 12,000 words including appendices and footnotes) into the origin of “Jingle Bells,” the life of its composer, James L. Pierpont, and the popularity of sleigh songs in the mid-1800s. She found documents showing that the song’s first public performance may have occurred in 1857 at a Boston minstrel show. Minstrelsy was a then-popular form of entertainment in which white actors performed in blackface.

But when told that Council Rock has removed ‘Jingle Bells” based partly on her research, Hamill responded in an email: “I am actually quite shocked the school would remove the song from the repertoire. … I, in no way, recommended that it stopped being sung by children.”

She continued:

"My article tried to tell the story of the first performance of the song, I do not connect this to the popular Christmas tradition of singing the song now.

"The very fact of (“Jingle Bells’”) popularity has to do (with) the very catchy melody of the song, and not to be only understood in terms of its origins in the minstrel tradition. … I would say it should very much be sung and enjoyed, and perhaps discussed."

COMMENT:  Let's have the singing.  The discussion can wait.

December 24, 2021       Permalink