New Year’s Eve Reads
Posted: December 31, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 22 Comments
Halston, Bianca Jagger, Jack Haley Jr, his wife Liza Minnelli and Andy Warhol at a New Year’s Eve party at Studio 54 in 1978.
Good Afternoon!!
Here we are on the last day of 2015. I’m going to make this a link dump, as JJ calls it, because I know it will be another quiet day and I once again overslept. I hope I can get myself back into a normal routine in 2016! So here are some stories I’ve been reading.
The National Memo: This Year In Crazy: 2015 Belonged To The Wingnuts.
As you may recall, this year kicked off with a big national conversation about the efficacy of vaccinations — setting the tone for a host of debates utterly untethered to reality, whether it was fraudulent anti-abortion videos meant to “expose” Planned Parenthood, or a U.S. senator using a single snowball to disprove 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate science.
We saw loony conspiracy theories that would be too unrealistic for an episode of 24 gaining currency with a surprising number of politicians, as when a handful of paranoid Texans thought that a military exercise was the opening salvo in a federal invasion. This delusion then gained traction and metastasized wildly in the patchwork of talk radio shows and fringe websites that have become the touchstone of our political discourse, until even Texas governor Greg Abbot and Ted Cruz voiced their concern.
The Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage was a landmark victory for civil rights, but it sent conservative Christians into an apocalyptic tizzy. Governors tried to pass legislation to legally discriminate against same-sex couples under the reprehensible camouflage of “religious liberty,” and one county clerk became a national martyr when she spent five nights in jail rather than let two men walk down the aisle.
When a racist terrorist shot up a black church with a gun,conservatives told us we could blame the attack on anything except racism and guns. Finally, we all just blamed a flag. Even so, down in Dixie and elsewhere, there were many who fought to fly it proudly — on the lawn of the South Carolina state house and over a grassy knoll in Texas just off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
It was hard to narrow it down, but based on your votes, we have assembled the top 5 crazies from this year’s archives.
Head over to the National Memo to read their top choices–it’s worth clicking the link just to see the illustration at the top of the article.
Here’s a WTF story for you from PC Magazine: Twitter Criticized For Hiring White Male as New Diversity Chief.
The microblogging service this week announced that Jeffrey Siminoff will join the company to lead global diversity and inclusion at Twitter. Siminoff has an impressive resume as Apple’s former Director of Worldwide Inclusion and Diversity, but there’s just one problem, according to critics: He’s a white male.
His appointment was criticized by diversity supporters such as Mark S. Luckie, who doesn’t seem to have a problem with Siminoff himself, but said it “makes no sense” to hire a white male for the role.
“Not saying a white guy can’t be head of diversity but for a company that hires a majority white guys it sends the wrong message,” Luckie wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “I’m sure he’s a great guy but you’ve set the company back instead of moving it forward”….
Twitter last year said its workforce is 70 percent male and 30 percent female. Fifty nine percent of its employees are white, while 29 percent are Asian. African-Americans, Latinos, and people of other ethnicities represent just a fraction of those numbers.
Why is Chris Cillizza writing for a major newspaper?
Washington Post: I said Hillary Clinton had the ‘Worst Year in Washington.’ Here’s why.
I write a weekly column awarding someone — usually a political figure — the “Worst Week in Washington.” It’s just what it sounds like. At the end of the year, I write one big piece about who had the “Worst Year in Washington.” President Obama won it in 2013 and 2014. This year, I named co-winners: Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Outrage!
How could I compare Jeb(!) with Hillary, people screamed. One is barely relevant in the presidential race; the other is a clear front-runner for her party’s nomination. Naming Clinton as a co-winner was either evidence of my “both sides do it” obsession or the latest example of me being just plain dumb.
Roughly 1 billion people sent me this tweet from ESPN’s Nate Silver, which provided further proof of my (a) bias or (b) stupidity.
It’s possible, of course, that I am biased, dumb or maybe a little bit of both. But let me explain why I picked Clinton and why I stand by it.
You’re biased, stupid, ignorant, moronic, out-of-touch, and the ultimate Villager, Chris. Read Cillizza’s convoluted defense of his stupidity at the link.
This news just broke at Politico: Two of Carson’s top aides resign.
Campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts both resigned, effective immediately, on Thursday. “Barry Bennett and I have resigned from the Carson campaign effective immediately,” Watts said in a statement. “We respect the candidate and we have enjoyed helping him go from far back in the field to top tier status.”
The announcement comes as Carson has struggled to halt a dramatic slide in his poll numbers as doubts arose about his grasp of foreign policy issues and the accuracy of his personal narrative.
TPM: Donald Trump Offers Passionate Defense Of Aerosol Hair Spray In South Carolina.
At the sold out campaign event in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Trump lobbed an attack at President Obama’s action on climate change, saying Obama still flies on “a very old Air Force One…spewing stuff” despite being concerned about his carbon footprint.
“You can’t use hair spray, because hair spray is going to affect the ozone,” the billionaire mogul told crowd.
He continued, pausing to pantomime spraying and styling his shag carpet-like hair: “I’m in my room, in New York City, and I want to put a little spray…but I hear they don’t want me to use hairspray, they want me to use the pump.”
The presidential candidate very much prefers aerosol hair spray to “the pump” version, which he said “comes out in big globs and it’s stuck in your hair and you say, ‘oh my god, I’ve gotta take a shower again because my hair’s all screwed up.’”
Trump also contended that using aerosol hair products in his “sealed” apartment can’t cause harm to the environment.
“I’m sitting in this concealed apartment, this concealed unit – you know, I really do live in a very nice apartment – but it’s sealed! It’s beautiful! I don’t think anything gets out,” he concluded.
Aerosol cans haven’t contained ozone-damaging chemicals since the late 1970s, when the Environmental Protection Agency imposed regulations on the products, but other chemicals in the cans do raise your carbon footprint “ever so slightly,” according to Scientific American. Trump has also railed against EPA water regulations for ruining his signature hairdo.
I have to wonder why all those gun-toting, manly white men who follow Trump don’t find him a little effeminate talking about his hairdo all the time.
In the same speech Trump babbled a lot of nonsense about how women supposedly don’t like Hillary Clinton. Politico:
The real estate mogul told the Hilton Head crowd that Clinton has been hitting him “really hard with the women card, OK? Really hard.”
“And I had to say, OK, that’s enough. That’s enough. And we did a strong number. She’s not going to win,” Trump said, reiterating that “I love” the concept of a female president, but it “can’t be her.” ….
Hillary Clinton is “horrible,” Trump continued. “But I’ll tell you who doesn’t like Hillary are women. Women don’t like Hillary. I see it all the time,” he proclaimed to cheers in the audience. (The latest national CNN poll found that 82 percent of female registered Democrats have a favorable opinion of Clinton, while 15 percent have an unfavorable view.)
The former secretary of state is “always so theatrical” when she criticizes him, Trump observed, mimicking Clinton for saying “Mr. Trump said this and that and this.”
“I shouldn’t do it. I just have to turn off the television sometimes. She just gives me a headache,” Trump said, before remarking, “Although last night I think I gave her a big headache.
Hillary would swat Trump like an annoying mosquito.
Washington Post: How Rubio helped his ex-con brother-in-law acquire a real estate license.
When Marco Rubio was majority whip of the Florida House of Representatives, he used his official position to urge state regulators to grant a real estate license to his brother-in-law, a convicted cocaine trafficker who had been released from prison 20 months earlier, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
In July 2002, Rubio sent a letter on his official statehouse stationery to the Florida Division of Real Estate, recommending Orlando Cicilia “for licensure without reservation.” The letter, obtained by The Washington Post under the Florida Public Records Act, offers a glimpse of Rubio using his growing political power to assist his troubled brother-in-law and provides new insight into how the young lawmaker intertwined his personal and political lives.
Rubio did not disclose in the letter that Cicilia was married to his sister, Barbara, or that the former cocaine dealer was living at the time in the same West Miami home as Rubio’s parents. He wrote that he had known Cicilia “for over 25 years,” without elaborating.
I actually don’t have a problem with ex-cons getting jobs. I hear Obama is thinking of issuing an executive order to prevent employers from asking about criminal records. I don’t think this will hurt Rubio much.
More links:
New York Times: Donald Trump’s Strongest Supporters: A Certain Kind of Democrat. (Spoiler: they are people registered as Dems who call themselves Repubs and they are mostly in the South.)
Think Progress: Another Texas Republican Under Fire For Rape ‘Joke.’
Texas Observer: Jonathan Stickland’s Pot Antics are Comical. His Views on Rape are Terrifying.
ABC News: Man Charged With Arson in Houston Mosque Fire says he was a member of the congregation.
CNN: Donald Trump doesn’t understand what ‘sexism’ is.
Des Moines Register: Jeb Bush cancels Iowa TV buy, shifts money to ground game.
What stories are you following?
Tuesday Reads: Politics Free Zone
Posted: December 29, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: AJ Waines, books, Ernest Hemingway, giant squid sighting, JRR Tolkien, Paula Hawkins, Pompeii 9 CommentsA view of one of the frescoes of the newly restored Villa of Mysteries on the occasion of its presentation to journalists in the ancient site of Pompeii, Italy, Friday, March 20, 2015. (AP)
Good Afternoon!
In just a few more days it will be 2016, and the slow news zone of the holidays will be over. I sure hope the new year will be an improvement over 2015. At least I’m hoping to see woman President of the U.S. by next year’s end.
I’m going to avoid politics today. I’m just not in the mood for stories about Donald Trump attacking Hillary and anyone else who dares to say something truthful about him and his campaign.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the story of Pompeii and how the city was frozen in time by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The ancient city is in the news now, because Italy has restored six houses and opened them to public view. CNN:
Newly restored ruins in the ancient city of Pompeii, with intricate mosaic tiles, bathhouses and even graffiti were officially unveiled to the public on Thursday after a lengthy restoration process.
The project, including six restored homes, is the result of a 2012 partnership between the EU’s European Commission and Italian authorities.
The partnership spent 150 million Euros for 12 projects geared towards consolidating “high risk” structures, building a drainage system, and restoring artifacts at the UNESCO World Heritage site situated near Naples, Italy.
Pompeii is one of most famous historical sites in the world. In 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius buried the town and its unsuspecting inhabitants in hot rock, volcanic ash and noxious gas. Those who did not escape, suffocated or burned. Some were covered in several feet of ash and preserved and fossilized in the process. The resulting archeological record is remarkable. Its furnished rooms, paintings and even plaster casts of deceased inhabitants offer a detailed picture of life during the Early Roman Empire.
The Italian government has been accused of neglecting the historic site, but now it is apparently committed to maintaining and improving it.
Journalists take photos of frescoes of the newly restored Villa of Mysteries in March 2015 (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
The Daily Mail on the Villa of Mysteries:
The Villa dei Misteri (Villa of Mysteries), an estate on the outskirts of Pompeii’s city centre that features some of the best-preserved frescoes of the site, is now open to the public after one of many restoration projects ordered by the EU….
Pompeii, a busy commercial city overlooking the Mediterranean, was destroyed in A.D. 79 by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius that killed thousands of people and buried the city in 20 feet of volcanic ash.
But the ash also helped preserve Pompeii’s treasures, providing precious information about life in the ancient world.
The first excavations began in the 18th century, but even today only two-thirds of the site’s 60 hectares (150 acres) have been uncovered.
In recent years, Pompeii has been bedeviled by neglect and mismanagement characteristic of Italy’s underdeveloped south, as well as brushes with the corruption that has infected some other important public works in Italy, including its Expo 2015 World’s Fair in Milan and the Moses water barrier project in Venice.
One of the frescoes that has been restored to its former glory at the Villa of the Mysteries at the ancient archaeological site of Pompeii.
The ash also preserved the shapes of the bodies of many people who perished in the disaster.
From Metro UK: Pompeii restoration reveals tragic scene of ‘scared boy cowering on his mother’s lap’.
Through plaster casts experts have managed to show the devastating scene of a ‘scared boy on his mother’s lap’.
It is thought the child, who was around four, had run to his mother as Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the Roman town in ash in 79 AD. Read about the making of the plaster casts at the link.
You can see many more stunning photos from Pompeii at the links I’ve provided and at this Pinterest page.
NPR recently covered the story of another important restoration project, that of Ernest Hemingway’s home in Cuba.
New Conservation Effort Aims To Protect Papa’s Papers.
It’s been a year since the U.S. and Cuba began normalizing relations. Tourism, business and cultural exchanges are booming. And there is another curious benefactor of those warmer ties — Ernest Hemingway, or at least, his legacy. The writer lived just outside of Havana for 20 years, and that house, called the Finca Vigia, has long been a national museum.
But years of hot, humid Caribbean weather has taken a toll on the author’s thousands of papers and books. A Boston-based foundation is helping restore those weathered treasures, and who better to lead that effort than the original dean of home repairs: Bob Vila, of public television’s This Old House. He tells NPR’s Carrie Kahn that he has a personal connection to Cuba. “I’m American-born Cuban,” he says. “My Havana-born parents emigrated during the latter part of World War II, and I was born in Miami, raised there and partially in Havana up until the revolution in 1959.”
Read more about the project and listen to the story at the link above.
Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea here at the Finca Vigia, his home outside Havana. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Did you hear about the siting of a giant squid in Japan on December 24? From CNN:
It isn’t every day that a mystery from the deep swims into plain sight. But on Christmas Eve, spectators on a pier in Toyama Bay in central Japan were treated to a rare sighting of a giant squid.
The creature swam under fishing boats and close to the surface of Toyama Bay, better known for its firefly squid, and reportedly hung around the bay for several hours before it was ushered back to open water.
It was captured on video by a submersible camera, and even joined by a diver, Akinobu Kimura, owner of Diving Shop Kaiyu, who swam in close proximity to the red-and-white real-life sea monster.
“My curiosity was way bigger than fear, so I jumped into the water and go close to it,” he told CNN.
“This squid was not damaged and looked lively, spurting ink and trying to entangle his tentacles around me. I guided the squid toward to the ocean, several hundred meters from the area it was found in, and it disappeared into the deep sea.” Here’s a screen shot from video footage (CBS News).
I was browsing through some end-of-the-year articles on books, and I came across this interesting article at the BBC. The article is based on a new book by Dominic Sandbrook:
Did Tolkien Write Juvenile Trash?
Taking Tolkien seriously is inevitably complicated by the fact that he has long been associated in the public mind with a sweaty, furtive gang of misfits and weirdoes – by which I mean those critics who for more than half a century have been sneering at his books and their readers. Self-consciously highbrow types often have surprisingly intolerant views about what other people ought to be writing, and when the first volume of The Lord of the Rings was published in the summer of 1954, a few weeks before Lord of the Flies, many were appalled by its nostalgic medievalism.
A prime example was the American modernist Edmund Wilson, who in a hilariously wrong-headed review for The Nation dismissed Tolkien’s book as “juvenile trash”, marked by – of all things! – an “impotence of imagination”. In the New Statesman, meanwhile, Maurice Richardson, himself a writer of surreal fantasy stories, conceded that The Lord of the Rings might appeal to “very leisured boys”, but claimed that it made him want to march through the streets carrying the sign: “Adults of all ages! Unite against the infantilist invasion.”
Even decades later, long after Tolkien’s book had become an international cultural phenomenon, the academic medievalist Peter Godman was still assuring readers of the London Review of Books that it was merely an “entertaining diversion for pre-teenage children”. Michael Moorcock, likening it to the works of A A Milne, dismissed The Lord of the Rings as “a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class“, while Philip Pullman, always keen to sneer at those authors from whom he had borrowed so liberally, called it “trivial“, and “not worth arguing with”. Yet none of this, of course, has ever made the slightest dent in Tolkien’s popularity.
Read the rest at the link.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Finally, here’s an interesting piece on a popular book of the moment and how it got confused with another book of the same title.
NPR Books: A Tale Of Two Titles: A Girl, A Train And Thousands Of Confused Readers.
The Girl on the Train is a psychological thriller, set in contemporary London, with a female protagonist and a female author — Paula Hawkins. It was published this year, and received wide acclaim.
Girl on a Train is a psychological thriller, set in contemporary London, with a female protagonist and a female author — Alison Waines. It was published in 2013, and received almost no attention….
“An incredible number of people were buying the wrong book,” reporter David Benoit tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer.
Benoit revealed the case of mistaken identity in the Wall Street Journal — after he experienced it first-hand….
Now Waine’s book is selling well.
“Writing had always been a hobby for her,” Benoit says, but this year she says she sold over 30,000 copies of her book.
And she’s excited to see what happens when her next book comes out….
“Many readers who admit they bought the wrong book liked it anyway,” Benoit wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
“One woman I talked to actually liked Miss Waines’ book better than Miss Hawkins’ book,” Benoit tells Wertheimer.
She made her book club, which had planned on reading the best-seller, pick up Girl on a Train instead.
I might just check that one out.
What stories are you following today? Please share in the comment thread and have a great day.
Monday Afternoon Ledes
Posted: December 28, 2015 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Flint MIchigan lead poisoning, Meadowlark Lemon, Ramadi, Tamir Rice shooting, Texas weather 8 Comments
The weather here has finally done me in. We set a record high of 82 and the humidity has been gruesome! Now, it’s turned chilly! I’ve got a flu like you wouldn’t believe so I’m going to just get us caught up on some of the headlines because they’re actually quite a few today. Hopefully, this will go away because the last two days have kept me in bed with hot tea and meds constantly coughing, sneezing and shivering.
Americans again name Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama the woman and man living anywhere in the world they admire most. Both win by wide margins over the next-closest finishers, Malala Yousafzai for women and Pope Francis and Donald Trump for men.
You may want to check out her history as a Civil Rights worker. It’s interesting and important.
One of the most interesting holiday surprises was the revelation by Amy Chozick in The New York Times about Hillary Rodham, Covert Operative.
Playing down her flat Chicago accent, she told the school’s guidance counselor that her husband had just taken a job in Dothan, that they were a churchgoing family and that they were looking for a school for their son. The future Mrs. Clinton, then a 24-year-old law student, was working for Marian Wright Edelman, the civil rights activist and prominent advocate for children. Mrs. Edelman had sent her to Alabama to help prove that the Nixon administration was not enforcing the legal ban on granting tax-exempt status to so-called segregation academies, the estimated 200 private academies that sprang up in the South to cater to white families after a 1969 Supreme Court decision forced public schools to integrate. Her mission was simple: Establish whether the Dothan school was discriminating based on race.
Make no mistake. Even in 1972, this took considerable guts. The segregated academies were the outward sign of the vicious backlash against the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement that only would intensify over the following decade as the Republican party, and the conservative movement that would come to be its essential life-force, discovered that, in many important ways,the whole country was Southern. The backlash was even more virulent at the local level. If Undercover Hillz blew her cover, very bad things could have happened to her.
After filing a FOIA request, a Virginia Tech professor recently discovered Michigan state officials knew the city of Flint’s water supply was giving children lead poisoning while falsely assuring residents that the water was safe. Although the government had been aware of the increased levels of lead poisoning since July, they continued to lie to the public until a Flint pediatrician published a study in September that found lead exposure in children had doubled citywide and nearly tripled in high-risk areas.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty announced in a press conference Monday that the Cleveland police officers who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year will not face charges. Surveillance video captured officer Timothy Loehmann shooting Rice, who was carrying a toy gun, almost immediately after he and his partner, Frank Garmback, arrived at a public park. The officers believed the boy was armed with a real gun.
Ben Carson may be the next republican to bail on the presidential primary process. I’ve always felt that he was in it to get on the Right Wing Talk and book circuit, but that’s just one woman’s opinion.
Two days before Christmas, with his presidential campaign fading fast, Ben Carson sought to take control at his manse in the countryside west of Baltimore.
A video crew was in the front living room preparing to film a campaign ad. A photo shoot was being prepped in the basement. The Associated Press had come calling, and more members of the media would show up after The Washington Post had its turn. In a matter of hours, Carson’s children and grandchildren were expected to arrive for the holiday.
Amid all that commotion stood Carson, both completely surrounded and almost entirely alone — the sole staffer on hand was a financial adviser, and the two spoke only glancingly.
Unless something in his campaign changed fast, Carson was in danger of going the way of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain — fad candidates who wilted before a single vote had been cast. This was the day he had marked to stop the fade.
The Atlantic has a story on the disappearing Republican presidential candidates.
Hey, remember Scott Walker? That corn-fed, Kohls-shopping, union-busting, unintimidated governor of a blue state who had a real shot at next July’s nominating convention?
He’s probably sitting in his Madison, Wisconsin, office right now reading the same stories about Donald Trump that you are.
Walker was one of several casualties in the 2015 leg of the presidential-primary contest, a brutal stretch that saw candidates who were expected to make their mark gone from the race or gasping for air. As Trumpmentum and Clintoninevitability rage on, some contenders who looked like they’d fill a void in the field haven’t seen much success, while others haven’t lived up to their early, favorable reviews.
The charismatic basketball player Meadowlark Lemon has died. The Harlem Globetrotter’s were a big fixture in my childhood and he was my favorite. He was 83 years young.
George “Meadowlark” Lemon, the basketball star who entertained millions of fans around the world with his antics as a longtime member of the Harlem Globetrotters, died Sunday in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was 83.
Lemon played 24 seasons and by his own estimate more than 16,000 games with the Globetrotters, the touring exhibition basketball team known for its slick ball-handling, practical jokes, red-white-and-blue uniforms and multiyear winning streaks against overmatched opponents.
He also was one of a handful of Globetrotters whose fame transcended sports, especially among children during the team’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Lemon was immortalized in a Harlem Globetrotters cartoon series and appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” episodes of “Scooby Doo” and many national TV commercials.
Ramadi has been liberated from Daesh (ISIL) by the Iraqi army but the fight isn’t over. No surprises there.
Iraqi forces claimed victory over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Ramadi as clearing operations were under way to flush out the armed group’s remaining fighters in the key city.
“Yes, the city of Ramadi has been liberated,” Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said in a televised statement on Monday, a day after the army took control of the key government compound in Ramadi’s Al Huz neighbourhood.
“The Iraqi counterterrorism forces have raised the Iraqi flag over the government complex in Anbar,” Rasool added, saying the fighting will continue until the whole city is liberated.
Bet Texas doesn’t want to secede today. Horrible tornadoes have wrecked havoc on the state. Bet they’ll be happy to see FEMA for the New Year.
At least 19 people were killed in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama between Wednesday and Saturday in wicked weather that made the Christmas holiday hellish for many, according to The Associated Press.
Over the weekend, tornadoes in Texas claimed another 11 lives, and floods that washed over roadways and into homes led to 13 deaths in Missouri and Illinois.
At least 43 people have been killed in a five-day span. And the dangerous weather is not over yet.
I totally have to go crawl back into bed with my hot tea and kleenix box. So, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Extra Lazy Saturday Afternoon After Christmas
Posted: December 26, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 21 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
So . . . I was looking for stories to post about and . . . I fell asleep for a really long time.
Sigh . . .Could my fear of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee be doing this to me? And of course there’s the fear of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee.
Then I’d have to read about Republicans attacking Sanders as a “commie” and “socialist,” and we could end up with a fascist, racist, clown as president of the U.S. Please tell me I’m imagining things. Tell me I’m in a nightmare I can wake up from.
Some GOP voters in New Hampshire are “terrified” of Trump as their nominee and they’re trying to figure out which of the clowns in the clown car they should vote for instead.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Raw Story: ‘I’m terrified he’s going to be our nominee’: New Hampshire GOP voters horrified by Trump popularity.
In recent weeks, [Chris] Christie has gained support in New Hampshire, the state where he has focused his campaign. Two recent polls have placed him in fourth place there, with 11 percent support — just behind Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rubio, who were between 12 percent and 14 percent in the polls. Donald Trump led, with 26 percent in one poll and 32 percent in another.
A number of voters at Christie’s events expressed worry over a Trump win.
“I’m terrified he’s going to be our nominee,” said Chris Freiberger, 58, of Manchester. “I think he’s a buffoon, I really do.”
Freiberger, a bank chief information officer, had narrowed his list to Christie, Rubio, and Cruz but feared he would confront a “lesser of two evils” decision between Trump and Clinton.
So there are people who see Chris Christie as a more reasonable alternative to Trump! This is the political world we are living in these days.
I missed this Trump attack on Hillary on Xmas eve. From the Hill:
Trump campaign: Hillary bullied women to hide Bill’s ‘sexist secrets.’
In an interview late Wednesday on CNN, Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson unloaded on Clinton and her campaign, returning fire after Clinton condemned Trump’s “penchant for sexism.”
“What you have on Hillary Clinton’s side are a bunch of people, including women — liberal women — who want to run around talking about the war on women,” Pierson said. “They want to burn their bras and complain about equal pay and be treated as men, and the second they get criticized for anything they start acting like 9-year-old little girls.”
According to Pierson, her candidate’s use of the word “schlonged” to describe Clinton’s loss to Obama in 2008 wasn’t offensive.
“You know, no one really complained in 2011 when he used the exact same word to describe a woman winning an election cycle… and so all of a sudden it’s horrible,” Pierson said. “But Hillary Clinton has some nerve to talk about the war on women and the bigotry toward women when she has a serious problem in her husband.”
According to some polls, more than 40 percent of GOP voters support this garbage.
Also from The Hill, Brent Budowsky says Hillary is tough enough to beat the bully.
Beyond the issue of Trump’s destructive comments about Muslims, and his bizarre but revealing bromance with Putin, is how Clinton showed woman and others how to deal with bullies such as the real estate tycoon.
When the former first lady addressed herself to girls who have been bullied, as she did on Tuesday, she demonstrated a warmth, compassion and sensitivity that was worthy of a president as she advised them to stand up for their rights.
When Clinton addresses Trump, who provides the gold standard for low-end bullying in American public life, she provides the gold standard of toughness, firmness and resolve that is needed to lead the nation in a hard and tough world.
Trump has insulted, berated and demeaned women, repeatedly using terms such as fat slobs and bimbos. He even dished personal insults against the highly respected Fox News host Megyn Kelly, whom I strongly supported and applauded in a column earlier in the campaign. If Trump ever tried to make these statements about women in a presidential debate with Clinton standing across the stage, she would administer some serious schooling that he would remember for the rest of his life.
Actually, I think Bernie Sanders would be able to stand up to Trump too, but he would never be able to beat Trump in the Southern or many Western states. Back to Budowsky’s piece:
Trump may fool many Republican voters. He may fool many in the mainstream media who persist in claiming that his tactics are working, when a basic RealClearPolitics search tells the truth of the story, which is that Hillary Clinton might well administer serious punishment to Donald Trump and Republicans in a general election.
Bullies need to be put in their place, with the kind of strength, resolve and character that the former secretary of State has shown in the way she takes charge in the campaign against Trump. And Trump knows Clinton has gotten the better of him, which is why he is reduced to vulgar, sexist and offensive comments as she stands her ground.
Trump can cite his poll numbers all he wants, but it must drive him up a Christmas tree to know that the woman who would become the first female U.S. president will, according to polls, beat him to a pulp in the general election if the GOP is suicidal enough to nominate him.
This story is just plain weird. Could Bernie Sanders really believe this?
Tom Boggioni (T-Bogg) of Raw Story: Sanders campaign hints ‘hacker’ who accessed Clinton data may have been a DNC plant.
In an interview with Yahoo Politics, an adviser to the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders hinted that the data breach that resulted in the campaign losing access to the DNC servers may have been the result of a employee planted in the campaign by the DNC.
Following the controversy that saw Sanders staffers blocked from accessing some of their own voter data after it was revealed that proprietary information belonging to the Clinton campaign was being viewed, the Sanders campaign apologized and fired the “hacker,” national data director, Josh Uretsky.
However an unnamed adviser to the Vermont independent’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is suggesting that Uretsky maybe have been a plant by both the DNC and the technology company that hosts the data.
“It’s not as if we conjured this guy Josh from thin air. This is an individual … who was recommended to us by the DNC and NGP VAN,” the adviser said.
Is Sanders buying into conspiracy theories now? I hope not. I can’t imagine the DNC would use such a roundabout technique to hurt Sanders when he is already far behind Clinton and she already has enough super delegates to beat him at the convention anyway.
Here’s the original story at Yahoo News: The Sanders campaign is taking its fight with the DNC to the next level.
The dustup over a data breach that briefly erupted in the Democratic presidential primary last week isn’t over as far as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his team are concerned.
In a conversation with Yahoo News, a top Sanders campaign adviser made a series of explosive allegations about how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a political technology company that works with the party handled the incident. According to the Sanders adviser, the DNC and NGP VAN, a firm that has a contract with the party organization to operate a voter file, have responded to the data breach by “leaking information” and “stonewalling an investigation” into the matter.
“We have demanded a full investigation from top to bottom,” the Sanders adviser said.
Sanders’ adviser noted that a lawsuit the campaign filed in federal court about the data breach last Friday, Dec. 18, is still ongoing, and described it as an attempt to get answers despite the party’s lack of cooperation.
Oh brother. All we need is an ugly battle within the Democratic Party.
There’s been another attack on a mosque, this time in Houston.
Houston Chronicle: Mosque catches fire in southwest Houston.
Smoke rising from across the parking lot of a southwest Houston strip center caught Abdul Hafiz’s attention as he sipped a cup of tea and chatted with friends at a restaurant Friday afternoon.
The source was the Savoy Mosque, where Hafiz had finished his afternoon prayer a bit earlier. Hafiz and a few other men rushed over to the mosque, banging on the glass door as thick, dark smoke billowed around them.
“Thank God there was no one inside,” Hafiz said.It took about 80 firefighters to extinguish the two-alarm blaze that began around 2:45 p.m. at the small mosque, a storefront in the Savoy Plaza, near Wilcrest Drive and West Bellfort Avenue. Arson investigators are trying to determine what caused the fire.
Members of the mosque said images from several digital surveillance cameras in the worship center had been turned over to investigators. Although they hope it was not a case of arson, members said they were baffled about what might have caused the fire. It is only about three years old and well-maintained, they said.
KHOU reports that ATF Says Cause of fire at Houston mosque is suspicious.
An ATF spokesperson has confirmed the cause of a two-alarm fire at a southwest Houston mosque does appear to be suspicious, because the fire had multiple points of origin.
Investigators said they are looking through surveillance video to see if cameras captured a potential suspect.
Firefighters with the Houston Fire Department initially responded to the fire at the Masjid mosque Friday afternoon.
The fire was put out shortly after crews arrived on the scene and no injuries were reported.
There is no word on the amount of damage to the mosque, but officials said several other businesses in the shopping center were damaged by the heavy smoke.
Full Cold Moon Reads
Posted: December 25, 2015 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Christmas Eve Bonfires, Full Cold Moon, Lutcher Louisiana 6 Comments
2015 continues to wind down and it can’t happen soon enough for me!
There’s a “Full Cold Moon” today which is an infrequent event. This is when a full moon happens on the day designated for Christmas. We also have an unearthly visitor whizzing by us in the form of a space rock. The pictures for today are from the Lutcher Bonfires made to signal a path into the bayou for Père Noël. I’m going to give you a little background on both since it’s probably a day that you’d prefer to avoid reality for awhile, like me.
Most parts of the U.S. won’t see a white Christmas this year, but they will see a bright one, as a full moon coincides with the holiday for the first time in 38 years.
The final full moon of the year each December is known as the Full Cold Moon, and it hasn’t fallen on Christmas since 1977. Astronomers say it won’t happen again until 2034.
If you want to catch a glimpse, NASA says the moon will reach its peak at 6:11 a.m. EST on Christmas morning.
Moonrise and moonset times vary slightly depending on your location, even within time zones. In New York, the moon rises at 4:28 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve and sets at 7:03 a.m. EST Christmas Day, while the times are a few minutes earlier in Boston to the northeast, and about 20 minutes later in Atlanta to the southwest. Times are similar in other cities across the country, but if you want to be precise about it, you can look up the moonrise and moonset times for your city here.
If clouds interfere with your view, the Slooh Community Observatory is hosting a free webcast beginning at 7 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve. As a bonus, their telescopes will also be tracking Comet Catalina, a recently discovered comet that should be visible for the next few weeks. You can watch the webcast here until midnight EST.
It has been an unusually busy holiday for stargazers, with an asteroid buzzing by Earth this morning. The space rock, about 1.24 miles wide, stayed a safe distance away, passing about 6.6 million miles from our planet.
Full Cold Moons had special meaning to Native Americans long before we brought our European myths and ways to North America. As usual, the solstice is really the reason for the entire season every where!
In Native American cultures which tracked the calendar by the Moons, December’s Full Moon was known as the Full Cold Moon. It is the month when the winter cold fastens its grip and the nights become long and dark.
This full Moon is also called the Long Nights Moon by some Native American tribes because it’s near the winter solstice—the night with the least amount of daylight.
So, the tradition of the Lutcher Bonfires on the Mississippi River Levees is an interesting and fun one. The traditional ones are teepee shaped. They are a Cajun tradition here in Louisiana for Christmas Eve. They happen in St. James Parish which we call one of the River Parishes down here.
Many of the bonfires are built in the traditional “teepee” style with a center pole that anchors the structure. Others come in different shapes and color schemes.
“There’s one constructed in the form of a fish with scales, one in the form of an old sailboat with oars,” Keller said. “Then some of the more traditional ones are painted different colors: red white and blue, black and gold, purple and gold.”
There’s some history involved with the tradition, of course. They are actually based on Celtic traditions where Druids would conduct ceremonies to honor the Sun. The idea was to ensure that the days would get longer after the Winter Solstice.
The area of Louisiana now known as the River Parishes (St. James, St. John and St. Charles) was settled in the early 1700’s by the Old World French and Germans. These early colonists brought with them the knowledge of both summer and winter bonfire customs and traditions which they had known in their native lands. By sharing this knowledge with their many descendants, they provided the inspiration for a practice which has evolved into one giant celebration—the present-day Christmas Eve levee bonfires!
Of necessity, survival and the establishment of a new colony were the principal concerns of the French and Germans who first settled along the lover Mississippi River. These early colonists undoubtedly built a few celebration fires, but early history of the area has failed to record any information about this. As a result, as the bonfire custom increased in recent generations, so has speculation about the origin and development of tradition.
For example, one of the more recent and increasingly popular explanations is that the bonfires were a “Cajun tradition”, first used to light the way for “Papa Noel”, the Cajun version of Santa Claus. This charming version, although improbable, has been depicted annually in front of a Paulina, LA business establishment where a levee scene shows “Papa Noel” with his pirogue drawn by alligators named Gaston, Ninette, “Te-Boy”, Celeste, Suzette, etc.
Some Acadian exiles from Nova Scotia settled in St. James Parish as early as 1765, with many more arriving in the 1780’s, but “Papa Noel” was not yet known to them. It was on New Year’s Eve that the little French children received their gifts.
In South Louisiana of old, Christmas was a strictly religious observance, and it was New Year’s Eve that was marked by the exchange of gifts and the “reveille” to see the old year out and to greet the new year. In Cabanocey: The History, Customs and Folklore of St. James Parish, published in 1957, the author, Lillian Bourgeois, tells of this custom of celebrating New Year’s Eve with a gathering of family and friends who enjoyed a gumbo supper, eggnog and the burning of huge cone-shaped bonfires on the batture, the land area between the base of the levee and the water’s edge. With the passage of time, these activities gradually moved to Christmas Eve.
Some have also offered the theory that the bonfires served as navigational signals to guide ships along the river, or were used to light the way for the faithful to attend Midnight Mass.
Through 1865 letters still in existence, it has been established that the summer feast of St. John the Baptist was then celebrated in neighboring St. John Parish (known as the Second German Coast) with the lighting of fires and the homecoming of relatives who lived away.
A recently discovered 1871 picture shows members of the Lacoul and de Lobel Mahy families gathered around two bonfires built on the levee in front of Laura Plantation in West St. James Parish. The men pictured are wearing coats and the women are wearing hats, but the time of the year is not specified.
In 1989, I participated in a local study on the development of Christmas Eve bonfires in the River Parishes. Many older residents or their descendants were interviewed to learn their knowledge of the history and traditions of the custom.
In a personal interview with H. D’Aquin Bourgeois, son of George Bourgeois, a St. James Parish native born in 1855, I learned that the elder Mr. Bourgeois, an enterprising merchant, had built Christmas Eve levee bonfires in front of his New Camellia Plantation store as early as 1884. Throughout the year, he collected wooden shipping crates, some as large as 3’x5’, in which merchandise for his store had been shipped. These crates, along with old lumber, were used to construct a Christmas Eve bonfire for the pleasure of local residents and the children of his store patrons. The blazing bonfire, the sound of exploding fireworks provided by the store owner, and the gleeful sounds of the children attracted riverboat crews who interrupted their travel to join in the celebration. Bonfires at this location continued until 1930, and in later years grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original builder resumed bonfire construction at the same site.
Another 1989 interview with Mrs. Hilda Gabb Cambre, a St. James native born in 1901, revealed that she had known Christmas Eve yard bonfires during childhood days spent on her grandfather’s Magnolia Plantation in West St. James Parish. The bonfires, built with any type wood available, were part of a festive occasion where lanterns were placed in the trees and eggnog was served to guests. In later Christmas seasons, kerosene-soaked cotton balls were lit and rolled down the levee. (Could this be a counterpart of the German wheel-rolling down the hillside?)
You can read more about the history of the bonfires and the memories of the River Parish Elders at the link I provided. The one really wonderful thing about Louisiana is its unique heritage that is directly 
attributable to its French roots as well as the many cultures that eventually settled here or were brought here through the institution of slavery. The bonfires went off without a hitch last night even though it’s near 80 here, foggy and quite drizzly. The foghorns were blaring on the Mississippi River last night. The kathouse is just a few blocks away from it and the Poland Avenue Wharf. It’s home to the best seat to see the New Year’s fireworks too!! So happy to be ending the year and looking to the start of the Carnival Season on 12th night!!
I do have a bit of sad/bad news. A morning fire has damaged the Clinton Birthplace in Hope Arkansas. The Birthplaces of US Presidents are generally historic sites and are used to illustrate the various backgrounds and childhoods of our premier elected leaders. This is a site maintained by the National Park Service. Arson is suspected.
Hope officials suspect arson in a fire that broke out about 3:20 a.m. today at the house in Hope where Bill Clinton spent the first four years of his life. It is now a historic site maintained by the National Park Service.
Damage was reported to the back wall on the east side of the house and the fire spread to the second floor. Smoke and water damage was reported inside. Officials didn’t specify what evidence led them to believe the fire was set. But a report by KSLA also said graffiti was found on the property.
So, I’ll make this short today since I’m sure you’re all using the time off today happily or productively! Whatever way you spend your day, please have a great one and remember that you always have friends that love you completely here at Sky Dancing!!!
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