Finally Friday Reads

People watch the sunrise at the winter solstice celebration at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, in this photo from Dec. 22, 2011.
TIM IRELAND/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Let me put up a beautiful reminder of the reason for the season.  Solstice came on time yesterday, and there were celebrations around the world. Axial tilt has defined life on the planet for longer than we’ve been around to mess it up.

So, JJ found this calligraphy art on Instagram, and I had to share it since Tashi Mannox is the artist for the cloud artwork on that decks the blog!  I’m unsure if you’ve ever read about the work, but you can see a lot more if you go to the sidebar and indulge in the luscious linkiness that will take you to his site. JJ also has a tattoo design created by Tashi for her.

Along with my watercolor brushes, I have a variety of styluses and pots of ink for my own indulgences. I sent my granddaughters a ‘scribes desk’. It’s an upscale Etch-a-sketch on legs that uses a stylus.  Like my daughters and me, they get started early with piano and tools of the arts. Their little benches were delivered today. I sent the delivery notice to their parents, along with this beautiful look at Tashi and his stylus scripting Winter Solstice in Tibetan. It’s beautiful and restful to watch.

For those who don’t recognize an ol’ Bo Duke, a revised version. Thanks, Rick Haffey! @repeat1968, John Buss

So, take a deep breath while I post something that points out the existence of the stupid season upon us.  This election year is going to make me chew nails and spit rust. Whenever there are American entertainers who are the least talented or enduring in this country, they prove everything I ever thought about them back when they had a moment of relevance.

You’ll see just exactly how much JJ inspired me today because, so far, all this news comes from her.  I never watched “The Dukes of Hazard” because I was a budding teenage feminist who hated even seeing the Daisy Duke character.  But it’s John Schneider that piqued my interest today. He also captured the pen of John Buss, a fellow graduate of Westside High School, and equally appalled we shared that experience with Ginnie Thomas.

I am sincerely sorry to harsh your mellow.  John, Dayne and I are all down here in the Dirty South. None of us like what’s going on in our country.  Dayne is a professor of Library Science at South Eastern University of Louisiana, where I taught for a few years during grad school before finishing my doctorate. He’s the author of many seriously good books, plays guitar, and restores saddles to their former glory. JJ lives in the Georgia Mountains. All of us are Biden Supporters.

“Just a good ol’ boy, never meaning no harm…:” John Buss, @repeat1968

This is from our local Fox News, New Orleans. “‘Dukes of Hazzard’ star calls for Biden’s hanging in social media post; prompts Secret Service probe.”  He joins Chachi in the Trump Hall of “Who is That Again?”  He specializes in Red Neck drag and funky accents, kind of like my Senator John Neely Kennedy.

The United States Secret Service is investigating a now-deleted social media post made by “Dukes of Hazzard” star John Schneider.

In a reply to President Joe Biden’s post on Wed., Dec. 20, Schneider suggested he be “publicly hung.”

“Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world,” Biden posted at 6:26 p.m. “But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy. If we lose that, we lose everything.”

In a now-deleted reply, Schneider accused the president of treason.

“The Secret Service is aware of the comments made by Mr. Schneider, and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence,” a spokesperson for the Secret Service confirmed to Fox 8. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”

Fox 8 has reached out to Schneider for a comment and is awaiting a reply.

People look towards the sun as druids, pagans, and revelers gather at Stonehenge for a winter solstice ceremony on Dec. 21, 2016.

But, of course, no one sees this as unusual at all.  From The Detroit News, we get more evidence of real crimes by the former guy. “Trump recorded pressuring Wayne County canvassers not to certify 2020 vote.”  The Republican Party contains nothing but enablers and fascist idiots these days.

Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.

On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.

“We’ve got to fight for our country,” said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.”

McDaniel, a Michigan native and the leader of the Republican Party nationally, said at another point in the call, “If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys.”

To which Trump added: “We’ll take care of that.”

Palmer and Hartmann left the canvassers meeting without signing the official statement of votes for Wayne County, and the following day, they unsuccessfully attempted to rescind their votes in favor of certification, filing legal affidavits claiming they were pressured.

The moves from Palmer, Hartmann and Trump, had they been successful, threatened to throw the statewide certification of Michigan’s 2020 election into doubt.

People gather wearing costumes for Brighton’s annual “Burning The Clocks” lantern parade for the winter solstice on Dec. 21, 2018.

I can never figure out if they are all doing some kind of performance to be as stupid as the Orange Kool-Aid Kult or if they really all are that stupid. “Joe Rogan Corrected On-Air for Blaming Trump Gaffe on Biden.”  Probably, it’s a lot of both.

Joe Rogan has done it again. But this time, even his own producers couldn’t help but correct him during a live podcast taping.

In a clip from Thursday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” (first reported by Mediaite), Rogan attempted to argue that comments made by President Joe Biden essentially disqualify him from running in 2024. The only problem? It was Trump who made the original gaffe.

Rogan and his guest, MMA fighter Bo Nickal, were accusing Biden of making “no sense at all” when the host asked, “Did you hear what he said yesterday, or a couple of days ago?” He then claimed that Biden recently said in earnest that America “lost” the Revolutionary War because “we didn’t have en0ugh airports.”

“Pull him!” Rogan said. “If you had any other job, and you were talking like that, they would go, ‘Hey, you’re done.’”

The two men continued to denigrate Biden and defend Trump for several minutes before one of Rogan’s producers found the video in question, in which Biden says of Trump, “The same ‘stable genius’ said the biggest problem we had during the Revolutionary War is we didn’t have enough airports!”

“It’s not fake,” they told Rogan, “but he was referencing Trump saying that.”

Then, viewers of Rogan’s video podcast were treated to watching his face fall as the team played him a clip of a speech Trump gave in 2019, in which he said that Revolutionary forces “took over the airports” in their victorious fight against the British—despite the fact that planes would not be invented for another couple of centuries.

I remember that gaffe well since I wrote the blog post about it here.  The memes were splendid that week, and I didn’t waste a minute crowding all of them onto the post.

Well, I’ve got a dentist’s appointment in about 45 minutes. It’s probably easier for me than writing all the nonsense coming out due to the election nonsense.  I’ll leave you to add stuff to the thread, and I’ll be back to add more to that.

We made it through the longest night of the year!  Now, on to what may seem like the longest damned election in U.S. History!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?