Friday Reads: Food Comas and Unsilent Nights

“Ewww… hidden in plain sight.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I have to admit that I spent most of the evening in a food coma, having spent the day with my friend whose chef skills were responsible for a restaurant down here earning a 3-star Michelin rating. Between the camaraderie of her black cat, Nemo, who spent the day in my lap, and everything else. I went home, blissfully ready to sleep for hours. I have several chef friends who are extremely skilled and spent their early days fighting off all kinds of discrimination. Another friend always tells the story of being trained by Paul Prudhomme and being called “chefette” when Willard Scott came to interview the great Cajun Chef at K-Paul’s, his French Quarter Restaurant.  I wish I could say this ended with our generation, but it certainly hasn’t.

I hope your day was just as good. It was hard not to think about how many people were working hard at food banks and restaurants to attend to the needs of families, including the elderly and children, who were food insecure during these holidays. The prices of meat were incredible this year. Between inflation and the policies of Orange Caligula, entire communities across the country have had to step up to make the season of much feasting accessible to the hungry and homeless.

If our kids aren’t traumatized enough by all that, Trump made some pretty inappropriate comments when taking calls from children on the eve of the big Crassmas holiday. This is from The Independent. “Trump’s Christmas Eve calls with children asking about Santa’s whereabouts are steeped in partisan politics. The president celebrated the season of goodwill to all by crowing about his election victories while vowing to protect the U.S. from being ‘infiltrated’ by a ‘bad Santa’. It’s really time to put him in a more appropriate institution than the White House.

Ah, Christmas: a time of peace, joy, goodwill to all men, and falsely insisting for the umpteenth time that you won the 2020 presidential election.

That is according to President Donald Trump, who could not resist peppering his festive presidential phone calls with children and service members on Christmas Eve with his trademark partisan score-settling.

“Pennsylvania’s great. We won Pennsylvania, actually, three times,” the president wrongly claimed while chatting with a five-year-old boy calling from the Keystone State to check on Santa’s location according to NORAD. (Fact check: Trump lost Pennsylvania in 2020.)

“Oklahoma was very good to me in the election. So I love Oklahoma,” he told a four-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy in Sapulpa.

“The country is doing well! We saved our country,” he insisted on a call with a family living near Tacoma in Washington state.

A separate call with service members was marred by technical difficulties, causing the audio and video to drop out entirely.

“I think that’s the enemy doing it,” Trump joked, before his aides began sharply hustling journalists out of the room.

Later, the president issued an even more bracing Christmas message on his social network Truth Social. “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly,” he raged.

CNN has some of the more disturbing entries into what were clearly inappropriate conversations with children. “Trump tells 10-year-old child he made sure ‘a bad Santa’ is not ‘infiltrating’ the US.”

The phone rings. Would your 10-year-old like to speak with the president? He’s tracking Santa Claus from his living room in Palm Beach.

“Santa is a very good person,” President Donald Trump, in a suit and gold tie, tells Jasper in Tulsa. “We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa. So we found out that Santa is good. Santa loves you. Santa loves Oklahoma, like I do. You know Oklahoma was very good to me in the election. So I love Oklahoma. Don’t ever leave Oklahoma, okay?”

Okay, Jasper says.

Next one, general.

Trump is speaking to children whose calls to NORAD to track Santa have been patched through to Mar-a-Lago. It’s a presidential tradition.

“I figure you should hear all of this,” he tells his audience of reporters, who are watching from beside the Venetian silk panels and Romanesque columns at Trump’s gilded Florida resort. His speakerphone is on, but his wife’s is not.

“She’s very focused. The first lady’s very focused,” he said, peering around the Christmas tree to where Melania Trump is sitting, receiver to ear.

She doesn’t look up.

“I think it’s best if they go to sleep,” the first lady says into her receiver, with her back to the president. “And then Santa will arrive to your house.”

“She’s able to focus totally without listening to this,” the president says. “At least you know what’s happening.”

An 8-year-old in North Carolina is next.

“You sound so beautiful and cute! You sound so smart,” the president tells Savannah, who is wondering: “Will Santa ever get mad if we don’t leave him out any cookies?”

“He won’t get mad,” Trump replies, after asking Savannah to repeat her question. “But I think he’ll be very disappointed. You know, Santa, he tends to be a little bit on the cherubic side. You know what cherubic means? A little on the heavy side.”

Another glance over to the first lady, engrossed in conversation.

“This way you can hear what’s going on. I think it’s a little bit better,” he says, pointing to his speakerphone. “One-sided calls are never good, but they’re less much less dangerous.”

The military is tracking Santa over Sweden, the general informs Trump.

That actually appears benign compared to the craziness he caused with Nigeria. Although I wouldn’t want to be the one to talk to Savannah about dirty old pedophiles saying inappropriate things to 8-year-old girls. Better to be a cat in the lap than an innocent girl trying to ask a question to the nation’s crazy grandpa. This AP article has a good summary of what could’ve turned into a World War. “US launches strikes against Islamic State group in Nigeria after attacks target Christians,” I swear the entire religion is based on the assumption of persecution of innocents rather than colonializers and culture destroyers. (Comment not meant for actual practitioners of the Jesus philosophy, but the other kind who give y’all a bad name.) I can only imagine what this might stir up in the terrorist branches of the other religion.

President Donald Trump said the United States launched a “powerful and deadly” strike against forces of the Islamic State group in Nigeria, after spending weeks accusing the West African country’s government of failing to rein in the targeting of Christians.

In a Christmas evening post on his social media site Thursday, Trump did not provide details or mention the extent of the damage caused by the strikes in the northwestern state of Sokoto.

A Defense Department official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss details not made public, said the U.S. worked with Nigeria to carry out the strikes and that they’d been approved by Abuja.

Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the cooperation included exchange of intelligence and strategic coordination in ways “consistent with international law, mutual respect for sovereignty and shared commitments to regional and global security.”

Nigeria is battling multiple armed groups, including at least two affiliated with IS, an offshoot of the Boko Haram extremist group known as the Islamic State West Africa Province in the northeast, and the less-known Lakurawa group prominent in the northwestern states, where the gangs use large swathes of forests as hideouts.

The continual replay of the Crusades has become really tiring, deadly, and violent. Nigeria was certainly compelled to launch the strikes to avoid unilateral action. This is from the Washington Post.  “U.S. strikes ISIS in Nigeria after Trump warnings on Christian killings. The U.S. military said it attacked Islamic State militants with the approval of Nigerian authorities. The number of casualties is unknown.” So much for Peace on earth, goodwill towards all, and blah, blah, blah.

Trump said in a Truth Social post that the military conducted “multiple strikes” but did not elaborate. In a news release, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said multiple people that it said were Islamic State terrorists were killed in strikes in Sokoto state, which is in the northwestern part of the country bordering Niger and has become a hot spot for a resurgence in violent extremism and the kidnapping of schoolchildren.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues,” Trump posted to social media.

I guess that’s why he wants more battleships. He plans to launch wars on several distinct continents. So, something tells me that the Trump Family didn’t really spend a lot of time with the Crank-in-Chief this holiday. This is from The Daily Beast. “Trump Posts Nearly 150 Times in Unhinged Christmas Day Spree. The president amplified conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and called for a member of Congress to be deported.”

President Donald Trump gifted the world nearly 150 Truth Social posts (and counting) on Christmas Day, where he complained about the 2020 election, the media, Democrats, Somali immigrants, and other favorite targets.

In the early hours of Thursday, Christmas Day, the president shared a flurry of posts, many of which amplified baseless claims made by his allies and fans. It’s unclear if Trump, 79, published the posts himself or if he was in bed after attending a holiday dinner at Mar-a-Lago with his wife and father-in-law, then wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone—including “Radical Left Scum.” The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

The president’s posts were filled with many breathless claims, including a video of longtime Trump pal Rudy Giuliani baselessly stating that 315,000 votes had been added to Joe Biden’s tally in Fulton County, Georgia.

Giuliani was not only indicted in that state over his election-thwarting efforts, but was separately found guilty of defaming two poll workers he accused of fraud. He ultimately settled a $148 million defamation judgment for an undisclosed amount, on the condition that he stop defaming them. But Trump on Thursday supported calls for the 66-year-old grandmother and her 41-year-old daughter to “pay back” the former New York City mayor.

Trump followed that up by reposting a baseless claim by a user called WallStreetApes about the 2020 election in Michigan being “rigged,” then boosting a conspiracy theory from comedian Roseanne Barr that the COVID pandemic was a Democratic plot to push mail-in ballots to hurt Trump’s reelection chances.

The president also shared a video of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ranting about Somali immigrants.

“When you see the state of Somalia, that’s what they want for America,” Miller, 40, says in the clip. “Because it’s easier to rule over an empire of ashes than it is for the Democratic Party to rule over a functioning, Western, high-trust society with a strong middle class… That’s their model for America: to make the whole country into a version of Somalia.”

Seriously, Congress, just make all this go away and give us a truly Happy New Year! Impeach him and send him to a home for the Criminally Insane.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?