Throw cares away

It's that time of year again! And nothing starts the season off like "The Carol of the Bells", so here's a nice flash-mob version from the streets of Paris to get into the spirit. I wish you warmth and light and fellowship to help you face the cold and dark.

"86 Democrats Join GOP in Voting for ‘Very, Very Stupid’ Resolution Condemning Socialism: 'House Minority Leader Jeffries voting with the GOP in favor of this resolution is showing his ultrawealthy donors exactly who he fights for,' said one progressive leader. 'It’s not the people.' [...] 'A bunch of people with taxpayer-funded salaries, doing a job that is impossible to outsource to the private sector, are condemning the evils of socialism,' said Casten. 'Either they are stupid, or that they think you are.' 'We have a mixed economy,' he added. 'We benefit from free markets and competition in lots of sectors, and also have a judicial system, border security, national defense, economic security for seniors and those who can’t work that is socially funded. That’s a good thing! Condemning one half of that equation has no more logic—and is no more deserving of finite House floor time—than condemning defensive linemen because they never score touchdowns.'"

"Sarah Hurwitz Profanes the Holocaust: Holocaust education has worked too well for the Obama speechwriter, since when she rationalizes Israel's genocide, "I sound obscene." Maybe sit with that, Sarah [...] What Hurwitz objects to is that Holocaust education works. She is not upset that TikTok is driving misperceptions of the genocide. She is upset that the various social media vectors through which people hear directly from Palestinians drive accurate perceptions of the genocide. She is upset that those perceptions are unavoidable because of Holocaust education. Fearful of activating antisemitism, she doesn't want Israelis, or any Jews, to be thought of as rapacious murderers. I sympathize. But the only way that will happen is for Israel, whose flag displays the Star of David, to stop murdering Palestinians (and Lebanese, and Syrians, and Iranians, and Yemenis, and and and), and for Jewish institutions beyond Israel to stop rationalizing it. Hurwitz is caught in the pincer of that recognition on one side and her Zionism on the other. For her, the lesson of the Holocaust is: Never again to us. And it's darker than I can bear for someone who sat upon the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council to say these things. We can safely assume that Hurwitz is not delivering off-the-cuff remarks. She's thought about this. She has chosen the abyss. She is far from the only one."

"Former Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown dies in prison hospital at 82: BUTNER, N.C. (AP) — H. Rap Brown, one of the most vocal leaders of the Black Power movement, has died in a prison hospital while serving a life sentence for the killing of a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. He was 82. Brown — who later in life changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin — died Sunday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, his widow, Karima Al-Amin, said Monday." To this day, it is unclear whether he was framed, but it's not unbelievable.

I know I've talked before about how the poverty line is too low. How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America: [...] So when I say the real poverty line is $140,000, I’m being conservative. I’m using optimistic, national-average housing assumptions. If we plug in the actual cost of living in the zip codes where the jobs are—where rent is $2,700, not $1,900—the threshold pushes past $160,000."

Chris Hedges at Truthdig, "The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News: Don't blame the Internet. The bloodless and soulless journalism of the traditional media left newspapers on the wrong side of the growing class divide and their readers.The bloodless and soulless journalism of the traditional media left newspapers on the wrong side of the growing class divide and their readers. [...] 'The very notion that on any given story all you have to do is report what both sides say and you’ve done a fine job of objective journalism debilitates the press,' the late columnist Molly Ivins once wrote. 'There is no such thing as objectivity, and the truth, that slippery little bugger, has the oddest habit of being way to hell off on one side or the other: it seldom nestles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view. The smug complacency of much of the press — I have heard many an editor say, ‘Well, we’re being attacked by both sides so we must be right’ — stems from the curious notion that if you get a quote from both sides, preferably in an official position, you’ve done the job. In the first place, most stories aren’t two-sided, they’re 17-sided at least. In the second place, it’s of no help to either the readers or the truth to quote one side saying, ‘Cat,’ and the other side saying ‘Dog,’ while the truth is there’s an elephant crashing around out there in the bushes.'"