I don't seem to have the sense of timing I used to have, so let's do this before the last night of Christmas on the 6th. Here we are with the traditional Christmas links:
• Mark Evanier's wonderful Mel Tormé story, and here's the man himself in duet with Judy Garland.
• Joshua Held's Christmas card, with a little help from Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters.
• Brian Brink's tour-de-force performance of "The Carol of the Bells"
• "Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime."
• Ron Tiner's one-page cartoon version of A Christmas Carol
Ann Telneas quit The Washington Post after they killed one of her cartoons. "Why I'm quitting the Washington Post: I've worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I've never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now."
The problem I was complaining about 20 years ago has not gone away, and I still have no way to know whether the 2016 election, the 2020 election, or the 2024 election were actually hacked. The machines still aren't being audited and without real hand-counts, we don't actually know how the voters actually voted. I still have no reason in the world to think E&S, in particular, is not hacking elections—I mean, they practically bragged about it once upon a time. And I don't know anything about Rachel Donald and whether the story is pure conjecture, but she says, "Cyber-Security Experts Warn Election Was Hacked," and for all I know it could be true.
"Pentagon Repatriates Guantánamo Detainee Held Without Charge for Over Two Decades: The move came as the Biden administration faced pressure to clear the notorious military prison of all uncharged detainees before Donald Trump takes office. The man, 59-year-old Ridah bin Saleh al-Yazidi, had been held at Guantánamo since the day former U.S. President George W. Bush opened the prison camp in 2002. The Pentagon said in a statement Monday that al-Yazidi has been repatriated to the government of Tunisia. With al-Yazidi's transfer, there are now 26 detainees remaining at Guantánamo, the majority of whom have never been charged with a crime and have been approved for release from the prison, which United Nations experts have said is "defined by the systematic use of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." More detainees have died at Guantánamo than have been convicted of a crime, according to the human rights group Reprieve."
"How 'more reason for alarm' is hitting Dems after Harris loss: report [...] Per the report, Three "focus groups — held immediately after the 2024 election and conducted by GBAO, a Democratic polling firm — featured three kinds of voters: young men in battleground states who voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024; voters in battleground states who voted for Biden in 2020 but didn't vote at all in 2024; and voters in blue states who had previously voted for Democrats, a third party candidate or didn't vote in 2020 but voted for Trump in 2024." Navigator Research's director of polling and analytics, Rachael Russell, told Politico that "the focus groups offer 'a pretty scathing rebuke' of the Democratic Party." Some ex-Democratic voters call the party "weak" and say its "overly focused on diversity and elites," according to the news outlet. Furthermore, "When asked to compare the Democratic Party to an animal, one participant compared the party to an ostrich because 'they've got their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they're failing,'" Politico notes, while "Another likened them to koalas, who 'are complacent and lazy about getting policy wins that we really need.'" Russell emphasized, "This weakness they see, [Democrats] not getting things done, not being able to actually fight for people — is something that needs to be figured out." She added, "It might not be the message, it might be the policy. It might be something a little bit deeper that has to be addressed by the party.""
From Normal Island News, "Media deeply confused after discovering Germany terror suspect is a Zionist: In an event that was as confusing as it was horrific, a Zionist has committed an act of terrorism in Germany. Mainstream journalists quickly condemned this brutality because we assumed the suspect was an Islamist, but now we know the truth, we don't want to talk about it anymore. This is because we have no idea if we are supposed to support or condemn this guy. He is kind of like our Luigi Mangione..."
Also from Normal Island News, "Israel destroys Syrian navy due to concerns of underwater tunnels: Israel says it has destroyed every vessel in the Syrian navy, due to worrying reports of tunnels under the water. It has also bombed targets in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia and Palmyr, but it's unclear if it has blown up the schools and hospitals. Excitingly, the Israeli military raised its flag over the town of al-Khadr in a move that looked nothing like settler-colonialism. Israel decided to invade Syria the moment the Assad regime fell because it never misses an opportunity to attack a neighbour. It's kind of like seeing someone you don't like passed out in the street and kicking them in the head, several hundred times, in self-defence. Israel explained it has destroyed 80% of Syria's military capacity to stop it becoming a 'future military threat', a label it could apply to any country on earth. Obviously, most countries aren't as defenceless as Syria, but Israel has nukes so consider this a warning... Pre-emptively attacking a country has no basis in international law, but the British government has reassured the public: 'We will always support Israel's right to defend itself and make itself secure'. You would support Israel too, if Mossad had embarrassing tapes of you..."
"The 'Blob' Is Furious About Gaza. But That's Not Enough.: The foreign policy proletariat needs to stop filtering its dissent through official channels and start taking more radical action. Public resignations. Repeated leaks to the press. A torrent of desperate dissent cables. Government institutions in internal revolt against a president taking US policy off the rails. No, this is not about the forthcoming Trump administration. It's about Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and the US foreign policy apparatus they oversee. Over the past year, a series of sanctioned and unsanctioned revolts has erupted among foreign policy and intelligence agencies in protest of the Biden administration's complicity in the Gaza genocide."
RIP: "Jimmy Carter, longest-lived US president, dies aged 100" What can I say? He wasn't a good president, he started the deregulation and austerity, he only seemed to wake up after the hostage crisis in Tehran and it was too late, and the corporations —and therefore the media—instantly turned on him after his too-long speech talking about what we needed to do. But it seems like he spent the rest of his life trying to make up for it.
"84% Of Americans Want Tougher Online Privacy Laws, But Congress Is Too Corrupt To Follow Through: Americans are, apparently, tired of having every last shred of personal data over-collected, hyper monetized, then improperly secured by a rotating crop of ethics-optional corporations and lazy executives. [...] As is the norm for U.S. journalism, the outlet frames our failure to pass an internet privacy law over the last 30 years as something that just kind of happened without meaningful cause. The 'question' of whether to have even baseline public privacy protections has been left unanswered due to some sort of ambiguous externality. Just blame that pesky, ambiguous gridlock. In reality, Congress hasn't passed a privacy law because it's blisteringly, grotesquely corrupt. U.S. policymakers have decided, time and time and time again, that making gobs of money is more important than consumer welfare, public safety, market health, or even national security (see: our obsession with TikTok, while ignoring the national security risks of unregulated data brokers). The federal government is also disincentivized from passing a nationwide privacy law for the internet era because they've found that buying consumer data from data brokers is a wonderful way to avoid having to get a traditional warrant."
"On Chief Justice Roberts' 2024 Year-End Report: Challenging Critics & Invoking Heroic Civil Rights-Era Judges To Insulate An Imperial Court [...] Civil rights lawyers were perpetually foiled by judges who were openly prejudiced or who simply refused to compel southern jurisdictions to comply with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown. And when they filed cases before Judge Justice or Judge Waring, the claims were matters related directly to the forum where those judges sat. This is not what is happening with judge shopping cases in the northern district of Texas. That is why the history of Judges Justice and Waring cannot justify the decision by conservative lawyers to repeatedly file cases before one extremely conservative district court judge, even when their claims bear no relationship to the forum in Texas where that judge sits. The Chief closed his report with a point that demanded greater narrative attention. Indeed I regard it as the most important passage in the essay: '[t]he federal courts must do their part to preserve the public's confidence in our institutions.' Yes. There's the rub. What of the responsibility of courts to earn and maintain the public's confidence? The Chief might have acknowledged – however briefly - that some critiques of the Supreme Court's practices have actually led to positive changes. And he might have stated his intention in the New Year to encourage his fellow colleagues and judges across the federal system to redouble their efforts to ensure that their conduct promotes the public's confidence in the judicial system (timely and thorough financial disclosure reporting might be a start). Such a statement at the end of his essay would have done more to improve the federal courts' standing with the public, than the repeated and heated denials from judges whose conduct has garnered scrutiny."
Ian Welsh saying what I'm still afraid to say: "Thompson's assassination will cause more execs and CEOs to bodyguard up, but that doesn't matter much. Modern IEDs and drones are very very effective and getting cheaper all the time, though civilian drones are extremely restricted in the US, which has led to China being the world leader. I suspect they're restricted in part to make assassinations harder. Guns are nice, drones are better. Chinese leaders make the lives of most Chinese much better, not worse, so they aren't scared of assassination."
This one is for those of us who think Frank Miller ruined the DC universe.
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