Why Is It ...

… that this Christmas many will hate refugees while they set up their Nativity Scene showing refugees desperately looking for shelter?

… that these days, if any group has the word "Liberty" or "Patriots" in its name, you can bet that they have little if anything to do with either.

… that Coca-Cola keeps trying to introduce these new flavors to their soft drinks but refuse to bring  the cocaine back?

… that some say aging gracefully is an art but I think aging disgracefully is a riot?

… that the only way to find out if your old is to fall down? If people laugh, you’re still young, but if people panic, you’re old.

… that a 72 hold in a  psych ward sounds intriguing as a potential vacation opportunity?

… that I am officially too old to know the slang of the youth? I mean, what the hell is ‘rizz’?

… that I’m not admitting to getting older, but I am saying that dinner time and bedtime are getting much closer?

… that as I put more thought into it, I just don’t think being an adult is going to work for me?

Bobservations

One last Consuelo story … for now.

Once we got the little bitch our darling girl into the house, and into the guest room, and I was trying to get her out of the cage, Carlos said:

“Wait. Are we sure that’s her?”

Seriously. And if she ever gets out again, I now know I’ll just have to throw a dish towel on the floor by her food dish and he’ll think she’s still in the house.

Here’s a story I’d never heard …

Shortly after Rosa Parks defied segregation laws and sparked the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, she left the South for Detroit. In 1994 Rosa Parks was robbed and assaulted in her home at the age of 81. Damon Keith, a Detroit native and civil rights activist, helped Rosa Parks find a new, safer apartment in the city, and that’s when the amazingly sweet happened.

Mike Ilitch, the Little Caesars founder and Detroit Tigers owner who died last week, read the story in the newspaper and called Damon Keith and made an offer: he would pay for Rosa Parks' housing indefinitely, which he did from 1994 until the icon passed in 2005.

RIP Mr. Ilitch and say Hello to Rosa.

The nativity scene at Claremont United Methodist Church depicts Jesus, Mary and Joseph as refugees held in separate cages topped with barbed wire. The baby Jesus is wrapped in a silver foil blanket. Lead Pastor Karen Clark Ristine:

"We thought about the most famous refugee family in the world, the family of Jesus.  In the Claremont United Methodist Church nativity scene this Christmas, the Holy Family takes the place of the thousands of nameless families separated at our borders. Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center as more than 5,500 children have been the past three years."

Imagine that Deplorables? If Jesus, Mary and Joseph came to our borders today, you’d cheer as they were separated and jailed.

This weekend is the Kennedy Center Honors, honoring Earth, Wind & Fire, Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, Sesame Street, and Michael Tilson Thomas. But before the show, the State Dept. held a  dinner for the honorees and Mike Pompeo, introducing Linda Ronstadt, paraphrased one of her biggest hits and asked when he would be “loved”.

When Linda Ronstadt got up to receive her award, she looked Pompeo dead in the eyes and said:

“Maybe when you stop enabling Donald _____”.

Icon. Hero. Deserves very honor.

Matt Gay, kicker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has been bullied his whole life because of his last name.

Now his nieces and nephews suffer the same, because … 2019 and people are still asshats. So, Matt has taken up the cause of anti-bullying and will wear special cleats to Sunday’s game against the Indianapolis Colts:

“It’s so easy to hide behind a phone and say whatever you want. … I think it’s pure coward-ism for those who do it and there’s no place for it in this world. I got bullied and teased all the time for my last name and things like that. Luckily, I was stronger willed than they were and overcome it. There’s a lot of kids that get bullied in this world and have no way to stand up for themselves. Some of the messages I receive, it’s almost like people forget you’re an actual human being.”

Good on Matt because not only is the bullying ridiculous and must stop, the idea that calling someone gay is an insult has also got to go.

A new holiday ad for the H&M clothing chain features gay and lesbian love alongside straight couples in an ad entitled “Moments in Between”—that is the moments during the holiday season that come between the big events like Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Set to Judy Garland’s performance of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” many of the scenes shown aren’t romantic, and most aren’t LGBTQ. But there are two queer moments where two women are kissing under the mistletoe, and two young men kiss on a stairway.

Cute, right? Well, H&M is being forced to delete hateful comments about LGBTQ people under the post:

“We have a strong belief in love being for all and would like everyone to keep a friendly tone. Therefore comments that are extremely hurtful and not in line with our well-rooted values about equality have been removed.”

The comments are removed, but not the scenes of two same-sex couples sharing a kiss.

Take that!

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, has been selected as TIME’s 2019 ‘Person of the Year’, making her the youngest person ever bestowed with their honor.

Before 2019, the previous individual to hold the record for youngest Person of the Year was the first Person of the Year in TIME’s history: 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh, back in 1927.

Congratulations to a most deserving honoree.

Adrien France.

Yes; he’s French; I’m dreaming of that accent now. And then there’s that whole loves-to-model-in-his-underwear thing. He works the curly hair, works the sleek hair, works the 70s porn star look.

Just sayin’.

Tuesday Thought #3

The Funny Papers

Mike Smith, David Fitzsimmons, Drew Sheneman, Nick Anderson, Randall Enos, Bill Bramhall, Darrin Bell, Adam Zyglis, Steve Breen, Kevin Siers, Mike Luckovich

In His Own Words _____ Proves Himself Unfit To Lead

We all know that _____ is ill-prepared to be president—most of us knew that all last year—but as we’ve learned last week, with the release of leaked transcripts of phone between _____ and Mexico’s President, Enrique Peña Nieto, and with Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, he is completely out of his depth.

Let’s begin with _____ and Peña Nieto discussing ‘The Wall.’

Candidate _____ used ‘The Wall’ as one of his building blocks of his campaign, stoking the flames of fear of brown-skinned people as drug dealers, rapists and murderers to promise the American people that he would protect us ... by building a wall and having Mexico pay for it.

At the time, when some people I knew said they liked the idea, especially the part about Mexico paying for it, I told them this little story...

Your neighbor has a dog that keeps coming into your yard and digging up your flower beds; you don’t like it, but you cannot stop the dog and the neighbors can’t be bothered. So, you decide you’re going to build a fence to keep the dog out and have your neighbor pay for it.

Yeah, that would never happen; I mean, sure, you could sue to have the neighbor pay, but probably all you’d get is the right to kill the dog if it continues to trespass, or force the neighbor to watch their dog or chain up their dog. But you cannot build a fence on your property, or even your property line, and then make someone else pay for it.

So, why anyone believed _____ is a testament to how idiotic his followers can be, especially given the fact that, at every single turn, Mexico’s President Peña Nieto, said his country will not pay for the wall; not now, not ever; no discussion.

So, in that White House call with Peña Nieto, _____ described his vow to charge Mexico as a growing political problem, and tried to force Peña Nieto to stop saying his government would never pay:

“You cannot say that to the press.”

And _____ even promised to get the money some other, but said he would cut off contact if Peña Nieto continued to make defiant statements; seriously. And he added:

“If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”

Is it me, or does he sound like a guy begging for sex from his, say Eastern European born wife, and then threatening to hold his breath until he gets some? But he continued to beg, claiming that the wall is “the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important.”

You know, because the base will get riled up and maybe turn on him. But, sadly, this is our president, whining about how another country will build our wall because, if they don’t he’ll stop talking to them.

“On the wall, you and I both have a political problem. My people stand up and say, ‘Mexico will pay for the wall,’ and your people probably say something in a similar but slightly different language.”

Um, it’s called Spanish ... but then _____ acknowledged that his threats to make Mexico pay had left him cornered politically:

“I have to have Mexico pay for the wall—I have to. I have been talking about it for a two-year period.”

And so he tried to force Peña Nieto to simply stopped saying ‘No’ to paying:

“We should both say, ‘We will work it out.’ It will work out in the formula somehow. As opposed to you saying, ‘We will not pay,’ and me saying, ‘We will not pay.’”

But Peña Nieto resisted, saying his “position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall.” And _____ flipped:

“But you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that.”

Perhaps the idea of the President of the United States whining like a little bitch, softened Peña Nieto’s heart because, while he continued to refuse to pay for the wall, he did agree to stop talking about it.

President _____ signed an executive order mandating construction of the wall, though to this day the funding for it remains unclear. And while _____ reiterated his vow that Mexico would pay—as recently as last month at the G20—the House approved a spending bill setting aside $1.6 billion for a wall that is projected to cost as much as $21 billion.

In US dollars, mind you.

And Mexico said, ‘Meh.’

But it wasn’t just a phone call to Mexico that showed the weakness in _____; he also spoke with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about the United States accepting refugees ... well, Muslim refugees anyway.

As we know now, with the transcripts leaked to the press, _____ exploded on Turnbull:

“I have had it. I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day.”

Huh; so I wonder who was the nicest person _____ spoke with ...

“Putin was a pleasant call.”

Go figure.

And the phone call became even more contentious when it returned to the idea of the United States accepting refugees from Australian detention centers. While the Obama administration had agreed to accept some detainees _____ was not having it.

“I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”

Huh? What? Why?

Turnbull tried to explain that the detainees were economic refugees who had not been accused of crimes, and said they were being denied entry into Australia because of a policy aimed at discouraging human smuggling. He even tried to give _____ a way to explain it by doing something _____ loves to do, blame Obama:

“There is nothing more important in business or politics than a deal is a deal. You can certainly say that it was not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it.”

That only made _____ angrier, saying that the refugees could “become the Boston bomber in five years” before adding:

“I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made. As far as I am concerned, that is enough Malcom [sic]. I have had it. This is going to kill me. I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people.”

Look, here’s the deal: this man is woefully out of his league in this job. He has spent a career bullying developers, contractors, designers, vendors, constructions workers to get his way and he thought he could use that same ignorant mentality in the White House and—since we know these conversations took place in late January—we see that even in his first week in office he is ill-prepared and unsuited to be the leader of this country.

But here’s the saddest part of the leaked phone calls: it’s clear that _____ is not really concerned with the resistance—he offers no concrete plans as a result of Mexico and Australia refusing to play ball—he seems most concerned with how this makes him look.

And he should, because he, once again, looks like he has no idea what he’s doing.

WaPo

The Funny Papers

Mike Smith, Mike Luckovich, Nick Anderson, JD Crowe, Jim Morin, Pat Bagley, Bill Day, David Horsey, Drew Sheneman, Trevor Irvin

My Two Cents: Turning Our Backs On Refugees

So … "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I think we need to take down that statue since some of us in this country, and oddly enough, the ones of us who spout their faith and Christianity at every turn, no longer believe in what Emma Lazarus wrote, and what is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

So … give it back. Take it down, put it on a big ship and tell France we no longer believe in those words.

The governors of some thirty-one states — and it could be more, I haven’t checked the news lately — including our own Nikki Haley who reminds us every time she opens her mouth what a good Christian woman she is, have asked that no Syrian refugees be allowed to enter their states.

Their states. And, of course, they have no plan to accomplish this since they have no legal recourse, no authority, to do any such thing; that would be up to the federal government, wingnuts. But the question of whether they can refuse entry to refugees or not is unimportant, when you think about why, why, they would want to punish refugees fleeing ISIS and war and persecution and death.

How Christian is that? I saw a meme on Facebook that said something to the effect that if only there was a seasonal story about Middle Eastern refugees being denied a play to stay. If only … Jesus, Mary and Joseph. That’s the story!

But these governors don’t remember that and want to turn their backs, our collective backs, on people feeling for their lives because maybe, maybe, one of them, maybe two, might be a terrorist even though they have no proof that this is so.

Oh, but wait. Jeb No-Last-Name will accept the refugees, if, and only if, they can prove they are Christians because real Christians don’t commit acts of terror.

Timothy McVeigh.

But again, how is this Christian? How is this what they teach in churches or the Bible? Turning away those in need, those running from certain death? How is that Christ-like at all?

And how is this American? I mean, unless you’re a direct bloodline to a Native America we are all, each and every one of us, immigrants and refugees — Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio’s families fled persecution in Cuba, so I guess they should consider themselves lucky that there weren’t politicians with their own bent mindset in place when they arrived on calmer shores.

So … if only there was a way to see if this might work before we actually do it you know, if only there was an historical precedent, an historical action, that we might compare this to, so we can see what could happen if we turn our backs on those in need.

Oh wait … back in 1939, the MS St Louis arrived in New York City carrying nearly a thousand Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. And what did we do to those huddled masses yearning to breathe free?

We told them to get out, and to go back where they came from and so the ship turned around and headed back to Europe where some other countries took some of those folks in, gave them shelter. But around 250 of those refugees, who came here, begging for help, begging for us to save their lives, were taken into Nazi concentration camps where they were murdered.

Is that what we want … again? Is that America? Is it Christian? It is right?