Sociologist writing for TIME Magazine caricatures First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, but doesn't interview a single actual member of the church

 Attending the event in person allowed me to appreciate how central Trump remains to white evangelicalism. ...

Standing in line 2.5 hours before the event, I chatted with a group of five elderly women who all came together. All were committed churchgoers in the Dallas area, but none were members at First Baptist. ...

There was Bill, a repairman who had taken public transportation to get to First Baptist. He was not a member either, but had always been a huge fan of Trump and was eager to see him in person. ...

And there was Carlos. Like Bill, Carlos was visiting First Baptist from elsewhere in the city along with a friend. ...

Trump’s appeal Sunday morning extends far beyond the First Baptist faithful. Evangelical visitors from around the city had come to cheer for their President. They were convinced he’d been treated unfairly. And they pined to see him back in office. ...

For the vast majority of white evangelicals in the U.S., like those visiting First Baptist Dallas on Sunday, Trump is still their warrior. ... over two-thirds of white evangelicals felt the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump.

More.

This guy should get out more and document the adulation directed at Democrats visiting America's black churches and insinuate in a column about how 92% of the nation's blacks voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they're duped by religion or something.

Because our better selves are optimists, we're musing today that COVID-19 will soon be a thing of the past, along with Donald Trump, his warp speed vaccines, and that clown Joe Biden

Christmas wishes do come true. You only have to believe.

Another woke general crawls out from under his retirement rock, wants FOX News banned from all US military bases

 Paul D. Eaton, here.

Hillary supporter, critic of Bush 43's Iraq War.

LOL Trump brags about the same vaccines which are failing spectacularly in Canada in Dallas, gets unenthusiastic response

A good sign.

Mediaite LOVES Trump now!

... kudos to the former president for not pussy-footing around in answering, and receiving the smattering of boos with some grace and laughter.

The US House passed the $2.5 trillion increase to the debt ceiling in the dead of night with just one, unneeded, Republican vote

The bill, which lawmakers passed 221-209, with one Republican voting yes, raises the federal debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion to increase the limit to close to $31 trillion.

More. 

Adam Kinzinger was the lone Republican vote in the House:

Representative Adam Kinzinger was the only Republican lawmaker who voted with Democrats in the House to raise the debt ceiling, staving off a potentially disastrous federal default.

Last week, Kinzinger was also the only Republican to back the Democrats over the plan struck by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) allowing Senate Democrats to lift the ceiling through a simple majority vote.

The Illinois congressman, one of 10 Republicans to vote for the second impeachment of ex-President Donald Trump after the Capitol insurrection and one of only two GOP lawmakers on the January 6 committee investigating the riots that day, will not be standing for re-election in the 2022 midterms.

Trump kicks off speaking tour vying for the Sean Penn vote, saying he got on best with communist dictators of China, North Korea, also with Russia's Putin

 Reported here.

Tone deaf, much?

My guess is Sean Penn still isn't impressed, try as Trump may.

They move the goalposts so fast with these C19 vaccine recommendations it's hard even for Fauci to keep up: "Fully-vaccinated" to disappear in favor of annual shots

In September Fauci was already arguing for a 3-shot battery for COVID-19 as it was becoming clear the 2-shots for "fully vaccinated" were not holding up under the Delta onslaught. You can bet the farm he knew the number of breakthroughs after 2-shots was already much higher than the public knew, but because they didn't count them officially, no one was the wiser.

Just as with Trump, if you don't test you don't have cases!

Amid criticism from global health officials, Fauci argued that the COVID-19 vaccines should have been viewed as a three-shot regimen from the "get-go."

Three months later and Fauci is now hedging on that. He shape-shifts faster than a Terminator.

Fauci said the official definition of “fully vaccinated” is in some ways semantic, but important as a guidepost for the various vaccination requirements that employers, businesses, and other organizations have implemented. ... “As a public health person, I just say get your third shot,” Fauci said. “Forget about what the definition is. I just want to see people be optimally protected.”

The reason?

Some health experts are less sure — especially with the emergence of omicron — predicting it will be more like a flu vaccine where the shots are typically recommended on an annual basis.

“If that becomes the case, then ‘fully vaccinated’ becomes a term that’s sort of less useful, because there is no ‘fully vaccinated,'” Stephen Kissler, a Harvard infectious disease researcher, told reporters on a conference call this week. “Basically, how recently have you been vaccinated becomes the question.” 

Here's a news flash for ya:

No one's going to get 3 shots every year.

You can hardly get people to take the one for influenza. The average for adults in the last decade was barely 42%.

They are going to have to come up with something else, something that actually works and doesn't come with terrible side-effects.

Or maybe Omicron is a sign the virus will just save us all the trouble, by becoming less deadly over time.

The answer to COVID-19 is not 42.

LOL, The Grauniad thinks it's in the Vanguard of the press, having few scruples about printing Trump's four years filled with swearing, obviously doesn't read POLITICO

Here where it can't even bring itself to spell them out:

In remarks to diners at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday night, Donald Trump called the American media “crooked ba**ards” and Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, a “fu**ing idiot”. ...

Trump’s penchant for swearing is well-known, to the extent that his four-year presidency prompted soul-searching among some US media outlets about which words could properly be printed.

The Guardian has long had few such scruples.

 

POLITICO in October:

Behind closed doors, the former Catholic school boy is quite profane, according to several current and former aides.

“When he gets going he definitely gets going,” said one White House official.

In meetings with aides, Biden’s vulgarities include but are not limited too: “Fuck them,” “What the fuck are we doing?” “Why the fuck isn’t this happening?” “bullshit,” “dammit,” or just simply: “fuck,” according to several current and former aides.

When pushing aides for better answers, he will sometimes say, “don't bullshit a bullshitter.”

Some say they find Biden’s foul mouth endearing — a part of his everyman appeal that made him president. One former aide noted that’s true just as long as you’re not on the receiving end of it.

By contrast, Vice President KAMALA HARRIS’ favorite swear word is “motherfuck-ah,” [emphasis on the ahhhhh] according to someone who worked closely with her. She also alluded to this preference in a past interview. Her office did not respond.

Trump is the f*cking idiot who elevated the f*cking idiot Mark Milley in the first place, Raheem, you f*cking idiot

 https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/trump-is-right-mark-milley-is-in-fact-a-fucking-idiot/

LOL, Biden reimposes Trump's African Ban which he slammed in February 2020

 

Hillary "vast right wing conspiracy" Clinton is still beating that same old, worn out, authoritarian personality drum she bought at a 1950s vintage store in the 1990s

... there is a plot against the country by people who truly want to turn the clock back. They believe that the progress we’ve made on all kinds of civil rights and human rights, the cultural changes that have taken place, are so deeply threatening that they want to stage a coup.

Now, think about it, because that’s truly what is behind Trump and his enablers and those who invaded and attacked our Capitol. They don’t like the world we’re living in and they have that in common with, you know, autocratic leaders from Russia to Turkey to Hungary to Brazil and so many other places, who are driven by personal power and greed and corruption but who utilize fears about change to try to get people to hate one another and feel insecure and, therefore, be easily manipulated by demagogues and by disinformation.

More.

The projection from the person behind the Steele Dossier is really something. Crackpot, loony-bin level stuff.

 

 

Elon Musk is selling stocks because he'd rather pay taxes at Trump rates than at the proposed Democrat rates

 That's all.

I'm not sure it was actually Billy Pilgrim who appeared in my dream the other night

 But the theme for today sure does seem to indicate that.

I mean, Biden told businesses to vaccinate anyway even after the Fifth Circuit Court for Appeals stayed his OSHA mandate. Trump would have been lynched in a second for that.

I mean impeached.

So it goes.

Everything is horrible and I don't think it really matters.

Deconstruct that, Pete Booty Judge.

Civilian employment under Biden in October 2021 is at about the same level it was four years ago under Trump

How long will it take to recover? Seven years like it did under Obama-Biden?

Let's hope not.

The current trajectory looks like civilian employment will recover round about March 2023, a little more than three years after the Feb 2020 peak. That is slightly longer than the typical 2-3 years during recessions.

Foolish energy and vaccine policies could interfere with that, however.

Job creation under Trump in 2019 using W-2 payroll data actually looks pretty crappy based on the most recent figures out in October: The worst in eight years

 

Full-time as a percent of population peaked in July at 49.28% and averages 48.47% for the first 10 months of 2021

 Still way off the (lousy) Trump peak of 50.4% in 2019.

 

Good morning!

 Only 167 days until Easter.

Tucker Carlson chalks up new illegal immigrant reparations scheme to Biden just acting in keeping with his other craziness, but this widely misses the mark

And of course, pretty much every morning, what we had assumed was a joke turns out to be entirely real. It's actually happening. The Biden administration really is that crazy. They really are firing thousands of nurses in the middle of a pandemic, firing thousands of cops in the middle of a crime wave. No, they're not kidding, even in the slightest, when they tell you that's a genuine female four-star admiral standing right there. Joe Biden isn't giggling. He tells you Rachel Levine's promotion is a victory for women everywhere, and he means it when he says it.

More.

Like the full court press by the federal government to exaggerate the January 6 debacle as an insurrection, the "reparations" scheme is designed to do just one thing: Paint the record of Donald Trump in the worst possible light.

One of the most distinctive features about America is how its leadership on both sides fails to take seriously the real problems facing the country while taking too seriously merely imaginary ones.

This is how a nation declines and falls.

Somewhere, out there, there's an iceberg, waiting for its moment.

Feynman lives: Ann Bauer believes in the ignorance of the experts because they helped kill her autistic son

 If you read nothing else about COVID-19 ever again, make sure you at least read this.

I Have Been Through This Before:

In the end, what I believe doesn’t really matter. History will out. Ten or 15 or 25 years from now there will a reckoning, deep research, a spate of biographies and memoirs from the people who spent 2020-21 under the sway of gurus. News media that trumpeted their wisdom and methods will issue brisk, researched, documentary-style reports. People will swarm out of the shadows to claim they didn’t really believe the experts embodied science and were secretly resisting all along; even those who preached their gospel and strong-armed the public’s obedience will insist they actually did not.

 

LOL Trump is still president: Biden to reimplement Remain in Mexico policy for migrants after a federal court ruling in August

 Story.