12.30 Adirondack Thunder 5 Newfoundland Growlers 5 (OT)
12.30 Tom Wilkinson dies at 75.
12.28 Joe Country by Mick Herron.
12.27 Jonathan Karl, in Tired of Winning: Donald Trumpand the End of the Grand Old Party, “quotes ”a very senior official who spent day in and day out with Donald Trump for over a year in the West Wing”: “He lacks any shred of human decency, humility or caring. He is morally bankrupt, breathtakingly dishonest, lethally incompetent, and stunningly ignorant of virtually anything related to governing, history, geography, human events or world affairs. He is a traitor and a malignancy in our nation and represents a clear and present danger to our democracy and the rule of law.”
12.27 Tom Smothers dies at 86.
12.25 Donald Trump on X: Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against “TRUMP” and “MAGA.” Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and “sick” as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
12.23 Real Tigers by Mick Herron
12.22 Molly, Shawn, Ginny and I at the Winter Dreams exhibit at Fort William Henry at Lake George. Very creative!
12.21 Rudy Giuliani files for bankruptcy
12.19 Colorado’s Supreme Court rules that Trump is barred from holding office again because of his role during the January 6th riot at the Capitol.
12.19 Peter Wehner in The Atlantic: For many years, Biden was seen as an “amiable lightweight.” His political career seemed finished when, as vice president, he was passed over by his party, which nominated Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. But history had other things in mind. Biden looks to be the only person standing between Trump and a second term that would pose a catastrophic threat to the republic. At the same time, he is also the key person resisting the pull of the progressive left on the Democratic Party. A person who was thought to be a transitional president is turning out to be a consequential one. An awful lot hinges on the man from Scranton.
12.16 Trump in Durham NH: “[Immigrants are] poisoning the blood of our country. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they are coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They’re pouring into our country, nobody’s even looking at them.”
12.16-17 Early Christmas. When Ginny catches her foot while descending a twisty slide with Ivy, she causes a 47 kid pile up.
12.15 After a weeklong trial, a jury ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million to former Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman for the harm caused by defamatory statements he made about them following the 2020 election.
12.14 Tom Nichols in The Atlantic: In a newly declassified report to Congress, US intelligence estimates that Russia has lost 87 percent of the total number of its active-duty ground troops since launching its invasion of Ukraine—this does not mean “men sent into battle” but nearly nine-tenths of its entire army—and two-thirds of its preinvasion tank force. The US has so far provided military aid to Ukraine that amounts to roughly a tenth of its total annual defense budget. In return, one of America’s most dangerous enemies has sacrificed almost all of its existing soldiers and the bulk of its armor. The courage of the Ukrainian people and the valor of their armed forces have accomplished all of this without a single American soldier being ordered into battle. Yet Republicans want to depict this astonishing achievement as a budgetary strain that makes America less safe.
12.13 From The New York Times: For the first time since nations began meeting three decades ago to confront climate change, diplomats from nearly 200 countries approved a global pact that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” like oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet. The sweeping agreement, which comes during the hottest year in recorded history, was reached after two weeks of furious debate at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai. European leaders and many of the nations most vulnerable to climate-fueled disasters were urging language that called for a complete “phaseout” of fossil fuels. But that proposal faced intense pushback from major oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, as well as fast-growing countries like India and Nigeria. In the end, negotiators struck a compromise: The new deal calls on countries to accelerate a global shift away from fossil fuels this decade in a “just, orderly and equitable manner,” and to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by midcentury. It also calls on nations to triple the amount of renewable energy, like wind and solar power, installed around the world by 2030 and to slash emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term.
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.12 Andre Braugher dies at 61. I so admired his fiercely intelligent portrayal of Det. Frank Pembleton on the low-rated, erratically scheduled, consistently brilliant Homicide: Life On the Streets that I persuaded Esquire to let me do a little story on him. We spent a couple hours in a joint in Fells Point in Baltimore, across from the old police station where they filmed the show. He was impressive–as fiercely intelligent in person as he was on the tube.
12.11 From The Atlantic: this excerpt from a speech by Bayard Rustin, delivered at Harvard University Chapel on January 19, 1987: “The old form of racism was based on prejudging all blacks as somehow inherently undeserving of equal treatment. What makes the new form more insidious is its basis in observed sociological data. The new racist equates the pathology of the poor with race, ignoring the fact that family dissolution, teenage pregnancy, illegitimacy, alcohol and drug abuse, street crime, and idleness are universal problems of the poor. They exist wherever there is economic dislocation and deterioration—in the cities, for example, dotting Britain’s devastated industrial north. They are rampant among the white jobless in Liverpool as well as among unemployed blacks in New York, And if the American underclass seems more violent, it is only because we, as a nation, are more violent. The new forms of racism cannot be attacked frontally. Society will not combat the new racism, as has been naively suggested in the press, by asking people to be good or asking teachers to teach new courses on tolerance. Nor can it be attacked by adopting the strategy and tactics used so effectively by King in the 1960s. To combat bigotry and injustice today requires an analysis of structural changes in the economy … The technological revolution, automation, cybernation, and robots have taken jobs away from the poor and uneducated. And though some of these innovations create work, they do not create work for those without skills or, worse, those unable to attain them. Labor-intensive industries, which were prime vehicles for economic advancement for generations of white immigrants and black former slaves, have gone overseas, never to return. To honor King we must look ahead, beyond the racial equality dream, to economic equity … The second phase of the revolution envisioned by King will require billions of dollars. But they are not dollars that will be spent on an exclusively black agenda. Continuing black economic progress and equal opportunity are not contingent on the government providing “special treatment” to blacks. Any preferential approach postulated along racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual lines will only disrupt a multicultural society and lead to a backlash. However, special treatment can be provided to those who have been exploited or denied opportunities if solutions are predicated along class lines, precisely because all religious, ethnic, and racial groups have a depressed class who would benefit. Black economic progress is contingent upon the national economy performing well for all Americans. That can only happen if the federal government commits billions in resources to a comprehensive program that addresses this nation’s deteriorating economic position and the erosion of education and research and development. We need a national commitment to excellence in education and to federal vocational and job-training programs to help blacks and others enter an increasingly specialized and competitive job market, and to move on to new jobs when technological innovation eliminates old jobs.”
12.10 Million Dollar Quartet Christmas at Capital Rep.
12.10 Ross Douthat in the Times: Pro-immigration liberalism inevitably faces a balancing act: High rates of immigration make native voters more conservative, so a policy that’s too radically open is a good way to elect politicians who prefer the border closed. You can see this pattern in U.S. politics writ large. The foreign-born population in the United States climbed through the Obama presidency, to 44 million from 38 million, and as a share of the overall population it was nearing the highs of the late 19th and early 20th century — a fact that almost certainly helped Donald Trump ride anti-immigration sentiment to the presidency. Then under Trump there was some stabilization — the foreign-born population was about the same just before Covid-19 hit as it had been in 2016 — which probably help defuse the issue for Democrats, increase American sympathy for migrants, and make Biden’s victory possible. But since 2020 the numbers are rising sharply once again, and the estimated foreign-born share of the American population now exceeds the highs of the last great age of immigration. Which, again unsurprisingly, has pushed some number of Biden voters back toward Trump.
12.10 Helen Lewis in The Atlantic: Britain is Slough House: damp and drafty, creaking along, with its basic infrastructure gummed up by neglect, and a ruling class that has insulated itself from failure. Like the Park, the country proceeds seamlessly from screwup to cover-up. If only there were a Jackson Lamb somewhere out there, sitting in a fog of smoke and yesterday’s curry fumes, ready to sort the problems out.
12.9 Shohei Otani signs a ten year deal with the Dodgers for $700 million. Ohtani will earn only $2 million in salary over the length of the 10-year deal, deferring $680 million. The deferral payments will be made over the course of 10 years without interest—$68 million every July 1 starting in 2034.
12.6 Francis Wilkinson in Bloomberg: In its current polarized state, the US is governed by unelected right-wing activists working in concert with six unelected jurists on the high court. Here’s how a bill becomes law in 2023: A right-wing activist, or a MAGA state office holder, files a lawsuit — often in Texas, where judge-shopping has become as common among conservatives as a trip to Hobby Lobby. After the ruling is handed down, the loser appeals to the far-right 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. From there, it’s just a skip and a jump to the Supreme Court in Washington, where six judges craft the conservative legislation that will bind the entire nation. Does the federal government, under the direction of the Democratic president, really have the power to enforce its own rules? The conservative justices will decide.
12.6 The Yankees acquire Juan Soto.
12.6 Girl From the North Country at Proctor’s.
12.6 Time names Taylor Swift Person of the Year.
12.6 Norman Lear dies at 101. From the obituary I wrote for EW in 2005: “Few people have had as much influence on television, and therefore on American culture, as did Lear. Shows like NYPD Blue, Will & Grace, and Sex and the City owe something of their existence to Lear’s groundbreaking efforts to liberalize ideas of what is fit content for a television program. Born in New Haven, Conn., in 1922, Lear fought in World War II and returned home to work as a press agent. He soon joined his cousin Ed Simmons to write comedy material for Danny Thomas, Martin & Lewis, Martha Raye, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and others to perform in nightclubs and eventually on TV, but it was in his partnership with director Bud Yorkin that Lear started to hit his stride. They moved back and forth between television and movies, working on programs like The Andy Williams Show and features including Divorce: American Style (Lear earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay in 1968), The Night They Raided Minsky’s, and Cold Turkey (his directorial debut).
But his life took a turn when he read an item in TV Guide about a British series called Till Death Do Us Part, about a middle-aged man and his son-in-law who fought about all the social and political issues of the day. Lear and Yorkin bought the rights and developed All in the Family. In the process, they created one of the most vivid characters ever seen on the screen. Archie Bunker was loud, unschooled, guiltlessly bigoted, and totally new. Not since The Honeymooners had television had a blue collar hero, never had the prime character in a program been so unpalatable, and never had so many controversial issues been tossed into the maw of a sitcom. Subjects that were tackled included abortion, birth control, mate-swapping, homosexuality, religion, menopause, and most relentlessly, racial and ethnic stereotypes, with words like spic, heeb, and spade appearing with great frequency. When the show hit the airwaves in 1971, CBS took the precaution of hiring extra phone operators to staff switchboards around the country in anticipation of a deluge of complaint. As it turned out, there were a lot of calls, but many were positive. All in the Family would spend the next five years as the top-rated show in the country, win three Emmys for Best Comedy Series, and run in various incarnations for 12 years.
In short order, Lear began to capitalize on his success. He soon brought out Maude, starring the imperious Bea Arthur playing a character that had been introduced as Edith Bunker‘s feminist cousin (and who was based in no small measure on Lear’s wife Frances), and Sanford and Son, starring the great Redd Foxx. The Jeffersons, a comedy about middle-class blacks that dared to show that bigotry wasn’t exclusively a white phenomenon, and One Day at a Time, about a single mother, followed. Lear’s final success was Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a parody soap opera that went further over the top than any of its stable mates. (Informed that a madman had just murdered her neighbors as well as their three children, two goats and eight chickens, Mary exclaims “What kind of madman would kill two goats and eight chickens?”) The show was rejected by all three networks, but became a hit in syndication.
Although the signature of a Lear show was its willingness to tackle hot button issues, he dismissed the idea that this endowed him with any special influence. “Are people less bigoted than they were before All in the Family or Sanford and Son?” he said in an interview with Playboy.”And even if they are, am I responsible for it? Bulls—.” Even so,when Lear withdrew from daily involvement in his programs in 1978, they seemed to lose their creative spark, and what Rob Reiner — All in the Family‘s Meathead — called “the Norman Lear oasis in his the history of television” drew to a close.
Lear sporadically involved himself in show business projects in the years since, but he was most active in philanthropy. In 1981 he founded People for the American Way, a politically liberal foundation that supports Constitutional freedoms and Bill of Rights guarantees. In 2001 he bought an original copy of the Declaration of Independence for $8.2million and took it on tour around the United States. “I like living in a country where I can speak out,” he told Bill Moyers. “I like the First Amendment. I like pluralism. I like diversity. And I like the flag; it is not the exclusive property of the far right. Call me a liberal, or a moderate, or a progressive – I think I’m a bleeding-heart conservative – but it’s my flag, too. It is more than a symbol of America’s might. It is a symbol of America’s people.”
12.5 Speaker Mike Johnson, acknowledging that Republicans are altering footage of the January 6 insurrection. “We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ.”
12.5 For its Word of the Year, the Oxford English Dictionary chooses rizz, which refers to someone’s ability to flirt by being charismatic, as in “Livvy rizzed him up.”
12.3 Derek Guy in the Times: Dr. [Frazier] Crane’s contemporary wardrobe skews less highbrow and more middle-class because the wealthiest, most powerful people in America (men like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Cook) now dress almost indistinguishably from their employees. Their status is telegraphed not through bespoke suits, but through modes of consumption for which there is no imitation (mansions, private security and luxury cars). In the 1980s, cultural capital may have meant being able to “pass” at a “Paris Review” soiree and hold a conversation with a fusty George Plimpton about art and literature. Today, it’s, “talking about Danish restaurants with Chris Sacca on his private plane,” said David Marx, author of “Status and Culture,” a book about how our pursuit of status shapes our cultural consumption and production. “Crane’s clothing evolution is a very accurate marker of how aspirational taste in the United States has changed in the last 40 years,” Mr. Marx said. “New money today dwarfs old money. You could I.P.O. your tech start-up and make more money than any trust fund kid would see in their lifetime. Old money’s influence on society today is incredibly weak, so the original set of aesthetics associated with that group has been detached from power and now exists as pure fashion.”
12.2 Napoleon.
12.1 George Santos is expelled from the House.
12.1 Sandra Day O’Connor dies at 93.